Courageous Solidarity or Contradicting Catholic Moral Teaching: The Canadian Catholic Church and The Polarizing World March of Women 2000

One of the enduring legacies of Vatican II was the Catholic Church made working for social justice – the enhancement of human dignity and serving the common good – an integral part of its mission.  A key section of Gaudium et Spes (Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World)¸#77-90, called for greater international cooperation to foster peace by addressing the economic injustices that led to war.  Taking this call for international solidarity seriously, in 1967 the Canadian bishops launched the Canadian Catholic Organization of Development and Peace (currently known as Development and Peace-Caritas Canada).  Development and Peace’s two-fold mission was to raise funds for socio-economic development projects in the Global South and to educate, animate, and mobilize Canadians to action around issues of global inequality and injustice.  Over the next 50 years, Development and Peace would raise over $500 million to fund over 15,200 grass-roots development and humanitarian aid projects in 70 countries around the world.  While these numbers are impressive, the work of Development and Peace has also been divisive within the Canadian Catholic community.  For some Canadian Catholics, like Bernard Daly – historian and long-time staff member of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops – Development and Peace is Canada’s “most successful collaboration between bishops and laity.”  For others, life LifeSiteNews – who see itself as the vanguard of a new “Counter-Cultural” Catholicism that publicly denounces abortion on demand and gender fluidity – Development and Peace is subverting traditional Catholic moral teaching.  

This paper explores a key moment in the history of Development and Peace; one that polarized the Canadian Catholic community.  In the year 2000, an international movement of women organized a series of events called the World March of Women (abbreviated to WMW 2000).  Tens of thousands of women around the world marched together to condemn poverty and violence against women.  Development and Peace (on behalf of the Canadian Catholic Church) financially supported international organizing efforts for the March and encouraged Canadian Catholics to participate as a sign of “courageous solidarity” with women around the world, especially those in Global South who were often the poorest and the most oppressed. According to Dr. Fabien Leboeuf, the executive director of Development and Peace from 1996-2001, “the poverty and oppression of women was the greatest development challenge…it was not possible for D&P to refuse to engage due to our Catholic commitment to justice—and it was impossible to ignore these victims of injustice.”  In total, Development and Peace donated $110,000 from 1997-2000 to financially support international organizing efforts for the March.  On February 17, 2000, Bishop Gerry Wiesner of Prince George, the president of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, issued a pastoral letter entitled “Marching Together” that officially endorsed the main objectives of the March and encouraged Canadian Catholics to participate in their local communities. 

As soon as WMW activities in Canada began on March 8th, they became extremely contentious within the Catholic community.  Leading the opposition was a relatively new pro-life website in Canada called LifeSiteNews, who staunchly denounced the March.  Funded by Campaign Life Coalition (CLC), the Canadian national pro-life organization, LifeSiteNews agreed with the Canadian March Committee’s stated demands that women should have greater access to education, employment, property, safe water, decent housing, and health care. However, they were alarmed by other statements by the WMW Canadian organizing committee that were “explicitly pro-abortion and pro-lesbian.”  Allegations that the World March of Women was explicitly pro-abortion would be troubling for Catholics, as according to The Catechism of the Catholic Church, “Since the first century the Church has affirmed the moral evil of every procured abortion. This teaching has not changed and remains unchangeable. Direct abortion, that is to say, abortion willed either as an end or a means, is gravely contrary to the moral law” (No. 2271).  LifeSiteNews called for a boycott of the March, for the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops to withdraw its support from Development and Peace, and for Catholics not to give to CCODP’s annual Share Lent collection. 

As a response to the allegations that the World March of Women was “an abortion march” and that Catholics who participated in the March would be contradicting Catholic moral teaching, on May 15, 2000, four Catholic organizations – the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, Development and Peace, the Canadian Religious Conference, and the national executive of Catholic Women’s League – issued a joint statement of clarification on Catholic participation in the March.  The public statement was very theologically nuanced in arguing why Catholic organizations could, in good conscience, support the March even if they did not agree with all of the individual clauses or share the same opinions on abortion with other sponsoring organizations that also supported the March.

While the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops continued to support Development and Peace during this divisive time, several bishops – Archbishop Adam Exner of Vancouver, Cardinal Aloysius Ambrozic of Toronto, and Bishop Anthony Tonnos of Hamilton – broke ranks publicly over this issue and held back their dioceses’ annual diocesan collections to Development and Peace.  These bishops argued that when Development and Peace agreed to sit at the same table as pro-choice organizations, it was condoning, or at least indirectly supporting, the right to abortion (guilt by association).  In contrast, other bishops publicly voiced support for the March.  Archbishop Marcel Gervais of Ottawa, Bishop John Sherlock of London, and Bishop Fred Henry of Calgary, argued that Catholics can co-operate with organizations with which they share common goals, while simultaneously disagreeing in other areas.  This was a rare occasion when Canadian bishops publicly disagreed with one another.  In the words of The Catholic Register – the largest newspaper in English-speaking Canada – the question of whether Catholics could support the World March of Women became “one of the most divisive debates in the history of the Catholic Church in Canada.”  This short paper draws upon primary sources to explain the controversy and why this event was so polarizing within the Canadian Catholic Church.