New lies for old -- The USCCB and New Ways Ministry

By Randy Engel

Introduction

In his classic work New Lies For Old — The Communist Strategy of Deception and Disinformation, ex-KGB Soviet defector Anatoliy Golitsyn defines "strategic disinformation" as "a systematic effort to disseminate false information and to distort or withhold information so as to misrepresent the real situation, in, and policies of, the communist world and thereby to confuse, deceive, and influence the noncommunist world, to jeopardize its policies, and to induce Western adversaries to contribute unwittingly to the achievement of communist objectives." [1]

Over the last 40 years, a similar program of strategic disinformation and deception has been waged against faithful Catholics in America by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops/U.S. Catholic Conference (NCCB/USCC), known today as the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB).

From day one, with malice and forethought, the NCCB/USCC, a creature of the Second Vatican Council (although its roots go back to the pre-Conciliar era), has been systematically attacking and undermining Catholic dogma, faith, and morals, thereby creating a climate of confusion, deception, and apostasy among rank and file Catholics.

And there is no area in which the USCCB's disinformation program has been more successful than in the realm of Catholic sexual morality as it applies to homosexuality and pederasty — the main driving forces behind the clerical sex abuse scandal in AmChurch today. [2]

USCCB disinformation on New Ways Ministry

A recent case in point is the March 11, 2011, statement by the USCCB Committee on Doctrine and the USCCB Ad Hoc Committee for the Defense of Marriage, which was issued in response to a booklet titled "Marriage Equality: A Positive Catholic Approach," by New Ways Ministry Executive Director Francis DeBernardo.

The USCCB joint statement signed by Chairmen Donald Cardinal Wuerl and Bishop Salvatore Cordileone for their respective Committees reaffirmed an earlier statement made on February 12, 2010, by USCCB President Francis Cardinal George, OMI, concerning the non-Catholicity of New Ways Ministry, a pro-homosexual organization.

Cardinal George's February news release issued by the USCCB Media Department was prompted by New Ways' attack on the Catholic Church for its opposition, limited as it was, to homosexual and lesbian "marriages."

It was a masterpiece of deception and disinformation.

George stated that since New Ways' founding in 1977 (actually 1978) by Sr. Jeannine Gramick, SSND, and Salvatorian priest Rev. Robert Nugent, "serious questions have been raised about the group's adherence to Church teachings on homosexuality." He also noted that in 1984, Archbishop James Hickey of the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., ordered New Ways out of the Archdiocese, and Rome instructed the dynamic duo to separate themselves from the organization. Further, he explained that in 1999, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) permanently prohibited both Gramick and Nugent from any pastoral work dealing with homosexuals.

All these statements are true.

So, if they are true, why do I say that the Cardinal's remarks served as a vehicle for disinformation? Because it was what the Cardinal failed to say that was critical, not what he did say about New Ways.

Not only did Cardinal George fail to explain the true political and subversive nature of New Ways, he also failed to acknowledge the role that the USCCB, the organization of which he was president, has played in the meteoric rise of New Ways in AmChurch. This column is intended to make up for this sin of omission.

New Ways not a "ministry"

The essential thing to remember about New Ways is that it is not a "ministry" in any sense of the word. It is a political entity that is only incidentally religious — that is, it uses religion solely for political ends designed to subvert Catholic opposition to sodomy and other forms of sexual perversion.

According to Gramick and Nugent, New Ways exists "to explore and develop those areas that for many remain formidable obstacles to an acceptance of homosexual identity and expression as potentially morally good and healthy as heterosexuality in the Judaeo-Christian scheme." [3]

Both founders were working for the homosexual group Dignity and the pro-Marxist Quixote Center when New Ways was incorporated in 1978.

In 1974, William Cardinal Baum had withdrawn Nugent's faculties for the Archdiocese of Washington. At this point, Nugent left the diocesan priesthood to join the "gay-friendly" Salvatorians.

In 1984, Cardinal Hickey kicked New Ways out of the D.C. Archdiocese, and the Holy See attempted to force the superiors of the School Sisters of Notre Dame and Salvatorians to make Gramick and Nugent relinquish their leadership position in New Ways. It did not work.

