Open Letter to the United States Conference of Bishops

To the Most Reverend Members of the USCCB,

I am a concerned Catholic professional with degrees in both civil and canon law.  I am also a wife, a mother of three and a pro-life and anti-surrogacy activist. Consistent with the teachings of the Church, I have sponsored immigrants and assisted illegal entrants in attaining citizenship.  My husband and I are active parishioners in San Francisco, California and Park City, Utah.  We have raised our children in the Church and weathered with the Church the shocking exposure of suppressed incidents of sexual abuse against children by some of our clergy. 

I have been faithful and involved.

The recent exposure of the sexual abuse by and lifestyle of Cardinal “Uncle Ted” McCarrick opens old wounds of betrayal by the clergy and a new, far more serious chapter in the moral authority of the Episcopal conference. The credibility and viability of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) is now in question.

Those of us who have followed the Conference’s response to the 2002 Boston Globe expose found reassurance in the employment of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice to study, first, the scope of the sexual abuse and, subsequently, the causes and context of that abuse. We also embraced the USCCB’s 2002 Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People as a sincere statement of action and as a watershed moment creating transparency and cooperation with the laity to prevent any further abuse and scandal. Through contributions of time, talent and money, the laity stood side-by-side with the USCCB and our dioceses to expose, heal and compensate the gross sexual wrongdoing of clergy. We stood upon promises from our shepherds that reporting, exposure, and sexual safety were the new norms; admissions of wrong-doing and recompense and healing for victims, the new spiritual language; and zero tolerance of clerical predatory behavior, the uncompromised standard of all bishops.

Yet, here we awake again to scandalous headlines: “American Cardinal Accused of Sexually Abusing Minor Is Removed From Ministry”  (NYT); “Man Says Cardinal McCarrick, His ‘Uncle Ted,’ Sexually Abused Him for Years”  (NYT)); “Cardinal McCarrick, former archbishop of Washington, accused of sexual abuse and removed from ministry” (WashPost).  Allegations now include sexual molestation of minors as well as sexual predatory behavior with young seminarians and priests.

More, media disclosures insist that the predatory behaviors of Cardinal McCarrick have been well known for decades. This from religion writer Julia Duin: “Numerous journalists – and Catholics – knew that McCarrick has been accused of this sort of thing for decades and that he cultivated male seminarians for sexual purposes for years.“ The American Conservative writer Rod Dreher makes similar assertions in his article “Cardinal McCarrick: Everybody Knew.”

Remember how, after Harvey Weinstein was busted as a serial sexual abuser, it emerged that a whole lot of people knew this about Weinstein, but never said anything about it? The same thing is true about Cardinal Theodore McCarrick . . . I had never heard that McCarrick abused minors, but I heard from many sources that he would go after seminarians. He had a habit of inviting them to his beach house and always inviting one more young man than there was bed space for. The unlucky mark had to bunk with the Archbishop, who loved to snuggle.

Allegations that Cardinal McCarrick’s inappropriate, predatory sexual behaviors were well known in journalistic and certain clerical circles raise a critical issue: Were the members of the USCCB aware of either these allegations against or the actual behaviors of Cardinal McCarrick’s? As the USCCB undertook the task of re-establishing credibility with the public and moral authority with the communal body after years of ignoring, misunderstanding and mishandling credible allegations of clerical abuse of children, was there knowledge that one of their own – then Archbishop McCarrick – should have been in the database of offenders, not sitting in the room? 

As a lawyer, feminist and mother, I am reminded immediately, like Mr. Dreher, of Harvey Weinstein’s predatory behaviors and Hollywood’s blind eye. Has the USCCB behaved any differently than our civil celebrities who dared not cause public shame to one of their own? 

I go further than Mr. Dreher, though, and reflect with alarm and dread on the conspiracy of silence that enabled and protected Jerry Sandusky of Penn State through his years of sexual predation. Is it possible that our Apostles of Christ disregarded known fact or allegations against “one of their own” even as they promised the laity that the USCCB would take every action necessary to provide a sexually safe environment for our young people?

While the USCCB is not a disciplinary body with respect to individual members, nor does it displace the primary relationship of each bishop with the Holy Pontiff, the conference functions as a primary community for the bishops. Its purpose is to foster “the communion of fraternal charity and zeal for the universal mission entrusted to the Apostles” and allow the bishops to “[pool] their abilities and their wills for the common good and for the welfare of the individual churches.” (Christus Dominus, 36). 

The USCCB is not a union, a professional organization or a coaching staff. By canon law, it is committed “to promote the greater good which the Church offers mankind, especially through the forms and methods of the apostolate fittingly adapted to the circumstances of time and place, according to the norm of law.” (c. 447) This current scandal, along with pointed allegations in the press that Cardinal McCarrick’s predatory behavior was known to at least some of his fellow bishops (see Dreher, “Cardinal McCarrick: Everybody Knew”) raises legitimate concern that the USCCB, like Hollywood and the Penn State coaching staff, has enabled at least one of its members to engage in decades of sexually predatory behavior. 

This scandal will not pass. It will not blow over. It is not a footnote to the sexual abuse crisis. Even as I write, I dread the headlines in the days ahead. How many more hurting, damaged victims of Cardinal McCarrick will finally be able to come forward? How many other bishops have engaged in similar predatory behavior or turned their backs on victims complaining of inappropriate sexual behavior by fellow bishops? 

With this shameful exposure of Cardinal McCarrick’s history, the USCCB enters a new, ominous chapter. The bishops must confront serious questions about the role and credibility of the Conference itself, it’s ability to provide moral correction and guidance for the Catholic laity, and, whether it functions in compliance with Canon Law “for the common good and for the welfare of the individual churches” or has metastasized into an opaque organization for the positioning and protection of bishops.  

