July 5, 2013 (Crisis Magazine) – There’s a guy you’ve never heard of who runs an organization you’ve never heard of but it is likely because of him that the Catholic Church has not taken a stand against the radicalization of the Girl Scouts and now the Boy Scouts.
Robert McCarty is the Executive Director of the National Federation of Catholic Youth Ministry. It should be understood that McCarty’s group is closely connected to, if not officially part of, the Catholic Church. It is an independent, non-profit corporation whose board of directors, nonetheless, is controlled by representatives from 16 diocese of the Catholic Church. It’s episcopal liaison is Bishop Martin Holley of the Archdiocese of Washington DC.
In recent days, McCarty issued a statement on the Boy Scouts’ decision to abandon its long-standing membership policy against “open and avowed” homosexuality. McCarty said: “We have been closely following the various discussions of the recent BSA decision and the response of various bishops, all of whom have stated the BSA decision to include young people with a homosexual orientation is not against Catholic Church teaching.” (Italics mine.)
Let’s unpack McCarty. First and foremost, he gets the policy change wrong.
The Boy Scouts never kept out boys with a homosexual inclination. It was only “open and avowed” homosexuality that was forbidden under Scout rules and practice. Heck, the raft of gay Boy Scouts publicly endorsing the new policy attests to this.
McCarty says every one of the Catholic bishops who has spoken about the new Boy Scout policy has endorsed it as “not against Catholic Church teaching.” I have in front of me the statement of my bishop, Paul Loverde of Arlington, Virginia. Nowhere in Bishop Loverde’s statement does he say what McCarty says Loverde said. In fact, Loverde says, “Sadly, yesterday’s decision forces us to prayerfully reconsider whether a continued partnership with the BSA will be possible.”
McCarty then goes on to pronounce a new Catholic teaching. He says organizations that do not admit open and avowed homosexuals are in violation of the teachings of the Catholic Church. He is referring to a group called American Heritage Girls (AHG) that does not admit openly homosexual members or leaders. Specifically, he says “With their affirmation of exclusion it seems that AHG is not aligned with the Catholic Church teaching on young people with homosexual orientation.”
Is this really Church teaching? Tell that to open and avowed homosexuals kept out of Catholic seminaries. Tell that to open and avowed homosexuals kept from the priesthood. Tell that to open and avowed homosexuals who want to teach in Catholic schools. Tell that also to the number of Catholic Bishops who allow the “exclusionary” American Heritage Girls the use of Church facilities. Tell that to the thousands of Catholic Boy Scout troops who for 100 years were exclusionary, too. Were all those Bishops, priests, parishes, and troops acting against the teaching of the Church?
Of course not. There is no such teaching. McCarty is making this up.
None of this is surprising to anyone who has followed the travails of the Girl Scouts-USA and the obfuscation of the man in charge of Catholic scouting. McCarty has had a front row seat to years and years of problems with the Girl Scouts and he has concluded against all evidence that there is no problem.
The problems started in earnest in the late 1990s when the Girl Scouts dropped “God” from their pledge. This is what precipitated the creation of American Heritage Girls and other breakaway groups.
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Then in 2004 it was discovered that a Girl Scout troop in Texas ran a program with the local Planned Parenthood office that praised abortion, masturbation and showed girls how to put on a condom. This began a national boycott of Girl Scout cookies and caused then Girl Scout CEO Kathy Cloninger to appear on the Today Show to put out the fire. But during that broadcast she said without apology that the Girls Scouts “partner” with Planned Parenthood “across the country.”
The latest round of boycotts began a few years ago when it was reported that a pornographic brochure produced by Planned Parenthood was made available at a girl’s only Girl Scout meeting at the United Nations. The brochure advocated promiscuous sex, including anal sex. This caused a national backlash that the Girl Scouts are still feeling in dropping enrollment and plummeting cookie sales.
Naturally, Catholic Scout leaders and parents turned to their bishops for guidance, and to whom do the bishops turn? Why, to Robert McCarty.
McCarty claims to have done an “investigation” into the myriad charges about the Girl Scouts, including meeting with Girl Scout officials like Josh Ackerly, an open and avowed homosexual and former front man for the “homo-punk band” the Dead Betties who does public relations and blogging for the Girl Scouts.
The result? McCarty gave the Girl Scouts a bill of clean health.
Mary Hasson of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington DC has done extensive research into the Girl Scout problems and McCarty’s support of groups that oppose Catholic teaching. Among Hasson’s many charges against McCarty is that in his book he endorses a group called Advocates for Youth who say, “Young women need the right to safe and legal abortion. “ The group calls for striking down parental notification laws on abortion for children.
It should therefore come as no surprise that this “advocate for youth” would be silent when the Girl Scout national office orders a local troop to accept a cross dressing boy as a Brownie. It should come as no surprise that he would have no quarrel when the Girl Scouts hire the former homo-punk bandleader whose video shows him strangling a woman as an advice columnist for Catholic Girl Scouts. It should come as no surprise that he would announce the Girl Scouts have nothing to do with abortion and Planned Parenthood even though their CEO went on national TV and proudly admitted it.
The whole culture is leading young people astray. It is devouring them. Catholic parents allow their children into Scouting because they trust what is going on there. And when they have suspicions, their suspicions are allayed by Robert McCarty.
Many Catholics parents are beginning to wonder if this advocate for youth is leading their children astray.
Reprinted with permission from Crisis Magazine