Mothers' Day: Catholic Bishops Would Be Better Fathers If They Acted Like Good Mothers

As Mothers' Day arrives in many parts of the world, I'm thinking back to the following posting that I wrote in May 2009. It still seems pertinent to me, with its arguments that the bishops of the Catholic church would be far better bishops if they acted more like good mothers and less like bad fathers.  Here it is (with Mothers' Day wishes to readers):

After I posted yesterday about the inability of the U.S. Catholic bishops to convince either Catholics or society at large about their interpretation of what respect for life entails, my friend and fellow-blogger Colleen Kochivar-Baker left a comment. Colleen notes that my posting dovetailed with what she posted on her Enlightened Catholicism blog the same day.


Colleen’s posting focuses on the homily Pope Benedict gave this past Sunday at a Mass in Jordan. And she is absolutely right: her critique of that homily dovetails in a remarkable way with my analysis of why the U.S. bishops are failing to convince either their co-religionists or the wider public that the Catholic church really means what it teaches about the value of life.

Colleen notes that Benedict’s homily follows a well-trodden path in speaking of male-female complementarity and the “special” vocation of women. As Colleen notes, Benedict has been emphasizing this theme for some time now: in 2004, as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the then Cardinal Ratzinger issued a “Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Collaboration of Men and Women in the Church and in the World.”

That document enunciates the same themes Benedict highlighted this past Sunday: e.g., that women have a “particular dignity, vocation and mission” in church and world, a mission centered on “building peace and fostering love.” Benedict speaks of women as “bearers of love, teachers of mercy and artisans of peace, bringing warmth and humanity to a world that all too often judges the value of a person by the cold criteria of usefulness and profit.”

Benedict bases his theory of male-female complementarity in part on the Genesis creation narratives. But as Colleen notes, Benedict’s understanding of those narratives seems not to be informed by sound exegetical research, since

[w]hat Benedict usually leaves out in his references to Genesis is that biblical scholars see the first chapter of Genesis describing the creation of ha adam out of adamah. That is creating an 'earthling' (ha adam), from earth (adamah). There is no gender definition implied in the original Hebrew.

The Hebrew in which the Genesis creation narratives are written implies that God creates humanity first and foremost. The distinction of human being into gender is a secondary moment in the creation process. The calling to be human—fully human—transcends any biological calling to be male or female.

This is not merely a niggling observation about the need for exegetical accuracy as we interpret the bible. It is a profoundly important observation about what being human is all about, in the mind of the author(s) of the Genesis creation narratives. If we are called by these narratives to live our lives according to some divine purpose implanted in us by virtue of creation, that purpose is first and foremost about being a human being—a human being made in God’s image. It is only secondarily (and tangentially) about being a man or a woman.

In elevating the male-female distinction to the level of God’s divine plan for human beings and arguing that these stories lay down separate biologically-grounded roles for men and women, Benedict and many other Christians today are missing the point: they are turning into an idol something in the text that was not meant to have divine status. They are reading biological imperatives as divine commands, which then translate into commands about gender roles for faithful men and women.

There is no gender definition implied in the original Hebrew: Colleen’s analysis of the story is absolutely correct here. There is no gender definition implied, and to the extent that we now read these stories as stories about male-female complementarity (and separate male-female gender roles), we’re misinterpreting them by imposing on them preoccupations that were not part of the worldview of the authors of the text.

And how does this insight dovetail with what I posted yesterday? In yesterday’s posting, I argued that the U.S. Catholic bishops have failed to convince many of us with their ethic of life, because they ground that ethic in paternalistic example and a paternalistic worldview. I argued that to be convincing about life, the bishops would have to do what seems not to come naturally to them these days: they’d have to act maternal for a change.

They’d have to think like mothers. They’d have to think like what they keep insisting the church is to all of us, a mother. They’d have to start wrapping their arms around the world the way God does in the very first image of God we meet in scripture, in those very same Genesis creation stories, which speak of God creating the world by folding matter under her divine wings and brooding over it until it comes to life.

To convince us about life, the men wearing bright robes while brandishing big croziers need to begin acting like good mothers. As I wrote, if the bishops want to be convincing when they talk about life, they need to cultivate the maternal virtues that, as Benedict’s homily last Sunday rightly notes, are central to any profound ethic of life.

They’d need to begin nurturing the young and the weak, healing the sick, tending the earth and making it flourish, creating a safe and welcoming space for others, building a community of homes in which everyone has welcome places throughout the land. They’d need to start doing these things themselves and stop relegating them to some woman somewhere, or any woman anywhere (the paternalistic rhetoric of the magisterium assumes women are objects, generic care-providing things).

That noble-sounding rhetoric of the magisterium re: male-female complementarity and the “particular dignity and vocation” of women is a trap and a cop-out. It’s a trap for women and a cop-out for men. It entraps women because it allows men all over the globe to slough off responsibility to do what women are always expected to do and men need to do: care for the young and the elderly and the weak, cherish the earth and make it flourish, build welcoming homes across the globe, nurse the sick. The paternalistic rhetoric of male-female complementarity is a cop-out for men because it lets men off the hook when such necessary human tasks arise. It allows men to relegate the most significant tasks in the world to some woman somewhere, who is not even respected as she undertakes these tasks, and is regarded as interchangeable with all women in the rhetoric of paternalism.

Benedict's reading of Genesis allows men to be not who they were meant to be—full human beings capable of a wide range of emotions and responsibilities—but less human. Benedict twists Genesis to permit men to become something they were never meant to be, half-human beings with no instinct for care, nurture, tenderness. In being paternal without being maternal, in fulfilling their “God-given” role as real men, men end up being stunted human beings, even as men profess to be the lords and masters of creation under the divine imperative of Genesis.

Human beings who do not aim at being fully developed humans, who combine in their persons and lives male-female tasks, are incapable of effective leadership of communities of care centered on an ethic of respect for life. The bishops cannot and never will obtain buy-in for their life ethic until they begin to show that they themselves take the ethic of life seriously, in all its ramifications. As a start, they could begin to listen, for instance, as mothers listen carefully to their children, to hear the words inside the spoken words, the cries of the speaking heart hidden in the words.

One of the supremely ironic effects of the current papal regime’s call for a purge of gays in the priesthood and in seminaries is that this purge is likely to weed out precisely those men in ministry most competent at modeling the gender-complementarity that should be the goal of any balanced human psyche, and, in particular, of the psyche of any human being in ministry. The church’s current ugly, preposterous attempt to convince us that the only good priest is a manly man—a man modeling a macho, swaggering maleness that demeans women—will eventually starve the priesthood of candidates most gifted for pastoral ministry.

And it will also eventually undermine the church’s teaching about respect for life even more profoundly than it has already been undermined by a generation of bishops who have unthinkingly bought into the rhetoric of gender complementarity with its attendant presuppositions of the male's obligation to dominate and the female's calling to submit. If the bishops ever want to convince us that they really do respect life—all life, from cradle to grave—then they need to drop the act of the domineering papa and the gay-bashing that goes with that act, and act like good mothers for a change.

Attacks on Planned Parenthood Continue to Raise Questions about Goals of Pro-Life Movement

When I've blogged about Planned Parenthood (most recently here), I've noted that, for me as a Catholic, one of the overriding moral issues to be taken into consideration as proposals are made to cut funding for this organization is that it provides essential health care services to economically struggling women throughout the U.S.  And I've questioned whether one can have bona fide pro-life intent if one claims that Planned Parenthood should be shut down because it provides abortions, while the large majority of the services the organization offers are much-needed health care services for poor women.

