Washington D.C., Dec 4, 2009 / 10:43 (CNA).- Conservative blogs were buzzing on Friday with the discovery that a member of the USCCB’s Subcommittee on Catholic Health Care is an active homosexual and gay rights activist. However, though Mary Kay Henry’s bio states that she is a labor adviser to the U.S. bishops, the USCCB communications director told CNA “she is not a consultant.”
Henry, the international executive vice president for the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) was recently named one of the nation’s “Top 25 Women in Healthcare” for 2009 by Modern Healthcare. Her biography at the SEIU website explains that “Her faith and values as a practicing Roman Catholic led her to pursue union organizing as a vocation.”
“Mary Kay is also active in the fight for immigration reform and gay and lesbian rights. She is a founding member of SEIU’s gay and lesbian Lavender Caucus,” her description continues.
According to SEIU, “The Lavender Caucus is the Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/ Transgender (L/G/B/T) Caucus of the Service Employees International Union whose purpose is to facilitate open and respectful communication between the L/G/B/T community and the labor movement.”
The last line of Henry’s SEIU bio reads, “She and her partner, Paula Macchello, have been together for 20 years.”
Henry is listed on the USCCB website as a member of the Subcommittee on Justice, Peace, and Human Development who helped produce the working paper, “A Fair and Just Workplace: Principles and Practices for Catholic Health Care.”
ModernHealthCare.com also mentions that Henry is a labor adviser to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Catholic Health Care & Work Subcommittee.
However, in an email asking to confirm Henry’s advisory role at the USCCB, Sister Mary Ann Walsh, the conference media director simply told CNA, “She is not a consultant.”
CNA spoke with another woman in the Justice, Peace and Human Development office at the USCCB who said a press release on the topic would be available on Friday afternoon.
But by Friday night, no press release had been posted on the USCCB’s website.
Similarly, a call from CNA to Henry was not returned.
So if not a consultant exactly what is her capacity within the USCCB? Seems once more like bureaucratic double-speak. She has worked on multiple sub-committees which submitted recommendations which were accepted within the USCCB. So maybe not technically used as an consultant but it is obvious her opinions were sought after. Or are we to believe her job in these subcommittees were to make coffee?
This is just more effects of the relationships of staff at the USCCB and left leaning organizations and unions. This relationship has always turned up strange bedfellows. The USCCB has continuously sought advice from Catholics less than faithful to the Church. When the National Review Board in response to priestly abuse was established they included a couple of problematic Catholics including Bob Bennett the pro-abortion lawyer who worked for Bill Clinton.
A couple of months ago the coalition “So We Might See” which the Office of Communications of the USCCB belongs to issued a petition to investigate Rush Limbaugh. The USCCB later denied supporting the petition of the group they still belong to.
Plus with the scandals within CCHD it just goes to show that the bureaucracy within the staff of the USCCB has been heavily compromised in some departments. Light though will continue to shine on these problems and the rapid dissemination of such information will help to some degree reform this.
23 comments
From her biography:
“She is also a labor adviser to and member of the U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops’ Subcommittee on Catholic Health Care.”
http://www.seiu.org/a/ourunion/mary-kay-henry.php
Define “practicing Catholic.”
What would you call this “post-concilliary” or “post-Catholic”?
I suspected that the USCCB is a front for lay liberal bueaucrats and anything they come out with that conforms to Catholicism is purely accidental.
Are US bishops being led around by a covert gang of communist gays and
lesbians?
Look like it.
How many US bishops have signed the Manhattan Declaration? Why nnot?
DANTE’S
CLUB
Vile, vile,
Down the aisle
Narcissistic freaks they file,
Not the fools
Who feign their gaiety…
But tolerant white sepulchred laity.
I know many Catholics rejoice every time the USCCB is caught with its pants down but I’m not one of them. It makes me so sad that the bishops cannot seem to get their act together when it comes to controlling their own staffs. It makes absolutely no difference whether this lady is a “consultant” or not. Nobody at the USCCB should be consulting her. It really makes it impossible for me to support the USCCB until they can stop issueing more ‘statements’ & start cleaning house in earnest.