Both continued to work behind the scenes of New Ways. Together, Gramick and Nugent helped set up several front organizations including the Center for Homophobia Education, Catholic Parents Network, and the Catholic Coalition for Gay Civil Rights, one of the most powerful "gay" lobbying organizations in AmChurch, funded largely by Catholic religious congregations including the SSND and the Salvatorians. [4]

DeBernardo, an avowed homosexual, was hired as Executive Director to replace Gramick and Nugent. He was a former reporter for The Tablet, the diocesan weekly for the Diocese of Brooklyn, headed at the time by homosexual Bishop Francis John Mugavero. Mugavero, who gave his blessings to a diocesan religious order of sodomites called the St. Matthew Community, was credited with inspiring the name — New Ways Ministry. [5]

Among the politically-savvy serving on the Board of New Ways was another avowed homosexual, Xavieran Brother Joseph Izzo, who kept tabs on sodomites in the American hierarchy — knowledge that proved helpful in gaining access to the corridors of power at the NCCB/USCC, which already had a large contingent of homosexual prelates in key organizational positions dating back to its creation decades before. [6]

Rev. Paul K. Thomas, a self-identified homosexual priest of the Archdiocese of Baltimore, was, and remains, a New Ways Board member. For many years he resided at 637 Dover Street, Baltimore, which just happened to be Nugent's address up until 2001. [7]

New Ways gains access to the NCCB/USCC

From its earliest days, New Ways, unlike its Catholic opposition, routinely had access to AmChurch's national bureaucracy and its resources.

For example, Nugent was appointed a consultant for "sexual minorities" by the NCCB/USCC. He was also credited with writing the section on "Single Young Adult Sexual Minorities" found in the USCC's Department of Education publication Planning for Single Young Adult Ministry: Directives for Ministerial Outreach. New Ways has been permitted to distribute its "gay" propaganda at official NCCB/USCC conferences.

Nugent was one of three homosexual clerics who helped draft the infamous pastoral letter "Always Our Children." Before the Administrative Committee of the NCCB released the pro-"gay" document on September 30, 1997, Gramick bragged that she had seen the highly secret minutes of the bishops' November 1997 executive session during which the document was discussed and it seemed to her that "most bishops are behind the pastoral." Access is the name of the game, and New Ways has always had access to the NCCB/USCC and the USCCB.

AmChurch bishops back New Ways

Nor has New Ways ever lacked for support from the American hierarchy.

Among the well-known backers of New Ways have been Joseph Cardinal Bernardin, Archbishop Rembert Weakland, and Bishops and Auxiliary Bishops Joseph A.. Fiorenza, Thomas Gumbleton, Walter Sullivan, Matthew Clark, Kenneth J. Povish, John J. McRaith, Thomas J. Costello, Charles Buswell, Joseph Symons, Kenneth Untener, Francis A. Quinn, Leroy T. Mattheisen, Gerald O'Keefe, Joseph L. Imesch, Lawrence L. McNamara, William A. Hughes, Robert F. Morneau, Raymond A. Lucker, William Friend, John S. Cummins, John J. Snyder, Francis P. Murphy, Frank J. Rodimer, Peter A. Rosazza, and last but not least Donald W. Wuerl, former Bishop of Pittsburgh and current Archbishop of Washington, D.C., mentioned earlier in this article.

Wuerl's open door policy for Dignity and New Ways

When Wuerl became Bishop of Pittsburgh, replacing Bishop Anthony Bevilacqua, who become Archbishop of Philadelphia, he permitted Dignity/Pittsburgh homosexual "Masses" to continue for eight more years in not one but two parishes — St. Elizabeth in the Strip District and St. Pamphilus in Beechview. According to Ann Rodgers-Melnick, a besotted reporter for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, "Banning Dignity was a sad moment for Wuerl." [8]

Under Wuerl's watch, the Pittsburgh Diocese became a stomping ground for nationally-known doctrinal and moral miscreants, including Matthew Fox, Raymond Brown, and howling feminists Rosemary Radford Ruether and Monica Hellwig. [9]

New Ways road show comes to Pittsburgh

In mid-October 1991, Gramick and Nugent brought their "Homophobia in Religion and Society" road show to four Catholic dioceses in Southwest Pennsylvania, including the Pittsburgh Diocese. [10]

They came armed with letters of recommendation to the Ordinaries of the Dioceses of Pittsburgh, Greensburg, Altoona-Johnstown, and Youngstown (Ohio) from five AmChurch bishops who wanted their names kept secret. Here are their names:

• Bishop Kenneth J. Povish, Diocese of Lansing, Mich. (deceased)
  
  
• Bishop John McRaith, Diocese of Owensboro, Ky.
  
  
• Aux. Bishop Thomas Costello, Diocese of Syracuse, N.Y.
  
  
• Bishop Francis A. Quinn, Diocese of Sacramento, Calif.
  
  
• Bishop Eugene J. Gerber (deceased), head of the Wichita Diocese, who provided a letter of recommendation to Gramick and Nugent in 1990, but it was later withdrawn from circulation. [11]
  
  

USCL opposes New Ways

Opposition to the Gramick/Nugent pro-homosexual presentation in the Pittsburgh Diocese was organized by the U.S. Coalition for Life, directed by yours truly. The USCL media blitz attracted the attention of the secular press, and in a pre-conference interview with the Pittsburgh Press, an unhappy Nugent whined to a reporter that USCL Director Randy Engel was exhibiting "a classic case of homophobia." Nugent assured the reporter that he and Gramick intended to uphold the positive things that the Church says about gay and lesbian people and that they would present the views of revisionist theologians right alongside official church teachings.

