Church’s pregnancy advice agency compromised by state funding
Innitzer wasn’t a Nazi supporter. But he was afraid for the survival of his church. “Looking back, we can say he was naive,” said his successor, Cardinal Franz König. “But his idea was that the Germans are very stubborn; we Austrians are kind - maybe if we change the language a little bit and offer the ‘Heil Hitler,’ we will get more freedom.”
Innitzer soon saw the error of his ways. A group of Nazi thugs ransacked his residence. But the damage to his credibility was greater. He never managed to live down his apparent co-operation with the Nazis.
A half a century later, the German Catholic church diced with a more subtle form of wrongdoing. Some of the bishops were at odds with Pope John Paul II on the role of church-backed counselling centres, and whether they should provide certificates that could be used to fulfil German legal requirements for abortion. They argued that by involving themselves in the process of counselling women, the church-backed centres might discourage abortions.
The Pope said no, and Cardinal Ratzinger agreed with him. By filling out the required certificate, church agencies would be co-operating in the process of procuring abortions.
Some things have to be opposed on principle. Otherwise you risk compromising everything you stand for. There can be compassionate arguments in favour of a particular course of action, but if it involves the risk of doing a greater evil, it’s a non-starter.
That is why many people of conscience, and not just people of faith, will be shocked by the revelation that Cura, the Catholic church’s pregnancy counselling agency, is giving out leaflets containing contact details of groups which facilitate abortion. Cura has entered a ‘service level agreement’ with the Government’s Crisis Pregnancy Agency (CPA) under which it gets €600,000 in funds annually. From the state’s point of view, it’s money well spent considering Cura’s established reputation and national network of volunteers. The problem is that the CPA is trying to promote a set menu among the various counselling agencies it funds, only a minority of whom do not provide abortion referral information.
As part of its policy the CPA insists on a ‘non-directive approach,’ which means that pregnancy counsellors are supposed to remain outwardly neutral on the question of whether a woman should or shouldn’t have an abortion. Cura appears to have signed up to that. CPA has also produced a leaflet entitled ‘Positive Options,’ which includes contact details for abortion referral agencies.
Under pressure from CPA, the new Cura policy is to provide these leaflets to their clients, thus indirectly promoting access to British abortion providers.
Some of the organisation’s long-time volunteers are upset. “We are members of our local Cura centre for over 17 years,” wrote Mary Kelly, Ann Farren, Phil Murray and Pauline Roarty of the Letterkenny centre in a letter to The Irish Catholic.
“During that time when dealing with clients we did not give any information or direction which would facilitate anyone wishing to procure an abortion ... we are very disillusioned.”
Are these hard-line, doctrinaire people? Or just women who want to do what Cura has always done - provide support to pregnant women while protecting unborn children? Some volunteers report that Cura now tends to discourage the participation of counsellors whose approach to abortion might be ‘old-fashioned’ or not in keeping with the new non-directive ethos.
It is not hard to understand how an organisation like Cura might struggle to keep its ethos in a society where many politicians and public health professionals are ambivalent about abortion. This makes the role of the bishops, as the people responsible for ensuring good pastoral practice, all the more important. But the story gets depressing here. According to CPA chairperson Olive Braiden, the matter was raised with the bishop responsible for Cura, Dr John Fleming of Killala diocese. “He went back to discuss it,” Braiden told RTE, “and the word was that they would give out the leaflet.”
I have very little doubt that Bishop Fleming is a compassionate man who wants to do his best for the women and babies involved in unexpected pregnancy situations. But it is simply unacceptable that church leaders, on an issue as serious as this, can get things so wrong.
LET’S remember what is involved here. Abortion in England takes place up to 24 weeks without restriction. It is not pleasant to talk about what can happen to a child who may have developed to the point that he/she can move, taste, smell, see, hear, dream, even suck his/her thumb, but who can be aborted lawfully in Britain.
Maybe the higher-ups in Cura should have thought about this. Even for a minute.
What’s worse, the Cura leadership failed to see the problem even after the alarm was raised. Back in February 2004, Cura’s Dublin chaplain raised concerns which counsellors in the agency’s centre there had expressed about distributing abortion referral material. But the first break in episcopal inertia only came a year later when the Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Diarmuid Martin, raised the issue at a meeting of the hierarchy last March.
Last week, a priest close to Bishop Fleming was contacted by a journalist and asked for his opinion. He responded by berating “right-wing groups” for “harassing Cura.” Sorry, Father, but that’s not good enough. You can’t fob off people’s legitimate concerns in that way.
It is a tragic irony that the church has a great message about the sacredness of human life, but some of its agencies and personnel lack either the belief or the courage to lead the way. Instead, they seem mesmerised by state agencies and quangos from whom, in fact, Cura has everything to lose and nothing to gain. Cura is by far the best known, and most respected, pregnancy counselling agency in the country. It has a base of rock-solid, compassionate volunteers whose ability to tell right from wrong comes from instinct and experience.
Olive Braiden was ambivalent about whether Cura could continue to get Government money if they refused to provide the abortion referral leaflet. But how far will Cura go to win the state’s approval? And wouldn’t a nationwide church gate collection raise that amount in five minutes? The bona fides of Cura’s new friend, the Crisis Pregnancy Agency, must now be seriously open to question. The CPA claims that it seeks “a reduction in the number of women with crisis pregnancy who opt for abortion by offering services and supports which make other options more attractive.” How is this compatible with a leaflet that includes abortion referral agencies among the providers of ‘positive options’? Who do they think they are fooling? Apart from Cura, that is?
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