boston globe – RI Future

Two Rhode Island Catholic legislators told Mike Stanton, reporting for the Boston Globe, that they were asked to step down from positions in their churches because they supported same sex marriage.

Stanton, a former Providence Journal investigative reporter reports that House Majority Leader Nick Mattiello and Senator William Conley were both punished in their parishes for their legislative positions on marriage equality.

Representative Nicholas Mattiello of Cranston, the Democratic House majority leader, says that he was asked to take a break from serving as a lector at his church after changing his position and publicly supporting same-sex marriage.

“I do think it’s time to concentrate on what unifies and brings us together, what makes us merciful rather than judgmental,” Mattiello said. “The pope’s views are more appropriate than what I’ve been hearing for years.”

State Senator William J. Conley Jr. of East Providence, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which approved the marriage bill, says a diocesan official asked him to resign as a trustee of La Salle Academy in Providence. The pastor of the East Providence parish where he was baptized, Conley says, denounced him from the pulpit as a “Judas.”

Stanton’s blockbuster report on Tobin also has gems like this:

Meghan Smith of Catholics for Choice, calls Tobin “one of the more rightwing bishops” in the United States. His style is at odds with the new pope, she says, as well as his flock in the one of most Catholic states.

Earlier this year, RI Future reported that a Catholic church in Woonsocket had asked gay married people not to receive communion.

An editorial in today’s Boston Globe recommends that Rhode Island not use the NECAP test as a graduation requirement.

While Education Commissioner Deborah Gist keeps comparing the NECAP to Massachusetts MCAT, the state’s biggest newspaper agree with what Tom Sgouros has been writing about on RI Future:

The fundamental problem, though, is that the test wasn’t originally designed to be a graduation requirement and isn’t suited for that purpose. Schools need more high standards and accountability, and the NECAP was designed not to evaluate individual students’ proficiency, but to rank the quality of the schools they attend. Unlike tests meant primarily for student assessment, such as the MCAS in Massachusetts, the NECAP expects a certain portion of test-takers to fail. Research suggests that percentage will likely come from low-income, working-class neighborhoods — the students who are least likely to return for a fifth year of high school, even if skipping it means going without a diploma.

The editorial also lauds the Providence Student Union for raising attention to the issue:

The Providence Student Union, a student-led advocacy group, last month organized an event at which 50 prominent Rhode Islanders took a shortened version of the math NECAP. Sixty percent of the test-takers — among them elected officials, attorneys, scientists, engineers, reporters, college professors, and directors of leading nonprofits — failed to score at least “partially proficient,” the standard education officials have set for graduation. Under the new rules, many of those 50 successful individuals would not have been allowed to graduate.

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Catholic parishes punish two state legislators

Boston Globe Says No To NECAP Requirement