OPPOSITION
NOTES
CATHOLICS FOR A FREE CHOICE
OPPOSITION
NOTES
Faithless Politics:
Priests for Life Defies
Constitution and Conscience
INTRODUCTION
P
riests for Life national director Frank Pavone has spent more than 15 years trying
vainly to grow his Catholic antichoice group into the mass clerical movement
envisioned in its rhetoric, only to find himself banished to a Texan wasteland.
In a country with some 40,000 Catholic priests, Priests for Life (PFL) has never claimed
more than 5,000 members—and quietly stopped counting some time around the turn of the
2
1
st
century. Unapologetic electoral campaigning, and unabashed cooperation with the
most militant antichoice figures, have not brought PFL membership numbers to match the
New York priest’s ambitions.
Pavone’s nonprofit says it is “for everyone who wants to stop abortion and euthanasia,”
“not an association that seeks to be some sort of separate and elite group of priests who
claim to be more pro-life than all the rest”
1
; it boasts the church hierarchy’s approval, strict
orthodoxy and a board of arc
hbishops and cardinals. Even by PFL’s own optimistic
estimates, however, P
avone appears never to
have attracted a membership of more than one
in five US priests. His reaction has been to all
but give up on the existing priesthood, which he
regularly castigates as too timid on abortion,
and to seek to mold young priests in his image
at his new Texas refuge.
Faced with clerical indifference and hamstrung by superiors in his more egregious
campaigns, P
avone has sought a new start out West—namely, in the remote mission
diocese of Amarillo, whic
h covers 2
5,000 square miles of the Texas Panhandle but serves
very few Catholics. Having obtained latitude from Bishop John Yanta that he could not
AN INVESTIGATIVE SERIES ON THOSE WHO OPPOSE
WOMEN’S RIGHTS AND REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH
Pavone has always personalized the PFL message and
image, selling himself—often with large photos of himself
on PFL billboards—much as a candidate for office might do.
KEY FINDINGS
•
Despite official church endorsement and national director Frank Pavone’s vision of a
mass clerical movement, PFL has run up against priestly indifference and superiors’
frequent disapproval.
•
PFL finds itself banished from New York to a Texas refuge, where it has reportedly
recruited three priests to train as the next generation of antichoice activists. Pavone
continues to badger the US priests about what he sees as their insufficient
o
rthodoxy.
• PFL electioneers unambiguously at every national election in favor of Republican
candidates, is especially loyal to US president George W. Bush and has criticized
C
atholics’ traditional alignment with Democrats. PFL loyalties to Republican
conservative positions appear at times to outweigh its obedience to the Vatican, as
when PFL enthusiastically endorsed the Iraq war despite obvious papal reservations
and the absence of any Vatican characterization of the war as just.
•
PFL’s defense of its electoral campaigning contradicts directly Internal Revenue
Service guidelines on such activity by tax-exempt nonprofits and the IRS has recently
issued warnings about increasing levels of banned political activity by tax-exempt
groups.
• PFL is implicated in an ever-shifting network of overlapping Washington, DC, advocacy
groups run by Pavone and twin brothers Rob and Paul Schenck and dedicated to
inserting extremist “Christian” conservatism into public policy.
• Pavone encourages a cult of personality around himself, comparing himself favorably
to saints and prophets and featuring large photographs of himself on many
advertisements and other materials.
• Pavone defied the overwhelming public consensus and contradicted medical opinion
in the Terri Schiavo end-of-life case, calling for government intervention into the
family’s affairs and describing the patient as laughing and smiling.
• PFL traffics in myths and lies about subjects ranging from abortion and contraception
to Planned Parenthood and tax law.
• PFL’s allies have included specialists of extreme and sometimes illegal protest, and
Pavone’s denunciations of violence against abortion clinics have been consistently
ambiguous and insensitive.
• PFL’s financial performance is rated below average by a charity watchdog, with a
particular weakness in the area of efficiency.
secure in the Archdiocese of New York,
Pavone became a priest of the Diocese of
Amarillo
2
and in 2005 founded a society
o
f priests devoted to opposing
reproductive choice. As of this writing,
the society has publicized the enrollment
of three candidates for membership.
Recruitment appears focused on young
men who have just completed their
seminary studies, as Pavone tries to build
f
rom scratch the movement he found
himself unable to assemble within what
he saw as a natural constituency.
PFL’s positions on abortion and its
other preoccupations are ultraorthodox,
alienating many laypeople and priests
alike, and its links to the antichoice
movement’s extreme, aggressive fringe
have been a constant scandal. The
group’s identity is inseparable from that
of its top priest. Pavone has always
personalized the PFL message and image,
selling himself—often with large photos of
himself on PFL billboards—much as a
candidate for office might do. The
approach is fitting, given PFL’s long
history of inappropriate electoral
activities. The tax-exempt nonprofit,
whose yearly budget is in the $5 million-
$7 million range, makes no apology for
its electoral focus, instead offering an
elaborate defense that amounts to an
unsanctioned alternative to Internal
Revenue Service rules and guidance. PFL
purports to accept church-state separation
but advances a version of the principle
that is at odds with the conventional one
and calls openly for more church in the
state. Some of PFL’s attempts at electoral
influence pass through a tangled web of
antichoice groups with offices in
W
ashington, DC, and overlapping
leadership and ambitions.
Alongside PFL’s electoral activity, there
is the frequent claim of obedience only to
a divine authority who outranks any
government agency. Pavone complained
in 2002, for example, of “legalistic
jargon” that demanded P
FL respect
“nondiscrimination” and other
mainstream values—”all of it, of course,
‘as required by law,’” he said.
O
PPOSITION NOTES • AN INVESTIGATIVE SERIES
2
“As required by law????” Pavone
marveled [emphasis in original]. “When
are we going to stop running our Church
l
ike lawyers and begin running it like
prophets?”
3
Accordingly, Pavone’s self-promotion
has sometimes been literally
hagiographic. On PFL’s Web site, the
priest likens himself to saints Francis of
Assisi and Ignatius of Loyola, each called
b
y God to confront a “great moral
crisis.” Pavone calls abortion the greatest
of all these crises and implies with little
room for ambiguity that he is the saint
for the job.
4
HISTORICAL OVERVIEW
Literally since its inception, PFL has
been dedicated to electoral campaigning:
Founder Lee Kaylor organized a letter-
writing campaign in 1990 urging his
fellow priests throughout California to
mobilize parishioners against a prochoice
ballot measure; within months, PFL
emerged out of that effort, and Kaylor
determined the group’s primary activity
would be sending an antichoice
newsletter to priests around the country
via their dioceses.
San Francisco archbishop John Quinn
almost immediately granted the new
organization his stamp of approval.
S
oon,
5
Kaylor had handed over control
of PFL to Frank Pavone and was
participating in the first US-Iraq war as a
chaplain.
6
Pavone moved PFL to his
home base, Staten Island, New York.
In 1995, twins Paul and Rob Schenck
started the Washington, DC, Pentecostal
church that would lead to a tangled web
of politically minded conservative-
Christian groups. Pavone, who would
become deeply involved in that network,
in 1
9
96 met with “Republican
revolution” leader Newt Gingrich, told
the H
ouse of R
epresentatives prolife
caucus he had “heard enough of what
churches cannot do in the political
arena”
7
and denounced D
emocratic
president Bill Clinton.
8
Pavone received Norma McCorvey
into the church in 1998, giving first
communion to and confirming the newly
a
ntichoice figure who had been the
plaintiff in the landmark
Roe v. Wade
case, which led to the Supreme Court’s
1973 decision that states may not ban
abortion. PFL states clearly that Pavone
confirmed McCorvey
9
; it is unclear
whether the confirmation was authorized
a
s would be required by church
teachings. According to the 1994
Catechism, “the bishop may for grave
reasons concede to priests the faculty of
administering Confirmation” but “it is
appropriate from the very meaning of
the sacrament that he should confer it
himself.”
1
0
In 2000, PFL attracted some of the
most intense media coverage in its brief
history with its Campaign for Life, an
election-year antichoice advertising push
that included a full-page
New York Times
advertisement and was accompanied by
Pavone’s brazen endorsement of
Republican presidential candidate
George W. Bush as a “breath of fresh
air.”
11
New York archbishop Cardinal
Edward Egan in 2001 ordered Pavone to
stop running PFL and return to parochial
ministry in the N
ew Y
ork archdiocese.
Pavone would soon return from the
reassignment to resume work as full-time
head of PFL.
Egan’s decision to reassign P
avone to
parish work came amid continued
appeals and publicity in the N
ational
Organization for Women’s case against
Joseph Scheidler, a close PFL ally who
had been found guilty of extortion and
threats of violence for his obstruction
tactics at abortion clinics. “I know
nobody in the world,” Pavone had said
in 1
999, “more opposed to violence than
Joseph Scheidler”
12
; but in 2001, an
appeals court called the record of
S
c
heidler and his associates “replete with
F
AITHLESS POLITICS: PRIESTS FOR LIFE DEFIES CONSTITUTION AND CONSCIENCE
3
PFL’s support is reserved specifically for Republicans and
not, as Pavone claims frequently, apolitically for “life.”
evidence of instances in which their
conduct crossed the line from protected
speech to illegal acts, including acts of
v
iolence.”
1
3,14
T
hat same year, following
numerous violent incidents at abortion
clinics, PFL offered a $50,000 reward for
turning in clinic shooters—an act
undercut considerably by Pavone’s
history of equating prochoice advocates
with those who kill abortion doctors.
I
n 2002, Pavone predicted “major
Church-State conflicts” unless
government policies began to follow a
conservative Catholic line.
15
The
following year, PFL undertook the latest
in a series of PFL pro-Republican
electoral campaigns, disguised as a
nonpartisan voter drive for the coming
presidential election.
The 2004 electoral campaign saw PFL
intervene more flagrantly than ever
before, including through a political
sermon at a prochoice candidate’s parish
church, approving posts of Bush speeches
on the PFL Web site and explicit
criticism of Catholics’ historical support
for Democrats. PFL acknowledged in
September 2004 that it aimed to
“influence the elections,”
16
and in
October, Pavone in a “personal capacity”
endorsed Bush.
17
The 2004-2005 period also saw
P
avone attract significant media attention
by inserting himself personally into the
melee around whether irreversibly
vegetative Florida woman Terri Schiavo’s
feeding tube could be removed; aligning
himself against S
c
hiavo’s husband and
with her parents and the president’s
brother, Florida governor Jeb Bush,
Pavone opposed removing the tube.
W
ith the new millennium, the
activities of California-born, New York-
bred P
F
L had begun to shift bac
k out
W
est, with P
F
L as of Marc
h 2
005 “in the
process of establishing a headquarters” in
Amarillo, Texas, while still planning to
maintain branches in New York;
W
ashington, DC; Virginia; California;
and Rome. In Amarillo, PFL is trying to
build an order of priests devoted solely
to antichoice activity.
18
PFL’s electoral
focus continues: As 2006 began, Pavone
asked supporters to “fire up the engines
for another election.”
19
FINANCES
In the U
S presidential campaign year of
2004, PFL saw a jump in revenue and
spending, which each exceeded $7
million after several years in the $5
million-$6 million range. PFL’s $4.5
million in program spending in 2004 was
a $1 million increase over 2003. The
group takes in more than 99 percent of
its revenue in the form of direct public
support, and its largest expenditures are
for raising funds and compensating
employees, who numbered 35 in 2004.
The organization had $379,000 in net
assets as of the end of 2004.
PFL’s 2004 financial performance was
worse than that of most similar groups,
with inefficiency a particular weakness,
according to the respected independent
nonprofit evaluator Charity Navigator.
The watchdog awarded PFL two of a
possible four stars overall, meaning P
FL
“underperforms most charities in its
Cause,” and one star for efficiency, in
which area PFL “fails to meet industry
standards and performs well below most
charities in its Cause.”
20
The largest single figure among PFL’s
2004 functional expenses was $1.15
million for postage and shipping, nearly
all of which was for fundraising, a purpose
for which PFL spent $1.73 million in all.
A little more than one-fourth of program
spending in 2004 was for pay and benefits
and the associated taxes.
The highest-paid employee was
executive director Anthony DeStefano,
who earned $1
7
5,000 from P
F
L and
another $36,000 from Rachel’s Vineyard,
O
PPOSITION NOTES • AN INVESTIGATIVE SERIES
4
PFL’s 2004 financial performance was worse than that
of most similar groups, with inefficiency a particular
weakness, according to a charity finances watchdog.
which PFL lists as a related organization.
PFL’s second highest-paid employee was
chief operational officer Janet Morana, at
$
95,000. Its priests were unpaid, with the
exception of priest associate Peter West,
who earned $22,000. Its best-paid
contractors were Virginia media and
advertising firm Strategic
Communications Corporation, at
$321,000, and California fundraiser
F
rank Norris, at $96,000.
PFL provides almost no information
about its membership but according to
tax forms receives no money in
membership dues. PFL has in the past
claimed as many as 20 percent of US
priests were members, and it maintains a
W
eb page indicating annual membership
dues are $15.
2
1
PFL said in 2004 tax forms that it
“provided” its newsletter to “210,000
individuals”—nearly five copies for every
priest in the United States.
2
2
Each year,
PFL increases this reported number by
10,000 to 20,000. In 2002, PFL priest
associate West said there were more than
100,000 subscribers
2
3
; the number was
only half what PFL would claim only two
years later, but still dwarfed the figure—
20,000—cited only three years earlier by
the Institute for Democracy Studies.
24
West also said in 2002 that 40,000 priests
were receiving the newsletter
25
—roughly
92 percent of US priests, according to US
Conference of Catholic Bishops figures
published in 2
00
3.
26
PFL reports an unusual practice of
paying “grants and allocations” to
organizations larger and richer than itself,
rather than receiving grants from suc
h
entities, as is more common. In 2004, the
most prominent of these was the
Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Justice
and Peace, to which PFL paid $82,000,
up from $1
0,000 a year earlier
. The
council’s president, Renato Martino, sits
on PFL’s Episcopal Board of Advisors.
