Originally printed in the National Catholic Register on June 25th, 2000.

CELESTE McGOVERN
Register Correspondent

BALTIMORE - Catholic Relief Services, the official foreign-aid charity of the Catholic community in the United States, is participating in the controversial March of Women 2000 - an international anti-poverty coalition that supports abortion-on-demand and homosexual rights.

The March of Women 2000 is a six-month-long schedule of activities organized to draw attention to poverty and violence against women. It will culminate October 15 with a march on Washington and a presentation to the United Nations of a list of 59 demands, including access to abortion and the acceptance of homosexual marriage.

In Canada, support for the march by an arm of the Canadian Council of Catholic Bishops and the Catholic Women's League has seriously divided Catholics. At least four Canadian bishops have publicly denounced Catholic participation, and many members of the Catholic Women's League are lobbying their national executive to withdraw support.

Bishop James Wingle of Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, warned of the march's philosophy in a June 13 letter to his diocese. "One after another of the national committees of the World March of Women list among their objectives and demands the inclusion of abortion and same-sex unions," he wrote. "The Canadian organizing committee, the United States committee, the Swiss committee - to mention but a few - have each in turn called for the enshrinement of access to contraception and abortion as an integral part of what they call women's reproductive health. They also demand legal recognition of same-sex unions.

"While these demands are not typically listed as the first objectives of the march, the fact that they are integrally included is more than sufficient grounds to warrant the removal of any support for the march on the part of individuals, groups or associations of the Catholic Church."

The U.S. arm of the march is being coordinated through the office of the pro-abortion National Organization for Women in Washington. "Never before has the need for a national, feminist march been more apparent," states a letter on the march's Internet site written by Patricia Ireland, president of National Organization for Women.

Ireland's letter cites "mean-spirited rhetoric on the floor of Congress," threats to "abortion rights" and to partial-birth abortion, and courts questioning constitutionality of bubble zones around abortion clinics as "problems" that the march opposes.

Moria Byrne, a communications officer at Catholic Relief Services headquarters in Baltimore, confirmed that the Catholic charity is sponsoring the March of Women. She said she was unable to contact Jane Lindsteadt, the official overseeing participation, because she is away in Africa. No one else in the Catholic Relief Services office was available to comment, or to disclose how much money is being provided to the march.

A spokeswoman for the National Conference of Catholic Bishops told the Register that she had not heard of the March of Women and was unaware of the Canadian controversy.

The only other nominally Catholic group signed on to the march in the United States is Catholics For a Free Choice, a pro-abortion group repudiated by the U.S. bishops and financed in part by Planned Parenthood Federation of America and the Playboy Foundation. Catholics for a Free Choice is leading the campaign by a coalition of pro-abortion organizations to revoke the Vatican's Permanent Observer status at the United Nations.

"Thousands of Catholics will be marching with us," National Organization for Women executive vice president Kim Gandy told the Register. Added Gandy, "In my opinion [abortion is] an issue that relates to poverty in women."

In Canada, the March of Women was endorsed by the executive of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, the national executive of the Catholic Women's League, the Canadian Religious Conference and by the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace, which donated $75,000.

Following a groundswell of opposition from grassroots Catholics, the four Catholic groups sponsoring the march issued a joint statement May 16 recommitting their support. They contended the march's demands make no specific mention of abortion, and they declared it serves as a "powerful bridge of solidarity to our sisters."

Other prominent groups supporting the march in Canada include the Canadian Abortion Rights Action League and Equality for Gays and Lesbians Everywhere, Canada's leading homosexual-rights lobby.

Pro-life Catholics in Canada insist the march's abortion advocacy is indisputable. They cite a March 29 letter from Diane Matte, Canadian coordinator for the committee of the World March, to Cecelia von Dehn, a nurse who wrote asking to participate as a pro-life voice.

The letter states that the committee (which includes Marcelle Sinclair, a representative of the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace) "unanimously decided" that "a pro-life contingent at the World March is unacceptable to us since the anti-choice position defended by your organization is in clear contradiction with the objectives pursued by the march."

Gandy defended the Canadian decision to exclude pro-lifers. "If they're there to support their anti-abortion agenda, I can see why Diane [Matte] wouldn't want them," she told the Register. "It would provoke intra-march conflict."

Currently, the march is provoking intra-Catholic conflict. Since April, diocesan Catholic Women's League groups have been asking the league's national executive council to disassociate the league from the march.

LifeSite Daily News, a Canadian Internet news service, reported on June 12 that the British Columbia and Yukon provincial Catholic Women's League annual convention voted with a nearly 80% majority to disassociate from the march. LifeSite also reported that the Toronto archdiocesan Catholic Women's League voted 68% against the march at their annual convention.

Catholic Women's League member Jakki Jeffs said it is quite possible that her Hamilton council, representing 12,500 of the league's 105,000 Canadian members, will withdraw its membership if the national leadership does not reverse its decision. "This is breaking my heart," said Jeffs. "But we're involved in a march that is working to defeat everything we stand for. Many, many grassroots women are upset by this."

Celeste McGovern writes from Victoria, British Columbia.

Side Bar

What Canadian Bishops Say About the March

In early May, Cardinal Aloysius Ambrozic of Toronto criticized the participation of the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace in the March of Women 2000, and redirected $15,000 intended for the group to a Pastoral Mission Fund. "Many of our clergy and laity have queried the involvement of Development and Peace," Cardinal Ambrozic noted in a May 9 letter to his priests. "The association of D&P [development & peace] with this group is indeed unfortunate and we need to make a clear and definite statement to disassociate our archdiocese with this movement through D&P."

In an April 19 letter, Bishop Anthony Tonnos of Hamilton, Ontario, announced that his diocese would not support the march. "I have also expressed my personal dissatisfaction to Development and Peace and to the Canadian Conference of Bishops," he wrote. On June 7, Vancouver Archbishop Adam Exner announced that with "full and strong support" of his bishops council and the archdiocesan Catholic Women's League, he was withholding

Development and Peace contributions until he was assured that the money "will be used only for third world projects and needs that are not in conflict with Catholic teaching."

Several other bishops have publicly supported Catholic participation. "The vast majority of the goals of this March for Women are legitimate, desirable and totally coherent with the Church's social teaching, " Bishop John Sherlock of London, Ontario, wrote in a May 30 statement. "There are some groups who have an agenda that we cannot accept. But every Catholic group that has committed itself to be involved has explicitly disassociated itself from that agenda and that disassociation has been recognized by those who are involved." Archbishop Marcel Gervais of Ottawa released a letter June 7 that stated, "It is much better for us to be present, promoting our pro-life message, than for us to stay away and leave the entire stage to our opponents."

In a June 13 letter, Bishop James Wingle of Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, replied to such arguments by quoting from John Paul II's 1995 encyclical, Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life).

In it, the Pope states: "[T]he choice of certain ways of acting is radically incompatible with the love of God and with the dignity of the person created in his image. Such choices cannot be redeemed by the goodness of any intention or of any consequence; they are irrevocably opposed to the bond between persons; they contradict the fundamental decision to direct one's life to God" (No. 75). Concluded Bishop Wingle, "Some may have hoped at an earlier time that by offering qualified support to the World March, an influence could be exercised on those responsible for the leadership of the March to foster in the expressions of the March only the inclusion of goals and aims that are worthy and consistent with the Church's teaching on life, marriage and family. Such hope is now demonstrated to be futile. "

- Celeste McGovern