A Press Release from HLI

Fr. Euteneuer asks Bishops to Fire Scandalous Movie Reviewer

FRONT ROYAL, VA — The Rev. Thomas J. Euteneuer, STL, president of Human Life International, (HLI) today called on the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) to fire Harry Forbes, director of the Office for Film and Broadcasting of the Conference, for his positive reviews of immoral or anti-Catholic films on the Conference’s Catholic News Service (CNS).

Father Euteneuer said, “I refuse to believe that Harry Forbes, who gave such glowing remarks to the homosexual promo film Brokeback Mountain and the atheist indoctrination flick The Golden Compass, speaks in the name of our bishops. An employee who shames our bishops with reviews of this sort should be fired. He now has a track record and is not worthy to be a public spokesperson for any Catholic let alone the national conference of bishops. I urgently ask the bishops to correct this anomaly at the headquarters and restore the dignity of the conference, which has been sullied by this man.

“There seems to be a decades-old pattern of embarrassment on the part of some USCCB subordinates and other lay officials when it comes to the teachings of the Catholic Church. All too often these scandals involve matters of homosexuality. In 1987 we had the document ‘The Many Faces of AIDS’ which was problematic on the use of condoms, then in 1997 the scandalous document ‘Always our Children’ so distorted Catholic teaching that it had to be rewritten after its release.”

Father Euteneuer continued, “Then in December, 2005, Forbes’s review of Brokeback Mountain with its original ‘L’ rating for ‘Limited’ had to be corrected and reclassified as ‘O’ for ‘Morally Objectionable.’ The bishops have been embarrassed by their staff like clockwork for almost 20 years. Now, in December 2007, the bishops have had to withdraw Forbes’s review of The Golden Compass from CNS after publication. After major scandals involving homosexual clergy, do we really need their movie reviewer now tiptoeing around hostile atheism?

“Let Harry Forbes be the sign that the bishops can break the cycle of subtle and overt dissent among their subordinates. They should show him the door and require all other employees to take an Oath of Fidelity. That will separate the wheat from the chaff,” concluded Fr. Euteneuer.

I'm surprised that an Oath of Fidelity is not mandatory for employees of the bureaucracy of the USCCB...but then again, a mandatum is still not required of theology professors in Catholic colleges...go figure.