PFL has also reported payments in this
category to other V
atican bodies, as well
as archdioceses and other US antichoice
groups. The latter include N
orma
McC
orvey’s new group, Crossing over
F
AITHLESS POLITICS: PRIESTS FOR LIFE DEFIES CONSTITUTION AND CONSCIENCE
5
PFL Grants and Allocations, 2002–2004
2003-04 Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace $92,000
2
002-03 National Association for Abortion Reform $49,700
2002-04 St. Roch’s Parish $43,654
2
004 Center for Bio-Ethical Reform $20,000
2002 National Pro-Life Religious Council $13,900
2003-04 Pontifical Academy for Life $13,000
2002-04 Crossroads Foundation $10,350
2004 King of America $9,000
2002 Christian Defense Coalition $5,000
2002-04
Crisis magazine $4,000
2002 Newman House $3,679
2002, 2004 Diocese of Simdega, India $3,000
2004 Stand True $2,500
2003 Crisis Pregnancy Centers of Kansas City $1,500
2002 Holy Apostles Seminary $1,500
2002 Problem Pregnancy Help Centers $1,200
2004 Life Center of Long Island $1,000
2002 Miss Staten Island pageant $1,000
2004 Alpha Omega Life $500
2004 Crossing Over Ministry $500
2002 Lambs of Christ $500
2003 Women and Children First $314
2003 Augustinian Community Immaculate $150
2004 Passionist Ministry $10
Ministry, and a new outlet for former
Rock for Life founder Bryan Kemper, as
well as a group that is widely seen as
b
eing on the extremist fringe of the
antichoice movement in the US, the
Lambs of Christ. A more surprising
inclusion on the list is the Miss Staten
Island pageant, which received $1,000
in 2002.
No. 3 on the list of PFL grantees is St.
R
och’s Parish, which like PFL is in New
York City’s Staten Island borough.
Proximity does not appear to be the
motivation for PFL’s granting more than
$40,000 to the parish over the period
2002-04, though: St. Roch’s pastor Leo
Prince was a classmate of Pavone’s at
St. J
oseph’s Seminary in Yonkers, New
York, and has criticized US priests for
“pervasive” resistance to proclaiming
Vatican abortion teaching.
27
In 2004
at St. Roch’s, Prince and Pavone together
received Paul Schenck into the Catholic
church.
28
AFFILIATES
PFL is deeply entangled in a small web
of Washington, DC, advocacy groups
whose staff and agendas overlap
considerably. The organizational ties
reflect personal ties between Pavone and
the twin brothers Rob and Paul Schenck,
J
ewish converts to a zealous and political
Christianity who run several antichoice
organizations.
All the Schenck twins’ projects trace
their roots to a Pentecostal church that
Rob Schenck founded in Washington in
1995 with the intent of reaching
fundamentalist Christians in the federal
government. Paul Schenck previously was
executive vice president of the antichoice
legal group the American Center for Law
and Justice, a project of the televangelist
and political commentator Pat Robertson,
the most recent of whose frequent
outrage-provoking
statements, as of this
writing, was his call for the assassination
of the president of V
enezuela.
29
R
ob
Schenck participated in the founding of
Randall Terry’s Operation Rescue and
has a long history of arrests for
aggressive antichoice protest.
30
P
avone is pastoral director of the
National Pro-Life Action Center,
31
located across the street from the US
Supreme Court and sponsored by PFL,
the Kentucky-based
Catholics United
for Life
and Faith and Action, a
501 (c) (3) “Christian missionary
o
utreach” headquartered in the action
center. The center says it conducts
“activities designed to reach government
officials” with its conservative Christian
message,
32
while Faith and Action is an
antichoice lobby group that seeks “to
reintroduce the Word of God into the
public debate surrounding legislation and
policy matters” in venues ranging “from
the White House to the U.S. Capitol and
the U.S. Supreme Court.”
33
Faith and
Action and the National Pro-Life Action
Center were founded by the Schenck
twins. Paul and Rob Schenck are now
respectively chairman and president of
Faith and Action, and Paul Schenck is
director of the center.
3
4
Paul Schenck is also executive director
of the related
Gospel of Life
Ministries
, of which PFL and Faith and
Action are sponsors.
35
Pavone is national
director of Gospel of Life Ministries.
3
6
Gospel of Life has produced a television
series that aired in the middle of the
night on the obscure Sky Angel satellite
service
37
and a radio program on the Sky
Angel-affiliated Bott Radio Network.
3
8
Another sponsor of Gospel of Life
Ministries is the
National Clergy
C
ouncil
, of whic
h P
aul Schenck is
chairman and Rob Schenck has been
identified as president. P
avone is on the
council’s executive committee.
39
The
council describes itself as an “informal
network” of antic
hoice clergy,
40
and
donations to it are routed through a Faith
and Action-identified Web page.
4
1
Despite producing a steady stream of
verbiage and maintaining a labyrinth of
cross-referenced Web sites, the
W
ashington-based collaborations
between P
avone and the S
c
henc
k twins
O
PPOSITION NOTES • AN INVESTIGATIVE SERIES
6
may amount to not much more than
three men seeking to increase their
influence by presenting themselves as a
l
arger, more diverse movement—or
serially trying to repackage themselves
through fresh new affiliates in the hope
of bolstering interest. Whatever the
reason for such a complicated network, it
seems clear that the three are either
unable or unwilling to bring on
c
olleagues to help them run the
organizations.
PFL has tried sporadically and without
much success to start initiatives reaching
out to women who have had abortions.
Pavone is board chair and pastoral
director of
Rachel’s Vineyard, which
administers “retreats” for suc
h women,
4
6
and PFL is involved in an
interdenominational bid to mobilize such
women for antichoice purposes, the
Silent No More Awareness
Campaign
.
4
7
In 2001, PFL launched
what it called a “radically innovative”
advertising campaign—featuring, for
example, a billboard with an enormous
photograph of Pavone—aimed at women
who had had abortions.
4
8
The US
bishops quashed the campaign. CFFC
president Frances Kissling wrote that the
campaign sought to politicize help for
women, unlike diocesan programs, which
tended “to treat women who have had
abortions with some respect and
compassion.” The Religion News Service
reported that P
F
L’s campaign was
scuppered “in part because the nation’s
Catholic bishops were concerned it
lacked the sophistication of existing
abortion-related ministries.”
4
9
It appears possible that Deacons for
Life
may exist only as a W
eb site
featuring essays by Pavone and by
ultraorthodox deacon and lawyer Keith
F
ournier, who has called for a “Catholic
restoration”—a rollback of the church’s
move toward modernity at the Second
Vatican Council. Fournier was the first
executive director of the American
Center for Law and Justice and served as
an electoral adviser to conservative
publisher Steve F
orbes, who ran for the
F
AITHLESS POLITICS: PRIESTS FOR LIFE DEFIES CONSTITUTION AND CONSCIENCE
7
Washington-based Collaborations between Pavone and the Schenck Twins
O
rganization Frank Pavone Paul Schenck Rob Schenck
Priests for Life National director Pastoral associate On PFL: “Billy
Graham move
o
ver. Fr. Frank
Pavone has
arrived.”
4
2
National Pro-Life Pastoral director Director and Founder
A
ction Center founder
Faith and Action Ties include 2004 Chairman President
sermon at Faith
and Action
“National Memorial
for the Pre-Born
Service,” held in a
US Senate office
building
43
National Clergy Executive Chairman and President and
Council committee founder founder
member
Gospel of Life National director Executive director
Ministries of sponsoring
organization
Priests for Life
American Center Supported ACLJ Former executive Former
for Law and bid to eliminate vice president consultant
45
Justice legal obstacles to
electioneering
by religious
nonprofits
4
4
Republican US presidential nomination
in 1996 and 2000.
50
PFL also features a group it calls
S
eminarians for Life but which appears
to call itself
Seminarian Life Link,
whose founder is Eric Bowman.
5
1
This
group’s short-term survival is uncertain:
The most recent media hit touted on the
group’s Web site is from 2002
52
; a
campaign of “e-letters” to supporters, to
“
supplement what Seminarian Life Link
(SLL) has already been able to
accomplish in its short existence,” was
started in late 2003 and ended in early
2004
53
; the group had annual conferences
for a few years but appears to have had
none since 2004
5
4
; a new conference is
planned for A
ugust 2006 with Pavone as
keynote speaker and a registration fee of
$350.
55
In a similar vein, Students
Turning Around a Nation of Death
is
nominally “the youth outreach of Priests
for Life,”
5
6
but the group’s Web site—
almost entirely links to other student
groups—suggests it may have no
particular activity or staff and may exist
less as an organization than as an
invitation by PFL for young people to
start an organization, which they do not
appear to have done. Much of the Web
site’s content consists of PFL instructions
to an ostensible youth constituency about
how to conduct their lives and how to be
antichoice activists.
Significantly, Pavone has had almost
no success in his efforts to establish P
F
L
internationally. As of this writing, PFL’s
Web site refers to its Canadian affiliate as
“the first” PFL branch outside the US
and gives no indication of a P
F
L
presence in any other country. “Our
priests travel to many other
countries…and we send materials
throughout the world,” PFL says on the
W
eb page.
57
P
avone has made extensive
independent efforts to expand PFL to
other countries and even worked to that
end for two years in Rome in the late
1
990s with the Pontifical Council for
the Family.
P
erhaps P
avone’s grandest expansion
plan to date is his latest one, a c
hurc
h-
approved new order of priests called the
Missionaries of the Gospel of Life,
which formally began activity in 2005 at
i
ts base in the isolated Diocese of
Amarillo in Texas, where John Yanta is
bishop. Pavone initially sought to base
the society in New York and referred in a
2000 article to any decision about the
order being “up to the archbishop” of
New York, Cardinal Edward Egan
58
; a
y
ear later, the cardinal ordered Pavone
to leave his full-time post at the head of
PFL and return to parish ministry.
The new “society of apostolic life,”
which is designed to produce priests who
are specialists in abortion protest, could
at the same time provide a more fully
religious counterpoint to P
FL’s electoral
campaign-style selling of Pavone as
antichoice personality.
59
In announcing
the new group’s mission, Pavone
compares himself, favorably if indirectly,
to a list of major saints: “God has
intervened in times of great moral crisis,”
he writes, to raise up Saint Benedict “as
pagans overran the Christian world” and,
in later crises, Saints Francis, Dominic
and Ignatius of Loyola. As the third
millennium begins, Pavone writes, the
church is faced with a new “great moral
crisis” in the “plague” of abortion—and
“there has never been a single force
more insidious, more deadly, and more
dangerous in the history of the Church of
Christ.” To combat this greatest evil in
history, he continues, it “make[s] sense”
for God to “call forth a community of
men willing to dedicate their lives to” the
antichoice cause. Inescapably, although
P
avone stops short of calling himself a
saint, that “community” is his
Missionaries of the G
ospel of Life, and
he is the successor—although presumably
greater, since the evil he has to fight is
the greatest in history—to the litany of
saints he has provided above.
6
0
The society’s home base is a remote,
poor missionary diocese covering about
2
6,000 square miles of the Texas
panhandle and serving about 50,000
Catholics.
61
It is safe to say Y
anta, who
was installed in Amarillo in 1
9
9
7 after
O
PPOSITION NOTES • AN INVESTIGATIVE SERIES
8
nearly four decades as a priest in the San
Antonio Archdiocese, would be a virtual
unknown were it not for Pavone.
N
evertheless Yanta has, like most PFL
figures, been a frequent participant in
electoral politics. During the 2004 US
presidential campaign, as controversy
raged over whether prochoice politicians
should receive communion, Yanta said,
“These politicians are making a mockery
o
f the Catholic faith.”
62
T
he following
year, he supported a state constitutional
amendment to ban gay marriage, and a
recorded message featuring Yanta
speaking in support of the ban was sent
out to some 800,000 telephone
numbers.
6
3
Signs of activity by the new P
FL order
have been sparse as of this writing. In
June 2005, it held its first “discernment
retreat,” at which potential members
gathered to consider whether they
wanted to begin a multistage process
leading to membership in the order
64
;
there is a subsequent reference on the
group’s Web site to an inaugural class of
three aspirants. In January 2006, Pavone
said 15 priests were “talking to their
bishops about joining” and that the
group’s membership ultimately “could be
40 priests, or it could be 400.”
65
In a
letter to the
Wisconsin State Journal editor
in February 2006, apparent Missionaries
aspirant Pat Hardyman said he planned
to begin training for the order “later in
the year
.”
66
ELECTORAL
INTERVENTION
PFL founder Kaylor began the
organization as the result of a letter-
writing campaign around a California
ballot measure, and PFL has only
become bolder over the years in its
election-oriented work. A
t every national
election, in apparent violation of its
5
0
1 (c) (3) tax-exempt c
harity status, the
group campaigns unambiguously for
Republican candidates but takes care not
to mention them by name.
PFL promotes a narrowly technical
interpretation of the relevant tax law that
fundamentally contradicts IRS advice.
T
he tax agency’s materials specifically
rule out the possibility that 501 (c) (3)
groups can engage in electoral
campaigning by using code words to
stand in for candidates’ names. Pavone
clearly and defiantly stated precisely that
view in 2
001: When asked what
“tangible result” PFL had obtained for
the “impressive sums of money” it spent
“on the [2000] election,” he replied, “The
tangible result is now sitting in the White
House. While we mentioned no
candidate’s name, our message was
understood by many.”
6
7
The 2002 IRS Continuing Professional
Education Manual
warns that a 501 (c) (3)
may not “avail itself of the opportunity to
intervene in a political campaign in a
rather surreptitious manner,” such as
through the use of “code words”—
specifically including the code word PFL
most often uses, “pro-life.”
The concern is that an [Internal
Revenue Code] 501 (c) (3)
organization may support or oppose a
particular candidate in a political
campaign without specifically naming
the candidate by using code words to
substitute for the candidate’s name in
its messages, such as “conservative,”
“liberal,” “pro-life,” “pro-choice,”
“anti-c
hoice,” “R
epublican,”
“Democrat,” etc., coupled with a
discussion of the candidacy or the
election. When this occurs, it is quite
evident what is happening—an
intervention is taking place.
68
It is difficult to imagine that PFL is
unaware of suc
h instructions. That it
flouts them so openly must be
F
AITHLESS POLITICS: PRIESTS FOR LIFE DEFIES CONSTITUTION AND CONSCIENCE
9
At every national election, in apparent violation of its 501
(c) (3) tax-exempt charity status, the group campaigns
unambiguously for Republican candidates but takes care
not to mention them by name.
interpreted in the context of PFL’s stated
position that its first allegiance is to God’s
law, such as PFL views it, and that
C
atholic teaching should ultimately be
enshrined in US law. “Caesar must obey
God,” Pavone has said. “The well-being
of the entire nation depends on the
obedience which both the king and his
people give to the King of heaven…. The
separation of Church and state does not
m
ean separation of God and state. If you
separate the state from God, the State
disintegrates…. [Catholic] moral truths
are basic…. Because they are truths, they
must shape public policy.”
