Sister Jeannine Gramick and the Mother Teresa AwardsIn 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 Albuquerque, NM.
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.
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, 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 Web site 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 ViceIn 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 New Ways, she had plenty of experience in radical "gay" politics having helped establish Dignity/Baltimore, Dignity/Washington, D.C., and Dignity/Philadelphia and the Conference for Catholic Lesbians in the 1970s.
Together with New Ways co-founder Fr. Robert Nugent, a Salvatorian priest, 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 New Ways "gay" political fronts including Sisters in Gay Ministry Associated, the Center for Homophobia Education, and Catholic Parents Network.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 Christ, 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 Quixote Center, a multi-million pro-Marxist, pro-abortion, pro-homosexual organization based in Mt. Rainier, MD, that eventually gave "birth" to New Ways.
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.'
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."
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 Vatican or the American hierarchy, but from faithful Catholic laymen.
In 1977, Catholic faithful pressured the Congregation for the Institutes of Consecrated Life and Secular Institutes (CICL) in Rome into ordering the Salvatorians and School Sisters of Notre Dame to conduct the first of three "internal studies" of Gramick's and Nugent's pro-homosexual activities.
Predictably, since the superiors themselves were actively involved in funding and promoting New Ways, the investigations came to nothing.
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 New Ways office were told that Sister Gramick was on a one-year leave of absence and Father Nugent was no longer connected with New Ways, but these statements were not true.
As late as 1984, both Gramick and Nugent were still active with the New Ways front organization, the Catholic Coalition for Gay Civil Rights, and Nugent still maintained his Dover Street residence in Baltimore with avowed homosexual Father Paul Thomas, Chairman of the Board of Directors of New Ways.
Both Gramick and Nugent continued their pro-homosexual writings, lectures, and retreats.Investigation by the Maida Commission and the CFDIn March 1988, the Congregation for Religious and Secular Institutes announced the formation of a three member independent U.S.-based committee headed by Bishop Adam Joseph Maida, then Bishop of Green Bay, Wis., 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 New Ways road show continued.
On October 4, 1994 the Maida Commission issued its final report praising New Ways for its "ministry" to homosexuals, but noting that certain aspects of Gramick's and Nugent's ministry to homosexuals was "problematic."
Like previous "investigations," the Maida Commission inquiry came to nothing. 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" 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 New Ways; or the dozens of NCCB/USCC (USCCB) officials who have supported New Ways, to sign the document.
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" 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, which 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 Web site 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 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."
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 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 Albuquerque, NM.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 Nio de Atocha," in which Our Lady is surrounded by a rainbow — the universal symbol of "gay" liberation and solidarity.
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