Newswire:

No Ladies On The Court!

Ladies and Gentlemen of Kansas, welcome to the Stone Age.

On Feb. 2, the boys’ basketball team of St. Mary’s Academy, located near Topeka, was ready to take the court to play basketball.

Suddenly, 10 minutes before tipoff, school officials brought everything to a screeching halt. The emergency? They realized one of the referees for the day’s game was (gasp!) a woman. [USA Today] [Kansas City Star]

The school actually said they could not have a woman call the game because it would put her in a position of authority over the male students and that was against the academy’s beliefs.

Shocked, the official, Michelle Campbell, walked off the court. She was followed in solidarity by her colleague, Darin Putthoff.

The school then tried to get another referee (and 12-year Army vet), Fred Shockey to call the game.

“I said there was no way I was going to work those games. I have been led by some of the finest women this nation has to offer and there was no way I was going to go along with that,” Shockey said.

St. Mary’s Academy is owned by the Society of St. Pius X. The society’s leader, the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, was excommunicated in the late ‘80s for the sect’s radical beliefs and hatred of women.

For example, the school’s website states, “Feminism refuses the true nature of woman, confuses the natural and supernatural relations between the sexes and embarks upon a deviant path at the end of which the suicide of thought and the death of womanhood is inevitable.”

The school now faces an excommunication of its own: If the state Activities Association confirms this is a standing policy of the school, students will no longer be allowed to compete against any of the other schools in the area.

Somehow, we suspect the inability to play hoops against other schools will be among the least of the problems faced in life by graduates of St. Mary’s.

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Comments

1. Let’s try to get our facts straight, shall we? I am a teacher at SMA, and there is no such doctrine in the traditional Catholic faith or at St. Mary’s as what you describe here, i.e. putting the female ref in a position of authority over the boys. It is rubbish. We have plenty of female teachers in our boys’ school. However, we do not have female coaches, as that would be considered inappropriate. The position of referee is similarly regarded.The quote from the campus website is in reference to the role of fathers and mothers, and the role models we hold up for our children/students.

   Here is the press release of today:
   PRESS RELEASE
   ON ST. MARYʼS ACADEMY CONTROVERSY
   February 15, 2008

   ST. MARY’S ACADEMY (in St. Maryʼs, KS) policy is to have only men in their sports program for boys.

   Sports for boys are seen as training for the battlefield of life where the boys will need to fight at times through great difficulties. As such, it is more appropriate that it be men who train and direct the boys in these sports programs for only men can teach the boys to be men, just only women can truly teach girls to be women.

   It is not a question of women having no authority over boys as the quote in the paper (if it was accurate) seem to indicate. It is a question in athletics of men training boys to be men. (source)

   — Gandalf - Feb 15, 07:06 PM - #