Father Carey's Chickens

The Rev. James A. Carey, head of St. Michael's Roman Catholic high school in Jersey City, N.J., last week hit his 600 girls and boys with a jarring edict: Any student "dating one person to the exclusion of all others shall be expelled." Father Carey said that he is "horrified and utterly disgusted" at parents who permit steady dating: "Inasmuch as there is so much delinquency among parents, we at St. Michael's intend to act before our offended God brings down fire and brimstone on all of us."

What fired up Father Carey was a recent stroll about his parish when "I had to chase two couples out of a doorway." Such encounters have shaken many other Catholic educators, but even banning steady daters from extracurricular activities seems unworkable to Chicago's archdiocesan school superintendent, Msgr. William McManus. He prefers counseling to regulating, even though "steady dating is getting to be old hat in Chicago." As for public schools, one top Denver official typically rejects rules on dating as "an invasion of rights that belong in the home." San Francisco's School Superintendent Harold Spears holds a really steady view of steady dating: "I think that's a natural biological urge, and I would hate to have to enforce a ban on it."

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