by K. D. Whitehead

American Catholics can only reflect with deep shame on the role their government played in the preparation for and participation in the recent UN International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo. The Cairo conference itself surely represented some kind of moral low point in the modem world’s relentless slide into official immorality and decadence; and from the outset the U.S. government played the most active and prominent role in making the Cairo conference what it was.

Would anyone, twenty-five years ago, have thought that there could actually be a UN-sponsored international conference which would attempt to impose through government action a totally materialistic and utilitarian view of human beings upon the whole world?

Or would anyone ever have imagined that those opposed to the ruthless decimation of the next generation by abortion – supposedly required on the pretext that the world is, or will be, “overpopulated”- would be the ones automatically assumed to be the “bad guys” at such an international conference? Or that those who do not perceive any objection to having large numbers of the next generation killed off by abortion before they have a chance to be born would be the ones automatically assumed to be the “good guys?” The well-worn phrase of Nietzsche, “transvaluation of all values,” doesn’t succeed in conveying the truth of what has happened to traditional morality in the world of today. And it was Cairo that made it all happen. The world surely has traveled far and fast in the past quarter century.

As the Cairo conference demonstrated, however, the present administration in Washington proved to be only too willing to enlist all the power and prestige of the United States in order to help drive the world yet farther and faster down the wrong road which it has now chosen. The U.S. Government went into the Cairo conference with a firm and well-documented policy frankly aimed at pro- moting government “population control.”

When publicly challenged, notably by Pope John Paul II, whose unusually pointed criticisms of U.S. population policy were strongly echoed by a letter from the six American cardinals addressed to President Clinton himself, the U.S. Government clumsily tried to deny what its policy was and to deflect the criticisms back upon the pope and the Vatican; and then, when the heat apparently became too great, U.S. Government spokesmen, including both the president and the vice president, openly lied about what the U.S. policy verifiably was.

And as if this official, bare-faced lying was not disgraceful enough for the government of a great nation, the proud media of that same nation tamely tended to accept at absolute face value the government’s own assertions of what its policy was, rather than inquiring into the real truth of the matter. There were times, indeed, when the Clinton Administration was exonerated in the very same news story which was reporting other, damning facts which should have pointed to a conviction rather than to an exoneration. Where the U.S. Government’s population policy was concerned, however, especially with regard to its position on abortion, the kind of adversarial, “expose” journalism at the expense of the White House made famous in such affairs as Watergate and Iran-Contra temporarily disappeared from the American media. What was the U.S. Government’s international abortion policy going into the Cairo conference? In March 1994, the U.S. State Department sent out a cable outlining this policy to all American diplomatic and consular posts abroad in order to allow them to inform the governments to which they were accredited about the U.S. policy in question. This State Department cable made it absolutely clear that the U.S . intended to exert its influences with the other governments, with the World Bank, and with the Interna- tional Monetary Fund to “advance U.S. population policy interests.” The implication was that if underdeveloped countries failed to go along with the policy the U.S. was promoting for Cairo, they might find aid and development money drying up.

And the policy the U.S. intended to push for in Cairo definitely included what was described as “the need to ensure universal access to family planning and related reproductive health services, including access to safe abortion.” In the parlance of the modern family planning industry, the phrase “reproductive health services” virtually always includes abortion, and precisely as a method of “family planning,” as Americans will discover in connection with health care reform if they are not careful. But in this particular document, the reference to the inclusion of abortion was made explicit, probably in order to be able to stress the safety angle. When carefully perused, then, the text here does indeed call for nothing else but “universal…access to safe abortions.” That was the U.S. Government’s international abortion policy going into the Cairo conference.

As the September 5 date for the opening of the Cairo conference approached, the rhetoric intensified, much of it at the expense of the Vatican, and some of it inspired by the U.S. Government’s own efforts in support of population control. This same pattern would carry on in Cairo itself after the convening of the conference. Papal “attacks” and Vatican “obstructionism” were regularly deplored in press accounts. National Public Radio – which employed the virulently anti-papal Frances Kissling of the oxymoronic “non-organization” Catholics for a Free Choice as its expert on the Cairo conference – characterized the papal proposition as “strident.”

The Vatican was out of step and out of date, it was reported – or else out of touch, isolated, with perhaps only a couple of Latin American countries going along with its views, a Liechtenstein, or a Malta. How could the pope even continue to hang on? Surely he was on the ropes.

No: suddenly the Vatican was responsible for stirring up Muslim opposition, for encouraging Islamic fundamentalism: the Holy See was actually seeking support for its positions even from such radical regimes as those in Libya and Iran. Washington Post columnist Jim Hoagland described this as a “moral nadir” for the Vatican.

One of the favorite approaches of the pro-population-controls, anti-Vatican media was to feature prominently the vaporous emissions of Catholic malcontents and turncoats prepared to take a public stand with the neo-pagan modem world against the Church they still claimed to belong to (although they were apparently not equally prepared to fulfill some of the requirements of true Church membership).

Or else the media resorted to citing polls indicating how many Catholics today supposedly disagree with the teachings of the Church on such topics as abortion, birth control, sexual morality, and the like – as if such disagreement by individual Catholics somehow invalidated the Church’s position or nullified her ancient claim to be the authoritative interpreter of a divine revelation which she has guarded and handed down from the time of the apostles, her ancient claim, that is, to be literally the authoritative voice of Jesus Christ in the world speaking to each generation. For, as everybody really knows, the Catholic Church bases her “policies” neither on the results of public opinion polls nor upon any democratic majority vote, but rather upon what she firmly believes to be the special guidance of the Holy Spirit promised to her by Christ concerning what we must believe and do in order to achieve our sanctification and salvation. Once unleashed, however, the campaign against the pope and the Vatican eventually got out of hand, at least from the point of view of the Clinton Administration. In late August, just before the conference convened, and even while asserting that the U.S. Government did not want the conference to become a “U.S-Vatican showdown,” the State Department’s population coordinator, Faith Mitchell, nevertheless said that the Vatican’s disagreement with the U.S. had to do, in her view, “with the fact that the conference [was] really calling for a new role for women, calling for girls’ education and improving the status of women.” (On the evidence of such a statement as this, it surely could not have been a surprise to anyone to learn that this same Faith Mitchell had been a population-control activist in San Francisco before joining the Clinton Administration.)

Among other reactions to this false and bigoted statement, the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights was obliged to publish in the New York Times an open letter to President Clinton signed by Harvard law professor Mary Ann Glendon and endorsed by a number of other distinguished Catholic women and women’s organizations. The open letter pointed out the irrefutable fact that the Catholic Church had long led the world in providing the education of girls and it called on the president to direct Faith Mitchell to retract her statement.

Eventually this kind of mounting heat on the Clinton Administration was perceived as being too great. After all, Catholics still do vote in the United States. And certain Catholics close to the White House who also possessed a modicum of political savvy, including current White House chief of staff Leon Panetta, and former California Congressman Tony Coelho, who is now with the Democratic National Committee, were suddenly to be found conceding candidly to reporters that yes, indeed, some members of the Clinton Administration had been guilty of anti-papal and “anti-Catholic sentiments requiring White House discipline,” according to one press report in the Washington Times.

No doubt privately the same or like-minded officials apparently succeeded in convincing their own administration that the continuing ongoing open warfare in the media with the pope and the Catholic Church was hardly likely to be conducive to electoral success with many traditionally Democratic Catholic voters. However that may be, the Clinton Administration’s principal “solution” to the public embarrassment it now realized it faced turned out to be even more insulting and mendacious than its creation of the original “problem.”

The solution was that on August 25 Vice President Al Gore himself stepped before the cameras and microphones at the National Press Club and, without batting an eye, declared that “the United States has not sought, does not seek, and will not seek an international right to abortion.” Anyone who pointed to the obvious fact that the preparatory document for the Cairo conference which had been largely engineered by the United States did attempt to call for precisely that – or that U.S. policy on numerous previous occasions had, again, called for precisely that – was guilty of an “outrageous allegation,” the vice president unblushingly declared. In other words, the pope himself, who knew and had said what the real U.S. policy was, could only be at the head of the line of the guilty ones.

The U.S. policy certainly had been to promote abortion internationally, the vice president’s statement notwithstanding to the contrary. As Bishop James T. McHugh of Camden, New Jersey stated, the American delegation had been “determined and intransigent” in continuing to insist on including abortion as a method of family planning because it was a basic woman’s right.

Now, however, Vice President Gore was apparently signaling that henceforth this was no longer going to be U.S. policy. When he himself limped up to the rostrum in Cairo on crutches as a result of a tennis accident- although the crutches surely constituted a very apt symbol of how the Clinton Administration had been handling the whole thing – the vice president, in what turned out to be an unusually mild speech, repeated his claim that the United States did not seek to impose the legalization of abortion on other countries. Correspondent Morton Blackwell, reporting from Cairo in Human Events, wrote that “this was contrary to the frequently expressed position of President Clinton’s U.S. delegates and that of the conference managers, but leftists here quietly accepted Gore’s sop to Roman Catholic opinion in the United States.”

