To the Most Reverend Members of the USCCB,

I write respectfully in follow up to my July 23, 2018, Open Letter to the USCCB regarding the Cardinal McCarrick Scandal.

You are preparing to meet in Baltimore November 12-14. This meeting comes in the turbulent wake of formerly-Cardinal McCarrick’s removal from the College of Cardinals and public ministry; the lurid revelations of the Pennsylvania Grand Jury Report; and the shocking exchange between former US Nuncio Archbishop Carlo Marie Viganó and our Holy Father.

This meeting convenes as your first organized gathering following what’s been dubbed our “Catholic summer of shame,” a period of torrential lamentation and suffering for victims of sexual abuse and faithful laity and clerics. You convene amidst deepening secular investigation (both media and judicial) of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States with its associated expense and burden and embarrassment. 

The outraged response has reached you from the full range of Catholic orientation, including the most theologically “liberal” to the most ferociously “conservative” corners of the American church.

The burden upon you is heavy. 

As you enter your meeting, you are aware the USCCB lacks credibility with the faithful. While calls for “transparency” predominate, the unifying theme – of victims, faithful followers and secular authorities is this: Tell the Truth.  

There is TRUTH about who knew what when regarding formerly-Cardinal McCarrick’s ignominious career; but this truth must be sought, compiled and released. 

November 12-14 represents a critical moment for the United States Catholic Church. 

Will you decide to pursue the investigation, reporting, and disclosure of the TRUTH regarding the former Cardinal’s rise to power and immunity to consequences for sexual predation, or will you decide to deny the TRUTH to the laity (and yourselves) with delays, excuses or half-hearted measures?  

Here I summarize briefly what I have learned and heard through an online discussion group I manage of approximately 600 faithful, engaged, heart-broken Catholics, The Catherine Commission. The group formed on August 3, 2018, and is dedicated as follows.

Catherine Commission – a Truth Project. St. Catherine of Sienna, pray for us. Help us to heal the deep wounds in our Church and cleanse us from all iniquities. We pray that you will guide us, in love, charity, and diligence, to go where the light of Truth takes us, in the name of our Savior and Lord Jesus Christ. May His Church be restored by Truth.

I commend to you the following three lay expectations regarding your efforts to restore Episcopal credibility and advance healing for the suffering of McCarrick’s victims and the laity and your priests and religious. Failure to meet these expectations will deepen disappointment, division, and disharmony within our community. Embracing these expectations as your own will draw us together in purpose.

1. Lay-led accounting of the rise of the former Cardinal, Rev. Theodore E. McCarrick (Who has not been laicized though he has been removed from public ministry.)

The overwhelming expectation of American Catholics is that you will initiate a thorough, lay-led investigation of McCarrick.

The laity has received precious few facts explaining how the most powerful hierarchical figure of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States has ended up fallen from grace, ousted from the College of Cardinals, subject to unspecified canonical proceedings, confined to a friary in Kansas, and – in contradiction to his entire history within our Church community – completely removed from the public landscape of the domestic and international Church. 

News, mostly secular, tells us that he grossly abused at least one minor; sexually targeted, harassed and abused seminarians and young priests, and provoked at least two significant civil settlements for sexual harassment, one in Metuchen NJ and one in Newark NJ. 

McCarrick himself is SILENT. Members of the USCCB have been largely SILENT as to “who knew what when.” Our Holy Father commends SILENCE as a response. 

Only the former United States Nuncio Archbishop Viganó, has “broken rank” with detailed, assertions about “who knew what when.” Many of you have acknowledged the Archbishop’s good character and reputation. Cardinal Daniel DiNardo observed, “The questions raised deserve answers that are conclusive and based on evidence. Without those answers, innocent men may be tainted by false accusation and the guilty may be left to repeat sins of the past.” 

Many bishops have agreed that a complete investigation of formerly-Cardinal McCarrick’s rise to power is needed – and that only with such an investigation can steps then be taken to heal the harms of McCarrick’s predatory and abusive behaviors, prevent further malfeasance by bishops and restore the credibility of the Episcopal body. 

As Bishop Robert Barron wrote:

Their task should be to determine how Archbishop McCarrick managed, despite his widespread reputation for iniquity, to rise through the ranks of the hierarchy and to continue, in his retirement years, to function as a roving ambassador for the Church and to have a disproportionate influence on the appointment of bishops. They should ask the ecclesial version of Sen. Howard Baker’s famous questions: “What did the responsible parties know and when did they know it?” Only after these matters are settled will we know what the next steps ought to be.

Comments to Bishop Barron’s article, like comments at The Catherine Commission, overwhelming support a complete “who knew what when” lay-led investigation.  The Church’s current National Review Board has pleaded for a similar, though broader, investigation.  

 The National Review Board firmly believes, as has been expressed by several bishops in recent days, that the episcopacy needs to be held accountable for these past actions, and in the future, for being complicit, either directly or indirectly, in the sexual abuse of the vulnerable. Holding bishops accountable will require an independent review into the actions of the bishop when an allegation comes to light. The only way to ensure the independence of such a review is to entrust this to the laity, as recently suggested by Cardinal DiNardo.

Respected lay organizations like Legatus and Catholic intellectuals like Christopher Tollefsen have publicly announced that they are withholding contributions to the Church until there are answers. Prominent Catholic journal First Things published Mr. Tollefsen’s statement as an “invitation” for fellow Catholics to follow suit. 

