BOSTON (LifeSiteNews) –– An Archdiocese of Boston educational fundraising organization is under fire for having the pro-abortion lesbian Governor of Massachusetts address its annual gala on April 11.
Elected in 2022, Maura Healey became the first lesbian governor in the United States after eight years as Massachusetts’ Attorney General. In her previous role, she participated in the multi-state legal challenges that eventually overturned the longstanding Defense of Marriage Act which protected states’ rights to decide their own marriage policies, supported the codification of abortion “rights”” in state law, defended mandatory contraception coverage, and defended “buffer zone” laws suppressing peaceful pro-life speech and prayer outside abortion centers.
Since becoming governor, she continued to pursue pro-abortion and pro-LGBT agendas, including by funding not only the abortion industry but also disinformation campaigns against pro-life alternative pregnancy centers, and by attempting to force Catholic high schools to keep employees who reject Catholic teaching on sexuality. Healy is “partnered” with another woman, Joanna Lydgate.
Despite all of the above, the Catholic Action League of Massachusetts reports that the Catholic Schools Foundation, which fundraises for area parochial schools, honored Healey with a speaking slot at their prestigious event.
The Catholic Schools Foundation’s Board of Trustees is chaired by Cardinal Seán O’Malley, the Archbishop of Boston, who has his own history of using his position to promote liberalism, including by helping shield pro-abortion “Catholic” politicians from excommunication, refusing to endorse calls to end abortion, and mandating COVID-19 vaccination for certain roles in church services.
In 2017, Healey and O’Malley co-authored a Boston Globe op-ed criticizing the Trump administration from the left on immigration.
“Cardinal O’Malley has a two decade history of praising, promoting, honoring and fraternizing with pro-abortion political figures, including the late U.S. Senator Edward Kennedy, the late Boston Mayor Thomas Menino, former Secretary of State John Kerry, former Labor Secretary and Boston Mayor Marty Walsh, U.S. Senator Robert Casey, Jr., former Governor Charlie Baker, former Congressman Joseph Kennedy III and former President Barack Obama,” reacted Catholic Action League executive director C. J. Doyle.
“When a purportedly Catholic organization, headed by a Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church, invites to its premier annual function a lesbian public official, backed by Planned Parenthood, who is waging a campaign of intimidation against pro-life institutions in her state, it tells us all we need to know about the total absence of integrity, fidelity and Catholic loyalty by those involved,” he added.
Since the first century, the Catholic Church has recognized abortion as a “moral evil,” complicity in which “constitutes a grave offense” carrying the “canonical penalty of excommunication to this crime against human life.” It also teaches that “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered” because they are “close the sexual act to the gift of life” and “do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity,” so “[u]nder no circumstances can they be approved.”
Yet for years, church officials in the United States and the Vatican, up to and including Pope Francis, have given varying degrees of mixed signals on issues where Catholic teaching conflicts with modern liberal ideology, with prominent figures such as Jesuit Father James Martin openly using their positions to promote homosexuality. Meanwhile, Communion for many pro-abortion politicians who claim Catholic status, such as Healey, President Joe Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, has been allowed to continue in the United States.
Former Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput argues that it “give[s] scandal” for pro-abortion politicians to receive Communion because it “creat[es] the impression that the moral laws of the Church are optional.”