This prophecy of St. Nilus is so powerful that I had to share it with all of you. I have always marvelled at these words, given some 1,600 years ago:
``Where the Bishop is, there let the multitude of believers be; even as where Jesus is, there is the Catholic Church'' Ignatius of Antioch, 1st c. A.D
The Prophecy of St. Nilus
St. Nilus was one of the many disciples of St. John Chrysostom (347-407). He was an officer at the Court of Constantinople, married, with two sons, and later becamne a priest. His works, including a multitude of letters, consist of denunciations of heresy, paganism, abuses of discipline and crimes, of rules and principles of asceticism. St. Nilus died around the year 430 A.D.; his feast day is 12 November.
The Prophecy
After the year 1900, toward the middle of the 20th century, the people of that time will become unrecognizable. When the time for the Advent of the Antichrist approaches, people's minds will grow cloudy from carnal passions, and dishonor and lawlessness will grow stronger. Then the world will become unrecognizable. People's appearances will change, and it will be impossible to distinguish men from women due to their shamelessness in dress and style of hair. These people will be cruel and will be like wild animals because of the temptations of the Antichrist. There will be no respect for parents and elders, love will disappear, and Christian pastors, bishops, and priests will become vain men, completely failing to distinguish the right-hand way from the left. At that time the morals and traditions of Christians and of the Church will change. People will abandon modesty, and dissipation will reign. Falsehood and greed will attain great proportions, and woe to those who pile up treasures. Lust, adultery, homosexuality, secret deeds and murder will rule in society. At that future time, due to the power of such great crimes and licentiousness, people will be deprived of the grace of the Holy Spirit, which they received in Holy Baptism and equally of remorse. The Churches of God will be deprived of God-fearing and pious pastors, and woe to the Christians remaining in the world at that time; they will completely lose their faith because they will lack the opportunity of seeing the light of knowledge from anyone at all. Then they will separate themselves out of the world in holy refuges in search of lightening their spiritual sufferings, but everywhere they will meet obstacles and constraints. And all this will result from the fact that the Antichrist wants to be Lord over everything and become the ruler of the whole universe, and he will produce miracles and fantastic signs. He will also give depraved wisdom to an unhappy man so that he will discover a way by which one man can carry on a conversation with another from one end of the earth to the other. At that time men will also fly through the air like birds and descend to the bottom of the sea like fish. And when they have achieved all this, these unhappy people will spend their lives in comfort without knowing, poor souls, that it is deceit of the Antichrist. And, the impious one! -- he will so complete science with vanity that it will go off the right path and lead people to lose faith in the existence of God in three hypostases. Then the All-good God will see the downfall of the human race and will shorten the days for the sake of those few who are being saved, because the enemy wants to lead even the chosen into temptation, if that is possible... then the sword of chastisement will suddenly appear and kill the perverter and his servants.
Back to Apocalypse: The Whore of Babylon, The Beast, & the Rapture Common Objections Index
Sunday, June 26, 2005
The fruit of apostasy...
This article, from Crisis Magazine, is profoundly disturbing. When "Catholic" universities begin to promote what Pope John Paul II rightly labelled the "culture of death," you know things are only getting worse within the Church here in the United States.
For this very reason, faithful Catholics will rise up and actively oppose what our new beloved Pontiff has referred to as the "Dictatorship of Relativism" and will make their voice heard on life issues.
June 14, 2005
Teaching EuthanasiaBy Patrick J. Reilly
The intense battle to prevent Terri Schiavo’s husband from removing her feeding tube was horrible enough. To think that some American Catholic universities—and their ethics, theology, law, and medical professors—bear some responsibility for Schiavo’s slow death is almost too much to imagine.
Yet prior to Schiavo’s death, professors from top Catholic universities helped convince the courts and the public that removing her feeding tube was acceptable and consistent with Catholic teaching—even while the Vatican said it was euthanasia. Several professors sought to publicly undermine Pope John Paul II’s clear statements on the moral obligation to feed and hydrate even the most severely injured patients.
It’s well-known that the culture of death has made inroads into Catholic higher education in the form of abortion advocacy, but little attention is given to end-of-life issues—or so it seemed before the Schiavo debacle. When six Catholic university professors signed an amicus brief in favor of removing Schiavo’s feeding tube, the Cardinal Newman Society launched an investigation that revealed the dark side of some Catholic university faculties, which include leading advocates of assisted suicide, vocal dissenters from Vatican teaching on euthanasia, and even top officials of national pro-death advocacy organizations.
The danger is obvious: If the Church is going to face up to a growing movement for euthanasia and assisted suicide in the United States, Catholic universities must help in that important battle. Harboring the enemy and training new spokesmen for the culture of death is not the way to do it.
Killing Terri
The brief filed last August by 55 bioethicists urged the Florida Supreme Court to overturn “Terri’s Law,” the measure passed by the state legislature to empower Gov. Jeb Bush to protect Schiavo’s life.
Among the ethicists signing the brief were six Catholic university professors: Charles Baron, professor at Boston College Law School; Carol Bayley, adjunct professor of nursing at the University of San Francisco; Milton Heifetz, adjunct professor at Boston College Law School; Lawrence Nelson, adjunct associate professor of philosophy and of women and gender studies at Santa Clara University; Rev. John Paris, S.J., professor of bioethics in the theology department at Boston College; and James Walter, professor of bioethics and chairman of the Bioethics Institute at Loyola Marymount University.
The ethicists argued that “no legal right is more important in American society than the right of personal autonomy”—without explaining exactly how this supercedes the more fundamental right to life. But what was most striking and unusual about the brief was its direct challenge to Pope John Paul II’s teaching on the obligatory use of feeding tubes for seriously ill patients in a “persistent vegetative state.” During a Vatican-sponsored conference of physicians and ethicists last year, the late Holy Father said that in cases in which a person’s ability to function is minimal, but death is not imminent, food and water should be considered “morally obligatory, insofar as and until it is seen to have attained its proper finality, which in the present case consists in providing nourishment to the patient and alleviation of his suffering.... Death by starvation or dehydration is, in fact, the only possible outcome as a result of their withdrawal. In this sense it ends up becoming, if done knowingly and willingly, true and proper euthanasia by omission.”
The ethicists argued that “the Pope’s speech has not changed anything concerning the centuries-old teachings of the Catholic Church on the care due to patients,” which does not require “extraordinary” medical treatment for terminally ill persons. They got that right. What did change, after decades of theological debate about whether a feeding tube could be considered “extraordinary” medical treatment, is that one of the late pope’s last contributions to Catholic teaching was to declare that food and water are ordinary care to be provided in almost all circumstances by any suitable means. It is true that even the most ardently pro-life theologians, like Janet Smith of Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit, acknowledge that the question does not appear to be closed—at least not without the formality of a papal encyclical—but that the Vatican’s teaching deserves “great weight” and prayerful reflection.
The following is not what Smith prescribes: arguing with certainty before a court that a woman must die because—in direct contradiction to what the pope and Vatican officials have clearly taught—Catholic teaching is interpreted to permit starvation and dehydration when a patient’s recovery is unlikely. Even in the modern culture of dissent, one might expect more tact—especially from Catholic university professors.
Boston Legal
The Schiavo brief was just a hint of some of the signers’ activities in support of euthanasia and assisted suicide. Charles Baron has intervened in such cases before. He filed a brief for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in the 1980s with the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in support of removing the feeding tube of Paul Brophy. Like Schiavo, Brophy had suffered brain damage and was diagnosed as living in a “persistent vegetative state” for three years, but he was not terminally ill or facing imminent death. Although Brophy had never expressed his wishes in writing, the court accepted the “substitute judgment” of his wife, and the 48-year-old man was starved to death.
Last year Baron joined 41 bioethicists who filed an amicus brief with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals defending Oregon’s Death With Dignity law, which allows physician-assisted suicide. The case, Oregon v. Ashcroft, in which Oregon officials complain that former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft improperly banned doctors from using federally controlled drugs to kill their patients, is now before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Well-regarded as an expert on end-of-life issues, Baron has testified before the U.S. House of Representatives and Britain’s House of Lords on legalizing physician-assisted suicide. He was the spokesman for a group of academics that published a model state law to legalize physician-assisted suicide in 1996. The model, which has been advocated in Massachusetts since 1997, is posted online among Boston College Law School’s faculty papers. Baron now serves on the board of directors of the Death With Dignity National Center, which is the organization most responsible for Oregon’s Death With Dignity law and has promoted similar laws in Maine, Hawaii, and Vermont.
How do these activities affect Boston College students? In addition to teaching courses on constitutional law, Baron teaches “Law and Bioethics”—including discussion of assisted suicide and “artificial prolongation of human life”—and “Health Law and Policy,” which includes discussions of “life and death decision-making.”
It gets worse. Baron has taught both courses with adjunct law professor Milton Heifetz, also a signatory to the bioethicists’ brief supporting Schiavo’s death by starvation and co-author of The Right to Die: A Neurosurgeon Speaks of Death With Candor (Putnam, 1975). The book advocates legalizing assisted suicide and even entertains the possibility of euthanasia for severely retarded people and newborns with severe medical problems.
“Is life at birth more significant than at the second, fourth, or sixth month of pregnancy?” Heifetz and co-author Charles Mangel ask. “It is not. True, it is closer to gaining the attributes of man, but, as yet, it has only the potential for those qualities. If this difference is true for the normal newborn, how much less significant is it for the newborn who doesn’t even have this potential?”
Bioethics professors Rev. John Paris, S.J., of Boston College and James Walter of Loyola Marymount University were outspoken in the Schiavo case. Catholics ought to be impressed by their credentials: Walter taught at the Catholic University of America, Georgetown University, Loyola University of Chicago, and Marygrove College before chairing the Bioethics Institute at Loyola Marymount. He is also the founding chairman of the International Forum for Catholic Bioethicists. Father Paris has published more than 100 articles on law, medicine, and ethics and has consulted for the President’s Commission for the Study of Ethics in Medicine and the U.S. Senate Committee on Aging.
So why the lapse in professionalism when commenting on the Schiavo case? Without having evaluated Schiavo personally, Walter confidently told the National Catholic Reporter last October that “any chance of self-awareness is not going to happen.” Walter sought to dispel concerns about Schiavo’s suffering when her feeding tube is removed: “All centers of her brain are so severely compromised she can’t feel pain or hunger, and if there is any indication of it, she would be sedated during her dying.” Walter’s confidence gives no hint of the significant disagreements over Schiavo’s medical condition and her awareness of pain and her surroundings.
In March, Father Paris admitted that Schiavo “is quite alive,” but still “she has no obligation to medical interventions if they prove disproportionately burdensome.” Food and water, Father Paris argued, are burdensome interventions. In a Salon.com interview, Father Paris said the Schiavo case was really about “the power of the Christian right. This case has nothing to do with the legal issues involving a feeding tube.” He complained: “[T]he family has the radical, antiabortion, right-to-life Christian right, with its apparently unlimited resources and political muscle, behind them.” Not exactly the careful analysis one would expect from a respected ethicist.
Credibility is also a problem for Carol Bayley, who teaches nursing at the University of San Francisco but wields greater influence as vice president for ethics and justice education at Catholic Healthcare West, a large hospital system in the western United States. Last April, Bayley represented her employer with a cautious but faithful response to the Vatican teaching on feeding tubes: “We’re going to take the Pope’s statements very seriously. We’re going to look at what effect this could have on our practice.” Just three months later, Bayley signed on to the Schiavo brief, pointedly rejecting the pope’s teaching with no apparent consequence for her employment.
An Attorney’s Legacy
At 82 years old, Florence Wendland cannot forget her six-year battle to prevent her son’s death by starvation and dehydration. And she has some idea of what Terri Schiavo’s parents have gone through.
“I just pray to the Lord to help them,” she told the Mercury News.
Wendland also knows something about the problem of euthanasia activists teaching at Catholic universities. Lawrence Nelson, the attorney who urged the California Supreme Court to sanction the removal of her son’s feeding tube, is a medical and legal ethics professor at the Jesuits’ Santa Clara University.
Robert Wendland was in a car accident in 1993 and was severely disabled—unable to speak or walk on his own, but occasionally able to make limited movements like writing the letter “R.” Unlike Schiavo, it was apparent that Robert was not in a persistent vegetative state. His wife, Rose, nevertheless sought to remove his feeding tube, and Robert’s mother Florence and sister Rebekah sued to prevent it. Nelson testified at the trial level in support of starving Robert, then later took over the case as the attorney for Robert’s wife.
Despite losing to Robert’s family at the California Supreme Court—which ruled that a feeding tube could be removed only in instances of a coma or imminent death, or with the patient’s explicit instructions in writing—Nelson has continued to plead his case to the public under the auspices of Santa Clara University. Nelson has admitted that Rose Wendland knew her husband was alive but believed “that this was no life for Robert, no life he would ever want. The only experiences he seemed to have were negative. She thought it was wrong and even cruel in a way.” It was a textbook case of “mercy killing.”
Despite his views supporting such an atrocity, Nelson has been designated a scholar at Santa Clara University’s Markkula Center for Applied Ethics and is identified on the university’s Web site as a media source on “death and dying.” Through the Markkula Center, Nelson has written and made presentations on assisted suicide and the Wendland case. Nelson argues that even in circumstances where a patient’s wishes are not known for certain, “close family members should presumptively be the ones who decide when it is right to forgo treatment of their incompetent relative,” including removal of a feeding tube.
Also published by the Markkula Center is “A Brief Case for the Moral Permissibility of Stem Cell Research,” in which Nelson argues that “scientists must destroy embryos in order to obtain primordial stem cells. This destruction is ethically defensible because embryos have only a modest moral status and can be destroyed for substantial reasons.”
Florence Wendland’s attorney, Janie Hickok Siess, says that one of the most disturbing things about Nelson is his collaboration with Ronald Cranford, a faculty member at the University of Minnesota’s Center for Bioethics. Cranford has a history of court testimony in support of euthanasia. He was the expert witness who declared Schiavo to be in a persistent vegetative state despite the lack of certain medical tests that some doctors said might have revealed significant brain activity. Cranford testified that Robert Wendland’s movements—which included operating a motorized wheelchair and using a television remote control—were comparable to those of a trained animal.
In 1999, Nelson and Cranford published their arguments for removing Wendland’s feeding tube in the Journal of Contemporary Health Law and Policy, which is sponsored by the Catholic University of America law school. They describe Wendland as “minimally conscious”—since they could not reasonably label him vegetative—and argue that for such individuals who cannot communicate, “Their biographical and personal life is over.”
Siess, who is a Lutheran, wonders why Nelson is teaching ethics at a Catholic university: “I don’t believe that his views, as I understand them, are consistent with the Gospels and the teaching of Jesus.” One of her children attends a Christian college, and she expects something different from a faith-based education: “If you’re sending your kid to a church-affiliated school, you would want the school to be consistent with the teaching of that church.”
Santa Clara University officials see it differently. In 2003, the Markkula Center awarded Nelson a grant to develop “a theory of constitutional personhood,” considering the moral status of human embryos outside the womb, “moral respect for the disabled,” and “forgoing treatment of conscious, independent persons.” The same year, Santa Clara’s Bannan Center for Jesuit Education gave Nelson a grant “to explore the place of philosophical ethics in Jesuit higher education and mission.”
Rogues Gallery
Nelson and the other five Catholic university professors who signed the Schiavo brief are not the only employees of Catholic universities who have contributed recently to a culture of death:
· Tom Beauchamp, philosophy professor at Georgetown University and a senior research scholar at the university’s Kennedy Institute of Ethics, has served on the board of directors of the Compassion in Dying Federation since 1999. This national organization advocated Oregon’s assisted dying law and challenged laws prohibiting assisted suicide in Washington and New York, taking its fight to the U.S. Supreme Court. Beauchamp organized the amicus brief signed by Baron, Beauchamp, and 40 other bioethicists in Oregon v. Ashcroft, arguing for Oregon’s Death With Dignity law. Beauchamp co-authored Principles of Biomedical Ethics (Oxford, 1979), which is often cited in arguments for euthanasia and assisted suicide.
· Maxwell Gregg Bloche, professor at the Georgetown University Law Center and co-director of the joint program in law and public health with Johns Hopkins University, also signed an amicus brief in Oregon v. Ashcroft arguing that doctors’ actions protected by the Oregon assisted-suicide law constitute “sound and ethical medical practices.”
· As touted on Seattle University’s Web site, adjunct law professor Robert Free has served as an advisory board member for Compassion in Dying of Washington, which advocates assisted suicide. Free helped the organization prepare amicus briefs challenging the Washington state law criminalizing physician-assisted suicide and defending Oregon’s Death With Dignity law.
· Howard Freed, clinical associate professor of emergency medicine at the Georgetown University School of Medicine, signed an amicus brief in Oregon v. Ashcroft complaining that the former attorney general interfered with “physicians’ ability to care for terminally ill patients nationwide” and warning that “many health professionals will retreat from their obligations to their terminally ill patients.”
· The Georgetown University Law Center’s Web site describes Lawrence Gostin as an expert on constitutional law, health law, and bioethics, but it negelects to mention that Gostin has twice joined amicus briefs in Oregon v. Ashcroft defending Oregon’s assisted-suicide law. Gostin holds several positions at Georgetown including law professor, faculty affiliate of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics, and director of the Center for Law and the Public’s Health (a joint program with Johns Hopkins University). Gostin is the health law and ethics editor of the influential Journal of the American Medical Association and serves on the editorial board of the International Journal of Bioethics and the executive committee of the ACLU board of directors.
· Former Jesuit priest Daniel Maguire, theology professor at Marquette University, not only supported removal of Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube, but he told FOX News that “this woman should have been allowed to complete her dying 15 years ago when they realized that she had terrible damage to her brain and was no longer capable of personal consciousness.” Maguire accused Pope John Paul II and Vatican officials of a “fetishism of life signs,” using any sign of life as a justification for delaying death.
· Rev. Richard McBrien, theology professor at the University of Notre Dame, argued in support of removing Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube. “This is not a question of euthanasia,” he told Bill O’Reilly on FOX News, directly contradicting the Vatican. “[T]his is the removal of an extraordinary means of sustaining life, which is an indirect killing because eventually she will die, but it is not with the intention of killing her, of bringing about her death.”
· Fairfield University identifies associate philosophy professor Curtis Naser as an expert in biomedical ethics and “end of life decisions.” Naser joined Beauchamp, Nelson, and 39 other bioethicists in an amicus brief filed in the 1997 U.S. Supreme Court cases Vacco v. Quill and State of Washington v. Glucksberg, arguing against New York and Washington state bans on physician-assisted suicide. They argued that “medical ethics and trust in physicians are better served by physician-assisted suicide where the patient can have the care, comfort and treatment of his or her doctor at the time the patient acts to hasten death.”