In the event, because of what turned out to be the opposition of more than 30 countries out of the 152 which sent delegations to the Cairo conference, the conference itself was forced to back off from the initially proposed universal-access-to-abortion language in its final document, even though the speakers there who advocated this position were cheered on the floor of the conference itself, while those who agreed with the Vatican’s position were as often as not unceremoniously booed. The headline of one Washington Post story datelined Cairo gave the flavor: “Vatican’s Abortion Stance Riles Many At Forum.” (It appears that Catholic Christians today will have to get used to the fact that the tenets of their faith no longer enjoy much acceptance or respect in certain rather prominent sectors of today’s world.)

In the end, the Cairo conference was evidently forced to retreat from the extreme position most of the delegates there favored because the U.S. Government had been forced to retreat from its extreme position. As one story in the Washington Times reported:

“…the informal coalition between the Vatican and Islamic fundamentalists appears to have caught the U.S. administration by surprise. U.S. offi- cials were certain a month ago that the issue of contraception and abortion could be pushed through, if necessary, by a formal vote, since the Vatican at that time was supported by only four other small countries. Now even mod- erate Arabic nations are backing away from any suggestion that they should permit abortion….”

Concerning all this American Catholics can only muse how God truly does work in mysterious ways….

For the much ballyhooed 1994 UN International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo finally ended up deciding, contrary to what the American delegation among others had originally pushed for, that “in no case should abortion be permitted as a method of family planning.” Similarly, the Holy See and its allies successfully insisted on language to the effect that family reproductive health matters should conform to local laws, cultures, ethics, and religion, and that the conference proposals were not intended to overturn national laws or social customs.

These points represented notable victories for the Vatican and for what by common consent was conceded to be its very competent delegation in Cairo. Morton Blackwell wrote that “the best speech given here was by the head of the Vatican delegation, Monsignor Renato Martino. In 20 minutes of sensible and eloquent remarks, first he advised the conference to focus more on achievable eco- nomic development. Then the assembly quieted noticeably as he urged delegates not to dismiss the moral dimension of irresponsible or immature behavior.”

In his Cairo speech Archbishop Martino took note of the fact that there had “been efforts by some to foster the concept of a ‘right to abortion’ and to establish abortion as an essential component of population policy.” This concept, the archbishop went on to say, correctly, “would be entirely innovative in the international community and would be contrary to the constitutional and legislative positions of many states as well as being alien to the sensitivities of vast numbers of persons, believers and unbelievers alike.”

At least on a few such points, then, the Vatican prevailed against all the odds, proving itself to be the true defender of underdeveloped countries against the arrogance and excesses of the rich, developed countries, including, unfortunately, the United States. And behind all the work of the Vatican delegation at the conference there were the words and example of Pope John Paul II himself – an adversary that President Clinton and Vice President Gore probably never took very seriously in the beginning.

Of course the degree to which the Vatican “victory” in Cairo is going to alter very many things in practice in today’s world should not be exaggerated. The population controllers, after all, did end up getting their official reference to making abortion “safe.” They got some of the other things they wanted as well, so that the Holy See could only endorse the final document in an “incomplete” and “partial” manner.

Not even John Paul II, apparently, could fight and win the whole battle. The victories stigmatizing legalized abortion and favoring local autonomy were probably the most that could be won in the present climate highly favorable to “population control.” For American Catholics, however, even these small “victories” cannot be anything but very bittersweet ones, considering how vigorously their own government pushed for universal legalized abortion for as long as it perceived it was able to do so; and then, when it was forced lo retreat, resorted to a disgraceful series of official lies and obfuscation.

More than that, if “anti-Catholicism” were against the law, and the present U.S. Government were ever put on trial for it under such a law, it is hard to see, on the evidence, how it could ever expect to be acquitted.

K. D. Whitehead is a former career U.S. Foreign Service Officer who served in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. He was an Assistant Secretary of Education in the Reagan Administration, and today works as a writer and translator in Falls Church, Virginia. He is a member o f the Board ofDirectors of the Catholic League.

On Sunday, September 25, Catholic League president Dr. William A. Donohue delivered the keynote address at the Red Mass Luncheon. The event, which took place at the New York Hilton, was preceded by the Red Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral; Cardinal O ‘Connor was the celebrant. The Red Mass is the annual Mass that recognizes the work of Catholic lawyers. Dr. Donohue’s talk, “Catholic-Bashing in the Nineties,” appears below in an edited version. The event was sponsored by the Guild of Catholic Lawyers.

In my role as president of the Catholic League, I have many opportunities to discuss anti-Catholicism. Though there are many views on the subject, there are some common denominators, as well. Almost everyone I know admits that there is such a phenomenon as anti-Catholicism. However, not a few ascribe to the idea that many of those who are anti-Catholic don’t mean to be anti-Catholic. In other words, the argument goes, there are many people who don’t see themselves as bigoted even though they give voice to anti-Catholic statements. This raises an interesting question, “Can there be bigotry without bigots?” It is a question I tried to answer during my remarks to the Guild of Catholic Lawyers following the Red Mass on September 25th.

I confess to being skeptical about the proposition that there can be bigotry without bigots. To be sure, there are people who, out of sheer ignorance, entertain ideas about race, religion and ethnicity that are pure poppycock. But ignorance does not explain the persistence, if not the growth of, anti-Catholicism among the well-educated elites in the media, academia and the publishing world. There is something else at work when the cultural elite target the Catholic Church to vent their anger, and that something else is called bigotry. It follows that those who engage in such practices are bigots. They may be mistaken, confused or misinformed, but they are bigots nonetheless.

Those who demur must explain why it is that one rarely hears about anti-black or anti-Jewish sentiment that isn’t the product of bigots. The terms racist and anti-Semite roll off the lips because we have been culturally sensitized to believing that racists and anti-Semites exist. We would fmd it difficult to understand how there could be bigotry against blacks and Jews without there being regularly identifiable bigots. So how is it that we are prepared to entertain the fantastic notion that anti-Catholicism is not the work of bigots?

When Mary Ann Glendon, a Harvard Law professor, is chastised by her superiors for mailing pro-life letters to pastors on Harvard letter-head – even though no one at Harvard has ever been criticized for making the most egregiously political appeals on the university’s stationery – are we to believe that bigots had nothing to do with this? When college students have to endure tirades against the Catholic Church, in classes that have nothing to do with the subject, are we to accept this as the work of something other than that of bigots? When a reporter interviews me for over an hour and never once asks a question that is anything other than hostile toward the Catholic Church, am I to conclude that he isn’t a bigot? If protesters march naked in front of St. Patrick’s Cathedral and conduct themselves like animals, is it possible that they aren’t bigots?

Many other examples could be cited, but the point is the same. Where bigotry exists, so, too, do bigots. No one, especially not the literati, likes to think of himself as a bigot. Archie Bunker is their idea of a bigot and they’re too sophisticated to be like him. But being urbane isn’t a disqualifier from the category of bigots. It simply means that some bigots are more polished than others.

It’s funny, we have affirmative action programs and sensitivity training workshops to combat just about every form of bigotry, save anti-Catholicism. That this might itself be explained as the result of bigotry seems never to be acknowledged, much less understood. Take the case of the school newspaper at William Paterson College, the New Jersey institution that the Catholic League charged with anti-Catholicism (see the September Catalyst).

This past September, the school newspaper ran a story that was highly critical of the Catholic League’s protest over the bigoted remarks made by one of William Paterson’s professors. Yet the cover story of the newspaper was a report on students who filed a complaint against a professor for making allegedly homophobic comments in class. The comments of this professor paled in significance to the remarks made against Pope John Paul II, but no matter, the newspaper was totally committed to routing out that type of bigotry, all the while exculpating the anti-Catholic bigot who uttered vulgarities about the pope. That apparently no one on the editorial staff saw the irony in this is quite a commentary.

Bigotry of any type is offensive. Working against it is noble, but having the ability, or should I say the will, to recognize it is even more important. The sad fact is that those who think of the mselves as enlightened, progressive and without a trace of bigotry, are also the most likely to need a workshop or two on the evils of anti-Catholicism. Just as admitting that one is an alcoholic is the first step toward treatment, admitting that one harbors a bias against Catholics and/or the Catholic Church is the first step toward freedom from bigotry. Doing so requires courage, but that, unfortunately, is not a property that the deep thinkers are known to possess in large number.

By William A.Donohue

The Cairo Conference on Population and Development will mostly be remembered for what the Holy See did: it held the line against the determined modernists from the U.S. and Western Europe. It’s been some time since the Vatican asserted itself so boldly, surprising friend and foe alike. While it may be a bit presumptuous to say that the Vatican won, it certainly did not lose. It succeeded in denying the abortion-rights fanatics a clear victory and it succeeded in removing reference to “other unions” outside marriage from the final document. At the very least, the Vatican won the respect of its most vociferous critics, and in the game of world politics, that alone counts for a lot.

