Yes to NAC: no to AFWUF (Alberta Federation of Women United for Families).

Two days after I was received into the Catholic church in 1992, friends and I met for our regular post-Mass lunch at a small cafe near the cathedral. We were barely past the blessing when my chums began roasting the local bishop for his alleged incompetence.

I listened quietly as they--orthodox, traditionalist, faithful Catholics all--widened their circle of scathing criticism to include more prelates than I knew existed.

In the Anglican Church where I was raised, bishops seemed little more than cloud-shaped grandfathers who drifted into our parish lives once a year, muttering the peculiar word "diocesan" a lot before drifting away again. So it was, on one level, heartening to know Catholic bishops were so active and important to their flock that they provoked the kind of coffee shop angst normally reserved for politicians.

After a few minutes, though, it became alarming to hear the leaders of the Church I'd just joyfully entered being taken apart and re-assembled in configurations of ridicule like so many pastoral Mr. Potato Heads.

"Stop," I said finally. "You're exaggerating. I don't want to hear any more." My pals looked sheepish, and acknowledged going too far.

"Maybe things aren't as bad as we've said," one acknowledged. "But they're pretty bad."

Perhaps with the naive fervour of the newly converted, I came away convinced the Church's most vigorous adversaries can be the laity who love her dearly.

This past autumn, however, I began to wonder if my friends didn't have it at least partially right in suggesting bishops can be their own worst enemies.

To be clear, I still find bishop-bashing as discomfitting and wrong today as I did over lunch four years ago.

I was present, for example, during the October, 1995 International Pro-Life Conference in Rome when Archbishop Adam Exner of Vancouver absorbed some extraordinary cheap shots from certain delegates for the bishops' perceived lack of leadership. It was a lesson in grace to watch Archbishop Exner handle the verbal attacks with extraordinary dignity, intelligence and charity.

Nor has my concern been piqued by the tragedies involving Bishop Hubert O'Connor of B.C. or Scotland's Bishop Roderick Wright. Despite the malevolent glee of my media colleagues in insisting these scandals are a commentary on the church herself, it's clear they reflect the failings of two weak, deeply troubled individuals overwhelmed by sin. Let the perfect cast stones.

What does have me perplexed, however, is a considered decision by the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops to refuse help for a conservative, pro-life, pro-family women's group here in Calgary despite having given $2,000 last spring to the proabortion, pro-homosexual, virulently anti-Catholic National Action Committee on the Status of Women (NACSOW).

Obviously, the CCCB can't give money to everyone who asks. Nor should it. But it strikes me as odd that the request from Calgary-based Alberta Federation of Women United for Families (AFWUF) was rejected even though the group sought funds to send members to Rome to battle the anti-family, population control agenda at yet another UN conference.

Odder still: at the same September 4 meeting where the CCCB denied the request from AFWUF, it also refused funding for a group called Kids First, which seeks to help mothers stay home to raise their children.

The CCCB has money, then, for the political activities of NACSOW radical feminists who deplore virtually everything the Church stands for. It has only a cold shoulder, however, for two groups working in harmony with Church teachings.

Oddest of all: Rev. Doug Crosby, OMI, the CCCB's general secretary, has defended these decisions by citing papal encyclicals on the need to find common ground with those who oppose the church. Surely, loving our enemies is one thing; throwing pearls before NACSOWs is something else entirely.

That seems to be the Holy Father's attitude for he has granted an audience to the AFWUF members who will be in Rome for the UN conference this month.

He has offered to meet them to express his gratitude for the work they, and others like them, have done fighting beside the Holy See at previous UN population control gab-fests in Cairo, Copenhagen, Beijing and Istanbul.

His Holiness clearly understands the importance of such gestures in keeping those who are with the Church by her side.

Canada's bishops, alas, seem to have forgotten that in seeking to make friends of our enemies, we must always take care not to make enemies of our friends.