Why I can't support CRS

Several years ago a news story broke about a CRS executive who was charged with assault after running over a pro-life protester in Washington DC.  While laughing. In the first link above CRS makes mention of several other questionable hires, but I want to focus on Ms. Glassman for this post.

Last week the news broke about a VP of CRS who is in a gay "marriage".  CRS is said to be in "deliberations" over the matter.

"Well," you say, "that's only two employees.  CRS is a big organization. Surely in any large organization you can expect a few rogue operators," and that's fair.  I don't know how many staffers CRS has but it's surely in the thousands.  The various scandals that they find themselves in suggest a more systematic problem but I'd like to focus on just these two.

Let's say that you found yourself working for an organization that upheld ideas you disagree with.  I don't mean that the organization gives to charities that you don't care about, or their United Way appeals get on your nerves (been there, done that).  I mean the company values something that you find abhorrent.  Let's say the founder and executive committee is made up of neo-Nazis.  Let's say there are posters up around the building advocating The Final Solution, or Racial Purity.  Let's say that all the executives are distinctly Arian in complexion.  The break areas are littered with anti-Semitic literature.  Perhaps the men tend to have little Hitler mustaches and wear brown shirts.  But you, as a good God fearing American whose father went to war to fight such evil can't abide it.

Let's tone it down a bit.  Maybe it's not obvious that the company is run by neo-Nazis.  Maybe you just notice as you walk down the halls that a few of the employees have small momentos of Nazism. Perhaps one of the women has a little swastika necklace.  Or you see a reproduction of some of Hitler's watercolor paintings around.  Or you sit in on a discussion about a candidate for an open position and his racial background is discussed in frank detail.  And eventually you figure it out.

Would you stay?  Once you knew what was going on, how many days would you stick around?  Would you want your friends and family knowing that you worked for the Nazis in town?  Would it bother you?

Now let's say your Ms Glassman.  Your advocacy of abortion is so pronounced that you proudly carry the banner of the pro-abortion political party in a (minor) election and ram your car into a crowd of pro-life marches, laughing while your foot's on the accelerator.  Now consider that you work in a Catholic charity that "upholds Catholic principals" to quote CRS's webpage.  Perhaps you see pro-life posters on the wall. Emails come out announcing a carpool to the annual March for Life.  People have Baby Banks sitting on their desks.    People talk about praying the rosary outside an abortion clinic during their lunch hour.  Do you stay?  Can you tolerate such an environment?

Let's say you're Mr Estridge.  You are living the gay lifestyle so completely that you go off an get married to your gay partner.  But you work for a Catholic organization.  Maybe you get emails about some speaker coming to the area to talk about religious liberty.  People organize letter writing campaigns to their elected officials to oppose bills that would redefine marriage.  You see marketing material from the National Organization for Marriage sitting around.  Can you handle that? Do you stay?  For 16 years? And work your way to the post of VP?

My example of Ms Glassman may be extreme, but Mr Estridge's cohort frequently compare people who uphold the Catholic understanding of marriage as bigots and haters.  The Southern Poverty Law Center branded NOM as a hate group.  If you work for such a group, but enter into a gay union, doesn't that seem a little inconsistent?

In fact, it seems more likely that Ms Glassman and Mr Estridge stayed with CRS because they didn't see any inconsistency in their position and CRS's position.  They saw no "provocative" posters or literature around.  CRS, for them, was Home on the Range: where never is heard a discouraging word.  The "Catholic" in "CRS" was so completely suppressed it never caused a ripple of consternation. In fact, the Catholics that they met in CRS may have been a detriment to the Church's mission: "Oh, don't worry. We're not that kind of Catholic."  Meaning they are the same kind of Catholic that currently occupy the halls of power in DC: Biden, Pelosi, Sotomayor and the rest.

So I can't support CRS.  I don't care if they hire people who aren't Catholic.  But I expect the environment to have so much Catholic identity that someone who wants to run over pro-lifers wouldn't feel comfortable working there. I want the people who work there to be so aligned with the Bishops that anyone opposed to the Bishops' agenda won't feel comfortable working there.

And that's clearly not the case today.