Patricia Jannuzzi, a religion teacher at Immaculata High School in New Jersey, posted on Facebook that gays "want to reengineer western civ (sic) into a slow extinction" as part of their "agenda." This made headlines after two celebrities became involved. Susan Sarandon’s nephew, an Immaculata alumnus, wrote Januzzi a critical letter which Sarandon posted on her official Facebook page. Greg Bennett, a cast member of “Real Housewives of New Jersey” who had also attended Immaculata, posted his objections on Twitter.
On March 13, Jannuzzi was put on administrative leave with pay and benefits. Diocese of Metuchen Bishop Paul Bootkoski became the target of a campaign demanding the teacher’s reinstatement including radio ads. "Call Bishop Bootkoski now," the announcer says in an ad which ran during the Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity shows on WOR. "Ask him whose side he's on: Catholics who defend our faith or Hollywood liberals who mock it."
Jannuzzi was reinstated on April 10 unlike the numerous Catholic school teachers and administrators fired in the past ten years in various states for being gay, most recently Matthew Eledge, from the Skutt Catholic School in Omaha and Lonnie Billard from the Charlotte Catholic High School among others. In February, San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone and in January, Miami Archbishop Thomas Wenski advised their personnel they could be fired for any conduct that is “inconsistent with the teachings of the Catholic Church.”
Januzzi was reinstated with the admonition that a Catholic school teacher “must always communicate the faith in a way that is positive and never hurtful. Tone and choice of words matter and I trust Mrs. Jannuzzi’s stated promise to strive always to teach in a spirit of truth and charity,” Monsignor Seamus Brennan, the school’s director said in an April 10 statement.
That is the “Francis effect.” Obfuscate, make oblique references, use innuendo, but never admit to being anti-gay.
“The family is threatened by growing efforts on the part of some to redefine the very institution of marriage, by relativism, by the culture of the ephemeral, by a lack of openness to life,” Pope Francis warned during his Jan. 15-19 visit to the Philippines. A Vatican spokesman confirmed that, at least in part, the pope had gay marriage in mind.
The man/woman nature of marriage is “an anthropological fact … that cannot be qualified based on ideological notions or concepts important only at one time in history,”
the pope said during a meeting he had called at the Vatican between American Catholics and evangelicals to defend marriage as between a man and a woman.
In February, Francis strongly criticized modern theories that consider people's gender identities to exist along a spectrum, saying such theories do not "recognize the order of creation." Speaking of gender theory in an interview in a new book released in Italy, the pope even compares such theories to genetic manipulation and nuclear weapons.
The same month, the pope expressed “his appreciation to the entire Slovak Church, encouraging everyone to continue their efforts in defense of the family, the vital cell of society, just days before Slovakians will vote for the third time on whether or not same-sex unions should be legalized in the country.”
Anti-gay not just in words, the pope has refused since January to accept the credentials of Laurent Stefanini as French ambassador to the Vatican because the man is openly gay. In 2014, he excommunicated Brazilian priest, Roberto Francisco Daniel, for defending same-sex marriage.
That said, as Eliel Cruz noted, the pope’s words “serve to dehumanize" and “fear monger Christians into mobilizing” against the transgender community. Cruz notes the increased incidence of murders and suicides among the transgender population, but the same has been documented among the entire LGBT community.
The pope should be held accountable for the anti-gay attitudes he encourages within his Church by his own example.