Based on a survey of its readers, America Magazine reached the following conclusion as of November 2, 2018:

[M]any respondents told America that they had reduced their financial contributions to the Catholic Church in the wake of the sexual abuse crisis. Fifty-seven percent of respondents said they had lowered the amount they gave to their bishop’s appeal, while 47 percent said they had reduced donations to their parishes.

As you enter your meeting in Baltimore, it is fair to say that the United States Catholic community is crying out for truth. We expect you to initiate a lay-led investigation of formerly-Cardinal McCarrick, including how he attained the highest position of respect and authority in the American Catholic Church despite a history of sexual abuse of minors, official diocesan settlement of civil lawsuits against him for sexual harassment and widespread, and credible evidence of ongoing sexual harassment and abuse of seminarians and young priests. 

2. Including and Answering the Women of the Church 

The overwhelming expectation of American Catholic women is that you will include and answer women in a thorough lay-led investigation of McCarrick.

In response to the scandalous behaviors of formerly-Cardinal McCarrick, scores of thousands of faithful Catholic women have pleaded to be heard.  

These pleas come from prominent Catholic women well-regarded and well-known to you. They include Illinois Supreme Court Justice Ann Burke, scholarly blogger Elizabeth Scalia, and moral theologian and seminary professor Dr. Janet Smith. Our lay female leadership is of one mind in support of investigation and accountability. They are also united in their pained confusion how are our male leadership – which is supposed to model fatherhood itself – has failed to protect our children and left seminarians and young priests vulnerable prey for clerical homosexual targeting. 

Female dismay runs widespread throughout the church.

On August 30, 2018, another prominent, faithful Catholic lay leader, Mary Rice Hasson of the Catholic Women’s Forum, organized an online Letter to Pope Francis from Catholic Women, posting the letter for review and signature. As you enter your November meeting, over 47,000 women have signed this charitable, humble letter begging for answers whether the Holy Father and “highly placed cardinals” turned “a blind eye to former Cardinal McCarrick’s egregious behavior” while “promoting this predator as a global spokesman and spiritual leader.” The letter embraced Cardinal Daniel D. DiNardo’s recognition that questions regarding McCarrick “deserve answers that are conclusive and based on evidence.”

To date, there has been no public response from any member of the hierarchy of our Church to this genuinely faithful plea – this despite the fundamental role women play in the Church and the Catholic mother’s unique role in deciding whether to support and encourage our sons in discerning vocations. 

We, the women of the Church, are deeply disturbed that we might support a son’s entry into a seminary where he is “noticed” and targeted for the sort of sexual predation practiced by McCarrick. If the former Cardinal was a lone wolf, we need to know this. We need to know how he managed to target, groom and abuse young men for his sexual stimulation and pleasure. We need to know the truth.  

The SILENCE in response to these concerns and pleas deafens and dulls the senses of faithful women. It is hardly surprising that the secular media is drawing upon women whistleblowers, such as Jennifer Haselberger of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, Siobhan O’Connor of the Buffalo diocese and Helen Drinan of the Archdiocese of Boston. 

These women – all long-term faithful servants in diocesan positions of responsibility and exposure – each have gone public with various accusations of abuse cover-up, mishandling or simply gross insensitivity to the victims of clerical abuse. Each has gone public to express the frustration and indignation of women desperate to help and assist their shepherds but closed out from the critical formulation of proper responses to sex abuse allegations and findings.  

Please, Most Reverend Members of the USCCB, do not turn away from the voices of the women in your flock. Since my Open Letter to the USCCB Regarding the McCarrick Scandal on July 23, 2018, I’ve personally reached out to and offered to travel and talk to four individual bishops whose statements seemed open to laity input. Only one responded. 

I remain cautiously optimistic that you will reach out to women like Ann Burke, Elizabeth Scalia, Janet Smith, and Mary Rice Hasson as invaluable resources for you during this crisis. The time grows short, you must decide clearly and purposefully to fold into your discussions and deliberations the voices of the women in your flock. 

The time grows short.

3. Establishing the USCCB as credibly functioning for its canonical purposes.

The damaged credibility of the USCCB is in your hands.

Will this Episcopal Conference function in this crisis “for the greater good which the Church offers mankind” or will it function to shield individuals and the Episcopal body from examination and disclosure of potentially embarrassing information contributing to the rise of formerly-Cardinal McCarrick? 

One would hope that the conference body itself recognizes the extent to which McCarrick sacrilegiously and deviously used the Episcopal conference to project and grandstand a series of blatant misrepresentations to the American Catholic laity. 

You need only recall the article published on April 23, 2002, Washington Post’s “Vatican’s Man of the Hour” as a reminder of the extent to which McCarrick used the sexual abuse crisis and you to launch himself with probable lies and false intentions. 

At last week’s meeting of the U.S. cardinals, McCarrick filled a leadership vacuum. Traditionally, the most influential voices in that group have been those of the most senior U.S. cardinal, currently Boston’s Cardinal Bernard F. Law, and the archbishop of New York, now Cardinal Edward M. Egan. But Law and Egan are embroiled in the sexual abuse scandal, facing criticism for failing to report priests’ misconduct to civil authorities and for shuttling the priests from one parish to another. Another prominent cardinal, Roger Mahony of Los Angeles, riled the Vatican just before the summit by calling for a reconsideration of mandatory celibacy for priests. By contrast, McCarrick does not question papal doctrine. He is a staunch defender of celibacy and the male-only priesthood. He is effusive in his praise of the pope. And he has not been tainted by the scandal.

If this does not upset you on a personal and spiritual level alone, you nevertheless must recognize the damage done by McCarrick to the conference body itself. 

