June 1, 2009 - Three years ago Dr. Morris Wortman watched a presentation by Deacon Thomas Driscoll, of Holy Family Parish in Rochester.  That evening Driscoll outlined the assertion that Pius XII and the Catholic Church were complicit and even approving of the Nazi Holocaust.  Dr. Wortman, an outspoken politically active abortionist and son of Holocaust survivors, saw Deacon Driscoll’s lecture and conceived the idea of an interfaith program along the same lines.  Thus began the joint effort of the Rochester Diocese and Temple B’rith Kodesh.  This new team then enlisted the help of Catholic Deacon, former family court judge and city councilman, Anthony Sciolino.

The final fourteen-part indoctrination that Wortman initiated, “2000-Year Road to the Holocaust,” accuses the Catholic Church of depriving Jews of their basic rights as citizens, fomenting hatred of Jews, and encouraging their persecution since the time of Christ.  It attributes much responsibility directly to Popes throughout the ages and presents a re-hash of the recent stream of phony indictments against Pope Pius XII.  Nothing is mentioned of the history of Papal support for Jews or of any intervention on their behalf against injustices up to and including the heroic efforts of Pope Pius.

The following Anti-Catholic rhetoric is the surprising work of the two Catholic deacons, Driscoll and Sciolino:

• Granting equal rights to Jews violated church doctrine, which mandated their “marginalization” as punishment for the arch-crime of deicide and their continued refusal to embrace Christianity. 

• Anti-Judaism remained an integral part of doctrine and practice. As in the past, Jews were scapegoated for events that adversely affected church, state and society.

• In 1820 and again in 1831, popular revolts erupted against papal authority in the Papal States. Its reactionary worldview shaken again, the Vatican’s siege mentality continued. Increasingly, Jews were viewed as the personification of all the ills of modern times.

• By the 16th century, the papacy had established supreme authority over the whole of Western Christendom.

• (French Revolution ) “Radical” ideas, as reflected in the slogan “liberty, fraternity, equality,” tore at the fabric of papal authoritarianism.

Abe Foxman of the anti-defamation league is quoted at the program’s Holocaust Road website:

For almost twenty centuries…the Church was the arch-enemy of the Jews, our most powerful and relentless oppressor and the world’s greatest force for the dissemination of anti-Semitic beliefs and the instigation of the acts of hatred. Many of the same people who operated the gas chambers worshiped in Christian churches on Sunday…The question of the complicity of the church in the murder of Jews is a living one. We must understand the truths of history.

The Holocaust Road presentation draws mainly from the discredited writers James Carroll Constantine’s Sword, John Cornwell Hitler’s Pope, and Daniel Goldhagen A Moral Reckoning:  The Role of the Catholic Church in the Holocaust and its Unfulfilled Duty of Repair.  The broad accusations, poor scholarship and conspiratorial speculations made in these popular works have been carefully refuted by Rabbi David Dalin and Ronald Rychlak.

Deacon Thomas Driscoll, author of the original Holocaust presentation, lectures at St. Bernard School of Theology and Ministry.  That institution is dedicated to providing advanced degrees, training and background for future Catholic clergy and parish staff.  Noted Catholic dissident Sr. Joan Chittister, OSB, is scheduled to speak at the school summer 2009. 

Deacon Anthony Sciolino is a former Monroe County family court judge.  While deciding the fates of spouses and children he made a key ruling advancing the legal status of same-sex parents.  In 1993 Judge John W. Sweeny in Putnam County denied a request by a lesbian woman to adopt her partner’s biological child.  That court declared that domestic relations law does not provide for adoptions by a same sex partner.  The following December, Judge Sciolino ruled that such an adoption was not prohibited by New York law and approved an adoption by a lesbian partner.  In this ruling Deacon Sciolino treated the lesbian couple as two unrelated individuals, waiving the rights of the biological parent(s), ignoring the same sex and homosexual relationship of the parties, and set critical precedent.  Commenting on his ruling, Sciolino stated, “It is unrealistic to pretend that children can only be successfully reared in an idealized concept of family, the product of nostalgia for a time long past.” 

Dr. Morris Wortman, founder of Holocaust Road, is a fierce defender of women’s and reproductive rights.  An unabashed abortion provider, Wortman is actively lobbying for  the repeal of the conscience laws protecting health care providers from being forced to give abortion-related assistance.  Dr. Wortman has performed abortions since 1973. He founded the Center for Menstrual Disorders and Reproductive Choice in 1986, which provides a full range of women’s reproductive health services including abortion and sterilization. Dr. Wortman was honored at the annual National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League luncheon celebrating the 26th anniversary of Roe v. Wade in 1999.  He is also an active member of Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health, an organization which supports policies that promote reproductive healthcare for all, including increased access to birth control, emergency contraception, and abortion services, as well as comprehensive sex education.

Why is the Bishop of Rochester, Matthew Clark, giving diocesan approval to a blatantly anti-Catholic production that involves an outspoken, politically active abortionist and gay adoption judge?

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