Democrats Secret Weapon - How American Bishops Kept Abortion Legal for Thirty Years

Thirty years of parades, demonstrations, side-walk counseling, civil disobedience, educational campaigns and annual letters from the Catholic bishops have not only failed to bring forth a Human Life Amendment but have left entrenched abortion as a right deeper in the culture.

Unfortunately, the evidence suggests that the Catholic bishops themselves, with a few exceptions, constitute the Secret Weapon of the Democrat Party which functions as the chief advocate and protector of the abortion industry. This conclusion resulted from an examination not of the Catholic bishops' pro-life rhetoric but of their spending.

The fact remains that the great bulk of the work and leadership in the cause of Life came from the Catholic laity. In general, the Bishops have done less than nothing. A few examples from the Chicago area serve to illustrate this point.

Joe Scheidler has been leading pro-life demonstrations, training pro-life activists and educating through public appearances since Roe v Wade in 1973. His work at abortion clinics cut deeply into the abortionists' expected revenues and undermined the ideology of sexual liberation which defined abortion as a political right. Joe Scheidler, a devout Catholic, husband and father, did such damage to the abortion industry that the National Organization of Women (NOW), an instrument of the Democrat Party, sued him in federal court, under RICO statutes, for racketeering. They demanded millions of dollars in judgment and imposed on him burdensome legal costs.

Joe Scheidler was, and is, doing God's work. Furthermore, he was doing the Church's work. Yet, in all that time, the Archdiocese of Chicago provided him with no financial help, even when NOW had put him under their legal guns.

Conrad Wojnar lived through a similar story. He quit his job as a social worker and dedicated his amazing organizing skills to helping women avoid abortion as a solution to personal problems. A devout Catholic husband and father, Wojnar put together The Womens' Center, a place where women with problem pregnancies can find sympathetic counseling, learn the facts about abortion, receive medical referrals and find material help. The Womens' Center provides such services in an atmosphere of Catholic piety and morals. Wojnar has even set aside space in the building for a chapel where priests come almost every day to offer Mass.

NOW also sued Wojnar for racketeering, threatening to take his home and leave him destitute. He too does God's work, which is supposed to be the Church's work. As with Scheidler's Pro-Life Action League, Wojnar's Womens' Center has no financial help from the Archdiocese of Chicago.

In another part of the Chicago area, AID for Women operates in a similar manner to that of The Womens' Center. The Archdiocese has likewise failed to help this organization, as it has failed to help other pro-life organizations like the Illinois Citizens for Life.

This ecclesiastical failure cannot be understood without reference to the political situation. The political fact relevant here is that the Republican Party has officially taken up the cause of Life. It has become the home of many former Democrats who saw their party taken over by social revolutionaries, change-agents who have nothing but hostility for Catholic teaching and morality. What the Catholic bishops have done is place the interests of the Democrat Party over the lives of unborn children. They accomplished this by protecting Democrat candidates from defeat at the polls over abortion and other family issues. They enlarged Democrat power by funding organizations and organizers that advanced Democrat political fortunes. The Catholic bishops in collaboration with change agents and community activists, devised a scheme by which devout, church-going Catholics, including serious pro-lifers, mostly Republicans, would fund the agenda and protect the political power of the Democrats.

The Catholic bishops created a funding vehicle known as the Campaign for Human Development, later known as the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD). They collect money from the faithful in church the Sunday before Thanksgiving Day in November. The acronym should more properly stand for the Catholic Campaign to Help Democrats.

What makes this funding vehicle extraordinary is that it, in its by-laws, prohibits giving money to organizations that actually feed, clothe or house needy persons. The funds must go to organizations that foster "social change". Not coincidentally such organizations had already come into being, tailor-made, to carry out the mission that the CCHD had specified. These organizations follow a structure and philosophy established by the Industrial Area Foundation (IAF).

The IAF embodies the beliefs and practices developed by its founder, Saul Alinsky. In the course of time, he trained many organizers who have gone on to successful careers in politics and "social change" organizations. Perhaps the most famous of his proteges is the pro-abortion feminist Hillary Clinton. She actually wrote her senior thesis at Wellsley College on the radical politics of Saul Alinsky. She later became the First Lady when her Democrat husband Bill was elected President of the U.S. and then became the Democrat Senator from the State of New York. Alinsky trained other famous political figures, among them Cesar Chavez, who forced Mexican grape-pickers into his union in California, and Dick Morris, the Clinton's political consultant, who helped them win the White House.

