To Contact Us
Write:
PO Box 1603
Lafayette, IN 47902
Phone:
(765) 742-2050
Fax:
(765) 742-7513
E-mail
our office
Happening ... in the Local Church
By Kevin Cullen
The Catholic Moment
LAFAYETTE — Catholics should not participate in the April 19 Komen Race for the Cure in Indianapolis, according to the director of the diocesan Office for Family Life and Bishop William L. Higi.
Several other Catholic dioceses in the United States are taking the same position because the Komen Foundation allows its chapters to fund Planned Parenthood, the nation’s leading abortion provider, and donates millions of dollars to embryonic stem-cell research.
Margie
Crooks, director of the Pastoral Office for Family Life for the Lafayette
diocese, said her office has been receiving phone calls regarding the race,
a fund-raiser for Komen’s breast cancer research efforts.
Crooks said it would be inappropriate for Catholics to be involved, because of a Komen policy that allows affiliates to offer “financial support for abortion- providing facilities and its endorsement of embryonic stem-cell research, and the continued denial that abortion may well lead to the development of breast cancer.”
The Komen Foundation is an international organization that raises millions of dollars each year for breast cancer research, detection and treatment. Part of the proceeds are given to Planned Parenthood for breast exams and to educate women in Planned Parenthood clinics.
“Donors cannot control how an organization designates its funds,” Crooks said in a March 10 statement that was approved by Bishop Higi and sent to pastors. “Therefore, money donated for a specific service, i.e. breast health care, directly frees up funds to support other areas of an organization’s agenda, i.e. contraceptive services, ‘safe’ sex education and abortion services.”
Crooks suggested that Catholics consider donating directly to local Catholic hospitals that provide breast cancer services, including detection, treatment, research and patient support groups.
The Diocese of Little Rock, in Little Rock, Ark., was among the dioceses that had warned Catholics that fund-raising activities for Komen sometimes support Planned Parenthood.
After much controversy, Msgr. J. Gaston Hebert, administrator for the diocese, apologized last week. He said the warning was based on an “unintentional error.” He said he was assured that no money raised by events in Arkansas would be used to fund abortions.
According to the Associated Press, Rebecca Gibson, a spokesman for the Komen Foundation, conceded that Komen affiliates gave grants to Planned Parenthood in 2007.
Nineteen of the 122 Komen affiliates provided $374,253 in such grants last year.
Because of that, Douglas R. Scott Jr., president of the pro-life Life Decisions International, said that Komen should be boycotted nationwide.
He told the Catholic News Agency that Msgr. Hebert shouldn’t have backed down. “Despite the efforts of some to make this issue sound complicated, the facts are clear,” he said.
“The Susan G. Komen Cancer Foundation allows its chapters to fund Planned Parenthood and several of them do so. The Diocese of Little Rock has essentially said it is acceptable to be associated with a group that funds an abortion-committing goliath so long as local dollars are not going to the group. This kind of disconnect is exactly what Komen officials were hoping to achieve and they clearly succeeded.”
Sherrye McBryde, executive director of the Arkansas affiliate of the Komen Foundation, told the Catholic News Agency that she was pleased with Msgr. Hebert’s apology.
“We think this is groundbreaking and hope it will have an impact across the country,” she said.
Crooks said that the statement from the Lafayette diocese was “based on the fact that Catholic teaching strongly opposes any procedure that willfully terminates innocent human life, from the time of conception until natural death. Included in this opposition is abortion and embryonic stem- cell research.”
She said that the Komen Foundation has helped raise awareness of breast cancer prevention, but it also donates a “substantial portion” of its fund-raising proceeds to embryonic stem-cell research, while allowing its affiliates to donate to centers that perform abortions.
Human life begins at conception, and “embryonic stem-cell research takes this human life and destroys it in order to isolate the stem cells for ‘research,’” said William Saunders, director of the Center for Human Life & Bioethics at the Family Research Council.
Crooks said that the Church is not insensitive to those who have loved ones who may someday benefit from stem-cell research, but it does not support the destruction of human life to harvest embryonic stem cells.
According to the Center for Human Life & Bioethics, Crooks said, “adult” stem cells can be taken from umbilical cord blood, placentas and a person’s own tissues and organs without destroying human beings at any stage of development.
The Church, Crooks said, supports adult stem-cell research.
Quoting the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, she said, “Medical progress and respect for human life are not in conflict; they can and should support and enrich one another for the good of all.”