Jon O’Brien says he’s a good Catholic.
Though his leadership of the group “Catholics for
Choice” puts him in clear opposition to Church positions on
contraception and reproduction, “I believe in the totality of Catholic
teaching, and that includes the right to dissent and freedom of
conscience,” he said.
“I’m a real traditionalist,” he adds, with a hint of the subversive humor prevalent in his hometown of Dublin, Ireland.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops disagrees.
“Catholics for Choice is not a Catholic
organization. It never has been and was established to oppose the
Catholic position on abortion,” Sister Mary Ann Walsh said in an email
from the conference.
National Right to Life has called Catholics for Choice “militantly pro-abortion.”
Catholics for Choice was founded in 1973 by three
Catholic women responding to opposition to the Roe v. Wade case that
legalized abortion. It has clashed for nearly 40 years with the U.S.
Conference of Catholic Bishops, which says the group is funded by
“powerful and wealthy private foundations ... to promote abortion as a
method of population control.”
Not so, according to Catholics for Choice, which
operates on a $3 million annual budget. It describes itself as
pro-choice — that is, that people should be able to choose to have as
many, or as few, children as they want.
“The Catholic hierarchy’s ban on
contraception and abortion has a disastrous impact on women’s lives,”
according to the CFC.
The group drew attention in 1984.
Abortion was an
exceptionally hot-button issue in the presidential campaign, especially
because of the views of abortion-rights supporter Geraldine Ferraro —
the Democratic candidate for vice president, and the first woman from a
major party on the nation’s top ticket. Catholics for Choice took out
an ad in the New York Times signed by Catholic theologians and clergy,
saying committed Catholics had “a diversity of opinions” on abortion.
O’Brien, 46, who has headed Catholics for Choice
since 2007, is in town to accept an award from an abortion-rights group,
Personal PAC.
“We’ve seen here in Illinois, even, bishops
comparing the president to Stalin and Hitler;” he said, “condemning a
Catholic governor for celebrating the bravery of a rape survivor in
Chicago.”
O’Brien was speaking of two local controversies.
In a homily last April, Peoria Bishop Daniel Jenky
linked Hitler and Stalin and President Barack Obama’s health care
mandate. The plan has drawn strong opposition from Catholic and other
faith-based institutions that say it infringes on their religious
beliefs by requiring them to cover birth control.
In the U.S., “you’re granted freedom of religion
and freedom from religion,” O’Brien said.
“You can’t have one religion
discriminating against other folk.”
Last year, Illinois bishops slammed Gov. Pat Quinn
for his participation in a Personal PAC event.
After it was revealed
Quinn was presenting an award to a rape survivor — and the woman charged
the bishops with insensitivity — Cardinal Francis George said he had
not been given all the facts by the Catholic Conference of Illinois
before he spoke against Quinn.
“The church is actually all of the people,”
O’Brien said. “The bishops are part of it, but they’re not the church.
We are all the church. Our position is people should be able to follow
their consciences.”
He rejects the notion that so-called “cafeteria
Catholics” — who pick and choose which official stances of their faith
they accept — are not real Catholics.
“What makes you a Catholic,” he says, “is your Baptism.”
O’Brien’s life is intertwined with the gradual
dilution of the Church’s power in overwhelmingly Roman Catholic Ireland,
and the continuing battle between anti-abortion and abortion-rights
supporters in America.
He previously worked at the Irish Family Planning
Association.
In the early 1990s, the organization was fined for selling
condoms. “We got a call, that ‘the boys’ were very concerned about what
was happening, and they wanted to help out,” O’Brien said.
“‘The Boys’ turned out to be U2,” he said.
The rockers paid the fines.
A watershed event occurred in 1992, when an Irish
court prohibited a 14-year-old rape victim from traveling to England to
get an abortion.
The decision roiled Ireland.
A higher court cleared the
way for the termination, saying the girl had become suicidal and her
life was in danger.
“If you grow up in a country where
contraception was seriously restricted, abortion is illegal, and people
couldn’t get divorced — the litany of personal rights taken away was
unbelievable,” O’Brien said.