The pundits, of course, came at the Vatican from all sides. Four types of reactions were evident: stupidity, intellectual dishonesty, hypocrisy and bigotry.

Here’s a sample of each.

As the name of the Cairo conference implies, the issue of development was supposed to be given equal weight to the issue of population. But in reality, neither the pundits who covered the conference, nor the participants who attended the proceedings, had much interest in anything but population matters. In some cases, it wasn’t disinterest that accounted for the lack of discussion, it was pure stupidity. For example, consider the spokeswoman from Zero Population Growth (ZPG) whom I debated on National Public Radio.

After an exchange on abortion, I moved the subject to the question of economic development. When I completed my remarks, I asked the ZPG lady why she showed little interest in this aspect of the Cairo conference. She quickly said that she was very much concerned about the issue of development and explained that that was why she wanted to comment further on the right of women to have an abortion. Stunned at first, I answered by saying that abortion rights and economic development were not synonymous. Ignoring this, she pressed her case for abortion rights once again. I finally said that a good debate on this subject was impossible as my adversary was simply too dumb to understand the meaning of the term “development. “

I ran into intellectual dishonesty on a FOX TV show, this time with a spokeswoman from NARAL, a national abortion-rights organization. I commented that the terms “fertility regulation” and “reproductive rights” were code for abortion-on-demand. The NARAL lady tried to deny this.

She also tried to deny the significance of other language in the document. It was originally stated that “the family is the basic unit in society,” but it was changed to read “the family is a basic unit in society.” I maintained that the change was made so as to place alternative lifestyles on the same platform with the family. When she denied this I threw it back in her court: if the change in the language from the family being the basic unit to a basic unit didn’t mean what I said it did, then she should have no trouble accepting the original wording. I got no reply but that didn’t stop me from accusing her, on the air, of intellectual dishonesty. In any event, the Vatican succeeded in forcing a change back to the original wording.

Hypocrisy was evident in much of the commentary on the Cairo conference. No one outdid William Safire of the New York Times. Normally a trenchant observer of domestic and international politics, Safire exposed a side of him in his column of September 5th that I had not seen before. He accused the Vatican of engaging in “unprecedented papal meddling in U.S. politics” for simply criticizing the Clinton administration’s positions at the conference.

Much to Safire’s chagrin, the Holy See is an elected member state of the United Nations. As such, it has the right to applaud or criticize the policies of any other member state, including the U.S. But even if the Holy See did not belong to the U.N., it would be curious to learn from Safire why the Vatican should refrain from passing comment on world affairs. After all, all we ever hear these days (especially from the New York Times) is that the Vatican was “silent” during the Holocaust. Now the Vatican is being blamed for saying too much. Perhaps Pope John Paul II should consult with Safire and his newspaper on when to speak out and when to shut up; it would make for interesting reading.

What is most appalling about Safire’s commentary is that it should come from a man known to be a libertarian First Amendment absolutist. In the late 1970s, Safire had no problem telling his fellow Jews in Skokie, Illinois just how wrong they were in not allowing Nazis to march in their town. Now the same guy who thinks Nazis should be treated like the Boy Scouts thinks the Vatican ought to muzzle its objections to abortion-on-demand.

Finally, the bigots were in full-force during the Cairo proceedings. Frances Kissling, the inveterate Catholic-baiter from Catholics for a Free Choice, made her rounds on the talk shows slamming the Church anytime she got a chance. She repeated her call to have the Holy See booted out of the U.N. though it is not certain that anyone paid much attention to her. Then there was Sister Maureen Fiedler and her little-known band called Catholics Speak Out. Profoundly alienated, Sister Fiedler chimes right in with the bigots, so much so that she sounds like the Queen of the Sour Grapes Brigade.

The anti-Catholic bigots in the Clinton administration got so exercised during the Cairo conference that Leon Panetta, the White House Chief of Staff, acknowledged that there was a problem with Catholic-bashing and vowed to discipline anyone who continued to chide the Vatican. That was perhaps the brightest note to come out of the week-long conference.

By Rabbi Daniel Lapin

I believe that there is only one fundamental set of principles on which to base a functioning society, that the forces which accept these principles will often be tragically divided with regard to methods, priorities, etc., and that the forces which reject the fundamental principles will be united by their rejection. In practical terms, we might say that there are two types of faith: a constructive or positive faith, which accepts universal truths, and what we might call an anti-faith, whose defining characteristic is the rejection of those truths. The positive faith often produces conflict among its adherents, who disagree with one another for the very best of reasons. The anti-faith produces the unanimity of the lowest common denominator.

I now hypothesize that the Left does in fact represent such an anti-faith and that the ultimate principle being rejected is none other than God Himself. Of course, the scientific standard for the acceptance of any hypothesis is: how well does it explain certain phenomena? I believe my hypothesis does this very well, and in a particularly difficult case. The congruence of opinion on the Left is so remarkable, it resembles the rising of the sun: that is to say, were it not so regular and so common, it would cause men to prostrate themselves at the sight. Consider: why on earth should those people who support radical environmentalism, in all its bizarre manifestations, be exactly the same people who endorse the agenda of radical homosexuality? But they are! Why should the same group who enthusiastically advocate widespread abortion also embrace gun control? But they do! And so on, down the line of leftist causes.

This is too remarkable to be a mere set of coincidences; we must strip away the black magic and find the cause and effect. My hypothesis does just that. Restated simply, there are many, many ways to worship God, but only one way to reject Him. This, I think, best accounts both for the divisiveness of the conservative movement and for the congruence of the Left.

Some of you would readily agree with me that the Left is rejectionist but might hesitate over my assertion that it is God they oppose. Let me, then, further test my hypothesis in a more scientific way: I’ll ask how the basic doctrines of the Left compare with their Scriptural counterparts. Scientifically, you would agree that if this were a random matter, if there were no anti-God theme to liberalism, then we ought to find that liberals sometimes agree with Biblical social policy and sometimes do not – perhaps we should see a fifty/fifty distribution. Let us examine a few of them with this purpose in mind.

Now the Bible has some interesting prohibitions; one of them you will notice on me right away. Strangely enough, I possess on my body no tattooing at all, in spite of the artistic themes that from time to time have occurred to me to place across my chest. It happens to be one of the Biblical injunctions that I find easier to obey than others – right up there with not sleeping with one’s grandmother.

Nonetheless, the objection to tattooing is very significant. It ties in to a prohibition in the Bible against any self-mutilation of body. Let us see what drives this prohibition.

The fundamental idea here is stewardship and tenancy. The Bible tells me that my body doesn’t belong to me. I have the use of it, and I must look after it. The tenant has much less freedom to paint the walls or change the plumbing than the landlord. Biblical law, therefore, severely restricts not just tattooing, but also such practices as abortion and euthanasia. The message is consistent: control over the body, including life and death, must be left with God. Man should not interfere.

Of course, the position of the Left on these issues helps confirm our hypothesis. Liberals reject the notion that God gives life, yet God still seems to retain some control over death. So they would seize that power and make matters of life and death into questions of human choice. We now understand why abortion and euthanasia have to be such major themes in the Left’s political landscape.

We also find that the exception proves the rule. The Bible does give society one measure of control over life: it authorizes capital punishment for certain crimes. If human control over life and death, generically understood, were the underlying principle in the Left’s position on abortion and euthanasia, then wouldn’t liberals fight for capital punishment as a logical extension of their principle? But instead they oppose it at every turn. And this moral repugnance for imposing capital punishment is best explained by our hypothesis. This resembles the peculiar ferocity that devotees of the Left reserve for the cigarette smoker in the face of their placid acceptance of the AIDS carrier. They fuel a national movement to prohibit smoking in any public building but resist the suggestion that known AIDS carriers should be excluded from food preparation occupations.

The only possible explanation I can find is that cigarette smoking is not Biblically proscribed. Since homosexuality is Biblically forbidden, any sanctions applied in that direction might look suspiciously like an endorsement of God so must be scrupulously avoided. Likewise, since capital punishment is Biblically mandated, the modernist must oppose it.

Let’s look at another example. The Bible gives us a limited number of commandments, and Deuteronomy specifically prohibits adding to or modifying this relatively short list. Likewise, Aristotle said that laws should be few in number and seldom changed. Compare that with the Niagara-like cascade of legislation that pours out incessantly from a governing bureaucracy that has become dominated by an anti-Godly vision.

Yet another example illustrates the Left’s war on fundamental Biblical themes. Notice that the beginning of all beginnings, the opening chapters of Genesis, shows us a hierarchical universe. God puts Mineral at the bottom of the pyramid and proceeds, day by day, to add Vegetable. When Vegetable is created, we move one level up, to Animal. And when Animal is created, we go to one level above that, to Man. And when Man has been created, we go one level above that to – Woman.

