Sister Jeannine Gramick
and the Mother Teresa Awards
By Randy Engel
From
Catholic Family News February 2007
Editor’s Note: This article is based on a fully documented study of
New Ways Ministry and its co-founders, Sr. Jeannine Gramick and Fr. Robert Nugent,
found in Randy Engel’s new book The Rite
of Sodomy — Homosexuality and the Roman Catholic Church. **
Introduction
In November 2006, Sr.
Jeannine Gramick, the notorious pro-abortion and pro-homosexual dissenter from
Church teachings and co-founder of New Ways Ministry, was named a recipient of
the Mother Teresa Award from the St. Bernadette Institute of Sacred Art in
The award recognizes
“the achievements of those who beautify the world, especially in the fields of
religion, social justice and the arts,” and acknowledges and honors “special
souls for choosing to share themselves and their gifts with the world,” states
Dan Paulos, the Art Institute’s founder and President of the Board of
Directors.1 Nominations come from the public at large. The Board of Directors
of the Mother Teresa Awards and the Art Institute makes the final selection of
laureates.
The award began to
attract national attention in 2004 after Sister Mary Nirmala, mc, Superior
General of the Missionaries of Charity of India, gave permission to the
Institute to name its award after Mother Teresa “for the glory of God and the
good of His people.” Sadly, the nomination of Sr. Gramick “for her role as
American Human Rights Activist, especially in the field of Spirituality,”
neither glorifies God nor benefits His people.
The nomination and
acceptance tribute to Sr. Gramick found on the Mother Teresa Awards official
website (see above) features a picture of the nun, her anti-life fangs well
hidden behind a facade of sweetness and light; a short acceptance statement —
“I humbly accept this award on behalf of all who are oppressed, especially
members of any sexual minority. I pray for an integration of spirituality and
human sexuality”; and a summary of her 30 year struggle to secure “justice and
peace for sexual minorities.” It is a public relations scam of the first order
that needs to be exposed point by point starting with mythos that the cause
Gramick has championed for more than three decades is a work of justice and
peace.
Justice Demands the Suppression of Vice
In a society that calls
itself civilized, both State and Church have a moral obligation to suppress
vice and promote virtue. Neither can be indifferent to, much less supportive of
vice in any form, including homosexuality and pederasty. This is especially
true today, when the forces of organized perversion are on the offensive.
Gramick’s sexual
minorities “ministry” is not a “ministry” in the traditional sense of the word
nor does it promote the cause of “justice and peace.” Rather, it is a work of
injustice against the social order and common good and an open attack on God’s
ordinances.
Gramick is the prototype
of the post-Conciliar nun. Her work is not religious because she, herself, is a
Catholic religious in name only. She is a radical political agitator operating
under the guise of a religious. Her working environment is not a contemplative
cell but a political cell.
Long before Gramick
helped establish
Together with New Ways
co-founder Fr. Robert Nugent, a Salvatorian priest and a homosexual, Gramick
created one of the most powerful pro-homosexual political organizations in the
American Church (AmChurch) — the Catholic Coalition for Gay Civil Rights
(CCGCR).
The main task of the
Coalition was to organize clerical homosexuals in Catholic dioceses and
religious orders, male and female into a coherent political force capable of
moving the agenda of the Homosexual Collective forward in the Church and in
Society.
In 1980, NWM’s
newsletter, Bondings, reported that 1,373 individuals and 91 groups had endorsed
the pro-homosexual objectives of the CCGCR. By November 1981, the number of
endorsements had grown to 2,469 individuals and 150 organizations including 606
Catholic priests and brothers, 747 Catholic nuns, and over 50 Catholic
religious orders.
The CCGCR urged all
Catholics to support pro-gay legislation under the banner of “civil rights” and
to refrain from any opposition to pro-homosexual ordinances “on the basis of
unfounded fears, irrational myths and inflammatory statements about homosexual persons,”
and to support the CCGCR’s leadership and witness in “this ministry of justice,
healing and reconciliation.”
The lexicon and
arguments used by the CCGCR to promote the vice of homosexuality as a virtue
was identical to that of the secular Homosexual Collective. The CCGCR claimed
that homosexuals are an “oppressed people” who need to be “liberated”; that
homosexuality is an “inborn condition” and not a matter of choice; that
homosexuals do not recruit youth; that the homosexual movement is “family-friendly”;
and that pederasty has no connection whatsoever to homosexuality.
