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Stephen D Mumford DrPH (NAC Chair)
President,
The Center for Research on Population and Security
Chapel Hill, North Carolina
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Contents
Political Action
Even before the work of the Papal Commission on Population
and Birth Control was completed in 1966, it was widely recognized in the Vatican
that the Church faced a grave problem regarding birth control, including
abortion. Vatican Council II, which ended in 1966, set the stage for the bishops
to address this problem. One of the outcomes of this Council was the Pastoral
Constitution on the Church in the Modern World. Part two of the Constitution was
titled, “Some Problems of Special Urgency.” In his book, Catholic Bishops in
American Politics, published by the Princeton University Press in 1991, T.A.
Byrnes observes, “This list of problems to which the Church was to turn its
attention reads like a blueprint of the American hierarchy’s political agenda
in the 1970s and 1980s.”[4] The first was abortion:
God, the Lord of life, has conferred on men the
surpassing ministry of safeguarding life – a ministry which must be fulfilled
in a manner which is worthy of man. Therefore, from the moment of conception
life must be guarded with the greatest of care, while abortion and infanticide
are unspeakable crimes.[5]
The Decree on the Bishops’ Pastoral Office in the Church,
another Vatican Council II document, created the National Conference of Catholic
Bishops (NCCB), which was organized according to universal church law. It was
created to serve as a political instrument of the Vatican.[6]
During a meeting of the American hierarchy in November 1966, the bishops
formally established the NCCB as their official collective body and established
the United States Catholic Conference (USCC) as their administrative arm and
secretariat.[7]
From the very beginning, there has been a common and
correct perception that the Catholic hierarchy was primarily an anti-abortion
political lobby. Byrnes summarizes his study of the history of Catholic bishops
in American politics by saying:
Before I end, I want to address one final matter, namely
the unique position that abortion occupies on the Catholic hierarchy’s
public policy agenda. Abortion is not simply one issue among many for the
bishops. It is rather the bedrock, non-negotiable starting point from which
the rest of their agenda has developed. The bishops’ positions on other
issues have led to political action and political controversy but abortion,
throughout the period I have examined, has been a consistently central feature
of the Catholic hierarchy’s participation in American politics.[8]
On January 22, 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court legalized
abortion for Americans. According to Bishop James McHugh, “within twenty-four
hours” of the court’s action, the bishops knew they would need to mount a
political campaign in favor of a constitutional amendment prohibiting abortion.[9]
The Vatican wasted no time in responding. In 1974, the
stage was further set to create a political machine to end legal abortion in the
United States when Rome issued a document titled, Vatican Declaration on
Abortion, which states:
A Christian can never conform to a law which is in itself
immoral, and such is the case of a law which would admit in principle the
licitness of abortion. Nor can a Christian take part in a propaganda campaign
in favor of such a law, or vote for it. Moreover, he may not collaborate in
its application.[10]
This statement is an unequivocal rejection of the
legitimacy of our democratically elected government to pass laws legalizing
abortion. The papacy had placed its authority on the line, pitting itself
against the U.S. government. If the Vatican were to avoid the looming
destruction of papal authority, it must minimize the number of abortions legally
performed and ultimately succeed in reversing the effects of Roe v. Wade. The
1974 Vatican Declaration on Abortion follows the instructions set forth by Pope
Leo XIII in his encyclical on the Chief Duties of Christian Citizens:
If the laws of the state are manifestly at variance with
the divine law, containing enactments hurtful to the Church or conveying
injunctions adverse to the duty imposed by religion, or if they violate in the
person of the Supreme Pontiff the authority of Jesus Christ, then truly, to
resist becomes a positive duty, to obey, a crime.[11]
The current abortion law in the United States is
unquestionably “hurtful to the Church.” Minimizing the number of abortions
done in the United States is obviously helpful to the Church.