The laity widely doubts that the USCCB in this prolonged crisis is functioning as a collegial body able to foster “the communion of fraternal charity and zeal for the universal mission entrusted to the Apostles.” Nor does the laity have any confidence that the USCCB in this crisis allows 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 darkest perception is that the bishops of the USCCB are all complicit in McCarrick’s crimes and delicts and use the Conference to cover up that complicity. More hopeful laity prayerfully awaits the outcome of your November meeting for evidence of the USCCB restoring its canonical functions through truth and correction. 

What will you do to set the USCCB on a path in communion with your flock? How will you address the abuses of McCarrick against the Episcopal Conference itself and convince the laity that the body is lead by and comprised of faithful shepherds? 

A primary and necessary first step is to stay true to the plan proposed August 16, 2018.  

The Executive Committee has established three goals: (1) an investigation into the questions surrounding Archbishop McCarrick; (2) an opening of new and confidential channels for reporting complaints against bishops; and (3) advocacy for more effective resolution of future complaints. These goals will be pursued according to three criteria: proper independence, sufficient authority, and substantial leadership by the laity.

Backtracking on these goals and criteria by, e.g., limiting the investigation of formerly-Cardinal McCarrick to select diocesan files or refusing to give lay leadership autonomy in the execution of the goals or excluding women from participation, will be ill-received by the laity so anxious for your leadership to be restored.

Worse, the disappointment from a failure to follow and strengthen the original plan will inflame the darkest perception of the USCCB itself and further erode its role in holding together and restoring Church unity.

Be assured, Most Reverend Members of the USCCB, of the prayers, fasting, and vigilance that accompanies you into your meeting. The laity has heard the call of the Holy Father and the Episcopal body to prayer and fasting for forgiveness as a communal body. Projects like Lori Carter’s Wear Gray have ignited women throughout the United States in communion with you.

The Wear GRAY movement is the laity’s response to the widespread sexual crimes and corruption affecting our Catholic Church. The movement unites all in prayer, fasting, and penance in union with Jesus’ heart. We ask all cardinals, bishops, and priests to humbly offer reparation for the sins of the Church and to act immediately to bring all guilty to justice while supporting the victims and many diligent faithful priests and religious. In Nineveh, the people proclaimed a fast, and all of them, from the greatest to the least, put on sackcloth. The king and his princes then followed the example of the people, and they returned to God (Jonah 3:1-10).

We unite our prayers to the suffering of all sexual abuse victims and strive to support you in the heavy labor ahead. Just as we pray and repent and suffer together, we must also seek, find and expose the truth together. 

Our unity is at stake. 

St. Catherine of Siena, Pray for Us.

Women’s dignity has often been unacknowledged and their prerogatives misrepresented; they have often been relegated to the margins of society and even reduced to servitude. This has prevented women from truly being themselves, and it has resulted in a spiritual impoverishment of humanity. St. John Paul II

The redacted Grand Jury report released on August 14, 2018, covers the occurrence and handling of sexual abuse cases in six Pennsylvania dioceses affecting over 1000 children.

Let that sink in – over 1000 children, who were fondled, groped, photographed in the nude and in sexual positions, and sexually assaulted.

These are our sons and daughters, grandchildren, nieces and nephews, the children we mothers and women of the Church baptized into a faith premised upon the precious value and dignity of every human being.

How could our leadership possibly have allowed and enabled sexual violations so contrary to the very heart of the teaching of the Church, so profoundly violent toward the particular interest of mothers and the protection of their young?

How could they have loosed upon the women and children of the Church a known group of male predators?

Any person of leadership in the Church, especially the bishops, who urge that the Grand Jury report should not cause alarm furthers the shame and disaster of this Episcopal crisis. It simply does not matter that this is “decades-old” activity and so much “progress” has been made since the implementation of the 2002 Charter for the Protection of Minors and Young People,

The Grand Jury report itself warns:

“What we can say, though, is that despite some institutional reform, individual leaders of the church have largely escaped public accountability. Priests were raping little boys and girls, and the men of God who were responsible for them not only did nothing; they hid it all. For decades. Monsignors, auxiliary bishops, bishops, archbishops, cardinals have mostly been protected; many, including some named in this report, have been promoted. Until that changes, we think it is too early to close the book on the Catholic Church sex scandal.” (p. 7) (Emphasis added)

It is in this context – while their own enabling of sexual abuse and abuse allegations against several Bishops were known – that the Bishops exempted themselves from the protections and mechanisms to prevent, detect, and address sexual abuse. This glaring exclusion – now euphemistically called a ‘mistake” by some Bishops – insured secrecy, non-transparency and non-accountability for themselves. It also enabled nearly two more decades of sexual abuse at the highest levels of the United States Catholic Church.

Proving the prescience of the report, we feel dizzy looking at revelations that, despite the promises of our leadership, a serial abuser served as the voice person for the 2002 Charter and attained the most august position of the U.S. Catholic Church. This was allowed to occur with full knowledge of every bishop!

We are now asked to believe statements denying any knowledge of McCarrick’s predatory behavior, such as those issued by Cardinals Farrell and Wuerl.  Consider just how out of touch these “men of God” are with the women of the Church. With a few notable exceptions, our leadership has adopted the same strategies reported by the Pennsylvania Grand Jury as a strategy for self-protection — the use of euphemisms, assurances that clergy will solve the problem, non-disclosure of facts, non-accountability, and support for the offender. (See p. 3)

The Grand Jury report gives alarming insight into our leadership and how the “men of God” strategized in the face of the sexual crisis. The report provides a basic roadmap as to how the United States Conference of Bishops has and can be expected, to react to what Bishop Barron has called “the McCarrick Mess.” (Bishop Barron is one of the exceptions to the USCCB’s strategies listed above as self-protection).

