Dupage Policy Journal

Benet Academy is shedding its affiliation with the Catholic Church after it reversed course on allowing for the hire of an LGBT lacrosse coach.

AM 569 Chicago’s Morning Answer host Dan Proft, a Benet Academy graduate, is outspoken on the school’s removal from the oversight of the Catholic Church.

“Today, @BenetRedwings' board and the Benedictines will announce it's no longer a Catholic school and identitarian politics is more important than a faith-based education. A few egomaniacal board members and a lacrosse coach ended the school,” Proft said in a tweet.

The matter came to a head in September when the school hired Amanda Kammes as girls lacrosse coach but rescinded the offer after she put her wife’s name down for her emergency contact.

After Kammes authored a viral Facebook post and a community petition received over 1,100 signatures to reinstate her, she was brought back onto the school’s staff. 

Chancellor Abbot Austin G. Murphy and Board Chairman Dennis M. Flynn co-signed a letter noting the change in the school’s status.

“Events in recent months have been an occasion for the Benedictine monks of St. Procopius Abbey to examine their future relationship with Benet Academy. After much deliberation, the monks as a community have discerned that they no longer have the resources needed for the governance and oversight ion the Academy. Currently, alternatives for the Academy’s governance are being studied. In the meantime, the Abbey will continue its role in the governance of the high school. The goal is that Benet Academy will continue to operate with an emphasis on academic excellence and Catholic identity within the Benedictine tradition.”

Proft added more on his radio show. 

“The board decided that the politics of the day is more important than their allegedly enduring faith,” he said. “Pope Francis on marriage redefinition, ‘anthropological regression’ is what he terms it. You know, the pope that the social justice Catholics, which is to say the anti-Catholic Catholics celebrate as non-Catholic or as cafeteria Catholic.”

The appointed Benedictine board decided to leave the school rather than fight the progressives, Proft told listeners.

“Apparently the monks weren't up for the fight. They won't replace a few egomaniacal board members who usurped the authority of the Benedictines to play politics. So there goes Bennet Academy…on the altar of identity politics,” Proft said.

Proft said board members who were on the side of the LGBT teacher threatened the businesses of those who sought to stand up to those seeking the affiliation change. 

“The faith and the faith infused education at Bennet Academy shunted aside to make sure we're all celebrating the identitarian politics of the day,” he said.

Proft said the move is an “abdication of moral authority.”

“An appointed board exercise power they don't have and the religious order won't exercise power it does have,” he said. “And you are confused as to how things got the way they are and why we can't make it stop and concerned about where this is all going.”

The Lisle school has just over 1,300 students. Tuition and fees are over $14,000 annually. 

It received millions in PPP loan funds.