I urge you toward disclosure, transparency, and communication. I urge you to commission a third study with a focus on how a sexually abusive bishop not only remained immune from the scrutiny that our priests underwent during the sexual abuse crisis but advanced in his Episcopacy. This study must detail what Cardinal McCarrick’s fellow bishops knew about both allegations and instances of sexual predation and what, if anything, the community of Bishops did to address the information. It must also fully and finally reveal the scope of sexual misconduct and allegations of misconduct by Cardinal McCarrick, as well as any other Bishop, detailing the Bishops’ own compliance with the standards imposed on all clergy in 2002.

I also urge the USCCB to promptly appoint a commission of laity to work with the USCCB on initiating this investigation and to formulate independent observations and recommendations regarding procedures for exposing, reporting and addressing sexual misconduct by our Bishops. It is critical to Catholics – who are called upon to encourage our sons toward the priesthood – to understand the scope of sexual predation, and its enabling, among our Bishops. The voice of the laity must be included and heard, for the voice of our Bishops has failed us. 

In Christ,

Marjorie Murphy Campbell

A Book Review

Surrogacy: A Human Rights Violation by Renate Klein

“Surrogacy,” author and activist Dr. Renate Klein writes in her new book Surrogacy: A Human Rights Violation, “is the commissioning/buying/renting of a woman into whose womb an embryo is inserted and who thus becomes a ‘breeder’ for a third party.” The transaction typically involves “commissioning” or “intended” parents; paid “donors” of biological reproductive material;  compensated“gestational carriers;” IVF medical professionals (including doctors, care staff and technicians); pharmacists and fertility drug specialists, as well as lawyers, surrogacy agency personnel; surrogacy brokers and intermediaries and judicial personnel, including family court judges.

It’s a complex maze in which the woman who “gestates” the human child remains largely invisible.

Dr. Klein debunks the romanticized “Build Your Family” image marketed by the booming fertility industry and purchasing parents and exposes the dark reality of the women paid to gestate and turn-over human babies. A typical transaction rests on a series of lop-sided contracts, prepared by lawyers working for the purchasing parents and for the medical personnel. These legal documents tether the woman “renting” her womb to “nine months of bondage” during which she is legally subject to the detailed medical, health and physical instructions of third parties.  

As Dr. Klein details, surrogates’s lives are no longer their own: surrogacy contracts typically allow the intended parents and their medical team to control what a “gestational carrier” consumes and does 24 hours a day over the course of the pregnancy. The purchasers retain the authority and rights to schedule and attend appointments and testing, control the surrogate’s physical and sexual activities, and to demand invasive procedures, including abortion of a fetus. 

Dr. Klein amply supports her argument that surrogacy offers a means-to-a-child only for the educated elite with money to spend. While this complex of service and product extracts enormous amounts of money from purchasing parents, it is highly lucrative only for the professionals, not the women indentured as surrogates. The women hired to gestate and turnover babies tend to come from much lower economic circumstances and most often need money. More, they often lack the education and experience to negotiate effectively, much less read meaningfully, the contracts they are required to sign.

Dr. Klein’s volume exposes the emotional and physical harms this thriving industry hides and denies. The dark reality of surrogacy unfolds in Ms. Klein’s detailing of failed implantation, unwanted and “flawed” fetuses, demands for abortion, abandoned babies and unpaid, ill and suffering womb-renters. Even the most ardent surrogacy proponent would be hard-pressed to disagree with Dr. Klein’s conclusion that “the best way to prevent the harm is not to engage in the practice at all.”  

Yet, Dr. Klein’s historically rich account of the opposition movement left this sympathic reader wanting more. The author dates resistance to surrogacy to the 1984 publication of Test-Tube Women: What Future for Motherhood, a collection of 33 essays reflecting on “urgent” reproductive issues following the birth of the first test tube baby, Louise Brown, in 1978. Providing an impressive selection of books and conferences, Klein’s Chapter 6 “Resistance – past and present” consumes 50 pages of her compact 180 page book.

With this length and detail, Dr. Klein unintentionally chronicles how little impact the opposition has had on the burgeoning, international, multi-billion dollar fertility business. Notably, she moves from “resistance” to conclusions – there’s no chapter on accomplishments.

 Klein’s focus on “resistance” flows directly from her conviction that only prohibition of surrogacy can protect women and children from the exploitation that inheres in the practice itself. She argues in Chapter 3 that surrogacy is unethical – but,with respect to the gestating mothers, offers in support only scattered quotations from Andrea Dworkin and a singular reference to “an ethical framework that is based on striving for global human dignity and human rights that are based on a do-no-harm philosophy to your fellow human beings.”

Dr. Klein is passionately clear on why surrogacy offends her personal ethical paradigm, which she links to that of other radical feminists struggling against patriarchal, misogynous, capitalist structures. However, Dr. Klein does not identify or offer a more general ethical context upon which to anchor and build surrogacy opposition. (She does more so with respect to children born from gestational surrogacy and other fertility innovations where she references UN statements regarding the rights of children.)

Dr. Klein’s analogy to slavery does not help. Voluntary surrogate mothers, often with some limited protections from state laws, do not suffer the abuse, exploitation and dehumanization of the human slave. The antislavery movement galvanized an international consensus against human slavery upon the Judeo-Christian ethic that a human being may never be chattel, counted among the financial assets of the slave’s owner. While surrogate mothers are often confined and very poorly treated, their situation is more akin to the plights of sex workers who, like surrogates, monetize sought after aspects of the female human body.