· Rev. Kevin O’Rourke, O.P., ethics professor at the Loyola University of Chicago Medical School, told the Miami Herald that preserving Schiavo’s life was “blasphemy”: “I can attest from a theological point of view that what the [Florida] governor and others are doing to Terri is not doing any good for her.... For Christians, it is a blasphemy to keep people alive as if you were doing them a favor.”
Ignoring the Pope
O’Rourke drafted a statement that was circulated at a meeting of Catholic Health Association ethicists in March. The statement scolds Bishop Elio Sgreccia, president of the Pontifical Academy for Life, for arguing that withholding nutrition and hydration is euthanasia—the same argument made by Pope John Paul II. O’Rourke complains that the Vatican position is “irresponsible” and “simply an insult,” because it contradicts prior statements by theologians and bishops and infers that they support euthanasia.
There is no question that by declaring the provision of food and water through an artificial feeding tube to be normal care, Pope John Paul II embarrassed many American theologians and bishops who for decades had been advising families differently. Some grumbling about the Vatican’s position was expected, but the opposition has become disrespectful and rebellious. By their quick and total dismissal of Vatican teaching and their aggressive advocacy of what the Vatican calls euthanasia, critics like O’Rourke have resorted to public dissent.
One well-used strategy is to portray the Vatican teaching as ambiguous or allowing broad discretion for the families of severely injured patients. Pope John Paul II was quite clear that the intentional removal of a feeding tube—even from patients in a persistent vegetative state—is “true and proper euthanasia by omission.” Bishop Sgreccia said regarding Schiavo: “The removal of the gastric feeding tube from this person, in these conditions, may be considered direct euthanasia.... The gastric feeding tube cannot be regarded as an ‘extraordinary’ or as a therapeutic ‘means.’ It is an integral part of the modality in which Schiavo can be fed and hydrated.”
Nevertheless, John Collins Harvey, senior research scholar at Georgetown University’s Kennedy Institute of Ethics and chairman of the bioethics committee at Georgetown University Hospital, tried to muddy the waters.
“[I]t’s important to understand that the words of the Holy Father were interpreted in many different ways, so that it’s hard to really come to the conclusion of what exactly he said to everyone,” Harvey said on PBS’s Religion & Ethics Newsweekly. “He talked very carefully and said ‘in principle,’ food and water is ordinary treatment. It’s not a medical treatment, and therefore it’s part of comfort care and must always be used. But ‘in principle,’ which means there are conditions and times when it can be omitted.”
Father McBrien has claimed that the pope did not speak authoritatively on the matter of feeding tubes. In Schiavo’s case, “Catholic moral theologians would say this is an exception.” Speaking to the Los Angeles Times, he characterized an editorial in L’Osservatore Romano—which echoed the Vatican position—as “theologically erroneous and irresponsibly so, given the highly public nature of this controversy.”
Critics have also complained that the late pope took them by surprise at a 2004 conference in Rome by attempting to impose new moral guidelines at the behest of pro-life activists. But contrary to media reports, Pope John Paul II addressed the topic as early as 1998 in his ad limina address to the bishops from California, Nevada, and Hawaii. He drew a sharp distinction between what the Catechism of the Catholic Church calls “the refusal of ‘over-zealous’ treatment” and taking away the ordinary means of preserving life, such as feeding, hydration, and normal medical care.
Walter at Loyola Marymount University plays the sympathy card, arguing the Vatican’s position “might even drive people toward euthanasia, by making them feel that they have lost a traditional and sympathetic ally in their final journey.”
Among the Vatican’s critics, Boston College’s Father Paris is perhaps the most confrontational. He dismissed the late Holy Father’s statements as pandering to “radical right-to-lifers.”
“The right-to-life types want to renounce brain death and keep everyone going forever,” Father Paris told Newsweek. “It seems that Lenin’s mausoleum will be the model for the future. The entire enterprise is mischief-making at the Vatican.” Regarding the pope’s 2004 address, Father Paris told the St. Petersburg Times: “I think the best thing to do is ignore it, and it will go away. It’s not an authoritative teaching statement.... The problem here is that non-Catholics think when the Pope says ‘Jump,’ we all say, ‘How high?’”
In Honor of Terri
Following a Florida court’s ruling in favor of removing Schiavo’s feeding tube, Bishop Sgreccia warned: “If such a decision was confirmed and leads to Terri Schiavo’s death, it would create a juridical precedent and would present euthanasia in reality as a right before the courts of the United States, with the serious consequences that can be easily imagined for the lives of many other more or less autonomous persons, in this country and elsewhere.”
That may well be the road paved by Catholic ethicists who advance the culture of death. These are the consequences of a Church leadership and laity reluctant to hold Catholic universities accountable for scandal—understandable because lay-directed universities are autonomous and responsible for their own actions and policies, but negligent because we too often forget that “Catholic identity” is not the universities’ to define or distort.
Catholic universities must be committed to the difficult task of rooting out the culture of death from their halls. They also must advance a culture of life, educating their students about the Church’s authentic teaching on end-of-life issues as well as college-age concerns about sexuality. Such would be a fitting tribute to Terri Schiavo.
Patrick J. Reilly is president of the Cardinal Newman Society (www.cardinalnewmansociety.org), a national organization that seeks the renewal of Catholic identity at Catholic colleges and universities in the United States.
Copyright Crisis Magazine © 2001 Washington DC, USA
For this very reason, faithful Catholics will rise up and actively oppose what our new beloved Pontiff has referred to as the "Dictatorship of Relativism" and will make their voice heard on life issues.
June 14, 2005
Teaching EuthanasiaBy Patrick J. Reilly
The intense battle to prevent Terri Schiavo’s husband from removing her feeding tube was horrible enough. To think that some American Catholic universities—and their ethics, theology, law, and medical professors—bear some responsibility for Schiavo’s slow death is almost too much to imagine.
Yet prior to Schiavo’s death, professors from top Catholic universities helped convince the courts and the public that removing her feeding tube was acceptable and consistent with Catholic teaching—even while the Vatican said it was euthanasia. Several professors sought to publicly undermine Pope John Paul II’s clear statements on the moral obligation to feed and hydrate even the most severely injured patients.
It’s well-known that the culture of death has made inroads into Catholic higher education in the form of abortion advocacy, but little attention is given to end-of-life issues—or so it seemed before the Schiavo debacle. When six Catholic university professors signed an amicus brief in favor of removing Schiavo’s feeding tube, the Cardinal Newman Society launched an investigation that revealed the dark side of some Catholic university faculties, which include leading advocates of assisted suicide, vocal dissenters from Vatican teaching on euthanasia, and even top officials of national pro-death advocacy organizations.
The danger is obvious: If the Church is going to face up to a growing movement for euthanasia and assisted suicide in the United States, Catholic universities must help in that important battle. Harboring the enemy and training new spokesmen for the culture of death is not the way to do it.
Killing Terri
The brief filed last August by 55 bioethicists urged the Florida Supreme Court to overturn “Terri’s Law,” the measure passed by the state legislature to empower Gov. Jeb Bush to protect Schiavo’s life.
Among the ethicists signing the brief were six Catholic university professors: Charles Baron, professor at Boston College Law School; Carol Bayley, adjunct professor of nursing at the University of San Francisco; Milton Heifetz, adjunct professor at Boston College Law School; Lawrence Nelson, adjunct associate professor of philosophy and of women and gender studies at Santa Clara University; Rev. John Paris, S.J., professor of bioethics in the theology department at Boston College; and James Walter, professor of bioethics and chairman of the Bioethics Institute at Loyola Marymount University.
The ethicists argued that “no legal right is more important in American society than the right of personal autonomy”—without explaining exactly how this supercedes the more fundamental right to life. But what was most striking and unusual about the brief was its direct challenge to Pope John Paul II’s teaching on the obligatory use of feeding tubes for seriously ill patients in a “persistent vegetative state.” During a Vatican-sponsored conference of physicians and ethicists last year, the late Holy Father said that in cases in which a person’s ability to function is minimal, but death is not imminent, food and water should be considered “morally obligatory, insofar as and until it is seen to have attained its proper finality, which in the present case consists in providing nourishment to the patient and alleviation of his suffering.... Death by starvation or dehydration is, in fact, the only possible outcome as a result of their withdrawal. In this sense it ends up becoming, if done knowingly and willingly, true and proper euthanasia by omission.”
The ethicists argued that “the Pope’s speech has not changed anything concerning the centuries-old teachings of the Catholic Church on the care due to patients,” which does not require “extraordinary” medical treatment for terminally ill persons. They got that right. What did change, after decades of theological debate about whether a feeding tube could be considered “extraordinary” medical treatment, is that one of the late pope’s last contributions to Catholic teaching was to declare that food and water are ordinary care to be provided in almost all circumstances by any suitable means. It is true that even the most ardently pro-life theologians, like Janet Smith of Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit, acknowledge that the question does not appear to be closed—at least not without the formality of a papal encyclical—but that the Vatican’s teaching deserves “great weight” and prayerful reflection.
The following is not what Smith prescribes: arguing with certainty before a court that a woman must die because—in direct contradiction to what the pope and Vatican officials have clearly taught—Catholic teaching is interpreted to permit starvation and dehydration when a patient’s recovery is unlikely. Even in the modern culture of dissent, one might expect more tact—especially from Catholic university professors.
Boston Legal
The Schiavo brief was just a hint of some of the signers’ activities in support of euthanasia and assisted suicide. Charles Baron has intervened in such cases before. He filed a brief for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in the 1980s with the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in support of removing the feeding tube of Paul Brophy. Like Schiavo, Brophy had suffered brain damage and was diagnosed as living in a “persistent vegetative state” for three years, but he was not terminally ill or facing imminent death. Although Brophy had never expressed his wishes in writing, the court accepted the “substitute judgment” of his wife, and the 48-year-old man was starved to death.
Last year Baron joined 41 bioethicists who filed an amicus brief with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals defending Oregon’s Death With Dignity law, which allows physician-assisted suicide. The case, Oregon v. Ashcroft, in which Oregon officials complain that former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft improperly banned doctors from using federally controlled drugs to kill their patients, is now before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Well-regarded as an expert on end-of-life issues, Baron has testified before the U.S. House of Representatives and Britain’s House of Lords on legalizing physician-assisted suicide. He was the spokesman for a group of academics that published a model state law to legalize physician-assisted suicide in 1996. The model, which has been advocated in Massachusetts since 1997, is posted online among Boston College Law School’s faculty papers. Baron now serves on the board of directors of the Death With Dignity National Center, which is the organization most responsible for Oregon’s Death With Dignity law and has promoted similar laws in Maine, Hawaii, and Vermont.
How do these activities affect Boston College students? In addition to teaching courses on constitutional law, Baron teaches “Law and Bioethics”—including discussion of assisted suicide and “artificial prolongation of human life”—and “Health Law and Policy,” which includes discussions of “life and death decision-making.”
It gets worse. Baron has taught both courses with adjunct law professor Milton Heifetz, also a signatory to the bioethicists’ brief supporting Schiavo’s death by starvation and co-author of The Right to Die: A Neurosurgeon Speaks of Death With Candor (Putnam, 1975). The book advocates legalizing assisted suicide and even entertains the possibility of euthanasia for severely retarded people and newborns with severe medical problems.
“Is life at birth more significant than at the second, fourth, or sixth month of pregnancy?” Heifetz and co-author Charles Mangel ask. “It is not. True, it is closer to gaining the attributes of man, but, as yet, it has only the potential for those qualities. If this difference is true for the normal newborn, how much less significant is it for the newborn who doesn’t even have this potential?”
Bioethics professors Rev. John Paris, S.J., of Boston College and James Walter of Loyola Marymount University were outspoken in the Schiavo case. Catholics ought to be impressed by their credentials: Walter taught at the Catholic University of America, Georgetown University, Loyola University of Chicago, and Marygrove College before chairing the Bioethics Institute at Loyola Marymount. He is also the founding chairman of the International Forum for Catholic Bioethicists. Father Paris has published more than 100 articles on law, medicine, and ethics and has consulted for the President’s Commission for the Study of Ethics in Medicine and the U.S. Senate Committee on Aging.
So why the lapse in professionalism when commenting on the Schiavo case? Without having evaluated Schiavo personally, Walter confidently told the National Catholic Reporter last October that “any chance of self-awareness is not going to happen.” Walter sought to dispel concerns about Schiavo’s suffering when her feeding tube is removed: “All centers of her brain are so severely compromised she can’t feel pain or hunger, and if there is any indication of it, she would be sedated during her dying.” Walter’s confidence gives no hint of the significant disagreements over Schiavo’s medical condition and her awareness of pain and her surroundings.
In March, Father Paris admitted that Schiavo “is quite alive,” but still “she has no obligation to medical interventions if they prove disproportionately burdensome.” Food and water, Father Paris argued, are burdensome interventions. In a Salon.com interview, Father Paris said the Schiavo case was really about “the power of the Christian right. This case has nothing to do with the legal issues involving a feeding tube.” He complained: “[T]he family has the radical, antiabortion, right-to-life Christian right, with its apparently unlimited resources and political muscle, behind them.” Not exactly the careful analysis one would expect from a respected ethicist.
Credibility is also a problem for Carol Bayley, who teaches nursing at the University of San Francisco but wields greater influence as vice president for ethics and justice education at Catholic Healthcare West, a large hospital system in the western United States. Last April, Bayley represented her employer with a cautious but faithful response to the Vatican teaching on feeding tubes: “We’re going to take the Pope’s statements very seriously. We’re going to look at what effect this could have on our practice.” Just three months later, Bayley signed on to the Schiavo brief, pointedly rejecting the pope’s teaching with no apparent consequence for her employment.
An Attorney’s Legacy
At 82 years old, Florence Wendland cannot forget her six-year battle to prevent her son’s death by starvation and dehydration. And she has some idea of what Terri Schiavo’s parents have gone through.
“I just pray to the Lord to help them,” she told the Mercury News.
Wendland also knows something about the problem of euthanasia activists teaching at Catholic universities. Lawrence Nelson, the attorney who urged the California Supreme Court to sanction the removal of her son’s feeding tube, is a medical and legal ethics professor at the Jesuits’ Santa Clara University.
Robert Wendland was in a car accident in 1993 and was severely disabled—unable to speak or walk on his own, but occasionally able to make limited movements like writing the letter “R.” Unlike Schiavo, it was apparent that Robert was not in a persistent vegetative state. His wife, Rose, nevertheless sought to remove his feeding tube, and Robert’s mother Florence and sister Rebekah sued to prevent it. Nelson testified at the trial level in support of starving Robert, then later took over the case as the attorney for Robert’s wife.
Despite losing to Robert’s family at the California Supreme Court—which ruled that a feeding tube could be removed only in instances of a coma or imminent death, or with the patient’s explicit instructions in writing—Nelson has continued to plead his case to the public under the auspices of Santa Clara University. Nelson has admitted that Rose Wendland knew her husband was alive but believed “that this was no life for Robert, no life he would ever want. The only experiences he seemed to have were negative. She thought it was wrong and even cruel in a way.” It was a textbook case of “mercy killing.”
Despite his views supporting such an atrocity, Nelson has been designated a scholar at Santa Clara University’s Markkula Center for Applied Ethics and is identified on the university’s Web site as a media source on “death and dying.” Through the Markkula Center, Nelson has written and made presentations on assisted suicide and the Wendland case. Nelson argues that even in circumstances where a patient’s wishes are not known for certain, “close family members should presumptively be the ones who decide when it is right to forgo treatment of their incompetent relative,” including removal of a feeding tube.
Also published by the Markkula Center is “A Brief Case for the Moral Permissibility of Stem Cell Research,” in which Nelson argues that “scientists must destroy embryos in order to obtain primordial stem cells. This destruction is ethically defensible because embryos have only a modest moral status and can be destroyed for substantial reasons.”
Florence Wendland’s attorney, Janie Hickok Siess, says that one of the most disturbing things about Nelson is his collaboration with Ronald Cranford, a faculty member at the University of Minnesota’s Center for Bioethics. Cranford has a history of court testimony in support of euthanasia. He was the expert witness who declared Schiavo to be in a persistent vegetative state despite the lack of certain medical tests that some doctors said might have revealed significant brain activity. Cranford testified that Robert Wendland’s movements—which included operating a motorized wheelchair and using a television remote control—were comparable to those of a trained animal.
In 1999, Nelson and Cranford published their arguments for removing Wendland’s feeding tube in the Journal of Contemporary Health Law and Policy, which is sponsored by the Catholic University of America law school. They describe Wendland as “minimally conscious”—since they could not reasonably label him vegetative—and argue that for such individuals who cannot communicate, “Their biographical and personal life is over.”
Siess, who is a Lutheran, wonders why Nelson is teaching ethics at a Catholic university: “I don’t believe that his views, as I understand them, are consistent with the Gospels and the teaching of Jesus.” One of her children attends a Christian college, and she expects something different from a faith-based education: “If you’re sending your kid to a church-affiliated school, you would want the school to be consistent with the teaching of that church.”
Santa Clara University officials see it differently. In 2003, the Markkula Center awarded Nelson a grant to develop “a theory of constitutional personhood,” considering the moral status of human embryos outside the womb, “moral respect for the disabled,” and “forgoing treatment of conscious, independent persons.” The same year, Santa Clara’s Bannan Center for Jesuit Education gave Nelson a grant “to explore the place of philosophical ethics in Jesuit higher education and mission.”
Rogues Gallery
Nelson and the other five Catholic university professors who signed the Schiavo brief are not the only employees of Catholic universities who have contributed recently to a culture of death:
· Tom Beauchamp, philosophy professor at Georgetown University and a senior research scholar at the university’s Kennedy Institute of Ethics, has served on the board of directors of the Compassion in Dying Federation since 1999. This national organization advocated Oregon’s assisted dying law and challenged laws prohibiting assisted suicide in Washington and New York, taking its fight to the U.S. Supreme Court. Beauchamp organized the amicus brief signed by Baron, Beauchamp, and 40 other bioethicists in Oregon v. Ashcroft, arguing for Oregon’s Death With Dignity law. Beauchamp co-authored Principles of Biomedical Ethics (Oxford, 1979), which is often cited in arguments for euthanasia and assisted suicide.
· Maxwell Gregg Bloche, professor at the Georgetown University Law Center and co-director of the joint program in law and public health with Johns Hopkins University, also signed an amicus brief in Oregon v. Ashcroft arguing that doctors’ actions protected by the Oregon assisted-suicide law constitute “sound and ethical medical practices.”
· As touted on Seattle University’s Web site, adjunct law professor Robert Free has served as an advisory board member for Compassion in Dying of Washington, which advocates assisted suicide. Free helped the organization prepare amicus briefs challenging the Washington state law criminalizing physician-assisted suicide and defending Oregon’s Death With Dignity law.
