Follow-up: the World March of Women 2000

The feminist March of Women 2000 is mired in controversy and confusion. For example, the Catholic Women's League (CWL) Councils of BC, Alberta, Antigonish and Yarmouth, plus a great many individual local Parish Councils across the country have withdrawn from the March.

In the province of Ontario, the Spiritual Advisor to the Council of the CWL, the Most Reverend Bishop Nicola de Angelis, sent a letter dated June 26, 2000, to the Ontario Provincial President of the CWL, Betty Ann Brown. In his letter, he expressed his concern that the provincial CWL had only sent statements from officials within the Catholic Church who supported the March, and not those who had withdrawn from it, such as Aloysius Cardinal Ambrozic, Archbishop of Toronto, Bishop Tonnos of Hamilton, Archbishop Exner of Vancouver and Bishop Wingle of Yarmouth.

In addition, he pointed out that the executive of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB), which had endorsed the March, was an administrative body only and had no authority in Canon law to issue decrees on moral and faith issues. Only a Bishop, according to Bishop De Angelis, has the moral competence and authority in his diocese to decide these matters.

Bishop De Angelis also stated that although there were some good objectives to the March, there were, at the same time, explicit attacks on Catholic family values, namely, abortion on demand and the promotion of lesbian rights - objectives totally opposed to those of the Roman Catholic Church. It was his firm conviction, he said, that one cannot mix good and bad objectives in the hope that good results might be achieved.

Finally he stated that he knew from personal experience that the March for Women is not the only way to help women in need. "There are many missionary groups, lay Catholic movements and organizations who do this work on a daily basis and in the spirit of the Church's best missionary tradition," he said.

In her reply to Bishop De Angelis, Mrs. Betty Ann Brown, CWL President, Ontario stated in part that "we are an autonomous women's organization in which males do not have a vote on policy." What an extraordinary statement! It is obvious that Bishop De Angelis was addressing the issue of the March in his capacity as the spiritual advisor to the CWL in Ontario and that his being "male" had nothing to do with the issue.

Unfortunately, Bishop De Angelis was hospitalized at the time the provincial CWL meeting was held in Waterloo, Ontario, in July and regrettably, his representative, the spiritual director of the Diocese of Toronto CWL, Father Nino Cavoto, was denied admission to the meeting which subsequently voted to remain in the March. The provincial meeting was mainly attended by provincial executive members of the CWL, not by local grassroots parish presidents.

The national meeting of the CWL is to be held in Charlottetown, PEI, in August. Again, very few grassroots members will attend, and executive members, provincial and national will be mainly in attendance. The National President, in her most recent address to the CWL, has maintained her support of the March and urged her members to support it.

It is clear from all this confusion that the executive members of the CWL do not, in fact, speak for its members. It is a sad commentary on an organization that appears to have lost its way.

Anglican Church Replies
REAL Women sent a letter dated May 17th inquiring whether the Anglican Church in Canada supported the March. In its response, dated June 27, 2000, the Reverend Canon Gordon Light, Principal Secretary to the Anglican Primate, Michael Peers stated:

The Anglican Church of Canada works ecumenically with other churches in a variety of coalitions. Clearly, we do not agree in every instance with every position of member organizations. Nevertheless, our church members and the mission of the church are generally well-served by this sort of cooperation.

Such is the case, as I understand it, of our participation in and support for the Women's Interchurch Council of Canada, a long-standing and reputable organization. We have the greatest respect for their judgement in determining priorities and programs, one of which is demonstrating responsible leadership in the Canadian Woman's March Committee.

… We have supported the Council's work with grants and by encouraging our church constituency to get involved at every level in the range of events anticipated through the year. We believe it is through constructive participation that our deepest values and concerns can be realized.

The Anglican Church's unflinching endorsement of the Women's Inter-faith Council is surprising - or not considering the liberal views of its hierarchy - in view of the fact that the Women's Inter-faith Council recently signed a petition in support of removing the Holy See (Catholic Church) from the UN as a Permanent Observer and that the Anglican and Catholic Churches met, in June, in Mississauga, Ontario in an intense search to create unity between the two bodies.

World March of Women 2000 Leader Speaks at the UN on Behalf of All Women

In REAL Women's letter to the churches which had endorsed the March, we expressed our concern that the feminist organization, the Quebec Federation of Women, heading up the March, would use the churches' support for the March for its own purposes and would ignore the fact that organizations such as the CWL did not endorse its pro-abortion position. This, in fact, has occurred.

On June 9, 2000, at the Beijing +5 Conference, Françoise David, President of the Quebec Federation of Women, addressed the General Assembly of the UN claiming she represented all women in North America and Europe, and women of all faiths. She stated:

I am here to represent the women of North America and both Eastern and Western Europe. I speak in the name of diverse women who live in our region: young and older women of all faiths, ethnic origin and social conditions, white women and women of colour, native women, heterosexual and lesbian women, migrant women and disabled women. We are proud of our diversity but we are aware that it is also a source of discrimination and inequity between women. Therefore, we have decided that we will work together for a change.

We demand that our governments and all the governments of the world commit wholeheartedly to adopting concrete measures that will ensure women's equality.

We demand parity, institutional mechanisms to guarantee women's right to equality, adequate financial resources in government budgets, specialized UN agencies and regional bodies for the organizations that defend women's human rights and support women who need it.

States must remember that women have an inalienable right to make choices about their lives and their sexual and their reproductive health. We demand that these rights be recognized.

(This is UN language for abortion and sexual rights, such as homosexual/lesbian equality, and adolescent access to abortion and contraception without parental knowledge or consent.)

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