West Wyoming priest admits to ‘poor judgment’ in showing gruesome abortion video to kids

timesleader.com ^ | February 05. 2015 | Steve Corbett

[Morgana]

WEST WYOMING — In a voice soft with contrition, Father Leo McKernan confessed.

“Poor judgment on my part,” he said when we spoke on the phone.

Now the good people of the parish of St. Monica must decide whether to forgive this man known for his rabid anti-abortion views and dedication to what the church calls “pro-life.”

The Roman Catholic priest from the Diocese of Scranton admitted he was wrong to approve the showing of a 14-minute “movie” to a religious instruction class of 11-year-olds, sixth-grade innocents who will shape the soul of the Church for generations to come.

No one asked the children’s parents for permission, either.

The woman who taught the “CCD” class — short for Confraternity of Christian Doctrine — allowed her “zeal to overcome her common sense,” the priest said.

Parish parents know her well. Some accuse her of sharing McKernan’s zeal as an enemy of abortion, a Constitutionally protected right that she and he call murder. One parishioner said he and his wife regularly become uncomfortable during Mass because the priest works his hatred for abortion into his sermons whenever he can.

If, though, the priest and the “teacher” truly respect the sanctity of life, why inflict a gruesome, bloody and violent dramatization of an abortion into the lives of the most vulnerable — the very children they claim they want to save and protect?

One child sat stoically through the film, facing a wall and refusing to look, her mother said when she called WILK to talk with me on the air. A little boy came home and opened up about what he saw, adding that the teacher had also once passed around plastic figures of a fetus in various stages of gestation, his mother said.

[Mears]

“but in a year or two Planned Parenthood will be glad to perform that gruesome procedure on the girls in the class without parental notification. That’s far more outrageous, if you ask me.”

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Absolutely——and that should not take place either.

I hate to see parents cut out of decision making on important things like this.

.

[kitkat]

“One parishioner said he and his wife regularly become uncomfortable during Mass because the priest works his hatred for abortion into his sermons whenever he can.”

If the parishioners are uncomfortable about hearing a priest preach against abortion, they aren’t true Catholics.

And by the way, the eleven year olds are in sixth grade and have already seen too much about sex and abortion on TV. Time they heard the other side.