· Howard Freed, clinical associate professor of emergency medicine at the Georgetown University School of Medicine, signed an amicus brief in Oregon v. Ashcroft complaining that the former attorney general interfered with “physicians’ ability to care for terminally ill patients nationwide” and warning that “many health professionals will retreat from their obligations to their terminally ill patients.”
· The Georgetown University Law Center’s Web site describes Lawrence Gostin as an expert on constitutional law, health law, and bioethics, but it negelects to mention that Gostin has twice joined amicus briefs in Oregon v. Ashcroft defending Oregon’s assisted-suicide law. Gostin holds several positions at Georgetown including law professor, faculty affiliate of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics, and director of the Center for Law and the Public’s Health (a joint program with Johns Hopkins University). Gostin is the health law and ethics editor of the influential Journal of the American Medical Association and serves on the editorial board of the International Journal of Bioethics and the executive committee of the ACLU board of directors.
· Former Jesuit priest Daniel Maguire, theology professor at Marquette University, not only supported removal of Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube, but he told FOX News that “this woman should have been allowed to complete her dying 15 years ago when they realized that she had terrible damage to her brain and was no longer capable of personal consciousness.” Maguire accused Pope John Paul II and Vatican officials of a “fetishism of life signs,” using any sign of life as a justification for delaying death.
· Rev. Richard McBrien, theology professor at the University of Notre Dame, argued in support of removing Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube. “This is not a question of euthanasia,” he told Bill O’Reilly on FOX News, directly contradicting the Vatican. “[T]his is the removal of an extraordinary means of sustaining life, which is an indirect killing because eventually she will die, but it is not with the intention of killing her, of bringing about her death.”
· Fairfield University identifies associate philosophy professor Curtis Naser as an expert in biomedical ethics and “end of life decisions.” Naser joined Beauchamp, Nelson, and 39 other bioethicists in an amicus brief filed in the 1997 U.S. Supreme Court cases Vacco v. Quill and State of Washington v. Glucksberg, arguing against New York and Washington state bans on physician-assisted suicide. They argued that “medical ethics and trust in physicians are better served by physician-assisted suicide where the patient can have the care, comfort and treatment of his or her doctor at the time the patient acts to hasten death.”
· Rev. Kevin O’Rourke, O.P., ethics professor at the Loyola University of Chicago Medical School, told the Miami Herald that preserving Schiavo’s life was “blasphemy”: “I can attest from a theological point of view that what the [Florida] governor and others are doing to Terri is not doing any good for her.... For Christians, it is a blasphemy to keep people alive as if you were doing them a favor.”
Ignoring the Pope
O’Rourke drafted a statement that was circulated at a meeting of Catholic Health Association ethicists in March. The statement scolds Bishop Elio Sgreccia, president of the Pontifical Academy for Life, for arguing that withholding nutrition and hydration is euthanasia—the same argument made by Pope John Paul II. O’Rourke complains that the Vatican position is “irresponsible” and “simply an insult,” because it contradicts prior statements by theologians and bishops and infers that they support euthanasia.
There is no question that by declaring the provision of food and water through an artificial feeding tube to be normal care, Pope John Paul II embarrassed many American theologians and bishops who for decades had been advising families differently. Some grumbling about the Vatican’s position was expected, but the opposition has become disrespectful and rebellious. By their quick and total dismissal of Vatican teaching and their aggressive advocacy of what the Vatican calls euthanasia, critics like O’Rourke have resorted to public dissent.
One well-used strategy is to portray the Vatican teaching as ambiguous or allowing broad discretion for the families of severely injured patients. Pope John Paul II was quite clear that the intentional removal of a feeding tube—even from patients in a persistent vegetative state—is “true and proper euthanasia by omission.” Bishop Sgreccia said regarding Schiavo: “The removal of the gastric feeding tube from this person, in these conditions, may be considered direct euthanasia.... The gastric feeding tube cannot be regarded as an ‘extraordinary’ or as a therapeutic ‘means.’ It is an integral part of the modality in which Schiavo can be fed and hydrated.”
Nevertheless, John Collins Harvey, senior research scholar at Georgetown University’s Kennedy Institute of Ethics and chairman of the bioethics committee at Georgetown University Hospital, tried to muddy the waters.
“[I]t’s important to understand that the words of the Holy Father were interpreted in many different ways, so that it’s hard to really come to the conclusion of what exactly he said to everyone,” Harvey said on PBS’s Religion & Ethics Newsweekly. “He talked very carefully and said ‘in principle,’ food and water is ordinary treatment. It’s not a medical treatment, and therefore it’s part of comfort care and must always be used. But ‘in principle,’ which means there are conditions and times when it can be omitted.”
Father McBrien has claimed that the pope did not speak authoritatively on the matter of feeding tubes. In Schiavo’s case, “Catholic moral theologians would say this is an exception.” Speaking to the Los Angeles Times, he characterized an editorial in L’Osservatore Romano—which echoed the Vatican position—as “theologically erroneous and irresponsibly so, given the highly public nature of this controversy.”
Critics have also complained that the late pope took them by surprise at a 2004 conference in Rome by attempting to impose new moral guidelines at the behest of pro-life activists. But contrary to media reports, Pope John Paul II addressed the topic as early as 1998 in his ad limina address to the bishops from California, Nevada, and Hawaii. He drew a sharp distinction between what the Catechism of the Catholic Church calls “the refusal of ‘over-zealous’ treatment” and taking away the ordinary means of preserving life, such as feeding, hydration, and normal medical care.
Walter at Loyola Marymount University plays the sympathy card, arguing the Vatican’s position “might even drive people toward euthanasia, by making them feel that they have lost a traditional and sympathetic ally in their final journey.”
Among the Vatican’s critics, Boston College’s Father Paris is perhaps the most confrontational. He dismissed the late Holy Father’s statements as pandering to “radical right-to-lifers.”
“The right-to-life types want to renounce brain death and keep everyone going forever,” Father Paris told Newsweek. “It seems that Lenin’s mausoleum will be the model for the future. The entire enterprise is mischief-making at the Vatican.” Regarding the pope’s 2004 address, Father Paris told the St. Petersburg Times: “I think the best thing to do is ignore it, and it will go away. It’s not an authoritative teaching statement.... The problem here is that non-Catholics think when the Pope says ‘Jump,’ we all say, ‘How high?’”
In Honor of Terri
Following a Florida court’s ruling in favor of removing Schiavo’s feeding tube, Bishop Sgreccia warned: “If such a decision was confirmed and leads to Terri Schiavo’s death, it would create a juridical precedent and would present euthanasia in reality as a right before the courts of the United States, with the serious consequences that can be easily imagined for the lives of many other more or less autonomous persons, in this country and elsewhere.”
That may well be the road paved by Catholic ethicists who advance the culture of death. These are the consequences of a Church leadership and laity reluctant to hold Catholic universities accountable for scandal—understandable because lay-directed universities are autonomous and responsible for their own actions and policies, but negligent because we too often forget that “Catholic identity” is not the universities’ to define or distort.
Catholic universities must be committed to the difficult task of rooting out the culture of death from their halls. They also must advance a culture of life, educating their students about the Church’s authentic teaching on end-of-life issues as well as college-age concerns about sexuality. Such would be a fitting tribute to Terri Schiavo.
Patrick J. Reilly is president of the Cardinal Newman Society (www.cardinalnewmansociety.org), a national organization that seeks the renewal of Catholic identity at Catholic colleges and universities in the United States.
Copyright Crisis Magazine © 2001 Washington DC, USA
Saturday, June 25, 2005
More symptoms of a society in crisis
Louisiana minister, followers indicted
7 charged with rape in sexual abuse of children, animals
08:12 PM CDT on Friday, June 24, 2005
Associated Press
AMITE, La. – A minister and six of his followers, including a former sheriff's deputy, were charged Thursday with aggravated rape in a case that has included accusations that children and animals were sexually abused.
A grand jury indicted Louis Lamonica, 45, who was the pastor of Hosanna Church in Ponchatoula, on six counts of rape.
Four counts each were brought against former Tangipahoa Parish sheriff's deputy Christopher Blair Labat, 24; Allen R. Pierson, 46, who lived in an apartment on the church complex; church member Paul Fontenot; and Austin Bernard, 36, whose wife, Nicole, first exposed the allegations.
Mr. Pierson's wife, Patricia, 54, and Mr. Lamonica's wife, Robbin, were charged on two counts each.
Authorities have said witnesses described the use of robes, pentagrams on the church floor, sex with a dog and the sacrifice of cats. The alleged victims, suspected to number up to two dozen, range from infants to young teens.
Investigators believe the abuse began in 1999 and continued until the church closed in 2003. But it was not until Mrs. Bernard called in April, saying she had fled to Ohio to protect her child, that police had any idea of what was happening, officials say.
About the same time, Mr. Lamonica walked into the sheriff's office in neighboring Livingston Parish and gave detailed descriptions of church activities, officials say.
Our Lady of La Salette: Pray for us.
7 charged with rape in sexual abuse of children, animals
08:12 PM CDT on Friday, June 24, 2005
Associated Press
AMITE, La. – A minister and six of his followers, including a former sheriff's deputy, were charged Thursday with aggravated rape in a case that has included accusations that children and animals were sexually abused.
A grand jury indicted Louis Lamonica, 45, who was the pastor of Hosanna Church in Ponchatoula, on six counts of rape.
Four counts each were brought against former Tangipahoa Parish sheriff's deputy Christopher Blair Labat, 24; Allen R. Pierson, 46, who lived in an apartment on the church complex; church member Paul Fontenot; and Austin Bernard, 36, whose wife, Nicole, first exposed the allegations.
Mr. Pierson's wife, Patricia, 54, and Mr. Lamonica's wife, Robbin, were charged on two counts each.
Authorities have said witnesses described the use of robes, pentagrams on the church floor, sex with a dog and the sacrifice of cats. The alleged victims, suspected to number up to two dozen, range from infants to young teens.
Investigators believe the abuse began in 1999 and continued until the church closed in 2003. But it was not until Mrs. Bernard called in April, saying she had fled to Ohio to protect her child, that police had any idea of what was happening, officials say.
About the same time, Mr. Lamonica walked into the sheriff's office in neighboring Livingston Parish and gave detailed descriptions of church activities, officials say.
Our Lady of La Salette: Pray for us.
Friday, June 24, 2005
Houston Attorney Daniel Shea...more troubling background
Not only has attorney Daniel Shea been involved to some extent in the Transgender Movement, but some four years before the Church sex abuse crisis grabbed front page headlines, this attorney was already waging his own private war against God and His Commandments. Read the following:
Brister confirmed as justice without single vote to spare
By Janet ElliottMay 12, 2004, 6:28AM
Houston Chronicle Austin Bureau
AUSTIN -- Former Houston judge Scott Brister barely received the number of votes he needed Tuesday to be confirmed as a justice on the Texas Supreme Court. Brister, who once posted the Ten Commandments in his Houston courtroom, got 19 votes, exactly the two-thirds majority necessary to be confirmed. Nine Democratic senators voted against him, including Houston Sens. Rodney Ellis, Mario Gallegos and John Whitmire. Three senators were absent during voting.
Brister was appointed by Gov. Rick Perry last November to a vacancy on the high court. Perry elevated Brister from Houston's 14th Court of Appeals, where he served as chief justice. Brister also served on Houston's other intermediate appellate court, the 1st Court of Appeals, and was a judge for the 234th District Court in Harris County for 11 years.
Sen. Gonzalo Barrientos, D-Austin, criticized Brister for failing to answer questions during his recent confirmation hearing about the separation of church and state, judicial selection, attorney-client privilege and private school vouchers. "Never in my entire time in the Senate have I faced the kind of answers that were given by this nominee," said Barrientos.
Barrientos and Sen. Juan Hinojosa, D-McAllen, clashed with Brister last week when the justice appeared before the Senate Nominations Committee. "Do you believe in separation of church and state?" Hinojosa asked Brister. "It depends on the circumstances," replied Brister.
Brister said he never noticed attorneys or juries being influenced by his display of the Ten Commandments.
But in 1998, Houston lawyer Daniel Shea sued to force Brister to remove the Ten Commandments from the wall. A federal judge ruled that Shea did not have a legal interest, or "standing," to challenge Brister's display.
Before becoming a judge, Brister provided free legal representation to abortion opponents. In January 1987, he represented Right to Life Advocacy Inc., which wanted to distribute anti-abortion pamphlets at middle and high schools. At the time of his nomination, Brister said he would not recuse himself from any cases involving abortion rights.
Paul
Brister confirmed as justice without single vote to spare
By Janet ElliottMay 12, 2004, 6:28AM
Houston Chronicle Austin Bureau
AUSTIN -- Former Houston judge Scott Brister barely received the number of votes he needed Tuesday to be confirmed as a justice on the Texas Supreme Court. Brister, who once posted the Ten Commandments in his Houston courtroom, got 19 votes, exactly the two-thirds majority necessary to be confirmed. Nine Democratic senators voted against him, including Houston Sens. Rodney Ellis, Mario Gallegos and John Whitmire. Three senators were absent during voting.
Brister was appointed by Gov. Rick Perry last November to a vacancy on the high court. Perry elevated Brister from Houston's 14th Court of Appeals, where he served as chief justice. Brister also served on Houston's other intermediate appellate court, the 1st Court of Appeals, and was a judge for the 234th District Court in Harris County for 11 years.
Sen. Gonzalo Barrientos, D-Austin, criticized Brister for failing to answer questions during his recent confirmation hearing about the separation of church and state, judicial selection, attorney-client privilege and private school vouchers. "Never in my entire time in the Senate have I faced the kind of answers that were given by this nominee," said Barrientos.
Barrientos and Sen. Juan Hinojosa, D-McAllen, clashed with Brister last week when the justice appeared before the Senate Nominations Committee. "Do you believe in separation of church and state?" Hinojosa asked Brister. "It depends on the circumstances," replied Brister.
Brister said he never noticed attorneys or juries being influenced by his display of the Ten Commandments.
But in 1998, Houston lawyer Daniel Shea sued to force Brister to remove the Ten Commandments from the wall. A federal judge ruled that Shea did not have a legal interest, or "standing," to challenge Brister's display.
Before becoming a judge, Brister provided free legal representation to abortion opponents. In January 1987, he represented Right to Life Advocacy Inc., which wanted to distribute anti-abortion pamphlets at middle and high schools. At the time of his nomination, Brister said he would not recuse himself from any cases involving abortion rights.
Paul
Still more on attorney Daniel Shea...
Attorney Daniel Shea has written a legal article entitled, "Civic Virtue: When in Doubt, Disclose" which is referenced at this link: http://www.transgenderlegal.com/procindex1.htm
This link takes you to the website of the "Transgender Law Conference."
Paul
This link takes you to the website of the "Transgender Law Conference."
Paul
Attorney Daniel Shea article
Attorney Daniel Shea has written a legal article for a magazine called "Transgender Tapestry Journal." The article is referenced at this link: http://www.ifge.org/magazines/73_fall95.htm
Again the question: Does this man embrace the philosophy of the transgender movement? And, if so, might this not explain his hostility toward the Roman Catholic Church? To what extent is Mr. Shea involved in this movement? He has written one article (that I know of) for one of their publications and has even served as a guest speaker at one of their conferences.
Interesting is it not?
Paul
Again the question: Does this man embrace the philosophy of the transgender movement? And, if so, might this not explain his hostility toward the Roman Catholic Church? To what extent is Mr. Shea involved in this movement? He has written one article (that I know of) for one of their publications and has even served as a guest speaker at one of their conferences.
Interesting is it not?
Paul
Thursday, June 23, 2005
Attorney Daniel Shea and Co: Liberal Agenda to discredit Pope Benedict XVI? Part II
In his letter to Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly, attorney Daniel Shea refers to canonical trials as "secret canonical trials" and goes on to suggest that "These so-called church trials are a sham." However, according to canonists, the fact that Crimen Sollicitationis was not designed to "cover up" sex abuse is made clear by a careful reading of paragraph 15, which obligates anyone with knowledge of a priest abusing the confessional for that purpose to come forward, under pain of excommunication for failing to do so. This penalty is stipulated, the document says, "lest [the offense] remain occult and unpunished and always with inestimable detriment to souls."
Canon lawyers have also noted that pontifical secrecy is not reserved solely for sexual abuse. Under a February 4, 1974 Instruction entitled "Secreta Continere," pontifical secrecy covers the following: 1. Documents for which pontifical secrecy is expressly indicated; 2. Affairs dealt with by the Secretariat of State under pontifical secrecy; 3. Doctrinal denunciations and publications of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, as well as its investigations; 4. Extrajudicial denunciations of crimes against the faith or against morals, and crimes against the sacrament of penance, as well as the procedures leading to these denunciations; 5. Acts by Vatican representatives relative to matters covered by the pontifical secret; 6. Creation of Cardinals; 7. Nomination of bishops, apostolic administrators and other ordinaries with episcopal power, and the procedures related to these appointments; 8. Nomination of superiors and other major officials of the Roman curia; 9. Codes and coded correspondence; 10. Affairs and practices of the pope, of the chief cardinal or archbishop of a dicastery and of pontifical representatives.
Crimen Sollicitationes does not address the civil rights and responsibilities of the person alleging to have been solicited. Instead, as the statement of the USCCB makes clear, it is considering the good order of the Church's own internal life: the protection of the good names of the persons involved, the sacred nature of the sacrament of penance, and the potential for scandalizing the faithful etc. The document says nothing about the responsibility that the Church may have within the civil jurisdictions in which it lives and works.
Who is Daniel Shea?
Attorney Daniel Shea is a Houston, Texas-based lawyer who used to be a seminarian and whose hatred of the Church would seem to be rather evident based upon his own rhetoric. As already noted, he has referred to the Church as "a criminal institution" while asserting that "those who contribute to it any longer are aiding and abetting this criminal conduct called obstruction of justice." He has also asserted that "Ratzinger and Co" are engaging in an 'international conspiracy to obstruct justice."
Attorney Shea has also been a guest speaker for the International Conference on Transgender Law and Employment Policy. He spoke at their 2nd Conference which was held at the Hilton, Southwest Freeway, Houston, Texas on August 26-29, 1993. His involvement with this group is documented at this website link: http://www.transgenderlegal.com/ictlephis1.htm (p. 4).
At this website, readers may click on an article entitled "The International Bill of Gender Rights." #1 of this document reads: "All human beings carry within themselves an ever unfolding idea of who they are and what they are capable of achieving. The individuals sense of self is not determined by chromosomal sex, genitalia, assigned birth sex, or initial gender role. Thus, the individual's identity and capabilities cannot be cirumscribed by what society deems to be masculine or feminine behavior. It is fundamental that individuals have the right to define, and to redefine as their lives unfold, their own gender identities, without regard to chromosomal sex, genitalia, assigned birth sex, or initial gender role...Therefore, all human beings have the right to define their own gender identity regardless of chromosomal sex, genitalia, assigned birth sex, or initial gender role."