Our tradition tells us that it is right for a man to dedicate himself to providing for a woman, just as there is nothing at all wrong with an animal, as it were, seeking it’s ultimate fulfillment by being of service to the human race. For a man to see his fulfillment as an escape from selfishness, and the ability to start providing for a woman, is only recognizing a fundamental concept of hierarchy that God has imparted to the world.

Well, naturally, if God said “Yes” to hierarchy, then modern liberalism has to say “No” to hierarchy. And one of the very first victims of the war on hierarchy is education. Because what education used to mean was that someone who knew more than I would tell me what he knew. He would teach me how to relate to the world, and he would initiate me into my culture, into my people, into civilization. He could do this only because he occupied a niche above mine. What did the war on hierarchy accomplish? That, for the first time in the American experience, students grade teachers! What’s more, students tell teachers what to teach! What on earth can account for this? It makes sense only in one context: the over-throwing of hierarchy.

Of course, hatred of hierarchy also explains, better than any other notion, the unarguable enmity that the Left has for the military. Because if there is one thing upon which military success rests, it is the concept of hierarchy. Just in case we didn’t understand that, the Book of Exodus explicitly calls God a Man of War. War is admissible, the Bible tells us; there are certain things which can only be resolved by war. When war does come, you’d better have a hierarchy in place, because nothing else will work.

There is still more evidence for our hypothesis. Whether one considers the Bible as light bedtime reading or regards it as the Word of God, nobody, but nobody, can miss this fundamental rule: every single human being has been granted the power of moral choice. Abel’s murderer, Cain, is not gently excused on account of traumatic potty training. The population of Sodom is not the victim of its environment. Everyone is accountable for his actions. Not, perhaps for his thoughts and motivations – only God can know these – but certainly for his behavior.

Well, what is the position of the opposition? Absolutely predictable! They give us an unbelievable proliferation of mental and social disorders, because they want reasons other than free moral choice to account for why people behave the way they do. If God said “personal accountability” the Left has to say “No personal accountability.” Look at the social disorder that inevitably results from such a seemingly small decision.

Let’s look at a final, and most significant, conflict between the Bible and the Left. The Mishna, a part of the Jewish Oral Tradition, which was put in writing just before the time Augustus ruled Rome, says that there are only two answers to a grouping of three fundamental questions of life. The questions are: Where did we come from, where are we going, and what are we supposed to be doing in between?

Have you noticed that any innocent little child always asks you these questions if you have the good fortune to be seated next to one on an airplane? “Where did you come from? Where are you going?” And, “What’s your name, and how old are you?” In other words, tell me about what you are; what are you doing?

Adults say, “What do you do?” It doesn’t just mean, “How do you put bread on your table?” They are trying to relate to the spiritual reality of you.

And as to where we came from, again, there are only two possibilities. I characterize them as: we came from the apes or we came from the angels. That’s it. Pay your money and take your choice. You want to wait for proof? I’m afraid that life calls upon you to make a commitment before the proof is in. Just as it always does. We marry before we know every last knowable detail of the intended. We invest often before knowing every possible knowable fact about the fiscal outcome of our decision. In exactly the same way, we must decide, where are we going? The choices, again, only two: the Godly choice and the anti-Godly choice. Either there is something after death or not.

To clarify the practical implications of this dilemma, let me tell you what happened to one of my teachers, a great rabbi. On a trip to Israel, he found himself seated next to the head of the Israeli socialist movement. As the plane took off, my teacher’s son, sitting several rows behind, came forward and said, “Father, let me take your shoes; I have your slippers here. You know how your feet swell on the airplane.” A few minutes later, he came and said, “Here are the sandwiches Mother sent; I know you don’t like the airline food.”

This went on in similar fashion for some time, and finally, the head of lsrael’s socialist movement turned to my teacher and said, “I don’t get this. I have four sons. They’re grown now. But in all my life I don’t recall them ever offering to do anything at all for me. Why is your son doing all of this?”

And the rabbi said, “You have to understand. You mustn’t blame yourself. Your sons are faithful to your teachings, and my sons are faithful to my teachings. It’s simple, you see. You made the decision to teach your sons that they are descended from apes. That means that you are one generation closer to the ape than they. And that means that it is only proper and appropriate that you acknowledge their status and that you serve them. But, you see, I chose to teach my sons that we came from God Himself. And that puts me one generation closer to the ultimate truth, and that means it’s only appropriate that they treat me accordingly.”

On the other hand, with respect to the question of where we are going, we shouldn’t be surprised that the Left tells us that we are hopelessly doomed, whether because of environmental catastrophe, nuclear war, overpopulation, or what-have-you. Tell the Left that man’s God-given ingenuity creates solutions, and what is the answer? Only apocalyptic measures will save us: from elimination of aerosols to banning human beings entirely from the open wastes – we’ve got to save the planet, which is in imminent peril of destruction.

Well, I think we’ve amassed more than enough evidence to prove our hypothesis. To summarize: it’s quite clear that the power and unity of the Left come not from any intrinsic merit of their policy ideas or from any well-considered public philosophy. That power and unity could only come from a religious faith: what I call Anti-Godism. And this truth brings us face to face with an even more terrifying fact: that the Left’s goal in the current culture war is not a negotiated peace, but unconditional surrender. The enemy is intent on capturing our capital city, nothing less.

It follows that only a similar effort on our side can possibly succeed. Conservatives cannot fight this powerful and all-encompassing religious faith with a few good policy ideas; we must reach back to God’s word, the ultimate source of our convictions, if we are to prevail. I do not believe that a superior system can be developed than that which we have inherited, and to which our founding fathers so faithfully subscribed. I refer to the Judea-Christian value system, and I believe that we have no choice but to adopt it as the unifying theory of existence for our side of the great American culture war. To some extent, we have little choice, because the other side has already chosen Scripture as the battlefield.

They have made the abolition of transcendent value the centerpiece of their struggle. For us to ignore Judea-Christian thought is to abandon the main battleground of this war to the political enemy.

This article is excerpted, with permission, from an address that Rabbi Daniel Lapin gave at The Heritage Foundation last Winter. Rabbi Lapin is President of “Toward Tradition” a Seattle-based organization uniting Jews and Christians in an eff0rt to restore a more traditional vision of culture, economy, and politics.

September marks the month of the International Conference on Population and Development, otherwise known as the Cairo Conference. Regrettably, events leading up to the Conference have already exposed a virulent strain of anti-Catholicism (see the June Catalyst), and it is therefore unlikely that the Cairo proceedings will close without additional incidents of Catholic-bashing. This is particularly unfortunate given that the trigger issue – the Vatican’s opposition to abortion as a means of curbing population growth – would not be an issue at all were it not for a misguided approach to the problem of world population growth.

Although the Conference’s title indicates that population concerns cannot be separated from the subject of economic development, in reality most of the attention will focus on the former issue. That’s too bad because it is highly unlikely that population growth can be effectively curtailed without addressing economic development.

In general, there is an inverse relationship between eco- nomic development and population growth, meaning that the wealthier the nation, the lower is its expected rate of population growth. It doesn’t always happen that way (per capita income declined recently in Latin America and so did the birth rate), but overall it is clear that the underdeveloped nations have fertility rates that are approximately five times larger than the developed nations. It is also true that within nations the birth rate among the poor far exceeds the birth rate among the rich. In short, throughout the world the pattern is the same: those who can least afford to have children have the most while those who can best afford to have children have the least.

The reasons for this anomaly are largely psycho-cultural. The poor tend to have short horizons, that is they tend to be present-oriented. This live-for-today attitude reflects the sense of resignation that many of the poor have. For those who live in abject poverty, today was a mirror image of yesterday and, more important, tomorrow will be no different than today. On the other hand, the wealthy (and that certainly includes the middle class in the developed nations) tend not to live for today but for tomorrow, that is, they are future oriented. Family planning comes as naturally to them as financial planning.

To the extent that population growth is considered a problem, solutions to the problem that do not address economic development are bound to fail. Unfortunately, many of those in the developed nations who are pushing the hardest for population control have little or no interest in tackling the problem from anything other than a “stop the birth rate” type of approach.

It is simply fascinating to observe the overlay between those who favor contraception and abortion as a means of curtailing population growth and those who favor economic policies that make for poverty and increasing rates of population growth. There is by now conclusive evidence that market economies engender economic growth while state socialist models deliver nothing but poverty. It is bizarre beyond reason, then, that those who worry the most about increasing rates of population growth should also sponsor the very economic programs that create the problem they hope to alleviate. What is even more perverse, however, is that the same people want to solve the problem by killing innocent unborn children.

Logic would argue that the underdeveloped nations, almost all of which practice some variant of socialism, should be encouraged to adopt a market economy. Where markets flourish so does economic development, and it, in turn, abets a decrease in fertility rates. Therefore, the way to stem population growth in places like China, India and Africa is not via contraception and abortion, but through the free market place.

