> To me the issue is that they fired the guy.
But, they (the school) didn’t.
He resigned. And, yeah, he was asked to resign, which is very much like being fired, but he was asked to resign his post as chaplain by the Archdiocese of Boston, not MIT. Why? Well…
Moloney wrote on June 7: “George Floyd was killed by a police officer, and shouldn’t have been. He had not lived a virtuous life. He was convicted of several crimes, including armed robbery, which he seems to have committed to feed his drug habit. And he was high on drugs at the time of his arrest. But we do not kill such people.” And: “In the wake of George Floyd’s death, most people in the country have framed this as an act of racism. I don’t think we know that. Many people have claimed that racism is a major problem in police forces. I don’t think we know that.”
Sean Cardinal O’Malley, Archbishop of Boston wrote, in a “Letter to the People of the Archdiocese of Boston” on June 5 (that is, two day before Moloney’s email, so Moloney would—if not completely negligent—have been aware of it when writing his own missive): “The murder of George Floyd, an African American citizen, at the hands of four rogue police officers was tragically all too familiar to the African American community. During our lifetimes there has been the reality of the Negro Travelers Green Book, identifying locations where African Americans stop and stay in our country with less likelihood of being attacked. We have seen the Ku Klux Klan’s brutal lynchings of innocent black people. And we have now again witnessed heinous violence perpetrated by some who were entrusted with the duty to protect. George Floyd’s death makes clear that racist premises and attitudes, often implicit, are woven through basic structures—political, legal, economic, cultural and religious—in the United States.” And he wrote, later in the letter: “Going forward, the reality of racism in our society and the moral imperative of racial equality and justice must be incorporated in our schools, our teaching and our preaching. We must uphold the commitments to equal dignity and human rights in all institutions of our society, in politics, law, economy, education. Catholic teaching on social justice measures the way a society acts fairly or not. Our work will not be done until African American men, women and children are treated equally in every aspect of life in the United States.” [0]
Moloney wasn’t forced out because of a conflict with MIT leadership over a statement of simple facts. He was forced out because of a conflict over the basic pastoral responsibilities of the Church in the context of then-current events with the Church official to whom is entrusted, under Canon Law, the charge to “take care that [presbyters, a.k.a priests] correctly fulfill the obligations proper to their state” and the power and duty “to govern the particular church entrusted to him with legislative, executive, and judicial power” [1]
This wasn’t MIT “wokeness” impinging the freedom of the Catholic chaplain to minister to the community, this was the Catholic Church in the Boston Archdiocese taking action because a chaplain was acting at odds with the pastoral priorities identified by the highest authority in that particular church.
The story being spun here by Hafer and Miller is propaganda where facts are discarded and replaced with more convenient fictions where it advances the political narrative.
[0] https://www.bostoncatholic.org/george-floyd
[1] Canon 384; Canon 391, Sec. 1; https://www.vatican.va/archive/cod-iuris-canonici/eng/docume....