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With the challenges and dangers that young students face today (online bullying, offline bullying, gossip, hate, and the increasingly common school shooting) programs like the Anti-Defamation League’s “World of Difference” has arguably never been more important.
But Phoenix Catholic Bishop Thomas Olmsted disagrees.
In this week’s cover story, “Bishop Thomas Olmsted Expels the ADL’s Sensitivity Training from Catholic Schools,” Michael Lacey details how Olmsted has clung to outdated church doctrine in his vendetta against the ADL. Here’s an excerpt from the story:
Bill Straus spoke at Seton Catholic in 2008. A year later, in 2009, the Catholic diocese kicked him to the curb.
Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted terminated the acclaimed national program of decency in Phoenix Catholic high schools because of personal malice.
In puissant posturing with Jewish leaders, the bishop banned the humanitarian training by the Anti-Defamation League from Seton Catholic, as well as from Notre Dame High Preparatory School in Scottsdale. And the cleric canceled plans to open an ADL program at St. Mary’s Catholic High School in Phoenix.
Olmsted’s action was driven by abortion politics and was entirely unrelated to the teaching program, which aims to instill civility in juvenile savages.