The New Ways Pittsburgh workshop was scheduled for October 12, 1991, at St. Mary's Convent on the Carlow College campus operated by the Sisters of Mercy.

The President of Carlow College defended the workshop on homophobia. In a curt letter to the USCL, Sister Sheila Carney, RSM, declared, "Our hosting of this program constitutes neither 'a violation of Vatican directives on homosexuality' nor a 'homosexualist scandal at St. Mary's Convent in Pittsburgh,' as your [USCL] memo suggests." "It is, rather, reflective of our community's commitment to promote the dignity of all persons," she concluded. The public relations director for the college stated that every member of the Mercy community was behind Nugent and Gramick, and that "Randy Engel is the only one who has objected to it."

Bishop Wuerl backs New Ways

Father Ronald Lengwin, the official spokesman for Bishop Donald Wuerl, told a Wanderer reporter that Wuerl was not convinced the workshop would violate Church doctrine. "We have been assured," said Lengwin, "that the presentation would not be contrary to the teaching of the Church. We live within that level of trust."

"Level of trust?" You've got to be kidding.

By 1991, when the road show came to Pittsburgh, the pro-sodomite activities of New Ways were so notorious that the Vatican's Congregation for Religious and Secular Institutes had already established a special commission in the United States to "render a judgment as to the clarity and orthodoxy" of Gramick and Nugent's presentation on the Church's teaching on homosexuality. [12]

Lengwin added that Bishop Wuerl could not cancel the program because it was being held on property owned by the Sisters of Mercy and it was not church property.

This is, of course, sheer nonsense. All religious orders remain in a diocese at the good pleasure of the Ordinary of the diocese and it was within Wuerl's power, had he chosen to exercise it, to tell the Sisters of Mercy to cancel the event or, at the very least, relocate the workshop off campus.

In any case, the New Ways road show came and went, and Bishop Wuerl remained silent... until his March 11, 2011, statement issued on behalf of the USCCB Committee on Doctrine. [13]

The Maida Commission and beyond

Although it was created in March of 1988, the Maida Commission was not reactivated until January 24, 1994 — a period of five years and nine months, during which time Gramick and Nugent were running footloose and fancy free throughout numerous U.S. dioceses and abroad, peddling their doctrinal and moral poison.

The Maida Commission's ill-conceived and ill-fated investigation concluded in early 1996, when the Final Commission Report was filed with the Holy See. The Report praised Gramick and Nugent's "courage and zeal" and "love and compassion," in their "important and needed ministry," but alas, the Commission found their works "problematic" and doctrinally ambiguous, deficient, and erroneous.

In the meantime, because of unresolved grave doctrinal questions related to Gramick and Nugent's writings, the case had been transferred from the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life to the CDF, headed by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger.

The Vatican finally acts

On July 13, 1999, twenty-one years after Gramick and Nugent had created New Ways, and the homosexual colonization of AmChurch's male and female religious congregations was complete, the CDF publicly released its "Notification" concerning the final disposition on the matter.

Gramick and Nugent were permanently prohibited from any and all pastoral work with homosexuals (emphasis added).

Nugent, who unlike Gramick, the more "manly" of the two, agreed to make a "Profession of Faith" supporting the Church's teachings in opposition to homosexuality, was permitted to retain his priestly faculties, but was forbidden to preach and administer the sacraments for homosexual gatherings.

Today, Nugent resides at St. John the Baptist Church in New Freedom, Penna., although he spends much of his time abroad in England and Ireland, and visiting the Tantur Ecumenical Institute in Jerusalem, an international ecumenical institute for theological research and pastoral studies. His latest book, Silence Speaks: Teilhard de Chardin, Yves Congar, John Courtney Murray, and Thomas Merton, was recently advertised in the Harrisburg diocesan paper, The Catholic Witness.

Gramick joins Sisters of Loretto

In August 2001, Gramick announced that she had left the School Sisters of Notre Dame and joined the equally liberal Sisters of Loretto based in Denver, which has its own homosexual ministry. The sisters established a "Sr. Jeannine Gay Ministry Fund," to enable Gramick to continue to campaign for the legitimization of sodomy, lesbianism, and an ever-expanding litany of sexual perversions.

