Dupage Policy Journal

A Go Fund Me campaign is promising money to Lisle's Benet Academy if the school agrees to a new "vision" for the school that eschews Catholic teaching.

Titled "A Vision for Benet’s Future," and featuring a photo of the school with a "gay pride" rainbow hovering above, the campaign implores the school to focus more on "LGBTQ youth" and demands school leadership "dismantle implicit bias" against "LGBTQ individuals."

"LGBTQ" is an acronym for lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, transgender and queer.

The campaign, started by an anonymous organizer who only disclosed they reside in Oak Park, had raised $3,486 from 21 donors as of Mon. Feb 21; it states a goal of $10,000. 

According to a letter of introduction, all of of the proceeds are promised to the school if it promises to use them to further the organizers' stated goals.

"We ask that the Diversity Leadership Council receive 100% of these funds to use or redirect in a way that best honors our intentions," the letter says.

Founded in 2018, Benet's Diversity Leadership Council was created by three then-students -- Isabel Melgoza, Olivia Johnson, and Grace Gardnier-- "to educate students on the ideas of diversity through a variety of activities in which they learn about the traditions and customs of other cultures."

In 2019, the group distributed t-shirts to students "in solidarity" with immigrants, which it called "one of the most marginalized and oppressed groups in today’s world."

On the group's Twitter account, during Pro-Life Week it reminded students that being Pro-Life also "means being pro-social justice," posting a quote from Jesuit priest James Martin, well known for his public defense of elected officials who support abortion while claiming  to be practicing Catholics. 

Melgoza now a senior at Colgate; Johnson attends Fordham and Gardnier, Trinity College in Dublin.

Last September, Benet hired an openly-lesbian lacrosse coach, Amanda Kammes, who is in a same-sex marriage.

School chancellor Abbot Austin Murphy of St. Procopius Abbey, which founded and has run Benet for 120 years, responded that he was "deeply troubled by the school's decision which calls into question its adherence to the doctrines of the Catholic faith."

The Catholic Church explicitly doesn't recognize gay marriage, stating in 2020 that “there are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God’s plan for marriage and family”

"The Christian community and its Pastors are called to welcome with respect and sensitivity persons with homosexual inclinations, and will know how to find the most appropriate ways, consistent with Church teaching, to proclaim to them the Gospel in its fullness," a Vatican memo said. "The Church recalls that God Himself never ceases to bless each of His pilgrim children in this world... but he does not and cannot bless sin: he blesses sinful man, so that he may recognize that he is part of his plan of love and allow himself to be changed by him."

In January, Murphy announced St. Procopius Abbey would no longer be associated with the school.

A "Keep Benet Catholic" parents and alumni group has launched a petition drive, calling on the school "to wholeheartedly accept its Catholic foundation and face head on these pressures and abide by the teachings of the Catholic Church."

"We send our children to a Catholic high school for a rigorous Christ-centered college preparatory education without the bias and pressure to bow to the latest social and secular whims," it says. "We request the Administration, Staff, and Board of Directors vow to adhere to an Oath of Fidelity to the Catholic Church."