Worse, the report demonstrates how the voice of women was systemically absent from critical decisions regarding the safety and protection of children. How can the Church leadership reach sound, healthy, and considered judgments about the safety and security of its children and young people while categorically excluding the voice of its women? As St. John Paul II wrote of his Theology of the Body in a 1995 Letter to Women:

The creation of woman is thus marked from the outset by the disposition to help: a help which is not one-sided but mutual. Woman complements man, just as man complements woman: men and women are complementary. Womanhood expresses the “human” as much as manhood does but in a different and complementary way.

Yet, critical decisions impacting the safety and well-being of the children of the Church were routinely made by a small male coterie which viewed alleged offenders, not in the interest of the women and children of the Church, but more from the vantage point of a male platoon defending against the scandal and shame which the enemy – the injured children and their mothers – might unleash upon their worthy enterprise.

The Pennsylvania Grand Jury report raises an urgent question for Church leadership. Has the failure of the Episcopacy to implement complementarity and the inclusion of women in critical decision-making resulted in a fraternity mentality that too readily objectifies women and children in favor of protecting one of its own? Put more directly, has the exclusion of women from critical decision-making in sexual abuse matters resulted in the chronic bad judgment by the Bishops?

These questions become more pressing given the Church’s subsequent history with lay involvement following the 2002 Charter, a period of “some institutional reform,” according to the Grand Jury report. An increase in proper reporting, removing alleged abusers from ministry and safeguarding the community is broadly acknowledged since the 2002 Charter reforms were put into place.

This fact is worth pause especially since a significant number of qualified laywomen were given voice through the mandated Diocesan Review Boards and the National Review Board. Indeed, most recently, three highly qualified laywomen were appointed to the National Review Board. It is not a stretch to conclude that women have played a critical role assisting their Bishops to improve the soundness of their decisions and the safety of the Church community.

In contrast, the report identifies approximately 54 individuals, including the Bishops, in leadership positions affecting the critical decision-making in each of the six dioceses under investigation. Of these 55 individuals, only two, Carol Houghton, Chancellor of the diocese of Harrisburg, and Rita Flaherty, were female. Houghton served as Chancellor but, as the detail of the report reflects, her role in abuse cases seems primarily administrative fact gathering. Houghton’s experience and involvement warrants recounting.

The material and the material Houghton did not gather — and never saw — was filed in the Bishop’s secret archive to which Houghton had no access. As the Grand Jury reported concerning Rev. Augustine Giella and a memo detailing abuse allegations against Giella, prepared by Monsignor Hugh Overbaugh:

Houghton was shown the 1987 Overbaugh memorandum and was questioned regarding the Diocese of Harrisburg’s failure to inform the family or law enforcement of its contents. Houghton testified she had never seen the 1987 Overbaugh memorandum concerning Giella. She had no prior knowledge that the Diocese of Harrisburg had warnings about Giella’ s behavior in 1987. Houghton did not have access to the secret archives; only the Bishop had access pursuant to the Canon Law of the Church. The Grand Jury observed this in numerous flawed Diocesan investigations across Pennsylvania. The Dioceses’ focus on secrecy often left even the Dioceses’ investigators in the dark. (p. 169)

Houghton’s input appears to have been further frustrated. In the case of Rev. Paul R. Fisher, the Grand Jury report noted:

“Chancellor Carol Houghton of the Diocese of Harrisburg testified before the Grand Jury on October 20, 2017. She stated she had a great concern about Fisher being placed back in ministry in 2011 when he admitted to viewing images of naked children. Houghton said she questioned [Bishop] McFadden about his decision. McFadden told her to forget it because nothing was found criminal on the laptop.” (p. 537)

Houghton persisted and In 2016 brought Fisher to Bishop McFadden’s successor Bishop Gainer’s attention.

Chancellor Houghton reviewed the clergy files in 2016 and remained concerned with how the Diocese handled the Fisher matter in 2011. She raised her concern to, and they approached Gainer, which resulted in the Diocese interviewing Fisher again in 2016. (p. 537)

Based on the follow up triggered by Houghton’s initiative, Fisher was removed from ministry. The Grand Jury report reflects that Fisher’s case remains pending with the Congregation of the Doctrine of Faith.

With the sole exception and limited role of Chancellor Carol Houghton, the Grand Jury identified 53 male clergy as the individuals responsible for the strategy which 1) allowed sexually abusive priests to remain in and return to ministry and 2) hide from government authority and the laity the abuse history of priests in ministry. Without information, without input into the handling of abusers, without awareness of the Episcopal disregard for the concerns of the women of the Church, mothers and all women did not know to protect and safeguard their children from sexual abuse at the hands of clergy.

Women will not make this mistake again.

Many have left the Church and taken their families to safer, more transparent environments, environments that welcome the voice of women at all levels. We who have stayed are wearied beyond measure and failing, appreciative as we are for the difficult service women have rendered the Church since 2002 on Diocesan and National Review Boards.

Their service, like the many lay and religious women staffing the Church’s diocesan offices and social service programs, occurs in a disturbing vacuum of attention to teachings which touch and shape the lives of women and children. As the expert scholar, Pia de Solenni recently commented, “[T]he June revelations of the credible allegations of sex abuse on the part of Cardinal Theodore McCarrick confirm what many have suspected for a long time. The Church has been uncomfortably silent on matters of sexuality, family, and marriage because some in her leadership do not live these teachings themselves. And it is very hard to teach something that one does not know and live.”