Social agitation, confrontation, and personal attacks characterize Alinsky-style political organizing. It betrays a strong Marxist influence. This philosophy opposes fundamental Christian principles, because it divides persons into antagonistic groups, the "haves" and "have-nots". It follows an ideology of "class struggle", where one side is considered the enemy. The dehumanization of "the enemy" results in certain ethical consequences: persons lose their dignity as children of God and become means to an end: the end justifies the means. As Alinsky wrote, "Ethics are determined by whether one is losing or winning." He also wrote, "He who fears corruption, fears life."

Alinsky advocated and practiced what we now term, "the politics of personal destruction." The Democrats use this most effectively in destroying the reputations of their enemies, prominent political figures like Robert Bork, Clarence Thomas, and most recently, Rush Limbaugh. He wrote it down in his books, "Ridicule is man's most potent weapons" and "Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it and polarize it."

Considering Alinsky's ethics, it should come as no surprise that he actually dedicated one of his books, "Rules for Radicals," to Lucifer. What could be more fitting? Lucifer carried out the ultimate rebellion. He too championed "social change", as he does today. He too rejects God's moral law, as Alinsky rejects the authority of the Catholic Church and the morality that it teaches. Alinsky opposes the very fundamentals for which the Pope and the bishops have always stood.

Whereas the Church teaches a dogmatic theology, Alinsky protests, "I detest and fear dogma." Whereas the Church defends eternal truths, Alinsky insists, "Truth is relative and changing." Whereas the Catholic bishops have publicly declared that abortion goes against God's law, Alinsky proclaims, "I have always believed that birth control and abortion are personal rights."

Alinsky's theory of rebellion has a history. He did not just make this stuff up. It goes back at least as far as the time before the French Revolution, where the socio-sexual revolutionaries sought to overthrow Throne and Altar. They specifically wanted to overthrow the moral order that protected marriage and children. Pat Buchanan pointed out that during, "the French Revolution, the Paris mob used the high altar at Notre Dame Cathedral to canonize the town tramp as their Goddess of Reason."

Their rejection of the moral order was so radical that many of them turned to Satanism as a religion. Good evidence exists that Karl Marx, himself, the founder of the Communist Party, was a Satanist. He wrote poems praising Satan.

His own son-in-law, Edward Eveling, gave lectures on, "The Wickeness of God" and himself wrote a poem in praise of Satan. Frederick Engels, Marx's partner in communist revolution, expressed the rebellious spirit thus, (Communism) "abolishes eternal truths, abolishes all religion, and all morality."

A colleague of Marx was a German poet, Heinrich Heine, who spoke well of Alinsky's role model, Lucifer, saying, "I called the Devil and he came." Marx's follower Mikhail Bakunin, another rebel, expressed similar sentiments, "Satan is the eternal rebel, the first freethinker and emancipator of worlds." Bakunin also wrote, "In the revolution we will have to awaken the Devil in the people, to stir up their basest passions."

A fellow socialist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, also worshipped Satan and praised him, writing, "God is stupidity and cowardice...God is evil." And yet, amazingly, Catholic bishops bragged about their friendship with Saul Alinsky.

For thirty years the Bishops have been paying lip-service to the right to life, while putting Catholic money into Alinsky-style organizations like the IAF, using CCHD as a funding scheme. They gave IAF itself a million dollars. They gave a million to ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) where Hillary Clinton learned her trade. Not too long ago, Joseph Cardinal Bernardin gave a million to fund the Chicago Metropolitan Sponsors (CMS) (while shutting down parochial schools) so that it could hire IAF to organize and train persons to staff what eventually became known as United Power for Action and Justice (UPAJ). When the Cardinal was criticized for giving so much Catholic money to this group, he answered that the money did not really belonging to the Church. Someone gave it to him for the purpose of funding CMS. No one in authority has yet pointed out that donating money in such a manner constitutes the essence of money-laundering.

This child of CMS, UPAJ, is an effort to induce Lutheran, Baptist, Episcopalian, Jewish and Moslem Republicans living in Chicago suburbs to funnel money, just as the Catholics do, into the organizing projects of the Democrat Party. It is of course no coincidence that the traditional allies (Perhaps "agencies" is a better word.) of the Democrat Party, the labor unions, energetically sponsoredthe CMS. These include the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) and the Illinois Education Association (IEA).

AFSCME is one of the organizers of a march on Washington being planned for spring 2004 in defense of abortion "rights." Other organizers are NARAL, NOW, and Planned Parenthood Federation of America.(1)

The IEA is affiliated with the National Education Association, a reliable organ of the Democrat Party and an aggressive proponent of abortion, feminism, homosexuality and other evils long denounced by Catholic tradition.