69
The claim of devotion to these “moral
truths,” not to specific parties or
candidates, is at the heart of P
FL’s
attempts to justify its electoral activity. “If
focusing on abortion in effect favors one
or another candidate or party,” Pavone
said in 2006, “that’s because of the
position that the candidate or party takes,
not because of us.”
7
0
Undercutting such
high-minded statements of principle,
though, are other PFL communications
that seem designed to eliminate
ambiguity about what party P
F
L wants
Catholics to support.
PFL has instructed supporters to vote
for the most antichoice candidate from
one of the two major parties—in practice,
nearly always a Republican—even when a
minor-party candidate is more antic
hoice
than either of the two. Electoral realities,
PFL told supporters in 2002, mean that
“you are not free…to really c
hoose the
candidate you want.”
7
1
During the 2004
campaign, Pavone’s view on the subject
was indistinguishable from those of
major-party politicos: “
A vote for the
‘best’ candidate who won’t win takes a
vote away from the better of the others,
and hence favors the worst.”
72
Expanding
that position, Pavone said in 2005 that
Catholics should vote for “pro-life”
parties, not just individual “pro-life”
c
andidates. “The positions of the party to
which the candidate belongs…matter….
By putting that candidate into office, you
also help to put his/her party into
power,” he said.
73
Pavone in 2006 showed what he
meant in those remarks: Faced with a
P
ennsylvania US Senate campaign in
which both the Republican and
Democratic candidates were antichoice,
Pavone joined other conservative clergy
in a “training session” that provided a
forum for Republican Rick Santorum’s
taped views but no such platform for
D
emocrat Bob Casey. In a speech at the
session, Pavone—without naming names—
called for continued Republican control
of the Senate in support of Republican
president Bush: “This particular
president needs the kind of support that
he has today but might not necessarily
have after 2006,” Pavone said.
7
4
The
incident once again made clear that
PFL’s support is reserved specifically for
Republicans and not, as Pavone claims
frequently, apolitically for “life.”
As a result of PFL’s electioneering,
Catholics for a Free Choice has repeatedly
taken the rare step of formally challenging
PFL’s status with the IRS, on the bases of
its prohibited campaigning for “pro-life”
candidates and its violation of the IRS’
ban on material that “invites its audience
to compare a candidate’s positions with
the organization’s own views.” One such
challenge is pending at this writing; an
earlier one, in 2
00
4, was followed by a
general IRS warning of a growing amount
of inappropriate electoral activity by 5
0
1
(c) (3) organizations. The agency does not
release information about action taken
with respect to specific tax-exempt
organizations.
While this report was being written,
Pavone provided a fresh example of
P
FL’s approach to these questions,
scoffing via his blog at “unfounded
allegations” that when P
F
L leaders “take
part in the election process,” they
O
PPOSITION NOTES • AN INVESTIGATIVE SERIES
10
“The tangible result is now sitting in the White House.
While we mentioned no candidate’s name, our message
was understood by many.”–
Frank Pavone on PFL’s 2000
electioneering
“violate” PFL’s “IRS tax-exemption.”
Pavone claimed that “these objections
are based on ignorance of the law” and
t
hat PFL’s calls to “elect pro-life
candidates” are “absolutely not” out of
bounds. He wrote, “If the candidates in
any race switched their positions
tomorrow…our message would remain
exactly the same.”
75
Such statements are
of dubious significance in light of
P
avone’s obvious support of Republicans
even in races featuring antichoice
Democrats. Pavone’s position also
implies he believes charities such as PFL
may electioneer unambiguously as long
as their support of candidates is based on
some policy position—a view that not
only directly contradicts I
RS guidance
but also leads to the absurd conclusion
that only candidates chosen at random
are off limits for electioneering.
No information was available at this
writing about the consequences of
CFFC’s IRS complaint about PFL, but a
CFFC complaint against the
ultraorthodox apologetics group Catholic
Answers—filed during the same period
and on substantially similar grounds as
the complaint against PFL—resulted in
Catholic Answers’ deciding to
incorporate a new offshoot under a
separate section of the Internal Revenue
Code. Catholic Answers said the IRS
had been hounding it in an investigation
initiated by the CFFC complaint; the
apologetics group expressed in essence
the view that the new offshoot, Catholic
Answers Action, could conduct
electioneering activities with greater
freedom.
PFL’s donations and those of its
leaders reflect the organization’s
Republican orientation and extend its
political reach. The organization has
funded suc
h politically active groups as
the National Association for Abortion
Reform, the National Pro-Life Religious
Council and the Christian Defense
C
oalition. PFL executive director
Anthony DeStefano gave $1,000 to
G
eorge W
. Bush’s 2
000 presidential
campaign and gave $5
00 in 1
9
9
8 and
$1,000 in 2000 to unsuccessful House of
Representatives bids by Republican
Gregory Becker, whose campaign in
1
998 touted a blessing the candidate had
received from Pope John Paul II.
113
Pavone in 2000 contributed $300 to
Republican Rick Lazio’s US Senate
campaign against Democrat Hillary
Clinton, and Rob Schenck contributed
$2,000 in 2002 to Republican Constance
M
orella’s campaign for the US House of
Representatives. Lazio had relatively
weak antichoice credentials and Morella
was prochoice; both faced staunchly
prochoice opponents.
ISSUES
As befits its name, PFL’s work is mainly
focused on abortion, but the group’s
leaders have been known to weigh in on
other topics in response to events in
politics and society. In particular, these
include contraception and questions
around the end of life; the latter subject
provided Pavone with a period of intense
exposure when in 2004 he became
deeply involved in the Terri Schiavo
case. PFL figures have also been willing
to venture far afield from their abortion
focus—to military matters, for example—
to promote conservative, nearly always
Republican policy positions.
P
riests for Life says
abortion is “the
most
radical break with civilization
[emphasis in original] that history has
ever seen.”
114
The priests’ group’s
antichoice position understandably rests
primarily on obedience to the V
atican,
but P
F
L also tries to demonstrate that
abortion is murder through a mix of
scientific language and faulty logic.
Pavone has claimed, for example, that
F
AITHLESS POLITICS: PRIESTS FOR LIFE DEFIES CONSTITUTION AND CONSCIENCE
11
Pavone has promoted antichoice psychologist Philip Ney’s
notion, dismissed in the conservative
Weekly Standard as
“crankery,” of a “post-abortion survivor syndrome” in which
people whose mothers had abortions are filled with angst.
O
PPOSITION NOTES • AN INVESTIGATIVE SERIES
12
Date PFL Electoral and Political Campaigns Beneficiary
[
Direct electioneering is in boldface]
1990 PFL founder Kaylor organizes campaign urging priests in the pulpit to oppose “a piece Antichoice candidates
of anti-life legislation on the ballot in Sacramento, California.”
76
M
arch Pavone meets with US House speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA), addresses House prolife Antichoice
1996 caucus at invitation of Michael Forbes (R-NY). Pavone:”We have heard enough of what House members
churches cannot do in the political arena.”
77
M
ay 1996 PFL
C
atholic New York
a
d denounces Democratic US president Clinton over veto of Republican legislators
“partial-birth” abortion ban.
78
September Pavone: US law should ban abortion because “the Declaration of Independence says Antichoice legislators
1
996 that the right to life is endowed by the Creator—not by the government.”
7
9
1998 Date of first of antichoice statements by then Texas governor, later US president Bush
George W. Bush that PFL catalogs approvingly on Web site.
80
2000 PFL provides model antichoice letters to the editor: “The candidates running for Antichoice candidates,
office have starkly different positions on the most fundamental issue: abortion. overwhelmingly
Babies will live and die based on how you vote.”
81
Republican and
including GW Bush
March 2000 Pavone defends antichoice prayer in Florida legislature, says the Declaration of Antichoice legislators
Independence “states that governments are instituted precisely to secure” a “right
to life.”
82
May 2000 Pavone: candidate Bush “a breath of fresh air for all of us who have suffered Bush candidacy
through the Clinton/Gore era.”
8
3
June 2000 Pavone calls Bush “pro-life,” Democratic opponent Al Gore “an apostle for abortion.”
8
4
Bush candidacy
July 2000 PFL Campaign for Life targets “lawmakers, voters, and those running for public Bush and other
office.” $1M campaign includes
New York Times, USA Today ads.
85
antichoice candidates
April 2001 After Bush win, Pavone refers to “what we have accomplished.” Recounts and Bush
challenges had culminated in Supreme Court declaration of Bush win; Pavone says
God “reached down from heaven and pressed a big pause button” to prolong
election and associated antichoice fervor; says IRS limits on PFL electioneering
seek “the silence of the Church.”
8
6
May 2001 Asked what “tangible result” came of “impressive sums of money” PFL spent “on Bush
the election,”Pavone says, “The tangible result is now sitting in the White House.
While wementioned no candidate’s name, our message was understood by many.”
8
7
November PFL sees “major Church-State conflicts unfolding in this decade.” Pavone: Government Antichoice candidates
2002 “must wrestle” with Catholic “definitive and unchanging positions”; “It is not the duty of
the Church to compromise its beliefs for the sake of left-wing zealots in government.”
8
8
i
Pavone sends suppor
ters “message of gratitude” after election sees Republicans
Republican candidates
gain control of US Senate: “We’ve only just begun.”
89
2003 PFL mounts “Christian voter r
egistration” drive, asser
ts “legal and moral right.”
90
“Christian”-favored
candidates
November PFL chief operational officer Morana attends Bush signing of “partial-birth” abortion Bush, Republicans in
2003 ban.
91
Congress
2004
PFL priest associate W
ilde delivers homily in church attended by pr
ochoice Catholic Antichoice candidate
candidate for office: “If you know any pro-abortion politician, vote him out.”
92
In letter seeking “help to prepar
e for Election Day,” Pavone notes PFL Web posting Bush
of Bush speeches “for life and family.”
93
Pavone slams Catholics’ “loyalty to the Democratic party”: “There is nothing wrong Republican candidates
with belonging to a political party…but when that party promotes the widespread,
daily, legal killing of children, the voice of protest must be heard.”
9
4
PFL election Web site seeks votes for “pro-life” candidates,
95
features link to Bush, other
outside page with slogan, “Pro-Life Advocates: Vote for President Bush.”
96
antichoice candidates
F
AITHLESS POLITICS: PRIESTS FOR LIFE DEFIES CONSTITUTION AND CONSCIENCE
13
Date PFL Electoral and Political Campaigns Beneficiary
[
Direct electioneering is in boldface]
April 2004 Morana attends Bush signing of Unborn Victims of Violence Act. PFL stressed Bush, Republicans
Republican support, Democratic opposition to bill.
97
in Congress
P
avone issues “challenge” to Democratic presidential candidate Kerry to “renounce Bush
his support of legal abortion, or to publicly admit…that abortion dismembers and
crushes the heads of babies.”
98
P
avone asks supporters who “know anyone in Pennsylvania” to “urge them to vote Toomey candidacy
pro-life” in primary between well-known prochoice senator Specter and antichoice
opponent Toomey.
99
M
ay 2004 Pavone: “Being in favor of abortion disqualifies a candidate, morally, from public Republican candidates
o
ffice…. The Republican platform says that the unborn have a right to life that cannot
be infringed and that should ultimately be protected by Constitutional amendment.
Meanwhile, the Democratic platform upholds the ‘right to choose’ abortion.”
100
August PFL Web poll asks whether respondents think “the Democratic Party…can no longer Republican candidates
2004 be morally supported by Christians.” Pavone: “People are answering ‘Yes’ by a
ten-to-one margin…. If you are one of those who have left the Democratic Party…
and you want to share your story….”
1
01
September PFL announces bid to “influence the elections,” “aimed at church-goers, who have Antichoice candidates
2004 been shown in polls to vote in favor of pro-life candidates.”
102
PFL publishes criticism of Kerry campaign by Florida head of PFL Silent No More Bush
Campaign.
103
October Pavone endorses Bush for president: “I’m proud of the Pope, I’m proud of the Bush
2004 President….” E-mail sent in “personal capacity” resembles PFL mailings.
1
04
November Pavone in personal capacity issues election-eve e-mail: “Call and email people you Bush
2004 know in [battleground] states. Make sure they are going to vote for President
Bush….I support the war fully and am fully pro-life. … The Pope never told us we
had to hold any particular position about ‘the war in Iraq.’”
1
0
5
January Pavone blasts “Democratic obstructionism” on Bush nominees: “We intend to monitor Republican Senate
2005 closely the behavior of Senate Democrats in this regard, and will make it an candidates
election issue in 2006.”
1
06
Pavone on 2006 election: “Everything we did in the 2004 cycle will be repeated, Antichoice candidates
intensified and multiplied, without compromise and without apology…. Let us all
begin now to recruit, train and activate even more pro-life voters for the 2006 cycle.”
1
07
June 2005 Pavone: With 2004 Republican election wins, “We avoided going into an abyss…. Republican candidates
The Democrats have come to see that being pro-abortion loses elections.”
1
08
August
Pavone says PFL “pro-life” advocacy extends to par
ties as well as candidates: “The Republican candidates
2005
positions of the par
ty to which the candidate belongs…matter…. By putting that
candidate into office, you also help to put his/her party into power.”
109
October Pavone ur
ges “yes” votes in Califor
nia for measure stipulating parental notification Antichoice supporters
2005 and waiting periods for abortion.
110
of ballot measure
2006 PFL without explanation posts election materials on outside Web site, that of Antichoice candidates
Catholic Music Network; invites support for antichoice candidates in 2006.
111
Januar
y
Pavone: “As the year 2006 begins, it is time to fire up the engines for another
Antichoice candidates
2006 election, and focus on electing leaders who will provide the maximum possible
protection to innocent human life. In the last several major elections, voters have
increased pr
o-life majorities both on the state and federal levels of government.”
112
“common biology” holds that fetuses
“should be protected from abortion.”
Fetuses, he added, “are human from the
m
oment of conception. That is not an
opinion, that’s a fact.”
115
Pavone in 1999
said it is up to the prochoice camp to
“prove” abortion is not “the killing of a
human being.”
