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Phoenix Bishop Misrepresented by Secular Press

PHOENIX, August 10, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The flap started last year over a speaking engagement on a proposition to the Arizona government to impose restrictions on illegal immigrants. Governor Janet Napolitano cancelled speeches against the proposition, which the Arizona Catholic conference also opposes, in some of the Catholic churches in the Phoenix diocese. This resulted from the Diocese of Phoenix asking the Governor to choose another venue, because, though they were in agreement over the treatment of undocumented immigrants, the Methodist Governor supported abortion and homosexual “marriage,” which are non-negotiables for Catholics.

One Arizona online news source ran the Republic article with the headline, “Bishop’s ban targets Napolitano.” The paper then reported that last week some members of a group of poverty activists voluntarily bowed out of a memorial service for homeless people in a Phoenix Catholic church on the grounds that their views on abortion clashed with the Catholic teaching.

Representatives of the diocese of Phoenix have said that the Arizona Republic’s characterization of the story as a case of an ‘archconservative’ Catholic bishop issuing “edicts” to suppress freedom of speech is unfair. The paper further confused the issue, says Ron Johnson, Executive Director of the Arizona Catholic Conference, by giving the impression that there was a double standard at work in which only public figures were “targeted.”

Johnson said in an interview with LifeSiteNews.com, “There’s no double standard. The prohibition does not apply to those who may privately disagree or hold a confused position. The point is not to ‘target’ anyone. So if you are a public figure whose support for abortion is a matter of public record, we have to prevent confusion or misunderstanding about what the Church teaches.”

In a follow-up email, Johnson said, “The clear inference from this headline seems to reduce the importance of Bishop Olmsted's policy to a mere personal attack.”

In December 2004, Bishop Olmsted wrote a letter to priests stating that those public figures who supported the killing of unborn children by abortion and the normalization of sexual immorality must not be given a public forum in Phoenix parishes or other Catholic institutions. It was a follow-up of the decision taken the previous June by the entire US Conference of Catholic Bishops to have individual bishops implement measures to protect the Church from misrepresentations of its teachings.

“Bishop Olmsted's policy on politicians supporting abortion is not a personal attack directed at any single person,” said Johnson, “but primarily an effort to protect the Church from being used by politicians at odds with core Church teachings.”

The Republic’s overtly anti-Catholic bias was revealed when it included quotes from Frances Kissling, the notorious anti-Catholic abortion crusader and founder of the duplicitously named, “Catholics for a Free Choice.” CFFC is a front organization funded by Planned Parenthood whose self-proclaimed mission is to undermine Catholic influence in public and force the Church to abandon its ancient teachings on sexual morality.

The US Bishops and others have repeatedly attempted to clarify that neither Kissling nor her organization is qualified to speak as representative of the Church.

Read Arizona Republic coverage:
http://www.azcentral.com/12news/news/articles/0805bishop-gov05-CP.html

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