 Dr. Klein’s alternate analogy fits better: the similarity between reproductive surrogacy and sexual prostitution. Unlike slavery, both surrogacy and prostitution enjoy support from a broad range of communities. While a correct Judeo-Christian ethic would oppose these forms of female objectification, no consensus has emerged, especially in partnership with secular sources, that either should be fully prohibited. To the contrary, famous celebrities and politicians have all purchased children through surrogacy with little or no criticism.

Sadly, as Dr. Klein reports, despite some isolated surrogacy prohibitions in limited geographical areas, we find ourselves in boom times for surrogacy, enriching the matrix of agents who actively manipulate public opinion. In its current partnership with child-seeking gay male couples, the fertility/surrogacy industry plays upon human longing for children with promises of problem-free family building.  The plight of the impoverished and exploited surrogates is neither documented, studied, acknowledged oraddressed. Even jurisdictions solidly opposed to surrogacy in past years, are showing significant shifts in public opinion toward favoring surrogacy, at least in some circumstances. 

Notably, Dr. Klein’s objections focus on the prevailing surrogacy arrangement, involving a human mother to achieve a human birth and turnover. Klein acknowledges that the industry seeks a more efficient gestational option and has high hopes that artificial wombs will replace the human female surrogate.  

While I am sure that Dr. Klein and other surrogacy critics do and will oppose gestation of the human child by non-human means, I am less sure that, without a broad ethical framework, they can offer morally compelling opposition. The arguments upon which they have relied for nearly 50 years have not succeeded in the prohibition they seek; such arguments will have limited, if any, application to non-human gestation.

Let me note here that I do not disagree with Dr. Klein and the other critics – I believe that surrogacy should be illegal and I recommend her book without qualification for a compelling history of the opposition movement.  I was an original supporter of and signatory to ‘Stop Surrogacy Now’ and, like Dr. Klein, acknowledge the tireless contribution of Jennifer Lahl and the Center for Bioethics and Culture in forming, organizing and mobilizing this coalition.

 Yet, Dr. Klein’s book, the limited achievements of Stop Surrogacy Now and the fast-paced development of reproductive technologies cry out for a broader, far-reaching, cross-technological and ethical foundation upon which we can discuss not just the injustices of surrogacy, but the commercializing and dehumanizing of human reproduction and birth, developments which “affect our very humanity” as bioethics expert Leon Kass would say. Just what, we must decide, makes human reproduction essentially human? 

We’ve answered this question throughout human history upon an ethic of male-female love: creating a biological, sexual joinder, resulting in the natural conception of a child interior to the female lover’s body, resulting in the natural transition of the male to father and female to mother, as parents known to and knowable by the human child.

The female human body, as Dr. Klein discusses in the context of gestational surrogacy, is gifted with hormonal psycho-physical mechanisms which infuse reproduction with the emotions that create deeply human bonds. The child is born into a total physical dependency on the woman with whom he has bonded and relies, a woman with whom he has exchanged cells and has come to know intimately during gestation.  

 With surrogacy, egg extraction, embryo creation and implantation, genetic testing and engineering, for example, the love model of human reproduction is rapidly being replaced with commercial production of human offspring. We can literally build a child from component parts with biologically correct environments; and the technologies for adding detail and preference and option advance each day. All of the deeply human mechanisms of the female body for creating a human child in the context of human bonding are being eliminated by technology and legal contract.

At some point in this process, the human child becomes a manufactured product; the gestational womb, a rental space; the child’s genetic makeup, an exercise in priced selection. Dr. Klein’s focus on the surrogacy component recognizes that something has gone so far amiss that for the surrogate mother and the child she births and turns over pursuant to the terms of a commercial contract, reproduction becomes dehumanizing by ignoring and even denying the very processes which make a birth essentially human. 

Dr. Klein is absolutely right that regulation of surrogacy will not and cannot restore the humanity to the reproduction process. But both surrogate mothers and the children they gestate and sell are entitled to process whichrecognizes, honors and retains as far as possible that which makes and keeps reproduction essentially human.

 As Dr. Klein’s book demonstrates, we need an articulated ethic from which the Rights of a Human Birthing Mother and the Rights of a Human Child by Contract can emerge to preserve the essential humanity of human reproduction.  A human female reproductive ethic must set a standard to which ALL substitute, commercialized forms of human reproduction must conform.  Let our procedures and reproductive technologies be defined by our essential humanity, not become the tools by which our humanity is dismantled.

In an August 15, 2017, broadcast, Fox commentator Charles Krauthammer characterized President Trump’s most recent remarks regarding the Charlottesville conflict as a “moral disgrace.” While fellow commentator Laura Ingraham called racism itself “evil,” Krauthammer avoided generalizing about racism or hatred or even violence, in favor of public condemnation of what President Trump did, or did not say, about specific white supremacy groups present in Charlottesville.

What the President misses, Krauthammer insisted, “is the uniqueness of [slavery] and white supremacy, the KKK and Nazism” which stain American history as an “original sin” that must be “cured” and “redeemed” by each successive generation of white people. The acknowledged presence of “bad guys on both sides,” Krauthammer asserted, is not relevant in view of the public appearance of white supremacists, regardless the levels of hate and violence.

In what theological tower does Krauthammer live? His metaphor, heard often now in connection with racial incidents, is disastrous. It equates “being white” with a permanent transgression (American slavery) that casts white relations toward people of color as always suspect, irredeemably tainted with the “original sin” of our white ancestors.

The persistence of this metaphor defies the vision of Martin Luther King and what we spent our youth struggling to achieve. I say “we” with deep affection.

In 1970, as an entering 9th grader at Thompson Junior High School in Richmond, Virginia, our south side schools welcomed several hundred black students, bused across the city as part of a court-administered effort to integrate the persistently segregated Richmond public schools. It was a volatile time, but both white and black students who remained in the public school system rapidly formed a consensus that the furious arguments of those opposed to integration needed to remain outside the school building.