Does attorney Shea accept this philosophy? If so, and knowing where the Church stands on such issues, could this be a factor in his ongoing attacks against the Church?
Paul Anthony Melanson
Canon lawyers have also noted that pontifical secrecy is not reserved solely for sexual abuse. Under a February 4, 1974 Instruction entitled "Secreta Continere," pontifical secrecy covers the following: 1. Documents for which pontifical secrecy is expressly indicated; 2. Affairs dealt with by the Secretariat of State under pontifical secrecy; 3. Doctrinal denunciations and publications of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, as well as its investigations; 4. Extrajudicial denunciations of crimes against the faith or against morals, and crimes against the sacrament of penance, as well as the procedures leading to these denunciations; 5. Acts by Vatican representatives relative to matters covered by the pontifical secret; 6. Creation of Cardinals; 7. Nomination of bishops, apostolic administrators and other ordinaries with episcopal power, and the procedures related to these appointments; 8. Nomination of superiors and other major officials of the Roman curia; 9. Codes and coded correspondence; 10. Affairs and practices of the pope, of the chief cardinal or archbishop of a dicastery and of pontifical representatives.
Crimen Sollicitationes does not address the civil rights and responsibilities of the person alleging to have been solicited. Instead, as the statement of the USCCB makes clear, it is considering the good order of the Church's own internal life: the protection of the good names of the persons involved, the sacred nature of the sacrament of penance, and the potential for scandalizing the faithful etc. The document says nothing about the responsibility that the Church may have within the civil jurisdictions in which it lives and works.
Who is Daniel Shea?
Attorney Daniel Shea is a Houston, Texas-based lawyer who used to be a seminarian and whose hatred of the Church would seem to be rather evident based upon his own rhetoric. As already noted, he has referred to the Church as "a criminal institution" while asserting that "those who contribute to it any longer are aiding and abetting this criminal conduct called obstruction of justice." He has also asserted that "Ratzinger and Co" are engaging in an 'international conspiracy to obstruct justice."
Attorney Shea has also been a guest speaker for the International Conference on Transgender Law and Employment Policy. He spoke at their 2nd Conference which was held at the Hilton, Southwest Freeway, Houston, Texas on August 26-29, 1993. His involvement with this group is documented at this website link: http://www.transgenderlegal.com/ictlephis1.htm (p. 4).
At this website, readers may click on an article entitled "The International Bill of Gender Rights." #1 of this document reads: "All human beings carry within themselves an ever unfolding idea of who they are and what they are capable of achieving. The individuals sense of self is not determined by chromosomal sex, genitalia, assigned birth sex, or initial gender role. Thus, the individual's identity and capabilities cannot be cirumscribed by what society deems to be masculine or feminine behavior. It is fundamental that individuals have the right to define, and to redefine as their lives unfold, their own gender identities, without regard to chromosomal sex, genitalia, assigned birth sex, or initial gender role...Therefore, all human beings have the right to define their own gender identity regardless of chromosomal sex, genitalia, assigned birth sex, or initial gender role."
Does attorney Shea accept this philosophy? If so, and knowing where the Church stands on such issues, could this be a factor in his ongoing attacks against the Church?
Paul Anthony Melanson
Wednesday, June 22, 2005
Attorney Daniel Shea and Co: Liberal agenda to discredit Pope Benedict XVI? Part I.
Is Attorney Daniel Shea of Houston part of a conspiracy to discredit Pope Benedict XVI? In an article entitled "Lawyer seeks to hold Pope accountable for abuse cover-up" published by the Irish Examiner.com and which may be found at the archives section of www.spiritdaily.com (June 20, 2005 edition), readers are told that attorney Shea wants to question Pope Benedict XVI because of the document Crimen solicitationis which he believes constitutes a "ground plan" for "covering up" the crime of sexual abuse of minors by clerics.
Now, a statement developed by staff and consultants of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and which was reviewed by the Chairman of the Committee for Canonical Affairs, has already addressed this issue quite comprehensively. That response to those who would take the document Crimen solicitationis out of context and distort it completely may be found here: http://www.kstp.com/article/stories/S6686.html?cat=1
Attorney Shea, who apparently is allergic to objectivity, has made some rather odd comments in the past regarding the Catholic Church. On one occasion, this attorney wrote me an e-mail in which he wrote that the Church, "..is a criminal institution and those who contribute to it any longer are aiding and abetting this criminal conduct called obstruction of justice."
On another occasion, he asserted that I "..seem to be blinded by the ability of Ratzinger and Co. to engage in an international conspiracy to obstruct justice." But the story doesn't end here. Attorney Shea is apparently good friends with (or at least working with) the Rev. Thomas Doyle, O.P., formerly a canon lawyer at the Vatican's Washington embassy and now an Air Force chaplain in Germany. Rev. Doyle has received the "Priest of Integrity" award from the dissident group "Voice of the Faithful" (VOTF).
In an e-mail which attorney Shea sent to various individuals on his e-mail mailing list including Rev. Richard P. McBrien the dissident moral theologian at Notre Dame; Mr. David Clohessy, who has served as the National Director of SNAP (the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests) ; Attorney Carmen Durso and Worcester Telegram & Gazette reporter Kathy Shaw among others, and which was a fascimile of a letter written to Thomas F. Reilly, the Attorney General of Massachusetts, Mr. Shea writes: "Reference is made to my letter to you of March 1, 2002 in which I enclosed a May 18, 2001 'Letter to All Bishops of the Catholic Church....' I stated that it appeared to me to be a clear and universal instruction to obstruct justice by an official of the Vatican City State, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. I stand by that characterization for the reasons that follow.
The Ratzinger letter expresses that it is an update to an instruction 'Crimen Sollicitationes,...issued...on March 16, 1962 in force until now [May 18, 2001].' It has taken Father Thomas Doyle and me the ensuing year to find this document. The delay can be attributed to its prefacing statement 'servanda diligenter in archivo secreto curiae pro norma interna non publicanda nec ullis comentarriis augenda,' translated in the enclosed as 'This text is to be diligently stored in the secret archives of the Curia [of each diocese] as strictly confidential. Nor is it to be published nor added to with any commentaries.' A careful study of the text reveals the motive behind the secrecy.
With respect to the crime of pederasty, referred to by Cardinal Law under oath as something only historically considered a 'sin,' refer to par. 73 of Crimen which refers to the 'worst crime with penal effects' as 'any obscene, external act, gravely sinful, perpetrated in any way by a cleric or attempted by him with youths of either sex or with brute animals (bestiality).' Elsewhere in the document it is characterized as an 'unspeakable crime.' And lest Bernard Law think there is no grounds here for perjury, let him be reminded that the Roman Catholic Church has been using the different terms crimen for crime, and peccata for sin for untold centuries and further, that Sacrum Poenitentiae of Benedict XIV has been on the books since June 1, 1741."
But attorney Shea misses the point. Crimen deals exclusively with ecclesiastical crimes and punishments which are found in Church Law. The document, as staff and consultants of the USCCB stated clearly, "..outlines procedures for addressing ecclesiastical crimes which have already been designated publicly as such in the 1917 Code of Canon Law (see its canons 2359 and 2368). It treats these crimes very seriously and repeats the penalties for them. The penalties include dismissal from the clerical state. The 1962 document has no bearing on civil law. It does not forbid the civil reporting of civil crimes. Confidentiality, in the past and today, is often required in court procedures, including civil court procedures, for a variety of reasons - including not unnecessarily impugning a person's good name, the protection of the young or victims of assault, etc. In addition, the special nature of the crime of solicitation in the confessional (the most confidential forum of all), to which the document is mainly dedicated, has to be taken into account. The allegation of committing this crime is most serious since the accused priest cannot break the 'seal of confession' to defend himself. Investigation of confessional matters must be done most delicately to protect the confidentiality of the sacrament of penance, and the rights and dignity of both the accused and the accuser."
Boston attorney Carmen L. Durso has also argued that Crimen may prove that the Catholic Church has been "obstructing justice." Durso was quoted by the Worcester Telegram & Gazette as having said that "This document [Crimen] may provide the link in the thinking of all of those who hid the truth for so many years." The newspaper also quoted him as having told a federal attorney that, "The constant admonitions that information regarding accusations against priests are to be deemed 'a secret of the Holy Office' may explain, but most certainly do not justify, their actions."
However, according to canon law experts, Crimen Sollicitationis dealt with canonical cases against a priest that could lead to removal from ministry or expulsion from the priesthood. Its imposition of secrecy therefore concerned the Church's internal disciplinary process. It did not prevent a Bishop or anyone else from reporting a crime perpetrated against a minor to the civil authorities. Oblate Father Francis Morrisey of St. Paul University in Ottawa explained to the NCR that, "The document was so secret that it couldn't even be mentioned..I'm inclined to believe that most bishops were unaware of its existence and contents until a situation arose..Of course, a bishop couldn't use this document cover up denunciation of an act of sexual abuse, the document simply wasn't made for that purpose."
Attorney Shea, disregarding what Canon Law experts have said time and again, is still insisting that Crimen is evidence of an attempt by the Catholic Church to cover-up crimes perpetrated against minors and that it is also evidence of an "international conspiracy." However, recalling the old dictum "You are known by the company you keep," we might justifiably ask "Is attorney Shea part of a conspiracy to discredit Pope Benedict XVI as well as the legacy of Pope John Paul II?
After all, his e-mail mailing list includes a moral theologian who is well-known for his dissent on various Church teachings, a reporter for the Worcester Telegram & Gazette who seems well-motivated in her efforts to write about abuse committed by priests and who contributes frequently to her newspaper's "church in crisis" feature, the National Director of SNAP (which may hardly be described as "magisterial catholic" and which often rails against the Church while promoting dissent groups such as VOTF) and such notables as attorney Carmen Durso who, it would seem, has already convicted the Church in his own mind as has attorney Shea.
More to come.....
Paul Anthony Melanson
Now, a statement developed by staff and consultants of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and which was reviewed by the Chairman of the Committee for Canonical Affairs, has already addressed this issue quite comprehensively. That response to those who would take the document Crimen solicitationis out of context and distort it completely may be found here: http://www.kstp.com/article/stories/S6686.html?cat=1
Attorney Shea, who apparently is allergic to objectivity, has made some rather odd comments in the past regarding the Catholic Church. On one occasion, this attorney wrote me an e-mail in which he wrote that the Church, "..is a criminal institution and those who contribute to it any longer are aiding and abetting this criminal conduct called obstruction of justice."
On another occasion, he asserted that I "..seem to be blinded by the ability of Ratzinger and Co. to engage in an international conspiracy to obstruct justice." But the story doesn't end here. Attorney Shea is apparently good friends with (or at least working with) the Rev. Thomas Doyle, O.P., formerly a canon lawyer at the Vatican's Washington embassy and now an Air Force chaplain in Germany. Rev. Doyle has received the "Priest of Integrity" award from the dissident group "Voice of the Faithful" (VOTF).
In an e-mail which attorney Shea sent to various individuals on his e-mail mailing list including Rev. Richard P. McBrien the dissident moral theologian at Notre Dame; Mr. David Clohessy, who has served as the National Director of SNAP (the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests) ; Attorney Carmen Durso and Worcester Telegram & Gazette reporter Kathy Shaw among others, and which was a fascimile of a letter written to Thomas F. Reilly, the Attorney General of Massachusetts, Mr. Shea writes: "Reference is made to my letter to you of March 1, 2002 in which I enclosed a May 18, 2001 'Letter to All Bishops of the Catholic Church....' I stated that it appeared to me to be a clear and universal instruction to obstruct justice by an official of the Vatican City State, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. I stand by that characterization for the reasons that follow.
The Ratzinger letter expresses that it is an update to an instruction 'Crimen Sollicitationes,...issued...on March 16, 1962 in force until now [May 18, 2001].' It has taken Father Thomas Doyle and me the ensuing year to find this document. The delay can be attributed to its prefacing statement 'servanda diligenter in archivo secreto curiae pro norma interna non publicanda nec ullis comentarriis augenda,' translated in the enclosed as 'This text is to be diligently stored in the secret archives of the Curia [of each diocese] as strictly confidential. Nor is it to be published nor added to with any commentaries.' A careful study of the text reveals the motive behind the secrecy.
With respect to the crime of pederasty, referred to by Cardinal Law under oath as something only historically considered a 'sin,' refer to par. 73 of Crimen which refers to the 'worst crime with penal effects' as 'any obscene, external act, gravely sinful, perpetrated in any way by a cleric or attempted by him with youths of either sex or with brute animals (bestiality).' Elsewhere in the document it is characterized as an 'unspeakable crime.' And lest Bernard Law think there is no grounds here for perjury, let him be reminded that the Roman Catholic Church has been using the different terms crimen for crime, and peccata for sin for untold centuries and further, that Sacrum Poenitentiae of Benedict XIV has been on the books since June 1, 1741."
But attorney Shea misses the point. Crimen deals exclusively with ecclesiastical crimes and punishments which are found in Church Law. The document, as staff and consultants of the USCCB stated clearly, "..outlines procedures for addressing ecclesiastical crimes which have already been designated publicly as such in the 1917 Code of Canon Law (see its canons 2359 and 2368). It treats these crimes very seriously and repeats the penalties for them. The penalties include dismissal from the clerical state. The 1962 document has no bearing on civil law. It does not forbid the civil reporting of civil crimes. Confidentiality, in the past and today, is often required in court procedures, including civil court procedures, for a variety of reasons - including not unnecessarily impugning a person's good name, the protection of the young or victims of assault, etc. In addition, the special nature of the crime of solicitation in the confessional (the most confidential forum of all), to which the document is mainly dedicated, has to be taken into account. The allegation of committing this crime is most serious since the accused priest cannot break the 'seal of confession' to defend himself. Investigation of confessional matters must be done most delicately to protect the confidentiality of the sacrament of penance, and the rights and dignity of both the accused and the accuser."
Boston attorney Carmen L. Durso has also argued that Crimen may prove that the Catholic Church has been "obstructing justice." Durso was quoted by the Worcester Telegram & Gazette as having said that "This document [Crimen] may provide the link in the thinking of all of those who hid the truth for so many years." The newspaper also quoted him as having told a federal attorney that, "The constant admonitions that information regarding accusations against priests are to be deemed 'a secret of the Holy Office' may explain, but most certainly do not justify, their actions."
However, according to canon law experts, Crimen Sollicitationis dealt with canonical cases against a priest that could lead to removal from ministry or expulsion from the priesthood. Its imposition of secrecy therefore concerned the Church's internal disciplinary process. It did not prevent a Bishop or anyone else from reporting a crime perpetrated against a minor to the civil authorities. Oblate Father Francis Morrisey of St. Paul University in Ottawa explained to the NCR that, "The document was so secret that it couldn't even be mentioned..I'm inclined to believe that most bishops were unaware of its existence and contents until a situation arose..Of course, a bishop couldn't use this document cover up denunciation of an act of sexual abuse, the document simply wasn't made for that purpose."
Attorney Shea, disregarding what Canon Law experts have said time and again, is still insisting that Crimen is evidence of an attempt by the Catholic Church to cover-up crimes perpetrated against minors and that it is also evidence of an "international conspiracy." However, recalling the old dictum "You are known by the company you keep," we might justifiably ask "Is attorney Shea part of a conspiracy to discredit Pope Benedict XVI as well as the legacy of Pope John Paul II?
After all, his e-mail mailing list includes a moral theologian who is well-known for his dissent on various Church teachings, a reporter for the Worcester Telegram & Gazette who seems well-motivated in her efforts to write about abuse committed by priests and who contributes frequently to her newspaper's "church in crisis" feature, the National Director of SNAP (which may hardly be described as "magisterial catholic" and which often rails against the Church while promoting dissent groups such as VOTF) and such notables as attorney Carmen Durso who, it would seem, has already convicted the Church in his own mind as has attorney Shea.
More to come.....
Paul Anthony Melanson
La Salette Consecration Prayer
Consecration to Our Lady of La Salette
Most holy Mother, Our Lady of La Salette, who for love of me shed such bitter tears in your merciful apparition, look down with kindness upon me, as I consecrate myself to you without reserve. From this day, my glory shall be to know that I am your child. May I so live as to dry your tears and console your afflicted heart. Beloved Mother, to you and to your blessed charge and sacred keeping and into the bosom of your mercy, for this day and for every day, and for the hour of my death I commend myself, body and soul, every hope and every joy, every trouble and every sorrow, my life and my life's end. O dearest Mother, enlighten by understanding, direct my steps, console me by your maternal protection, so that exempt from all error, sheltered from every danger of sin, I may, with ardor and invincible courage, walk in the paths traced out for me by you and your Son. Amen.
Most holy Mother, Our Lady of La Salette, who for love of me shed such bitter tears in your merciful apparition, look down with kindness upon me, as I consecrate myself to you without reserve. From this day, my glory shall be to know that I am your child. May I so live as to dry your tears and console your afflicted heart. Beloved Mother, to you and to your blessed charge and sacred keeping and into the bosom of your mercy, for this day and for every day, and for the hour of my death I commend myself, body and soul, every hope and every joy, every trouble and every sorrow, my life and my life's end. O dearest Mother, enlighten by understanding, direct my steps, console me by your maternal protection, so that exempt from all error, sheltered from every danger of sin, I may, with ardor and invincible courage, walk in the paths traced out for me by you and your Son. Amen.
Tuesday, June 21, 2005
The Wanderer on Saul Alinsky
Below is an article from The Wanderer on Saul Alinsky and the influence he has had on the Campaign for Human Development in the United States:
A Commentary on Catholic Campaign for Human Development Funding of the Industrial Areas Foundation
Prepared for the Catholic Bishops of the United States by the Wanderer Forum Foundation
I. Introduction:
This commentary is submitted to the Catholic Bishops of the United States as a response to recently proposed changes in the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD) guidelines. The Wanderer Forum Foundation is encouraged by these reform efforts and thanks the United States Catholic Bishops for their work to more accurately shape the guidelines into greater conformity with Church teaching.
However, the Wanderer Forum Foundation is aware that guidelines alone, without adequate information about potential CHD grantees, will be insufficient to make informed decisions about the capacity of given organizations to respect Catholic moral and social justice principles. This commentary is offered in an attempt to provide some of that information.
It is essential to note the limited purpose and scope of this commentary:
1. This commentary is intended for the use of the Catholic Bishops of the United States in their consideration of the issues discussed. In view of the objections raised by the CCHD over the Wanderer Forum Foundation's having made the 1997 CHD Commentary available to the public, the Wanderer Forum Foundation will not make the 1998 IAF Commentary public until January 1999. We hope this will allow adequate time for in-depth perusal of the Commentary by the bishops and will permit a serious exchange between the CCHD committee and the Foundation.