In California, Catholic Charities and CCHD-funded IAF oranizations stole the election of Republican Congressman Robert Dornan, by means of documented immigration and election fraud. Hundreds of invalidly naturalized persons were driven from getting their citizenship papers directly to the polling places.

Catholic money helped steal an election away from a devout Catholic and patriotic man, with a perfect voting record on the right to life and other moral issues, on behalf of a woman with an anti-life and anti-family Democrat agenda, Loretta Sanchez, a Clintonite radical with campaign support from the usual allies of the Democrat Party: the NOW, NARAL (National Abortion Rights Action League), the homosexual advocacy group Human Rights Campaign and other such groups.

The Illinois Leader, an internet newspaper (www.illinoisleader.com) found that 75% of the Catholic priests in the Chicago Archdiocese have officially registered as Democrats. Thus they ally themselves with the party of "social change", the party of permanent revolution, the party of abortionists, homosexuals, pornographers, adulterers, fornicators and perjurers.

According to Block, "The Catholic members of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, of which there are well over a hundred, cast more votes in favor of abortion than not. In fact, Catholic politicians - whose Church teaches the sanctity of human life from the moment of conception - have demonstrated a worse voting record on life issues than their Presbyterian and Methodist counterparts." (1)

Francis Cardinal George recently called for changes in U.S. immigration policy that dovetail with Democrat political objectives and echo the work of IAF operatives in defeating the election of Bob Dornan in California. These include the legalization of undocumented residents and the discharge of the U.S. "blockade" at our borders.

This latest pronouncement from George shows how he and other Catholic bishops are working to advance the Democrat Party. Immigrants vote for Democrats not Republicans. Liberalization of immigration laws sits high on the Democrat agenda.

George also failed to stop the pro-abortion candidate for the Democrat Party's Presidential nomination Al Sharpton from speaking under Archdiocesan auspices at St. Sabina's parish, where the Fr. Michael Pfleger serves as Pastor.

Many of the Chicago area priests hold membership in another Alinsky-inspired organization, Call to Action. It not only follows the organizational principles Alinsky developed but also embraces his revolutionary world view, taking the Democrat ideology of moral revisionism into the very heart of the Catholic Church.

Do the Catholic bishops oppose CTA or prohibit it in any way from operating in their dioceses? Not at all. CTA has complete freedom to organize and promote its agenda of dissent which seeks to destroy the papacy and the Church hierarchy, to win acceptance for divorce, abortion, contraception, homosexuality, priestesses, liturgical abuses, a married clergy, and the abolition of property rights. Bishops have actually appointed CTA dissenters as pastors in their parishes.

Catholic bishops gave a million dollars to organizations whose world view excludes everything Catholic, to ACORN, to IAF, to CMF but not a cent to struggling Catholic operations like Joe Schiedler's Pro-life Action League or Conrad Wojnar's Womens' Center. They withhold support to the cause of life and the family because that would undermine Democrat power and the revolutionary ideology which drives it.

Stephanie Block put it best, "This year, when the collection plate comes around, remember that you can sabotage Church teaching with a flick of your wrist. You can shoot it down by paying for organizations to fight for health clinics that dispense contraceptives and make abortion referrals. You can shoot it down by paying for organizing that supports pro-abortion politicians. You can shoot it down by paying for organizing that trains Catholics to dissent. Just don't be surprised by the blood on your hands."

1. Block, Stephanie 2003. Shooting Ourselves in the Feet: How One of the Most Potent Weapons Serving the 'Culture of Death' Lies in the Pockets of Catholic Donors, www.CatholicCitizens.org

2. Mask, Teresa 2003. "Overhaul immigration cardinal tells conference, Daily Herald, (Mar. 1), p. 11.

I don't want bishops endorsing or railing against specific named candidates. It's a cheapening of their mission.

I didn't say anything about endorsing or railing candidates. Why can't O'Malley simply enforce Church law? Which is: Those in a state of mortal sin cannot receive any Sacraments, except for Confession.

More Amchurch exceptions for Amchurch "Catholic" baby-killers by Amchurch bishops.

Nothing new.

I believe the Archdiocese did file an amicus brief on Joe's behalf. Funny it doesn't mention that. Joe's always been complimentary of Cardinal George and whatever help he's given.