But ideology often triumphs over the truth. Those who are most exercised about population growth are pro-abortion for the same reason they favor pro-socialist prescriptions for the economy: what drives them is control, the ability to engineer the outcomes of private individuals for collectivist ends, ends which are, of course, determined by them. They not only want to put a cap on the population, they would like to determine what the mosaic should look like. Furthermore, it is their insatiable appetite for power that explains their fondness for socialism and distrust for capitalism.

China is a splendid example. From 1949 to 1976, Mao Zedong ruled China with a fierce totalitarian grip. With socialism came unprecedented poverty and a sharp increase in population growth. Only now, long after Mao’s death, is the economy rebounding, and this is due entirely to the development of a quasi-market model. Population control enthusiasts, however, dislike this development and prefer a socialist model.

What meets their approval, however, is the common practice of having government agents track the menstrual cycles of women. This tracking is done so that if a woman who is not authorized to have a baby misses her period, government agents can order her – and physically coerce her if necessary – to have an abortion. Control is what matters, and nothing else. All this from those who fancy themselves as “pro-choice.”

Population control fetishists not only promote abortion and socialism, they vigorously condemn anyone who obstructs their quest for power. And that explains why anti-Catholicism is so prevalent among their ranks.

According to Duquesne University professor Charles Rubin, author of the brilliant new book, The Green Crusade, “anti-Catholic sentiment has played a role among influential thinkers in the population debate.” Rubin knows of what he speaks: The Green Crusade is the most informed account of the ideological roots of the environmental movement.

If there is one person that the population control crowd can’t stomach, it is Pope John Paul II. The Pope is not only unalterably opposed to abortion, he is unalterably opposed to the socialist model. Indeed, the Pontiff was a major player in the war against the evil empires that were built on socialist blocks. It is not surprising, then, that anti-Catholic statements tend to appear whenever the elites tackle the issue of population control. With Pope John Paul II at the helm, the Catholic Church provides a formidable adversary to those who want to make the world safe for abortionists and socialists.

There are many people, of course, who are genuinely concerned about the population issue and aren’t the slightest bit anti-Catholic. But when the focus turns to the elites, namely to those organizers who proudly carry the pro-abortion and pro-statist banners, something less innocent appears. It is not an exaggeration to say that abortion is, for some elites, the single most important right a woman can have. Indeed, they’d rather yield the franchise before ever giving up the right to legally summon an abortionist. Given their fixation, they cannot resist taking aim at the Catholic Church.

In recent years, every attempt has been made by the save-the-planet gang to discredit not only the teachings of the Catholic Church on population matters, but to question its right to even address such issues. What is demanded from this crew is ideological purity, and that is why they loathe the Catholic Church: it is refreshingly obstinate in its convictions. Ironically, accusations of dogmatism are hurled against the Catholic Church by the very people who specialize in smear attacks against those who quarrel with their secular theology.

The Vatican is right to charge its critics with cultural imperialism. It is amazing to listen to Western male and female Caucasians – all of whom swear allegiance to the god of multiculturalism – lecture their non-white brothers and sisters from around the world about the benefits of saline injections. The same people who profess to hate the imposition of Western values on the Third World have no qualms about indoctrinating women of color with their Planned Parenthood ideas. If the elites valued the rights of unborn African children the way they value the fate of the African elephant, much of the real problem would be resolved.

Catholics can be proud of the Vatican’s position on population control. Nowhere in its documents is there any language which sacrifices innocent human life for utilitarian ends. In an age when relativism is rampant, the Catholic Church is still prepared to say that some things are intrinsically evil. That may not be fashionable, but it remains as true today as it was when it was proclaimed in Scripture.

It is no secret that much of the hatred of the Catholic Church these days emanates from radical feminists and those sympathetic to the feminist movement. The push for women’s ordination and the passion to expand abortion rights are two of the most important forces driving anti-Catholic sentiment in the 1990s. Unfortunately, a fair amount of the rancor stems from alienated Catholics. The reasons for this disaffection are multiple but it is not they who are the object of this essay: the concern here is with non-Catholics, and more specifically with those non-Catholics who hate the Catholic Church because of the Church’s teachings on ordination and abortion.

At one level, the hyper-criticism of the Catholic Church that is so trendy these days makes no sense whatsoever. When the Church doesn’t deliver a politically correct message, the usual retort is that the Church is a dictatorship. But of course no one is coerced into joining the Church and those who have come to hate it can always quit. Even so, the larger question is “why do some non-Catholics get so angry about what Catholics believe?” In short, what business is it of theirs to sit in judgment? And aren’t the ones passing the harsh judgments normally associated with the value-free, non-judgmental school of thought?

If it were curiosity at work, that would be understandable. But that’s not what’s happening. The Catholic Church isn’t being looked at by curiosity seekers, it’s being scrutinized, measured, examined and judged by a host of politically inspired voyeurs. In their own strange way, they can’t get enough of the Catholic Church; they feed off of it. Take the issue of the Pope’s recent statement on the ordination of women.

This past spring, Pope John Paul II restated the Church’s teachings on ordination and immediately set off a firestorm of protest. On a local New York TV show, I discussed this issue with two men and one women. One of the men was Jewish, the other Pentecostal; the woman was an avowed atheist. So here I was debating the wisdom of the Pope’s apostolic letter with three non-Catholics, two of whom, the Pentecostal and the atheist, were outspoken in their denunciation of the Pope’s letter. Perhaps the most cogent remark of the day came from the former Mayor of New York, Ed Koch, who politely remarked that his mother always advised him not to speak ill of other religions. It is a lesson that apparently few have learned.

Newspapers all over the country were consumed with rage over the Pope’s statement. Editorialists and cartoonists led the way, acting as though they had some legitimate kind of leverage on the Catholic Church. Now just imagine what the reaction would be if a priest or bishop criticized from the pulpit one of the incredibly stupid editorials or cartoons found in those newspapers. “Foul” they would cry. More than that, they would accuse the Catholic Church of imperialism, of sticking its nose in where it doesn’t belong. Unhappily, this is one shoe that doesn’t fit all sizes.

Abortion gets the same reaction. Some years ago I remember discussing abortion with an acquaintance of mine. She remarked that she contributes to Catholics for a Free Choice, the anti-Catholic pro-abortion group that is comprised mostly of self-hating Catholics. “But Gerda,” I said, “you’re a Jew.” I didn’t get much of an answer, just an uncomfortable shrug. “That would be like me joining ‘Jews for Jesus,”‘ I offered. Again I got a cold response.

One of the most telling commentaries against the Catholic Church’s teachings on abortion appeared recently in the New York Times. On June 15th, the front page headline read, “Vatican Fights U.N. Draft on Women’s Rights.” I read the article with interest wanting to know why the Vatican would fight against a U.N. document on women’s rights. Then I read it again, figuring I must have missed something. But I hadn’t. There was no draft on women’s rights. Not only was there no document by that name, there was no document that focused on women’s rights. Here’s what happened.

The draft that Alan Cowell discussed was a preliminary statement on population control, a document that would be hammered out in final detail in Cairo this September. The Vatican has registered its misgivings about the wording of the document and has urged that the sections on abortion and the family be reconsidered. Loose definitions of the family, coupled with the right of adolescents to make decisions about abortion independent of the wishes of their family, are troubling issues for the Vatican and, one would hope, for all Catholics.

But instead of portraying the document as a statement on population control, the prism of the New York Times reduced it to a commentary on abortion. And instead of citing the Church’s concerns for the integrity of the family and for the life of the unborn, the subject was altered to make the Church look like the great oppressor of women. This isn’t journalism at work, it’s politics, pure and uncut.

Non-Catholics would do well to follow the advice of Ed Koch’s mom and just give it a rest. Their crankiness is wearing thin.

–William A. Donohue

the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights & the Society of Catholic Social Scientists
By Dr. Joseph A. Varacalli

Former V.P. Dan Quayle calls it the “cultural elite.” Theologian Richard Neuhaus refers to it as a modern day form of “gnosticism.” Sociologist Peter Berger terms it the “new class.” Adapting Berger’s phrase to the radical left wing of the Catholic Church, I coined the phrase, the “new Catholic knowledge class.” To many average Americans, who form the basis of a contemporary “populist” revolt, there is in onr society a powerful group of heavy-handed and arrogant snobs.

However named, the underlying reality is the same: there exists a category of secular and progressivist intellectuals, bureaucrats, and social activists who dominate both America’s public square and the infrastructure of America’s mainstream religious denominations. Moreover, this group carries both a worldview and vested ideological interests (in terms of the sociological, trilogy of status, power, and wealth) which are furthered by bashing the Judaic-Christian heritage and excluding the latter from any meaningful participation within the American political system and cultural life of the society.

Given its potential with both a 2,000 year tradition and impressive moral, intellectual, and organizational resources (especially when inspired by such a visionary leader like John Paul II), it becomes clear why the secularist assault is concentrated against the Catholic Church. In short, all roads do lead to either Rome or secularism. It is Rome that constitutes the last great obstacle to the modernist onslaught; destroy (or capture) Rome and the game is over. Given this, it is not hard to understand why the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights was founded by Father Virgil Blum, S.J. in 1973 and so recently re-energized by William Donohue. If these men and their organization didn’t exist, they would have had to be invented.