When the CCGCR was
disbanded in the early 1990s, it was replaced by other
Gramick’s political
radicalism is even evident in her Scriptural meditations found in the
“inclusive” 1989 devotional The Road to Emmaus — Daily Encounters with the
Risen Christ2 distributed by New Ways:
In her January 3
meditation (John 10:7-17), Gramick whines, “I have seen the bands of
ecclesiastical predators expel lesbians and gay Christians from our churches,
relegate women to second-class citizenship, and support government policies
that oppress the poor … .”
In her January 11
meditation, Gramick writes, “… I also need to meet our Father-Mother God in a
quiet place.”
In her January 13
meditation, the nun’s thoughts drift to modern day self-righteous “pariahs”
such as “the religious leaders who enforce doctrinal orthodoxy at the expense
of God’s command to love,” and “politicians, business people, and scientists
who perpetuate a military-industrial complex … .”
The issues of the
ordination of women to the priesthood and homosexual “unions” arise in
Gramick’s January 14 meditation when she asks Jesus to abolish unjust laws. “…
I bring to you church laws which prohibit women from being ordained to the
priesthood or which bar homosexual persons from having their committed
relationships blessed,” she prays.
The hierarchy gets
another blast in Gramick’s January 25 meditation (Mark 6:14-29) in which she
ponders, “Like Herod, some of our church leaders are also so drunk with power
that they seek to control the intimate, private lives of others. They save face
by appealing to church doctrine, all the while failing to ask forgiveness for
past and present religious intolerance, racism and sexism.”
Is this the kind of deep
“spirituality” that the Board of Directors of the St. Bernadette Institute had
in mind when they gave Gramick the Mother Teresa Award?
Sr. Gramick is Pro-Abortion and
Anti-Family
Tellingly, Gramick’s
thirst for justice does not extend to the most defenseless of all human beings
— the unborn child in his mother’s womb. This fact alone should have
immediately disqualified her as a nominee for the Mother Teresa Awards.
In 1984, Gramick, an
open advocate of “reproductive rights” and “a woman’s right to choose (to kill
her unborn child),” became a signatory to the first “Catholics for a Free
Choice” ad in the New York Times.
In the early 1970s,
Gramick joined the
Gramick has held a
number of leadership positions in the National Coalition of American Nuns
(NCAN), a pro-abortion organization that also campaigns for women’s ordination,
“gay” rights, “gay unions,” and the adoption of children by homosexual
partners.
Gramick’s scorn for the
natural law and traditional family life is found in the following series of
quotes taken from A Challenge to Love (1980) edited by Fr. Nugent.
Speaking about the “sin”
of “homophobia,” Gramick asserts that “A societal unwillingness to sanction any
sexual behaviors, which depart from an established norm, may be a symptom of
homophobia.” However, the “characteristics and root causes of homosexual
prejudice” remain basically the same “religious and familial and sexual
dogmatism,” she states. The nun concludes that homosexual prejudice can be
replaced “with toleration and finally with acceptance, through education and
‘conscious-raising’ efforts directed at the shattering of gay and lesbian
‘myths and stereotypes,’ the removal of discriminatory legal barriers and the
end to any ‘taboo behavior’ society assigns as ‘unnatural’.”3
As Catholic writer Donna
Steichen has so astutely observed of radical religious feminists like Gramick,
“… among contemporary assailants of the Church, the female of the species is
more spiteful, irrational, unscrupulous and destructive than the male.”4
Opposition to Gramick,
Nugent and NWM
From the very first day
that Sr. Gramick, backed by the Order of the School Sisters of Notre Dame, and
Fr. Nugent, backed by the Salvatorian Order, began their public “ministry” to
“gays” and lesbians and other “sexual minorities,” they met with stiff
opposition. This opposition did not come from the
In 1977, Catholic
faithful pressured the Congregation for the Institutes of Consecrated Life and
Secular Institutes (CICL) in
In 1983, the
Congregation for the Institutes of Consecrated Life and Secular Institutes,
re-named the Congregation for Religious and Secular Institutes, instructed Sr.
Gramick and Fr. Nugent to separate themselves totally and completely from New
Ways and forbade them from engaging in any homosexual apostolate unless they
made it manifestly clear that homosexual acts are intrinsically and objectively
wrong.