I agree with the author's criticism of the bishops for failing to support courageous pro-lifers. But the author makes a pretty big leap here:

The acronym should more properly stand for the Catholic Campaign to Help Democrats. What makes this funding vehicle extraordinary is that it, in its by-laws, prohibits giving money to organizations that actually feed, clothe or house needy persons. The funds must go to organizations that foster "social change". Not coincidentally such organizations had already come into being, tailor-made, to carry out the mission that the CCHD had specified. These organizations follow a structure and philosophy established by the Industrial Area Foundation (IAF). The IAF embodies the beliefs and practices developed by its founder, Saul Alinsky.

Perhaps those responsible for founding the CCHD were Alinskyites, but it's irresponsible to tar all or most bishops with this brush. I find it impossible to excuse their failure to excommunicate pro-abortion politicians though.

I protest an abortion clinic in Iowa City Iowa. The clinic is surronded by 5 Catholic, 1 Jewish and 4-5 other churches and not one priest,rabbi etc has ever come to stand with me nor any lay people.

I used to go pretty regularly to the prayer (Rosary) vigil outside Planned Infanticide in Brookline. There were always a handful of nuns and a priest. Nevertheless, I have the feeling that these were the faithful remnant. Cardinal Law did little if anything publicly to make Kerry and Kennedy uncomfortable. Cardinal Law would walk in the annual March for Life, but I remember Phil Kotter (the Boston equivalent of Joe Scheidler) holding a huge "Excommunicate Kerry and Kennedy" sign and staring daggers at him.

Like it or not, such a statement would likely lead to the loss of tax-exempt status for the Church.

Probably. But the bishops could excommunicate pro-abortion politicians. And if that resulted in the loss of their tax-exempt status, too bad.

How many "Catholics" in Massachusetts do you think, now, have no problem voting for Kerry (or Kennedy, as they have always done) as a result of his lack of leadership?

Countless numbers. I live here. I see it. It's sickening. I'm very disappointed with the new bishop.

"George also failed to stop the pro-abortion candidate for the Democrat Party's Presidential nomination Al Sharpton from speaking under Archdiocesan auspices at St. Sabina's parish, where the Fr. Michael Pfleger serves as Pastor.

Many of the Chicago area priests hold membership in another Alinsky-inspired organization, Call to Action. It not only follows the organizational principles Alinsky developed but also embraces his revolutionary world view, taking the Democrat ideology of moral revisionism into the very heart of the Catholic Church."

I thought George had an "iron fist"? I know many still say that he can't act more forcefully with his priests because that would drive too many away from the Church.
Hard to believe.

That's why I hope O'Malley does not imitate Burke in denying the Eucharist to Kerry before the election; he would likely cause Bush to lose lots of votes in a backlash.

I am assumming Bishop O'Malley is more interested in saving souls rather than votes. If Kerry had an ounce of decency (which I doubt he has), he would not receive the Eucharist knowing his supports the murder of unborn children.

Funny how John the Baptist didn't see calling out Herod the tetrarch as cheapening his mission. I thought that the mission was the salvation of souls. Calling leaders onto the carpet was part of the job with many of the prophets.

It is sad when the leaders of the church are more concerned with temporal status than eternal life.

"I live here. I see it. It's sickening. I'm very disappointed with the new bishop. "

Tough words but one must consider that the Catholic Church has been traumatized into avoiding being branded political [or 'divisive'].

Hence the words 'Priests for Life' should be an oxymoron. Homilies never address shacking up or contraception because 'homilies are only address Bible readings' [but if the Priest can't source these marriage topics in the Bible readings, where do they come from?]

The sad thing is the Bishop needs to be the 'comeback kid'. The Church has lost the public when politicans find that being pro-abortion is very acceptable. One cannot blame politicians for reading the tea leaves. Even Bush has not succeeded in converting the mind and heart of Laura in his own household.

Perhaps those responsible for founding the CCHD were Alinskyites, but it's irresponsible to tar all or most bishops with this brush.

I disagree. It's not just the individual founders, but the goals and the entire purpose of the program which is Alinsky-ite. And the bishops continue to support and fund the organization, not just as 1 more among many others, but with its own special Sunday collection. The bishops must bear responsibility for the organizations they fund and support.

Cardinal Law did little if anything publicly to make Kerry and Kennedy uncomfortable.

This is an understatement. After the shooting at the Brookline clinic, didn't Law shut down all pro-life protests in the entire diocese? And wasn't he seen on TV flouncing around the Kennedys whenever another one of them died in some self-inflicted accident and needed a showy funeral?

Excommunication is a specific canonical penalty. The Church would have to, canonically, state that voting for abortion-rights legislation carries the penalty of excommunication. This would have to come from the Pope.

A politician who publicly advocates legal abortion and refuses to change his position after correction from his bishop is a formal heretic. He is no longer a Catholic and therefore should be refused communion.

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