The drive of the religious and political right to defund Planned Parenthood (which does not use tax dollars to support abortions, since it's forbidden by law to do so) remains in the news these days, as Indiana governor Mitch Daniels announces that he will sign legislation to cut all funding for the organization in his state.  Daniels' announcement has taken political observers by surprise, since Daniels had previously made noises about the need of the Republican party to stop pushing culture war issues, and had received praise in the Beltway echo chamber for making these noises.

Daniels' "moderation" on social issues had made him appear to many Beltway observers to be a viable, credible GOP presidential candidate.  And it now appears his decision to go after Planned Parenthood may well be part of a strategy to position himself as a presidential candidate by enhancing his cred with the the religious right faction of the Republican party, which has decisive power in making or breaking a potential GOP candidate.

Indiana is not the only state considering action to defund Planned Parenthood.  As Laurie Basset reports today at Huffington Post, in Oklahoma, Republican state legislator Jason Murphey is seeking to amend a nutrition bill so that no independent contractors can administer the state's WIC (Women, Infants, and Children) program.  Among the groups in Oklahoma distributing WIC vouchers, which provide food, nutrition education, and regular check-ups for mothers of small children and pregnant women, is Planned Parenthood of Tulsa.

This particular branch of Planned Parenthood does not even provide abortions.  Planned Parenthood of Tulsa provides essential health care for more than 3,535 women, infants and children yearly.  In addition to distributing WIC vouchers, the clinics of this Planned Parenthood group provide about 8,600 prenatal visits a year for poor mothers, and 5,600 pediatric visits a year for their children.

And so, in my view, what's happening in Oklahoma provides an instructive example of the moral incoherence about which I've been blogging as I look at the drive to defund Planned Parenthood: in the name of serving the values of life, of preserving life, influential political leaders are willing to remove food from the mouths of poor children and their mothers, and to block health care services that these mothers and children receive from no other organization.  To make a pro-life point.

Something is morally awry with the pro-life movement, when it arrives at this point.  Or so it seems to me.

U.S. Bishops' Pro-Life Spokeswoman: Catholics Oppose Taxpayer Funding of Contraception

Third update: I posted during Holy Week about Gerald Slevin's recent critical analysis of Germaine Grisez's revisionist history of the post-Vatican II papal commission on birth control.  As I noted in that posting, it strikes me as inconsistent to oppose both artificial contraception and abortion, since abundant evidence demonstrates that the majority of abortions take place because pregnancies haven't been planned or a couple or woman dealing with a pregnancy feels unable to provide for and raise a child.  

And in a Good Friday posting, I noted the recent finding of the Guttmacher Institute that some 98% of Catholic women in the U.S. have used birth control--a finding Fr. Anthony Ruff notes in his response to Cardinal Wuerl's recent statement about the teaching authority of bishops in the wake of the condemnation of Elizabeth Johnson's work.  As I noted in my discussion of Ruff's article, it's intriguing to me that we're only now discovering something that statisticians, theologians, and many others have known since the late 1960s: that an overwhelming percentage of Catholics in the developed areas of the world stoutly reject Catholic magisterial teaching about artificial contraception and sexual ethics in general.

In light of these previous discussions of the contraception issue, I find the response of the U.S. Catholic bishops' official pro-life spokeswoman to the Guttmacher Institute data fascinating.  Nancy Frazier O'Brien discusses this response in a recent article in National Catholic Reporter.

As O'Brien notes, after the Guttmacher findings were published, Deirdre McQuade, assistant director for policy and communications at USCCB's Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities, told Catholic News Service, "The way the data is presented . . . is misleading in a pretty fundamental way." McQuade's response to the Guttmacher data showing the vast majority of American Catholics reject church teaching about contraception is to reiterate the church's opposition to both abortion and contraception.

McQuade notes that "Catholics" are opposed to taxpayer funding of contraceptive services, because some contraceptives are actually abortifacients, and because "fertility is a sign of health."  Fertility should not be considered a disease to be controlled--and therefore birth control is not an area of health care that one ought  routinely to expect to be provided by health care agencies funded by tax dollars.

And again I have to say: I don't get it.  If we're really opposed to abortion and consider it one of the most heinous abuses of life to be curbed in our society, it seems to me we'd not only step back from the ban on artificial contraception, but we'd actively advocate for access to contraceptives for those who want or need them.  It's logically inconsistent to claim we're pro-life when it comes to abortion, and then to oppose contraceptives--given the clear link between preventing unwanted pregnancies and preventing abortions.

And there's another ethical issue lurking behind this debate that seems to me well worth noting: this is the desire of various groups of the religious and political right to control women and women's access to contraception, because women's ability to determine whether or when they will bear children is exceptionally threatening to the patriarchal mindset of the leaders of the religious and political right.  This is the unacknowledged goal of those trying to shut down Planned Parenthood.

What they're effectively trying to shut down is women's control over their reproductive lives.  In particular, they're effectively trying to shut down the control of poor women over their reproductive lives.  And that strikes me as morally reprehensible in the extreme, when those mounting this crusade know full well that affluent women will always have the means to obtain contraceptive devices or medications--while more and more women at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder will be deprived of those health care needs if this crusade has its way.

Pace Ms. McQuade, contraceptives most certainly are a part of any adequate health care plan for adults that seeks to provide comprehensive health care.  I grew up hearing one horror story after another about the effects of unplanned and unwanted pregnancies on many poor women in the chronically impoverished American South in the period from Reconstruction through the Great Depression.  I know from stories I heard my grandmother, mother, and aunts tell that women suffered horribly in the past when they were expected (and often forced) to bear one child after another during their years of fertility, and when food and the comforts to make life humane were scarce.

To ask that women be returned to that subjugation to biological fate and to male domination in the name of God strikes me as obscene.  The leaders of the Catholic church are on the wrong side of history and of morality with this particular crusade--and it's time they recognized that fact.  The opposition to contraceptive use undercuts what they want to teach us about the value of life and the evil of abortion.  Colluding with the religious and political right in attacks on the health care needs of poor women in the U.S. is not a morally admirable thing for Catholic bishops to do.

Planned Parenthood Debate Continues: Two Catholic Statements Taking Different Sides

The debate about Planned Parenthood continues.  I've summarized my own position as a Catholic in this particular debate.  (And for commentary worth reading, see here, here, and here).  Two more recent essays present two very different, and opposed, approaches to the Planned Parenthood debate, both from Catholic standpoints.

Writing last week in National Catholic Reporter, Phyllis Zagano argues that Planned Parenthood is "the nation's largest abortionist" and has roots in the racist eugenics of Margaret Sanger, which targets minority women.  As a Catholic, Zagano does not want her tax dollars supporting the organization.

At Religion Dispatches, Jon O'Brien asks, by contrast, where the Catholic conscience is, when it comes to Planned Parenthood.  O'Brien argues that, given how many key services Planned Parenthood provides to prevent unwanted pregnancies, those opposed to abortion ought logically to be defending the organization--not colluding in the attempt of conservative political leaders to shut down much-needed medical services for poor women.  As he notes, the attack on Planned Parenthood ignores the preferential option for the poor in Catholic social teaching, which calls on us to give particular attention to the effect of political and economic decisions on the poor and marginal.