With the National Conference of Christian and Jews (now called National Conference for Community and Justice) helping us sort out prejudices we barely understood, we united in hope and determination to create a safe, welcoming environment for all students.

We did not suffer notions of guilt and entitlement that kept us at arm’s length — the white teens guilty by association, the black teens entitled to suspicions and recompense. To the contrary, we were young teenagers and rapidly interested in normal adolescent pursuits, forming friendships and romances, attending school athletic events and dances, gossiping about teachers and each other. The NCCJ supported our new Human Relations Club and we cultivated active,

The then-NCCJ supported our new Human Relations Club as we cultivated active and equal interaction between races. No one inside the school, all working to make the school a success, was tainted with the atrocious behavior of those whites viciously opposed to busing, much less the historical reality of slavery over 100 years earlier.

We could not avoid the outside world, though. One night, after a football game in Petersburg, angry protesters pummeled our bus with stones. The next season, after a basketball game at George Washington High, the coaches suddenly screamed for us to close the bus windows and lay on the floor – as hostile parents again barraged us with debris. Talking to a friend one night on the phone, I heard his mother shrieking at him, “Get off the phone with that “nigger-lover.” He apologized and said we could not be friends any longer; I spent too much time with “niggers.”

We were not without sin. We brought – we ALL brought – sometimes uncharitable stereotypes to our interactions. But we also brought a profound commitment to letting wrongs go, seeking and giving forgiveness and forging a community of equals. This was, after all, the age of Martin Luther King whose condemnation of hatred and determined, faithful hope in the power of love inspired our day-to-day lives.

What a different social experience Thompson Junior High School would have been in 1970 had the white students to answer for slavery and white racism as personal “original sin.” As Professor John Patrick Leary recently wrote, “Original sin is a sin, after all, for which no atonement is ever possible.”  He continues:

“[H]ere is the major problem with describing slavery as an ‘original sin’: . . . the phrase becomes a sort of ritual performance of a generalizable guilt, in which the sin, and therefore the repentance (or the fiery retribution, depending on how wrathful you and your God are feeling), resides nowhere and with no one in particular.” (Emphasis added)

American whites become, as Krauthammer suggests, accountable for the grave wrong to American blacks in past history, despite that no living white American has ever owned a slave nor has any American black been a slave. Rather, the attitude towards American slavery as an “original sin” bestows responsibility on all whites-in-being to “cure” and “redeem” the wrongs of a now illegal, condemned industry of human ownership, with forms of singular, unique penance to all blacks-in-being.

I cannot think of a construct more certain to promote discomfort, ill will, and segregation. Are we to convey to our children that, if you are white, you carry guilt for a historical sin against the black children in the neighborhood, in the school, in the community? Are we to teach our children that, if you are black, the white children in your life have a responsibility to atone for the historical industry of human ownership and trade?

How can we possibly expect our children, none of whom are born with racism in their hearts, to approach each other with generosity, curiosity, and charity if their perceptions are formed with a willful intention that they must atone for slavery?

I found my first boyfriend during this period of integration at Thompson Junior High School. An athlete from one of the black neighborhoods across the James River, we spent long after-school hours doing what young teenagers often do: talking, fondling, laughing, teasing. With few exceptions, our relationship stayed within the boundaries of the school, which both protected and even encouraged our interracial involvement. We did not see black or white; we did not suffer guilt or shame over a history we both knew; we delighted in the hope and wonder of a world that had brought our paths to cross.

I long for the age of Martin Luther King. I pray for leadership that does not see, much less exploit, black or white. I wonder if we will ever again recognize that original sin knows no race, no gender, no age, but binds us together in the mystery and challenge of overcoming our worst inclinations toward each other. During the Civil Rights era we seemed so much closer, so much nearer Dr. King’s vision that “man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.”

During the Civil Rights era, we seemed so much closer, so much nearer Dr. King’s vision that “man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.”

Sadly, that’s as close as we got to a future rooted in love and hope, rather than tethered to the sins of the past – at least for my lifetime.

Opposition to the presidency of Donald Trump remains passionate. The recent march on January 21 2017 in DC pulsed with anti-Trump frenzy, quickly shedding its poor disguise as a “women’s march.” I heard “Not my President, not my President” chanted by diverse groups, from global warming enthusiasts to abortion advocates to Black Lives Matter protestors.

The marchers thoroughly enjoyed every sign, chant, or speech that trashed Trump. This week’s opposition to President Trump’s executive order PROTECTING THE NATION FROM FOREIGN TERRORIST ENTRY INTO THE UNITED STATES has stoked hysteria with fake news headlines decrying a Muslim ban in the United States and a religious test for immigrants.

Passion like this does not stick to the streets. Since I first publicly shared my interest in Donald Trump and his voters, I have received considerable criticism from some friends and associates. As my interest evolved into support for the Trump/Pence ticket, the criticism turned to denigration and even disavowal. On Inauguration Day, as I joined the celebrations in Washington, this text pinged me.

“I am so sad today, realizing that our friendship is really over. I am in mourning for our country and in mourning over us. … I do not want you part of my life.”

I plopped down and sighed. So my most treasured friend, with whom I’ve shared for decades secrets, sadnesses and joys, was dumping me over my support for Donald Trump. A few days later she added,

“Your “feminism” isn’t real, your beliefs are damaging the world. I have never felt so disappointed in someone.”

These remarks were beyond difference of opinion – they were delivered coldly and impersonally, without the benefit of a phone call or personal contact. More, my friend decided to unload her anti-Trumpism on me knowing that I was in the midst of a difficult and likely final visit with my failing mother. Whether my friend purposefully decided to be cruel to me or whether her anti-Trump passion seemed to justify such cruel behavior, I do not know.

