Is a Catholic school teacher a “minister” of the Catholic Church? Notwithstanding the more laity-centric ecclesiology of the past several decades and the proliferation of “ministers” and “ministries” in the average parish, most Catholics would answer in the negative. While the Catholic Church employs a multitude of lay people in important functions, particularly in schools, calling them “ministers” is indeed a stretch. In today’s dissenting opinion in Our Lady of Guadalupe School v. Morrissey-Berru, Justice Sotomayor emphasized this incongruity. She claimed that the “ministerial exception” to employment laws is meant to address concerns about state meddling in the leadership and governance of religious communities. Relying on the more common understanding of “minister”, Justice Sotomayor suggested that the exception should only apply to those individuals who serve a “unique leadership role” in religious community, which does not include “[l]ay faculty . . . who teach religion at church-affiliated schools.”
Justice Alito’s majority decision, however, declined to limit the ministerial exception to employees who exercise functions analogous to those of a prototypical (read Protestant) clergyman. Rather, the Court held that the exception extends to any employee who performs “vital religious duties”, which includes not only teachers but also (as Justice Alito mentioned in a footnote) monks, cloistered nuns, and others who are not part of the religious community’s leadership. Moreover, Justice Alito explained that Catholic education is not simply an optional appendage to the Church’s central “ministry.” To the contrary, the Court cited the Catechism’s statement that Catholic education is “intimately bound up with the whole of the Church’s life.” Once again, the Court seemed to be countering the notion that the ministerial exception can only apply to employees who carry out activities typical of a Protestant minister (Preaching and holding religious services? Yes. Teaching lessons out of a catechism book or leading the class in a “Hail Mary” before science class? No). The Catholic Church’s mission is not and never has been so narrow.
The ministerial exception, therefore, is not solely about non-interference with matters related to the selection and supervision of clergy, it more fundamentally protects the Church’s “independence on matters of faith and doctrine.” As Justice Thomas pointed out in his concurrence, the “ministerial exception” is a “misnomer.” “It is not limited to members of the clergy or others holding positions akin to that of a ‘minister” but “extends to the laity, provided they are entrusted with carrying out the religious mission of the organization. ” Crucially, this “religious mission” includes more than just church services, it also covers education (and perhaps other activities), which liberalism claims should be the exclusive or at least presumptive domain of the state.
In effect, the ministerial exception is a (partial) legal guarantee of libertas ecclesiae. The Church has long insisted on her right to complete freedom from interference by the temporal authorities, particularly in education. For example, in Divini illius magistri (1929), Pope Pius XI declared:
[T]he Church is independent of any sort of earthly power as well in the origin as in the exercise of her mission as educator, not merely in regard to her proper end and object, but also in regard to the means necessary and suitable to attain that end. Hence with regard to every other kind of human learning and instruction, which is the common patrimony of individuals and society, the Church has an independent right to make use of it, and above all to decide what may help or harm Christian education.1.
By shielding from government scrutiny the Church’s employment decisions with respect to Catholic teachers, the Supreme Court seems to have taken a small but important step toward securing libertas ecclesiae in the realm of Catholic education and beyond. The ministerial exception may be a clumsy and indirect way of achieving that goal, but in a Protestant and liberal society, it is a good start.
Yves Casertano