The Bishops’ Pastoral Plan for Pro-life Activities
On November 20, 1975, at its annual meeting, the American
Catholic bishops issued the Pastoral Plan for Pro-Life Activities, a frank and
superbly detailed blueprint of the bishops’ strategy for infiltrating and
manipulating the American democratic process at national, state and local
levels. It maps out the creation of a national political machine controlled by
the Vatican through the bishops. The plan is directed toward creating a highly
sophisticated, meticulously organized, and well-financed local, state, and
national political machine. The plan candidly states that the Church will
undertake activities to elect officials from local to national levels who will
adhere to Vatican-ordained positions; that it will seek to influence policy in
ways that will eliminate the threat to the Church; and that it will encourage
the Executive Branch to deal “administratively” with matters that are
unfavorable to the Church.
The Plan, in part, reads:
The abortion decisions of the United States Supreme Court
(January 22, 1973) violate the moral order, and have disrupted the legal
process which previously attempted to safeguard the rights of unborn children.
A comprehensive pro-life legislative program must therefore include the
following elements:
a) Passage of a constitutional amendment providing
protection for the unborn child to the maximum degree possible.
b) Passage of federal and state laws and adoption of
administrative policies that will restrict the practice of abortion as much as
possible.
According to the Pastoral Plan, there is to be in each
state a State Coordinating Committee, functioning under the State Conference or
its equivalent, which will include bishops’ representatives from each diocese
in the state and will function to monitor political trends in the state.
Diocesan Pro-Life Committees are to coordinate groups and activities within the
diocese, particularly efforts to effect passage of a constitutional amendment to
protect the unborn child. The diocesan committee is to rely for the information
and direction on the Bishops’ Pro-Life Office and on the National Committee
for a Human Life Amendment.
Noting that well-planned and coordinated political action
at national, state, and local levels would be required, the pamphlet states that
the activity is not simply the responsibility of Catholics and should not be
limited to Catholic groups or agencies. This instruction was a clarion call by
the bishops for the creation of the New Right movement.
Indeed, during the period 1976-1980, all of the
organizations that became known as the “New Right Movement” were created,
with one exception: The Christian Coalition was created later to replace the
Moral Majority, which had fallen into public disrepute. Catholics were key
players in the creation of all these organizations and influential in their
leadership. This assessment of the creation of this movement and the influence
in it of the bishops is well documented.[12, 13, 14]
In 1980, Federal Judge John Dooling ruled on McRae v. HEW,
a challenge to the Hyde Amendment, which prevented Medicaid payment for
abortion. The judge had spent a year studying the anti-abortion movement in
great detail, including the bishops’ Pastoral Plan. His findings showed that
the anti-abortion movement was essentially Roman Catholic with a little
non-Catholic window dressing.[15]
In a 328-page ruling, Dooling, a practicing Catholic, makes
short work of the anti-abortionists’ pretensions to be a spontaneous
grass-roots movement that owes its political victories to sheer moral appeal. He
confirms that the right-to-life’s main source of energy, organization, and
direction has been the Catholic Church, and he describes in detail how the
movement works to achieve its goals.
The Protestant face carefully put on the movement, first by
the Moral Majority and then by the Christian Coalition, was called for in the
Pastoral Plan. Richard A. Viguerie, a Catholic, is the man most responsible for
the development and success of the New Right. He was also involved in the
original discussions that led to the creation of the Moral Majority and, as its
fundraiser, can be credited with its financial success. Paul Weyrich, a
Catholic, claims credit for originating the idea for the group and the name
itself. In their search for an attractive front man for the organization, they
chose Jerry Falwell.[16]
Much effort went into avoiding public disclosure of the
role of the Catholic Church in the creation of the Moral Majority. Maxine Negri,
in “A Well-Planned Conspiracy,” exposed involvement of the Catholic
hierarchy in the Moral Majority.[17]
The Christian Coalition replaced the Moral Majority with
the bishops still in full control. The evidence supporting this statement is
compelling.[18] For example, Maureen Roselli,
executive director of the Catholic Alliance, a branch of the Christian
Coalition, claims that the Coalition has 250,000 Catholic members.[19]
Catholic Georgetown University political science professor Mary Bendyna told the
Religious News Service that she was surprised to find, even before the creation
of the Catholic Alliance, that all five staffers in the Christian Coalition’s
Washington, D.C., office were Catholic.[20]
Claims of autonomy by the Moral Majority and the Christian
Coalition should not be taken seriously. What is described here is exactly the
organization contemplated in the Pastoral Plan.