I am not the only person suffering cruelty because of support for President Trump’s candidacy. Being from California, where many of the bereaved now seek to secede from the Union, I may have more of these stories to tell than some. But I doubt it. Friends have confided similar tales of unprovoked hostility and tension within families and between friends. Commentators like Pierce Morgan and celebrities like Steve Harvey report verbal attacks from people who object to their links to President Trump.

These attacks are painful – especially when they come from family members or people with whom we have substantial histories and whom we call friends. The vitriol can be breathtaking, even shocking as we recognize that our love and caring has been swallowed by hostility we did not know possible. This behavior challenges us to frame a response that does not set off or condone a cycle of attack and bitterness.

Here’s the guide I have developed for myself. Please share your own thoughts in the comments.

Prepare to forgive. Even as I was reeling from my friend’s attack, I knew that I had eventually to forgive her. This is both a matter of my faith practice and a practical reality. All long-term loves ebb and wan with our own changes in belief and opinion and physical capacities – my friend and I have differed many times and we have practice forgiving each other. I did not make her graduation from graduate school when I said I would and she was gracious and forgiving. We pointedly argued once over teenagers and their sex practices – but we moved on to a calmer subject. Even if her attacks turn out to be a grand finale to our wonderful, long relationship, I knew I would have to find a way to move on, free of bitterness and remorse. “Forgiveness,” Joyce Meyer reminds us, “is not a feeling – it’s a decision we make to do what’s right before God. It’s a quality decision that won’t be easy and it may take time to get through the process

Remain loving and charitable. I knew forgiveness would be easier if I did not muck up the situation with my own clever retorts, quips and volleys. Tempting as it was, I did not branch to the merits of Trump vs. Clinton; I did not question whether our friendship was ever real if so disposable; and I did not ignore her. Instead, I waited several days, prayed, reflected, sought advice and then, briefly, I reassured her of my “unconditional love” and asked her to pray for my failing mother.

Set boundaries. When my friend responded without a mention of my mother or concern for me, focused entirely on her disgust with my “agenda” and “damaging” beliefs, I was devastated. Could she really be so filled with anti-Trump passion that my mother’s decline and impending death meant nothing to her? Could she be purposefully ignoring my personal situation as “punishment” for having supported the Trump/Pence ticket? Surely, she knew that she was withholding from me the very essence of our friendship – the love and caring we have shown each over for decades especially in our dynamics with our families of origin. Ouch.

As my friend’s words continued to distract me and eat at me, I recognized that I now had a boundary problem. “One sure sign of boundary problems,” Dr. Henry Cloud has written, “is when your relationship with one person has the power to affect your relationships with others. You are giving one person way too much power in your life.” Boundaries are my way of taking charge of my own feelings – so that I do not reel and roil because another person, no matter how dear, has tried to impose their feelings and issues as my problem.

So I have returned the problem to my friend. I posed several questions for her to answer if she chooses, including “Have you actually abandoned me?” and asked that she communicate with me in person. I do not know if she will respond. Perhaps not. But the ball is her court – her passion and hostility are her problem, not mine.

Rabid anti-Trumpism in any other form would be considered hateful, intolerant, and prejudicial, like other emotional attacks based upon race, sex, religion, or sexual preference. Virulent anti-Trumpism seeks no dialogue, no understanding, and no rational exchange – it is as destructive and irrational as any other bigotry used to justify cruelty towards others.

Rational opponents of President Trump and his rapid-fire policy positions exist, embracing traditional forms of debate and disagreement to which we are all accustomed. Snarky humor, point-counterpoint, and appeals to law, codes of morality, and tradition characterize these exchanges. True to form, artist and Clinton supporter Jayne Riew of New York City undertook one of the most elegant of such interactions with her photo-essay project “She’s With Him.” Ms. Riew presents seven women who voted for Trump, women she sought out after the election when she was “repelled by the ugly stereotypes and facile theories about [Trump’s female] supporters.” She adds,

“In many parts of American, female Trump supporters knew that had to keep their voting intentions hidden, not just from pollsters, but from people close to them. That intrigued me. What else did they have to say?”

I’ve bookmarked Ms. Riew’s website so that I can return to it again and again. Some days, it’s my only reminder of the difference – the difference between opposition to Trump policies and the anti-Trumpism unleashed upon us.

We have spilled much ink over Trump’s intemperate and offending comments about women, but there are other issues of grave concern in this election: our children.

As Ben Carson puts it, “There is no job more important than parenting. This I believe.” And so do many, many women who, like myself, identify as New Feminists and regard our children as the most profound work and measure of success in our lives. What is more satisfying, more sought after, more enriching – and more challenging – than launching healthy, successful children into the world?

On June 21, 2016, I attended a unique event: a gathering of Evangelicals in New York City to meet privately with Donald Trump. Originally intended for a few hundred invitees, the gathering grew to 1000, including a handful of Catholics.

I was one of them.

While Trump addressed scores of issues of concern to his audience, I found his comments regarding children remarkable and worthy of focused comment.

TRUMP’S CHILDREN

Even Trump’s harshest critics concede that Trump’s relationship to his children impresses. “At 69, he’s a father of five and grandfather to eight, and despite three marriages – two of which ended in tabloid frenzies – he has remarkably strong relationship with all of his adult children.”

So extraordinary is Trump as father, former Presidential candidate Michael Huckabee opened the June 21 meeting with the following observation and question, which I quote in length.

Before we go to the individual questions, there’s something that I want to say to you and ask you to respond to it. Because it’s something that I saw, in a way that most people would not have seen. Because if they weren’t on the stage during the presidential debates and also backstage, they would not have seen what I saw, what Ben Carson saw.

