Imprimatur to
Promotion of Homosexual Conduct
Open Letter to
Archbishop
To: Most Rev. Jerome Hanus, O.S.B., S.T.L.,
Archbishop of Dubuque
From: Randy Engel, National Director of the United
States Coalition for Life
Date: February 22, 2001
Subject: Removal of Nihil obstat and Imprimatur from
Harcourt catechetics with special attention to
Brown-ROA’s Growing in Love.
Your Excellency,
The following two-part report on catechetical
materials produced by Harcourt, Inc. and its acquisitions is being forwarded to
your office as the first step in obtaining the removal of the Nihil obstat
given by Rev. Richard L. Schaefer Censor De Putatus and your Imprimatur as the
Archbishop of Dubuque from all Harcourt catechetical materials including Brown-ROA’s
new sexual catechesis Growing In Love.
Once
the facts have been laid before you I trust you will act affirmatively and
judiciously in this matter so as to minimize the occasion of public scandal
should this grave matter become public.
The first part of this complaint involves Harcourt,
Inc. itself. As you are no doubt aware, in 1994 Harcourt acquired Brown-ROA, a
major publishing house for Catholic religious instruction materials. Harcourt
is a global multi-media corporation with fiscal revenues of more than $2.41
billion.
Since 1994, Catholic dioceses and their secondary
and higher educational institutions throughout the United States have, by their
purchasing of such Brown-ROA Catholic texts and study/instruction which bear
your Imprimatur, have become a core asset to Harcourt’s overall financial success.
In addition, given the ecclesiastical meaning of the
Imprimatur and Nihil obstat, Brown-ROA/Harcourt Catholic catechetical
publications have acquired a semi-official Church-approved status without which
the publishing house would find it difficult, if not impossible, to compete in
the multi-million dollar catechetical market.
In 1999, Mr. Matthew J. Thibeau, the President of
Brown-ROA, informed Catholic religion teachers, that in keeping with the
realities of the 1994 acquisition, Brown-ROA was changing its name to Harcourt
Religion Publishers. It is clear from his statement that Mr. Thibeau, at least
publicly, is satisfied with the acquisition.
But then again, it is your
Imprimatur then appears with the Brown-ROA/Harcourt Religion Publishers
identification and not his.
Now, to cut to the chase. Harcourt, Inc. is a
multi-national cartel with a large stable of notorious anti-life publishing
houses.
May I draw your attention to the fact that in May
1999, Churchill Livingston, a Harcourt Health Sciences Company, publicly
announced the publication of A
Clinician’s Guide to Medical and Surgical Abortion - “the first clinical
reference on abortion practice to be published in the United States in over
fifteen years.” This ‘how-to-kill unborn children’ guide features
multi-extermination methods of abortion, at all stages of fetal development,
including RU 486, manual aspiration, and late abortion techniques using
prostaglandins. It provides a list of resources for abortion providers.
Harcourt tells us that the book carries the imprimatur of the National Abortion
Federation.
In October 1999, another Harcourt company, W. B.
Saunders, published Contraception and
Office Gynecology, with clinical
details related to contraceptive, abortificients and “therapeutic termination
of pregnancy.”
In November 1999, Churchill Livingston published Contraception 3/e Your Questions Answered,
complete with an philosophical Malthusian introduction on “The Population
Explosion and the Importance of Fertility Control.” Abortifacient information
including updates on the Pill and “postcoital” [read abortion] methods are
provided.
In October 1997, still another Harcourt sister
company, Bailliere Tindall, published the Handbook
of Contraception and Family Planning,
which includes the application of all forms of contraception and abortifacients
and sterilization.
As its contribution to the Homosexual Movement, in
October 1995, Harcourt published The
Lives of Lesbians, Gays and Bisexuals
for use in undergraduate and graduate courses in gay, lesbian, and bisexual
“studies” designed to confirm homosexuals in their death-style – physically
[AIDS], psychologically and spiritually.
As early as 1988, Harcourt Brace and Jovanovich
published Bioethics which promotes
virtually every eugenic medical practice condemned in the Vatican’s Instruction on Respect for Human Life in Its
Origin issued with the Holy Father’s approbation by the Congregation for
the Doctrine of the Faith in 1987.