2. This commentary endeavors only to set forth facts. Supporting documentation can be made available to any bishop who so requests it. The commentary does not call into question the good faith or integrity of anyone involved with the CHD. Nor does it assert that any recipient of CHD funds has engaged in any misrepresentation or intentional misuse of funds in any way contrary to the stated purpose of CHD. This commentary does not assert that any persons or organizations involved in these matters have engaged in conduct that is illegal in any way.
3. This commentary is entirely directed to issues of prudence and judgment rather than legality and good faith. The discussion herein is intended merely to raise legitimate questions about specific CHD funding.
4. The scope of commentary is limited to examination of one CHD grant recipient, the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF).
II. Reasons for selecting the Industrial Areas Foundation for this Commentary:
1. The IAF receives the largest percentage of CHD grants of any CHD grantee. During the funding period of 1992-1997, CHD has awarded significant grants to the IAF. The IAF has received approximately 15% of the national CHD annual budget between 1992-1997. This represents approximately $6,466,500 during this funding period.
2. The CHD is historically related to the IAF. The consistently high proportion of CHD grants to the IAF are in themselves a reason to study IAF activities. Its historical relationship to the CHD is another: "There was no formal link between the Campaign for Human Development and the Industrial Areas Foundation [at the CHD's inception]; but the philosophy behind the newly established CHD had been influenced by key Catholic leaders who in turn had been influenced by Alinsky and the IAF. In fact, funding from the CHD over the years has often gone to broad based community organizations established with the support of the IAF. During his visit to Britain in 1990, Rev. Al LoPinto, then director of the Campaign for Human Development, explained that the Campaign had no formal commitment to the IAF and broad based community organising; however, they found the approach to be effective and the IAF organisers to be very professional."
III. Founding of the Industrial Areas Foundation:
1. The IAF was founded by organizer Saul Alinsky. Saul Alinsky wrote two books outlining his organizational principles and strategies: Reveille for Radicals and Rules for Radicals.
· Rules for Radicals opens with a quote about Lucifer, written by Saul Alinsky: "Lest we forget at least an over-the shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology, and history (and who is to know where mythology leaves off and history begins-or which is which), the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom - Lucifer."
· In Rules for Radicals, Alinsky says: "Here I propose to present an arrangement of certain facts and general concepts of change, a step toward a science of revolution." He builds on the tactical principles of Machiavelli: "The Prince was written by Machiavelli for the Haves on how to hold power. Rules for Radicals is written for the Have-Nots on how to take it away."
· Rules for Radicals is concerned with the acquisition of power: "My aim here is to suggest how to organize for power: how to get it and how to use it." This is not to be done through assistance to the poor, nor even by organizing the poor to demand assistance: "…[E]ven if all the low-income parts of our population were organized…it would not be powerful enough to get significant, basic, needed changes."
Alinsky advises the organizer to target the middle class, rather than the poor: "Organization for action will now and in the decade ahead center upon America's white middle class. That is where the power is." Alinsky is interested in the middle class solely for its usefulness: "Our rebels have contemptuously rejected the values and way of life of the middle class. They have stigmatized it as materialistic, decadent, bourgeois, degenerate, imperialistic, war-mongering, brutalized and corrupt. They are right; but we must begin from where we are if we are to build power for change, and the power and the people are in the middle class majority."
To accomplish this, Alinsky writes that the organizer must "begin to dissect and examine that way of life [the middle class lifestyle]…He will know that 'square' is no longer to be dismissed as such - instead his own approach must be 'square' enough to get the action started."
· Rules for Radicals defends belief that the end justifies the means: "To say that corrupt means corrupt the ends," writes Alinsky, "is to believe in the immaculate conception of ends and principles….the practical revolutionary will understand…[that]in action, one does not always enjoy the luxury of a decision that is consistent both with one's individual conscience and the good of mankind."
Altogether, Alinsky provides eleven rules of the ethics of means and ends. They are morally relativistic:
- "The practical revolutionary will understand Goethe's 'conscience is the virtue of observers and not of agents of action;' in action, one does not always enjoy the luxury of a decision that is consistent both with one's individual conscience and the good of mankind."
- "The second rule of the ethics of means and ends is that the judgment of the ethics of means is dependent on the political position of those sitting in judgment." Alinsky elaborates his meaning on this point, saying that if you were a member of the underground Resistance, "…then you adopted the means of assassination, terror, property destruction, the bombing of tunnels and trains, kidnapping, and the willingness to sacrifice of innocent hostages to the end of defeating the Nazis. Those who opposed the Nazi conquerors regarded the Resistance as a secret army of selfless, patriotic idealists….To the occupation authorities, however, these people were lawless terrorists, murderers, saboteurs, assassins, who believed the ends justified the means, and were utterly unethical…" Rules for Radicals is therefore concerned with how to win. "…[I]n such a conflict, neither protagonist is concerned with any value except victory."
- "The third rule of the ethics of means and ends is that in war the end justifies almost any means.
- "There can be no such thing as a successful traitor, for if one succeeds, he becomes a founding father."
· Rules for Radicals teaches the organizer that he must give a moral appearance (as opposed to behaving morally): "All effective action requires the passport of morality."
The tenth rule of the ethics of means and ends states "that you do what you can with what you have and clothe it with moral garments. ....Moral rationalization is indispensable at all times of action whether to justify the selection or the use of ends or means."
· Rules for Radicals provides the organizer with a tactical style for community organization that assumes an adversarial relationship between groups of people in which one either dominates or is dominated.
- "The first rule of power tactics is: power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have."
- "Wherever possible go outside the experience of the enemy. Here you want to cause confusion, fear, and retreat."
- "Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules. You can kill them with this. They can no more obey their own rules than the "Christian church can live up to Christianity."
- "Ridicule is man's most potent weapon. It is almost impossible to counterattack ridicule. Also, it infuriates the opposition, who then react to your advantage."
- "The threat is generally more terrifying than the thing itself."
- "In a fight almost anything goes. It almost reaches the point where you stop to apologize if a chance blow lands above the belt."
- "Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it."
- "One of the criteria for picking the target is the target's vulnerability....the other important point in the choosing of a target is that it must be a personification, not something general and abstract.."
- "The enemy properly goaded and guided in his reaction will be your major strength."
· Saul Alinsky urged the active and deliberate "consciousness-raising" of people through the technique of "popular education." Popular education is a method by which an organizer leads people to a class-based interpretation of their grievances, and to accept the organizer's systemic solutions to address those grievances. "Through the People's Organization these groups [of citizens] discover that what they considered primarily their individual problem is also the problem of others, and furthermore the only hope for solving an issue of such titanic proportions is by pooling all their efforts and strengths. That appreciation and conclusion is an educational process."
· Rules for Radicals stresses organizational power-collecting: "The ego of the organizer is stronger and more monumental than the ego of the leader. The leader is driven by the desire for power, while the organizer is driven by the desire to create. The organizer is in a true sense reaching for the highest level for which a man can reach - to create, to be a "great creator, 'to play God.'"
2. The IAF has not repudiated Saul Alinsky's organizing tactics. The Alinskyian roots of the modern-day IAF are openly acknowledged by the organization. In 1996, when the IAF was organizing a local in Chicago, reporters wrote: "CMS [Chicago Metropolitan Sponsors] has hired IAF to do its organizing, a coup for Monsignor John Egan, a longtime Alinsky supporter, IAF board member, and activist on Chicago urban issues."
The Illinois Welfare News, announcing the October 19, 1997 founding convention of the fledgling Chicago Metropolitan Sponsors, wrote: "The staff of Saul Alinsky's Industrial Areas Foundation assisted in laying the groundwork for the new organization over the past two years in neighborhood meetings in church halls and high school gymnasiums throughout the area."
Alinsky's principles are still very much in force in the contemporary IAF: "All participants in the Industrial Areas Foundation national training programs are given a reprint of a 1933 article by John H. Randall, Jr. titled 'The Importance of Being Unprincipled'...The thesis is that because politics is nothing but the 'practical method of compromise,' only two kinds of people can afford the luxury of acting on principle...everyone else who wants to be effective in politics has to learn to be "unprincipled" enough to compromise in order to see their principles succeed."
This idea has been echoed by Ernesto Cortes, Southwest Regional Director of the IAF: "One of the worst things you can be is overly principled. Everybody has got to compromise, adapt, change. So one of the hard things we've always had to learn in the world as it is, is that there are no permanent enemies and no permanent allies."
This is not to imply that the contemporary IAF has changed nothing that Alinsky put into place. One significant change is that the present-day IAF has abandoned Alinsky's original vision of self-determination of people through local control and replaced it with an nationally networked organization. "After Alinsky died in 1972, the foundation's leadership passed to Edward T. Chambers, who believed it was necessary to create a formal national network of community organizations with stronger links between the groups."
Conclusion regarding the IAF's relationship to Alinsky's organizational philosophy: The principles of Saul Alinsky's organizing are inherently unethical and render any organization so grounded unfit for receipt of Catholic charitable money. As the IAF proceeds upon the principles of Saul Alinsky, the IAF should no longer receive CHD grants.
IV. Structural Organization of the Industrial Areas Foundation:
1. The IAF is an organization of over 50 local affiliates around the United States, with several affiliates in Great Britain and one in South Africa. Membership in IAF local affiliates is by institution, rather than by individual. Those institutions are most commonly religious congregations, but may include unions locals, schools, and health care centers.
2. Organizing by institution, rather than by individual, has a number of practical advantages. One advantage is that it gives the appearance of greater political strength or support than the local organization may actually possess. Newspaper accounts of local IAF action, for example, frequently report the local IAF constituency in the hundreds of thousands, when in point of fact only a small fraction of that number are actively involved in IAF-related activities.
Religious institutions, such as churches, are the backbone of the IAF. Churches have a pre-existing structure, access to money, and an immediate moral credibility. The IAF handbook states: "...one of the largest reservoirs of untapped power is the institution of the parish and congregation. Religious institutions form the center of the organization. They have the people, the values, and the money."
3. Every individual belonging to each institutional member of an IAF affiliate is counted as a member of the affiliate. While only institutions join the IAF affiliate, each member of the institution is considered a member of the IAF affiliate. The half-century IAF commemorative publication, Organizing for Change, states, for example: "There are now twenty-eight IAF organizations nationwide, located in New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Texas, Tennessee, Arizona, and California, representing more than 1.5 million families."
Another example comes from an IAF concept paper produced in 1994: "IAF now provides leadership training for over 30 organizations representing nearly 1,000 institutions and over one million families."
A third example comes from a newspaper article about the three California IAF affiliates in the Los Angeles area: "Mobilizing hundreds of highly disciplined demonstrators in their current campaign, the unique alliance claims a constituency of 200,000, a figure derived from the registration of 74 member chapters."
A fourth example is taken from an 1987 master's thesis about an IAF local in the Brownsville, Texas area. The author quotes a statement from the Concerned Citizens for Church and State, an organization: "…[W]e are opposed to the Church involvement in politics through social welfare, high pressure, special interest groups that do not represent the total memberships they claim."
4. Some parishioners find themselves members of an IAF affiliate against their wills. As institutional membership in an IAF affiliate is rarely a unanimous decision on the part of every parishioner, some parishes have experienced friction among parishioners who oppose being considered IAF members.
In 1982, nine hundred and eighteen parishioners of St. Matthew's Catholic Church in El Paso signed a petition asking to be withdrawn from affiliation with the IAF local, EPISO. They were supported by the full parish council. The pastor, however, persisted in maintaining parish membership in EPISO and disbanded the parish council.
In 1987, Maryann Eklund provided a profile of a Protestant and Catholic coalition in the Brownsville, Texas area that opposed membership the IAF affiliate: "Concerned Citizens are active church members who serve on parish councils, church committees and governing boards. Many are active not only at the local level, but also at the state and national levels….These individuals are the pillars of the community.... Concerned Citizens are quite vocal about not wanting religious or the church involved in politics or secular activities."
Eight years later, parishioners at St. Charles Borromeo Catholic Church in Albuquerque, which is an institutional member of IAF local Albuquerque Interfaith, expressed their opposition to IAF membership. "I believe there's something wrong with politics being an essential part of our congregation's affiliation," one parishioner stated.
Institutional-based organizing has clear advantages for the organizers. However, it is unjust to any individual within member institutions to be forced into affiliation with the IAF (or any other institutional-based organization) if it is against his will - or without his knowledge.
5. The IAF is not grassroots. IAF local affiliates are created as the result of careful planning. For example, IAF organizer Arnold Graf was reported as saying: "Generally, our hope is that by 1996 we would be in twice the strategically located states as we are now and that would give us the capacity to develop either the regional or national base to look at national politics. If we were in the right fifteen or sixteen states, we wouldn't have to be in all fifty states. That would give us enough clout to be able to affect policies, whether it was through political parties or corporations."
A second example is recorded in Eklund's 1987 thesis: "According to one journalistic report…the IAF took an 'experimental tact' [sic] in the Rio Grande Valley. Rather than insisting on a local sponsoring committee for the new organization, the Texas bishops who had been funding Cortes [then lead organizer of the San Antonio IAF local] agreed to build a statewide sponsor, Texas Interfaith, comprised of IAF affiliates in San Antonio, Fort Worth, Houston, and El Paso. This group became the sponsor and provided much of the initial money for Valley Interfaith."
A third example is given by an IAF leader: "We are not a grassroots organization. Grass roots are shallow roots. Grass roots are fragile roots. Our roots are deep roots"
Another example is recorded by writer Harry Boyte. "'We are not a grassroots organization,' thundered the Rev. Johnny Youngblood, a key leader in the organization [New York IAF local East Brooklyn Churches], at one rally. 'Grass roots are shallow roots. Grass roots are fragile roots. Our roots are deep roots.'"
6. The IAF uses the local issues of its membership as a training ground for the larger IAF agenda. Msgr. Jack Egan, a Chicago IAF leader, said in an interview: "I believe that people are first interested in issues as they relate to their own lives. Then they can move from that dimension to city-wide or statewide questions. It's a process, a widening of horizons…I believe that people can be helped to see the connections…. [U]nless the local church or community begins to educate the people of the community to the international dimension of issues, they are doing a disservice."
Ernesto Cortes, southwestern regional IAF director, writes something similar: "[The organizer's] issue gets dealt with last. If you want your issue to be dealt with first, you'll never build anything. So you lead with other people's issues, and you teach them how to act on their issues. Then you model what is to be reciprocal, you model what it is to have a long-term vision." This means that, ultimately, it is the IAF's organizational agenda - which is different from the "agenda" of its individual member organizations - that will be addressed.
Consider this description of the preparation of a "vision paper" that "150 community leaders" were drawing up San Antonio on education: "The only discordant note was quickly smothered by Cortes. A priest rose to speak in behalf of the 'school voucher issue' a means of providing public financing for struggling parochial schools - and one mother seconded his plea. [They publicly were rebuffed by Cortes.] ….Outside in the lobby later, Cortes bluntly warned the priest to back off, lest he provoke an argument that might break up the multi-denominational coalition. 'I told the monsignor it was not in his interest to push the voucher issue,' Cortes said, 'because we would have to fight him on it.' "
An Evaluation Study of Institution-Based Organizing prepared for the Discount Foundation states: "…[W]hile IAF does not present itself as a national network, its affiliates are clustered into regions, only some of which are acting at state-wide and regional levels. However, IAF did act nationally a few years ago when leaders and organizers from numerous regions met with key congressional leaders in Washington, DC. They influenced Congressional leaders to pressure the INS to speed up applications for citizenship, particularly in California."
Conclusion concerning the organizational structure of the IAF: Community organizing by religious institution, rather than by individual, is unjust and robs the dissenting individual of his dignity and right of conscience. As the IAF is an institutional-based organization, the IAF should no longer receive CHD grants.
V. The Relationship of the Industrial Areas Foundation to Call to Action:
1. History of Industrial Areas Foundation's relationship to Call to Action: In October 1976, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, sponsored a three-day Conference in Detroit that brought together delegates from across the United States to ratify eight position papers, prepared in advance of the Conference.
Monsignor Jack Egan of Chicago, "a longtime Alinsky supporter, IAF board member, and activist on Chicago urban issues," served as co-chair of the 1976 Call to Action plenary sessions.
The "working papers" contained specific challenges to the discipline and doctrine of the Church. "…[M]ore than 2,400 delegates at the conference - people deeply involved in the life of the institutional church and appointed by their bishops - approve such progressive resolutions, ones calling for, among other things, the ordination of women and married men, female altar servers, and the right and responsibility of married couples to form their own consciences on the issue of artificial birth control."
The working paper on Neighborhood recommended (and it was approved by the Call to Action delegates) that every parish support a "competent," ecumenical neighborhood action group, with diocesan resources used to train organizational "leaders" for their use. The IAF had also been involved the year before in a pre-Detroit "hearing" on the topic of Nationhood. The Nationhood working papers proposed that the Church establish priorities for public policy, define major election issues, educate the laity on the moral dimensions of public issues, and implement these goals ecumenically - in conjunction with other churches and civic groups.
The following twenty years have seen implementation of these Call to Action recommendations by means of church-supported IAF local affiliates.
2. Present relationship of the Industrial Areas Foundation to Call to Action:
A. The IAF continues to be associated with the Call to Action movement.
· Msgr. Jack Egan, long-time IAF promoter, has maintained close and supportive ties to Call to Action. "Long before Call to Action became an organization some bishops banned, it was actually an event organized by the bishops.... Locally [in the Chicago area] that discernment led to the formation of a national church reform movement with the same name [CTA]....Now, as the 20th anniversary of that historic meeting approaches, nearly 100 Catholics gathered on Sept. 15th at Rosary College in River Forest to hear the recollections of two of Chicago's most prominent Catholics who attended the Detroit meeting, Msgr. John Egan and Patty Crowley."
Msgr. Egan was quoted as reminiscing: "But why did more than 2,400 delegates at the [1976] conference.... people deeply involved with the life of the institutional church and appointed by their bishops.... approve such progressive resolutions, ones calling for, among other things, the ordination of women and married men, female altar servers, and the right and responsibility of married couples to form their own consciences on the issue of artificial birth control?....[Because] they had a chance to talk about that issue in terms of personal experience, and they found that people listened, were touched and in many cases changed their minds"
Msgr. Egan has also been credited for providing the motivating force behind the organization of Chicago's IAF local, United Power for Action and Justice. "...Jack Egan initiated this organizing process with religious and union leaders under the name Chicago Metropolitan Sponsors (the name was changed to UPAJ at the 10/19/97 inaugural assembly). Key support came from Bishop Brazier and Cardinal Bernardin. Contributions came to $2.6 million of which $1 million was provided by the Archdiocese of Chicago."
· The 1996 Call to Action calendar lists Ernesto Cortes, Southwest Regional Director of the IAF, as a guest speaker for a Wisconsin workshop.
