San Antonio, Texas, teacher, Marquis LaFortune, has been fired from her job at a local Catholic high school for "scandal" after marrying a divorcee - but as she later discovered her husband's marriage had in fact been annulled. My San Antonio reports that less than a week before Ms LaFortune was supposed to marry her fiance, the principal of the downtown Central Catholic High School where she worked as an English teacher called her into his office to warn that a "scandal" was looming.
The scandal, the principal, Deacon Patrick Cunningham, informed the bride-to-be, was her coming marriage.
LaFortune married anyway, but now she's the one who feels scandalized. Fired from Central Catholic High School for the Nov. 22 wedding, the 25-year-old has filed a complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and wants to sue the school.
LaFortune told the principal that her fiance had been divorced.
The deacon was concerned with whether the first marriage of LaFortune's fiance, Benjamin Stakes, had been declared invalid by a Catholic tribunal and thereby annulled.
His concern, however, did not sit well with LaFortune, who refused to resign from her job or seek an annulment - a process that could reach to Rome and take more than a year.
"I would have resigned if I'd felt like I'd done something wrong," LaFortune said last week, adding that the conflict put a strain on her wedding preparations. "I couldn't get out of bed. It's just been this cloud. It was supposed to be the best week of my life, and I had to pull myself together for the ceremony."
The school's president said federal law supports the school's stance.
"We have very clear policies on what we expect from Catholic people on our faculty, and there has been a violation of that," Br Peter Pontolillo said. "When a person does something that is obviously contrary to everything that our Catholic school stands for, we cannot just look through our fingers."
"There is a high likelihood of scandal here," Cunningham wrote in a letter to LaFortune later that day, "when there is a public repudiation (even if it is unintentional) of the Church's understanding of the marital covenant. This is not something that Central Catholic High School can support.""As a general matter, religious institutions are free to engage in religious discrimination in employment," said Ira C. Lupu, a professor of law at the George Washington University Law School. "The question is, are they applying the policy consistently? I think the point about consistency is very important."
"It's beyond traumatic. I love working with kids. They said I'm an exemplary teacher," LaFortune said last week. "It made me look like a bad person. It made me feel like a bad person."
She said she is not bitter against the high school, just upset by the decisions of some that run counter to her concept of Christianity.
LaFortune remains unemployed, and she said she's skeptical about landing another teaching job, particularly with the termination on her record.
Two days after the wedding, the couple traveled to Cripple Creek, Colo., for their honeymoon, where LaFortune's husband called his ex-wife to relay the entire troubled saga. According to LaFortune, the ex-wife told him their previous marriage had, in fact, been annulled.
The newlyweds were stunned. LaFortune's husband said he had no recollection of an annulment.
"We didn't talk for about two days on the honeymoon," LaFortune said. "It was very, very, very bitter news."
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(Source: CTHUS)