VAN NUYS : High School Bride Battles Archdiocese

A Catholic high school junior from Van Nuys has promised administrators a fight after she was kicked out of school for getting married.

Alemany High School officials informed Jennifer Tellez Espinoza earlier this month in a letter that she could finish this school year, but not return next fall because “it is the policy of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles that married students may not attend a Catholic high school.”

Espinoza, 17, who in April married a former altar boy and graduate of the school, finds it odd that unmarried student mothers can attend the Mission Hills school and married women cannot.

“They had to have premarital sex to have the baby,” the soft-spoken Espinoza said. “All I did was get married.”

“I’m outraged,” said her husband, Caesar, 24. “This not the Dark Ages anymore.”

According to Father Gregory Coiro, a spokesman for the Los Angeles Archdiocese, which oversees 60 area Catholic schools, Espinoza was forced out for two reasons. First, simply getting married while in high school is discouraged by the church and may result in expulsion. Second, Espinoza was married in a civil, not Catholic, ceremony, and so she must be expelled.

“She is not married in the eyes of the church,” Coiro said. “The school felt that this contradiction in values was something that could not be allowed to continue.”

When Espinoza decided to get married in April, she and her husband sought several priests to perform the ceremony, but they all refused, the couple said.

“We said, ‘Will you marry a girl under 18?’ ” Espinoza recalled. “They said ‘No, we won’t.’ We wanted very much to have the ceremony performed by a priest.”

“It’s a Catch-22,” said attorney Gloria Allred, who is representing Espinoza. “She wanted to be a good Catholic, and they left her no alternative.”

The policy of the archdiocese is to discourage weddings of those under 19, Coiro said, and so it is not uncommon for priests to decline to perform marriages for young lovers.

“The statistical evidence suggests that teen-age marriages don’t last,” he said.

As for the issue of unwed mothers being allowed in area Catholic high schools while legally married women are not, Coiro said, “It’s not the same issue.

“The marriage is an ongoing situation. . . . The act of sexual intercourse is over and done (with unwed mothers).”

And, he added, a young Catholic girl who gets pregnant and does not have an abortion is “making a very strong pro-life statement.”

No one is forced to be a Catholic, Coiro said, and choosing to attend a church-affiliated school means agreeing to abide by the rules of the religion.

“They are living in defiance of the church, yet expect the church to provide them an education.”

Coiro said the no-marriage policy is not a school rule, but a regulation of the archdiocese.

Espinoza said she was unaware of the policy when she enrolled in the school three years ago.

“It’s disturbing to me that she should have to choose between her husband and her education,” attorney Allred said.

She and the Espinozas said they would “consider all their options” in having Espinoza reinstated at the school.