B. A number of IAF member institutions are also Call to Action members:
· Our Lady Queen of Angels Communities, a member of the Texas IAF Valley Interfaith, is listed as a Call to Action participating community. The 1996 listing includes a description of Our Lady Queen of Angels Communities: "We…are actively involved in working to change our social reality through Valley Interfaith of the Industrial Areas Foundation."
· The Southwest Austin Christian Community of St. Ignatius Martyr Church is listed as a Call to Action participating community
. The Southwest Austin Christian Community, through St. Ignatius Martyr Church, is a member of Austin Interfaith.
· The Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, New Mexico is listed as a Call to Action participating community. It is a member of the IAF local, Albuquerque Interfaith.
· St. Odilia Catholic Church in Tucson, Arizona is an institutional member of IAF local affiliate PIMA County Interfaith. In March 1998, St. Odilia hosted a Future of Priestly Ministry Dialogue, a joint project of Call to Action and FutureChurch.
· Holy Family in Inverness, Illinois is a member of the IAF local affiliate, United Power for Action and Justice. The pastor of Holy Family, Reverend Patrick Brennan, is a popular Call to Action speaker.
C. The IAF has used its power to involve itself in the internal life of the Church:
· Peter Skerry reports that the IAF was involved in the election of a Texas bishop: "Fundamental to the success of COPS [San Antonio IAF local] has been the support of Archbishop Flores, himself the beneficiary of a COPS letterwriting campaign when the hierarchy was considering his appointment."
· The IAF in New Mexico has become involved in the Archdiocesan RENEW program. Organizer Tim McCluskey of the IAF local Albuquerque Interfaith held a Leadership Development Workshop at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church on June 15, 1996. There he was recorded, saying: "…[I]f you give me 50 names of other people in this congregation who you think I should talk to…I'll go talk to them in that period of time, and see what kind of story we're getting: how do we feed that into the RENEW."
It has also been reported that Albuquerque Interfaith organizers have offered to train the pastoral council members of other Albuquerque parishes. This is a potential mixing of the internal life of the parish with the community organizers' methodologies, ideologies, and secular agenda.
Conclusion concerning the relationship of the CHD to Call to Action: Many points in the Call to Action agenda contradict Catholic teaching. The long-standing, pervasive, and compatible relationship between the IAF and Call to Action creates an example of material cooperation between a CHD-funded organization and an organization which is not in accord with Catholic teaching. Continued funding the IAF, therefore, violates the 1998 Draft of Moral Guidelines for Funding by the Catholic Campaign for Human Development which states that "CCHD funds will not be used to support any project which is sponsored or promoted by an organization whose primary or substantial thrust is contrary to Catholic teaching, even if the project itself is in accord with Catholic teaching."
VI. Nation-wide Activities of the IAF: The IAF has a number of activities that it is pursuing on a nation-wide basis, but two are of immediate concern: those in the areas of education reform and welfare.
1. The IAF is promoting systemic change in education: The 1997 Wanderer Forum Foundation Commentary on the Campaign for Human Development established that the IAF is pursuing a national agenda of education restructuring through its local affiliates. Documentation in that commentary showed that the IAF is laboring to create public consensus for a national system of education. The commentary also demonstrated that the national educational system being implemented by the IAF goes well beyond provision of academic training, including health care and social services.
A. The term "systemic change" is used frequently in documents by or about the IAF in regard to the IAF's intentions for public education. A job description for the IAF local affiliate South Bronx Churches, for example, states that the organizer is "to build a city-wide network of parents to deal with systemic as well as local issues in NYC public schools…"
B. The systemic change sought by the IAF replaces parental control over a child's education and local school board determination over its schools with an "IAF model for education reform." An IAF concept paper states: "The entire community must be meaningfully involved in the public education system and held accountable for its results."
C. The systemic change sought by the IAF imposes its educational philosophy on parents and students: "Through these [IAF training] sessions, parents and community members gain an understanding of where they 'fit' within the system."
D. The systemic change sought by the IAF alters not only the traditional relationship of parent to child, but of state to student.
· This systemic change alters traditional parental prerogatives: "Schools must be prepared to teach parents how to play a supportive role. In some cases this might mean making provision for parenting education," states one IAF paper on education.
· This systemic change alters the traditional relationship of the state to the student. The above mentioned IAF paper on education describes the comprehensive nature of the IAF model for education reform: "Increasingly, schools will find it important to employ social workers who can coordinate necessary services and to intervene on behalf of a child in need. Healthcare and dental services could be offered on-site. Schools will need to help working families make provision for after-school childcare, and day care for pre-schoolers."
Conclusion concerning the national activities of the IAF in educational restructuring: Catholic teaching has consistently affirmed the parental right and obligation "to make absolutely sure that the education of their children remain under their own control in keeping with their Christian duty." Further, the IAF model of education reform creates excessive intervention by the state into the personal lives of its citizens. This, too, is contrary to Catholic teaching. CCHD grants to IAF projects in education, therefore, are funding projects that do not conform to Catholic teaching.
2. The Industrial Areas Foundation is promoting systemic change in welfare reform: The 1997 Wanderer Forum Foundation Commentary on the Campaign for Human Development established that the IAF promotes welfare reform that tends to focus on the preservation and increase of federal welfare funding. It promotes the passage of federal funds into the hands of "mediating institutions" such as the parish church. Distribution of these funds then becomes the responsibility of the IAF-organized "mediating institution," such as the parish church, to distribute this federal money. The commentary described one such federally-funded program, an IAF-developed job-training project that is designed to be run out of the churches and is under consideration as a model for national replication.
Conclusion concerning the national activities of the IAF in welfare reform: While there is no question that the Church has a mission to social action, which is realized in both Her enunciation of the principles of social justice and in Her active benevolences, "it is not the role of Pastors of the Church to intervene directly in the political structuring and organization of social life." By extension, it seems inappropriate to engage the parish in activity that intervenes directly in the organizing of social life. This misuse of the parish undermines its primary works, which are to live its liturgical life and to practice the charity of the Lord. CCHD grants to IAF projects in welfare reform, therefore, are funding projects that do not conform to Catholic teaching.
VII. The CHD-funded IAF Engages in Partisan Political Activities: The 1997 Wander Forum Foundation Commentary on the Campaign for Human Development established that the IAF interfered in the Orange County, California elections of 1996, supported a pro-abortion candidate, and was implicated in the voter registration of a significant number non-citizens. This political activity is found in many IAF locals:
1. Arnold Graf, an IAF organizer, stated: "In places like San Antonio and Baltimore, we are as close to being a political party as anybody is. We go around organizing people, getting them to agree on an agenda, registering them to vote, interviewing candidates on whether the support our agenda. We're not a political party, but that's what political parties do."
2. Attorney Daniel J. Rylander has written the Pima county supervisor about the Arizona IAF local, Pima County Interfaith Council (PCIC): "…[T]he PCIC Articles of Incorporation as amended clearly indicate that PCIC is a Political Action Committee. The PCIC 1998 calendar indicates that from April to November of 1998, the members are to 'take charge of the 1998 elections.' These activities clearly disqualify them from public funding or even participating in a publicly funded program…..the mission of PCIC is, quite simply, the collection and exercise of political power and influence."
3. Omaha Internal Revenue Service agent, Carl R. Patterson, who specializes in tax-exempt organizations, has questioned the contributions of time and money to the Nebraska IAF local Omaha Together One Community (OTOC). "Some Omaha churches could lose their exemption from federal income taxes because of their participation on Omaha Together One Community, an Internal Revenue Service agent says….Patterson said that some church donations to OTOC, which range from $300 to $5000 this year,are large enough to question. And he said that money is not the only issue. An IRS investigation would also consider the other ways churches support OTOC, he said. 'We'd look at the number of notices in the church bulletin, the fliers, the free use of church meeting rooms, office space, equipment and supplies,' Patterson said. 'We'd look at the value of the time and the services of the pastors, too.'"
4. An Evaluation Study of Institution-Based Organizing prepared for the Discount Foundation provides several examples of partisan IAF political activity:
· "One of IAF's priorities and directions in the Northeast and mid-Atlantic regions includes developing new constituencies such as voters, through launching a regional voter mobilization strategy. Other targeted constituencies include parents, workers, and immigrants. One strategy behind this expansion is to engage larger numbers of people from diverse constituencies beyond congregations, and build sufficient power to impact more issues at a systemic level."
· "EHPC [NY IAF local, East Harlem Partnership for Change] used a local state assembly election to unseat a political family dynasty…EHPC turned out nearly 4,000 voters in the election…. According to New York Daily News reporter Jim Dwyer, the Del Toro campaign credentialed EHPC as a power player in East Harlem."
· "BUILD [Baltimore IAF local] leveraged competition between Baltimore City Council President and the Mayor in a hotly contested mayoral race…."
· The evaluation asks what the strengths and future potential of institution-based organizing are and answers that question. "Utilizing electoral processes to leverage issue wins: The ability to utilize the electoral process to leverage issues is also a strength and bodes well for future impact, as indicated in the section on altering power relations."
Conclusion concerning IAF efforts to promote a partisan political agenda: The Evaluation Study of Institution-Based Organizing prepared for the Discount Foundation makes this point: "The organizational culture harnesses and leverages congregations' social capital for social change. By fusing faith and politics, and acting on progressive issues, they build an organizational culture that engenders long-term involvement of leaders in a religious context."[emphasis added] The use of churches by outside organizations, such as the IAF, to promote their own "progressive issues" is inimical to the dignity of the individual within the church who opposes that progressive agenda, and is inimical to his rights of conscience.
VIII. The Industrial Areas Foundation Introduces Theological Distortions to Catholic Parishes.
1. Alinskyian organizing, like liberation theology, rejects objective or fixed truth. Charles Curran writes: "There are many similarities between Alinsky's community organization approach and liberation theology….An important similarity concerns the basic understanding of sociology and epistemology. Liberation theology rightly reacts against a value-free sociology with its claim of arriving at totally objective truth and it's emphasis on quantitative analysis. A value-free approach by its very nature tends to identify with and reinforce the status quo. Knowledge is not as objective and independent of human involvement as a classical understanding once thought. The sociology of knowledge reminds us that all knowledge is situated and subject to prejudice. One must approach existing realities and thought patterns with ideological suspicion….There is no dispassionate objectivity. Rationalization is an important human reality with which any organizer must come to grips."
2. Alinskyian organizing, like liberation theology, is grounded on a Marxist class analysis. "The option for the poor has become very central in both the praxis and theory of liberation theology. This same option for the poor, especially understood in terms of the powerless, characterizes the Alinsky method of organization. Alinsky definitely sides with the powerless - the have-nots - in their struggle."
3. Alinskyian organizing, like liberation theology, uses the technique of "popular education" (conscientization) to change values. Curran writes: Liberation theology gives great importance to Paulo Friar's pedagogy of the oppressed. In the process called 'conscientization,' through an unalienating and liberating cultural action, the oppressed person perceives and modifies one's relationship to the world….Although Alinsky does not use the word 'conscientization,' there is no doubt that such a process is the cornerstone of his method….The people must learn that through their power they can bring about change. Raising consciousness is a part of Alinsky's overarching commitment to popular education."
4. The technique of "popular education" (conscientization" or values clarification) change the values of its target and replace them with the values of the organizer. A New Republic article states: "…[The] IAF seeks to teach groups like Mexican/Americans of San Antonio to build on and then transcend natural ties of family and ethnicity" Another writer says: "Cortes [head organizer for IAF, SW region] knew that Mexican parents willingly sacrificed for their children - and often for their church. By talking about family values, could you motivate and organize people to act politically in their own genuine self-interest?...the new organization had to reach into the heart...The idea of protecting and enhancing families might make that possible."
The implication of these passages is that the religious and family values of Catholics are used to spark a conversation between them and the IAF. The IAF then uses the relationship built from those values to introduce another set of values - those of the IAF. Harry Boyte writes: "In St. Timothy's Church [in San Antonio], for instance, new catechisms connected biblical and Mexican historical and cultural themes with the current issues COPS [the IAF local] was working on….From such experiences, the [the IAF] developed an ongoing process of community and parish renewal."
5. Alinskyian organizing encourages small base communities. Harold McDougall writes about the Baltimore IAF, BUILD (Baltimoreans United in Leadership Development). Participating pastors in the Baltimore IAF , he reports, are networked together in a "peer group, sharing experiences….They are trying to raise consensus-oriented decision-making models for BUILD as a whole on the foundation of their peer relationships. Some are beginning to see the need to share power within their own churches…"
McDougall also describes the small base communities which, at the time of his writing (1993 and earlier), BUILD was planning. "…[T]hey will also need something more: participation in small, intimate 'base communities,' peer groups of a dozen or two dozen people which can evaluate the day's struggles….This kind of personal, intimate contact with trusted others is a necessary building block for Harry Boyte's 'third way' of citizen engagement….Families are not large or diverse enough to perform such a function. Churches are too large. The contact must take place in a new, smaller form of association in some ways similar to the social units liberation theologians in Latin America have called comunidades eclesiales de base, which translates as 'ecclesiastical base communities,' or simply 'Christian base communities.'"
Integral to these small communities would be prayer and Bible study, in which the scripture "text" is "discussed in the 'context' of community." The BUILD small faith communities would engage in facilitated discussions "of what community is for, the people involved, and what obstacles to community they think exist, always using the text of the Bible as a central resonating point for the discussion."
IAF groups in Texas also use the model of the South American base communities. In the Diocese of Brownsville there are 500 small faith communities operating both in the IAF network and in the Call to Action network.
Conclusion concerning theological distortions introduced by the IAF into the Catholic Church: The relationship between the IAF and certain factions within the United States Catholic Church goes beyond CCHD funding of individual projects. Withdrawal of CCHD funding of the IAF would help rectify the damage done by the theological distortions introduced by the IAF into various Catholic communities by clearly marking the IAF's theology as different from Catholic theology, and therefore inappropriate for such funding.
IX. The Catholic Bishops of the United States Ought to Reconsider Their Funding of the Industrial Areas Foundation through Catholic Campaign for Human Development Grants.
This commentary does not oppose CCHD funding of genuine, grassroots community organizations, run and supported by individual members of a parish or diocese and grounded on the principles of Catholic Action. There is potential value and virtue in the collective voice. However, when the CCHD funds Alinsky-style, church-based community organizations as in the best interest of the poor and supports organizations which advance agendas inimical to Catholic social justice principles, it divests the poor of their right to an authentic voice. This process tends to treat the poor as exploited units of human capital, rather than as human beings created in the dignity of God's image.
Nor is there any basis for the CCHD to imply by its actions that there are no alternative organizations that it can fund to promote valuable institutional change, uninfluenced by a politicized agenda. There is no necessity for CCHD funds to go to organizations which contribute to or participate in any way - either directly or indirectly - in the political support of abortion or the complicitous support of contraception. There is no necessity for the CCHD to fund the Industrial Areas Foundation. There are other organizations of the poor, that are self-determined and supportive of life, which would welcome and benefit from CCHD assistance. Those alternative, grassroots community organizations do not merely serve their constituency but rather they are their constituency. They do not use community organizing to further an additional agenda.
It would be reasonable for the bishops to consider the immediate cessation of all CHD funding to the Industrial Areas Foundation:
1. The IAF proceeds upon the principles of Saul Alinsky, which are inherently unethical and render any organization so grounded unfit for receipt of Catholic charitable money. As the IAF proceeds upon the principles of Saul Alinsky, the IAF should no longer receive CCHD grants.
2. The IAF is an institutional-based organization. Community organizing by religious institution, rather than by individual, is unjust and robs the dissenting individual of his dignity and right of conscience. As the IAF is an institutional-based organization, the IAF should no longer receive CCHD grants.
3. The IAF has a long-standing relationship with the dissident organization Call to Action. Many points in the Call to Action agenda contradict Catholic teaching. This pervasive and compatible relationship between the IAF and Call to Action creates an example of material cooperation between a CCHD-funded organization and an organization which is not in accord with Catholic teaching. Continued funding of the IAF, therefore, violates the 1998 Draft of Moral Guidelines for Funding by the Catholic Campaign for Human Development which states that "CCHD funds will not be used to support any project which is sponsored or promoted by an organization whose primary or substantial thrust is contrary to Catholic teaching, even if the project itself is in accord with Catholic teaching." Therefore, the IAF should no longer receive CCHD grants.
4. IAF activities in the area of education reform contradict Catholic teaching. IAF activities in the area of welfare reform also contradict Catholic teaching and subvert the work of its member parishes. Again, continued funding of the IAF violates the 1998 Draft of Moral Guidelines for Funding by the Catholic Campaign for Human Development which states that "CCHD funds will be used to support only projects that conform to Catholic teaching." Therefore, the IAF should no longer receive CCHD grants.
5. The IAF is engaged in partisan political activities. The use of churches by outside organizations, such as the IAF, to promote their own "progressive issues" is inimical to the dignity of the individual within the church who opposes that progressive agenda, and is inimical to his rights of conscience. Therefore, continued CCHD funding to the IAF is inappropriate.
6. The IAF has introduced theological distortions into a number of Catholic communities. Cessation of CCHD grants to the IAF would clarify that the IAF's theology is different from Catholic theology, is inappropriate for promulgation in Catholic communities, and disqualifies the IAF for such funding.
X. Conclusion: This commentary is offered for the consideration of the bishops in a spirit of objective inquiry. As noted in Section I above, it is not intended to disparage any person or group or to question the good faith or legality of any positions taken by any persons or groups involved in these matters. Rather, we respectfully submit this Commentary to assist the bishops in their deliberations about the future funding and activities of the CCHD.
A bound copy of this text, with footnotes, can be obtained from the Wanderer Forum Foundation, Forum Focus, P.O. Box 542, Hudson, WI 54016-0542 or telephone 651-276-1429. Please send $5.00 to cover postage. A year subscribtion to the Forum Focus Quarterly is $10.00 and can be obtained from the same address.
A Commentary on Catholic Campaign for Human Development Funding of the Industrial Areas Foundation
Prepared for the Catholic Bishops of the United States by the Wanderer Forum Foundation
I. Introduction:
This commentary is submitted to the Catholic Bishops of the United States as a response to recently proposed changes in the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD) guidelines. The Wanderer Forum Foundation is encouraged by these reform efforts and thanks the United States Catholic Bishops for their work to more accurately shape the guidelines into greater conformity with Church teaching.
However, the Wanderer Forum Foundation is aware that guidelines alone, without adequate information about potential CHD grantees, will be insufficient to make informed decisions about the capacity of given organizations to respect Catholic moral and social justice principles. This commentary is offered in an attempt to provide some of that information.