On January 14, 2005, The National Catholic Reporter ran a story by Gramick titled "Finding empathy for Shanley — Nun says Christian response goes beyond guilt or innocence," an apologia for the notorious criminal pederast and homosexual Fr. Paul Shanley, who for more than 30 years was able to live out his NAMBLA (North American Man/Boy Lover Association) fantasies with immunity, with the blessings of three Boston princes of the Church — Richard Cardinal Cushing, Humberto Cardinal Medeiros, and Bernard Cardinal Law.

Gramick's bombshell did not sit well with victims of clerical sexual abuse, who, if the truth be known, have never been the object of any real concern by New Ways or its founders.

More recently, Gramick has been traveling the world campaigning for homosexual rights, including the "right to marry," and pushing a documentary on her life and mission called In Good Conscience: Sister Jeannine Gramick's Journey of Faith.

Any faithful Catholic who has been holding his breath waiting for the USCCB or the Vatican to rein in the rebellious nun has long since died and been buried.

The USCCB continues to support pro-homosexual "ministries," with many larger dioceses like New York and San Francisco having established actual homosexual parishes such as St. Francis Xavier Parish in Manhattan and Most Holy Redeemer in the Castro District. The Ordinary for New York is the USCCB's new President, Archbishop Timothy Dolan. The Ordinary for San Francisco is Archbishop George H. Niederauer, former housemate of the Prefect for the CDF, William Cardinal Levada.

As for Cardinal George, his continued scandalous support for the pro-homosexual ministry Archdiocesan Gay and Lesbian Outreach program (AGLO) — which he permitted to extend into the suburbs of Chicago in 2004 — makes his criticism of New Ways ludicrous, to say the least.

Ratzinger smiles on Gramick

As for Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XV, what can I say? Perhaps, it's better if I let Gramick explain his position on the matter.

On Sunday, 2008, the Malta Times ran an interview with Gramick titled "The Unlikely Rebel," by Ariadne Massa. The overseas interview was later reprinted in the Spring 2008 issue of Bondings, the official publication of New Ways, with an appropriately provocative sado/masochist title. [14]

Gramick told Massa that she was a member of the National Coalition of American Nuns, which backed marriage and all the sacraments for gays. She denied that Natural Law prohibits sodomy and lesbian acts. "These arguments are based on plumbing... one sexual organ fits in another... that's ridiculous! This is a very male-based theology," she said.

When the Maltese reporter asked Gramick if she feared being excommunicated by the Vatican for her radical pro-homosexual agenda, the sister replied, "No."

Gramick then told Massa about an incident which occurred during the CDF's investigation into her and Nugent's controversial ministry. She said that her provincial with the School Sisters of Notre Dame recommended that she and Gramick make a pilgrimage to the birthplace of the foundress of the order to pray for a miracle. "Through sheer coincidence, travelling on the plane between Rome and Munich was Cardinal Ratzinger himself," Gramick said.

"My superior went up to him and said, 'Sr. Jeannine is a very good sister. We're very afraid she's going to get excommunicated.'" And he replied, "Oh, no no... it's not that level of doctrine." "She (Gramick) laughs, admitting that her miracle had happened on the plane," said Massa.

Now it is a matter of public record that the doctrinal problems of Gramick and Nugent concerning the morality of homosexuality were so grave and complex that the matter had to be transferred from the Congregation for Religious and Secular Institutes to the CDF. But, Gramick tells us that, Ratzinger, the future pope, said that "it's not that level of doctrine."

Perhaps at his next impromptu media talk, Benedict XV can enlighten American Catholics as to why the CDF has failed to monitor and enforce the prohibitions against the pro-abort, pro-homosexual, "Father-Mother God" sister.

An apology from the USCCB?

At the same time, perhaps the new President of the USCCB, Archbishop Archbishop Dolan of New York, with the assistance of Cardinal George and Cardinal Wuerl and Bishop Cordileone, can draft a short public apology for the 40 years of disinformation, deception, misdeeds, and misery that the USCCB, along with its liberal allies in the hierarchy and what passes for religious orders these days, have inflicted upon faithful Catholics in the United States, especially with regard to its failure to uphold and promote and teach the Catholic Church's teachings on the grave sins of homosexuality and its handmaiden, pederasty — homosexuality in its most pervasive and universal form.

Living in an age of organized perversion, it is all the more necessary that Catholics, indeed all civilized human beings, remember that the initial reaction of a normal person to perversion is one of shame and disgust. To shun perversions is a normal subconscious mental defense against contamination. When disgust and repulsion turn to sympathy, the normal individual becomes defenseless in the face of the perversion.

USCCB pro-homosexual actions and publications which promote an inordinate and false "compassion" for individuals caught up in the vice of sodomy have weakened Catholic opposition to the perversion, and rendered many Catholics defenseless before the onslaught of the Homosexual Collective.

The USCCB is a classic case of the tail wagging the dog. The obvious long-term solution is to put the mad dog down.

NOTES:















© Randy Engel