Chicago City Wire

The Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago is slamming a Catholic activist group for opposing the display and promotion of pornographic children's books by Chicago area public libraries.

A spokesman for Chicago Cardinal Blasé Cupich said a the church is not supportive of a campaign by Madison, Wisc.-based CatholicVote to remove from libraries books like Gender Queer, which includes illustrations of teens performing gay oral sex upon one another.

“Not everything that calls itself ‘Catholic’ is in fact part of our church,” Paula Waters, chief communications officer for Cupich, told Chicago Sun-Times columnist Neil Steinberg. “CatholicVote is not a Catholic organization, It’s not a part of the church, or sanctioned by the church or has any relationship to the church. It has no standing."

CatholicVote's "Hide the Pride" campaign encourages people to check out pornographic books from public libraries to prevent children from seeing them.

Steinberg also criticized CatholicVote and its president, Brian Burch, for trying to "tightly control what... children learn about life," arguing seeing gay pornography is inevitable and books depicting it should not be censored.

"Unsatisfied with merely raising their own children, (Catholic Vote) has appointed themselves as the moral guardians of everybody else’s children, too, no matter which faith or philosophy those parents imagine themselves free to practice."

Burch said CatholicVote, founded in 2005, is led by concerned Catholic lay people. According to the organization's web site, it does not speak for any Cardinal or Bishop, or the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), which runs the U.S. Catholic Church. 

"We were stunned to see our name slandered by an Archdiocesan official at the behest of a left-wing journalist who recently made waves for implying his support for legalizing child pornography," Burch said. "We have a strong working relationship with many Bishops and Catholic Conferences around the country."

"Our organization is made up of baptized Catholics, working in full communion with the Church to help defend and promote Catholic social teaching. We have always been careful never to advocate for anything that is contrary to Catholic social teaching. Further, to suggest that we have no relationship with the Church is simply false," he said. "Vatican II called for a greater role for lay persons in guiding and directing the mission of the Church. This is why CatholicVote was created. Cardinal Cupich himself has rightly criticized the culture of clericalism, and the suppression of lay voices, that has led to many of the scandals that still plague the Church. We need more lay involvement, not less."

Steinberg drew criticism last week after saying "guns are more dangerous than child pornography."

There are Catholic lay groups that use the name "Catholic" but have escaped official church condemnation.

"Catholics for Choice" is a Catholic lay group that argues for abortion, a position in conflict with church teaching.

In 1967, the National Catholic Reporter, a left-leaning media outlet covering Catholic issues, was criticized by Charles H. Helming, then-bishop of the Kansas City-St. Joseph diocese. 

"It is difficult to see how well-instructed writers who deliberately deny and ridicule dogmas of our Catholic faith can possibly escape the guilt of the crime defined in Canon 1325 on heresy, and how they can escape the penalties of automatic excommunication entailed thereby," he said.

The paper has ignored the demand.

Heidi Schlumpf, 58, the editor of the National Catholic Reporter lives and works in Chicago's Peterson Park neighborhood.