Kissling retires

Frances Kissling, founder of the pro-abortion Catholics for a Free Choice, an organization composed of basically a few people supported by some very big foundations, is retiring. Kissling has waged a one-woman war to advance the proposition that it is acceptable for Catholics to dissent from the Church’s teachings on abortion, contraception, sexual moral ethics, and other fundamental matters. She has worked to have the United Nations strip the Holy See of its observer status and has orchestrated worldwide advertising campaigns blaming the Church’s bishops for millions of AIDS deaths through the tortuous logic that the Church’s call to abstinence somehow forces fornicators not to use condoms but to fornicate anyway.

Good riddance to Kissling, but don’t let down your guard: There are plenty of others willing to step into her shoes.

One of the prochoice movement’s most senior leaders, Frances Kissling, is stepping down as president of Catholics for a Free Choice. With 37 years of professional involvement in the field, Kissling is one of the most knowledgeable and experienced international advocates of choice. Her career began as the director of one of the country’s first legal abortion clinics in New York City in 1970 and has included founding and heading the National Abortion Federation and 25 years as president of CFFC.

[...] Kissling has led CFFC through numerous controversies with church officials. Predominantly, these have related to the right to be Catholic while disagreeing with church positions on contraception, abortion, gay rights and stem cell research. Under her direction and with an extraordinarily talented staff, CFFC has grown into one of the largest church reform groups in the world with partner organizations in six Latin American countries, Canada and Spain, and representation in the United Nations and at the European parliament.

She is best known as a spirited and witty critic of the Catholic church and fierce defender of women’s moral integrity and reproductive choice. Under her leadership, The “See Change” Campaign, which criticizes the Holy See’s special designation at the U.N., and the Condoms4Life campaign, which focuses on the Vatican’s refusal to permit condom use in AIDS-ravaged countries, have turned a critical and very public eye on Vatican policies, especially those that prove detrimental to women in poor and developing countries.

God have mercy on her soul and may the Holy Spirit bring her to a great conversion.

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