Catholics for Choice, a pro-abortion pressure group that works to legitimize abortion within the Catholic Church, has praised Planned Parenthood as exemplifying the Catholic social justice tradition.
On social media earlier this week, the organization sent out a congratulatory Tweet celebrating the abortion giant’s 100th anniversary.
In point of fact, the Catholic social justice tradition condemns abortion in the strongest terms as the brutal murder of an innocent human being.
Leaders among the U.S. Catholic hierarchy have denounced the faux-Catholic organization, saying that it does not represent Church teaching and has no right to co-opt the term “Catholic.”
Last month, Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan of New York, chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB) Committee on Pro-Life Activities, condemned attempts by the group to deceive the public through an ad campaign calling for taxpayer funding of abortion in the name of the Catholic faith.
“As the U.S. Catholic bishops have stated for many years, the use of the name ‘Catholic’ as a platform to promote the taking of innocent human life is offensive not only to Catholics, but to all who expect honesty and forthrightness in public discourse,” he said.
“CFC is not affiliated with the Catholic Church in any way. It has no membership, and clearly does not speak for the faithful. It is funded by powerful private foundations to promote abortion as a method of population control,” he added.
This is not the first such organization set up for the express purpose of undermining Catholic teaching and confusing the faithful.
Hacked emails released by Wikileaks last week revealed that top members of the Hillary Clinton campaign have been engaged in efforts to subvert Catholic moral teaching through just this sort of organization. Campaign chief John Podesta boasted that he had set up two Catholic dummy associations for this purpose: Catholics United and Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good.
The email feed, titled “opening for a Catholic spring?” suggested that the phony Catholic groups could “plant the seeds of the revolution” and so bring an end to “a middle ages dictatorship” as well as ushering in an age of “gender equality” in the Church.
In response, Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput wrote a scathing essay decrying the deceptive ploys and anti-Catholicism of the Democratic Party as well as characterizing Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton as a “scheming, robotic liar with a lifelong appetite for power and an entourage riddled with anti-Catholic bigots.”
The Archbishop further suggested that as bad as things have been under President Obama, a Hillary presidency could make them worse still.
Despite the immense “cultural damage” brought about by the current White House, Chaput writes, with the “contemptuously anti-Catholic emails” of Hillary’s campaign team, “bad can always get worse.” In fact, Chaput had written earlier, in the view of many people, Hillary “should be under criminal indictment.”
Chaput quotes at length an email he received from a non-Catholic attorney, who assured him that these “bigots are actively strategizing how to shape Catholicism not to be Catholic.”
“They are, at the very core, trying to turn religion to their secular view of right and wrong consistent with their politics,” he quotes. “We have political actors trying to orchestrate a coup to destroy Catholic values, and they even analogize their takeover to a coup in the Middle East, which amplifies their bigotry and hatred of the Church.”
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