It is essential to note the limited purpose and scope of this commentary:
1. This commentary is intended for the use of the Catholic Bishops of the United States in their consideration of the issues discussed. In view of the objections raised by the CCHD over the Wanderer Forum Foundation's having made the 1997 CHD Commentary available to the public, the Wanderer Forum Foundation will not make the 1998 IAF Commentary public until January 1999. We hope this will allow adequate time for in-depth perusal of the Commentary by the bishops and will permit a serious exchange between the CCHD committee and the Foundation.
2. This commentary endeavors only to set forth facts. Supporting documentation can be made available to any bishop who so requests it. The commentary does not call into question the good faith or integrity of anyone involved with the CHD. Nor does it assert that any recipient of CHD funds has engaged in any misrepresentation or intentional misuse of funds in any way contrary to the stated purpose of CHD. This commentary does not assert that any persons or organizations involved in these matters have engaged in conduct that is illegal in any way.
3. This commentary is entirely directed to issues of prudence and judgment rather than legality and good faith. The discussion herein is intended merely to raise legitimate questions about specific CHD funding.
4. The scope of commentary is limited to examination of one CHD grant recipient, the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF).
II. Reasons for selecting the Industrial Areas Foundation for this Commentary:
1. The IAF receives the largest percentage of CHD grants of any CHD grantee. During the funding period of 1992-1997, CHD has awarded significant grants to the IAF. The IAF has received approximately 15% of the national CHD annual budget between 1992-1997. This represents approximately $6,466,500 during this funding period.
2. The CHD is historically related to the IAF. The consistently high proportion of CHD grants to the IAF are in themselves a reason to study IAF activities. Its historical relationship to the CHD is another: "There was no formal link between the Campaign for Human Development and the Industrial Areas Foundation [at the CHD's inception]; but the philosophy behind the newly established CHD had been influenced by key Catholic leaders who in turn had been influenced by Alinsky and the IAF. In fact, funding from the CHD over the years has often gone to broad based community organizations established with the support of the IAF. During his visit to Britain in 1990, Rev. Al LoPinto, then director of the Campaign for Human Development, explained that the Campaign had no formal commitment to the IAF and broad based community organising; however, they found the approach to be effective and the IAF organisers to be very professional."
III. Founding of the Industrial Areas Foundation:
1. The IAF was founded by organizer Saul Alinsky. Saul Alinsky wrote two books outlining his organizational principles and strategies: Reveille for Radicals and Rules for Radicals.
· Rules for Radicals opens with a quote about Lucifer, written by Saul Alinsky: "Lest we forget at least an over-the shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology, and history (and who is to know where mythology leaves off and history begins-or which is which), the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom - Lucifer."
· In Rules for Radicals, Alinsky says: "Here I propose to present an arrangement of certain facts and general concepts of change, a step toward a science of revolution." He builds on the tactical principles of Machiavelli: "The Prince was written by Machiavelli for the Haves on how to hold power. Rules for Radicals is written for the Have-Nots on how to take it away."
· Rules for Radicals is concerned with the acquisition of power: "My aim here is to suggest how to organize for power: how to get it and how to use it." This is not to be done through assistance to the poor, nor even by organizing the poor to demand assistance: "…[E]ven if all the low-income parts of our population were organized…it would not be powerful enough to get significant, basic, needed changes."
Alinsky advises the organizer to target the middle class, rather than the poor: "Organization for action will now and in the decade ahead center upon America's white middle class. That is where the power is." Alinsky is interested in the middle class solely for its usefulness: "Our rebels have contemptuously rejected the values and way of life of the middle class. They have stigmatized it as materialistic, decadent, bourgeois, degenerate, imperialistic, war-mongering, brutalized and corrupt. They are right; but we must begin from where we are if we are to build power for change, and the power and the people are in the middle class majority."
To accomplish this, Alinsky writes that the organizer must "begin to dissect and examine that way of life [the middle class lifestyle]…He will know that 'square' is no longer to be dismissed as such - instead his own approach must be 'square' enough to get the action started."
· Rules for Radicals defends belief that the end justifies the means: "To say that corrupt means corrupt the ends," writes Alinsky, "is to believe in the immaculate conception of ends and principles….the practical revolutionary will understand…[that]in action, one does not always enjoy the luxury of a decision that is consistent both with one's individual conscience and the good of mankind."
Altogether, Alinsky provides eleven rules of the ethics of means and ends. They are morally relativistic:
- "The practical revolutionary will understand Goethe's 'conscience is the virtue of observers and not of agents of action;' in action, one does not always enjoy the luxury of a decision that is consistent both with one's individual conscience and the good of mankind."
- "The second rule of the ethics of means and ends is that the judgment of the ethics of means is dependent on the political position of those sitting in judgment." Alinsky elaborates his meaning on this point, saying that if you were a member of the underground Resistance, "…then you adopted the means of assassination, terror, property destruction, the bombing of tunnels and trains, kidnapping, and the willingness to sacrifice of innocent hostages to the end of defeating the Nazis. Those who opposed the Nazi conquerors regarded the Resistance as a secret army of selfless, patriotic idealists….To the occupation authorities, however, these people were lawless terrorists, murderers, saboteurs, assassins, who believed the ends justified the means, and were utterly unethical…" Rules for Radicals is therefore concerned with how to win. "…[I]n such a conflict, neither protagonist is concerned with any value except victory."
- "The third rule of the ethics of means and ends is that in war the end justifies almost any means.
- "There can be no such thing as a successful traitor, for if one succeeds, he becomes a founding father."
· Rules for Radicals teaches the organizer that he must give a moral appearance (as opposed to behaving morally): "All effective action requires the passport of morality."
The tenth rule of the ethics of means and ends states "that you do what you can with what you have and clothe it with moral garments. ....Moral rationalization is indispensable at all times of action whether to justify the selection or the use of ends or means."
· Rules for Radicals provides the organizer with a tactical style for community organization that assumes an adversarial relationship between groups of people in which one either dominates or is dominated.
- "The first rule of power tactics is: power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have."
- "Wherever possible go outside the experience of the enemy. Here you want to cause confusion, fear, and retreat."
- "Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules. You can kill them with this. They can no more obey their own rules than the "Christian church can live up to Christianity."
- "Ridicule is man's most potent weapon. It is almost impossible to counterattack ridicule. Also, it infuriates the opposition, who then react to your advantage."
- "The threat is generally more terrifying than the thing itself."
- "In a fight almost anything goes. It almost reaches the point where you stop to apologize if a chance blow lands above the belt."
- "Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it."
- "One of the criteria for picking the target is the target's vulnerability....the other important point in the choosing of a target is that it must be a personification, not something general and abstract.."
- "The enemy properly goaded and guided in his reaction will be your major strength."
· Saul Alinsky urged the active and deliberate "consciousness-raising" of people through the technique of "popular education." Popular education is a method by which an organizer leads people to a class-based interpretation of their grievances, and to accept the organizer's systemic solutions to address those grievances. "Through the People's Organization these groups [of citizens] discover that what they considered primarily their individual problem is also the problem of others, and furthermore the only hope for solving an issue of such titanic proportions is by pooling all their efforts and strengths. That appreciation and conclusion is an educational process."
· Rules for Radicals stresses organizational power-collecting: "The ego of the organizer is stronger and more monumental than the ego of the leader. The leader is driven by the desire for power, while the organizer is driven by the desire to create. The organizer is in a true sense reaching for the highest level for which a man can reach - to create, to be a "great creator, 'to play God.'"
2. The IAF has not repudiated Saul Alinsky's organizing tactics. The Alinskyian roots of the modern-day IAF are openly acknowledged by the organization. In 1996, when the IAF was organizing a local in Chicago, reporters wrote: "CMS [Chicago Metropolitan Sponsors] has hired IAF to do its organizing, a coup for Monsignor John Egan, a longtime Alinsky supporter, IAF board member, and activist on Chicago urban issues."
The Illinois Welfare News, announcing the October 19, 1997 founding convention of the fledgling Chicago Metropolitan Sponsors, wrote: "The staff of Saul Alinsky's Industrial Areas Foundation assisted in laying the groundwork for the new organization over the past two years in neighborhood meetings in church halls and high school gymnasiums throughout the area."
Alinsky's principles are still very much in force in the contemporary IAF: "All participants in the Industrial Areas Foundation national training programs are given a reprint of a 1933 article by John H. Randall, Jr. titled 'The Importance of Being Unprincipled'...The thesis is that because politics is nothing but the 'practical method of compromise,' only two kinds of people can afford the luxury of acting on principle...everyone else who wants to be effective in politics has to learn to be "unprincipled" enough to compromise in order to see their principles succeed."
This idea has been echoed by Ernesto Cortes, Southwest Regional Director of the IAF: "One of the worst things you can be is overly principled. Everybody has got to compromise, adapt, change. So one of the hard things we've always had to learn in the world as it is, is that there are no permanent enemies and no permanent allies."
This is not to imply that the contemporary IAF has changed nothing that Alinsky put into place. One significant change is that the present-day IAF has abandoned Alinsky's original vision of self-determination of people through local control and replaced it with an nationally networked organization. "After Alinsky died in 1972, the foundation's leadership passed to Edward T. Chambers, who believed it was necessary to create a formal national network of community organizations with stronger links between the groups."
Conclusion regarding the IAF's relationship to Alinsky's organizational philosophy: The principles of Saul Alinsky's organizing are inherently unethical and render any organization so grounded unfit for receipt of Catholic charitable money. As the IAF proceeds upon the principles of Saul Alinsky, the IAF should no longer receive CHD grants.
IV. Structural Organization of the Industrial Areas Foundation:
1. The IAF is an organization of over 50 local affiliates around the United States, with several affiliates in Great Britain and one in South Africa. Membership in IAF local affiliates is by institution, rather than by individual. Those institutions are most commonly religious congregations, but may include unions locals, schools, and health care centers.
2. Organizing by institution, rather than by individual, has a number of practical advantages. One advantage is that it gives the appearance of greater political strength or support than the local organization may actually possess. Newspaper accounts of local IAF action, for example, frequently report the local IAF constituency in the hundreds of thousands, when in point of fact only a small fraction of that number are actively involved in IAF-related activities.
Religious institutions, such as churches, are the backbone of the IAF. Churches have a pre-existing structure, access to money, and an immediate moral credibility. The IAF handbook states: "...one of the largest reservoirs of untapped power is the institution of the parish and congregation. Religious institutions form the center of the organization. They have the people, the values, and the money."
3. Every individual belonging to each institutional member of an IAF affiliate is counted as a member of the affiliate. While only institutions join the IAF affiliate, each member of the institution is considered a member of the IAF affiliate. The half-century IAF commemorative publication, Organizing for Change, states, for example: "There are now twenty-eight IAF organizations nationwide, located in New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Texas, Tennessee, Arizona, and California, representing more than 1.5 million families."
Another example comes from an IAF concept paper produced in 1994: "IAF now provides leadership training for over 30 organizations representing nearly 1,000 institutions and over one million families."
A third example comes from a newspaper article about the three California IAF affiliates in the Los Angeles area: "Mobilizing hundreds of highly disciplined demonstrators in their current campaign, the unique alliance claims a constituency of 200,000, a figure derived from the registration of 74 member chapters."
A fourth example is taken from an 1987 master's thesis about an IAF local in the Brownsville, Texas area. The author quotes a statement from the Concerned Citizens for Church and State, an organization: "…[W]e are opposed to the Church involvement in politics through social welfare, high pressure, special interest groups that do not represent the total memberships they claim."
4. Some parishioners find themselves members of an IAF affiliate against their wills. As institutional membership in an IAF affiliate is rarely a unanimous decision on the part of every parishioner, some parishes have experienced friction among parishioners who oppose being considered IAF members.
In 1982, nine hundred and eighteen parishioners of St. Matthew's Catholic Church in El Paso signed a petition asking to be withdrawn from affiliation with the IAF local, EPISO. They were supported by the full parish council. The pastor, however, persisted in maintaining parish membership in EPISO and disbanded the parish council.
In 1987, Maryann Eklund provided a profile of a Protestant and Catholic coalition in the Brownsville, Texas area that opposed membership the IAF affiliate: "Concerned Citizens are active church members who serve on parish councils, church committees and governing boards. Many are active not only at the local level, but also at the state and national levels….These individuals are the pillars of the community.... Concerned Citizens are quite vocal about not wanting religious or the church involved in politics or secular activities."
Eight years later, parishioners at St. Charles Borromeo Catholic Church in Albuquerque, which is an institutional member of IAF local Albuquerque Interfaith, expressed their opposition to IAF membership. "I believe there's something wrong with politics being an essential part of our congregation's affiliation," one parishioner stated.
Institutional-based organizing has clear advantages for the organizers. However, it is unjust to any individual within member institutions to be forced into affiliation with the IAF (or any other institutional-based organization) if it is against his will - or without his knowledge.
5. The IAF is not grassroots. IAF local affiliates are created as the result of careful planning. For example, IAF organizer Arnold Graf was reported as saying: "Generally, our hope is that by 1996 we would be in twice the strategically located states as we are now and that would give us the capacity to develop either the regional or national base to look at national politics. If we were in the right fifteen or sixteen states, we wouldn't have to be in all fifty states. That would give us enough clout to be able to affect policies, whether it was through political parties or corporations."
A second example is recorded in Eklund's 1987 thesis: "According to one journalistic report…the IAF took an 'experimental tact' [sic] in the Rio Grande Valley. Rather than insisting on a local sponsoring committee for the new organization, the Texas bishops who had been funding Cortes [then lead organizer of the San Antonio IAF local] agreed to build a statewide sponsor, Texas Interfaith, comprised of IAF affiliates in San Antonio, Fort Worth, Houston, and El Paso. This group became the sponsor and provided much of the initial money for Valley Interfaith."
A third example is given by an IAF leader: "We are not a grassroots organization. Grass roots are shallow roots. Grass roots are fragile roots. Our roots are deep roots"
Another example is recorded by writer Harry Boyte. "'We are not a grassroots organization,' thundered the Rev. Johnny Youngblood, a key leader in the organization [New York IAF local East Brooklyn Churches], at one rally. 'Grass roots are shallow roots. Grass roots are fragile roots. Our roots are deep roots.'"
6. The IAF uses the local issues of its membership as a training ground for the larger IAF agenda. Msgr. Jack Egan, a Chicago IAF leader, said in an interview: "I believe that people are first interested in issues as they relate to their own lives. Then they can move from that dimension to city-wide or statewide questions. It's a process, a widening of horizons…I believe that people can be helped to see the connections…. [U]nless the local church or community begins to educate the people of the community to the international dimension of issues, they are doing a disservice."
Ernesto Cortes, southwestern regional IAF director, writes something similar: "[The organizer's] issue gets dealt with last. If you want your issue to be dealt with first, you'll never build anything. So you lead with other people's issues, and you teach them how to act on their issues. Then you model what is to be reciprocal, you model what it is to have a long-term vision." This means that, ultimately, it is the IAF's organizational agenda - which is different from the "agenda" of its individual member organizations - that will be addressed.
Consider this description of the preparation of a "vision paper" that "150 community leaders" were drawing up San Antonio on education: "The only discordant note was quickly smothered by Cortes. A priest rose to speak in behalf of the 'school voucher issue' a means of providing public financing for struggling parochial schools - and one mother seconded his plea. [They publicly were rebuffed by Cortes.] ….Outside in the lobby later, Cortes bluntly warned the priest to back off, lest he provoke an argument that might break up the multi-denominational coalition. 'I told the monsignor it was not in his interest to push the voucher issue,' Cortes said, 'because we would have to fight him on it.' "
An Evaluation Study of Institution-Based Organizing prepared for the Discount Foundation states: "…[W]hile IAF does not present itself as a national network, its affiliates are clustered into regions, only some of which are acting at state-wide and regional levels. However, IAF did act nationally a few years ago when leaders and organizers from numerous regions met with key congressional leaders in Washington, DC. They influenced Congressional leaders to pressure the INS to speed up applications for citizenship, particularly in California."
Conclusion concerning the organizational structure of the IAF: Community organizing by religious institution, rather than by individual, is unjust and robs the dissenting individual of his dignity and right of conscience. As the IAF is an institutional-based organization, the IAF should no longer receive CHD grants.
V. The Relationship of the Industrial Areas Foundation to Call to Action:
1. History of Industrial Areas Foundation's relationship to Call to Action: In October 1976, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, sponsored a three-day Conference in Detroit that brought together delegates from across the United States to ratify eight position papers, prepared in advance of the Conference.
Monsignor Jack Egan of Chicago, "a longtime Alinsky supporter, IAF board member, and activist on Chicago urban issues," served as co-chair of the 1976 Call to Action plenary sessions.
The "working papers" contained specific challenges to the discipline and doctrine of the Church. "…[M]ore than 2,400 delegates at the conference - people deeply involved in the life of the institutional church and appointed by their bishops - approve such progressive resolutions, ones calling for, among other things, the ordination of women and married men, female altar servers, and the right and responsibility of married couples to form their own consciences on the issue of artificial birth control."
The working paper on Neighborhood recommended (and it was approved by the Call to Action delegates) that every parish support a "competent," ecumenical neighborhood action group, with diocesan resources used to train organizational "leaders" for their use. The IAF had also been involved the year before in a pre-Detroit "hearing" on the topic of Nationhood. The Nationhood working papers proposed that the Church establish priorities for public policy, define major election issues, educate the laity on the moral dimensions of public issues, and implement these goals ecumenically - in conjunction with other churches and civic groups.
The following twenty years have seen implementation of these Call to Action recommendations by means of church-supported IAF local affiliates.
2. Present relationship of the Industrial Areas Foundation to Call to Action:
A. The IAF continues to be associated with the Call to Action movement.
· Msgr. Jack Egan, long-time IAF promoter, has maintained close and supportive ties to Call to Action. "Long before Call to Action became an organization some bishops banned, it was actually an event organized by the bishops.... Locally [in the Chicago area] that discernment led to the formation of a national church reform movement with the same name [CTA]....Now, as the 20th anniversary of that historic meeting approaches, nearly 100 Catholics gathered on Sept. 15th at Rosary College in River Forest to hear the recollections of two of Chicago's most prominent Catholics who attended the Detroit meeting, Msgr. John Egan and Patty Crowley."
Msgr. Egan was quoted as reminiscing: "But why did more than 2,400 delegates at the [1976] conference.... people deeply involved with the life of the institutional church and appointed by their bishops.... approve such progressive resolutions, ones calling for, among other things, the ordination of women and married men, female altar servers, and the right and responsibility of married couples to form their own consciences on the issue of artificial birth control?....[Because] they had a chance to talk about that issue in terms of personal experience, and they found that people listened, were touched and in many cases changed their minds"
Msgr. Egan has also been credited for providing the motivating force behind the organization of Chicago's IAF local, United Power for Action and Justice. "...Jack Egan initiated this organizing process with religious and union leaders under the name Chicago Metropolitan Sponsors (the name was changed to UPAJ at the 10/19/97 inaugural assembly). Key support came from Bishop Brazier and Cardinal Bernardin. Contributions came to $2.6 million of which $1 million was provided by the Archdiocese of Chicago."