Many women have experienced a general refusal in the Episcopacy to embrace and promulgate the teachings of Humanae Vitae, a profoundly pro-woman, pro-life Encyclical that celebrated its 50th anniversary in relative obscurity. Esteemed seminary professor Janet Smith observed on the occasion of the Encyclical’s anniversary, “Over the last 50 years those priests and laity who have tried to promote Humanae vitae and to teach methods of Natural Family Planning have regularly been astonished and demoralized by how little support they have received from bishops.”

The exclusion of women’s voices and concerns is costly to the Church. As the Director of the Catholic Women’s Forum Mary Rice Hasson summarized:

“Men and women look at people and particular problems through different lenses — which shapes decisions about questions to ask, data to collect and how to interpret results. Communication styles differ, as well. Sexual difference is real, but men and women are complementary. We need each other, and the Church needs our collaboration to amplify the good news of Humanae Vitae.”

Similarly, many of us have watched with dismay Bishops socializing with and honoring “Catholic pro-choice” politicians, the darlings of the abortion industry. We have tried – and failed – to enlist Episcopal support on issues critical to the New Feminism called for by St. John Paul II, issues of fidelity in marriage, the permanence of marriage, natural family planning, pro-life programming, and education.

We have raised genuine concern and reasonable questions over the increase of same-sex attracted men within the clergy, men who may succumb to sexual temptations in the all-male environment of seminaries and men who might feel sympathy for same-sex “marriage” and “family building” technologies that commercialize the reproduction of children and further objectify the female body.

For some of us, the worry now is whether there is a place for lay women in the United States Catholic Church. Is the Pennsylvania Grand Jury report our last straw?

The Grand Jury report reveals an Episcopal body desperately in need of its women.  But the bishops are seemingly more desperate to hide, conceal and obfuscate its own sins.

The looming question remains: Will the USCCB establish diocesan and national lay boards – with significant female membership – to hold accountable the Church leadership responsible for enabling McCarrick’s abuse and Episcopal ascendancy?

Women’s dignity has often been unacknowledged and their prerogatives misrepresented; they have often been relegated to the margins of society and even reduced to servitude. This has prevented women from truly being themselves, and it has resulted in a spiritual impoverishment of humanity. St. John Paul II

The redacted Grand Jury report released on August 14, 2018, covers the occurrence and handling of sexual abuse cases in six Pennsylvania dioceses affecting over 1000 children.

Let that sink in – over 1000 children, who were fondled, groped, photographed in the nude and in sexual positions, and sexually assaulted.

These are our sons and daughters, grandchildren, nieces and nephews, the children we mothers and women of the Church baptized into a faith premised upon the precious value and dignity of every human being.

How could our leadership possibly have allowed and enabled sexual violations so contrary to the very heart of the teaching of the Church, so profoundly violent toward the particular interest of mothers and the protection of their young?

How could they have loosed upon the women and children of the Church a known group of male predators?

Any person of leadership in the Church, especially the bishops, who urge that the Grand Jury report should not cause alarm furthers the shame and disaster of this Episcopal crisis. It simply does not matter that this is “decades-old” activity and so much “progress” has been made since the implementation of the 2002 Charter for the Protection of Minors and Young People,

The Grand Jury report itself warns:

“What we can say, though, is that despite some institutional reform, individual leaders of the church have largely escaped public accountability. Priests were raping little boys and girls, and the men of God who were responsible for them not only did nothing; they hid it all. For decades. Monsignors, auxiliary bishops, bishops, archbishops, cardinals have mostly been protected; many, including some named in this report, have been promoted. Until that changes, we think it is too early to close the book on the Catholic Church sex scandal.” (p. 7) (Emphasis added)

It is in this context – while their own enabling of sexual abuse and abuse allegations against several Bishops were known – that the Bishops exempted themselves from the protections and mechanisms to prevent, detect, and address sexual abuse. This glaring exclusion – now euphemistically called a ‘mistake” by some Bishops – insured secrecy, non-transparency and non-accountability for themselves. It also enabled nearly two more decades of sexual abuse at the highest levels of the United States Catholic Church.

Proving the prescience of the report, we feel dizzy looking at revelations that, despite the promises of our leadership, a serial abuser served as the voice person for the 2002 Charter and attained the most august position of the U.S. Catholic Church. This was allowed to occur with full knowledge of every bishop!

We are now asked to believe statements denying any knowledge of McCarrick’s predatory behavior, such as those issued by Cardinals Farrell and Wuerl.  Consider just how out of touch these “men of God” are with the women of the Church. With a few notable exceptions, our leadership has adopted the same strategies reported by the Pennsylvania Grand Jury as a strategy for self-protection — the use of euphemisms, assurances that clergy will solve the problem, non-disclosure of facts, non-accountability, and support for the offender. (See p. 3)

The Grand Jury report gives alarming insight into our leadership and how the “men of God” strategized in the face of the sexual crisis. The report provides a basic roadmap as to how the United States Conference of Bishops has and can be expected, to react to what Bishop Barron has called “the McCarrick Mess.” (Bishop Barron is one of the exceptions to the USCCB’s strategies listed above as self-protection).

Worse, the report demonstrates how the voice of women was systemically absent from critical decisions regarding the safety and protection of children. How can the Church leadership reach sound, healthy, and considered judgments about the safety and security of its children and young people while categorically excluding the voice of its women? As St. John Paul II wrote of his Theology of the Body in a 1995 Letter to Women:

The creation of woman is thus marked from the outset by the disposition to help: a help which is not one-sided but mutual. Woman complements man, just as man complements woman: men and women are complementary. Womanhood expresses the “human” as much as manhood does but in a different and complementary way.