Quite a few respondents to Zagano's NCR article suggest she has her facts wrong and is basing her moral judgment on misinformation about Planned Parenthood and what it does.  For those interested in seeing a dissection of some of the prevailing myths about the organization (e.g., federal tax dollars support abortions through PP, 90% of PP services are abortions, etc.), I recommend Claire Coleman's article about five myths re: Planned Parenthood in last Friday's Washington Post.

And for valuable commentary noting that the real goal of the political and religious right is not merely to stop abortion but also to thwart the access of as many women as possible to contraception, see Amanda Marcotte at AlterNet.  As Marcotte notes, the attempt of the religious and political right to block access to contraception affects low-income women, in particular.

As I note in my piece offering my own moral analysis of the Planned Parenthood debate, it seems crystal clear to me that anyone who wants to make abortion a less attractive option for many women, particularly those on the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder, needs to support the provision of top-notch healthcare to everyone--but to those at the bottom of society above all.  And it's also crystal clear to me that this top-notch healthcare must include access to contraception.

I find it rather difficult to believe in the pro-life ethic promoted by some of my fellow Catholics, when it simultaneously attacks contraception--and when it targets low-income women.  Nothing about that attack strikes me as conspicuously pro-life.  Or as sincere about really wanting to address the root causes of abortion.  As Alan McCornick points out at his Hepzibah site, the opposition of the Catholic magisterium to contraception reflects a "pre-modern framework" that refuses to take into account the graced experience and insights of millions of people of faith, both Catholic and Protestant, who do not view human sexuality in the biologistic, solely-for-procreation way that the magisterium wishes to maintain.  All the more reason that the leaders of the Catholic church in association with fundamentalists of the religious right coalition should not be permitted to impose their peculiar religion-based views on society at large . . . .

Richard Mellon Scaife on GOP Attack on Planned Parenthood: "Dead Wrong"

Another follow-up posting: this follows up on another appeal to educate ourselves that I posted several days ago.  I'm referring to my posting calling on readers to look at the moral implications of the current attack on Planned Parenthood from a broader perspective than that provided by the single issue of abortion on which too many pro-lifers are monomaniacally focused. 

As I've been noting in my commentary about the attack on Planned Parenthood (and, in particular, in my responses to comments on the two postings to which I've just linked), one of the mind-boggling things many pro-lifers appear to be missing as they call for a withdrawal of federal funds from this organization is that this action will in all likelihood increase rather than diminish the number of abortions that take place in the U.S.  It will in all likelihood increase abortions by removing essential medical services from many poor women for whom abortion is a desperate choice dictated by economic privation.  

And it will in all likelihood increase abortions by blocking the access of economically struggling women and young folks to the much-needed contraceptive services provided by Planned Parenthood.  Because that point seems so obvious to me, and yet seems to be completely off the radar screen of pro-lifers calling for an end to federal funding of Planned Parenthood, I'm fascinated to read that even a leading conservative media tycoon like Richard Mellon Scaife is now calling the Republican attack on Planned Parenthood "dead wrong," when some 90% of its medical services are designed precisely to prevent the unwanted pregnancies that end in abortion.

I have to admit, I find it pretty exasperating when ideologues of the religious right, both Catholic and other, try to argue--in the face of reason and of abundant evidence to the contrary--that wider access to contraception increases the likelihood of abortions and STDs.  The right-wing Catholic group in Ireland, Iona Institute, whose funding sources (from the American religious and political right?) are exceptionally murky and have never been revealed, has sought to press that argument recently (h/t Clerical Whispers). 

Pope Benedict sought to float a version of this same argument on his visit to Africa in 2009.  And when he floated this argument, large numbers of media and medical commentators rightly pushed back against the dangerous (and false) implication that making contraception widely available helps spread the HIV virus.  It is totally irresponsible--it is downright cruel, I think--to disseminate this kind of disinformation, solely because one has moral objections to the use of contraceptives.

If those moral objections are legitimate and persuasive, they can stand on their own feet rhetorical feet.  They do not need lies to make them more compelling.  It is irrational to claim that making contraceptives more widely available will increase abortions, when data demonstrate that a large percentage of abortions occur precisely because women who did not intend to become pregnant think they cannot afford to have a child, or when young people who have become sexually active lacked access to contraceptives or were discouraged from using them.

It is not merely irrational and inconsistent to claim that one's objective is to diminish abortions while one calls for more and more blocks in the process by which people can obtain birth control: it is downright anti-life rather than pro-life to take this path.  The pro-life movement does itself no favors at all by attacking groups like Planned Parenthood.

Commentary on Assault on Planned Parenthood: "War on Women" Targeting Poor Women

As a follow-up to what I posted a few days ago about Planned Parenthood (a posting that has elicited quite a bit of commentary, suggesting the strong divide that runs through many faith communities today, including the Catholic church, about "pro-life" issues): I'd like to draw attention to several significant statements of the past day or so.

First Jason Linkins and Kevin Bunkley note at Huffington Post how the assault on Planned Parenthood is part of a much larger assault on women's reproductive rights and on health services--contraceptive ones, iamong others--for low-income women throughout the nation.  It's going on everywhere, both at the federal level and in statehouses across the U.S.  And it's part of a concerted effort to turn the clock back vis-a-vis women's access to birth control, in which poor women are being asked to bear the brunt of the socially regressive attack.

In its editorial today on this issue, the New York Times characterizes what is taking place as a "war on women," stating,

Republicans in the House of Representatives are mounting an assault on women’s health and freedom that would deny millions of women access to affordable contraception and life-saving cancer screenings and cut nutritional support for millions of newborn babies in struggling families. And this is just the beginning. 

As the Times editorial points out, the bill that would slash funding for Planned Parenthood also seeks to eliminate support for Title X's federal program providing birth control, breast and cervical cancer screenings, and HIV testing to low-income women.  The bill also seeks to restrict family planning and reproductive health care overseas, where U.S. dollars are spent to provide health services in other nations.  The "pro-life" legislators sponsoring the attack on Planned Parenthood also want to cut nutritional programs serving millions of  low-income women and children, along with programs providing prenatal health care to poor women.

Ryan Grim does a good job at Huffington Post of showing how the religious and political right have ginned up support for the attack on Planned Parenthood by disseminating absurd disinformation to religious groups exercised about abortion (e.g., "Your tax dollars support abortions through Planned Parenthood") and through Lila Rose's doctored, misleading, downright mendacious videos seeking to depict Planned Parenthood as a corrupt organization. 

As Charles Blow points out in New York Times, this bogus moral crusade, which is so deeply anti-life rather than pro-life in key respects, has significant moral implications: while pretending to care intently about pre-born life, those promoting this legislation are exceptionally callous about the quality of life of those already born, particularly when babies are born to economically struggling mothers.  Blow's moral conclusion:

It is savagely immoral and profoundly inconsistent to insist that women endure unwanted — and in some cases dangerous — pregnancies for the sake of “unborn children,” then eliminate financing designed to prevent those children from being delivered prematurely, rendering them the most fragile and vulnerable of newborns. How is this humane?

And as Jonathan Bernstein suggests at his Plain Blog two days ago, the reason we--the reason the American people--are sitting ducks for this kind of savage pseudo-moral and pseudo pro-life crusade is that we are simply ill-informed, most of us.  We let ourselves be twisted and turned hither and yon by ideologues who feed us a steady diet of disinformation.  In our faith communities, many of us are bombarded by a constant stream of lurid misrepresentations of facts about abortion, about what is known scientifically regarding fetal development, and so forth.

