The culture wars have found a flash point in Catholic schools. Some people, including bishops, want to prohibit LGBTQ teachers from seeking employment in such schools, because they violate church teaching on sexual morality and gender identity. Other people urge the schools to be more welcoming, citing Pope Francis' injunction that the doors of the church are to be open to everyone. How do we negotiate these tensions in a way that respects the dignity of everyone involved, as well as the mission of Catholic education?

Cathleen Kaveny is the Darald and Juliet Libby Professor at Boston College. The author of four books and over a hundred articles and essays, she focuses on the relationship among law, religion, and morality in American society.

“So, before you take the religious liberty issue [for example], what people said [was that] we can't respect the religious liberty of everybody. Because that would mean that we were respecting religious traditions that we believe to be false. And we can't respect falsehood. What happened at the Second Vatican Council, and this is key, is they said, that's the wrong question. You're not asking whether you're respecting truthhood or falsehood. The more fundamental question is, are you respecting everyone’s dignity as a searcher for the truth? That's the right question.”