Clearly, Harcourt is neither a friend of the Roman
Catholic Church or to the unborn child. Your Imprimatur on any Harcourt catechetical material is as inappropriate as a Jewish
good-housekeeping seal would be for I.G. Farben.
The Imprimatur
Now, let me take up the specific case of your
Imprimatur on Brown-ROA/Harcourt Religion Publishers’ new sexual catechesis for
grades K-6 -Growing
in Love.
As the Archbishop of Dubuque, successor to the
Apostles, and the promoter and guardian of doctrine on faith and morals you
possess both the duty and right to exercise vigilance in order that the faith
and morals of the members of the faithful entrusted to your
care, most especially the souls of innocent children, may not suffer harm.
Are you unaware that so-called “classroom sex
education” or “sexual catechetics” as practiced in Catholic schools today is an
open violation of the teaching of the Magisterium
of the Church as enunciated by Pope Pius XI in his papal encyclical Divini illius Magistri [On Christian
Education of Youth] on December 31, 1929?
Are you unaware of the subsequent decree issued by the Holy Office on
March 21, 1931 reiterating Pope Pius XI’s condemnation of open classroom
programs of “sex initiation” or “sex instruction” and declaring that, “…no
approbation whatever can be given to the advocacy of the new method even as
taken up recently by some Catholic authors and set before the public in printed
publications.” ?
Despite claims to the contrary by proponents of
classroom sex instruction - NO TEACHING OF EQUAL OR SUPERIOR AUTHORITATIVE
STATUS HAS BEEN GIVEN BY THE MAGISTERIUM
OF THE CHURCH WHICH CAN SAFELY BY INTERPRETED AS DEPARTING FROM THE TEACHING OF
PIUS XI.
Therefore, any Catholic, whether he be bishop,
priest, religious or of the lay state, who advocates and advances the cause of
classroom sex education, is in violation of the teaching Magisterium of the Church.
Further, the condemnation of classroom sex
instruction, as opposed to the Church’s traditional catechetical instruction in
sexual morality, is not simply a matter
of sectarian discipline. For the condemnation is rooted in the laws of
nature, that is, they have a meaning beyond theology in that they are linked to
the “constitutive elements of human nature,” as designated by God, the Author
of Nature, and are binding on all men, for all time, in all places and
circumstances.
Thus the Church’s proposition that young children
should be permitted to enjoy a “period of innocence” [the latency period] is
based on the Natural Law. During this period of rapid spiritual, intellectual,
physical and psychological development, young children eagerly absorb the
truths of the Catholic faith. They remain free to enjoy their childhood
pursuits at all levels – pursuits which will form the foundation of their early
education as Christians and fortify them for the normal multi-faceted perils of
adolescence that lie ahead.
Sexual catechetics such as Brown-ROA/Harcourt
Religion Publications’ Growing in Love,
designed for Kindergarten – 6th
grade students, ages 5 to 12, constitute a direct spiritual, emotional and
psychological assault on the very souls of Catholic children – dare I say - a
demonic rape of innocence. So-called “sex-education” is sexual abuse in its
worst form because it directly affects the immortal souls of thousands of
Catholic school children [and their parents] and is carried out under the
auspices of the Roman Catholic Church itself.
This communication does not lend itself to a full
review of Growing in Love from a
Catholic perspective. However, I should be remiss, in not bringing to your
attention, the aggressive manner in which the ideology and practices of the
Homosexual Movement/Church in the United States are advanced in the texts of Growing in Love.
Interestingly, it is Harcourt Religion Publications
itself which alerts us to the homosexual overtures to be found in Growing In Love.
On its Catechetical Research web site promoting Growing in Love, Toinette M. Eugene,
Ph.D., in an essay titled “Relationships that Make a Difference – The
Importance of Including Culture and Scripture in Family Life and Human
Sexuality Education,” states that in the program [Growing In Love], “racism, sexism and HOMOPHOBIA, and other socially isolating evidence of social sinfulness
are addressed thoughtfully, explicitly, and carefully.” [emphasis added].