Those lurid misrepresentations, packaged as pious concern for unborn babies, cause us to leap onto a "pro-life" bandwagon that, in key respects, has nothing at all to do with respect for the sanctity of life, and, indeed, is callously indifferent to the value of life in almost any arena outside the abortion arena.  And so we become willing tools in political battles that have nothing at all to do with creating a culture of respect for life, and everything to do with partisan politics and with the determination of the ideologues using faith communities in partisan political battles to serve the interests of a single political party.

For Catholics, an important question to ask is this: Are the U.S. bishops capable of using rhetoric about abortion to serve political ends that have little or nothing to do with respect for life?  If the answer to that question might be yes--if there are plausible reasons to suggest that the bishops' concern for pre-born life is in any way overlaid with political goals and political intent that have little to do with respect for life--then perhaps we'd be better off stepping back a moment from the overheated rhetoric and analyzing what the bishops are asking us to do.  And why they're constantly nudging us onto the front lines of the abortion war.

And whether they have any compelling status now as moral teachers, given their performance with the abuse crisis.  It's time we shook off our slumber and became better educated, many of us--if, that is, we really care about respect for life in all its manifold ramifications, in our culture.  Attacking poor women and their children in the name of preserving the sanctity of life is morally heinous.

To do better, we need to learn better.

Standing with Planned Parenthood: Why I Signed the Petition

 

A good e-friend of mine, whose insights I respect, has asked me how I can be Catholic and sign a petition stating that I stand with Planned Parenthood, as a group of federal legislators seek to remove all federal funding from that organization.  This is a valid question, and I'd like to try to answer it in this public forum, where others might benefit from this dialogue between two Catholics with a different perspective about Planned Parenthood.

Here are my reasons for signing the petition, for what they're worth:

1. I signed after another e-friend whom I also respect--and who is also a Catholic and a faithful and practicing one--signed the petition and then sent me a link to it.  Like me, this e-friend has an academic background in theology.  She has a degree in ministry from a Catholic university, in fact.  And unlike me, she's a highly engaged, practicing Catholic who hasn't let herself be shoved beyond the margins (as I find myself).  Because I respect her, and because loyalty to friends counts pretty high in my list of virtues, I was happy to stand in solidarity with her when she invited me to sign this petition.

2. Shutting Planned Parenthood down (and that is surely the goal of withdrawing federal funding from it) will harm many people who have few avenues of access to the many valuable services Planned Parenthood provides in addition to abortions.  Many of these are low-income women who need the reproductive planning services of Planned Parenthood, prenatal care, and other valuable medical services provided by the organization.

It strikes me as cruel and immoral to try to prevent the access of those who need Planned Parenthood's services to those services.  It is particularly cruel and immoral to block the access of economically deprived people to much-needed medical services, including services that help poor women carry a healthy baby to term.

3. Though those spearheading the movement to shut Planned Parenthood down keep claiming that federal funds support abortions provided by this organization, that is not the case.  In my view, many of those circulating this disinformation know they are circulating erroneous information.  They are, not to put a fine point on it, lying.

I have been told--and if I am wrong in thinking this to be the case, I would like to be corrected--that Planned Parenthood does not even provide abortions in some areas of the country.  Or when it does so in these areas, those services are strictly limited.  Meanwhile, if I am not mistaken, throughout the nation it does provide much-needed health services, including reproductive ones, which are not widely available through many other medical providers, particularly for low-income people.

I think it's important to ask, too, whether all those calling for Planned Parenthood to be shut down because it provides abortions have investigated their own health care plans to see whether their plans are hermetically sealed from all abortion services.  If not, how do they justify having some of their own withheld dollars used to support abortions?  To be consistent, to be purists, should we not examine all of our contributions and tax funding for each and every organization that may in any way support abortions--and then withhold those funds from those organizations?

4. I have long been convinced that it is absurd for Catholics to claim that they seriously oppose abortion and want to diminish abortions, while at the same time they oppose the widespread availability of contraceptives.  And the use of contraceptives by sexually active people including teens who do not wish to have a child or cannot afford to have and care for a child.  It is inconsistent to say, when it comes to abortion, that the value of preserving life trumps everything else, and then to try to put barriers between sexually active people and contraceptives when those who will likely opt for an abortion if their sexual activity results in a pregnancy are denied access to contraception.

As a corollary to this, I will repeat something I've said over and over on this blog: I am not convinced--not at all--that respect for life is the driving force behind the anti-abortion movement of the political and religious right.  I do not see anywhere near a consistent ethic of respect for life in most of the pro-life movement.  I am highly dubious about the movement that calls itself pro-life, and I find I cannot make common cause with most of the pro-life Catholics I know because much of what they stand for in every area except the abortion area is, in my view, not exemplary in its respect for life.  I find much of what many Catholics who call themselves pro-life morally repugnant--precisely because I respect life.

I also think that the U.S. Catholic bishops have made a colossal mistake in putting all of their eggs into the anti-abortion cause of the religious and political right.  Their obsessive focus on this single issue has not resulted in the creation of a credible pluralistic coalition of people around the country intent on respecting life consistently.  Their reliance on a top-down dictatorial style of leadership which forbids discussion of the nuances and complexities of moral issues including abortion does not assist either Catholics or the culture at large to make intelligent decisions and to inform their consciences about these complex issues.  The result is that the Catholic pro-life movement has marginalized itself in the public square and can exercise influence only by trying to coerce legislators behind the scenes to do the bishops' bidding--as if the bishops are little lords in the land who should have the right to cross the church-state line by pulling political strings in back-room deals.

5. Planned Parenthood first came on my own radar screen in the following way, and this is part of the story of why I am happy to support this particular petition to stand with Planned Parenthood.  At the Catholic college in North Carolina at which I received an unexplained terminal contract some years ago, ending my career as a Catholic theologian, the student newspaper published an ad for Planned Parenthood not too long before I received the terminal contract.

The editor of the newspaper at that time was a theology major.  She did not ask me about placing this ad in the paper.  She did not tell me she intended to place it in the paper.  Nonetheless, because she was a theology major and I was chair of that department, some of the monks who owned this college and some faculty members who had been intent on seeing me fired because they opposed the theology of Vatican II (and, in truth, because I was not a right-wing Republican like them) accused me of nudging this theology major to place the Planned Parenthood ad in the student paper.

The student did come and talk to me after the ad was published and the blowback--which was fierce and exceptionally mean-spirited--began.  She did so because she was personally hurt, and deeply so, by the blowback.  Though her family had been close to the monastery that owned the college, she found herself shunned and disinvited from dinners the abbot held during this tense semester to "unite" the college.  (I was not ever invited to any of these "uniting" dinners, either.)  Faculty members did not hesitate to say slanderous and ugly things about her in class.  When her dorm room had a plumbing problem causing the toilet to back up, the maintenance staff would not fix the problem after repeated requests.

She left the school at the end of the semester, and who can blame her?  This young woman's mother was a former nun.  She came from an exemplary Catholic family.  She told me that the had placed the Planned Parenthood ad in the paper because she herself knew of some five young women at this Catholic campus who had had abortions that semester, and she thought that students should know where to obtain birth control and how to do so.

When the ad appeared, hell broke loose.  There were calls from the bishop's office, screaming at the college's administrators.  The well-organized and well-funded right-wing group of Catholics who have long thought they have unilateral ownership of this school made threats about withdrawing funding.  They also demanded that I be fired--and they evidently did this with the active assistance of the bishop.