Callers to the
As late as 1984, both
Gramick and Nugent were still active with the
Investigation by the Maida Commission and
the CFD
In March 1988, the
Congregation for Religious and Secular Institutes an-enounced the formation of
a three member independent U.S.-based committee headed by Bishop Adam Joseph
Maida, then Bishop of Green Bay, WI. to render a judgment as to the clarity and
orthodoxy of the public presentations of Sr. Gramick and Fr. Nugent, with
respect to the Church’s teaching on homosexuality.
However, the Maida
Commission delayed and did not begin its official investigation until January
1994, six years later. During the interim period it was business as usual for
Gramick and Nugent. The
On October 4, 1994 the
Maida Commission issued its final report praising
In 1996, the
responsibility of bringing the wayward duo to heel fell to the Congregation for
the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) headed by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger.
In May 1998, after a
series of unsuccessful negotiations between Vatican officials and the superiors
of the School Sisters of Notre Dame and the Salvadorians acting on behalf of
Gramick and Nugent, the CDF ordered the nun and priest to sign a “Profession of
Faith” (see above) in which they declare their interior assent to the teachings
of the Catholic Church on homosexuality and acknowledge that their writings,
specifically, Building Bridges and Voices of Hope contain errors. The CDF,
however, did not order the superiors of the School Sisters of Notre Dame and
Salvadorians who had backed Gramick and Nugent for nearly three decades; or the
more than 130 American Bishops who have provided a diocesan platform for
On July 13, 1999 the CFD
released its report concerning the final disposition of the Gramick and Nugent
case. The two religious were “permanently prohibited” from all forms of
homosexual ministry. This general disciplinary action was backed up in May 2000
with a formal order of silence by their superiors.
In January 2001, Nugent
admitted that he had signed the “Profession of Faith” (*see below) and that he
would return to parish work and adult education until a new papal
administration came into being.
Gramick, always the stronger
and more aggressive of the pair, said she would not sign the “Profession of
Faith,” she would not be silenced, and she would continue to ignore the CDF
sanctions.
In August 2001, Gramick
announced she had left the School Sisters of Notre Dame and joined up with
another feminist religious coven, the Sisters of Loretto, who promptly set up a
“Sr. Jeannine Gay Ministry Fund” to enable Gramick to continue her
pro-sodomite, pro-lesbian “ministry.” Gramick claims that her transfer to a new
religious community invalidates the penalty imposed on her under Pope John Paul
II. The Mother Teresa Awards website blamed Gramick’s plight on “opposition to
her work and consequent political considerations in her church …”
Six years have passed
since the Vatican issued its ultimatum and Roman officials have yet to utter a
“boo!” against this affront to Church authority by Sr. Gramick and the Sisters
of Loretto. Had it done so, perhaps the question of Sr. Gramick receiving the
Mother Teresa Award would have been rendered moot.
Awards Founder Responds to Charges
Against Sr. Gramick
In a December 2006
statement for Catholic News Service (D.C.) following the public release of the
news that Sr. Gramick had been honored as a Mother Teresa Awards laureate, Art
Institute Director Dan Paulos said that like Mother Teresa and her nuns who
show courage by helping those with AIDS, “Jeannine Gramick exercises compassion
to gays and lesbians who are full of life … offering them hope in a world where
they are too often discriminated against.”5
On January 2, 2007, this
writer sent an e-mail to the Art Institute stating that the Mother Teresa Award
to pro-abortion advocate Sr. Jeannine Gramick was a great source of scandal to
Catholics. I stated that Mother Teresa’s name should not be used to reward an
advocate of baby killing!
That same evening Paulos
wrote back and said that the charge that Gramick was pro-abortion was not true.
“Sister serves God’s children who no one else chooses to serve. She is a
remarkable woman. And a dedicated religious … She deserves better than this …
as does Our Lord,” he said.
Apparently, while Paulos
had no trouble in defending Gramick’s “gay ministry,” he was taken off guard by
the public knowledge of her pro-abortion record.
Further research
indicates that Paulos has “gay” connections of his own, not entirely surprising
in itself, given his background in the arts, albeit, the sacred arts.
For example, he held a
solo benefit art display for AIDS relief at Most Holy Redeemer Church, a “gay”
“inclusive” parish in the Castro District of San Francisco. MHR made national
headlines last year when it was discovered that the parish hall had been rented
out to the blasphemous in-your-face homosexual/cross dressing “nuns” known as
the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.