The relationship that you have with your family, the relationship and bond that you have with your adult children, is one of the most admirable I’ve ever seen from any father with children. People can fake it onstage — they can walk out and do a happy family moment — but you can’t fake that backstage, over and over again. What I saw was real.

And it was one of the reasons that I have had no hesitation endorsing you, supporting you, and enthusiastically encouraging people to get behind your candidacy. We’re going to talk about a lot of issues. But I want you to begin today by expressing: What is it about the relationship you have with your children that is so special? What is that bond all about?

Well known to the public, Trump, in fact, has five children: Donald Jr. (38), Ivanka (34), Eric (32), Tiffany (22) and Barron (10). Trump had the first of his three children with his first wife, Ivana Trump – who both supports and advises him in his run for President. Tiffany, Trump had with his second wife, Marla Maples. Says Maples, “He’s a wonderful father; he loves his children.” His youngest son, rising 5th grader Barron, receives the full attention of Trump’s current wife and Barron’s mother Melania. She “makes it clear that her main priority is being a mom. ‘Barron needs somebody as a parent, so I am with him all of the time.’ Although there’s a household staff, Melania says she does not have a nanny” (TIME, Donald Trump, p. 37).

Trump’s adult children are each credentialed and ambitious in their own right. Donald Jr. and Ivanka both graduated from the Wharton School of Business. Eric is a graduate of Georgetown. All three are married – Donald Jr. and his wife Vanessa have had 5 children over the last 7 years and Ivanka and Jared Kusher recently had their 3rd child. The latter family practices an orthodox Judaism that includes observing kosher rules. Tiffany, a student at the University of Pennsylvania, has released a music single “Like a Bird” and aspires to a music career.

All four children are “proud of [Trump] and praise him as a father.”

NO DRUGS, NO ALCOHOL

Trump’s first response to Governor Huckabee’s question at the June 21 Evangelical gathering was light-hearted. “I have really five wonderful children,” adding, “They were all very good students. I better knock on wood when I say all this stuff, because I’ll get a call – ‘Did you know about this?’”

Trump then grew deadly serious.

“[I would say] from the time they were little children – I mean, they didn’t even know what the words meant . . . ‘No drugs, no alcohol, no cigarettes,’ always. And it would drive them crazy. They’d say, ‘Dad, stop!’ . . . I’d drum it – Eric can tell you. I’d drum it into them because I’ve seen so many children who are as smart as you can get, the highest IQs, everything else. It’s over because the got hooked on something.”

Trump added, notably distressed, “If my children were hooked on heroin, they wouldn’t be with me now, they wouldn’t be doing well, and they wouldn’t know what’s even happening. Because I’ve seen it. It’s a horrible, horrible drug.”

CHILDREN IN NEW HAMPSHIRE

Trump’s concern for children became increasingly apparent as the June 21 gathering proceeded. Spontaneously, his comments turned to New Hampshire.

“When I won New Hampshire, I got very, very familiar with the people up there. I talked about it all the time. You see these beautiful valleys, these rivers and streams. It’s so beautiful as a place. And I said, “What’s your biggest problem?” They said, “Heroin.” And I said, “Heroin? It doesn’t match. Heroin doesn’t go with that stream.”

Trump seemed incredulous – and angry.

“We’ve got heroin pouring into this country that’s destroying the fabric of our children’s lives and lives beyond our children . . . We have to help those people get better because they’re so badly hooked. We have to stop this junk from pouring into our country.”

WALL AS A TOOL

Trump has taken endless grief for his call for a wall on the Southern border of the United States. But during his June 21 conversation, Trump brought up the wall several times – consistently in relation to protection of our children.

“Coming in through the southern border are massive, massive, massive amounts of drugs and lots of problems . . . There’s gotta be a border, a line, something to obey.”

Noting that Hillary Clinton herself supported a protective wall in the past, Trump acknowledged the controversy over his plan. But Trump remained adamant that only a wall could demarcate and enforce a border which would slow the flow of drugs into the United States – reinforced in his confidence by people who, he told us, know better than him.

“I received the other day, 60,500 endorsements from the border patrol guards. These are intelligent people who do their jobs, who I got to know by going down to the border, and I said to them, ‘So let me ask you, how important is the wall?’ And they said, ‘So important, Mr. Trump, you have no idea. We need the wall. It’s another tool and maybe our most important tool in stopping what’s happening with drugs and people coming illegally over the border.’ And I said, ‘Good — I feel good about it when you say that. Because if you didn’t say that, frankly, I don’t know what I’d do, because you people know better than anybody.’”

Throughout the June 21 gathering, Trump the candidate, Trump the father, Trump the results-oriented businessman restated his often stated intention: “So we’re going to build a wall.” Trump’s determination clearly stems from his own conviction – whether you agree or not – that “we are really in a very dangerous world right now, and we’re going to have to readjust our thinking very, very rapidly.”

Trump intends to take control of social influences – like drugs – which are impacting us, our children, and our families. He clearly grieves the impact of drugs on our youth – and values the role of parents, like himself, in setting boundaries within which our children thrive. He has provided remarkably effective parenting to his five children, and intends to bring that experience and those values to the Office of the President.

Much about Trump’s style of speech, choice of words and spontaneity still bother me. I personally prefer more polish and less fire in my elected leaders and more empathy and less aggression in men generally. But as Franklin Graham noted in his opening remarks at the June 21 meeting, “We’re all guilty of sin. There’s no perfect person – there’s only one, and that’s the Lord Jesus Christ. And he’s not running for President of the United States.”

Certainly the media is doing all it can to expose Donald Trump, the sinner.