Though I had had nothing at all to do with this ad and, in truth, hardly knew who or what Planned Parenthood was at the time, the ad became a convenient excuse to mount an ugly crusade on the campus, in which a number of people were shunned, demonized, attacked, driven away.  And it struck me as interesting to see who led that crusade among the faculty.

Not too long after I received the terminal contract, the abbot held a symbolic, demon-exorcising procession to celebrate the return of the college to orthodoxy.  In this procession, as he held his crozier high, he was accompanied by folks carrying fetal remains to the abbey cemetery to bury.  Lined up behind him was a line of faculty members, all male, all politically arch-conservative, most of whom never set foot in church.  These men had been overjoyed when Anita Hill found herself smeared as a liar during the Clarence Thomas hearings, and when Thomas was confirmed.  When Clinton was elected, they acted as if the world had ended.  The mood in the faculty lounge the day after the election was like the mood at a funeral, whereas it had been like the mood at a party when Thomas was confirmed.

There was, in other words, a clear political context to the "pro-life" movement on this Catholic campus, and it did not take a great deal of insight to see that this particular Catholic pro-life movement was repulsively misogynist and extremely conservative politically.  Those promoting this crusade of respect for fetal life were also bitterly and openly homophobic.  They were, in many cases, racist.  They were crudely heterosexist and determined to maintain this Catholic college as a boys' club welcoming only to them and their kind--though the monastery had, as Benedictine institutions commonly do, a statement over one of its doors stating that every guest must be received as Christ.

This experience is part of what opened my eyes to what the pro-life is really all about, in many Catholic circles.  Since I cannot stand with men like this in their intent to attack women, gays and lesbians, and people of color, or their intent to prevent poor people from having access to medical treatment, I cannot see how I can stand with them when they claim that they are pro-life in opposing abortion.

In my view, much that Planned Parenthood does serves a pro-life ethic, and I am happy to stand with the organization in those areas--even if I do also work for a society in which the choice to have abortions will be less appealing or less necessary for many people.  I find the demonization of Planned Parenthood and the callous crusade to shut down much-needed health services including contraceptive ones by the religious and political right morally repugnant.

Matt Abbott Issues Final Word on Euteneuer Case

A brief postscript to what I have just posted about how the fact that Euteneuer's violations of chastity involved an adult rather than a child might frame the discussion of his case:

Matt Abbott has now issued what he calls his "final word" on the Euteneuer case.  It deserves attention.  It does so because Abbott is a leading American Catholic pro-life spokesperson--someone who would, one would expect, normally be staunchly aligned with Euteneuer and the organization Euteneuer formerly headed.

But then there's this:

Father Tom's statement can be read by clicking here.

HLI's statement can be read by clicking here.

It's important to read both.

Having closely followed this story for a while now, I will say only that I am disappointed in certain aspects of both statements. Pray that the full truth be known, if it be God's will. At this point, however, I'm prepared to move on.

And what do you imagine Abbott means when he says, "Pray that the full truth be known . . ."?

Interesting slant, isn't it, from an ardent Catholic pro-lifer.  When even some so-called progressive Catholics are shouting that anyone pursuing the truth in this story should back off, stop judging, stop being mean, stop engaging in Schadenfreude, stop being self-righteous, stop hounding a good priest who fell after exhausting himself waging war with demons (and who fell, after all, with another adult, and a woman, to boot) . . . . 

Matt Abbott wants the full truth to be known.  Interesting.  I wonder what Abbott himself (and others) know, that they'd like the world to know now.  And why they think that this needs to be known.

And why they're praying for it to be revealed.

And that throwaway line, "It's important to read both," is surely the understatement of the year.  One that may deserve some kind of prize for understated narrative direction.

In this case, narrative direction nudging readers to place Fr. Euteneuer's confession side by side with what his former employer says in response to his confession.  Since a comparison reveals a significant disconnect that we should not miss, if we want to understand what is taking place with this confession.

And isn't it interesting that Abbott finds both statements disappointing.  Wonder what that could mean . . . .

Again, one of the most fascinating aspects of this story is how it has broken from the websites of the Catholic right, from those who had previously been strong allies of Euteneuer and Human Life International.

But who now appear to have information that they're praying the rest of us will eventually hear--evidently, because it's important that we hear it.  And, again, it's also fascinating to read comments of some progressive Catholics in the past several days, who regard the activity of these former strong allies of Euteneuer and HLI as "digging for dirt."

This doesn't sound to me like a situation in which these bloggers are digging for dirt at all.  It sounds far more like a situation in which some people who care very seriously about their pro-life movement have some information that they recognize as serious enough to warrant a fuller disclosure than we've yet seen. 

And I would find it hard to imagine that people of the ilk of Matt Abbott would want more information disclosed if their objective was to harm the pro-life movement.

The Euteneuer Story: Right-Wing Catholic Websites in Uproar Over Pro-Life Priest's Confession (Part 2)

What follows is by no means an exhaustive list of right-wing Catholic websites (and other websites with pertinent information) on which I find the Fr. Thomas Euteneuer story being discussed in the past several days.  It’s a sampling, but a sampling chosen to illustrate three points that, in my view, deserve serious attention as this story unfolds.  These websites are

1.    Questioning the accuracy of Fr. Euteneuer’s story;

2.    Raising serious questions about how he conducted his “ministry of exorcism,” and how he was permitted by both HLI and church authorities to do so; 

3.    And suggesting that both HLI and church officials have, for some time now, known more details about the situation than they have been willing to admit, are still not entirely forthcoming, and have been negligent in dealing with a situation about which they have known more than they are willing to admit.

To understand the significance of these three points, it’s important to look carefully at what Euteneuer said in his confession yesterday.  The confession itself states explicitly that, in making it, he was responding to a context of controversy that had arisen due to information circulating at various internet sites.  Euteneuer states:

I regret having to address the malicious falsehoods that were published this past week on various internet sites. I can only say that I am shocked to the depths of my being at the malicious efforts by supposedly faithful Catholics to destroy a priest who has served the Church faithfully for 22 years.

Against that backdrop, he also claims,  

•    My violations of chastity were limited to one person only, an adult woman;
•    The violations of chastity happened due to human weakness but did not involve the sexual act;
•    The accusation that I “targeted” vulnerable women or otherwise sought them out for spiritual direction is utterly false and a serious defamation of my character and ministry;
•    With rare exceptions, my exorcism/prayer ministry was always conducted with prayer helpers (third parties) present; situations where prayer or pastoral care occurred without helpers present were exceptional situations where I believed it was necessary for me to act quickly in order to help the afflicted person; while not proper protocol, these departures from the norm were never done with a motive to be alone with vulnerable women;
•    I repudiate any allegations of financial impropriety in conducting my prayer/exorcism ministry; I never, under any circumstances, solicited money for the ministry other than travel-related reimbursements, nor did I use HLI donor funds to carry out this work; any gifts offered to me were unsolicited and only accepted so as not to offend the giver and in most cases immediately given to those more needy than myself;
•    I have no knowledge of any persons who received any financial settlement in this matter, nor have I asked for that to be given.

His confession stresses that there was “one particularly complex situation” that “clouded my judgment” and led to “violating the boundaries of chastity with an adult female who was under my spiritual care.”  And Euteneuer exonerates church officials of all blame, saying that they have been “unjustly criticized by those writing and speaking in ignorance of the facts.”  

