Catholic Action League Condemns Holy Cross for Hosting Planned Parenthood, Naral

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2007 — The Catholic Action League of Massachusetts today condemned the College of the Holy Cross for hosting the 2007 Teen Pregnancy Institute, sponsored by the Massachusetts Alliance on Teen Pregnancy, which includes three workshops conducted by Planned Parenthood and one workshop conducted by NARAL Pro-Choice Massachusetts. The Bishop of Worcester, Most Reverend Robert J. McManus, warned that Holy Cross was in danger of losing its Catholic identity and called upon the college president, Reverend Michael McFarland, to revoke the invitation to the Alliance for the conference. McFarland refused, allowing the conference to be held today.

The Catholic Action League called McFarland’s decision “an appalling act of infidelity and a shameful betrayal of Catholic principles, which speaks to the moral and doctrinal corruption of the college administration and that of its parent religious order, the Society of Jesus”.

Catholic Action League Executive Director C.J. Doyle stated: “To allow this conference to go forward is an implicit repudiation of Church teaching on the sanctity and dignity of innocent human life, and is a grave scandal which makes a mockery of Catholic opposition to abortion and contraception. It is also a callous insult to faithful pro-life Catholics struggling to protect the unborn.”

“No one who sincerely believes in the inviolate character of human life would provide a forum for Planned Parenthood, an organization responsible for destroying the lives of more than 250,000 pre-born children in this country each year. In doing so, Holy Cross has discarded its Catholic identity and abandoned any pretense of religious or intellectual integrity. Needless to say, this also reveals a coldhearted disloyalty to the founders of the Jesuit order, the founders of Holy Cross, and the Faith, the Church, and the Catholic community which the college was established to serve.”

“Such treachery should not go unpunished. Bishop McManus should sanction the principal malefactor in this disgraceful episode, Reverend Michael McFarland, by suspending his faculties and ordering him to leave the Diocese of Worcester. For the bishop to merely withdraw the college’s designation as a Catholic institution would not only be insufficient, but would only serve to confirm the control of those who have dispossessed orthodox Catholics of this once faithful Catholic institution.”