Priest Chides Conservatives on Welfare

The Sacramento-based spokesman for California’s 26 Roman Catholic bishops has criticized public officials who are against abortions but oppose government programs enabling poor women to provide for themselves and their babies.

“It is dishonest and unjust to rail self-righteously against abortion while opposing or allowing to go unfunded such programs as prenatal and postnatal nutritional services, educational support services for adolescent parents and adoption and foster care services,” Father William J. Wood, the Jesuit executive director of the California Catholic Conference, said.

Wood spoke Wednesday in the state capital. He challenged “peace and justice liberals” to re-examine their reasons for defending legal abortions, but he directed most of his comments to “traditionalist and conservative friends.”

To the latter, Wood said: “If we truly oppose abortion, we will not content ourselves with working toward legislation that cuts off public funding for abortions. We will work for legislation and promote programs that will provide alternatives for pregnant women.”

Citing the California lieutenant governor’s 1985 report on “The Feminization of Poverty,” the priest said, “Besides her many other problems, a poor woman who becomes pregnant whether she is married or not often sees abortion as the only way out for herself and the child she is carrying.”

Wood said the conference will be critically examining the state budget in terms of whether government programs facilitate alternatives to abortion.

He said liberals have laudably defended equal rights for women and decried situations that oppress women. But he said they often ignore “the real source of oppression” when a woman is faced with an unwanted pregnancy--”irresponsible males allowed to do whatever they want to women in an oversexed, permissive and male-dominated society.” Permissive abortion laws allow males to escape accountability, he said.

Archbishop Roger Mahony of Los Angeles and two other high-ranking U.S. Roman Catholic leaders plan a mission to Haiti next month to consult with bishops of that impoverished nation, where Catholics and the government have been increasingly at odds.

The visit will be the latest by U.S. bishops to colleagues in Latin American nations, including Cuba, Nicaragua and El Salvador in the last year. Mahony, traveling as a member of the American bishops’ social development and world peace committee, will be accompanied by Bishop Anthony J. Bevilacqua of Pittsburgh, who handles migrant concerns, and Bishop Daniel P. Reilly of Norwich, Conn., who oversees Catholic Relief Services operations.

Representatives of the bishops’ U.S. Catholic Conference frequently testify before Congress on issues involving American foreign policy.

The bishops’ Feb. 3-6 visit to Haiti, where most of the population is Catholic, will come shortly after the Reagan Administration is scheduled to announce whether it will recertify that Haiti is making progress on human-rights matters--a condition for renewal of about $55 million in U.S. aid.

The bishops’ national conference has not taken a formal position on that question. However, Pax Christi, an international Catholic organization headed by Bishop Thomas Gumbleton of Detroit, recently criticized the government as repressive and urged the U.S. government to deny further aid.

Religion in Media will honor the Rev. Jess Moody, senior pastor of Van Nuys First Baptist Church, as clergyman of the year Feb. 20 at its ninth annual Angels Awards at the Ambassador Hotel. The Los Angeles-based group gives out the statuettes to film, TV, publishing and other media organizations adjudged to combine quality with high moral content.

Among other individuals receiving gold angels for public service is Catholic layman Carl Karcher, founder of the Carl’s Jr. fast-food chain, “for service to God and mankind” through volunteer work, Religion in Media announced.