ANALYSIS
May 5, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) — Carolyn Woo, a former co-chair of Catholics for Biden and former head of the contraception-promoting Catholic Relief Services (founded by the US bishops), is planned to be a guest speaker at the Catholic Leadership Institute’s (CLI) “Leadership Confessional” webinar series.
Despite her active campaigning for strongly pro-abortion and pro-LGBT Joe Biden, and her past complicity in the scandalous promotion of contraception to African teens as former CEO of Catholic Relief Services, she is being hailed by the Catholic Leadership Institute for her “impressive” “faith.”
“Former President & CEO of Catholic Relief Services, Carolyn’s resume is impressive and so is her faith. Carolyn’s journey, expertise, and leadership are admirable and inspiring,” reads the CLI promo page for the webinar, which is “reserved exclusively for monthly donors.”
Founded in 1992, the Catholic Leadership Institute aims to provide leadership formation for both clergy and laypeople, according to its website, and lists “Love of Christ and the Church” as one of its key values. Among the institution’s episcopal advisers are Cardinal Seán O’Malley of Boston, Cardinal Thomas Collins of Toronto, and USCCB president Archbishop José H. Gómez of Los Angeles.
As a co-chair of the voter outreach initiative Catholics for Biden, Woo was not “merely endorsing” Biden, as Josh Dickson, faith engagement director at Biden for President, explained. The co-chairs were to “lend their voices and their leadership” to Catholics for Biden events, including phone banks and voter turnout initiatives.
Many members of the laity and clergy, including bishops, have decried Biden’s extreme pro-abortion stance as gravely sinful. Biden goes so far as to oppose any legal measures that promote an informed and careful deliberation about the decision to choose life, while Vice President Kamala Harris earned a 100% congressional voting record from the pro-abortion group NARAL “every year she has served in the U.S. Senate.”
Biden and Harris issued a statement in January reiterating their commitment “to codifying Roe v. Wade and appointing judges that respect foundational precedents like Roe.”
Biden’s “Health Care Plan” also states that “his Justice Department will do everything in its power to stop” state laws that “so blatantly violate the constitutional right to an abortion,” such as “parental notification” and “ultrasound requirements.”
Since taking office, Biden has promoted abortion by having issued multiple executive orders that reinstate abortion funding both at home and abroad, including funding of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), which partners with China despite the country’s forced abortion and sterilization practices. Under his administration, the FDA has also reversed a Trump-era decision banning the dispensation of abortion-inducing drugs by mail.
Biden has signed several executive orders that open the doors to religious oppression. One such order forces women’s athletic programs, restrooms, and locker rooms to accept gender-confused males, prompting the Christian College of the Ozarks to sue because of this policy.
The importance of conservative judges
In explaining to Michael O’Loughlin, correspondent for the Jesuit Review America, why she supports Joe Biden, Woo insisted that “life is sacred,” but that “who the president is has nothing, no impact on reducing abortion. The whole idea that Republican presidents appoint conservative judges who then reverse Roe, well, we’ve had 30 years of Republican justices and nothing has happened.”
“Really what would reduce abortion is state and local level actions,” Woo continued.
And yet, these state laws are “utterly at the mercy of federal courts,” as LifeSiteNews writer Calvin Freiburger points out. These federal courts are overseen by judicial appointees of the president himself.
Addressing those Never Trumpers who argue that the presidency plays the least importance in abortion policy, Freiburger says: “Obviously, the heroic pro-life grassroots are essential. What’s not heroic is using them as an excuse not to do all we can at the federal level. It’s simply immoral to advocate that we not resist a pro-death ticket’s takeover of the executive branch just because part of the victim pool will be saved either way… especially when that ticket’s judges will also decide the fate of laws that directly impact pro-lifers’ ability to serve their communities.”
The idea that judges have no impact on abortion policy is also contradicted by abortion researchers Wm. Robert Johnston, Ph.D., and Thomas W. Jacobson, M.A., who say their findings worldwide reveal the “greatest genocide in history” and show that “government policies, including both laws themselves and the level of enforcement, profoundly affect the level of abortion.”
Planned Parenthood itself is wary of this, having noted that “challenges” to abortion restriction laws in court “are likely to be heard by Trump-nominated federal judges,” 18 of which NARAL has pegged as firmly pro-life (in their words, “anti-choice”).
Woo’s excuse for supporting Biden, in purely practical terms, is especially questionable because of the unprecedented contrast between presidential candidates on sanctity of life policy. Whereas Trump has been hailed by the president of the pro-life Susan B. Anthony List and others as the “most pro-life president in history,” self-described “pro-life liberals” warned before the 2020 election that “Joe Biden would be the most pro-abortion president in history.”
