What do you know about Catholics For a Free Choice (CFFC)?

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

Some RW nutcase columnist wrote in a Brazilian newspaper about that organization. This is the juiciest paragraph of his column:

But the evil this organization does to the Church, infiltrating it to corrode it from inside, doesn't limit itself to pure political macchiavelism. When I say CFFC's catholicism is an intentional parody, I'm not using a figure of speech, but describing a fact: the organization's first public act, as soon as it was established in 1970, was to crown its founder, Patricia F. McQuillan, as "Pope Joanna the First", in a ceremony on the stairs of St. Patrick's Cathedral in NYC. As if this wasn't enough, the movement's magazine, "Conscience", is chock full of explicit declarations of satanism, like for instance verses to the "sweet name of Lucifer, lyric, saint", or this ode to biblical idol Baal: "From the soil where new wheat was sown, Baal rises. In a shout of exhaltation, we rejoice: the Lord has risen, he sits again on the throne. He rules. Hallelujah!"

I didn't find any mention of that in the Web, except here: http://www.petitiononline.com/cffc/petition.html - no corroboration, of course, and the year is wrong (1974 instead of 1970), and it's only about the "fake Pope" thing. Wait, one more: http://www.ylcss.edu.hk/Intranet/E-Class/life/QUOTES/G-CFFC.HTM (Religious Right source too)

I can almost imagine the crowning herself Pope antics as a protest performance, but details about such an event are sorely lacking.

And the satanism? This is even shadier -- no mention to it anywhere. I seriously suspect he pulled this out of his ass, or of some random e-mail he got and didn't check since it matches his beliefs.

Wait, wait -- got a mention to it at a CFFC-bashing site: http://www.hli.org/catholics_for_free_choice_quotes.htm

If you take THEIR word for it (yeah I know), a certain Rosemary Radford Ruether said that in a book. Another mismatch: not the newsletter the columnist mentions. I guess an unrelated book, independently written by a "former CFFC board of directors member" (according to that site) wasn't enough -- he had to embellish facts a little. Also, very little context.

Anyone has more information on the subject?

[Warpy]

1. Yeah, right, and meanwhile

the church policy on womens issues are being decided not by men, but by celibate men, men who have seen women as nothing but "occasions of sin" their whole lives (which is a convenient way of blaming women for a man's inability to control himself).

Get real. Most practicing Catholics find the whole situation of a bunch of sex starved old bachelors making pronouncements on sex, marriage, and procreation just a little ludicrous, and instead listen to the "still small voice within" as the nuns instructed them to.

I suppose church women are going to have to wait as long as Galileo did to find out that birth control was a GOOD thing.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

2. Whoa, don't shoot the messenger

I just want to fact-check the crackpot who wrote that. I already know he mixes and matches facts and fiction to his heart's desire, but I'd like to tap into the DU Knowledge Well for more.

[Warpy]

3. I was snarling at the idiots you cited in your post,

not you. That should have been apparent.

The CFFC website is http://www.catholicsforchoice.org/indexengflash.htm

Silly spin against them (nominally Catholic, pro abortion, funded by pornography) is at http://dianedew.com/CFFC.htm and I think it degenerates from there, but it'll give you an idea of some of the funding CFFC gets and from whom.

You're right, there was nothing on Pope Joanna except the one that Urban I was so annoyed with, so if it was a publicity stunt, it appears to have failed miserably or was more likely a right wing stunt from the very beginning.

There's plenty of stuff denouncing CFFC out there. The site I provided does so mostly in loaded language used to twist what are essentially the facts.

Any organization that calls for a more democratic church is bound to arouse the patriarchs to a frenzy of lies delivered with a barrage of spittle.