I know many Catholics rejoice every time the USCCB is caught with its pants down but I’m not one of them. It makes me so sad that the bishops cannot seem to get their act together when it comes to controlling their own staffs. It makes absolutely no difference whether this lady is a “consultant” or not. Nobody at the USCCB should be consulting her. It really makes it impossible for me to support the USCCB until they can stop issueing more ‘statements’ & start cleaning house in earnest.
Define: Consultant
Define: Advisor
Is Rush Limbaugh a Catholic? Investigate him and then do what? He’s been on the air umpteen years. An odd aside among many more or less inexplicable events reported.
Several have signed it, T. Shaw, but as they show less than 200 prominent signatories on their website, there seems to be no way to determine the actual number.
This seems a common problem. Makes it hard for peopple to know what is going on.
BTW can you tell me where you got your advent Wreath, or the htmel code I would love to put it on my blog.
God Bless
I know what a real job is — waiting tables, nursing, driving a truck, fixing the wiring, teaching — but I have no idea what the office gnomes of the USCCB actually DO.
Jeff, you’re so wise, why don’t you enlighten us. What is the acceptable level of participation for a concerned, intelligent, politically active dyke, in a long term committed relationship with another woman, within the Catholic Church and it’s ancillary organizations? Would it be less than someone say, such as yourself, who is of course, free from the level of perversion and sin that this poor woman brazenly admits to.
Be specific, Jeff. Out dykes everywhere want to know how the one true Church of the God that created them feels about them and you, of course are the perfect authority to render judgement, being so extremely Catholic, male and heterosexual. Ya know, like God himself.
reddog,
In soccer you can’t use your hands on the ball. If you want to use your hands you join the rugby team.
Such a “concerned, intelligent, politically active dyke, in a long term committed relationship with another woman,” has a bright future in the Episcopal Church b/c that so-called church (founded by Henry 8 so he could marry eight different womyn w/o having to behead each one of them) maintains (as do you) that the only evils are when one is murdered, or robbed, or dies. That men/womyn should have good in all things except themselves(Augustine).
Maybe she ought to move to Dyker Hts., Brooklyn.
Nitwit
Nice trio the USCCB, the SEIU, and a gay activist. How lovely.
G-d help us all!
Isn’t that nice.
Although we are not empowered to judge people, as individuals, the Church is certainly empowered to judge actions. The Church has been given the authority not to tell people what to do, but to tell what Jesus taught. This individual obviously lives a lifestyle that is contrary to that, yet considers herself a “practicing Catholic”. Yet, she is an “advisor” to Bishops on important social issues.
Our guys got to get more consistent, folks. We’ve got to be what we say we are….repentant sinners. The key word is “repentant”, not continuing.
As a partnered lesbian for 20+ years, Mary Kay has the necessary credentials to apply for an heirarchical appointment with the Episcopal Church USA.
Is Rush Limbaugh a Catholic? Investigate him and then do what?
I do not believe Limbaugh is Catholic.
What is the acceptable level of participation for a concerned, intelligent, politically active dyke, in a long term committed relationship with another woman, within the Catholic Church and it’s ancillary organizations?
None. None whatsoever. Homosexual behavior is a sin. It doesn’t matter one iota if she’s “committed” to her partner or not. The Catholic Church’s teachings are clear: sex outside the context of a sacramental, heterosexual marriage is a sin. Gay or straight.
If she wants to be a member of the Catholic Church, her acceptable level of participation should be to attend to the sacrament of Reconciliation as often as the rest of us, live chastely, and stop undermining church teaching.
If she doesn’t like that, tough cookies. The Episcopal Church will welcome her.
Apparently for these people, “practicing Catholic” means they haven’t got it right yet.
Maybe not what it seems. According to this, she was the SEIU rep in discussions on labor, not appointed by the Bishops.
http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/new.php?n=17971
“Apparently for these people, ‘practicing Catholic’ means they haven’t got it right yet.”
A very droll observation. I like it.
On the other hand, though, that several of the saintliest of the Desert Fathers have said of themselves along these lines: “I have worn the habit for fifty years now, but have not yet begun to serve the Lord as He ought to served.”
Can any of us ordinary Catholics in the pews say otherwise?
