July 8, 2025
Catholic dissidents are a motley crew. They include ex-Catholics, Catholics in name only, and some who attend Mass. They are lay men and women, nuns and priests; more than a few are ex-nuns and ex-priests. What they have in common is anger: they are very angry at the Catholic Church. What do they want? They want to gut its moral theology and Protestantize it.
Practicing Catholics do not fund Catholic dissident organizations, so where do they get their cash? From elite foundations bent on undermining Catholicism. There are many of them, but the number-one contributor to these “organizations” (they are more like letterheads with an email address and a website) is the Arcus Foundation.
Arcus funds We Are Church, DignityUSA, New Ways Ministry, Catholics for Choice and the Women’s Alliance for Theology, Ethics and Ritual. All reject the Church’s teachings on marriage, the family, sexuality and ordination, yet claim to be Catholic.
Jon Stryker created the Arcus Foundation in 2000 to focus on queer causes and the preservation of the great apes. We are not sure how well he has done on the latter goal, but we are certain that he has succeeded in funding anti-Catholicism. A homosexual billionaire, in 2023 he gave a total of more than $42 million in grants and operating expenses to various organizations, some of which are dissident Catholic groups.
We Are Church is an umbrella group of ex-Catholics and Catholic malcontents. It is a member of the Global Network of Rainbow Catholics, a pro-homosexual outfit. Its leaders have tried very hard to mobilize everyday Catholics to join their efforts to radically change the Church from top to bottom. They have failed repeatedly, but they still try to tear it apart.
New Ways Ministry was founded in 1977 by Father Robert Nugent and Sister Jeannine Gramick. Their goal is to normalize homosexuality and to get the Church to change its teachings on sodomy. For decades this outfit has been roundly condemned by cardinals and bishops in Rome and the U.S., but in 2021 Pope Francis spoke positively of Gramick. Indeed, he warmly embraced her.
DignityUSA is another pro-homosexual entity. At one time its New York chaplain was Father Paul Shanley, the Boston child rapist who was thrown out of the priesthood after many clerics covered up for him.
Catholics for Choice is a pro-abortion and anti-Catholic letterhead. Frances Kissling, an ex-nun, succeeded in putting it on the map decades ago. The media love them, and no elite donor has been a steadier supporter of its policies more than the Ford Foundation. The Ford Foundation is so ideologically corrupt that Henry Ford II quit in protest in the 1970s.
Women’s Alliance for Theology, Ethics and Ritual (WATER) wants a woman to be pope, provided it is a woman who rejects the teachings of the Church on sexuality; it will settle for women priests right now.
Other dissident groups that are funded by the establishment include the National Coalition of American Nuns—it is openly pro-abortion—the Women’s Ordination Conference and NETWORK; the latter was run for many years by Sister Simone—Nuns-on-the-Bus—Campbell (the Democratic operative thinks abortion should be legal).
Arcus and the Ford Foundation are not alone in keeping these rogue groups alive. As expected, George Soros’ Open Society Foundations are donors to these anti-Catholic causes, as are the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation (Warren is a big abortion fan), the William & Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Huber Foundation.
We know of no organized effort to effectively assault the beliefs and practices of Jews, Muslims or Protestants. Just Catholics.
So while conservatives are rightly happy that there are some needed cultural shifts going on, they would be foolish to think that the enemies of Christianity, especially Catholicism, will go quietly into the night. Termites have a way of hanging around.
