Family & Life

‘To All Intents and Purposes’ the Crisis Pregnancy Agency is Pro-Abortion : 28th Nov 07

Irish Catholic Bishops Pressurised by Crisis Pregnancy Agency to Justify Their Pro-Life Position—CPA Continues to Push for Support for 'Positive Options' Pro-Abortion Leaflets

According to an editorial in the “Irish Catholic: newspaper, “protracted negotiations between the bishops and the Crisis Pregnancy Agency (CPA) makes for fascinating, but “also for worrying reading”. “The negotiations appear to have had a relatively happy outcome in that funding to CURA, the Irish bishops’ pregnancy counselling agency, will continue and CURA will not have to hand out contact details of pro-abortion organisations to their clients but instead refer them to a GP.

This is what caused all the trouble in the first place. In the correspondence seen by the Irish Catholic, the bishops’ negotiators say that they did not anticipate the interlinking of other agencies when the CPA took over funding from the National Health Boards. They are recorded as saying that they may have taken a different decision in light of the referral problems and might have asked that CURA be supported independently by the State thereby retaining its autonomy.

What is worrying is that at one point in the negotiations the bishops’ negotiating team appears to have been ready to sign up to a second version of the offending Positive Options (pro-abortion leaflet) leaflet which would still have included a list of counselling agencies included pro-abortion agencies.

CPA Attempted to Force CURA to Hand Out Phone Numbers of Pro-Abortion Bodies

It seems that at one point someone in the Bishops’ Conference intervened and put a stop to that due to the obvious dismay of the CPA board. However, what also makes for concerning reading throughout most of the documentation is that it was the bishops who were constantly under pressure to justify their position with regard to counselling when it should have been the CPA that was under pressure to justify forcing a pro-life body like CURA to hand out phone numbers of pro-abortion bodies.

To all intents and purposes the Crisis Pregnancy Agency is itself pro-choice (sic). At no point in the negotiations does the CPA give the impression it recognises the fact that when a pregnant woman presents herself to a counselling agency, the counsellor has in front of him or her two human beings, namely the mother and the baby.

In the final analysis, it was not the moral theologians or bishops who identified CURA’s moral dilemma but four volunteer women, who CURA suspended for breaking its culture of secrecy. Unbelievably, it almost signed up for Positive Options 11.

Would we have had to rely on a new set of whistleblowers to come forward if this deal had gone through? Isn’t it about time that the Church had more transparency or must we continue to rely on brave whistleblowers?

The Irish Catholic received all the correspondence through the Freedom of Information Act. The culture of secrecy which pervades the Church and its commissions and bodies needs to be replaced with a culture of openness and accountability.

There are those in the Bishops’ Conference who want to change this culture and should courageously move this ahead. The painful past has shown us all too well that this culture is destructive and damages the Church in the long run. As for the four women who originally brought this matter to legitimate scrutiny, thank you.” The Irish Catholic. November 22. See also in The Irish Catholic: "The Real Background to the CURA Story"—a special six-page exclusive story.

See also: CURA and CPA sign a new agreement:CLICK TO READ MORE.....

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Family & Life

‘To All Intents and Purposes’ the Crisis Pregnancy Agency is Pro-Abortion : 28th Nov 07

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