Yet, critical decisions impacting the safety and well-being of the children of the Church were routinely made by a small male coterie which viewed alleged offenders, not in the interest of the women and children of the Church, but more from the vantage point of a male platoon defending against the scandal and shame which the enemy – the injured children and their mothers – might unleash upon their worthy enterprise.

The Pennsylvania Grand Jury report raises an urgent question for Church leadership. Has the failure of the Episcopacy to implement complementarity and the inclusion of women in critical decision-making resulted in a fraternity mentality that too readily objectifies women and children in favor of protecting one of its own? Put more directly, has the exclusion of women from critical decision-making in sexual abuse matters resulted in the chronic bad judgment by the Bishops?

These questions become more pressing given the Church’s subsequent history with lay involvement following the 2002 Charter, a period of “some institutional reform,” according to the Grand Jury report. An increase in proper reporting, removing alleged abusers from ministry and safeguarding the community is broadly acknowledged since the 2002 Charter reforms were put into place.

This fact is worth pause especially since a significant number of qualified laywomen were given voice through the mandated Diocesan Review Boards and the National Review Board. Indeed, most recently, three highly qualified laywomen were appointed to the National Review Board. It is not a stretch to conclude that women have played a critical role assisting their Bishops to improve the soundness of their decisions and the safety of the Church community.

In contrast, the report identifies approximately 54 individuals, including the Bishops, in leadership positions affecting the critical decision-making in each of the six dioceses under investigation. Of these 55 individuals, only two, Carol Houghton, Chancellor of the diocese of Harrisburg, and Rita Flaherty, were female. Houghton served as Chancellor but, as the detail of the report reflects, her role in abuse cases seems primarily administrative fact gathering. Houghton’s experience and involvement warrants recounting.

The material and the material Houghton did not gather — and never saw — was filed in the Bishop’s secret archive to which Houghton had no access. As the Grand Jury reported concerning Rev. Augustine Giella and a memo detailing abuse allegations against Giella, prepared by Monsignor Hugh Overbaugh:

Houghton was shown the 1987 Overbaugh memorandum and was questioned regarding the Diocese of Harrisburg’s failure to inform the family or law enforcement of its contents. Houghton testified she had never seen the 1987 Overbaugh memorandum concerning Giella. She had no prior knowledge that the Diocese of Harrisburg had warnings about Giella’ s behavior in 1987. Houghton did not have access to the secret archives; only the Bishop had access pursuant to the Canon Law of the Church. The Grand Jury observed this in numerous flawed Diocesan investigations across Pennsylvania. The Dioceses’ focus on secrecy often left even the Dioceses’ investigators in the dark. (p. 169)

Houghton’s input appears to have been further frustrated. In the case of Rev. Paul R. Fisher, the Grand Jury report noted:

“Chancellor Carol Houghton of the Diocese of Harrisburg testified before the Grand Jury on October 20, 2017. She stated she had a great concern about Fisher being placed back in ministry in 2011 when he admitted to viewing images of naked children. Houghton said she questioned [Bishop] McFadden about his decision. McFadden told her to forget it because nothing was found criminal on the laptop.” (p. 537)

Houghton persisted and In 2016 brought Fisher to Bishop McFadden’s successor Bishop Gainer’s attention.

Chancellor Houghton reviewed the clergy files in 2016 and remained concerned with how the Diocese handled the Fisher matter in 2011. She raised her concern to, and they approached Gainer, which resulted in the Diocese interviewing Fisher again in 2016. (p. 537)

Based on the follow up triggered by Houghton’s initiative, Fisher was removed from ministry. The Grand Jury report reflects that Fisher’s case remains pending with the Congregation of the Doctrine of Faith.

With the sole exception and limited role of Chancellor Carol Houghton, the Grand Jury identified 53 male clergy as the individuals responsible for the strategy which 1) allowed sexually abusive priests to remain in and return to ministry and 2) hide from government authority and the laity the abuse history of priests in ministry. Without information, without input into the handling of abusers, without awareness of the Episcopal disregard for the concerns of the women of the Church, mothers and all women did not know to protect and safeguard their children from sexual abuse at the hands of clergy.

Women will not make this mistake again.

Many have left the Church and taken their families to safer, more transparent environments, environments that welcome the voice of women at all levels. We who have stayed are wearied beyond measure and failing, appreciative as we are for the difficult service women have rendered the Church since 2002 on Diocesan and National Review Boards.

Their service, like the many lay and religious women staffing the Church’s diocesan offices and social service programs, occurs in a disturbing vacuum of attention to teachings which touch and shape the lives of women and children. As the expert scholar, Pia de Solenni recently commented, “[T]he June revelations of the credible allegations of sex abuse on the part of Cardinal Theodore McCarrick confirm what many have suspected for a long time. The Church has been uncomfortably silent on matters of sexuality, family, and marriage because some in her leadership do not live these teachings themselves. And it is very hard to teach something that one does not know and live.”

Many women have experienced a general refusal in the Episcopacy to embrace and promulgate the teachings of Humanae Vitae, a profoundly pro-woman, pro-life Encyclical that celebrated its 50th anniversary in relative obscurity. Esteemed seminary professor Janet Smith observed on the occasion of the Encyclical’s anniversary, “Over the last 50 years those priests and laity who have tried to promote Humanae vitae and to teach methods of Natural Family Planning have regularly been astonished and demoralized by how little support they have received from bishops.”