Pro-life response to Woo’s claims
Michael Hichborn, President of the Lepanto Institute, refuted Woo’s claim that presidents have no impact on abortion in a comment to LifeSiteNews: “Joe Biden’s first act after being sworn in was to rescind the Mexico City Policy, allowing U.S.-funded agencies to provide and promote abortion overseas. Biden has also sworn that he would increase funding for the abortion industry’s leading retailer, Planned Parenthood, and he said that he would work to eliminate all legal obstacles, clearing the way for abortion on demand at all stages of fetal development.”
“Woo claims to have compassion for the poor, but she has no compassion for the preborn babies who are being dismembered and their body parts sold because of what she has done,” continued Hichborn.
Aside from washing over the practical impact of a pro-life president, Woo neglected to mention that Catholic teaching holds that support of pro-abortion candidates is unconscionable, regardless of the expected impact of such policies, when a pro-life alternative candidate is present.
Former Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, declared in a 2004 memorandum that only “morally proportionate reasons” could justify voting for a candidate in favor of abortion.
Ratzinger explained that abortion and euthanasia are intrinsically grave sins. ”Not all moral issues have the same moral weight as abortion and euthanasia. For example, if a Catholic were to be at odds with the Holy Father on the application of capital punishment or on the decision to wage war, he would not for that reason be considered unworthy to present himself to receive Holy Communion.”
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops also reminded the faithful in their document “Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship” that the “moral obligation to oppose policies promoting intrinsically evil acts has a special claim on our consciences and our actions.”
“I cannot conceive of any proportionate reason that could outweigh the death of nearly 50 million children killed by abortion,” former Archbishop of Omaha Elden F. Curtiss was quoted as saying in the book Catholic Voting and Mortal Sin: How Your Vote Can Endanger Your Salvation.
Archbishop Joseph Naumann, chair of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’s (USCCB) Committee on Pro-Life Activities, is currently working on a document that, if approved, “would make clear the USCCB’s view” that Biden and other Catholic public figures who similarly promote pro-abortion policies “should not present themselves for Communion,” Naumann explained to the Associated Press.
Nauman elaborated in an interview with The Atlantic, “Obviously, the president doesn’t believe what we believe about the sacredness of human life, or he wouldn’t be taking the actions that he is. And yet, he continues to receive the Eucharist. We can’t judge his heart. But we consider the action itself a grave moral evil.”
“He’s formally cooperating in abortion by his actions. He intends to make abortion available and accessible, to promote it, even help pay for it. He wants to force everybody else to do this as well, even if it violates their consciences,” Naumann continued.
“It can create confusion … How can he say he’s a devout Catholic and he’s doing these things that are contrary to the church’s teaching?” said Naumann.
“Biden may be able to woo some nominally Christian voters over to his side, but he certainly has no intention of governing according to the Word of the Lord,” commented blogger Elizabeth Johnston.
Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Springfield is one of many bishops who have made clear that voting for a pro-abortion politician is not an option for Catholics. He warned in 2012 that “a vote for a candidate who promotes actions or behaviors that are intrinsically evil and gravely sinful makes you morally complicit and places the eternal salvation of your own soul in serious jeopardy.”
Other problematic Biden policies from a Catholic perspective
This is not the only serious issue with voting for Biden, as he also defies Catholic Church by supporting same-sex “marriage” and laws which would punish Christians for living according to their religious beliefs on gender, sexuality, and the sanctity of life.
Biden admitted that as president he would force Catholic nuns to pay for contraception and abortion in spite of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in favor of their religious freedom. He has also repeatedly lauded the Equality Act, which would punish churches and other institutions for refusing to hire homosexuals, force shelters to allow men to sleep in women’s quarters, and compel doctors to perform transgender surgeries, among other anti-Christian provisions.
Woo’s support for contraception at Catholic Relief Services
And Woo’s practical opposition to Church teaching doesn’t stop at her support of Biden. As the former head of Catholic Relief Services (CRS), Woo continued the group’s practice of teaching African teens about contraception through one of its grant programs, and of heavily funding abortion and contraception-promoting groups.
Woo became President and CEO of CRS in January 2012, after having served on its Board of Directors from 2004 to 2010. In 2015, Michael Voris presented findings by Michael Hichborn and Steve Mosher that documented how CRS was directly involved in promoting contraception to Kenyan teens under the leadership of Woo in 2012, through a so-called “Healthy Choices 2” program.
On-the-ground investigative work in Kenya overseen by Steve Mosher confirmed that Healthy Choices 2 taught children ages 13 to 17 about contraception methods, including condom use.