The defense of the religious and civil rights of Catholics and other orthodox religionists requires, however, more than just the participation of lawyers, politicians, and an organized and educated laity. This is so because much of the philosophical and intellectual underpinnings of the attack on the Judaic-Christian heritage comes from a contemporary social science that 1) for better or worse, is a social fact of life that, subtly or not, influences all aspects of American life and 2) is dependent almost solely on secular assumptions, concepts, and theories about the nature and destiny of, and relationship between, the individual and society.

Consider the following examples. School administrators take-for-granted a Freudian-like assumption of human sexuality and conclude that condom distribution is both a strategic and moral imperative. Many psychologists portray supernaturally-based religion as both an illusion and opiate while seeing their own discipline as an alleged enlightened substitute for it. Many in the marriage counseling profession talk of courtship and marriage exclusively in contractual and emotional terms consisting merely of social, economic, and psychological exchanges. In many sociology classes, the traditional nuclear family is depicted as an abusive prison for, at least, women and children. Many anthropologists see to be unable to condemn such practices as human sacrifice, homosexuality, and children being born out of wedlock, thus promoting, either unconsciously or not, the philosophy of moral relativism. Many political scientists, forged in the Marxist-inspired and anti-American and anti-Western civilization era of the 1960s-1970s, routinely and uncritically consider all American military intervention as a form of economically self-serving imperialism. Afro-American courses tend to assume, a priori, that all Caucasians are racists; the reality of black racism is never broached. Similarly, much feminist scholarship simply defines men as sexist and ignores the injustice done to men in employment through the use of quotas. While racism, sexism, homophobia, and ageism are unquestionably seen as real “social problems,” the deleterious effects of abortion, euthanasia, divorce, day-care centers and, last but not least, religious bigotry are either not addressed or not addressed squarely. Intellectual discourse within the social science departments of America’s colleges and universities – Catholic institutions definitely included – thus take place within the narrow parameters of “politically correct” thought.

Such thought and behavior, again, is anything but absent within important sectors of the Catholic clergy; witness the effects of a “therapeutic mentality” on conceptions of sin and in the implementation of the Sacrament o f Reconciliation. To top things off, even many Bishops, when trying to form and implement positions on social issues and pastoral policy, rely heavily on secular social science with, predictably, unsatisfactory results. Put crudely, a secular social science attacks the Church from both without and within.

One recent response to the present unhappy state of affairs regarding secular social science and the Catholic faith is the formation, in 1992, of the Society of Catholic Social Scientists. The purpose of the S.C.S.S. is basically twofold: 1) to incorporate, where appropriate, Catholic philosophical/theological assumptions, issues, concepts, and modes of interpretation into the social sciences and 2) to bring Catholic social doctrine into the American public square from which social policy is forged. Minimally, at least, the restoration of the “social sciences in Christ” would guarantee the Church a voice in both the intellectual and political marketplace.

More to the point of this essay, it would also help immeasurably the complimentary – albeit more “defensive” – goals of the Catholic League. Put another way, the best defense is often a good offense; the evangelistic thrust of the S.C.S.S. into the academy, the government, and, indeed, the Church herself should, theoretically, result in a lessening of the bigotry against and ignorance of, the Catholic faith that the Catholic League routinely must confront.

The S.C.S.S. – now with over 200 professional members in social science and social science related disciplines – is off to a good start. One national conference has been held and two more are in the works. Many scholarly papers have been published in the S.C.S.S. organ, the Social Justice Review, and others are in press. The Society’s first two major intellectual projects on, respectively, Catholics and Politics” and “Catholics in Defense of the Traditional Family,” are nearing completion. Many standing committees and regional chapters are buzzing with activity. The S.C.S.S. has a Bishop’s Board which includes, most prominently, Cardinal John O’Connor. Our Advisory Board is replete with the names of outstanding Catholic scholars and includes three Catholic college presidents. Officers of the Society include Stephen Krason of Franciscan University, Robert George of Princeton University, Alberto Piedra of Catholic University, and Gerard Bradley of Notre Dame. A young dynamic priest of the Diocese of Rockville Centre, Reverend Robert Batule, serves as Society Chaplain.

The goals of The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights and that of the Society of Catholic Social Scientists are distinct yet complimentary. May both continue to work to defend and promote an authentic Catholic presence in the United States and may they cooperate with each other as the situation dictates. Indeed, such organizational cooperation may represent, in this case, a marriage made in heaven.

Dr. Joseph A. Varacalli, presently Associate Professor of Sociology at Nassau Community College – S.U.N.Y., is the Co-founder and Executive Secretary of the Society of Catholic Social Scientists and also is a member of the Board of Directors of The Fellowship of Catholic Scholars.

Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who is the happiest of them all? Not the intellectuals, that’s for sure. Indeed, they’re probably the most miserable. But more on that later.

Certainly among the happiest are those who have happy marriages, and there is little doubt that, by and large, the happily married are those who take their religion seriously. Social science data clearly show that there is a strong relationship between adherents of traditional religion and good marriages. Conversely, those who adhere to more “progressive” religions tend to have the worst track record. And for reasons that will be explained, the most well-educated are disproportionately represented among the losers.

Providing the data for such conclusions is a splendid new book by two academics from the City University of New York, Barry A. Kosmin and Seymour P. Lachman. One Nation Under God is a book chock-full of interesting data on the status of religion in contemporary society.  It is because the Census Bureau does not ask questions about religion that the Kosmin and Lachman study is so valuable: they provide us with data, in this case the results of a representative survey of 113,000 Americans, that are otherwise unavailable.

It is one thing to say that “the family that prays together stays together,” quite another to read those words as a conclusion in a national survey. But that is exactly what Kosmin and Lachman found. “Happily married couples,” they write, “are more likely than divorced couples to have had a religious wedding and to attend religious services regularly.” As already indicated, they also found that those who prefer their religion lite, or choose abstinence, are the most likely to be single, separated and divorced. It is not for nothing that the highest divorce rate belongs to Unitarians, even outdoing their non-believing cousins. Importantly, Kosmin and Lachman add, “the only significant underrepresentation of divorced people irrespective of gender is among Catholics.”

The correlation between religion and marital stability is not hard to understand. Throughout history men and women have traditionally married out of duty, not love. Indeed love as the basis for marriage is one of history’s oddities, so rare has it been. Men and women typically married when their fathers, or the eldest male in the kinship network, decreed it. Marriage was never the joining of two individuals, it was the joining together of two families, or two clans. The marriages lasted because they were built on a solid foundation, namely economic self-interest, duty, tradition (read: religion), and the coupling of two collectivities. Today’s marriages are not born of such qualities.

It should be obvious that the social supports that have traditionally provided the adhesiveness to marriage have all but disappeared. To be sure, for many persons religion remains a strong force, and that explains why those who possess it do well in marriage. Religion is the glue that provides the bonding during times of discord. It affirms in many ways – spiritually, psychologically and socially – the commitment between husband and wife, providing a buffer to adversity. Put another way, it congeals. Without it, relationships fray more easily.

High rates of divorce tend to cluster among the well-educated, as well as among non-believers and those who are soft on religion. For example, Unitarians not only top the list among the divorced, they top out as the most well-educated religious group in the country (almost 50 percent have a college degree as contrasted to 20 percent in the Catholic community). In general, those religions that are the most accepting of the “progressive” trends in our culture, namely the Unitarian, Jewish (save the Orthodox), Episcopalian, Presbyterian, and the “New Age” crowd, have educational achievement rates and divorce rates that well exceed the national average.

The well-educated tend to strike out in marriage more than the rest of us because they are more likely to be drawn to those religions which have struck the greatest degree of accommodation with the culture. Looked at another way, higher education inclines toward a hypercritical perspective of traditional morality, and it is this that accounts for the overrepresentation of the cognoscenti among the ranks of the disaffected. For them, ceremony and tradition are for the unenlightened. What they crave is rationality, not spirituality. That is why their religions, assuming they have any at all, tend to be hollow. In this respect, college faculty are prototypical.

Academicians, and most especially those who teach in the humanities and social sciences, are loaded with agnostics, atheists and adherents to “progressive” religions. These savants have spent a great deal of time thinking in a social vacuum about abstract ideas that bear no relationship to reality. Come to think of it, so too have madmen, which explains why the academy has so much in common with the asylum. But at least the patients have an excuse.

It is skepticism – run rampant – that makes the well-educated so ill-disposed to religion. But there is a price to be paid by turning one’s back on God. Such persons fall victim to themselves, fixing their eyes not on the other-world, or on others, but on themselves. Indeed one of the most pronounced characteristics that historian Paul Johnson found in his study of prominent Western intellectuals was the high degree of self-absorption that they possessed. What is striking is the extent to which people like Rousseau and Marx have long championed the cause of the dispossessed while simultaneously treating their parents, siblings, spouses, and children like dirt. They can embrace the masses but not their family.