116
PFL echoes other
antichoice groups in stressing the
fertilized egg’s genetic uniqueness, which
t
he argument presumes signifies moral
personhood. PFL does not often delve
into the biological or philosophical
complexities of fetal status.”
117
Pavone also promotes various dubious
and inaccurate claims that relate
indirectly to abortion without addressing
the central issue. P
avone has promoted
antichoice psychologist Philip Ney’s
notion, dismissed in the conservative
Weekly Standard as “crankery,”
118
of a
“post-abortion survivor syndrome” in
which people whose mothers had
abortions are filled with angst.
119
The PFL
head has claimed to know ex-abortion
practitioners who “posed as doctors
without having spent a day in medical
school” and others who “never sterilized
the instruments,” and he has said “stories
of sexual abuse in abortion clinics
abound.”
120
He warned in 2000 that the
use of the RU-486 abortion pill would
result in a wave of “children who are
born deformed.”
1
21
On the concept of
legal exceptions to abortion bans in cases
of rape, Pavone has said, “The abortion
does not UNRAPE [emphasis in
original] the woman.”
122
In Pavone’s oft-repeated view, “The
so-called ‘right to abortion’ is nowhere in
the Constitution, and unless a judge
wants to rewrite that document, he will
not invent such a right.”
123
Accordingly,
P
avone has been known to ape the strict
constructionist language of prominent
Republicans, gun-control opponents and
the right wing in general. He said in
2001, “The Constitution is not an evolving
[
emphasis in original] document with a
new meaning for every generation.”
124
Because strict constructionists generally
reject extralegal sources as a basis for
judicial action, though, Pavone would
appear to be excluded from their camp
by his Catholic commitment to natural
l
aw—the bedrock of the church’s
opposition to abortion. It can be argued
persuasively that Pavone’s natural law-
rooted support for banning abortion is in
fact antithetical to strict constructionist
principle, since he promotes the
imported concept of a fetal right to life.
P
avone rejects the idea of a “right to
die.”
1
25
He nominally supports the
church-approved right at the
end of life
to forgo extraordinary life-prolonging
measures, but his explanation of his
position raises questions about what if
any real-life situations might
accommodate the exercise of such a
right. He opposes living wills, in which
people can decide in advance to forgo
certain measures in case they become
unable to make decisions. He wrote in
1991 that any decision to forgo
intervention must be made—he did not
say by whom—only after the “medical
facts of the case” were known and
“examined in the light of the moral
principles involved.”
126
The priest in 2
00
4 became a personal
participant and public antagonist in the
case of Terri Schiavo, a Florida woman in
a persistent vegetative state and fed via
tube for 1
4 years. S
chiavo’s husband
sought, citing his wife’s wishes about
being kept alive in suc
h circumstances, to
have her tube removed. Pavone and
Operation Rescue founder Randall Terry
joined forces in support of T
erri S
c
hiavo’s
parents, who opposed her husband’s
ultimately successful petitions.
Massive public opposition to
government intervention in the situation
drove away the many politicians who
had become involved early on, but
P
avone continued to appear on news
O
PPOSITION NOTES • AN INVESTIGATIVE SERIES
14
PFL leaders’ support for the Iraq war was a rare departure
from the group’s professed devotion to the pope, who
never designated the Iraq war as a just one.
programs to promote an approach
rejected by virtually all Americans.
“When you get 82 percent saying they
t
hink Congress did the wrong thing,
that’s everyone,” said Pew Research
Center for the People and the Press
director Andrew Kohut, referring to a
poll conducted after the US Congress
passed legislation allowing federal courts
to review the Schiavo case. Pavone’s ally,
T
erry, claimed inexplicably that there
would be electoral “hell to pay” for
officials who did not buck the
overwhelming public consensus.
127
Pavone consistently made assertions
that flagrantly contradicted medical
opinion, including the eventual autopsy,
in seeking to de-emphasize and even
deny the patient’s vegetative condition.
He stressed initially that she was unable
to “communicate normally”
128
but as the
moment of truth drew nearer began to
claim he had seen her laugh, smile and
look around.
129
Interviewed by
conservative firebrand Bill O’Reilly after
the affair concluded, Pavone detailed
how she had “responded to [Pavone’s]
prayers”: “I prayed over her. She
responded. I put my hands on her head
and she closed her eyes. I finished the
prayer, she opened them again. She
smiled. She laughed.”
1
3
0
Priests for Life says there is a “close
link between
contraception and
abortion.”
131
Pavone opposes all
contraception and use of normally
contraceptive devices to prevent disease
transmission. A Pavone-led Pro-Life
America campaign in 2002 alleged that
birth control leads to “abortion or
cancer!” The campaign blamed Planned
P
arenthood and “the government” for
“shovel[ing] contraceptives into teens’
pockets” even though “condoms are a
joke [emphasis in original] when it comes
to stopping VD or AIDS.” According to
the campaign, abortion is “far worse”
than cervical cancer and other deadly
diseases—but “Thank G
od, there
is
[emphasis in original] a solution!”: Pro-
Life America’s publication and W
eb site
telling young people not to have sex.
132,133
PFL has less often but just as stridently
voiced opposition to
cloning, embryonic
stem cell research and homosexuality.
O
n the latter, intimate PFL associate Rob
Schenck
134
told the BBC in 2004 that the
US Constitution should be amended to
prevent gay people from marrying.
Dismissing the entire history and current
reality of homosexual life, Schenck said,
“Billions of billions of human beings over
m
illennia of time and in virtually every
culture couldn’t be all wrong.” In the same
article, he said government support for
poor, single mothers has “catastrophic”
results and equated homosexual
partnerships with polygamy.
1
35
PFL leaders have consistently and
actively voiced support for the waging of
war by the United States. Although
priests and other Catholics hold a
diversity of opinions on war and wars, it
is surprising that PFL, specifically
devoted to defending “life,” should so
invariably and enthusiastically promote
an enterprise that, whether justified or
not, entails mass killing.
“I support the war fully,” Pavone said
during the 2004 presidential campaign.
“The Pope never told us we had to hold
any particular position about ‘the war in
Iraq.’ As an American citizen I am proud
to trust the decisions of those who have
the awesome responsibility to make
them.”
136
Pavone’s characterization of the
papal position was accurate in only a
limited sense. Before the United States
invaded Iraq, P
ope John P
aul I
I had said
war was “always a defeat for humanity,”
specifically mentioning “the threat of a
war whic
h could strike the people of
Iraq, the land of the prophets, a people
already sorely tried by more than 12
years of embargo.”
137
PFL leaders’
support for the Iraq war was a rare
departure from the group’s professed
devotion to the pope, who never
designated the Iraq war as a just one.
F
AITHLESS POLITICS: PRIESTS FOR LIFE DEFIES CONSTITUTION AND CONSCIENCE
15
“We have heard enough of what churches cannot do in the
political arena.” –
Frank Pavone
PFL is associated with a number of well-
known adherents to especially
aggressive and sometimes criminal
forms of antichoice activity:
• Pavone has solicited donations for
NOW gadfly and clinic-disruption
pioneer
Joseph Scheidler,
154
whose
photograph is said to hang in the PFL
lobby.
155
• Operation Rescue founder Randall
Terr y
, who in 1995 said he wanted to
“execute” abortion practitioners,
156
spoke frequently alongside Pavone
during the Terri Schiavo case. Terry
converted to Catholicism in 2006.
• Pavone in 2005 described Operation
Save America leader
Flip Benham, a
frequent clinic arrestee who espouses
particularly confrontational protest
methods, as “my friend.”
157
The two
campaigned together in 1994 in
Vermont against testing of the
RU-486 abortion pill.
1
5
8
• Catholic Family and Human Rights
Institute head
Austin Ruse is a “long-
time friend and ally” to Pavone, the
latter has said. Pavone has also
solicited donations for Ruse, who
among other activities has sought to
physically disrupt the work of the
United Nations.
1
5
9
• New York state senator Eric
Schneiderman in 2001 linked
Thomas
Carleton
to PFL after Carleton signed
a statement to the effect that “use of
lethal force” by David Gunn, who
murdered a doctor, “was justifiable
provided it was carried out for the
purpose of defending the lives of
unbor
n children.”
1
60
• Mark Crutcher, the author of
Firestorm: A Guerrilla Strategy for a
Pr
o-Life America
,
1
61
appear
ed on
Pavone’s television show to discuss
the use of malpractice suits to put
abor
tion doctors out of business.
162
Other PFL figures have been as vocal
as Pavone in support of US war policy.
In a 2001 letter, PFL priest associate
P
eter West implied Iraq had threatened
the United States and was linked to al-
Qaeda and to Afghanistan’s ruling
Taliban: “It is not immoral to kill an
unjust aggressor or persons belonging to
organizations like Al-Queda that carry
out terroristic acts or the Taliban who
h
elp them,” West wrote to a
correspondent who had urged that PFL
oppose the coming war against Iraq.
138
A late 2001 interview that Pavone
conducted and PFL published on the Web
provided a platform for Lambs of Christ
founder Norman Weslin’s views on
terrorism, war and opposing abortion.
Doubling the accepted number, Weslin
claimed 6,000 people had died in the
September 11 al-Qaeda attack on the
United States. Speaking a week after US
bombing began in Afghanistan in response
to September 11, Weslin said antichoice
activists should use “precisely” the same
“means” as those the US government
employed in “selectively destroying” its
adversaries. “President Bush is now
responding to the terrorist attack by
precisely those means...selectively
destroying those things that support
terrorism,” Weslin said. Likewise, he said,
“We need to come in and resist those areas
that support Planned Parenthood
which…is destroying our children.”
139
TACTICS
PFL officially rejects murder and other
violence as antichoice tactics, but
Pavone’s condemnations of abortion-
clinic attacks have always been
ambiguous and insensitive. He argues
that practitioners’ killers are by definition
“proc
hoice”—intending thereby to
criticize the murderers with a term he
sees as negative, but by the same token
implying slain doctors have reaped what
they sowed.
“When someone kills an abortion
provider,” Pavone wrote in 1999, “he/she
is practicing what pro-choicers have
preached for decades: that sometimes it
is OK to choose to end a life to solve a
p
roblem.”
1
40
I
n his protest manual,
O
ur
Media is the Streets
, he writes that a slain
provider was “pro-choice” and that
“when someone comes along and ends a
life to ‘solve a problem,’ he is living out
the pro-choice philosophy.”
141
Some PFL condemnations of violence
h
ave appeared mostly tactical in intent.
In 2001, PFL announced an offer of
$50,000 for information leading to the
capture of clinic shooters. Pavone said in
announcing the reward that PFL had set
up the fund several years before, but
there is no evidence of any PFL effort to
publicize any suc
h reward before 2001.
1
42
PFL’s own efforts to combat abortion
are usually limited to electoral
campaigning, standard clinic protest and
media productions, but the group
opposes restraints on clinic protest and
associates with the more aggressive
elements of the antichoice movement.
“Perhaps the most important
principle…for the pro-life movement to
adopt,” wrote Pavone in 2001, “is that
pro-life activity which relies on the voluntary
consent of the audience is insufficient
….
Effective social reform requires
forcing the
message on an unwilling audience
[emphasis
in original].”
143
When the 1995 murder of two
Massachusetts clinic receptionists led
Cardinal B
ernard Law to call for a
moratorium on sidewalk protest, Pavone
opposed Law’s proposal.
144
“If America
wants to reject violence, let it reject
abortion without further delay,” he
said.
145
During the same era, a buffer
zone was created following three
murders at a Pensacola, Florida, clinic;
Pavone later recommended as a resource
the group Legal A
ction for W
omen,
whose leaders challenged the Florida
buffer zone and were among those who
exposed the identity of abortion provider
J
ohn Britton shortly before he was
murdered.
146
Pavone also attended a 1994
Chicago meeting of antic
hoice leaders at
whic
h discussion centered on whether
O
PPOSITION NOTES • AN INVESTIGATIVE SERIES
16
killing practitioners was justified and the
“presence” of Paul Hill, later convicted
of murder, reportedly “dominated the
m
eeting.” Interviewed about the
meeting, Pavone sought to play down the
controversy by calling the discussion
“abstract, almost theological.”
147
Raising still more questions about
PFL’s attitude toward clinic violence is
the presence of the group’s public
r
elations director, Jerry Horn. Horn was
convicted of trespassing during a 1983-84
disruption campaign at a Wisconsin
clinic; during the same period, shots
were fired at the clinic and chemicals
were introduced into the building
through holes drilled in walls. In 1985,
amid a period of frequent violence at
clinics, Horn organized a conference of
Joseph Scheidler’s Pro-Life Action
League at which a sign read “Have a
blast!” and firecrackers were attached to
some attendees’ name tags.
1
4
8
Pavone steadfastly supported
antichoice extremist Joseph Scheidler in
his two-decade legal battle with the
National Organization for Women, which
sought in the case to defend women’s
right of access to abortion clinics. In
1998, for example, Pavone called for
“sustained, public resistance” to a jury
ruling in NOW’s favor.
1
4
9,150
Pavone has
also expressed admiration for Lambs of
Christ founder Norman Weslin, a priest
who has been repeatedly arrested for
illegal activities at clinics. P
F
L in 2001
published a long interview Pavone
conducted with Weslin, who was about to
go to prison and acknowledged violating
buffer zones 1
2 times at clinics in the
New York cities of Rochester and
Buffalo.
151
PFL has enthusiastically embraced
gruesomely sensational forms of protest.
P
avone in July 2
00
6 traveled to Jackson,
Mississippi, to brandish a fetus in a jar of
formaldehyde, and ultimately bury it, in
conjunction with Operation Save
America protests of Mississippi’s only
abortion clinic. Jackson police
commander Lee V
ance described
P
avone’s possession of the fetus as “a
legal issue.”
152
Pavone in the end opted
not to bury the fetus, which he said he
had shown in protests in several other
l
ocations around the country, but vowed
to bury it later in the year in Alabama.
153
Pavone’s Our Media is the Streets calls
on antichoice protesters to break laws he
says “unfairly discriminate against pro-
life free speech” and contains numerous
other inflammatory passages. Protesters
“win,” P
avone writes, when they have
“brought abortion to [people’s] attention
whether they like it or not.” Pavone
writes of hoping to turn away even
clients “coming for legitimate reasons” to
a clinic, so that eventually the facility
might “lose its lease.” He endorses
approaching every passerby within
several blocks of a clinic.
