“Catholics” for a Free Choice Celebrates Easter by Attacking the Church

By C-FAM Staff

 

     (NEW YORK – C-FAM) As Christians the world over prepare for the Easter holiday through the season of Lent, dissident pro-abortion group “Catholics” for a Free Choice (CFFC) has used this time to redouble its attacks on Catholic Church teaching, even claiming that the Catholic Church has initiated a “crusade against reason and science in the modern world” and that Church officials, presumably even the Pope, are motivated by “cruelty, obsession and hatred.”

     In an April 1 press release, CFFC attacked a new Church document that catalogues various strategies and verbal sleights used by anti-family groups to expand the sexual revolution through such means as “safe sex” education for children, the legalization of abortion and the legalization of homosexual “marriage.” For instance, the Vatican document, entitled “Lexicon on Ambiguous and Colloquial Terms and Family Life and Ethical Questions,” chronicles how poorly defined phrases like “reproductive health services” allow abortion proponents to fight for abortion rights, without having to use the controversial word “abortion” itself.

     CFFC president Frances Kissling says the Lexicon “.give(s) new and disturbing meaning to what has become a Vatican crusade against reason and science in the modern world. This document is a throwback to the days when church leaders disregarded scientific advances and ignored the suffering caused by abstract application of so-called principles and values in the face of human tragedy and need.”

     Kissling seems most incensed about passages in the Lexicon relating to “safe sex” and condoms. Kissling charges Church authorities with hypocrisy; “Church leaders claim to foster a culture of life, yet the lexicon contributes to a culture of death when it condemns the use of condoms to prevent the transmission of AIDS.”

     Kissling does not mention that current social science scholarship appears to vindicate the Catholic position. For example, a comprehensive report from the UN Population Division concludes that the enormous “safe sex” campaign in Africa has largely failed in its efforts to raise condom use. In another report, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) has found that Uganda is the only country in sub-Saharan Africa to successfully combat the spread of AIDS, and it has done so primarily through abstinence training.

     Kissling also objects to the Lexicon’s description of homosexuality, saying “This document resorts to long-rejected pseudo-psychology in characterizing homosexuality as an ‘unresolved psychological conflict’.Authors of the lexicon should consult any standard dictionary for definitions of abuse, cruelty, obsession and hatred, which are the major characteristics displayed by those who promulgate this lexicon.”

     The tactics described in the Lexicon are commonly seen during United Nations negotiations, where the Catholic Church has fought successfully against efforts to recognize abortion as an international human right. Not coincidentally, CFFC is continuing its campaign to have the Church’s Permanent Observer status at the UN revoked.

 

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