Now the term “homophobic” is a gay political
homosexual verbal construct. In the homosexual manifesto Jesus Acted Up, ex-Jesuit and self-proclaimed homosexual Dr. Robert
Goss defines “homophobia” as “the socialized state of fear, threat, aversion,
prejudice, and irrational hated of the feelings of same-sex attractions” which
can be held by “individuals, groups, social institutions, and cultural
practices.” According to Goss, the most influential purveyor of the “sin” of “homophobia” is the Roman
Catholic Church.
Clearly,
Dr. Eugene’s pro-homosexual propaganda is welcome by the publishers of Growing in Love.
In
the Family Resource Book of Growing In
Love for parents of kindergarten children ages 5-6, the authors also use
the politically-loaded homosexualist term “gay,” and grossly misrepresent the
nature of homosexual acts to parents by stating that “A man who is gay loves
another man. A woman who is gay, or lesbian, loves another
woman.”[emphasis added] What a debasement and defilement of the word “love.”
Perverted
lust is a better description of homosexual acts which, objectively speaking,
are intrinsically evil.
Further
the degree of promiscuity that marks homosexual behavior and turns the active
homosexual into a biological time-bomb is well-known in medical and psychiatric
circles. Are the authors of Growing In
Love exploiting the fact that the average parent is totally unaware [and
naturally so] of the nature of homosexual acts including fellatio, sodomy,
fisting, sado-masochist activities and the ingestion of human urine and human
feces often combined with occult practices? Should these practices be dignified
by the term “love?” Should the minds of innocent children and youth, of any age, be polluted by such
inferences?
In
the 5th grade Student Activity Book, students ages 9-10 are informed
that while the majority of men and women have a “tendency” to be heterosexual, some
have the “tendency” to be homosexual. The fact is that heterosexuality is a
biological norm not a “tendency.”
Same-sex attraction is a psycho-sexual aberration related to a complex set of
familial disturbances in the formative years, combined with opportunities for
initiation into sodomical practices.
Moving
on to the 6th grade Family Resource Book for parents of children
ages 10-12, parents are treated to a dissertation on oral sex including
fellatio, commonly employed by male homosexuals and cunnilingus employed in
lesbian acts. The authors of Growing in
Filth assure parents that “Both homosexual and heterosexual couples engage
in oral sex…” and the text provides a detailed description of the perverted
acts. Given this acceleration in erotica one wonders what further explicit
information on perverted sex lies ahead for parents and students.
Growing in Love is all the more offensive
because it attempts to hide explicit sexual materials including descriptions of
perverted acts behind a religious façade.
I shuddered when I was advised that in your letter
of November 9, 1999 to Brown-ROA/Harcourt Religion Publishers, you chose and
approved as the Imprimatur date for Growing
In Love January 8, 2000, the feast of St. Thomas Aquinas!
In
December 1995, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith withdrew the
Imprimatur given to a Scottish sex instruction text by Archbishop Keith O’Brien
of St. Andrews and Edinburgh, which advocated the use of condoms as a way of
avoiding AIDS. The removal of the Imprimatur led to the “sex education study
pack” being banned from all Catholic schools in Scotland.
I
hope that you will take the initiative yourself without an order from the
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and agree to remove your Imprimatur
from all Harcourt publications beginning with Growing in Love. Further that you will publicly disassociate your person and the Archdiocese of Dubuque
from any direct or indirect association with Harcourt and its sister companies.
And that you immediately inform the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith,
the NCCB/USCC, all the American bishops, and all Catholic schools
administrators of your actions.
I trust you will act quickly in this matter and that
I may receive an affirmative answer to my pleading. Should you need to contact
me for further information please call at my residence - 724 327-8878.
Sincerely in Christ,
Randy Engel, National Director, US Coalition for
Life
cc. Congregation for the
Doctrine of the Faith
Pontifical
Council for the Family
Congregation for Catholic Education
Archdiocese of Dubuque
1229 Mount Loretta Ave.
P. O. Box 479
Dubuque, IA 52004
Voice: (319)556-2580 -- Fax: (319)556-5464