· The 1996 Call to Action calendar lists Ernesto Cortes, Southwest Regional Director of the IAF, as a guest speaker for a Wisconsin workshop.
B. A number of IAF member institutions are also Call to Action members:
· Our Lady Queen of Angels Communities, a member of the Texas IAF Valley Interfaith, is listed as a Call to Action participating community. The 1996 listing includes a description of Our Lady Queen of Angels Communities: "We…are actively involved in working to change our social reality through Valley Interfaith of the Industrial Areas Foundation."
· The Southwest Austin Christian Community of St. Ignatius Martyr Church is listed as a Call to Action participating community
. The Southwest Austin Christian Community, through St. Ignatius Martyr Church, is a member of Austin Interfaith.
· The Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, New Mexico is listed as a Call to Action participating community. It is a member of the IAF local, Albuquerque Interfaith.
· St. Odilia Catholic Church in Tucson, Arizona is an institutional member of IAF local affiliate PIMA County Interfaith. In March 1998, St. Odilia hosted a Future of Priestly Ministry Dialogue, a joint project of Call to Action and FutureChurch.
· Holy Family in Inverness, Illinois is a member of the IAF local affiliate, United Power for Action and Justice. The pastor of Holy Family, Reverend Patrick Brennan, is a popular Call to Action speaker.
C. The IAF has used its power to involve itself in the internal life of the Church:
· Peter Skerry reports that the IAF was involved in the election of a Texas bishop: "Fundamental to the success of COPS [San Antonio IAF local] has been the support of Archbishop Flores, himself the beneficiary of a COPS letterwriting campaign when the hierarchy was considering his appointment."
· The IAF in New Mexico has become involved in the Archdiocesan RENEW program. Organizer Tim McCluskey of the IAF local Albuquerque Interfaith held a Leadership Development Workshop at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church on June 15, 1996. There he was recorded, saying: "…[I]f you give me 50 names of other people in this congregation who you think I should talk to…I'll go talk to them in that period of time, and see what kind of story we're getting: how do we feed that into the RENEW."
It has also been reported that Albuquerque Interfaith organizers have offered to train the pastoral council members of other Albuquerque parishes. This is a potential mixing of the internal life of the parish with the community organizers' methodologies, ideologies, and secular agenda.
Conclusion concerning the relationship of the CHD to Call to Action: Many points in the Call to Action agenda contradict Catholic teaching. The long-standing, pervasive, and compatible relationship between the IAF and Call to Action creates an example of material cooperation between a CHD-funded organization and an organization which is not in accord with Catholic teaching. Continued funding the IAF, therefore, violates the 1998 Draft of Moral Guidelines for Funding by the Catholic Campaign for Human Development which states that "CCHD funds will not be used to support any project which is sponsored or promoted by an organization whose primary or substantial thrust is contrary to Catholic teaching, even if the project itself is in accord with Catholic teaching."
VI. Nation-wide Activities of the IAF: The IAF has a number of activities that it is pursuing on a nation-wide basis, but two are of immediate concern: those in the areas of education reform and welfare.
1. The IAF is promoting systemic change in education: The 1997 Wanderer Forum Foundation Commentary on the Campaign for Human Development established that the IAF is pursuing a national agenda of education restructuring through its local affiliates. Documentation in that commentary showed that the IAF is laboring to create public consensus for a national system of education. The commentary also demonstrated that the national educational system being implemented by the IAF goes well beyond provision of academic training, including health care and social services.
A. The term "systemic change" is used frequently in documents by or about the IAF in regard to the IAF's intentions for public education. A job description for the IAF local affiliate South Bronx Churches, for example, states that the organizer is "to build a city-wide network of parents to deal with systemic as well as local issues in NYC public schools…"
B. The systemic change sought by the IAF replaces parental control over a child's education and local school board determination over its schools with an "IAF model for education reform." An IAF concept paper states: "The entire community must be meaningfully involved in the public education system and held accountable for its results."
C. The systemic change sought by the IAF imposes its educational philosophy on parents and students: "Through these [IAF training] sessions, parents and community members gain an understanding of where they 'fit' within the system."
D. The systemic change sought by the IAF alters not only the traditional relationship of parent to child, but of state to student.
· This systemic change alters traditional parental prerogatives: "Schools must be prepared to teach parents how to play a supportive role. In some cases this might mean making provision for parenting education," states one IAF paper on education.
· This systemic change alters the traditional relationship of the state to the student. The above mentioned IAF paper on education describes the comprehensive nature of the IAF model for education reform: "Increasingly, schools will find it important to employ social workers who can coordinate necessary services and to intervene on behalf of a child in need. Healthcare and dental services could be offered on-site. Schools will need to help working families make provision for after-school childcare, and day care for pre-schoolers."
Conclusion concerning the national activities of the IAF in educational restructuring: Catholic teaching has consistently affirmed the parental right and obligation "to make absolutely sure that the education of their children remain under their own control in keeping with their Christian duty." Further, the IAF model of education reform creates excessive intervention by the state into the personal lives of its citizens. This, too, is contrary to Catholic teaching. CCHD grants to IAF projects in education, therefore, are funding projects that do not conform to Catholic teaching.
2. The Industrial Areas Foundation is promoting systemic change in welfare reform: The 1997 Wanderer Forum Foundation Commentary on the Campaign for Human Development established that the IAF promotes welfare reform that tends to focus on the preservation and increase of federal welfare funding. It promotes the passage of federal funds into the hands of "mediating institutions" such as the parish church. Distribution of these funds then becomes the responsibility of the IAF-organized "mediating institution," such as the parish church, to distribute this federal money. The commentary described one such federally-funded program, an IAF-developed job-training project that is designed to be run out of the churches and is under consideration as a model for national replication.
Conclusion concerning the national activities of the IAF in welfare reform: While there is no question that the Church has a mission to social action, which is realized in both Her enunciation of the principles of social justice and in Her active benevolences, "it is not the role of Pastors of the Church to intervene directly in the political structuring and organization of social life." By extension, it seems inappropriate to engage the parish in activity that intervenes directly in the organizing of social life. This misuse of the parish undermines its primary works, which are to live its liturgical life and to practice the charity of the Lord. CCHD grants to IAF projects in welfare reform, therefore, are funding projects that do not conform to Catholic teaching.
VII. The CHD-funded IAF Engages in Partisan Political Activities: The 1997 Wander Forum Foundation Commentary on the Campaign for Human Development established that the IAF interfered in the Orange County, California elections of 1996, supported a pro-abortion candidate, and was implicated in the voter registration of a significant number non-citizens. This political activity is found in many IAF locals:
1. Arnold Graf, an IAF organizer, stated: "In places like San Antonio and Baltimore, we are as close to being a political party as anybody is. We go around organizing people, getting them to agree on an agenda, registering them to vote, interviewing candidates on whether the support our agenda. We're not a political party, but that's what political parties do."
2. Attorney Daniel J. Rylander has written the Pima county supervisor about the Arizona IAF local, Pima County Interfaith Council (PCIC): "…[T]he PCIC Articles of Incorporation as amended clearly indicate that PCIC is a Political Action Committee. The PCIC 1998 calendar indicates that from April to November of 1998, the members are to 'take charge of the 1998 elections.' These activities clearly disqualify them from public funding or even participating in a publicly funded program…..the mission of PCIC is, quite simply, the collection and exercise of political power and influence."
3. Omaha Internal Revenue Service agent, Carl R. Patterson, who specializes in tax-exempt organizations, has questioned the contributions of time and money to the Nebraska IAF local Omaha Together One Community (OTOC). "Some Omaha churches could lose their exemption from federal income taxes because of their participation on Omaha Together One Community, an Internal Revenue Service agent says….Patterson said that some church donations to OTOC, which range from $300 to $5000 this year,are large enough to question. And he said that money is not the only issue. An IRS investigation would also consider the other ways churches support OTOC, he said. 'We'd look at the number of notices in the church bulletin, the fliers, the free use of church meeting rooms, office space, equipment and supplies,' Patterson said. 'We'd look at the value of the time and the services of the pastors, too.'"
4. An Evaluation Study of Institution-Based Organizing prepared for the Discount Foundation provides several examples of partisan IAF political activity:
· "One of IAF's priorities and directions in the Northeast and mid-Atlantic regions includes developing new constituencies such as voters, through launching a regional voter mobilization strategy. Other targeted constituencies include parents, workers, and immigrants. One strategy behind this expansion is to engage larger numbers of people from diverse constituencies beyond congregations, and build sufficient power to impact more issues at a systemic level."
· "EHPC [NY IAF local, East Harlem Partnership for Change] used a local state assembly election to unseat a political family dynasty…EHPC turned out nearly 4,000 voters in the election…. According to New York Daily News reporter Jim Dwyer, the Del Toro campaign credentialed EHPC as a power player in East Harlem."
· "BUILD [Baltimore IAF local] leveraged competition between Baltimore City Council President and the Mayor in a hotly contested mayoral race…."
· The evaluation asks what the strengths and future potential of institution-based organizing are and answers that question. "Utilizing electoral processes to leverage issue wins: The ability to utilize the electoral process to leverage issues is also a strength and bodes well for future impact, as indicated in the section on altering power relations."
Conclusion concerning IAF efforts to promote a partisan political agenda: The Evaluation Study of Institution-Based Organizing prepared for the Discount Foundation makes this point: "The organizational culture harnesses and leverages congregations' social capital for social change. By fusing faith and politics, and acting on progressive issues, they build an organizational culture that engenders long-term involvement of leaders in a religious context."[emphasis added] The use of churches by outside organizations, such as the IAF, to promote their own "progressive issues" is inimical to the dignity of the individual within the church who opposes that progressive agenda, and is inimical to his rights of conscience.
VIII. The Industrial Areas Foundation Introduces Theological Distortions to Catholic Parishes.
1. Alinskyian organizing, like liberation theology, rejects objective or fixed truth. Charles Curran writes: "There are many similarities between Alinsky's community organization approach and liberation theology….An important similarity concerns the basic understanding of sociology and epistemology. Liberation theology rightly reacts against a value-free sociology with its claim of arriving at totally objective truth and it's emphasis on quantitative analysis. A value-free approach by its very nature tends to identify with and reinforce the status quo. Knowledge is not as objective and independent of human involvement as a classical understanding once thought. The sociology of knowledge reminds us that all knowledge is situated and subject to prejudice. One must approach existing realities and thought patterns with ideological suspicion….There is no dispassionate objectivity. Rationalization is an important human reality with which any organizer must come to grips."
2. Alinskyian organizing, like liberation theology, is grounded on a Marxist class analysis. "The option for the poor has become very central in both the praxis and theory of liberation theology. This same option for the poor, especially understood in terms of the powerless, characterizes the Alinsky method of organization. Alinsky definitely sides with the powerless - the have-nots - in their struggle."
3. Alinskyian organizing, like liberation theology, uses the technique of "popular education" (conscientization) to change values. Curran writes: Liberation theology gives great importance to Paulo Friar's pedagogy of the oppressed. In the process called 'conscientization,' through an unalienating and liberating cultural action, the oppressed person perceives and modifies one's relationship to the world….Although Alinsky does not use the word 'conscientization,' there is no doubt that such a process is the cornerstone of his method….The people must learn that through their power they can bring about change. Raising consciousness is a part of Alinsky's overarching commitment to popular education."
4. The technique of "popular education" (conscientization" or values clarification) change the values of its target and replace them with the values of the organizer. A New Republic article states: "…[The] IAF seeks to teach groups like Mexican/Americans of San Antonio to build on and then transcend natural ties of family and ethnicity" Another writer says: "Cortes [head organizer for IAF, SW region] knew that Mexican parents willingly sacrificed for their children - and often for their church. By talking about family values, could you motivate and organize people to act politically in their own genuine self-interest?...the new organization had to reach into the heart...The idea of protecting and enhancing families might make that possible."
The implication of these passages is that the religious and family values of Catholics are used to spark a conversation between them and the IAF. The IAF then uses the relationship built from those values to introduce another set of values - those of the IAF. Harry Boyte writes: "In St. Timothy's Church [in San Antonio], for instance, new catechisms connected biblical and Mexican historical and cultural themes with the current issues COPS [the IAF local] was working on….From such experiences, the [the IAF] developed an ongoing process of community and parish renewal."
5. Alinskyian organizing encourages small base communities. Harold McDougall writes about the Baltimore IAF, BUILD (Baltimoreans United in Leadership Development). Participating pastors in the Baltimore IAF , he reports, are networked together in a "peer group, sharing experiences….They are trying to raise consensus-oriented decision-making models for BUILD as a whole on the foundation of their peer relationships. Some are beginning to see the need to share power within their own churches…"
McDougall also describes the small base communities which, at the time of his writing (1993 and earlier), BUILD was planning. "…[T]hey will also need something more: participation in small, intimate 'base communities,' peer groups of a dozen or two dozen people which can evaluate the day's struggles….This kind of personal, intimate contact with trusted others is a necessary building block for Harry Boyte's 'third way' of citizen engagement….Families are not large or diverse enough to perform such a function. Churches are too large. The contact must take place in a new, smaller form of association in some ways similar to the social units liberation theologians in Latin America have called comunidades eclesiales de base, which translates as 'ecclesiastical base communities,' or simply 'Christian base communities.'"
Integral to these small communities would be prayer and Bible study, in which the scripture "text" is "discussed in the 'context' of community." The BUILD small faith communities would engage in facilitated discussions "of what community is for, the people involved, and what obstacles to community they think exist, always using the text of the Bible as a central resonating point for the discussion."
IAF groups in Texas also use the model of the South American base communities. In the Diocese of Brownsville there are 500 small faith communities operating both in the IAF network and in the Call to Action network.
Conclusion concerning theological distortions introduced by the IAF into the Catholic Church: The relationship between the IAF and certain factions within the United States Catholic Church goes beyond CCHD funding of individual projects. Withdrawal of CCHD funding of the IAF would help rectify the damage done by the theological distortions introduced by the IAF into various Catholic communities by clearly marking the IAF's theology as different from Catholic theology, and therefore inappropriate for such funding.
IX. The Catholic Bishops of the United States Ought to Reconsider Their Funding of the Industrial Areas Foundation through Catholic Campaign for Human Development Grants.
This commentary does not oppose CCHD funding of genuine, grassroots community organizations, run and supported by individual members of a parish or diocese and grounded on the principles of Catholic Action. There is potential value and virtue in the collective voice. However, when the CCHD funds Alinsky-style, church-based community organizations as in the best interest of the poor and supports organizations which advance agendas inimical to Catholic social justice principles, it divests the poor of their right to an authentic voice. This process tends to treat the poor as exploited units of human capital, rather than as human beings created in the dignity of God's image.
Nor is there any basis for the CCHD to imply by its actions that there are no alternative organizations that it can fund to promote valuable institutional change, uninfluenced by a politicized agenda. There is no necessity for CCHD funds to go to organizations which contribute to or participate in any way - either directly or indirectly - in the political support of abortion or the complicitous support of contraception. There is no necessity for the CCHD to fund the Industrial Areas Foundation. There are other organizations of the poor, that are self-determined and supportive of life, which would welcome and benefit from CCHD assistance. Those alternative, grassroots community organizations do not merely serve their constituency but rather they are their constituency. They do not use community organizing to further an additional agenda.
It would be reasonable for the bishops to consider the immediate cessation of all CHD funding to the Industrial Areas Foundation:
1. The IAF proceeds upon the principles of Saul Alinsky, which are inherently unethical and render any organization so grounded unfit for receipt of Catholic charitable money. As the IAF proceeds upon the principles of Saul Alinsky, the IAF should no longer receive CCHD grants.
2. The IAF is an institutional-based organization. Community organizing by religious institution, rather than by individual, is unjust and robs the dissenting individual of his dignity and right of conscience. As the IAF is an institutional-based organization, the IAF should no longer receive CCHD grants.
3. The IAF has a long-standing relationship with the dissident organization Call to Action. Many points in the Call to Action agenda contradict Catholic teaching. This pervasive and compatible relationship between the IAF and Call to Action creates an example of material cooperation between a CCHD-funded organization and an organization which is not in accord with Catholic teaching. Continued funding of the IAF, therefore, violates the 1998 Draft of Moral Guidelines for Funding by the Catholic Campaign for Human Development which states that "CCHD funds will not be used to support any project which is sponsored or promoted by an organization whose primary or substantial thrust is contrary to Catholic teaching, even if the project itself is in accord with Catholic teaching." Therefore, the IAF should no longer receive CCHD grants.
4. IAF activities in the area of education reform contradict Catholic teaching. IAF activities in the area of welfare reform also contradict Catholic teaching and subvert the work of its member parishes. Again, continued funding of the IAF violates the 1998 Draft of Moral Guidelines for Funding by the Catholic Campaign for Human Development which states that "CCHD funds will be used to support only projects that conform to Catholic teaching." Therefore, the IAF should no longer receive CCHD grants.
5. The IAF is engaged in partisan political activities. The use of churches by outside organizations, such as the IAF, to promote their own "progressive issues" is inimical to the dignity of the individual within the church who opposes that progressive agenda, and is inimical to his rights of conscience. Therefore, continued CCHD funding to the IAF is inappropriate.
6. The IAF has introduced theological distortions into a number of Catholic communities. Cessation of CCHD grants to the IAF would clarify that the IAF's theology is different from Catholic theology, is inappropriate for promulgation in Catholic communities, and disqualifies the IAF for such funding.
X. Conclusion: This commentary is offered for the consideration of the bishops in a spirit of objective inquiry. As noted in Section I above, it is not intended to disparage any person or group or to question the good faith or legality of any positions taken by any persons or groups involved in these matters. Rather, we respectfully submit this Commentary to assist the bishops in their deliberations about the future funding and activities of the CCHD.
A bound copy of this text, with footnotes, can be obtained from the Wanderer Forum Foundation, Forum Focus, P.O. Box 542, Hudson, WI 54016-0542 or telephone 651-276-1429. Please send $5.00 to cover postage. A year subscribtion to the Forum Focus Quarterly is $10.00 and can be obtained from the same address.
Friday, June 17, 2005
Interesting Blog
For those interested in an excellent Blog written by a Spanish priest, please visit: http://carolmckinley.blogspot.com/
There you will find more information.
Paul
Para esos interesados en un Blog excelente escrito por un sacerdote espanol, visite por pavor: http://carolmckinley.blogspot.com/
Alli usted encontrara mas informacion.
Pablo
There you will find more information.
Paul
Para esos interesados en un Blog excelente escrito por un sacerdote espanol, visite por pavor: http://carolmckinley.blogspot.com/
Alli usted encontrara mas informacion.
Pablo
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