Voris’s report shared a screenshot of the Caritas Nyeri website, speaking “on behalf of the archdiocese of Nyeri,” that verified that CRS was in charge of implementing Healthy Choices 2, and explained that the program “aims” to “promote secondary abstinence or protected sexual intercourse/safe sex.”
Michael Hichborn commented, “It’s vital to point out here that we have four independent sources that are actually verifying that CRS through the SAIDIA grant did indeed implement Healthy Choices 2.”
Voris noted that they found U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief in Kenya (PEPFAR) documents that likewise showed CRS’s role in contraception-promoting programs for fiscal years 2011 and 2013.
Voris presented documentation showing that The Movement of Men Against Aids in Kenya (MMAAK) was a sub-partner of CRS under a PEPFAR grant. He also showed posters found in MMAAK’s offices depicting “proper” condom use, and explained how an investigator spoke with MMAAK’s regional coordinator for Nairobi, a man named Philip.
“I think the most condemning thing that Philip said about CRS’s activities to our investigator was that CRS told Philip and the people working in the MMAAK program not to take Healthy Choices 2 to any Catholic school, but to stay in other Christian schools. That suggests that Catholic Relief Services knew exactly that what they were doing was a violation of Catholic Church teaching and they wanted to avoid Catholic schools and Catholic churches so that they could avoid having these things come to light,” commented Mosher.
Funding distributed by Catholic Relief Services under Woo
In addition to CRS’s involvement in managing contraception education programs, it has provided massive funds to organizations that promote the grave sins of abortion and contraception.
Michael Hichborn discussed other findings of his investigation into CRS’s funding activity. “What we found is that 86 percent of all of the domestic grants that CRS distributed for the year 2012, that’s 64-plus million dollars out of 75-plus million dollars, went to organizations that are directly funding abortion, birth control, contraception, sterilization, the whole gamut. These organizations themselves are on the ground handing out contraceptive devices.
Hichborn cited what he described as the most clear-cut example of the issues with these groups: “You look at what Population Services International (PSI) is all about, and it’s mind-blowing that CRS would say, oh, we had no idea that they were handing out abortion or that they were dispensing birth control in such a wide scale.”
“The founder of Population Services International was a major pornographer who made his millions, actually billions, in the sex toy male industry, and then he took that money to create Population Services International for the specific purpose of population control. That’s why it was created,” Hichborn continued, referring to Phil Harvey, co-founder and president of the erotica distributor Adam & Eve.
Hichborn confirmed that CRS gave a whopping $2.8 million to PSI. “CRS defended itself by saying, well, none of that money went to, you know, contraception or anything, it went towards passing out mosquito nets and things like that,” noted Niles.
“When I think about what CRS is doing and their excuses I have an analogy that I like to draw. Imagine a Catholic college was paying Planned Parenthood to come on its campus to conduct breast cancer screenings or STD tests for students. It doesn’t matter how tightly controlled those funds are for the strict purpose of the screenings or the STD tests. The prestige the college helps Planned Parenthood acquire is gravely scandalous,” commented Hichborn.
More of Woo’s positions are in conflict with Church teaching
Hichborn, who has been providing ongoing reporting and documentation of CRS’s scandalous practices for years, pointed out to LifeSiteNews that Carolyn Woo “also personally defended employing a same-sex ‘married’ senior vice president at CRS,” which Hichborn reported on in 2015.
He also noted that after leaving CRS, Woo started working with the heretical organization called FutureChurch, which Hichborn commented on in late 2016, explaining that “FutureChurch promotes same-sex ‘marriage,’ the priestly ‘ordination’ of women, and contraception.”
“Dr. Carolyn Woo's public work, whether it be at CRS, FutureChurch, or Catholics for Biden, is fraught with an attitude of compromise. In her exit speech from CRS to the 2016 USCCB Annual Assembly, Woo said, ‘the most chilling statement I ever heard’ was ‘Carolyn, we can’t compromise,’” noted Hichborn.
“She called for compromise regarding a same-sex ‘married’ senior executive vice president at CRS, and she compromised with abortion and contraception providing organizations by letting them distribute abortifacient contraception in CRS-run areas. But since then, she’s jumped full in the abortion-industry's tank by co-chairing the Catholics for Biden organization and working with an organization that directly promotes same-sex ‘marriage,’ contraception, and women’s ordination.”
“With her track record of betraying the moral teachings of the Church, it’s hard to see how she can ever possibly be considered as a speaker at the Catholic Leadership Institute,” concluded Hichborn.
LifeSiteNews has repeatedly reached out to the Catholic Leadership Institute for comment, but has not received a response.