Letter to the Buffalo News on F. Kissling

"Truth in labelling" appears to suffer a shameful death when it comes to stories about dissenters active in the Catholic Church. The News recently gave front-page prominence to this fatality.

It carried the Reuters column on the Vatican's opposition to the anti-family culture of death being promoted by radical groups at the U.N.'s Conference on Women at Beijing.

Frances Kissling, president of Catholics for a Free Choice (CFFC), blasted the Vatican intervention. Quoting the CFFC as a reputable and authoritative source of Catholic teaching is like quoting a hypothetical "Communists for Free Choice" (CFFC) — a stupid contradiction in terms.

Kisslings's CFFC is no more Catholic than the Man in the Moon (MIM). Here are the facts:

• — CFFC shares an address and funding sources with the National Abortion Federation.
• — Kissling was director of one of the first legal abortion clinics in New York City and operated illegal abortuaries in Mexico and Rome.
• — From CFFC's own statistics alleging a 1983 membership of 5,000 and actual contributions ($221,900), the periodical CATHOLIC WORLD REPORT demonstrated that CFFC actually had less than 450 members or .00076 percent of America's 60 million Catholics.
• — This same periodical (January 1994) proceeded to document a rare moment of truth in Kissling's chronic duplicity. When she joined CFFC, Kissling stated that she no longer considered herself a Catholic.

It is astonishing that some Media should continue to quote CFFC as a reliable source for anything Catholic.