He notes that his “bishop . . . has allowed me to make this statement.” The bishop to whom he is referring is Bishop Gerald Barbarito of Palm Beach, who has now issued his own statement (to which I’ll return in a moment).  As with Euteneuer’s confession, this statement has been published at LifeSiteNews.  And this in itself is exceptionally curious, because, to the best of my knowledge, this news site has no official connection at all to the Catholic church, though the site has for some time now been carrying a scrolling ad across the top of its homepage promoting a Catholic college in North Carolina, Belmont Abbey College.

All “official” statements about this story—from Euteneuer to Bishop Barbarito to HLI—have appeared on this news site, as if it is now some official venue for announcements about intra-ecclesial Catholic news.  This use of an anti-abortion news site that is not an official Catholic news site to make such announcements is unprecedented, and suggests to me the extent to which the “pro-life” movement now owns and controls the Catholic church in the U.S. 

To return to the narrative: and so we see Euteneuer’s claims—“violations” of chastity with a single adult female; no targeting of vulnerable women in his “ministry of exorcism”; third parties always present when he engaged in that ministry (“with rare exceptions”); no fiscal improprieties and no payments of hush money; and no blame for anything in whatever happened to be borne by church officials.  Why is he stressing these points?

He’s doing so to address statements made on a number of Catholic (and other) websites in the past several days, which contradict almost every point he eventually made in the confession released yesterday.  On 29 January, Tom O’Toole wrote on the Renew America website:

Let's start with what has already been made known about the fall of Fr. Tom. The Diocese of Palm Beach has acknowledged (privately) "at least one inappropriate relationship," while the HLI side said (off the record) that "Father [reportedly] admitted to having 'an inappropriate relationship' with an employee in his letter of resignation [and] a second woman [apparently] came forward to say that Father had engaged in sexual activity with her — not intercourse, but close to it — while he was performing some type of exorcism prayer(s)."

In addition, a culture of negligence (as far as Church authority goes) developed, in which Father Tom, apparently without the official blessing of either the diocese or HLI, flew around the country for years performing prayers and exorcisms on vulnerable women on his own, fueled by cash or checks made out to Fr. E rather than the diocese or HLI. After some initial success with healing, many of these relationships went on for years with minimal positive results; either because exorcism, unlike the Consecration at Mass, is not a sacrament and thus depends on the holiness of the priest for its success, or worse, because (according to another lady who knew him), Father was [sexually inappropriate] with "more than one woman...many women...targeting confused, vulnerable women, often under the guise of spiritual director." Thus, while Fr. Tom might have a case for invoking CCC #2477 if it was just the one or two women HLI acknowledges (since they apparently were paid off and their settlement involved silence) it is for these other women, other victims, that the Catechism allows us to speak out. And if that last scenario allows us to speak out, the following case nearly compels us to.

And the following day, Carol McKinley wrote on her Tenth Crusade website:

UPDATE - A blogger who says that Fr. Euteneuer was Godfather to three of her children has blog posts up HERE and HERE that indicates she was told the story by an HLI Board member and she had a troubling experience (though not sexual) with him herself.

As you'll discover if you click on the two links embedded in McKinley’s posting above, they point to postings dated 25 and 29 January by a blogger named Adele at the Journey to Therese website.  In the first of these postings, Adele states that “three of us at least” had written to Euteneuer's bishop to make complaints about him.

It’s in the second of the two postings that Adele notes Euteneuer was godfather to three of her children.  She then states, 

The betrayal came when we were courageously informed  by one of the Board Members of Human Life International on December 23,  that "Fr. Tom" had sexually abused vulnerable women, and then said that in "Fr. Tom's" resignation letter that he had cited an "inappropriate relationship".  This last phrase is a huge abuse besides the other, as it is unfair to any of the women in question.  It was not a relationship, it was abuse.   My husband and I feel so betrayed by one whom we considered a Spiritual Father and a man of God.

She then goes on to say that she wants to challenge HLI board members and others who have information about this story to “come forward and reveal the truth.”  She issues this challenge for the following reason:

If there is one woman abused, you can be sure that there are many more out there that are hurting, and no one is sticking up for them.

Place the preceding statements—and I want to stress that these are all being made on conservative pro-life blogs by former friends and allies of Fr. Euteneuer—side by side with what Euteneuer states in his confession yesterday, and a disturbing disconnect between what he says and what they say is evident:

1.    Euteneuer insists that his violations of chastity occurred with one woman; Adele and O’Toole speak of multiple women, and Adele cites an HLI official speaking off the record as her source.  O’Toole also says that HLI has revealed—off the record, of course—that more than one woman has made allegations.
2.     Euteneuer says his “ministry of exorcism” was almost always conducted with supervision and third parties present.  O’Toole reports that there was “a culture of negligence” around this ministry, insofar as church officials are concerned, and that Euteneuer “flew around” the country for years conducting exorcisms on “vulnerable women,” with a source who has inside information stating that he “targeted” many women under the guise of offering them pastoral support.  And was “sexually inappropriate” with more than one of these.
3.    Euteneuer states that there was never any fiscal impropriety in any of this, and no payoffs were made.  O’Toole says that the exorcism trips were funded by cash and checks given directly to Euteneuer, without knowledge of HLI or his bishop.  And that hush money was paid out, according to his sources.
4.    Euteneuer exonerates church officials of all blame.  Adele states that she and at least two others had written to his bishop to complain about his abuse of his pastoral authority.  And so, at some point, church officials were informed directly by various people of a situation demanding their response.

And then there’s this: following the release of Euteneuer’s confession at LifeSiteNews yesterday, HLI officials finally broke silence.  As Roger Bianchini notes at this Warren County (Virginia) news site, journalists have been trying to obtain information about the story from the time Euteneuer left HLI last August, and neither HLI nor church authorities have been willing to disclose any information.  

And what the board of directors of HLI say in response to Euteneuer’s confession (again, they released their statement at the LifeSiteNews site) is revealing: they admit that HLI had received allegations in addition to those about the single case Euteneuer disclosed yesterday.  And they state explicitly that they are releasing this information in response to Euteneuer’s confession of the day before.  

This official statement by the organization Euteneuer formerly headed is extremely serious, because it flatly calls into question the veracity of the information he released in his confession at the same site the day before.

Bishop Barbarito of Palm Springs also provided an official statement to LifeSiteNews in response to Euteneuer’s confession.  It states that the diocese had previously known of “inappropriate crossing of adult heterosexual boundaries on the occasion of carrying out his priestly ministry.”  (Note the interesting insistence on "adult" and "heterosexual" running through both Euteneuer's and Barbarito's statements: does this imply that it is acceptable or thinkable to violate one's role as a pastor, if one does so with a member of the opposite sex who is an adult?  This insistence seems to me to overlook--it seems deliberately to mask--what is extremely disturbing in this story: that Fr. Eueteneuer violated the relationship of pastoral trust that ought always to exist between pastor and parishioner.)

And, as usual, Survivors Network of Abuse by Priests (SNAP) is right on the money when it notes, through Barbara Dorris, the SNAP Outreach Director,

We hope Fr. Euteneuer is telling the truth but we suspect he's not. Rarely do clerics who abuse their power do so only once.

Given the response of Euteneuer’s own organization, HLI, to his confession yesterday, I think it is almost impossible to doubt that at least some of the information about other women “targeted” by Fr. Euteneuer in his “ministry of exorcism” is accurate.  And that we will be hearing further disclosures down the road.