It is possible to love individuals, and to love God, but it is not possible to love mankind or humankind. Sadly, the intellectuals think that they can. That is why they write endlessly about the masses, the proletariat, people of color, the oppressed, the peasants, and the like. But it is impossible to love an abstraction. It is father, mother, husband, wife, son, and daughter who connect us in our happiness, not faceless entities. The happiness that derives from love of God may be abstract, but it is personal nonetheless. There is nothing personal about an aggregate.

It would be wrong to suggest that to be well-educated is to be soft on religion. For starters, just think about Pope John Paul II. And it would be equally wrong to suggest that only the most traditional in their beliefs are capable of having good marriages. But having acknowledged as much, we are still left with the fact that those who ascribe to traditional beliefs and practices are the most likely to find themselves happily married. It is also true that those who have notbeen seduced by the superstitions of the academy stand a better chance of maintaining a happy marriage. Put it together – the interactions between religion and happiness, and education and religion – and what we have is a powerful commentary on what makes for the good life.

– William A. Donohue

If I had to name the one place in the U.S. where Catholic bashing is most prevalent, it would be in higher education. Sure, the media love to bash Catholics, and so does Hollywood. There is bias on the job, in the arts and even in some government programs and regulations. But anyone who has spent much time in the academy knows that the typical college campus is more a hotbed of anti-Catholicism than anyplace else. Here’s just two recent examples of what I mean; both cases triggered a strong response from the Catholic League.

In 1991, Patrick Mooney was fired as a resident assistant (dorm counselor) from Carnegie Mellon University. His offense? He refused, on the basis of his Catholicism, to wear a pro-lesbian button during in-service week training. CMU’s punitive retaliation meant that Mooney was to lose thousands of dollars that he was counting on to defray tuition costs. But it was not for financial reasons that Mooney sued CMU: it was for the denial of his constitutional right to freedom of speech, freedom of association and freedom of religion. Having spoken with him, I am convinced that Mooney’s cause is justice, not money. His case is still undecided in the courts.

More recently, Mooney and CMU administrators have clashed on two other occasions. The first instance involves a protest that Mooney lodged against a particularly offensive attack on Catholics and on John Cardinal O’Connor, in particular. The second matter concerns the pressing of “harassment” charges against Mooney for the crime of disagreeing with a visiting professor about homosexuality.

The bigoted attack against Catholics came from a campus gay and lesbian group called cmuOUT. In both fliers and videos, Catholics were portrayed in a manner that would make the average professor apoplectic if the subject had been African-Americans. But since it was Catholics that were being abused, the bigotry was met with no resistance, save from Mooney and a student friend, Mark Sullivan. The vile movie, Stop the Church, was shown, and viciously obscene fliers were made about Cardinal O’Connor, complete with the inscription “Public Health Menace” printed on the top of a photo of New York’s Archbishop. The clash between Mooney and the professor occurred on March 3rd. Mooney simply expressed to visiting professor Tim Saternow his feelings about the gay assaults on Cardinal O’Connor. Professor Saternow, who is gay, defended the group and then pressed “harassment” charges against Mooney for having the temerity to express his sentiments. Mooney said nothing inflammatory, nor was he charged with making any incendiary remark. But he is being brought up on charges nonetheless.

The other case involves classroom behavior. On February 16th, Stephen Hilker walked into his doctorate course in public administration at Western Michigan University with an external religious symbol clearly marked on his forehead; it was Ash Wednesday. It didn’t take long before Dr. Ralph Chandler began an extensive diatribe against Catholics. Oh, yes, Dr. Chandler was careful not to mention Catholics by name, but a tape of the class (which we have in our possession) makes it clear that the “myths” that Dr. Chandler set out to debunk happened to be the central teachings of the Catholic Church.

Dr. Chandler’s behavior has been defended, quite naturally, as freedom of speech. That Chandler knew that Hilker was a deacon is not something that impressed the administrators. Nor did they give much credence to the idea that lengthy tirades against an established religion have no legitimate educational value. And apparently they feel that Dr. Chandler’s opinions on the Trinity are of significant import to doctoral students in public administration.

Hilker’s case not only illustrates the presence of anti-Catholicism on campus, it shows the degree to which academic fraud is tolerated and indeed defended. When students enroll in a course, they expect to be taught the subject matter that is listed in the course bulletin. For example, if they purchase a course in accounting, they do not expect a lecture on hammertoes. If they buy a course in astro physics, they do not expect a lecture on cognitive dissonance. And if they contract for a course on public administration, they do not expect to be lectured on the “myths” of the Roman Catholic Church.

Actually, the fraud is worse than this. Not for a minute would any college administrator tolerate a long dissertation on the irrational and incredulous religious beliefs of Native Americans. Were such an exercise to take place, it would quickly be labeled academic abuse, not academic freedom. Moreover, charges of insensitivity would be brought by the office of multiculturalism. And in all likelihood the offending professor would be subjected to a sensitivity training workshop wherein the mantra “respect for diversity” would never cease. But when it’s Catholics who are the target of invective, the rules have a way of changing.

The reason why Catholic students are victimized for refusing to wear buttons that offend their conscience and are then prosecuted under trumped up charges is the same reason why Catholic students can be insulted with impunity by academic bullies: Catholicism is seen as oppressive by college faculty and administrators. Those who act on their religious convictions and those who openly identify themselves as Catholics are seen as the enemy, pure and simple. To be sure, not everyone on campus feels this way. But too many do and not enough is done to assure equal rights.

I’ve been in touch with the appropriate authorities at both CMU and Western Michigan. What happens next is their call. We’ll keep you posted.

-William A. Donohue

By Rev. John H. Miller, C.S.C., S.T.D

Father John H. Miller is the editor of Social Justice Review and the author of four books: Fundamentals of the Liturgy (1960), Signs of Transformation in Christ (1963), Called by Love (1989), and Love Responds (1990) . This article appeared in the January-February 1994 issue of Social Justice Review and is reprinted here with permission.

Christian compassion is more often than not our reaction to anyone’s suffering. That is apparent in the case of the scourge of AIDS and is becoming rapidly more and more applicable to homosexuality itself. People feel so sorry for these people who suffer, not from homosexuality, but because people are against them.

I submit that this is not Christian compassion. While we must always feel sorry for the sinner, we cannot feel sorry for the wicked who refuse to acknowledge their sinfulness. That is itself sinful, recalcitrant, obstinate. I cannot feel sorry or experience compassion for those who try to justify homosexual actions by recasting the meaning of the Bible or by claiming that such people have no choice, that they are born this way and have a RIGHT to homosexual love.

Right off we must make a distinction that is becoming very useful among knowledgeable and loyal psychologists. I suppose they could have thought up another way of expressing it, but they make a distinction between the homosexual and the gay person. The homosexual is one who is not satisfied with or complacent in his condition, he wishes to live chastely and will follow the spiritual direction and accept the psychological help he needs in order to do so. It is possible to be a homosexual person and still be chaste and along with that happy. On the other hand, the gay person is “proud” of his homosexual tendency, he actively engages in homosexual actions, and these get uglier and more violent, while the gay activist himself becomes more and more militant.

The homosexual person can be helped; the gay activist is beyond reach. The homosexual person will make use of the sacrament of penance and the Eucharist; the gay activist will not budge from his penchant for the abnormal. The homosexual person will not flaunt his condition; the gay activist puts on an ugly scene whenever he can.

And some of our bishops, despite this acquired knowledge about such persons, while offering no help to the homosexual, set up offices for the gays – in some cases with a gay priest as director! Where, oh where has episcopal prudence gone?

WHAT?

What is homosexuality? It is clear, I believe, that it consists in a psychological tendency, more or less strong, to use persons of the same gender for sexual gratification. It is not homosexuality in the strict sense when young or grown men use same sex persons for gratification solely because females are lacking. This sort of thing was taken for granted by Napoleon when, upon being asked by one of the local madams in Egypt if he wanted her ladies to service his men, remarked “Non! Mes hommes se suffisent!” And today the young are known to experiment with homosexual actions without having any prolonged desire for it. In other words, it is not the action that defines homosexuality, but rather the psychological compulsion that does so. Note, please, I am not condoning the action.

On the other hand, the psychological tendency is not sinful unless agreed to by actively engaging in it either by action or consensual thought or desire. Sin consists, not in a tendency, but always in an immoral act freely consented to.

Now, simply on the level of this distinction between tendency and action, we must allow for a difference in our reaction. We have no argument, let alone an animosity, toward the person who has such a tendency, but we very much object to and reasonably discriminate against a person who indulges in such conduct. On the one hand, we are truly compassionate toward the person who suffers from such an affliction, and later I will explain how. On the other hand, we must use every spiritual and civil means available to contain the spread of active vice on the part of gays.

HOW?