The exclusion of women’s voices and concerns is costly to the Church. As the Director of the Catholic Women’s Forum Mary Rice Hasson summarized:

“Men and women look at people and particular problems through different lenses — which shapes decisions about questions to ask, data to collect and how to interpret results. Communication styles differ, as well. Sexual difference is real, but men and women are complementary. We need each other, and the Church needs our collaboration to amplify the good news of Humanae Vitae.”

Similarly, many of us have watched with dismay Bishops socializing with and honoring “Catholic pro-choice” politicians, the darlings of the abortion industry. We have tried – and failed – to enlist Episcopal support on issues critical to the New Feminism called for by St. John Paul II, issues of fidelity in marriage, the permanence of marriage, natural family planning, pro-life programming, and education.

We have raised genuine concern and reasonable questions over the increase of same-sex attracted men within the clergy, men who may succumb to sexual temptations in the all-male environment of seminaries and men who might feel sympathy for same-sex “marriage” and “family building” technologies that commercialize the reproduction of children and further objectify the female body.

For some of us, the worry now is whether there is a place for lay women in the United States Catholic Church. Is the Pennsylvania Grand Jury report our last straw?

The Grand Jury report reveals an Episcopal body desperately in need of its women.  But the bishops are seemingly more desperate to hide, conceal and obfuscate its own sins.

The looming question remains: Will the USCCB establish diocesan and national lay boards – with significant female membership – to hold accountable the Church leadership responsible for enabling McCarrick’s abuse and Episcopal ascendancy?

“What do I do now?” is what every Catholic thinks as we awaken to further detail of the ignoble ascendancy of Theodore McCarrick in the U.S. Episcopacy. The bishops who placed authority in McCarrick — whether knowing of allegations against him or not — in 2002 to lead them through the dark aftermath of the Boston Globe exposé offer only silence or largely predictable, repetitive. and weak answers. 

The Laity must ask questions. The Laity must demand answers. The Laity must find their own path forward.

I propose for the following for immediate action: that the laity in every diocese of the United States requests their bishop appoint a lay commission charged with the immediate duty of investigating and reporting to the diocesan community information regarding their bishop’s knowledge of formerly-Cardinal McCarrick’s malfeasance. 

This proposal supplements my call for an internal audit at the USCCB and appointment of a national lay commission in my Open Letter to the USCCB Regarding the Cardinal McCarrick Scandal, and provides an immediate action which bishops and laity can undertake cooperatively and incorporates the Church’s tradition and value of subsidiarity in all ecclesiastical matters.

With two exceptions, the Episcopal statements which have issued thus far follow a similar pattern: disclaimer of knowledge, general sorrow, prayer, more sorrow especially for those harassed or abused, vague assurances that the right people are addressing matters and, finally, a call to wait.  As Cardinal Wuerl phrased his statement, “We must now wait for a final determination of this case to be made in Rome.”  Victims are urged to come forward because, again from Washington, DC, “the archdiocese wishes to accompany them and help them through this process.”

Even the USCCB’s statement on August 1, 2018 – a full sixteen days since the New York Time’s bombshell headline “He Preyed on Men Who Wanted to Be Priests. Then He Became a Cardinal” – offered no role for its beleaguered, beaten laity, nothing for the laity to do – except pray and hope that their bishops are “learning from past sins” as they gather in closed meetings and undertake secret communications and processes which, we should be assured, will address their last decades of moral failure.

Given what I have seen of the USCCB’s performance in addressing, much less handling, matters of their own personal accountability, along with the secretive management style of abuse claims by members like Cardinal Wuerl’s in his Pittsburgh assignment — where a Grand Jury report on clerical abuse is pending disclosure — I can place no confidence in the USCCB or its members like Cardinal Wuerl.

I understand if victims read the USCCB’s statement and those like Cardinal Wuerl’s statement and weep. I understand if laity feels distraught, alienated and even consider leaving this scandal-ridden church. Neither the USCCB nor fellow bishops can be relied upon to correct or disagree with any bishops public assertions or practical strategy.

The emotional climate among the laity ranges from grief to anger – but a sense of powerlessness, betrayal, and Episcopal paralysis prevails. I have personally shared the suffering and pain of my fellow laity in the hundreds of comments, emails and inquiries I have received since my Open Letter to the United States Conference of Bishops Regarding the Cardinal McCarrick Scandal.  

Particularly acute is the suffering of the women of the Church who, often with great sacrifice by spouses and families, invested time, talent, and resources in support of the USCCB’s 2002 promises that healing, recovery, and spiritual renewal would be achieved and that abusive clerical behavior toward our children and young people would not be tolerated. 

Upon these promises, we Catholic women especially continued raising our children in the Church, interacting with trust with both priests and bishops sent to our parishes and dioceses, and, critically, encouraging our sons to consider seminary and a priestly vocation within the Church.

The betrayal of the laity beggars belief. Episcopal silence is maddening. The insistence there’s “nothing here” for the laity to do but “wait” and pray are so exasperating they verge on complicity.  Episcopal denials and deflections orchestrated by public relations professionals and lawyers seek to freeze the laity into silent forbearance. This strategy will not work this time.  

In this context, Christopher Tollefsen’s “An Invitation to the Laity” in First Things seems oddly measured and reasonable. He wrote, “to explain why I and my family will no longer be contributing to diocesan appeals for financial assistance” and he encouraged Catholics throughout the country to follow suit.

I do not fault Mr. Tollefsen for his outrage and financial withholding; many people may decide it is the only expression available to them, the only one their Bishop will hear. 