And if this is the case—if there have been other violations of pastoral authority in this case—how can one disagree with Barbara Dorris’s conclusion about the behavior of Bishop Barbarito and other church authorities in this situation:

We are disappointed that Bishop Barbarito and HLI have kept secret for months about this admitted violation and are keeping silent even now. It's irresponsible for church and non-profit officials to let an admitted wrongdoer "spin" his own wrongdoing. Barbarito and HLI are abdicating their responsibility.

And as more stories come out down the road, what’s going to become, I wonder, of a significant aspect of the “ministry” of Human Life International—to promote chastity and attack gays, with very specific accusations that gay priests are responsible for the sexual abuse in the Catholic priesthood?  HLI has a whole section of its website dedicated to disseminating “research” on precisely that point.

And, as Laura Esquivel reports at Right Wing Watch, when the Mark Foley scandal developed several years ago, this is what one HLI official, Jason Jones, had to say about Foley’s statement that he had been molested by a priest in his youth.

If his claim that he was the victim of sexual molestation by a clergyman, it only further proves that known homosexuals should not be admitted to the priesthood. Foley's actions were that of homosexual predator, not a pedophile. Homosexuals reproduce sexually by molesting children. This creates a cycle of violence and disordered behavior that creates future generations of abusers and predators. 

This case of sexual molestation by a clergyman “only further proves that known homosexuals should not be admitted to the priesthood”: singing that hateful song (with its next hateful verse about gays as sexual predators) is going to be a bit more difficult to do now, after the group doing the singing has had to admit that its priest-leader for the past decade has abused his pastoral authority by luring a woman or women under his authority into sexual relationships.  

Slamming the gays and keeping them out of the priesthood wouldn’t have screened Tom Euteneuer out of the priesthood, would it?  Maybe we’ve been on the wrong track for some time now, in our analysis of where the problems lie in the abuse crisis, and how to solve them. 

(And as a side note: Esquivel links to a Christian News Wire article for the preceding statement by Jason Jones.  That article is now gone from the link to which Esquivel points.  I do find it still online, however, at this Standard Newswire site.  It will be interesting to see how much scrubbing of information about Euteneuer and ties to him occurs at various websites in coming days.  If you want to read about this story, now might be the best time to obtain as much accurate information as is out there.)

Addendum: I'm just now seeing this late in the day.  Roger Bianchini has revised his blog posting to which I link above and has now published it on Huffington Post.  This story is not going to go away anytime soon, with coverage at such widely read media sites.  A disturbing tidbit in Bianchini's reporting on this story: he states that the blogger named Adele who revealed information about Euteneuer on the Journey to Therese website has received threats that she considers death threats.

The Euteneuer Story: Right-Wing Catholic Websites in Uproar Over Pro-Life Priest's Confession

 

The story about Fr. Thomas Euteneuer just continues to get stranger and stranger.  And here’s one of the strangest aspects: it seems to have broken—it exploded wide open—on right-wing Catholic websites first of all.  Which is to say, on the websites of those for whom Euteneuer has been a hero until recently.  That in itself is a big story, it seems to me.  When folks of the political and religious right finally turn on one of their own, they almost always do so only after they’ve accumulated incontrovertible evidence of his or her betrayal of their trust.  Unlike their counterparts on the left, folks on the political and religious right are not in the habit of creating circular firing squads to assassinate each other.  They stick together and save their fire for the enemy.  

But when they do finally turn on one of their own, they usually do so with a vengeance.  And so what I’ve been reading on some of the websites of the Catholic right in the past day or so, after having learned of Euteneuer’s confession, is hair-raising.  Euteneuer’s confession about his “violations” of chastity is here, by the way, at Lifesite news.  This link was embedded in yesterday’s article at Right Wing Watch to which my posting last evening links.

I don’t spend a lot of time on the websites of the Catholic right (or the religious right in general) because, to be frank, there’s a lot meanness on them.  Many of them bubble with vitriol and spite.  And frequent encounters with that kind of meanness—the particularly livid kind fueled by unquestioned belief in one’s own religious uprightness—can quickly corrode the soul.  Since I already have reasons aplenty in my own life to ward against corrosion of the soul, I don’t go looking for new ones.

And then there’s the—well, plain stupidity—of some of these websites and their theological prescriptions and proscriptions, which tend to be as devoid of thought as they are of humanity.  And which contain paragraphs like the following (this in a recent posting commenting on Euteneuer’s case):

Unrepentant sin turns your soul into a magnet for diabolical spirits. The Rosary, the Crucifix and a state of grace is the repellent.

Honestly, I don’t know whether the childish, magical theology in that paragraph offends me more, or the subject-verb agreement error.  Best to stay away from these sites and try in that way to keep the demon of snark inside me ill-fed.

It’s important in the case of the Euteneuer story, however, to take a peek at what’s bubbling furiously these days on right-wing Catholic websites, I think.  I recommend this because there are important pieces of the story on these sites that add valuable context to Euteneuer’s published confession yesterday.  Pieces from Euteneuer’s former cronies which suggest that there may well be more to the story than he himself is telling in his confession.

In what follows (and in a subsequent follow-up posting), I want to bring to readers’ attention a sampling of statements about the Euteneuer case from recent reactionary Catholic blogs, where the story appears to have been breaking for some days now.  In fact, it appears that the choice of some blogs maintained by former admirers of Euteneuer to begin breaking his story is precisely what precipitated his published confession yesterday.

As I offer these links to various Catholic blog and news sites, I want to underscore that this is an important story.  The Euteneuer story is important for the following reasons:

1.    Euteneuer has been an important figure in American Catholicism up until recently, a major player in the powerful right-wing sector of the American Catholic church which exercises growing influence over the direction now being taken by the entire Catholic church in the U.S.

Google the terms “Euteneuer” and “EWTN,” and you’ll get 64 pages of hits.  Fr. Euteneuer has been all over that major Catholic network for some years now, a network regarded by many Catholics and non-Catholics as the official voice of the U.S. Catholic church, whose founder Mother Angelica last year received the top honor the pope can offer lay or religious Catholics, the Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice medal.  You name the topic in the past decade, and Euteneuer has been on EWTN talking about it— pontificating about exorcism and peddling his book on that topic; broadcasting homilies about the Terri Schiavo case; celebrating EWTN Masses; chatting with Raymond Arroyo, Life on the Rock team Fr. Mark and Doug Barry, and EWTN radio talk host Barbara McGuigan.

And that’s only the tip of the iceberg, vis-à-vis Fr. Euteneuer’s media visibility and connections.  As I noted yesterday, he’s been on FOX news to go toe to toe with Sean Hannity, representing himself as the official voice of the Catholic church on issues like whether married Catholics practicing contraception should be denied communion.  He’s had feature articles in the Legionaries of Christ-owned newspaper National Catholic Register (which EWTN has just bought).  In 2005, the Catholic lay group Legatus awarded Euteneuer its distinguished John O’Connor Award for Life.  And as Loma O’Connor notes in a Palm Beach Post article* yesterday, Euteneuer himself says that in the last ten years, he has he traveled more than 1.1 million miles, visited 58 countries, and made thousands of public appearances to spread his version of the Catholic message. 

This is a man of great prominence who has had entrée in the most influential circles of the American Catholic church, and who has been lionized by those circles.  What he is now revealing is a big deal, because it implicates all of those influential circles and not merely himself.  Media superstars are our own creation: Euteneuer is, to certain extent, what we in the American Catholic church have wrought in the past decade, and the mirror he holds up to us now ought to show us who we have become, to a great extent, in the past decade.  The picture is not pretty.

