CHANGE OF PLANS?
I am confused. I read Scott Reeder’s recent story about the former Chiara Center becoming a trade school with some classic education added (“Rebuilding the Catholic church,” June 6). But is this the same reporter who told us in your pages in 2022 that the Chiara Center was destined to be a shrine to a modern saint from Italy (“Sign of the times,” Aug. 11, 2022)?
Reeder reported that plan as absolute fact, including how the resident nuns were working with Bishop Thomas Paprocki and how the saint’s daughter was, too, and would be living in Springfield to see the shrine completed. The daughter, Dr. Gianna Molla, told Reeder, “It was God who chose Springfield.”
I know everybody is entitled to change their mind, but this seems huge, switching shrine to shop class. And there is nary a single word in the new story about the old story.
As for the new plan, it has its own problems. It is said to be the brainchild of Bishop Paprocki, as tone-deaf a religious leader as I can remember coming to town. As his hired hand, the trade school’s first president says it will be all males for at least its first five years. What is this place, a club in a treehouse in the 1950s? And even then, according to the article, females are more likely to study becoming “nursing assistants, art restorers and ecclesial seamstresses.”
I find all this regrettable but not unpredictable, sadly.
Douglas Kamholz
Springfield
Editor’s note: Andrew Hansen, a spokesperson for the Diocese of Springfield, confirmed to IT that the shrine is no longer planned for Springfield.
HOPE IT’S DENIED
Here’s hoping their application for operating authority from the Illinois College Board of Higher Education gets a big fat denial for misogynistic discrimination. Do these guys know what year it is? Plus, $25,000 a year for three years and an associate’s degree? If anything, I hope this sends flocks of students to take a look at Lincoln Land Community College.
Tara Marie
Via Facebook.com/illinoistimes
DO IT YOURSELF
The way I see it, there is nothing keeping another organization from doing the same thing for women if they wanted. Anyone up in arms about this, form a board and put your indignation into action. I, for one, see great promise in it. I hope that the inaugural class of 26 begets thousands more in the coming decades. The trades are deficient in skilled laborers, regardless of gender.
John D. Polack
Via Facebook.com/illinoistimes
BAD LEADERSHIP
Wow, women have been told to be in nursing or a seamstress. Don’t worry about those manly jobs. Good grief. You want to know what’s wrong with the Catholic church in Springfield, look at the top. Absolutely disgusting 1950s-era attitudes.
Mike Shipman
Via Facebook.com/illinoistimes
UNIONS ARE FOR WOMEN TOO
Not admitting women for five years? Sure hope there isn’t any public funding involved. I would hate to see my hard-earned tax dollars going toward an institution that denies other women the opportunity I was afforded to be a tradeswoman.
Perhaps it is time to remind people that labor unions already have apprenticeships that admit applicants regardless of gender, race, religion or any other identifying factor, and there is no cost for tuition. One of the smartest choices I ever made was to enter the IBEW apprenticeship. As a journeyman wireman and chair of Local 193’s Women Committee, I encourage anyone, especially women, to explore this avenue.
Union trades work is one of the few areas of employment that genuinely has equal pay. Come join us, and take pride in your work as you build America. There’s a lot of good brotherhood and sisterhood out here in the field, and none of it requires a religious litmus test.
Denise Solon
BETTER OPTIONS
Try Lincoln Land Community College for less time, less money and less misogyny.
Tracy Owens
Via Facebook.com/illinoistimes
This article appears in Not present at crime, still charged with murder.
The caliber of comments on this article is what the problem is within society today. There is not one thing wrong with a trade school for males. Females need to do the same. Why are the men complaining about the division, are their wives down their throats? Men, stand up and be men! Women, stand up and be women. Women were not made to do the jobs men do, we do more important things like give birth and be teachers and roll models for our children. That is another problem today. The feminist have beat it into women’s heads today that being a woman, having babies and being a roll model for their children is somehow demeaning. I don’t understand how women of today can even buy into that insanity! Let the men learn the trades and be the head of the households and train the male children how to become men when they grow up and how to respect the women’s role in the household and in society.
Karmar2, there is nothing about tradeswork, or any other kind of work, that eliminates women as a class from doing it. We are already here, and have been here for a couple of generations now (fun fact: union apprenticeships are accredited by the Department of Labor and the Department of Education, and as such have formally been gender-desegregated since the passage of Title IX. Granted, not every local, just as not every public school, got on board with that immediately, but many did. I first had the idea I could do such work when I observed women in the St. Louis area on construction sites when I was in kindergarten. That “wow! Looks like fun!” feeling never left, so that’s what I grew up to do. Another fun fact: it still hasn’t. I love this life.). Probably worth a mention: there is also nothing that precludes women who work outside the home from being parents either. That also has been reality for an even greater number of years.
Men who receive a gender-segregated education will be ill-prepared for the workforce. Their clients, their supervisors, and their co-workers will be women. We are after all, half the population. If they are not able or willing to work with women as *equals*, they will disadvantage themselves. There seems to be a strange movement amongst conservatives to promote the trades as some sort of end-run around having to deal with women or the LGBT community, but that simply isn’t the case. Labor unions realized a long time ago that it is unwise to turn away anyone with the talent and willingness to do what is often a difficult (and generally unrecognized) job. This move by the local diocese is a giant step backwards.