I am not, however, ready to pursue this path myself. In the first place, even if the USCCB said it was cleaning house, I do not believe the USCCB and the bishops would get rid of their PR firms and lawyers, conduct an investigation of each other, impose or recommend any penalties for the enabling of formerly-Cardinal McCarrick, or otherwise take the steps needed to radically address their own moral failure and corrupted culture.  

Not only did the bishops exclude themselves from the 2002 Charter for the Protection of Minors and Young People, they also failed to address formerly-Cardinal McCarrick’s predation of our young men. These factors, considered together, reveal an Episcopal culture so detached from holiness and so corrupted by self-preservation that only laity-led and monitored solutions have any hope of achieving Mr. Tollefsen’s worthy goals of correction. 

Second, the withholding of funds from diocesan annual appeals will fall most heavily upon lay staff and the ministerial and charitable programming of each diocese. Perhaps, at the end of the day, shutting down our dioceses, with its attendant harms to the laity and multiple service populations, will be our only choice.

But two Bishops give me hope that there might be another option for the laity in the immediate days ahead. Bishop Scharfenberger of Albany drove straight to the heart of this crisis with his pastoral letter to his clergy on July 29, 2018. 

More words are not going to repair, let alone restore, the damage that has been done. Lawyering, pledges, and changes in the bureaucratic structures and policy – however well-intentioned – cannot do it either. I do not see how we can avoid what is really at the root of this crisis: sin and a retreat from holiness, specifically the holiness of an integral, truly human sexuality.

It is my belief that the vast majority of clergy – priests, deacons and bishops alike – live or, at least, are striving to live holy and admirable lifestyles. I am ashamed of those of my brothers, such as the Cardinal, who do not and have not.

Bishop Olson of Forth Worth Texas delivered his remarks to his diocese a day earlier. Bishop Olson forcefully wrote, “Justice also requires that all of those in Church leadership who knew of the former cardinal’s alleged crimes and sexual misconduct and did nothing be held accountable for their refusal to act thereby enabling others to be hurt.”

How are this justice and accountability accomplished? How do we answer Bishop Scharfenberger’s call to restore the Episcopacy to holiness? How do we – the laity – assume an active role in identifying our own bishops’ s knowledge of formerly-Cardinal McCarrick’s malfeasance and support our Bishops in their call to holiness?

The bishops must include the laity in all further investigations. They must disclose all pertinent records to the laity. They must formulate reports, responses, and recommendations to the Vatican with full participation of the lay persons.

Few of us can assess Cardinal Wuerl’s or any bishop’s credibility and competence at more than a generalized level through public statements and appearances. Most of us do not know or interact with bishops other than our own. In our communities, we have opportunities to interact with our bishop, or at least know people who do so. Our church communities connect directly to our bishop, through diocesan news, ecclesial celebrations, socializing and shared anecdotes. This information and interaction infuse a bishop’s flock with knowledge of their shepherd. 

Our Catholic principle of subsidiarity recognizes this reality. 

“It is a fundamental principle of social philosophy, fixed and unchangeable, that one should not withdraw from individuals and commit to the community what they can accomplish by their own enterprise and industry. So, too, it is an injustice and at the same time a grave evil and a disturbance to right order to transfer to the larger and higher collectivity functions which can be performed and provided for by lesser and subordinate bodies. Inasmuch as every social activity should, by its very nature, prove a help [subsidium] to members of the body social, it should never destroy or absorb them.” Pope Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno (1931)

The people who know – or who can best find out – what a bishop knew, and whether he enabled formerly-Cardinal McCarrick’s predation, are his people, the laity over whom a diocesan bishop “has all ordinary, proper, and immediate power which is required for the exercise of his pastoral function.” (c. 381 §1). 

Each bishop has the authority to appoint a group of his laity to undertake this task, offering his full cooperation, including access to notes, files, and documents as well as personal interviews as needed with the bishop himself. 

Our bishops need their laity now – and I hope every bishop will promptly appoint a group of laity, particularly women, to help him achieve complete transparency with his diocese on this new chapter of Episcopal failure and moral collapse. 

This should be a cooperative process, through which every bishop is held to account and any particular bishop has an opportunity to find his own repentance, and, where possible, reconciliation with his laity. Should a bishop refuse to participate, the laity can and should proceed independently, constituting a group to confer with their bishops with a goal of a cooperative investigation, disclosure, and accountability.

The name I suggest for these bodies is “Catherine Commissions.” In this manner, we call upon the powerful and inspired tradition of our beloved 14^th Century Saint, Catherine of Sienna, who was a Third Order Dominican. Historically, she confronted with political figures, bishops, clergy to restore order and resolve disputes. Spiritually, she provided leadership to the entire Church in the practice and observance of the total love of God. 

It is my fervent prayer that the laity will not be “absorbed” or “destroyed” by the collective secrecy, inaction, and failure of the USCCB. That our beloved domestic Church appears so bewildered and paralyzed suggests that this grave scandal is not being addressed at the proper level. Let us embrace the value and richness of subsidiarity and respond to Bishop Olson’s call to justice. Let us start today. I offer the following outline for a typical Catherine Commission and simple guidance on how to contact your bishops.

PLEASE CALL, EMAIL, AND WRITE TO YOUR BISHOPS REQUESTING THE IMMEDIATE APPOINTMENT OF A CATHERINE COMMISSION IN YOUR DIOCESE. PLEASE CONSIDER SERVING AND LET YOUR BISHOP KNOW YOU WOULD LIKE TO SERVE.

I have already placed a call to my bishop.

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.