2.    This is a big story, as well, because the group that Euteneuer headed for a decade, Human Life International, is a right-wing Catholic political activist group with strong influence both in American political life and around the world.  As the Reality Check website’s  overview of HLI notes, the organization holds training conferences and sponsors “pro-life missionary trips” around the world.  The HLI website claims it has trained activists in 160 countries, through these missionary trips.  It has 59 satellite offices in 51 nations, and is considered one of the largest anti-family planning organizations in the world.  

For a number of decades now, with strong but not always easily tracked funding sources, this organization has bombarded nations around the world with pamphlets and media materials promoting its peculiar version of Catholic pro-life teaching, which regards contraception as a kind of gateway drug leading to abortion and a "culture of death."  Rather than diminishing abortions, HLI teaches women in nations throughout the world to think, contraception fosters abortion and is in and of itself as anti-life as is abortion itself.  By preventing unwanted pregnancies, we are, in some magical-mystical universe of belief inhabited by these folks, increasing abortions.

3.    Finally, the Euteneuer story is a big story because, as I’ve previously noted, this is a story that has broken first on the websites of individuals and groups formerly strongly allied to Euteneuer and strongly supportive of Human Life International.  When sources like this—friends—begin to speak out about an individual who has formerly been held in almost godlike esteem in their circles, it behooves us to listen.  We need to listen because when former allies and friends begin providing information to fill in a hazy and ambiguous picture about spectacularly unprincipled behavior on the part of someone whose career has been built around preaching principles to others, you can be sure we're hearing accurate information.  And necessary information, if we want a complete picture of what's going on.

Finally, it's important to hear this testimony right now, because it's entirely possible that some of it will now begin to be scrubbed from various websites and publications, as various groups seek now to disguise the strong ties they've had up to now with Euteneuer and HLI.  I've already found one instance in which I think such scrubbing has taken place recently, and will report on that in my next posting.

And that posting will provide readers with a smorgasbord of links to Catholic websites I've read in the past day, commenting on the Euteneuer story and its implications.  As you'll see when I point you to these sites, they've already been discussing this story for some days now, and it's apparent that what Euteneuer chose to reveal in his confession yesterday is a response to what is circulating on these websites--and is rather more damning than what he chose to reveal, if the sources cited on these sites are speaking truthfully.

*H/t to my wonderful e-friend Kathy Hughes, who provided this article.

Prominent Right-Wing Catholic Priest-Activist Fr. Euteneuer Caught in Scandal

Remember Fr. Thomas Euteneuer, the priest-director of the high-profile right-wing Catholic Republican party front "pro-life" beltway organization Human Life International?  Euteneuer came on my radar screen back in 2009 when he published a Good Friday homily entitled “Good Friday: The World’s First Exorcism,” which he apparently first delivered in 2006, and which he then published on his HLI  blog in 2009.  A homily that was, well, flat crazy.  And not a little dangerous.  

It's full of apocalyptic folderol and bloody apocalyptic imagery, and uses the word "Jesus" twice, while it talks about "blood" ten times, and about people "mired in" "immoral lifestyles" on whom we need to call  down the blood of Jesus and free from the clutches of Satan.  Euteneuer continued on my radar screen as he combined his Republican front work "pro-life" activities with some good old-fashioned gay-bashing, writing hair-raising essays about how gay marriage spells the end of civilization.  

And my radar continued to ping when one of the top employees of HLI began to plaster this blog with toxic comments about this and that--most recently, with rants about the end of DADT and the moral decline of the military.  Which is a big theme with HLI--the military, that is.  Fr. Euteneuer used to make much of his supposed Marine background until a former Marine and Catholic convert named Frank Weathers began to question Euteneuer's claims about the extent of his military service, and those claims began to be revised in publications about the HLI director. 

Euteneuer and the HLI bunch are, in other words, firmly in that manly-man camp of thinking about the priesthood, re: which I blogged earlier today. They're in the camp that sees the gays as the problem in the priesthood and the world at large, and they're just outdone that the military, which looms large in their apocalyptic right-wing version of Catholicism, will now begin permitting openly gay service members to serve. 

And so with my radar pinging along, I wondered what on earth was going on a few months back, when Euteneuer suddenly disappeared from his post at HLI and showed up back in the diocese of Palm Beach, Florida, where he's apparently incardinated as a priest, and where he has also apparently been continuing what he calls his "ministry of exorcism."  I wondered, because priests who head high-profile Republican front groups right-wing Catholic "pro-life" organizations don't normally up and leave those organizations in haste like this unless some story is attached to the departure.

I said nothing about any of this on this blog because, of course, I knew nothing.  But I continued thinking my own thoughts and wondering whether we'd hear some story to explain that departure down the road. 

And now the story begins to come out: all the while that he was calling down the blood of Jesus on those "mired in" immoral lifestyles and ranting about gay marriage as the end of civilization and casting out demons, it appears Fr. Euteneuer has been involved in his own little drama.  Involving, he admits, an adult female with whom he "violated the boundaries of chastity" without engaging in "the sexual act."  Said adult female was, in fact, under his pastoral care in his "ministry of exorcism."

And what an adult chooses to do with another adult in a private and consensual relationship, I wouldn't  usually care a flip about or consider any business of mine at all.  Except for this: when religious authority figures betray the trust of someone to whom they're ministering by enticing them into an intimate encounter, they do something seriously harmful and seriously wrong.  By its very nature, such a relationship involves a power dynamic that  threatens to turn the person enticed into intimacy by the religious authority figure into an object, and which turns the relationship into a relationship of coercion.  I'm of the opinion that those who take vows of chastity should try to abide by them or seriously consider leaving ministry if they are unable to do so.

As I say, I wouldn't consider any of this my particular business, except: for the exceptionally serious violation of pastoral trust that is, by Fr. Euteneuer's own admission, at the dark heart of this story.  And except for this: except this particular priest has made it his business to advocate for the denial of communion to Catholics using contraception.  And to argue that Senator Ted Kennedy was a "heretical Catholic" about whom there was nothing admirable from a "moral point of view," and that this fellow Catholic should be denied a Catholic burial. 

And he has stoutly defended the barring of gay persons from the priesthood on the ground that "celibacy . . . requires that men renounce marriage for the sake of the kingdom of God—something homosexuals cannot do."  And that the homosexual "lifestyle compromises a man’s ability to competently serve as a priest."  And  permitting gays to form legalized same-sex unions will spell "'the end' of the Christian civilization whose values used to form the basis of American common life."  

And while decrying the immorality of his brother and sister Catholics who happen to be gay or lesbian, and while denouncing a brother Catholic as "heretical" and arguing for the denial of Catholic burial to him, and while calling for the barring of Catholics using contraception from the communion table, Fr. Euteneuer has been using his "ministry of exorcism" to violate "the boundaries of chastity"?  Something's wrong with this picture.

As I say, none of this would be my business or would merit commentary if this particular right-wing Catholic activist in a clerical collar had not made it his business for some years now to try to further the cause of one political party and the agenda of that party to capture the Catholic vote, by playing the gay-bashing card over and over, and by attacking fellow Catholics who have different political and theological views in a conspicuously nasty way.  While, it now appears, betraying the moral principles he accuses others of betraying.

And so here's yet another of those rabidly anti-gay manly-men priests who should give anyone thinking about their analysis of the ills of the contemporary church, and of the remedy for those ills, serious cause to think.  Serious cause to think about the pitfalls of their analysis that the gays are the big problem in the priesthood, and getting them out of the way--and attacking them at every turn in society at large--will surely cure the ills of the church today.