Wednesday April 21, 2010
Irish Pro-Life Advocates Question ‘Non-Judgmental’ Catholic Crisis Pregnancy Service
By Hilary White
DUBLIN, April 21, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Pro-life advocates in Ireland are questioning the methods of and the close association between the Catholic Church’s “non-judgmental” pregnancy counseling service CURA, and a government program for pregnant women called Positive Options.
Fr. Sylvester Mann, writing in the recently founded magazine Catholic Voice, has asked whether CURA, which is receiving state funding through the Irish Health Services Executive (HSE), has not been forced to compromise its Catholic pro-life principles. Calling it a simple case of moral relativism, Mann wrote that CURA’s use of the “non-directive counseling” technique undermines their commitment to Catholic teaching on abortion.
CURA, an agency of the Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference, states on its website that it “upholds the right of every child to be born and to have his or her right to life recognised and respected.” But Charlotte Keary of CURA told LifeSiteNews.com (LSN) that no CURA counselor would directly attempt to dissuade an abortion-minded woman.
Keary, who insisted that the group is run according to a “Catholic ethos,” strongly denied there is any conflict between the non-directive counseling model and the strictures of the Church against abortion. CURA volunteer counselors, she said, “do not give abortion information. We don’t give contacts, numbers or set up any appointments” for abortions.
The counselors, she said, will speak to a client about any issue they bring up related to a crisis pregnancy, including abortion. But she said again that no information on how to obtain an abortion is given. “This is written into our constitution,” Keary said.
Nevertheless, asked whether a CURA counselor would directly try to dissuade a woman from having an abortion, Keary said, “No. We would not say ‘Don’t do it’.”
“We would make it very clear that we would not be able to facilitate abortion in any way,” she said. “We would certainly speak to her about all options surrounding the crisis pregnancy.”
She said, “We would have to respect the decision she would make,” and added that in most cases, CURA counselors do not know what final decision a woman takes.
In the last three years, Keary said, CURA has received approximately 1.3 million Euros in funding from the Irish government. The group is listed by the government as an approved crisis pregnancy counseling service, and operates 19 centres around the country.
Keary said that women in a state of crisis over an unexpected pregnancy are not “really thinking.” “They need to begin to unravel their feelings and the concerns they bring to the pregnancy situation.”
She stressed that CURA also runs a post-abortion counseling service, and counseling for other family members dealing with the after-effects of abortion.
CURA receives funding under the auspices of the Crisis Pregnancy Agency (CPA), a program of the HSE, which, Fr. Mann wrote, “despite its deceptive claims, actually facilitates abortions” despite abortion and pro-abortion counseling being illegal in the Irish Republic. CPA runs a program called Positive Options, that maintains a list of government-approved crisis pregnancy centres, only one of which, CURA, is run by the Catholic Church.
CURA defends its membership in the Positive Options coalition, saying that Positive Options brochures help women to find out about CURA.
Mann wrote that what is at issue is CURA’s refusal to guide women away from abortion and its use of so-called “non-directive” counseling techniques. He pointed to the pro-life Irish Constitution and to the Regulation of Information Act of 1995 that “specifically directs that abortion-minded women be given pro-life information.”
Catholic Voice correspondent Gareth Peoples also interviewed Charlotte Keary at CURA’s annual conference in March, where she said that CURA has the support of the Catholic Bishops of Ireland and “works with a Catholic ethos, but we are professional and non-judgmental.”
She said, “We live in a very real world,” and that CURA does not tell women “what to do” when the “option” being examined is abortion.
“We work within her boundaries. That’s a given,” she said. “Very often we have no idea what decision she makes. Ultimately, the decision is her decision, and we would respect that decision.”
Asked whether CURA considers equally the life of the unborn child with the needs of the mother, Keary told Peoples, “The needs of the woman always come first because the woman is the person who has come to us with the crisis pregnancy.”
Catholic Voice noted that the non-directive counseling technique used by CURA was developed in the 1960s by the psychotherapist Carl Rogers. This model starts with the presumption that there is no such thing as objective morality, and that the client must decide what is right for herself.
Keary confirmed to Gareth Peoples that during counseling sessions, “God and religion” are not discussed unless the client brings it up. Keary cited “diversity” as the justification, saying, “CURA is a professional counseling organization and has to respect the diversity in modern Ireland.”
Fr. Mann, a member of the New York-based Franciscan Friars of the Renewal, wrote, “When human lives — and souls — are at stake, one cannot escape the question: Is the HSE is not paying CURA to remain silent in individual cases that come before their counselors?”
“Sadly, CURA has seemingly accepted the notion that being professional and being Catholic is a dichotomy, as if one cannot possibly be both,” he added.
Gareth Peoples also spoke with CURA’s conference keynote speaker Fergus Hogan, a representative of the Centre for Social and Family Research, who appeared to criticize adherence to the Church’s teaching on contraception and implied that pro-contraception “sex education” is the solution to unwanted pregnancies.
Speaking on the responsibilities and rights of men in crisis pregnancies, Hogan said that one of the goals of his research is to find out how men can “act procreatively responsibly around contraception.”
“The possibilities and responsibilities go right back to sex education, sex and sexuality,” Hogan continued, “and I think we have had a problem where we’ve simply had to close up and say ‘That’s only for marriage, that only happens within marriages.’ That’s not the way of the world now, whatever our morality around that.”