The Girl Scouts are un-Christian. This essentially is the conclusion of the Archdiocese of Kansas City (AKC), Kansas, which announced Monday that it’s finally severing ties with the increasingly secular, left-wing group.
Kansas City archbishop Joseph F. Naumann announced the decision in a statement in which he wrote that the Girl Scouts USA (GSUSA) is “no longer a compatible partner” for the Catholic Church and that it elevates role models who “stand in stark opposition to what we believe.” Consequently, AKC parishes will now be chartering troops of the American Heritage Girls, a Christ-centered scouting alternative.
The archbishop also “called for an end to Girl Scout cookie sales in the archdiocese,” reports the Kansas City Star. “‘No Girl Scout cookie sales should occur in Catholic Schools or on parish property after the 2016-2017 school year,’ he said in a letter to priests in January.”
Naumann stated he would give pastors the choice of making this transition away from the GSUSA “quickly, or to, over the next several years, ‘graduate’ the Scouts currently in the program.” But the transition will be made because, as the archbishop points out, “hundreds of hours” of staff research and dialoguing with GSUSA figures and others have found serious problems with the organization.
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The issue is that the Girl Scouts have become increasingly secular and un-Christian as time has progressed. It’s not just that in 1993 the group voted to allow members to replace “God” in the pledge with other words (so you could swear to Gaia or Beelzebub, apparently). It’s that they’ve taken a hard left turn, even advocating prenatal infanticide.
As Archbishop Naumann pointed out:
The national organization, for example, contributes more than a million dollars each year to the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts (WAGGS), an organization tied to International Planned Parenthood [PP] and its advocacy for legislation that includes both contraception and abortion as preventive health care for women.
Margaret Sanger [a eugenicist and PP’s founder], Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem are frequently held up in materials as role models for young Scouts. These as well as many other “role models” in the GSUSA’s new manuals and web content not only do not reflect our Catholic worldview but stand in stark opposition to what we believe.
Note that PP is so radically inhuman that its doctors were caught on video in 2015 talking about selling babies’ body parts as if they merely were inventory to be used to turn a profit.
It isn’t just PP, either. As The New American reported in 2014 quoting the website CookieCott, “Across the country, local Girl Scout councils honor and promote abortion rights advocates and pro-abortion politicians; suggest girls work with organizations that fight for abortion on demand; and invite girls to attend events related to abortion rights advocacy and other controversial issues.”
The GSUSA has also allowed boys claiming to be girls (so-called transgenders) to join the organization.
Though this certainly should be enough to discredit the group, its trespasses go further still. Just consider a GSUSA curriculum called “Journeys,” through which girls have learned “about stone labyrinths, world peace, global warming, yoga, avatars, smudging incense, Zen gardens and feminist, communist and lesbian role models,” reported WND.com’s Chelsea Schilling in 2009. And according to the Catholic News Agency, which provided more details in 2012:
The “Journey” book “Your Voice Your World: The Power of Advocacy” spotlights numerous lesbians and LGBT advocates as “Voices for Good” — role models for young Scouts.
And the 4th and 5th grade “Journeys” book, “Agent of Change,” highlights author Marjane Satrapi, a young Iranian woman with “real moxie,” whose life — detailed in her comic book-style autobiography, “Persepolis” — will “inspire” Girl Scouts. But in Persepolis, Satrapi crudely discusses men’s genitalia (even with her own father), calls nuns prostitutes, gets explicit lessons about sex from a promiscuous friend, lives with eight homosexual men and attempts suicide twice. Offensive illustrations and shocking sexual dialogue complete the picture. For ten-year olds?
… Another “Journey” book, “GIRLtopia,” encourages 9th and 10th graders, “to imagine a perfect world — for girls.” It recommends the book, “The Gate to Women’s Country,” by Sheri Tepper (former Executive Director of Rocky Mountain Planned Parenthood), as a utopian journey into “a future world where women spend their lives learning and discovering lost knowledge.” That’s a deceptive gloss on a book laced with obscenities, revolting dialogue, and lewd descriptions, and which presents men as violent barbarians. The book graphically describes women having sex with random warriors at a semi-annual Carnival, undergoing brutal, demeaning genital exams, and breeding out violence by compulsive sterilization and selective prostitution. The only good men are castrated men. This is Girl Scout utopia?
Archbishop Naumann alluded to such things in his statement. Mentioning “completely age-inappropriate material” that was removed from the Journey series (and what wasn’t removed?) at the AKC’s behest, he wrote that while he was grateful, “it is disturbing such an intervention on our part was necessary. We prefer to partner with youth organizations that share our values and vision for youth ministry, not ones that we have to monitor constantly to protect our children from being misled and misinformed.”
Speaking of misinformation, you won’t hear any of the above facts from the mainstream media. What you will get, from the Kansas City Star, for example, is much ink devoted to a few parents upset about the archbishop’s decision and who pout about “discrimination.” It’s reminiscent of the woman who sued a Catholic hospital because they wouldn’t perform “sex-reassignment surgery,” the parents who sued a Catholic school so their daughter could play boys’ sports, and the San Francisco city supervisors who condemned San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone for seeking to uphold Catholic teaching in diocesan schools.
It’s a sign of the times: We once would name cities after Saint Francis, angels (Los Angeles), or the body of Christ (Corpus Christi), but now people are shocked when Christian organizations act, well, as Christian organizations. As Barna Group research company president David Kinnaman put it, dedication to Jesus is “a mile wide and an inch deep” — and most are thus surprised when encountering a well of faith.
Also note that other churches had already severed ties with the GSUSA and, sometimes, with the Boy Scouts as well. And as traditionalist entities rightly abandon the two organizations — leaving their market increasingly secular and left-wing — they will move even further Left. This will push even more traditionalists into the open arms of American Heritage Girls, Trail Life USA (a Boy Scouts alternative), and other, more moral, scouting options.
It’s all part of the growing, relativism-born polarization in America. Some complain of this, such as a mother the Kansas City Star cited as saying that Archbishop Naumann’s actions do “nothing but divide us.” But perhaps she should note Jesus’ words: “Do not think that I came to send peace upon earth: I came not to send peace, but the sword. For I came to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother.”
Not everyone will embrace Truth — and division is vastly preferable to unity in darkness.
Image: Girl Scout ad