Pavone’s manual recommends the
“Chicago method” of misleading and
redirecting pregnant women as they
approach clinics. The method as outlined
by Pavone entails warning a woman
about supposed malpractice lawsuits
against the abortion clinic and
recommending an “alternative center”
with a “neutral-sounding name”—”You
might even offer to escort her there.”
Pavone plainly instructs those practicing
the method not to “disclose that you are
an anti-abortionist or that the agency you
are taking your clients to will not give
them an abortion or a referral,” and even
recommends—”if a woman asks whether
the alternative center does abortions”—
saying “something like…’They give
abortion information.’”
163
P
avone has also
endorsed telling clinic staff “they could
be in legal trouble for continuing to work
there…. I can guarantee you they are
breaking the law left and right.”
1
6
4
In the 2000s, PFL has also sought to
disrupt abortion services through a bid to
“bloc
k Planned P
arenthood’s access to
F
AITHLESS POLITICS: PRIESTS FOR LIFE DEFIES CONSTITUTION AND CONSCIENCE
17
Pavone’s relationship with the church hierarchy has at
times been rocky, as when in 2001 New York archbishop
Egan ordered PFL’s head priest to return to parish work.
schools, and therefore to a large portion
of their funding.” The basis of the Life
Dynamics International-PFL campaign is
t
he claim that Planned Parenthood
breaks the law by extending
confidentiality to minors who report
having sex, a practice PFL claims could
create “liability” for any school that
refers students to Planned Parenthood.
165
Center for Reproductive Rights lawyer
Bebe Anderson has called PFL’s claims
“an oversimplification and a distortion”
of the law, noting that in most states,
“considerable discretion is given to
physicians to judge what is in the best
interest of the child.” The campaign has
involved 800 phony phone calls to the
reproductive health group by callers
posing as 13-year-old girls; a push for
parents to hijack school board meetings
to “demand answers” about Planned
Parenthood
1
6
6
; and a mass mailing to
schools urging that girls seeking
contraception be turned in to
government authorities and raising the
specter of girls’ being “injured, killed, or
sexually assaulted” at abortion clinics.
1
6
7
PFL has also broadcast various media
productions promoting the antichoice
message. The most prominent of these is
P
avone’s
Defending Life, whic
h continued
to air on Catholic cable channel EWTN
as of 2006.
168
The opening episode of the
program’s eleventh season was
summarized thusly: “
Elections 2
00
6
—If a
candidate supported terrorism, you
wouldn’t even ask his position on other
issues. So it is also with abortion.”
169
Pavone has also spoken of talks with
television producers about the possibility
of broadcasting footage of an abortion
procedure, a possibility he compared
with 1960s images of police in the United
States turning dogs and fire hoses on
black people.
17 0
PFL also occasionally
places advertisements in major media,
suc
h as a 2
00
1
W
all Str
eet Journal
placement calling abortion “one of the
most UNREGULATED [emphasis in
original] surgical procedures in the
n
ation.”
Catholics for a Free Choice’s criticism
of Pavone’s inflammatory remarks
earned CFFC a warning letter from PFL
lawyers, who wrote that they would “be
monitoring [CFFC’s] future remarks
carefully” for legally “actionable”
s
tatements. The attorneys mixed
religious, emotional and legal arguments
in the letter. They called CFFC president
Frances Kissling “insensitive” and cited
“Catholic teaching,” not US law, in
calling Pavone’s provocations “valid.”
Where one might have expected the
conventional point that illegal acts can be
just if law is unjust, the attorneys instead
implied that Pavone’s approval rendered
illegal acts legal: “There is a vast
difference between ‘encouraging
lawlessness,’” they wrote, “and defending
what Father Pavone and his Church
consider to be a morally justifiable act of
civil disobedience.”
1
71
LINKS WITH THE
CHURCH HIERARCHY
PFL has made a political weapon of the
priesthood and of its air of authority as a
church-approved group but has attracted
few US priests to its membership.
Of about 4
0,000 priests in the US, PFL
appears never to have claimed a
membership of more than 5,000—one-
eighth of today’s priesthood—and
eventually stopped publishing
membership figures. A 12 percent
success rate in attracting members would
be remarkable in the general population,
but must be considered weak given PFL’s
approval by the hierarchy and its
obvious expectation of strict orthodoxy
in its clerical constituency
.
Pavone is clearly frustrated by the US
priesthood, whose members he
constantly badgers with suggestions they
should be more orthodox. Pavone
regularly questions the antic
hoice
O
PPOSITION NOTES • AN INVESTIGATIVE SERIES
18
Pavone’s self-promotion has sometimes been literally
hagiographic.
commitment of the average US priest. In
Our Media is the Streets, he urges
parishioners to keep their priests in line:
“
Pro-lifers should approach their pastors
regularly to encourage them to speak and
take action against abortion. They should
praise their pastor when he does speak
out, and gently but firmly remind him if
he doesn’t.”
17 2
Pavone has certain longstanding ties at
t
he Vatican, but his relationship with the
church hierarchy has at times been
rocky, as when in 2001 New York
archbishop Egan ordered PFL’s head
priest to return to parish work. Pavone
has cited support in advertisements and
other fora from “Catholic leaders,” but
most of those have been politically active
members of the laity.
Pavone’s devotion to the overall
institution is steady, however. In a letter
to supporters apparently sent in 1999 or
2000, Pavone defended the Catholic
church’s status as the only religion the
United Nations considers a nonmember
state, rather than a nongovernmental
organization. Amid challenges to the
Vatican’s special status by CFFC and
others, Pavone said the Holy See should
retain its status and continue “blocking”
UN family planning programs. “In My
12 Years as a Priest & My 25 Years As a
Pro-Life Activist, I’ve
Never Seen Such a
Vicious Anti-Catholic Attack!” he wrote,
adding inaccurately that CFFC was
campaigning “to get the V
atican kic
ked
out of the U.N.”
1
7
3
Despite such support, the Vatican’s
UN representative, archbishop Renato
Martino, appeared in 2
00
1 to chastise
PFL—with its support of war, its violent
associates and its emphasis on abortion
as dwarfing other issues—during a speech
at the dedication of PFL’s Staten Island
headquarters: “Our voice must be heard
not only in the fight against abortion, but
in the fight against euthanasia and capital
punishment as well. We can never
condone the deliberate taking of a
human life created in love by God and
redeemed in J
esus Christ. Our striving
for consistency in this regard is critical
F
AITHLESS POLITICS: PRIESTS FOR LIFE DEFIES CONSTITUTION AND CONSCIENCE
19
PFL’s Episcopal Board of Advisors
Alfonso Lopez Cardinal is president of the Pontifical Council for the Family and
T
rujillo of the PFL board. Longtime conservative voice at the Vatican,
frequent participant at extremist antichoice meetings, Opus Dei
supporter as early as 1974…. Pope John Paul II said to
a
ppreciate his work to combat liberation theology in Latin
America
17 8
…. Author of inaccurate statements about condoms
and HIV.
Renato Martino Cardinal is president of Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace,
ex-Vatican envoy at UN and elsewhere. Joined Pavone, Operation
R
escue founder Randall Terry and leading Republican politicians
in voicing support for Terri Schiavo’s parents, with whom
Martino met.
John Y
anta Amarillo, Texas, bishop providing home diocese for PFL
Missionaries of the Gospel of Life. At installation, stressed
opposition to abortion
1
79
.… Said in 2004 that prochoice
“politicians are making a mockery of the Catholic faith”
180
.…
Backed a 2005 state constitutional amendment to ban gay
marriage
1
8
1
…. Rails against “secularism.”
1
8
2
Charles Chaput Denver archbishop in 2004 indicated Catholics would sin by
voting for prochoice presidential candidate Kerry. To
New York
Times,
raised question of whether “John Kerry should receive
communion,” said people are “not…Catholic” if they vote for
prochoice candidates, decried Catholics’ tradition of being
“overwhelmingly Democrat.” Said of Republicans, “It’s that
they’re with us [emphasis in original].”
1
8
3
John Francis Retired ex-Atlanta archbishop of whom Call to Action’s Elaine
Donoghue LaLonde said in 2001, “He is really going by the party line, so
to speak, 100 percent…. Anything that looks like it smacks of
reform or questioning is simply not allowed”
184
…. In 2004, said
prochoice politicians could not receive communion in
archdiocese…. Called Iraq a just war
1
85
…. Banned women from
foot-washing ceremonies.
186
Edwin O’Brien Archbishop for US military oversaw Vatican-imposed review of
US seminaries over sex abuse scandals, acknowledged
targeting gay seminarians.
187
In 2005, said celibate gays should
not be priests.
188
In 2003-04, withdrew ecclesiastical
endorsements of two military chaplains who had spoken out
about clergy sex abuse.
189
John J. Myers Newark archbishop named as member of Opus Dei-sponsored
Priestly Society of the Holy Cross.
190
At 2002 Rome mass
celebrating Opus Dei founder St. Josemaria Escriva, said,
“Among so many worthy institutions, old and new, God wanted
Opus Dei…and the Church made Opus Dei a personal
prelature”
191
…. In 2004, said prochoice politicians should not
take communion
192
…. Reportedly told by president Bush that
conservative bishops’ influence decided 2004 election
1
9
3
….
Leader in 2006 campaign for constitutional amendment banning
gay marriage.
194
for the integrity of your message and the
effectiveness of your mission.”
174
No matter what the reality of the PFL-
h
ierarchy relationship, the mere name of
Priests for Life can, with its clear church
affiliation, be of some value to the
antichoice cause, as a 2001
Catholic Eye
column pointed out: “Will Senator
Hillary Clinton, having won New York’s
Catholic vote, publicly dis a group called
P
riests
[
emphasis in original] for Life?”
17 5
PFL has also sought to use church
infrastructure as a platform for its
campaigns. In 2003, Pavone announced a
“special initiative” in which “the nation’s
19,000+ Catholic parishes [had] been
‘matched’ to the nation’s remaining 700+
freestanding abortion mills.” P
arishioners
were to “pray and work for the
conversion and closing of a specific
killing center,” and Pavone claimed
among other things that “witchcraft is
sometimes carried out inside abortion
clinics.”
17 6
PFL maintains information
online about the project, including a
directory of parishes and “matched”
clinics,
1
7
7
but offers no information on
whether parishes have actually
participated. Research suggests the
campaign may be largely theoretical.
PFL’s ties to the church also pass
through its Episcopal Board of Advisors.
PFL lists 21 members of the board. Eight
are retired, with several in their 90s or
late 80s. Several other board members
lead major arc
hdioceses or hold senior
Vatican positions and, as such, cannot
have much time for working with PFL. In
any case, the board is a veritable
directory of ultraconservative bishops, as
the table indicates.
LEADERS
F
rank Pa
vone,
national dir
ector
Pavone is a New Yorker who attended
St. J
oseph’s S
eminary in Y
onkers and was
ordained a priest by Cardinal J
ohn
O’Connor in 1988. He has taught in the
P
ermanent Diaconate F
ormation P
rogram
and at the Institute for Religious Studies in
O
PPOSITION NOTES • AN INVESTIGATIVE SERIES
20
PFL’s Episcopal Board of Advisors (continued)
Sam Jacobs Bishop of Houma-Thibodaux Diocese in Louisiana, active in
C
atholic charismatic movement, describes speaking in
tongues…. Priest he returned to service after 1998 sex abuse
charge by 2001 faced new molestation allegation,
1
95
in 2003
p
leaded guilty, sentenced to two years in prison.
196
H
is former
Alexandria diocese in 2004 one of two in Louisiana found
lacking in handling of abuse cases
1
97
…. In 1999, questioned
w
hether mosque construction in Nazareth, Israel, near Christian
site meant “Jews have a right to go build a temple at the Dome
of the Rock” in Jerusalem,
1
98
where a year later Israeli leader
Ariel Sharon was blamed for sparking intifada.
Thomas In 2006, one of three US bishops to require full family planning
Olmsted courses for couples planning weddings, called on contraception
users to “seek forgiveness”
199
…. In 2004 banned church speech
by politicians differing with church abortion, gay marriage
positions
2
00
…. Accused of purging priests who signed declaration
supporting gay rights.
201,202,203
Robert Carlson Saginaw, Michigan, bishop and head of bishops’ charismatic
committee, reportedly wrote prochoice former US senator Tom
Daschle (D-SD) in 2003 that he should stop identifying himself
as Catholic
2
04
…. Tablet (UK) correspondent in 2006 wrote of
possible “insurrection among the priests” in Saginaw over
Carlson’s ultraorthodoxy.
2
0
5
Emilio Allue Spaniard is Boston auxiliary bishop for Merrimack region. In
2002 told pastor to stop church meetings of branch of 25,000-
member Voice of the Faithful, lay group on clergy sex abuse.
206
Targeted group alleged “smear campaign,”
207
National Review
Board head Keating criticized Allue,
2
0
8
archbishop Law within two
weeks issued policy contradicting Allue’s ban
209
…. 30 years
earlier, Allue as head of New York state school said to expel
student who alleged assault by Salesian brother working at
school.
2
10
Rene Gracida
Retired Corpus Christi, Texas, bishop sued by state in 1996 for
allegedly funneling $100 million to diocese in misuse of
foundation funds.
211
Texas bishops had spurred suit, papal
commission convened to mediate, 1997 settlement stipulated
new makeup of foundation board
212
…. Said in 2004 that
prochoice politicians should be denied communion,
213
criticized
bishops’ presidential-candidate questionnaire for including
questions on “the minimum wage, immigration, farm subsidies,
etc.” in addition to on abortion and select other topics.
214
Openly
sought votes for Bush: “The Catholic can vote for candidate (C,
Peroutka) but that will probably only help ensure the election of
candidate (A, Kerry). Therefore the Catholic voter has a
proportionate reason to vote for candidate (B, Bush) since his
vote may help to ensure the defeat of candidate (A, Kerry).”
215
New York. He appears to have begun
running PFL full-time as of September
1993,
216
soon moving PFL from California
f
irst to Port Chester, New York, and then
to the New York City borough of Staten
Island.
2
17
As of this writing, he is in the
process of moving his priestly affiliation
and much of PFL’s operation to the
remote mission diocese of Amarillo,
Texas.
P
avone has been single-mindedly
focused on banning abortion since well
before he joined PFL, which must be
viewed as the ideal forum for his stridency.
