The new Diocesan teachers "contract" - a teaching moment

One of the topics that is covered in every American History class is that of Joseph McCarthy and the use of the "big lie."

During the Cold War era, Senator Joseph McCarthy and his unscrupulous toady, Roy Cohn, would create lies of such enormity, and with such incredible detail, that most reasonable people, unable to believe that such enormous untruthfulness could be manufactured by someone in such an esteemed position, came to the conclusion that McCarthy must be telling the truth. Thus, for a while almost the entire country believed what McCarthy was dishing out.

Stories in the most recent Catholic Light and comments coming from the Diocesan office seem to indicate that Bishop Joseph Martino has taken to the tactics of his namesake, and Bill Genello seems all too eager to emulate Roy Cohn.

In the end, the lies caught up to McCarthy and Cohn and were their undoing. And the rest, as they say, is history.

So we'll leave it to the public to decide the issue about the new teachers' "contract."

• Will they believe that even the mere handful of teachers who cooperated in the immoral company union prefer a three-page "contract" as being offered by the Diocese to the LEGALLY-BINDING forty-page contracts that had covered our unionized teachers up to 2007?
• Will the public believe that teachers don't want due process and union representation?
• Will the public believe that our teachers would not like tenure?
• Will they believe that our teachers don't want their working conditions spelled out in their entirety?
• Will they believe that our teachers desire to be nothing more than at-will employees?

As for those of us who back the SDACT campaign, we'll believe it when they allow our teachers a vote to decide how we wish to be represented.