If she wants to be a member of the Catholic Church, her acceptable level of participation should be to attend to the sacrament of Reconciliation as often as the rest of us, live chastely, and stop undermining church teaching.
The funny thing is, awhile back reddog declared that the Church was well within its rights and ought to set the standards for its membership and if the members don’t like it, they should leave. It was memorable because it was one instance where reddog took a break from kicking sand in our faces and talked to us as if we were something other than something he found on the bottom of his shoe. Wish that reddog would show up more often.
“the Church was well within its rights and ought to set the standards for its membership and if the members don’t like it, they should leave.”
Before we “kick” anyone out of Christ’s Church, can we distinguish between Church membership and Church leadership?
Christ has taught that the attitude of the Church toward wayward members should be one of prayerfulness and forgiveness. He asks us to appeal to them as our brothers and our sisters, hoping that the Lord will convert their hearts to Himself, in the spirit of the father of the Prodigal. In the spirit of Himself toward us.
While they continue in their dissidence, however, the hierarchy errs in elevating dissident Catholics to positions of influence or authority within the Church.
Jesus’s view toward wayward members:
Mathew 18:16-17
“If your brother sins (against you), go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have won over your brother. If he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, so that ‘every fact may be established on the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ If he refuses to listen to them, tell the church. If he refuses to listen even to the church, then treat him as you would a Gentile or a tax collector. “
“If he refuses to listen even to the church, then treat him as you would a Gentile or a tax collector.“
Gentiles and tax collectors were very much outside the Jewish community of Our Lord’s time, and they were made very much to feel it. Although they might live side by side in the city and many villages, an observant Jew would likely refuse – politely – to enter the home of a Gentile or of a tax collector, wouldn’t break bread with him, wouldn’t give his daughter in marriage to him. An observant Jew wouldn’t treat these outsiders as lepers, nor would he behave provocatively toward them, such as by “getting in their face”. He would behave in a quite dignified, aloof and somber manner toward them, and other than that, would simply ignore them and have nothing to do with them as much as possible. An observant Jew would of necessity transact business with Gentiles and tax collectors, and might perhaps exchange civilities in passing with them in the street or the marketplace. But he would have to do with them only in public, and only as a necessary means to an indispensible end. He would not go into their homes, their worship services, not into their hearts and minds – nor open his to them.
Based upon what Our Lord said, and applying it today, I do think it makes sense for persons who publicly dissent from what the Catholic Church believes and teaches to be “disinvited” to the Communion table, and then leave it up to them to honor that request. And I think it would make sense for faithful Catholics to avoid buying or reading dissidents’ books, supporting their advancement in Catholic circles, or voting for them for public office. I think all that very much fits with what Our Lord said.
Always, however, in such a way that you’re not totally giving up on the person. That the door is open when they are ready and willing to make a change. And when they do, that you are eager to welcome them back to the fold with great joy. Only persons of dignity and reserve can bring this off, I think; snarkiness and sniping while they may make me feel good at the time, accomplish nothing except perhaps the burning of bridges that may never be rebuilt.
Marion said:
“Based upon what Our Lord said, and applying it today, I do think it makes sense for persons who publicly dissent from what the Catholic Church believes and teaches to be “disinvited” to the Communion table, and then leave it up to them to honor that request. And I think it would make sense for faithful Catholics to avoid buying or reading dissidents’ books, supporting their advancement in Catholic circles, or voting for them for public office. I think all that very much fits with what Our Lord said.
Always, however, in such a way that you’re not totally giving up on the person. That the door is open when they are ready and willing to make a change. And when they do, that you are eager to welcome them back to the fold with great joy. Only persons of dignity and reserve can bring this off, I think; snarkiness and sniping while they may make me feel good at the time, accomplish nothing except perhaps the burning of bridges that may never be rebuilt. “
There is great wisdom and understanding in these words, and I think they should be applied to other situations/people as well, including abortion workers and clients. I am often distressed by the venom of a few who speak with such potent condemnation that I fear folks who want to turn around and come home to the Truth will be trapped, out of fear and weakness, in the swamp they stepped into. And yet, if we lean too far in “charity” we condone sin and destruction. Marion expresses a good balance of prayer and right action.