He sidestepped a major obstacle in this
regard in 2001, when New York
archbishop Cardinal Edward Egan
instructed him to return to full-time
pastoral work.
2
18
PFL executive director
Anthony DeStefano said the organization’s
leaders were “shocked at what has
happened and frankly can’t make heads or
tails of it…. Father Frank…is continuing to
negotiate with the Cardinal.”
219
Archdiocesan spokesman Joseph Zwilling
said the assignment was “not an
unexpected development” and that
Pavone had learned of it “about nine
months ago.”
2
2
0
Pavone did work at the
parochial level briefly but soon returned as
full-time PFL national director.
Pavone constantly plays on his own
image and personality to promote his
cause, using large photographs of himself
in a wide variety of materials, especially
advertising. H
e has described himself in
terms that suggest a touring performer or
campaigning candidate for office. In a
May 2006 letter to supporters, he basked
in the “commitment and enthusiastic
response” of his fans. He added that the
“dynamic” of his interaction with
supporters—not commitment to the
cause, therefore—was “what drew me into
full-time pro-life ministry
.”
221
The priest avidly courts media
attention, for example by administering
the widely publicized 1998 confirmation,
with no bishop participating despite a
clear church teaching that bishops should
perform confirmations, of N
orma “Jane
R
oe” McC
orvey
.
222
P
erhaps his most
intense moment in the spotlight came
when in 2004 he became deeply involved
in the case of Terri Schiavo, the Florida
w
oman who was in a persistent vegetative
state for more than a decade and whose
parents, supported by Pavone, opposed
her husband’s ultimately successful bid to
have her feeding tube removed. Pavone
lent the veneer of the priesthood to the
parents’ camp in the controversy and,
a
ccording to the brother of Terri Schiavo’s
husband, Michael Schiavo, led the way in
making the latter “out to be a demon,
vilified as a murderer.”
223
As Michael
Schiavo sought police protection amid
threats on his life, Pavone delivered a
memorial homily for Terri Schiavo and
said she had simply been “unable to
communicate,” “an innocent woman who
was not dying.”
224
In keeping with PFL’s promotion of a
cult of personality around Pavone, PFL
officials and associates frequently portray
the priest in ecstatic terms. PFL
executive director Anthony DeStefano
has called Pavone a “great man,” “both a
leader of leaders, and a leader of the
masses.” Lambs of Christ founder
Norman Weslin, a convicted clinic
obstructionist whom PFL features on its
W
eb site, told P
avone, “It’s all up to you
now Frank,” since Mother Teresa and
Cardinal J
ohn O’Connor had died.
225
Anthon
y DeStef
ano,
executive dir
ector
PFL’s executive director since 1996
and its best-compensated employee by
far, D
eStefano previously worked for
antichoice, anti-”homosexual agenda,”
pro-death penalty Republican Herbert
London’s 1994 New York state
comptroller campaign
2
2
6
; wrote a regular
column for the
Staten Island Advance; and
F
AITHLESS POLITICS: PRIESTS FOR LIFE DEFIES CONSTITUTION AND CONSCIENCE
21
“Everything we did in the 2004 cycle will be repeated,
intensified and multiplied, without compromise and without
apology…. Let us all begin now to recruit, train and
activate even more pro-life voters for the 2006 cycle.”
–
Frank Pavone
ran the chain Fulton Electronics. The
avowed fundamentalist gave himself over
to theological flights of fancy in his book
A
Travel Guide to Heaven
,
refused by
religious publishers and ultimately
published by Random House. In an
interview about the book, DeStefano
dismissed “Eastern religions”—
presumably including such ancient faiths
as Buddhism and Hinduism—as “New
A
ge nonsense.” In the book, he affirms
that in Heaven, “there will be colors,”
and a person may spend time “hiking
through the mountains” or “reading a
really good book by the fireside with a
hot cup of tea nearby.” Love in Heaven
will be “universal,” DeStefano writes—
”not communistic,” he hastens to add.
2
27
Jerry Horn, senior advisor and director of
public relations
Horn was arrested repeatedly during a
1983-84 protest campaign at Fox Valley
Reproductive Center in Wisconsin and
was convicted of trespassing. He claimed
“marching orders from God.” During the
same period, the clinic was shot at, and
chemicals were forced in through holes
drilled in walls. Horn undertook a cross-
country walk for the antichoice cause in
1985, brandishing a dead fetus. The same
year, amid a period of frequent violence
at clinics, Horn organized a conference
of Joseph Scheidler’s Pro-Life Action
League at which a sign read “Have a
blast!” and firecrackers were attached to
attendees’ name tags.
2
2
8
Horn is a Texan
and former evangelical Protestant who
converted to Catholicism in 1996.
2
2
9
Janet Morana, chief operational officer
Morana is a founder of the Silent No
M
ore Awareness Campaign, a project of
P
F
L and the Anglican antichoice group
NOEL that involves women speaking at
protests and press events about their
regret over having abortions. Morana has
recounted being caused to “sob
uncontrollably” by a video that
convinced her that her past use of
ordinary birth control pills had “destroyed
an unknown number of children
[emphasis
in original].” Morana said she was “able
to come to grips with these feelings of
grief and loss” at a Rachel’s Vineyard
r
etreat for women who have had
abortions.
230
Morana in 1993 ran for New
York City Council as a Right to Life
Party candidate and received 2 percent
of the vote.
231
In 2004 she led the PFL
project Solidarity with Women, seeking
“votes for pro-life candidates.”
232
Rob Schenck, Faith and Action president
Rob Schenck directs the close PFL ally
Faith and Action and, along with Pavone
and Rob Schenck’s twin brother, Paul
Schenck, leads an intertwined network of
Washington, DC, antichoice advocacy
groups that seek to influence US policy.
Rob Schenck has a long history of arrests
for aggressive antiabortion protest: He
helped classmate Randall Terry start
Operation Rescue and in 1992 made
headlines when he brandished a dead
fetus at then presidential candidate Bill
Clinton.
2
3
3
Rob Schenck, like his twin a convert
from Judaism to Christianity, is a
minister of the Evangelical Church
Alliance and the Methodist Episcopal
Church USA.
2
3
4
Faith and Action
describes Rob Schenck as a “close
personal friend” of former Alabama chief
justice Roy Moore, a hero to those who
advocate more religion in government.
Moore, as of this writing a candidate for
the governorship of Alabama, was
removed from his post as chief justice for
refusing a federal order to remove a two-
ton Ten Commandments monument
from the state judiciary building in
M
ontgomery. Rob Schenck organized
pro-M
oore rallies daily in M
ontgomery.
He has made a habit of sending Ten
C
ommandments plaques to politicians
such as House of Representatives ex-
majority leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) and
speaker D
ennis Hastert (R
-I
L) and
Senator Joe Lieberman (D-CT). He
reportedly asks the recipients to work
toward a government based on the
commandments and in 2
003 exulted,
“We have the president, both leaders of
O
PPOSITION NOTES • AN INVESTIGATIVE SERIES
22
Congress, Hastert and DeLay, all of
whom share what I would call an
orthodox Christian worldview. All of
t
hem display the Ten
Commandments.”
235
Paul Schenck, pastoral associate
Rob Schenck’s twin is PFL pastoral
associate and director of PFL-sponsored
Gospel of Life Ministries, as well as
executive director of the National Pro-
Life Action Center, of which Pavone is
pastoral director. Paul Schenck is a
former executive vice president of the
antichoice American Center for Law and
Justice. Born Jewish, he converted to
Anglicanism, became an Anglican pastor
and is now Catholic after being received
into the church by Pavone.
2
36
His case
against the Pro-Choice Network of
Western New York made it in 1997 to the
Supreme Court, which ruled that fixed
buffer zones to control protests around
abortion clinics were constitutional but
also, in a partial victory for Schenck,
struck down “floating” buffer zones to
keep protesters at a distance from
individuals entering clinics.
Denis Wilde, priest associate
Augustinian priest Wilde was “sent
out” by P
avone during an election
campaign to preach in the parish church
attended by a prochoice candidate,
where W
ilde homilized, “If you know
any pro-abortion politician, vote him
out.”
237
A woman leaving a 2004 Florida
mass at which Wilde preached said,
“This was not a sermon, it was a political
speech…. I have never, ever heard
something like that in a Catholic church
and I hope I never do again…. He may
as well have had baskets of Bush-Cheney
b
umper stickers at the exit.” The
M
iami
Herald
reported the woman was a
“lifelong Miami Catholic” who “was one
of dozens who left during the eight
Masses at which the priest spoke.”
238
Giacomo Capoverdi, priest associate
Capoverdi is a political professional
who before entering the priesthood
worked for mayors Buddy Cianci and
Joseph Paolino of Providence, Rhode
Island.
239
Cianci is as of this writing
serving a five-year federal prison term
for racketeering; Paolino took over for
Cianci in 1984 when the latter resigned
his office after pleading no contest to
charges he attacked his ex-wife’s lover
with a lit cigarette and a fireplace log.
2
4
0
Cianci and Capoverdi appear to have
remained chums after the latter became a
priest: At a 2001 fund-raiser for Cianci’s
“political hard core,” the
Providence
Journal-Bulletin
reported, Capoverdi “did
a terrific send-up of Cianci and offered a
solemn prayer asking for blessings upon
the mayor.”
2
41
The Associated Press in
2002 summed up prosecutors’ view of
Providence in Capoverdi’s time: “a city
for sale, one where even routine dealings
with City Hall—applying for jobs, looking
for tax breaks and bidding on contracts—
meant greasing a few palms.”
242
PFL in
announcing its 2005 hiring of Capoverdi
said he would “foster political
responsibility among God’s people” and
“equip his fellow priests…to organize
more effectively for pro-life activity.”
243
F
AITHLESS POLITICS: PRIESTS FOR LIFE DEFIES CONSTITUTION AND CONSCIENCE
23
Notes
1
P
riests for Life, “Priests for Life and the Laity,”
h
ttp://www.priestsforlife.org/intro/
n
otjustforpriests.html (accessed May 22, 2006).
2
“Bishop, priest announce new pro-life priestly
society,” Catholic News Service, March 23, 2005.
3
F
rank Pavone, “Less Like Lawyers, More Like
P
rophets,”
W
anderer
,
May 2, 2002.
4
Pavone, “An Association of Priests for the
Pro-life Cause,” Priests for Life,
http://www.priestsforlife.org/vocations/
a
postolicassocsummary.htm (accessed May 2,
2
006).
5
The timing of these events is unclear in PFL’s
presentation: The group says Pavone was not
granted permission to take over PFL until 1993,
but also that Kaylor, “after handing over the
r
eins” to Pavone, “saw combat in the final
m
onths of Operation Desert Storm”—an
o
peration that ended in 1991, two years before
Pavone’s permission was granted.
6
Priests for Life, “How Did Priests for Life Start?”
Priests for Life Newsletter, January-February 2001.
7
Brian Caulfield, “‘Moral Crisis’: Priests for Life
director meets with Gingrich, addresses House
caucus,”
Catholic New York, March 14, 1996.
8
Priests for Life, advertisement, Catholic New
York, May 30, 1996.
9
Bill Howard, “Norma McCorvey of Supreme
Court decision legalizing abortion says she felt a
‘real sense of inner peace,’” Catholic News
Service, August 27, 1998.
10
Catechism of the Catholic Church, San Francisco:
Ignatius, 1994.
11
Priests for Life: A New Era in Antiabortion Activism,
New York: Institute for Democracy Studies, April
2
001, p. 4.
12
Priests for Life, “Fr. Frank Pavone responds to
Nationwide Injunction,” press release, July 19,
1999.
13
National Organization for Women, “Anti-
Abortion Extremists Suffer Major Court Defeat,”
press release, October 2, 2001.
14
In 2006, the US Supreme Court ruled in
Scheidler’s favor in the suit, finding that the law
under which antichoice activities were being
challenged applied only to crimes such as
extortion and robbery.
15
Priests for Life, “Radical Church-State Conflict
Unfolding, Says Nationally Known Priest,” press
release, November 4, 2002.
16
Priests for Life, “Priests Issue Challenge to Senator
John Kerry,” press release, April 15, 2004.
17
Pavone to supporters, April 25, 2004, in the
author’s possession.
1
8
P
riests for Life, “Pro-Life Society of Priests
A
nnounced by Fr. Pavone and Bishop Yanta,”
press release, March 23, 2005.
1
9
Pavone, “Election Perseverance,” Priests for Life,
h
ttp://www.priestsforlife.org/columns/
c
olumns2006/06-01-16electionperseverance.htm
(
accessed May 5, 2006).
20
Charity Navigator, “Priests for Life,”
http://www.charitynavigator.org/
i
ndex.cfm?bay=my.tools.income&orgid=6438
(
accessed May 25, 2006).
21
P
riests for Life, “Welcome to Priests for Life!”
http://www.priestsforlife.org/generalpfl/
member.html (accessed May 25, 2006).
2
2
U
S Conference of Catholic Bishops, “The Catholic
C
hurch in America,” http://www.usccb.org/
c
omm/cip.shtml (accessed May 25, 2006).
23
Peter West, “Statement of Fr. Peter West at
National Pro-Life Religious Council Press
Conference on Human Cloning,” Priests for Life,
M
ay 7, 2002.
24
P
riests for Life: A New Era in An
tiabortion Activism,
9
.
25
We
st, “Statement.”
26
US Conference of Catholic Bishops, “The
Catholic Church in America.”
27
Anthony DeStefano, “Priest Profile-Fr. Leo Prince,”
Priests for Life Newsletter, May-June 2002.
28
“Schenck Aims to Unite Pro-Lifers,”
Defend Life
Newsletter,
October 2004.
29
Faith and Action, “Biography of the Reverend
Dr. Rob (Robert Lenard) Schenck,”
http://www.faithandaction.org/RevSchenck
Biography.htm (accessed May 18, 2006).
30
Max Blumenthal, “God’s Country,”
Washington
Monthly
, October 2003.
31
Pavone, “Welcome from our National Pastoral
Director,” National Pro-Life Action Center,
http://www.nplac.org/pastoraldirector.html
(accessed May 2, 2006).
3
2
National Pro-Life Action Center, “Our History,”
http://www.nplac.org/aboutus.html (accessed
May 2, 2006).
3
3
Faith and Action, “About Faith and Action,”
http://www.faithandaction.org/DDDAboutus.htm
(accessed May 22, 2006).