How does homosexuality start? When does it begin? Barring extremely strong psychological influence in later years, no one past the age of three develops the psychological tendency. It is precisely in the second half of a child’s second year that the danger approaches. Let us zero in on the boy, as an example, for he has a particularly difficult problem. At that age he must begin to disassociate himself from his mother’s psychology. Up until that time it was quite normal for him to depend on her for everything, for the mother, precisely as mother, is the first and best of teachers. But he’s a boy; he must now acquire the masculine traits proper to his father’s masculine psychology. The normal pattern for a boy of this age is to want to be with his father, to share his thinking and experiences, to learn to like what his father likes, to acquire the ability to do the things he does.

But what happens if he feels rejected by his father, or if his father is unaffectionate, rejecting, excessively stern, even excessively manly by demanding too much of the child, or if his father is effeminate and his mother overly possessive, showing hurt due to his change of interests? This will only send the child back to the protective arms of his mother. He will grow to acquire her psychology from which he was about to break – and ultimately her sexual attraction. The same is true of an effeminate or henpecked father; the boy will not be attracted to him as dominant. Or perhaps there may be in the family circle an uncle who is particularly dominant, manly but homosexual and communicates this tendency to the boy. Contrary-wise, that same person may be entirely normal and wholesome and save the situation for the boy, keeping him attuned to full masculine development and thus preventing the opposite. There are all sorts of combinations possible here.

This is basically the theory behind the etiology of homosexuality proposed by the British psychiatrist, Elizabeth Moberly, in her two books: Psychogenesis: The Early Development of Gender Identity (1983) and Homosexuality: A New Christian Ethic (1983); by the California psychologist, Joseph Nicolosi, in his Reparative Therapy of Male Homosexuality – A New Clinical Approach (1991); and by Fr. John Harvey in his book, The Homosexual Person – New Thinking in Pastoral Care (1987).

Admittedly, the problem of the etiology of this psychological abnormality is difficult; not all psychologists and psychiatrists are in agreement. Nonetheless, Moberly seems closest to the mark when she singles out as one underlying principal that the homosexual man or woman “has suffered from some deficit in the relationship with the parent of the same sex and that there is a corresponding drive to make good this deficit through the medium of same-sex or homosexual relationships” (Homosexuality, A New Christian Ethic). Furthermore, it is especially noteworthy that Nicolosi, who has succeeded in changing some 200 homosexuals into heterosexuals, has repeatedly come upon the phenomenon of the male homosexual in search of his father’s affection. It is also noteworthy that Nicolosi has been so successful that the gays in the Los Angeles area have trashed his office and tried to have passed a law prohibiting doctors from attempting to change homosexuals into heterosexuals. That alone says a lot.

DANGERS

The dangers to individuals and society are manifest: seduction (or recruitment, as the gays call it) of the young, the spoiling of human relationships, the spread of disease, the attack on marriage and family life, and the lessening in the eyes of the young of the dignity and sacredness of sex as well as the superior status of heterosexual marriage. If anyone should think that gay activists are not interested in the young, permit me to quote from the article of Michael Swift. “Speaking up for the Homoerotic Order” in The Gay Community News of Feb. 15-21, 1987:

We shall sodomize your sons, emblems of your feeble masculinity, of your shallow dreams and vulgar lies. We shall seduce them in your schools, in your dormitories, in your gymnasiums, in your seminaries, in your youth groups, in your movie theater bathrooms, in your houses of Congress, wherever men are with men together. Your sons shall become our minions and do our bidding. They shall be recast in our image. They will come to crave us and adore us.

Sick isn’t it? But this same author is also responsible for outlining the following gay agenda: the abolition of heterosexual marriage, making love between males de rigueur, exiling those who oppose [us], abolishing the family unit, the placing of children in the care of the homosexually wise, the closing of all churches that condemn us, the making of homosexuality a requirement for true nobility, etc.

I believe it is clear that gay activism is wholeheartedly determined to do battle against human life and all that that stands for; true love among humans, marriage, birth, the family.

It must be said and proclaimed loudly and strongly that what is against marriage is against life. Homosexual actions in no way favor either; they are by nature intrinsically perverted in themselves and pervert all they touch. Hence, gays are on a direct collision course with marriage and its life-giving purpose and dignity. They are on a direct collision course with anything that can bring them happiness. Despite the misnomer “gay,” they are very unhappy people, very promiscuous because they can’t find lasting satisfaction or deep relationships, very prone to depression, and a prey to suicide.

But our children also stand in the path of this monstrous perversion, for the children of others are the future of the gay life-style. Since gays cannot generate their own offspring, they openly try to “recruit,” (seduce is the proper word) the children of others into being their heirs. For this very reason gays “should never be allowed to teach our children once they come out of the closet.” Unlike the chaste homosexual, gays are not innocent; they viciously attack the values of our culture and militantly intend to corrupt our youth. They cannot stand before students as role models, not the gays, for they propose to undo all the good and healthful influences from which a child may have previously benefited.

REMEDIES

Any solution whether to the psychological condition or to the dangers of its corruption of society, will depend, first of all, on whether one regards this phenomenon as evil. We have already stated the position of the Catholic Church; the psychological tendency in itself is not immoral. Though there are some religious bodies that regard even the disposition as evil, theologically we cannot accept this. The condition as such is abnormal but morally neutral. Immorality enters only when the disposition is put into practice in some way. I am of the opinion that the belief of some religious denominations that the condition is evil is due to their conviction that the disposition is freely chosen. This is increasingly disproved by serious and competent psychological researchers. Just as the proposal that the condition is inherited is too simplistic.

Morally speaking, homosexual actions are wrong because they are contrary to nature. Males, for example, do not fit together in this way, no matter how much they love each other. And I do and must speak here of true love, for that is what friendship is: the love of benevolence that, by definition and reality, seeks always the well-being of the other, is selflessly devoted to the other. But enter the sexual dimension, and what should be beautiful, productive of good, enriching and fulfilling is automatically spoiled. Why? Because the use of sex between males can in no way but euphemistically, be called marital intercourse; use of sex between two men is necessarily using each other as objects for self-gratification and not of mutual self-giving. The organs employed cannot express mutual self-giving, life-sharing and life-giving, as sex must do in order to be true to itself, for while one party may use his life-giving and sharing organ, the other can only receive such an organ through what very definitely and clearly is nothing but a death-hole! Pardon me for using such an expression, but the anus can in no sense be called a life-giving or sharing organ; it yields only dead matter. And to anticipate another type of outlook, allowing oneself to be used sexually by another is not an expression of love, because instead of seeking the well-being of the other, it allows him to degrade himself. Anal intercourse, not only does violence to the body, but also debases the spirit.

Mistaken compassion must not allow us to “grant” civil rights to gays. What an incredible misnomer! We recognize, not grant, civil rights for all human beings because they are human beings; we do not award civil rights to men or women because of their behavior, in this case outrageous behavior. I hold that all laws passed by governments, whether municipal, state or federal, insuring “civil” rights for gays, not only are offensive to blacks and other minorities, but they are illegal because immoral. No one is obliged morally to obey them, though one may have to suffer the consequences of violating a non-law. We must vigorously fight against such laws and have them rescinded. We have every natural, God-given right to discriminate against immoral, unhealthy, ugly, society-disturbing behavior. We have a natural right to live in peace and decency, not to have to lock up our children for their protection, and to defend the basic elements of our civilization.

Let me conclude with a few remarks about the chaste homosexual. The homosexual is always in search and in need of love. The tragedy of his situation (but consider also Hollywood and TV) is that he confuses sexual pleasure with love. To the homosexual who wishes to control himself we owe real Christian compassion and assistance as an apostolic duty born of love.

Father John Harvey’s book, The Homosexual Person – New Thinking in Pastoral Care, is a godsend for anyone who is willing to help. Fr. Harvey is no softie; he does not give in to whining, he does not mollycoddle. He is strict, demanding and absolutely Catholic in the principles he follows. He demands continence of anyone who comes to him, group work, monthly personal spiritual direction and frequent reception of the sacraments. But note: his work is pastoral. I would be the last one to urge any unqualified person to start acting like a psychiatrist or psychologist. Get the names of truly reliable Catholic ones for referrals. But as devoted Catholics, desirous of pursuing the well-being of every person, we certainly can engage in pastoral care. And I would sum up our pastoral care for the good homosexual in these few precious words: tough love, challenging love, spiritual disciplines born of love of God. Just as any child can recognize the difference between a parent’s punishing out of annoyance or out of disciplining love, so the good homosexual will know when he meets a Christian who loves him enough to give him the time he needs, doesn’t hesitate to correct and challenge him in a loving way, always tries to lead him to good and to God. And remember – this is crucial – whatever love we can muster in such a situation, we must guard it, spiritualize it, and insure that it does lead the sufferer to an intimate love relationship with Christ. We must try always to be another Christ with him or her. This is the occasion for genuine compassion as we Christians recognize and satisfy the need for love, acknowledging with our present Holy Father that “No one can live without love!”