Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on outside forces trying to manipulate the Catholic Church:
There is a long history of organizations that have nothing to do with the Catholic Church which nonetheless persist in sticking their noses into its internal affairs.
In the last century, the Communist party in the United States sought to infiltrate the Church with apostate homosexual priests. In more recent times, wealthy left-wing activists and foundations have attempted to derail the Church by promoting propaganda campaigns against Church teachings, typically centered on sexuality issues. For instance, the pro-abortion movement was launched by Catholic Church-hating activists who sought to destroy its moral authority.
The most recent manifestation of this invidious effort comes from a constellation of forces called Equal Future. It has taken direct aim at the Synod of Bishops on Young People, the Faith and the Discernment of Vocations, which is meeting in Rome, October 3-28.
According to the director of Equal Future, Tiernan Brady, the purpose of his outfit is “to highlight the damage being done to children and young people” by Church teachings. Brady, who directed the referenda campaigns on gay marriage in Australia and Ireland, is using this opportunity to pressure the Church to change its teachings on sexuality.
Equal Future consists of many lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) groups. The estimates range from 29 to more than 100 such entities. It includes some of the most prominent LGBT organizations, such as the Human Rights Campaign and the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD).
More important, it is comprised of gay groups which claim to be Catholic: New Ways Ministry, DignityUSA, and We Are Church are among the best known. They are all dissident groups in rebellion against the Catholic Church, and have practically zero support among Catholics. They wouldn’t exist were it not for funding from anti-Catholic organizations such as the Arcus Foundation, an institution that works closely with atheist billionaire and Church hater, George Soros.
In the last ten years, DignityUSA has received well over $700,000 from the Arcus Foundation. Last year, it gave New Ways Ministry a grant of $35,000 “to connect the work of pro-LGBT Catholic organizations in every region of the world.” In 2009, it gave them almost $100,000.
It also funds the Women’s Alliance for Theology Ethics and Ritual (WATER). Arcus gave it a boatload of cash to “create a cadre of Catholic, lesbian, bisexual and transgender women and their allies that would assume a leadership role within the Catholic community.” Earlier in this decade it gave WATER $70,000. Naturally, Arcus provides grants to Catholics for Choice, the pro-abortion and anti-Catholic entity that receives the bulk of its money from the Ford Foundation.
Arcus has made inroads in Catholic universities as well. It receives its most cooperation from Jesuit institutions such as Fordham University and Fairfield University. For example, Arcus funded a conference series, “More Than a Monologue,” that deliberately promoted dissident voices seeking to undermine Catholic teachings on sexuality. Pledges to area bishops that they would not do so were not honored.
According to a report by the Cardinal Newman Society, this conference sponsored several speakers who questioned Catholic teaching on homosexuality. They argued that the Vatican’s “official repression” of gay priests needs to end, and that “the Catholic Church would be much better off if all its priests were having sex with each other.” To top things off, they “disputed the necessity of priests for consecration of the Eucharist at Catholic Mass.”
The idea that gay priests are repressed is nonsense. Just the opposite is true: Gay-active seminarians and priests have driven more heterosexual men out of the seminaries and the priesthood than anyone can fathom. Moreover, it is diabolical to assert that priests would be better off if they practiced sodomy with each other. Even more pernicious is the assault on the Eucharist. That is what these activists want—a total annihilation of the Catholic Church. It was not always this way.
When Dr. Bernard Nathanson, the famed abortionist who co-founded the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL), started his effort to legalize abortion in 1969, he devised a plan to attack the Catholic Church. Why? He had to. The Church, he readily conceded, was the greatest defender of life. This meant that his pro-abortion agenda could not be realized without discrediting its voice.
Nathanson quickly embarked on a lengthy propaganda campaign that was riddled with lies about Catholicism. We know this to be true because of his conversion: after witnessing pictures of unborn babies—the sonogram had just been invented—he became pro-life. Then he converted to Catholicism. The key point is this: even in his most radical days, Nathanson never sought to assault the Church’s sacraments. That’s what we are faced with today. It is just that vicious.
There is no justification for any outside organization seeking to subvert the teachings and practices of any world religion. That some of these busy-bodies are tax-exempt foundations, which purport to serve the common good, makes it all the more perverse.