3
4
N
ational P
ro-Life A
ction C
enter, “Our History
.”
3
5
P
riests for Life, “Introducing G
ospel of Life
Ministries,” http://
www
.gospeloflife.com/
articles/intro.htm (accessed May 2, 2
00
6).
3
6
Ibid.
37
P
riests for Life, “G
ospel of Life T
elevision,”
http://
www
.gospeloflife.com/tv/index.htm
(accessed May 2, 2
00
6).
3
8
P
riests for Life, “Radio Spots for Gospel of Life
M
inistries,” http://www.gospeloflife.com/
media/radio.htm (accessed May 2, 2006).
3
9
National Clergy Council, “Terry Schiavo A
M
odern Martyr,” March 31, 2005,
h
ttp://www.nationalclergycouncil.org/033105
M
odernMartyr.htm (accessed May 22, 2006).
40
National Clergy Council, “Who We Are,”
http://www.nationalclergycouncil.org/whoW.html
(
accessed May 22, 2006).
4
1
C
lickandPledge.com, “Faith and Action,”
h
ttps://128bit.clickandpledge.com/default.aspx?
ID=202&cid=US&a= (accessed May 22, 2006).
4
2
Priests for Life, “Uplifting Comments from our
M
ailbox,” http://www.priestsforlife.org/
p
raise/index.htm (accessed May 22, 2006).
43
F
aith and Action, “Winter Conference 2004
Photo Gallery,” http://www.faithandaction.org/
Faith%20and%20Action/WC2004photo
album.htm (accessed May 22, 2006).
44
Jeremy Leaming, “Pu
lpit Politics,” Americans
U
nited for Separation of Church
and State,
February 20
04, http://w
ww.au.org/site/
Ne
ws2?page=NewsArticle&id=6341&
abbr=cs_&JServSe
ssionIda008
=pq0v6hemc1.app
12d&security=1001&news_iv_ctrl=1544 (accessed
May 22, 2006).
45
Michelle Bearden, “Chavez Assassination Talk
Rebuked,”
Tampa Tribune, August 24, 2005.
46
Rachel’s Vineyard, “Rachel’s Vineyard,”
http://www.rachelsvineyard.org/ (accessed
May 2, 2006).
47
Silent No More Awareness Campaign, “The
National Silent No More Awareness Campaign,”
http://www.silentnomoreawareness.org/
(accessed May 2, 2006).
48
Pavone, “2001 Media Blitz,” Priests for Life,
http://www.priestsforlife.org/media/billboard.ht
m (accessed May 5, 2006).
4
9
Kevin Eckstrom, “Controversial Anti-Abortion
Ad Campaign Revamped,” Religion News
Service, April 24, 2001.
5
0
Keith Fournier, “Catholic is a Noun,”
Your
Catholic Voice,
January 2, 2006.
5
1
Seminarian Life Link, “Mission Statement,”
http://seminarianlifelink.org/whoweare.htm
(accessed May 2, 2006).
5
2
S
eminarian Life Link, “
Articles,”
http://seminarianlifelink.org/articles.htm
(accessed May 2, 2
00
6).
5
3
S
eminarian Life Link, “W
eekly e-letters,”
http://seminarianlifelink.org/
whoweare/
eletters.htm (accessed May 2, 2
00
6).
54
S
eminarian Life Link, “On the F
ront Lines,”
http://seminarianlifelink.org/frontlines.htm
(accessed May 2, 2
00
6).
O
PPOSITION NOTES • AN INVESTIGATIVE SERIES
24
5
5
S
eminarian Life Link, “National Conference for
S
eminarians,” http://seminarianlifelink.org/
frontlines/conference2006.htm (accessed
May 2, 2006).
5
6
P
riests for Life, “Students Turning |Around a
N
ation of Death,” http://www.abortion
a
borted.org/ (accessed May 2, 2006).
57
Priests for Life, “International and Multilingual
Outreach,” http://www.priestsforlife.org/
l
anguages/internationalindex.htm (accessed
J
uly 11, 2006).
58
J
oshua Mercer, “Father Pavone Eyes Pro-life
Religious Order,”
National Catholic Register,
June 11-17, 2000.
5
9
P
riests for Life, “Missionaries of the Gospel of
L
ife,” http://www.priestsforlife.org/
v
ocations/index.htm (accessed May 2, 2006).
60
Pavone, “An Association of Priests.”
6
1
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops,
“
Stories and Pictures from the Diocese of
A
marillo,” http://www.
usccb.org/hm/
a
marillo.htm (accessed May 16, 20
06).
62
Fr
itz Wenzel, “Could Ohio’s Catholics pick a
president?”
To
ledo (OH) Blade
, July 5, 20
04.
63
Kelley Shannon, “Same-sex marriage ban among
amendments on ballot,” Associated Press,
November 8, 2005.
64
Brandi Dean, “Pro-life group begins first
discernment retreat,”
Amarillo (TX) Globe-News,
June 25, 2005.
65
Terry Mattingly, “Texas priest speaks for life,”
Knoxville (TN) News-Sentinel, January 28, 2006.
66
Pat Hardyman, letter to the editor,
Wisconsin
State Journal,
February 9, 2006.
67
Kathryn Jean Lopez, “Ministering Life,”
National
Review Online,
May 9, 2001.
6
8
Judith E. Kindell and John Francis Reilly,
“Election Year Issues,”
IRS Continuing Professional
Education Manual for FY 2002,
p. 345.
6
9
Pavone, “Caesar Must Obey God,” Gospel of
Life Ministries, http://www.gospeloflife.com/
articles/caesar.htm (accessed May 5, 2006).
7
0
Pavone, “Voter Registration,” Priests for Life,
May 2, 2006, http://priestsforlife.org/
blog/?m=200605 (accessed May 4, 2006).
7
1
P
riests for Life, “What if both candidates support
abortion?” http://
www
.priestsforlife.org/
elections/imperfectcand.htm (accessed May 1
1
,
2
00
6).
7
2
P
avone to supporters, N
ovember 2, 2
00
4, in the
author’s possession.
73
P
avone, “The P
arty Matters,” P
riests for Life,
http://
www
.priestsforlife.org/columns/
columns2
00
5/0
5-0
7
-1
8thepartymatters.htm
(accessed May 5, 2
00
6).
7
4
D
avid Kirkpatrick, “Pastors’ Get-Out-the-Vote
T
raining Could Test Tax Rules,”
N
ew York Times,
March 21, 2006.
7
5
Pavone, “A Recent Election Interview,” Priests
f
or Life, May 19, 2006, http://priestsforlife.org/
b
log/?m=200605 (accessed May 23, 2006).
76
P
riests for Life, “How Did Priests for Life Start?”
7
7
Caulfield, “‘Moral Crisis.’”
7
8
P
riests for Life, advertisement,
C
atholic New York.
79
P
eter Sonski, “Prolife Strategy: Tipping the
Scaled For the ‘Conflicted Middle,’”
National
Catholic Register,
September 8, 1996.
8
0
P
riests for Life, “The President Speaks up for
L
ife,” http://priestsforlife.org/news/
p
residentlife.htm (accessed May 8, 2006).
81
Priests for Life, “Sample Letters to the Editor,”
http://priestsforlife.org/letters/sampleletters.htm
(accessed May 8, 2006).
82
Priests for Life, “Pr
iests for Life: The Prayer
S
hould Be Said,” press release, March
13, 20
00.
83
Priests for Life: A New Era
in Antiabortion Activism,
4.
84
“Father Pavone Calls George W. Bush ‘Pro-
Life,’”
National Catholic Register, June 11-17, 2000.
85
Priests for Life: A New Era in Antiabortion Activism, 4.
86
Priests for Life, “Father Frank Pavone’s Award
Acceptance Speech,” press release, April 25, 2001.
87
Lopez, “Ministering Life.”
88
Priests for Life, “Radical Church-State Conflict.”
89
Pavone, “A Message of Gratitude,” November 6,
2002, http://www.priestsforlife.org/elections/
gratitude.htm (accessed May 11, 2006).
90
Priests for Life, “Announcing National Christian
Voter Registration Sundays,” http://www.priests
forlife.org/vote/index.htm (accessed May 8, 2003).
9
1
Priests for Life, “Priests for Life Associate
Director Present for Bill Signings,”
Priests for Life
Newsletter,
July-August 2004.
9
2
Pavone to supporters, undated solicitation letter,
in the author’s possession.
9
3
Ibid.
9
4
Pavone, “Distorted Citizenship,” Priests for Life,
http://priestsforlife.org/columns/columns2
00
4/
distortedcitizenship.htm (accessed May 8, 2
00
6).
9
5
P
riests for Life, “Election R
esources for Y
ou!”
http://
www
.abortionaborted.com/ (accessed
May 8, 2
00
6).
96
W
eV
oteP
roLife.com, “W
elcome to W
eV
ote
P
roLife.com,” http://
www
.wevoteprolife.com/
(accessed May 8, 2
00
6).
97
P
riests for Life, “P
riests for Life Associate
Director P
resent for Bill Signings.”
9
8
P
riests for Life, “Priests Issue Challenge to
S
enator John Kerry.”
9
9
Pavone to supporters, April 25, 2004.
1
00
P
avone, “Update from the Director,”
P
riests for
L
ife Newsletter
,
May-June 2004.
101
P
avone to supporters, August 3, 2004, in the
author’s possession.
1
02
P
riests for Life, “Priests for Life Launches 30-
D
ay, Million Dollar National Campaign to
I
nfluence the Elections,” press release,
S
eptember 23, 2004.
103
Priests for Life, “Adding Insult to a Post-Abortive
Woman’s Injury,”
Priests for Life Newsletter,
S
eptember-October 2004.
104
P
avone, “Is the Church ‘Too Political’?” Priests
f
or Life, http://priestsforlife.org/columns/
columns2004/04-10-25churchpolitical.htm
(accessed May 8, 2006).
1
05
P
avone to supporters, November 1, 2004, in the
a
uthor’s possession.
106
Priests for Life, “Pr
iests for Life Issues Strong
Appeal to De
mocrats, Republicans Regarding
Judges,” press release, January 17
, 2005
.
107
Pavone, “We’ve Only Just Begun to Influence
Elections,” letter to the editor,
National Catholic
Register,
January 23-29, 2005.
108
Dexter Duggan, “Lay Faithful ‘Thirst’ For Clergy
Leadership On Issue,”
Wanderer, June 23, 2005.
109
Pavone, “The Party Matters.”
110
Pavone to supporters, October 31, 2005, in the
author’s possession.
111
Priests for Life, “Volunteer Form,”
http://www.catholicmusicnetwork.com/pfl/
volunteer_form.htm (accessed May 2, 2006).
112
Pavone, “Election Perseverance.”
1
1
3
Gregory Becker, “Becker Clarifies Release,”
Three Village (NY) Times, letter to the editor,
October 30, 1998.
1114 Priests for Life, “‘Suspect’ and ‘Illusory,’”
Priests
for Life Newsletter
, January-February 2004.
1
15
Pavone, “Preaching on Abortion from
Scripture,” undated communication to priests.
1
16
Brian McGuire, “Priests for Life Goes to Battle
on the F
ront Lines,”
National Catholic Register,
S
eptember 2
6-
O
ctober 2, 1
9
9
9.
1
17
P
avone, “P
reac
hing on Abortion.”
1
18
David T
ell, “Planned Un-P
arenthood: R
oe v
.
W
ade at thirty,”
W
eekly Standard
, January 2
7,
2
00
3.
119
P
avone, “
A Matter of the H
eart,”
http://
www
.priestsforlife.org/magisterium/
bishops/matterofheartcommentary
.htm (accessed
May 9, 2
00
6).0.3
F
AITHLESS POLITICS: PRIESTS FOR LIFE DEFIES CONSTITUTION AND CONSCIENCE
25
1
20
P
avone, “The Neglected Side of Roe vs. Wade,”
P
riests for Life, July 30, 2001, http://www.priests
forlife.org/columns/columns2001/01-07-30
abmal.htm (accessed May 9, 2006).
1
21
P
riests for Life, “Priests for Life Statement on
F
DA Approval of RU-486,” press release,
S
eptember 28, 2000.
122
Pavone, “Preaching on Abortion.”
1
23
“
President Bush Names John Roberts as
N
ominee for Supreme Court Chief Justice,”
L
ifeSiteNews.com, September 6, 2005.
124
Pavone, “Judicial Activism,” Priests for Life, July
1, 2001, http://www.priestsforlife.org/
columns/columns2001/01-07-01judicial
a
ctivism.htm (accessed May 24, 2006).
125
P
avone to supporters, undated letter.
126
Pavone, unpublished letter to the editor, August
23, 1991, in the author’s possession.
1
27
G
wyneth Shaw and Gail Gibson, “For
Congress, a quiet retreat from Schiavo,”
B
altimore Sun
,
March 27
, 2005
.
128
Pa
vone, “Blessing the Grave,” Priests for Life,
Oc
tober 24, 20
05, http://w
ww.priestsforlife.org/
columns/columns2005/05-10-24blessing
grave.htm (accessed May 4, 2006).
129
Duggan, “Plans For New Pro-Life Activist Priests’
Society Go Forward,”
Wanderer, July 14, 2005.
130
“Honoring Terri Schiavo,” Fox News,
April 7, 2005.
131
Priests for Life, “Abortion, Contraception,
Natural Family Planning, Humanae Vitae,”
http://www.priestsforlife.org/contraception/
index.htm (accessed May 24, 2006).
132
Pro-Life America, advertisement,
Wanderer,
September 12, 2002.
133
Pavone also used the anti-contraception
campaign to issue a curious call for donations,
asking for $4,000 to “blanket” a school such as
Boston College or Purdue University; the latter
has about three times as many students as the
former.
1
3
4
Rob Schenck is head of Faith and Action and
twin brother of PFL pastoral associate Paul
Schenck, who heads Faith and Action’s sister
organization, the National Clergy Council.
Pavone is a member of the National Clergy
Council’s executive council and the pastoral
director of the N
ational P
ro-Life A
ction C
enter,
whic
h houses F
aith and A
ction.
1
35
“H
ead-to-head: Should the U
S C
onstitution bar
gay marriage?” B
BC N
ews, F
ebruary 2
6, 2
00
4.
1
36
P
avone to supporters, N
ovember 2, 2
00
4.
137
Catholic N
ews S
ervice, “P
ope W
arns Against
W
ar,” AmericanCatholic.org.