But, as I learned on June 21, there is more, much more, to Donald Trump than his sins. His children – and his concern for our children – demonstrate that.

A person who procures a completed abortion incurs a
latae sententiae excommunication.

(1983 Code of Canon Law, sec. 1398)

On Thursday, March 30, 2016, Nassua County, NY police found 20-year-old Sharon Seudat bleeding profusely. After transporting her to the emergency room and learning that a pregnancy was involved, the police searched the home. They found a dead newborn – an infant girl – sealed into a black plastic bag. Seudat has been charged with murder and is being held pending a $750,000 bond.

Only one day earlier, on March 29, during a town hall meeting moderated by “Hardball” questioner Chris Matthews, this flurried exchange occurred with presidential candidate, Donald Trump:

MATTHEWS: I never understood the pro-life position.
TRUMP: Well, a lot of people do understand.
MATTHEWS: I never understood it. Because I understand the principle, it’s human life as people see it.
TRUMP: Which it is.
MATTHEWS: But what crime is it?
TRUMP: Well, it’s human life.
MATTHEWS: No, should the woman be punished for having an abortion?
TRUMP: Look…
MATTHEWS: This is not something you can dodge.
TRUMP: It’s a — no, no…
MATTHEWS: If you say abortion is a crime or abortion is murder, you have to deal with it under law. Should abortion be punished?
TRUMP: Well, people in certain parts of the Republican Party and conservative Republicans would say, “yes, they should be punished.”
MATTHEWS: How about you?
TRUMP: I would say that it’s a very serious problem. And it’s a problem that we have to decide on. It’s very hard.
. . . .
MATTHEWS: Do you believe in punishment for abortion, yes or no as a principle?
TRUMP: The answer is that there has to be some form of punishment.
MATTHEWS: For the woman.
TRUMP: Yeah, there has to be some form.
MATTHEWS: Ten cents? Ten years? What?
TRUMP: I don’t know. That I don’t know. That I don’t know.
MATTHEWS: Why not?
TRUMP: I don’t know.
MATTHEWS: You take positions on everything else.
TRUMP: Because I don’t want to — I frankly, I do take positions on everything else. It’s a very complicated position.

Unlike their non-reaction to young mothers criminally charged when they murder their newborns, many pro-lifers issued blistering attacks on candidate Trump for hesitantly approving a penalty for aborting mothers.

An exemplary list of pro-life and anti-Trump proclamations appears here:  the basic theme being that women who kill their unborn “deserve” compassion, love, understanding, empowerment, support, mercy, etc. – but never justice or accountability.

As Robert George summarized in First Things: “Most pro-lifers and the entire mainstream pro-life movement oppose, and have always opposed, punishing women who seek abortions.”

Sadly, most pro-lifers did not analyze the context of Trump’s blunder or Catholic Matthew’s obtuse defense of abortion; nor did they embrace Trump’s “yeah” as a teaching moment.

Yet, a teachable moment it was. Trump most certainly – and many of his followers – rank among the least experienced and knowledgeable of the nuances and divisiveness of the pro-life, pro-choice subculture. This vacuum could have created educational opportunity but only if Mr. Trump and his supporters were not summarily dismissed by established pro-lifers as “not one of us.”

It is not obvious to many people why pro-lifers insist that a woman who finds a way to kill her unborn child – whether legal or illegal, whether procured or self-induced – should never be punished. Is this merely a necessary strategy, critical to combat pro-life “opponents” who would “weaken the pro-life cause by tarring pro-lifers as punitive, vindictive people who would send women . . . to prison”?

In fact, there is an interesting and substantial legal history of restraint in prosecuting women who procure illegal abortions in favor of convicting illegal abortion providers, like the restraint shown in prosecuting prostitutes in favor of convicting pimps.

But this history and context were notably missing in pro-life reaction to Trump’s remarks. I found no calls, for example, for education or reasoned discussion in my pro-life Facebook community. Rather, I read that Trump is “toxic” and that, were I to suggest a woman be held accountable for aborting her unborn, I’d be summarily “unfriended.”

Trump has a knack for triggering strong, sometimes virulent, response – even from Catholics who, one would have hoped, might embrace an opportunity for charity, education and dialogue. Catholics might have embraced Trump’s confused, forced response for its worth: why does the Pro-life Establishment insist that women who intentionally abort are “victims” of their own decision?

Catholics’ canonical law imposes the single most severe canonical penalty – an automatic excommunication from the Church – upon a woman for the intentional, voluntary inducing, procuring, or participating in the death of her unborn child.

Is it unfair to expect that Catholics, whose law holds a mother accountable for killing her unborn child, might entertain Trump’s brief and awkward proposition as both a reasonable and moral proposition worthy of response?

Which brings us back to 20-year-old Ms. Seudat – charged with murder of her newborn daughter as tests revealed the child had drawn breath before Ms. Seudat (allegedly) suffocated her. Poor Ms. Seudat missed by only seconds pro-lifer’s calls for compassion, love, understanding, empowerment, support, mercy, etc. If only her baby had not drawn a breath – that breath which transformed Ms. Seudat from a victim to a responsible adult party, accountable at law for her decisions and actions.

Post Script: Though largely disregarded, Trump’s later confessed confusion, clarifications and policy statements immediately fell in line with established pro-life policy that all women who abort their unborn child are victims, like the child itself.

The God of Abraham asks us to turn our face outward to the world, recognising His image even in the people who are not in our image, whose faith is not mine, whose colour and culture are not mine, yet whose humanity is as God-given and consecrated as mine. ~Jonathan Sacks

On March 7, 2016, prominent Catholics Robert P. George and George Weigel published in the National Review “An Appeal to Our Fellow Catholics” to “reject [Donald Trump’s] candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination.” As a fellow Catholic to whom this appeal was addressed, I respond in this open letter, apologizing for both the purpose and language of this published piece.

