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Forced
march The Report Newsmagazine It was the Tarot cards and the erotic lesbian art that made Anneliese Steden pack it in. The 63-year-old grandmother who belongs to the Catholic Women's League (CWL) of St. Ambrose Church Council in Hamilton was one of several ladies representing the CWL at a meeting of the World Inter- Church Council of Canadians (WICC) a few years back. She'd sat through a couple of discussions where ending the patriarchy was a dominant theme. Then she wandered down to the main display featuring New Age paraphernalia, a lesbian bookshop, and a giant quilt dedicated to abortion pioneer and Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger. The CWL is an organization of parish women who dedicate themselves "to God and Canada." Historically they have taken on such charitable causes as providing for the religious needs of soldiers, and raising money through penny-drives and bake-sales for a pickup truck for a travelling priest in South America or a photocopier for an Indian mission. Mrs. Steden says she was near tears at the WICC conference. "The CWL doesn't belong here," she told the group's current president. And she went home. Increasingly, to the chagrin of grassroots Catholic members like Mrs. Steden, the CWL's executive has been straying from the fold into radical territory, quietly endorsing feminist liberal causes such as women's ordination and marriage for priests. The CWL national council's decision to join the March of Women 2000 has brought the schism between the executive and the grassroots to a crisis. The march is a six-month event against poverty and violence against women that culminates this October with the presentation to the United Nations and the House of Commons of a lengthy list of demands, including access to abortion and the acceptance of homosexual marriage. Two weeks ago, the Hamilton Diocese CWL voted (151- 3) in favour of a resolution requiring the National Council to "issue a public statement of withdrawal of its support and endorsement" of the march. Hamilton lifelong CWL member Jakki Jeffs (recently profiled in a Catholic magazine as a model CWL member) says it is quite possible that the Hamilton CWL, representing 12,500 of the organization's 105,000 Canadian members, will pull its membership if the demand is not met. "This is breaking my heart," says Mrs. Jeffs. "But we're involved in a march that is working to defeat everything we stand for." As well as opposing the march demands for abortion and lesbian marriage, the Hamilton resolution preamble opposes demands to endorse the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. CEDAW, for example, is a feminist arm of the UN which has recently denounced "the influence of the Church" on Ireland's "access to healthcare." CEDAW has also ordered Kyrgyzstan to legalize lesbianism, reprimanded Belarus for celebrating Mother's Day, and chastised Italy for allowing doctors who don't want to do abortions not to. Other demands of the march would set off debate even among non- Catholics: $ 2- billion support for a national child care program, for example, and $50 million to "front-line, feminist, women-only" organizations. Its activities include a "Pay Equity Celebration" at an Ottawa bar and a "mock human rights trial" of the Canadian government. CWL is marching alongside groups including Status of Women, the Canadian Abortion Rights Action League, the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies (which recently endorsed serial killer Karla Homolka's bid for parole) and Equality for Gays and Lesbians Everywhere. CWL national president Sheila Pellerin wrote in a letter posted on the group's website that it was "under the auspices of WICC" that CWL joined the march. A typical WICC publication includes the poem "baptism of eve," a fanciful recasting of the Book of Genesis in the Bible: the snake tells Eve not to eat the apple, she does, the heavens open and a raven descends on her shoulder, "a deafening voice rings out quietly this is my daughter whom I love and with whom I am well pleased...each month streams of blood will pour from you as your birthing powers are renewed...take the man and the snake and make your home east of Eden knowing that you carry paradise within you." Even while the CWL is marking its 80th anniversary with celebrations across the country, its grassroots are threatening to rebel over the march . "Many, many women are upset about this," says Mrs. Jeffs. B.C.'s provincial CWL will be taking the march up at its June 7 meeting. "They have drastically overreached themselves this time, and they should withdraw immediately and apologize," says Cathy Smith, a 48-year-old Medicine Hat, Alta., member for 21 years who's seriously considering withdrawing her membership. Despite growing opposition, the CWL, along with three other Catholic groups, including the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB) and the Catholic Organization for Development and Peace (D&P) (which contributed $110,000 of churchgoers' donations), dug in their heels and issued a joint statement May 16 re-committing to the march, adding they did not support its abortion aims. It's hard to know if the recent vote from Hamilton will change their mind: CWL national board members refused to respond to questions from this magazine last week. As well as threatening to dissolve the largest women's religious group in the country, the march has publicly divided Canada's bishops. Toronto Archbishop Aloysius Ambrozic, a vigorous abortion opponent, criticized D& P's "unfortunate" participation and redirected $15,000 intended for the group to a Pastoral Mission Fund. Hamilton Bishop A.G. Tonnos endorsed his CWL's opposition to the march, too. But Calgary's Bishop Fred Henry wrote a piece in the Western Catholic Reporter defending the march and radical feminism, too, saying "as we walk we have the opportunity to say what we believe in and what we oppose." Yet in a letter to pro-life nurse Cecilia von Dehn, who had asked to participate as a pro-life voice, Diane Matte, the coordinator for the committee of the World March, wrote that the committee (which includes Marcelle Sinclair, a member of Catholic D&P) had "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." Excluding pro- lifers, she added, was a "most respectful way to avoid pointless discussion and confrontations." Bill Kokesh, a spokesman from the CCCB, says his office has "no intention to re-examine participating in the march." The bishops continue to receive " a lot of correspondence on the issue," however. "The one thing this controversy has brought out is the fact that Catholics are pro-life," says Mr. Kokesh. "They certainly are making it very clear." Courtesy of LifeSite Daily News, a production
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