138
W
est to Mary Harren, D
ecember 1
6, 2
00
1
, in
the author’s possession.
1
39
P
avone, “Fr. Norman Weslin: Peacefully
S
acrificing himself for Jesus Christ’s Babies,”
Priests for Life, October 14, 2001,
http://www.priestsforlife.org/media/weslin.htm
(accessed May 9, 2006).
1
40
P
riests for Life: A New Era in Antiabortion
A
ctivism
,
14.
141
Pavone, Our Media is the Streets, Priests for
Life, http://www.priestsforlife.org/brochures/
o
urmedia.html (accessed May 2, 2006).
1
42
P
riests for Life, “Priests for Life Puts up Reward
M
oney for Stopping Abortion Violence,” press
release, April 7, 2001.
1
43
Pavone, “The Unwilling Audience,” Priests for
L
ife, http://www.priestsforlife.org/columns/
c
olumns2001/01-06-18unwillingaudience.htm
(
accessed May 9, 2006).
144
Priests for Life: A New Era in Antiabortion
Activism
, 10.
1
45
J
ames Risen, “Anti-Abortion March Brings Tide
o
f Tension to Capital,”
L
os Angeles Ti
mes
,
January
23, 1995
.
146
Priests for Life: A New Era
in Antiabortion
Ac
tivism,
14
.
147
Tamar Lewin, “Death of a Doctor: The Moral
Debate,”
New York Times, July 30, 1994.
148
Priests for Life: A New Era in Antiabortion
Activism,
16.
149
Priests for Life: A New Era in Antiabortion
Activism,
2.
150
The US Supreme Court found in 2006 in
Scheidler’s favor, citing what might be called
technical grounds—a law NOW cited as a
centerpiece of its case, according to the court’s
unanimous opinion, was not pertinent to clinic
protest.
151
Pavone, “Fr. Norman Weslin.”
1
5
2
Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, “In The
Courts,”
Kaiser Daily Women’s Health Policy,
July 21, 2006.
1
5
3
Joshua Cogswell and Leah Rupp, “Abortion
protesters hold memorial for fetus at park,”
Jackson (MS) Clarion-Ledger, July 20, 2006.
1
54
Jennifer Craigmile Neubauer to “Friend,”
solicitation letter.
1
55
J
ennifer G
onnerman, “F
ather F
rank’s Crusade,”
V
illage V
oice
, May 2
3-2
9, 2
00
1
. http
1
56
Annette F
uentes, “Campaigning for a Christian
N
ation,” Institute for P
ublic Affairs, O
ctober 4,
1
9
9
8.
157
P
avone to supporters, A
ugust 1
5, 2
00
5, in the
author’s possession.
158
T
om Hac
ker, “
Abortion opponents Vt. Bound,”
Burlington (VT) Fr
ee Pr
ess
, D
ecember 1
, 1
9
9
4.
159
P
avone to supporters, undated letter
.
1
60
E
ric Schneiderman, “Priest has not truly
d
enounced anti-abortion protesters’ violence,”
letter to the editor,
Staten Island (NY) Advance,
May 17, 2001.
1
61
I
bid.
162
G
onnerman, “Father Frank’s Crusade.”
163
Pavone, Our Media is the Streets.
1
64
D
uggan, “Lay Faithful.”
1
65
P
riests for Life, “Child Protection Project,”
h
ttp://www.priestsforlife.org/schools/index.htm
(accessed May 2, 2006).
1
66
Frederick Clarkson, “Priest Group Launches
A
nti-Sex-Ed Campaign,” Women’s eNews,
N
ovember 11, 2002.
167
E
d Zielinski to superintendents, June 20,
2002, http://priestsforlife.org/schools/
certifiedletter.htm (accessed May 9, 2006).
1
68
E
WTN, “EWTN Television Schedule,”
h
ttp://www.
ewtn.com/tv/grids.asp?satellite=
DOM
&month=05&day=01
&year=194
5&
FirstSunday=4/30/20
06&LastSunday=
5/28
/2006 (accessed May 3, 2006).
169
Priests for Life, “Defending Life,”
http://www.priestsforlife.org/media/
defnlife11blurbs.htm (accessed May 18, 2006).
170
Catholic News Service, “Father Pavone Affirms
Continuing Pro-Life Involvement,”
National
Catholic Register,
December 9-15, 2001.
171
Mathew P. Ross to Frances Kissling, May 15,
2001, in the author’s possession.
172
Pavone,
Our Media is the Streets.
173
Pavone to supporters, undated letter.
174
Renato Martino, “Remarks of His Excellency
Archbishop Renato R. Martino,” Priests for
Life, http://www.priestsforlife.org/magisterium/
bishops/01-06-20archbishopmartino.htm
(accessed May 9, 2006).
1
7
5
“In the News,”
Catholic Eye, April 30, 2001.
1
7
6
Pavone, “Matchup,” Priests for Life,
http://priestsforlife.org/columns/columns2003/
03-06-16matchup.htm
1
77
Priests for Life, “The Matching of Catholic
Parishes with Freestanding Abortion Mills,”
http://priestsforlife.org/mills/ (accessed
May 3, 2
00
6).
1
78
Catholics for a F
ree Choice,
Pr
eserving P
ower
and Privilege,
W
ashington: Catholics for a F
ree
Choice, 2
00
3.
1
79
J. Mic
hael P
arker, “
Amarillo greets Bishop
Y
anta,”
San A
ntonio Expr
ess-
News
, Marc
h 1
8, 1
9
9
7
.
180
W
enzel, “C
ould Ohio’s Catholics pic
k a
president?”
181
Shannon, “Same-sex marriage ban.”
O
PPOSITION NOTES • AN INVESTIGATIVE SERIES
26
1
82
P
arker, “Catholic TV pioneer says secularism
b
ig challenge,”
S
an Antonio Express-News,
March 31, 2005.
1
83
Archdiocese of Denver, “All the News That’s Fit
t
o Print…Sort Of,” http://www.archden.org/
i
mages/nyt_transcript.pdf (accessed May 12,
2
006).
184
Gayle White, “A Shepherd to His Flock,”
Atlanta Journal-Constitution, June 16, 2001.
1
85
M
ary Zoghby, “‘Archbishop does not control
o
ur thinking,’”
A
tlanta Journal-Constitution
,
S
eptember 21, 2004.
186
John Blake, “Donoghue era comes to an end,”
Atlanta Journal-Constitution, January 11, 2005.
1
87
“
The Sex Abuse Crisis,”
C
onscience
,
December
2
2, 2005.
188
Tracy Wilkinson, “The World: Vatican to Define
Its Policy on Gay Seminarians,”
Los Angeles
Times,
November 12, 2005.
189
A
rthur Jones, “Pr
iests say dismissal lacked due
p
rocess,”
N
ational Catholic Reporter
,
August 13
,
2004
.
190
Jo
hn L. Allen, “Opus Dei prestige on display at
centenary event,”
National Catholic Reporter,
January 18, 2002.
191
John Myers, “Archbishop Myers’ homily at St.
Mary Major,” Opus Dei Information Office,
October 8, 2002, http://www.opusdei.com/
art.php?w=32&p=4927 (accessed May 16,
2006).
192
John Chadwick, “Catholics to focus on divisive
issue of Communion,”
Bergen County (NJ) Record,
October 5, 2005.
193
Peter Boyer, “A Hard Faith,”
New Yorker, May
16, 2005.
194
Kirkpatrick, “A Religious Push Against Gay
Unions,”
New York Times, April 24, 2006.
1
9
5
Associated Press, “Report: 111 U.S. Roman
Catholic bishops kept priests, others accused of
abuse on the job,” June 12, 2002.
1
9
6
Eugene Sutherland, “Early parole denied for
molester priest,”
Alexandria (LA) Daily Town
Talk,
February 12, 2004.
1
97
Bruce Nolan, “Five of seven La. dioceses pass
sex-abuse reform test,”
New Orleans Times-
Picayune
, January 7, 2004.
1
98
C
ynthia Jardon, “The N
azareth debate,”
Alexandria (
LA
) Daily T
own T
alk
, N
ovember 2
7,
1
9
9
9.
1
99
Associated P
ress, “Phoenix bishop calls almost
all birth control sinful,” January 9, 2
00
6.
200
Associated P
ress, “Phoenix Diocese bans
politicians who support abortion, gay rights,”
A
ugust 5, 2
00
5.
201
Associated P
ress, “Bishop tells 9 priests to
recant support for gay rights,” April 2
8, 2
00
4.
2
02
M
ichael Clancy, “Bishop Punishes Priest for
S
igning Gay-Rights Letter,”
A
rizona Republic
,
May 29, 2004.
2
03
Clancy, “Priests Say They Were Forced Out of
M
inistry,”
A
rizona Republic
,
July 10, 2005.
204
P
atricia Montemurri, “Diocese Gets Another
O
utspoken Bishop,”
D
etroit Free Press
,
February
24, 2005.
2
05
R
occo Palmo, “Carlson: Mama Don’t Preach,”
W
hispers in the Loggia, February 18, 2006,
h
ttp://whispersintheloggia.blogspot.com/2006/
0
2/carlson-mama-dont-preach.html (accessed
May 17, 2006).
2
06
Paul Keyes to parishioners, September 25, 2002,
B
ishop Accountability, http://www.bishop-
a
ccountability.org/resources/resource-
f
iles/timeline/2002-09-25-Keyes
A
llue-VOTFBan.htm (accessed May 17, 2006).
207
James Post to Emilio Allue, October 3, 2002,
on file.
208
“
Bishops form task group on charter,”
N
ational
C
atholic Reporter,
October 18
, 2002
.
209
Jo
sh Johnson, “Cardinal softens policy on
Vo
ice,”
Quincy (M
A) Pa
triot Ledger
, Oc
tober 15,
2002.
210
Michael Rezendes, “Boston Bishop Is Named in
Lawsuit,”
Boston Globe, November 22, 2002.
211
Jones, “Texas sues Bishop Gracida,”
National
Catholic Reporter,
May 24, 1996.
212
Stephen Michaud and Hugh Aynesworth,
“Showdown in Texas,”
Philanthropy, March
2001.
213
Rene Henry Gracida, “Denying Holy
Communion,” LifeSiteNews.com, September
28, 2004.
214
Gracida, “Texas Bishop Criticizes US Bishops
Conference Presidential Candidate’s
Questionnaire,”
Crisis, August 10, 2004.
2
1
5
Gracida, “On Voting for Pro-Abortion
Candidates,” Catholic Culture, August 11,
2004, http://www.catholicculture.org/docs/
doc_view.cfm?recnum=6159 (accessed May 17,
2006).
2
16
Confusion about when Pavone took over PFL is
described in note 3.
2
17
Priests for Life: A New Era in Antiabortion
A
ctivism
, 1
3.
2
18
Catholic N
ews S
ervice, “F
ather P
avone Affirms
C
ontinuing P
ro-Life Involvement.”
2
19
“F
ather P
avone Asked to Leave P
riests for Life,”
EW
T
N Pr
o-
F
amily News
, S
eptember 1
0, 2
00
1
.
220
“N.Y
. Arc
hdiocese says F
ather P
avone had
known he’d be recalled,”
Catholic News Service,
O
ctober 5, 2
00
1
.
221
P
avone to supporters, May 3
0, 2
00
6, on file.
2
22
H
oward, “Norma McCorvey.”
223
“Family feud still boils after Schiavo’s death,”
CNN, April 1, 2005.
2
24
“
Honoring Terri Schiavo,” Fox News.
225
P
avone, “Fr. Norman Weslin.”
226
Bill Baird and Joni Scott, “Seeking Common
Ground on Uncommon Ground,”
Humanist,
M
ay 1, 2000.
2
27
J
oseph D’Agostino, “Conservative Spotlight:
A
nthony DeStefano,”
H
uman Events,
A
pril 26,
2004.
2
28
Priests for Life: A New Era in Antiabortion
A
ctivism
1
6.
229
P
riests for Life, “Jerry Horn,” http://www.priests
f
orlife.org/staff/jerry.htm (accessed May 11, 2006).
230
Janet Morana and Theresa Burke,
“Abortifacients … The Other Forbidden Grief,”
P
riests for Life Newsletter
,
July-August 2004.
231
J
ames McKinley, “The 1993 Elections: City
Council,”
New York Ti
mes
, November 3, 1993
.
232
Pr
iests for Life, “Women Hurt by Abortion Ask
Voters to Consider Them,” press release, April
22, 2004.
233
Blumenthal, “God’s Country.”
234
Faith and Action, “Biography of the Reverend
Dr. Rob (Robert Lenard) Schenck.”
235
Blumenthal, “God’s Country.”
236
Priests for Life, “Fr. Frank receives Dr. Paul
Schenck into Catholic Church,” press release,
February 29, 2004.
237
Pavone to supporters, undated letter.
238
Alexandra Alter and Andrea Robinson, “Politics
in the Pulpit Blurs Lines Between Church,
State,”
Miami Herald, October 22, 2004.
2
3
9
North American Catholic Educational
Programming Foundation, “Let the Fire Fall,”
http://nacepf.net/Let%20the%20Fire%20
Fall1.htm (accessed May 12, 2006).
2
4
0
Brian Carovillano, “Cicilline leading Democrats
in race for Providence mayor,” Associated Press,
September 10, 2002.
2
41
Charles Bakst, “Cianci fundraiser: Loyalty
glimpsed through the haze,”
Pr
ovidence Journal-
Bulletin,
D
ecember 6, 2
00
1
.
2
42
Carovillano, “Cianci bows out of mayoral race,”
Associated P
ress, June 2
7, 2
00
2.
2
43
P
riests for Life, “Rhode Island P
riest to W
ork
F
ull Time for P
riests for Life,” press release, June
1
3, 2
00
5.
F
AITHLESS POLITICS: PRIESTS FOR LIFE DEFIES CONSTITUTION AND CONSCIENCE
27
O
PPOSITION NOTES • AN INVESTIGATIVE SERIES
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Faithless Politics:
Priests for Life Defies Constitution and Conscience
© Catholics for a Free Choice, 2006. All rights reserved.
Published August 2006. ISBN: 0-915365-79-0
Please cite as: Catholics for a Fr
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Defies Constitution and Conscience,” 2006.
PRESIDENT
Frances Kissling
EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT
Jon O’Brien
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
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chairperson
Sheila Briggs, M.A.
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contact:
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