The trousers were the tip of the iceberg at Sydney Catholic girls schools Santa Sabina College. With the trousers down, more has been revealed. Yet unfortunately, there is only one way Santa Sabina will listen to the concerns of its parents—many of whom are devout Maronite Catholic—over the Principal, Maree Herrett’s revolutionary sexual beliefs. And that is to withdraw their daughters from the school. Yes, it really is that serious. As Miranda Devine reported:

A red flag went up at Santa Sabina earlier this year when the 2018 student diaries came home. Nine pages had been neatly cut out of the diaries which previously had containing hymns, prayers, a map in which every part of the school bore a saint’s name, the national anthem and the school motto “Veritas”.

Make no mistake, this is not a question about style, practicality or comfort. It appears to be driven by an explicit anti-Christian and revolutionary ideology. This is exactly what happened in 1789 when the French revolutionaries threw out the truth of Scripture, condemned the existing social order and re-named 1400 streets in Paris in order to eliminate any reference to the names of saints and any association of Christianity with the French nation.

And the fact that Herrett is fully supported by the board, suggests that this elite private girl’s school in Sydney has drifted from its Roman Catholic heritage.

Forget redefining marriage—that’s so 2017!—what is occurring at Santa Sabina is a complete rejection of the Judeo-Christian anthropology which teaches that men and women have been made in God’s image (See Genesis 1:26-27). According to Devine, Merrett’s tearful defence to the 1,000-strong student body was this:

This is my school … I don’t have to prove anything … I promise I will do as I said to you, stand strong and not be bullied. I’m a Santa girl, too.

Now you know that you’re dealing with an odd case when she thinks that the school belongs to her and tries to convince you that she is in fact the victim. You see, Santa Sabina does not belong to Merrett; it belongs to the Roman Catholic Church. What’s more, since Merrett has been exposed actively promoting the book “Gender Reckonings” on her twitter feed (since deleted) then I’m sorry, but she does have everything to “prove”.

And finally, as the school principal, it’s rather disingenuous of Merrett to claim that she is just one of the Santa “girls” (which is, ironically, quite a surprising term to employ when Merrett has been arguing that gender is fluid, or ‘non-binary’).

Now for all those who would like a summary of what Merrett believes in this regard, take note the following infographic, “The Genderbread Person”, by Sam Killermann—yes, that really is his name!—the self-professed ‘social justice comedian’:

Or, if you’d like something a little simpler, there is always the ever-popular, “The Gender Unicorn”:

If you’re interested in reading a more thorough assessment of the entire issue, then see “When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Movement” (2018) by Dr Ryan T. Anderson, the American political philosopher, who writes about religious liberty and bio-ethics, and will be touring Australia next month.

One thing is absolutely certain: this is a significant departure from historic Christian teaching. And as such, the current principal of Santa Sabina should apologise and resign. But the reality is, we all know that she won’t. Instead, Devine says that:

The board also appointed crisis management firm Australian Public Affairs to conduct 12 one-hour “focus group” sessions over four days with no more than eight parents in each group and produce a report by mid-April.

But at a cost of approximately $50,000, the parent body is already aware of the “divide and conquer” strategy being adopted by separating them into smaller focus groups.

After the talk fest is over and everyone has been “heard”, the only option left to the Catholic parents is to withdraw their daughters while they look for another school. They might not be Catholic, but at least they have principals who hold to the beliefs and values of the denominations that employed them.

You see, here’s the really great tragedy. If the parents who are committed Catholics continue to keep their daughters at Santa Sabina, then they’ll find that it will become an increasingly “unsafe” place for them to be. Because their faith will be continually challenged, undermined and questioned until they conform to the “sexular” religion that its current Principal is preaching. As Devine reports former students of the school as saying:

Under Herrett’s leadership, the school “promoted and endorsed gender fluidity”, and that former religion teacher Helen Smith, who retired last year, “promoted an Islamic agenda … We were taught that we had the same God as the Islamic God, that Christians are the ones persecuting Muslims, that Jesus ‘was a refugee’ and thus we should have free and open borders, and that Islam was peace and essentially, truth.

She … promoted Islam, gay-marriage and was pro-Hillary Clinton despite her support of abortion.

Ultimately, the real victims here are the many Maronite parents and students who, in good faith, sent their children to Santa Sabina so as to be educated in the Roman Catholic tradition. Now they are the ones who are going to be persecuted and as such will, incredibly, themselves become the “religious refugees”. And when they do, the principal Maree Herrett, and those who have endorsed and supported her, will only have themselves to blame.

Mark Powell is the Associate Pastor of Cornerstone Presbyterian Church, Strathfield.

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