While Professor George and Mr. Weigel opened their letter with a noncontroversial (if incomplete) statement of Catholic priorities, and a more questionable embrace of the Republican Party, they immediately shifted, not to a candidate-by-candidate, reasoned analysis, but to a direct and hostile attack on one candidate, Donald J. Trump. With no factual support for their assertion that Trump’s appeal rests upon racism and ethnic prejudice, George and Weigel fashioned a personal, conclusory, name-calling hit piece on this candidate whose voter base constitutes a culture distinct from the more polished, elite world in which the authors live.

Sadly, these authors cursorily urged Catholics to reject Trump’s candidacy because he is “manifestly unfit to be president of the United States” and because of “his vulgarity, oafishness, shocking ignorance.”

Many Catholics, myself included, were dismayed that these respected Catholic intellectuals drew upon the sort of language they disapprove of in the candidate Trump. This alone warrants an apology. I wish to assure candidate Trump and his voters that Catholics generally are called upon by Gospel and church law to respect people whose differences we might not understand and to treat all persons with dignity, even people with whom we most strongly disagree or don’t understand.

The Catholic laity is held to a higher standard than mere avoidance of hypocrisy. Our church law, and letters and directives from our popes, exhort us to engage our work in a manner that serves as ‘witness to Christ throughout the world.” (Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity, 1965). This fundamental mission entails concern and care for the dignity of every person, not merely the promotion of the church as institution and enforcement of Catholic principles via legislation and political mandate.

The dignity of every individual includes good reputation. Catholics are admonished to avoid name-calling, gossip and other harm to a person’s reputation in the community. Canon 220 of the 1983 Code of Canon Law provides:

“No one is permitted to harm illegitimately the good reputation which a person possesses or to injure the right of any person to protect his or her own privacy.”

These rights inhere in “the exceptional dignity which belongs to the human person.” (Gaudium et spes, 1965). There is no exception to this Catholic precept because an individual says something “vulgar” or behaves awkwardly or selfishly – or because a person supports a candidate who speaks to them in familiar sentiments and language. To the contrary, one’s protection against intentional harm to his or her reputation by others is embedded as a right in their very humanity.

Catholics can – and should – take action in the world to witness Christ and the fundamental principles of our faith. We may act to “protect both the common good … and the Church itself … even though [we] might thereby damage someone’s reputation.” (New Commentary on the Code of Canon Law, 2000). Thus, for example, Church penalties are imposed publicly for wrongful behavior only as a last resort and Church law admonishes that “care must be taken so that the good name of anyone is not endangered.” (Canon 1717, sec. 2).

The concern for reputation imposes on all Catholics an obligation to avoid intentional attacks and harm to another in favor of rational dialogue, critique and even correction. Deal Hudson’s essay “Will Pro-life Catholics Vote for Donald Trump?” models how Catholics can and should dialogue with respect to all candidates. Professor George and Mr. Weigel could have, similarly, offered an analysis to fellow Catholics of their perspective of Catholic political priorities and how each of the Republican candidates might further such priorities, or not.

Their piece, however, was not a factual, reasoned analysis supportive of substantive conclusions; rather, their letter was a perfunctory, verbal assault to harm candidate Trump’s reputation. Notably, they also cast shame and intimidation on any Catholic who might consider voting for Trump with assertions that anyone of “genuinely Catholic sensibility” would agree with their attack.

Accusing a public figure (and, by extension, his supporters) of being oafish, vulgar, ignorant and unfit is language reserved for those anxious to express hostility and tarnish the reputation of the targeted individual. This is language which, I daresay, no ordained person would ever use with respect to another person; nor should any Catholic lay person.

Finally, the authors conclude with one final insult. They accuse Trump of demagoguery, adding for emphasis, “we do not hesitate to use the word.” Demagoguery – “an appeal to people that plays on their emotions and prejudices rather than on their rational side” – implicates the candidate as well as every one of the candidate’s supporters. Lest fellow Catholics miss their point, the authors urge a rejection not just of Trump but of those people who are supporting him. Such people, George and Weigel insist, are making emotional and prejudicial decisions, without reason or analysis.

I find this seemingly class-based bias most shocking of all. Are we to understand that the NASCAR, blue collar crowd’s objection to the apparent export and loss of their jobs; their objection to illegal immigration – that they believe is forcing down the wages of the jobs they do have, but fueling profits of big business; their objection to Free Trade — that they believe is gutting small town America, while fattening Wall Street; their objection to the exorbitant cost of health care and the phase out of benefits; their objection to the denigration of their sons and daughters who have served in the military, bled, and died … that these objections clearly articulated and addressed by candidate Trump are merely fears, prejudices and emotions? Are we to understand that their support of Trump is therefore without rational basis?

It is hard to fathom a more stinging insult to the dignity of Trump’s voter base. This base undoubtedly includes many practicing Catholics who, in trying to meet basic needs and protect and provide for their families in a climate the working class perceives as hostile, rejoice in finally having some voice in the political process and hope for their future. As Republican Kurt Schlichter recently wrote of the “Donaldites” at Townhall.com:

Immigration and free trade are generally good, but they impose real costs and our base is getting handed the bill. These folks have been asking us for help, and what was our response? Shut up, stupid racists.”

It is embarrassing that prominent Catholic voices have joined this chorus.

Mr. Trump, I do not know for whom I am going to vote. I have not personally determined the extent to which you will promote the Catholic values I cherish, though other Catholics believe our faith is consistent with support of your candidacy.

What I do know is that I am ashamed of the personal attack on you and your base by my fellow Catholics.

I apologize.