I am deeply disturbed that both Marie Bain and the daughter of the parent who filed the complaint against Ms. Bain are now being used as political targets, in the midst of Diocesan business and employment practices that do not GUARANTEE due process of the law to all persons, equally.

If Catholic Bishops can fire employees for "past acts" before an employment contract is signed, this basically states that every Diocesan employee can be fired at any time, without due process. I cannot imagine there is one Catholic employee who does not have something in his/her past that would be grounds for immediate termination, according to Bishop Wiegand.

If students can be expelled from Catholic schools because of exercising freedoms of speech and press, in accordance with the teachings of the Church, this is contradictory to the principles outlined in The Catholic School on the Threshold of the Third Millennium. Children should never be punished, through expulsion, without due process.

With all the clergy sex abuse lawsuits and embarassment, one would think that Bishops would now understand the urgent need to "listen" to employees and students, without hastily acting to terminate an employee or expelling a student, without due process of the law.

I am deeply disturbed that both Marie Bain and the daughter of the parent who filed the complaint against Ms. Bain are now being used as political targets...

Please remember that Bain is the person who is keeping the story alive (as it concerns her) at this point. She chose to file those complaints. Her lawyer was ready with a statement for the press. If anyone is shoving Bain into the spotlight, it's certainly not me. I have no desire to continue posting about her. As far as I'm concerned, Bain should just accept her firing, get a new job, and move on with her life. In fact, I think I wrote that in my post.

Um, what? Bain was , not imprisoned. Due process of the law has nothing to do with this situation. If her contract allowed her to be fired under these circumstances, then that should be the end of the story.

FYI, many employees work "at will" ... which means that we can be fired for any reason, or for no reason at all. If my boss decided that he didn't like me, he could fire me tomorrow. I'd have no legal recourse, unless he was foolish enough to say something that could be considered discrimination. So your complaints about "due process" are falling on deaf ears over here....

Nobody has a "right" to a job. A job is a mutual agreement between two consenting parties. The employer receives services, and the employee receives a paycheck (and other benefits). If that relationship of mutual consent is broken, then either party should have the right (subject to the terms of any contract) to seek other alternatives.

If Catholic Bishops can fire employees for "past acts" before an employment contract is signed, this basically states that every Diocesan employee can be fired at any time, without due process. I cannot imagine there is one Catholic employee who does not have something in his/her past that would be grounds for immediate termination, according to Bishop Wiegand.

Also, you might re-consider your use of the word "past" to describe Bain's actions. She was working escort duty right up until a month or two before she started teaching at Loretto. Her subsequent actions have proven that she continued in her contact with Planned Parenthood, even if her actual escort duty had stopped. That's only a "past" action in a very charitable sense of the word. Most people would consider that to be pretty current.

Here's a question for you: Jerry is a member of the KKK. Not just a member, but Jerry is actually a recruiter for the KKK. However, something causes Jerry to reconsider his situation. Perhaps he needs a new job, or perhaps he's getting tired of the KKK, or whatever. So Jerry quits the Klan, and two months later he applies for a job as a guidance counsellor at a high school. Does the school administration have a right to be concerned? If they discover Jerry's Klan "past", do they have a right to fire him? If not, why not?

If students can be expelled from Catholic schools because of exercising freedoms of speech and press, in accordance with the teachings of the Church, this is contradictory to the principles outlined in The Catholic School on the Threshold of the Third Millennium. Children should never be punished, through expulsion, without due process.

"That press release, dated, October 28 - a day before Katelyn said she received notice of her expulsion - says of the expulsion that it was a 'last resort' and accused the Sills family of 'an escalating series of public attacks made against Loretto'. The release says that 'these attacks have included taunts, threats and verbal abuse directed against members of our school community, as well as a mass e-mail campaign slandering the school's reputation as a Catholic institution.'"

Basically, I think Loretto wanted to get rid of the problem. They didn't want any of this attention in the first place, but the Bishop forced their hand. Now that they're in the spotlight, they think that getting rid of the Sills will remove the scandal. And they're probably right ... in the long term. In the short term, the scandal has only become worse. However, the public's attention is short-lived and fickle, and Loretto is probably betting that we'll forget all about them in a little while.

With all the clergy sex abuse lawsuits and embarassment, one would think that Bishops would now understand the urgent need to "listen" to employees and students, without hastily acting to terminate an employee or expelling a student, without due process of the law.

Please forgive me for saying so, but you have a real axe to grind here. Not everything that the Catholic Church does should be viewed through the prism of sexual abuse. The Church is the Body of Christ, and it cannot allow its worldwide, millennia-old ministry to be derailed by any one issue.

That said, if there is any connection here with the sex-abuse scandals, it should be about the foolishness of punishing whistle-blowers. Which gets back to my point about expelling Katelyn, but has nothing to do with Bain....

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