Catholics for Free Choice (Canada).

Toronto--On October 31, 1999, kids in Toronto's Catholic District School Board (104,000 students) collected Halloween pennies and dimes for either the Holy Childhood, Peace and Development, or "Aid to Women" groups. This sat not well with one Kathleen Howes. She wrote the board and asked to make a presentation at the regular board meeting on October 14. That was granted.

While that process was underway, Howes contacted the Toronto media and revealed herself as spokeswoman for "Catholics for Free Choice," supposedly representing parents enraged that collecting money for UNICEF had been dropped several years ago and then was replaced by Aid To Women. The media played the game as intended, speaking of "many enraged parents" who demanded that the Board reinstate the agency, and hinting that "the anti-abortion" people of Aid to Women had been in "trouble-with the law."

Now Aid to Women is a first-rate pro-life organization in Toronto which helps an estimated one hundred women a year seeking an abortion to carry their baby to term instead, and be happy for the rest of their lives. They help them with food, clothing, and needs for babies. UNICEF, on the other hand, is deeply immersed in pro-death, anti-women, anti-people policies disguised under the euphemism "reproductive rights."

Kathleen Howes was thwarted in her trouble-making when the Board insisted on receiving her report in private only, as is the custom. She departed. The collection for Aid to Women was reaffirmed.

One week later, the CBC felt it necessary to air the controversy on the National with Joanne Dieleman of Aid to Women explaining her work in simple and compelling terms, the opposition telling its usual lies, and a Catholic father saying that if his children brought Aid to Women boxes home he would throw them in the garbage. So much for ignorance! Who are "Catholics for Free Choice?"

CFC was founded in the USA and is headed by Frances Kissling. Practically without membership, CFC is a front organization financed by large anti-Catholic foundations such as the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations.

Kissling has contradicted the solemn moral teaching of the magisterium--especially on abortion and contraception--for some ten years or more. She uses her organization to sow division and confusion among rank-and-file Catholics. Since the U.N. Cairo Conference in 1994, she has also attempted to have the Vatican removed from the United Nations.

CFC members have been formally excommunicated in Latin America. The bishops there did not feel that their people knew enough about this foreign dissenting organization to form a judgement, and so they resolved it for them.

In the USA the bishops have not taken the same step. They are confident that Catholics there are well aware that those who publicly and repeatedly contradict the Church on solemn moral teaching--and after due warning continue to do so--excommunicate themselves.

Miss Kathleen Howes of Toronto falls under the same condemnation.