In 1993, Paulos produced
A Seeing Heart, a video on the artist’s life and art. Featured on the video was
Jesuit priest Fr. William Hart McNichols, the famed iconographer whose sacred
works of art adorn Catholic churches around the world including the Shrine of
St. Bernadette in
McNichols “came out” to
the world as a “gay” priest on the pages of Time magazine on May 12, 2002. He
lamented that “gays” were being used as a scapegoat for the clerical pederasty
scandal in the Church. One of his Marian icons is titled “St. Francis and St.
Aloysius bring people with AIDS to Our Lady of Guadeloupe and El Santa Nińo de
Atocha,” in which Our Lady is surrounded by a rainbow — the universal symbol of
“gay” liberation and solidarity.
Contact the Missionaries of Charity
Since Paulos, on behalf
of the Mother Teresa Awards Board of Directors, has not publicly expressed any
remorse regarding the Gramick award, there appears to be little sense in
contacting him directly for a redress of grievances.
Instead, readers would
be better advised to send their protests to the
The mailing address for
Sr. Mary Nirmala, mc, Superior General, is: Missionaries of Charity, 54A,
Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose Rd., Calcutta, India 700 016.
It’s time to let the
Homosexual Collective and its apologists, within and without the Church, know
that their open season on gullible and uninformed Catholics is over!
Notes:
1. See Mother Teresa Awards
website at http://www.cashabu.com/mta/index .asp
2 Joseph W. Houle, The Road to
Emmaus - Daily Encounters with the Risen Christ (Washington, D.C.: Emmaus
Press, 1989).
3. Robert Nugent, ed., A
Challenge to Love — Gay and Lesbian Catholics in the Church (New York:
Crossroad, 1980).
4. Donna Steichen, Ungodly Rage
— The Hidden Face of Catholic Feminism (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1992).
5. “Sister Jeannine Gramick
honored as Mother Teresa laureate,” The Criterion, December 18, 2006.
“Profession of Faith” *
With firm faith I believe that God, in creating human beings
as male and female, has created them equal as persons and complementary as male
and female. In marriage, they are united by God and become “one flesh” (Gen.
2:24), in a union that is by its very nature ordered to the procreation and
education of offspring (cf. Gen. 1:28) and to the good of the spouses (cf.
Gaudium et spes 12, 48-51; Familiaris consortio 11-15; Mulieris dignitatem 6-7;
Codex Iuris Canonici can 1055; Catechism of the Catholic Church 371-372).
I firmly accept and hold that every baptized person,
“clothed with Christ” (Gal. 3:27), is called to live the virtue of chastity
according to his particular state of life; married persons are called to live
conjugal chastity; all others must practice chastity in the form of continence.
Sexual intercourse may take place only within marriage (cf. Persona humana 7,
11-12; Familiaris consortio 11; Catechism of the Catholic Church 2348-2350).
I also firmly accept and hold that homosexual acts are
always objectively evil. On the solid foundation of a constant biblical
testimony, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity (cf. Gen.
19:1-29; Lev. 18:22, 10:13; Rom. 1:24-27; 1 Cor. 6:10; 1 Tim. 1:10). Tradition
has always declared that homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered (cf.
Persona humana 8; Homosexualitatis problema 3-8; Catechism of the Catholic
Church 2357, 2396).
I adhere with religious submission of will and intellect to
the teaching that the homosexual inclination, though not in itself a sin,
constitutes a tendency towards behavior that is intrinsically evil, and
therefore must be considered objectively disordered (homosexualitatis problema
3; Catechism of the Catholic Church 2358).
I also adhere with religious submission of will and
intellect to the teaching that, while homosexual persons must be received with
respect and protected from all unjust forms of discrimination, no one can claim
any right to engage in homosexual behavior (cf. Persona humana 8;
Homosexualitatis problema 9-10; Catechism of the Catholic Church 2358).
Moreover, I also adhere with religious submission of will
and intellect to the teaching that homosexual persons, by the virtues of
self-mastery which lead to inner freedom, by prayer and sacramental grace and
other forms of assistance, can advance toward Christian perfection
(Homosexualitatis problema 12; Catechism of the Catholic Church 2359).