What are some of the bishops’ successes on the three
branches of our federal government? The February 24, 1992, issue of Time
magazine showed that, with the election of anti-abortion Ronald Reagan in 1980,
the views of the Vatican gained substantial influence within the administrative
branch of the U.S. government in the area of population and family planning
policy.[21] Presidents Reagan and later Bush were
arguably the most pro-Vatican presidents in American history.
This article was written by Pulitzer prize-winning
journalist Carl Bernstein. He described what he referred to as the “Catholic
Team”:
The key Administration players were all devout Roman
Catholics – CIA chief William Casey, [Richard] Allen [Reagan’s first
National Security Advisor], [William] Clark [Reagan’s second National
Security Advisor], [Alexander] Haig [Secretary of State], [Vernon] Walters
[Ambassador at Large] and William Wilson, Reagan’s first ambassador to the
Vatican. They regarded the U.S.-Vatican relationship as a holy alliance: the
moral force of the Pope and the teachings of their church combined with their notion of American Democracy.
In a section of his article headed “The U.S. and the
Vatican on Birth Control,” Bernstein includes two more revealing paragraphs:
In response to concerns of the Vatican, the Reagan
Administration agreed to alter its foreign aid program to comply with the
church’s teachings on birth control. According to William Wilson, the
President’s first ambassador to the Vatican, the State Department
reluctantly agreed to an outright ban on the use of any U.S. aid funds by
either countries or international health organizations for the promotion of abortions. As a result of this position, announced at the World Conference
on Population in Mexico City in 1984, the U.S. withdrew funding from, among
others, two of the world’s largest family planning organizations: the
International Planned Parenthood Federation and the United Nations Fund for
Population Activities.
“American policy was changed as a result of the
Vatican’s not agreeing with our policy,” Wilson writes. “American aid
programs around the world did not meet the criteria the Vatican had for family
planning. AID [the Agency for International Development] sent various people
from the Department of State to Rome, and I’d accompany them to meet the
president of the Pontifical Council for the Family, and in long discussions
they finally got the message ...”
However, the bishops may have had even greater success in
targeting the judicial branch. In the 12 years of the Reagan and Bush
administrations, these two presidents appointed five Supreme Court Justices and
70% of all sitting judges in the federal court system. All were anti-abortion,
another goal of the Plan.
The legislative branch has been more difficult for the
bishops, although they did achieve sufficient influence in Congress to the
extent that pro-choice Congressmen could not override a presidential veto of
family planning bills. As long as the anti-family planning interests controlled
the White House, as they did during the Reagan and Bush years, this was
sufficient for the bishops’ purposes.
One of the more profound accomplishments of this Plan is
the capture of the Republican Party by the Vatican. This accomplishment was
vital to the bishops’ legislative agenda described in the Plan. In a July 28,
1994, Los Angeles Times wire service story, Jack Nelson describes the maneuvers
of the Religious Right so that this takeover is all but an accomplished fact.
On September 11, 1995, Bill Moyers gives his assessment of
the influence of the Religious Right in remarks titled Echoes of the Crusades:
The Radical Religious Right’s Holy War on American Freedom: “They control
the Republican party, the House of Representatives and the Senate ...”[22]
Outgoing Republican National Committee Chairman Richard
Bond told the members of that committee on January 29, 1993, that it was time
for the Republican Party to abandon the papal position on abortion. Bond said
that the party should not be governed by “zealotry masquerading as
principle.”[23]
But who is the Religious Right? The Spring 1994 issue of
Conscience, the journal of Catholics for a Free Choice, exploded the myth that
the Religious Right is a Protestant movement. It was designed, created, and
controlled by Catholics in response to the Pastoral Plan. These Catholics
recruited opportunistic Protestants to give the appearance that Protestants were
the instigators. The leadership is Catholic but the followers are often
Protestant. The National Catholic Reporter predicted that the Bishops’
Pastoral Plan would lead to the creation of a new political party, an American
Catholic Party.[24] But instead, the Vatican simply
chose to seize control of the Republican Party.
The outcomes of the Plan have been truly remarkable. And
they have implications for all Americans.
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