R. Cort Kirkwood

six times to Planned Parenthood
(Posted Oct 29, 2007 www.RemnantNewspaper.com)  Of the major GOP presidential candidates for 2008, joked Ann Romney, wife of the Mormon Republican, only Mitt has had one wife.  She was poking fun at the marital monkeyshines of her husband’s opponents, who boast seven wives between three of them, and a little fun at her own religion. But beneath Mrs. Romney's quip lies an element of unspoken truth: The GOP candidates are a randy herd, and one of them lopes to libertine and beyond.

That would be Rudy Giuliani—“America’s Mayor”—whose marital and family life is, in the couch doctor’s patois, dysfunctional. Not that Giuliani is alone. The GOP offers voters John McCain and Fred Thompson, both divorced, and nearly gave us Newt Gingrich, a thoroughly despicable man. Gingrich isn’t running, so of the three main candidates, Giuliani is the worst.

He is not only a fascistic thug but also an adulterer who openly defies the teachings of his Faith, even as he expects members of that Faith to vote for him because he is, or so he claims, a member of that Faith. He is also, as radio preacher Sean Hannity recently argued, the lesser of two evils, the other evil being Hillary Clinton. True, perhaps, but in voting for the less of two evils, one still votes for ... evil.

 Hannity laid out his arguments in radio and television interviews with evangelical tub drummer James Dobson, who has stated with iron conviction that he will not vote for Giuliani. Hannity, a Catholic who advocates contraception (and even abortion in certain cases) begs to differ. Differ he might, but Catholics must be wary of Hannity’s argument, lest they wind up helping elect a heterodox hedonist and leftist.

Giuliani's Personal Life

Before tackling Giuliani, let’s reprise the records of the other Republicans. Newt Gingrich is the most loathsome; so be thankful he bowed out. He handed his first wife divorce papers while she suffered with cancer, and he conducted numerous adulterous affairs, including one with the young woman who eventually became his third wife. Because he isn’t running, it isn’t worth rehashing Gingrich’s carnal activities. It suffices to say that intelligent, grown men of propriety and dignity don’t behave as Gingrich has. A father or brother somewhere along the way should have knocked his teeth down his throat. He’s a cad, and even worse, a hubristic intellectualoid, a Hillary Clinton with testosterone, who really thinks his crackpot, futuristic nonsense will save the world.

McCain divorced his first wife after returning from captivity in North Vietnam, then married a beer heiress and bullied his way into Congress. But at least he accepts responsibility for the failed marriage. After his divorce, Thompson stayed single for some 30 years before he remarried. So these two are relatively stable men who did not construct the bizarre, polyamorous marital careers of Giuliani, America’s incarnation of Il Duce. He’s a small man, columnist Jimmy Breslin said, in search of a balcony. The White House will do fine.

He is unqualified for the presidency for one apodictic reason: He’s a leftist, apostate Catholic. He would finish ruining the country, and, because of his cheeky public sinning, would scandalize Catholic and Protestant faithful alike.

Public Scandal

Giuliani’s record as a brutal, unjust and dishonest federal prosecutor in New York is less important for voters than the issues that follow, but that record is still worth a few sentences. He railroaded financier Michael Milkin for crimes he did not commit, and as syndicated columnist Paul Craig Roberts reported, “Giuliani was unknown until in search of name recognition he staged a storm trooper assault on the financial firm Princeton/Newport involving fifty federal marshals outfitted with automatic weapons and bulletproof vests. On another occasion, he had two New York investment bankers hauled off their trading floor in handcuffs. Giuliani’s victims had done nothing and were exonerated.” Yet nothing happened to Giuliani for this fascistic prosecutorial misconduct tantamount to the racially-motivated and rogue machinations of inquisitor Mike Nifong against three innocent lacrosse players at Duke University.

As well, America’s Mayor turned New York into a sanctuary city for illegal immigrants. As Heather MacDonald reported in City Journal magazine, he went to the U.S. Supreme Court to fight a federal ukase, passed in 1996, that said cities could not forbid their employees from helping the Immigration and Naturalization Service. This was before the carnage of 9-11, and “the INS, he claimed, with what turned out to be grotesque irony, only aims to ‘terrorize people.’ Though he lost in court, he remained defiant to the end. On September 5, 2001, his handpicked charter-revision committee ruled that New York could still require that its employees keep immigration information confidential to preserve trust between immigrants and government. Six days later, several visa-overstayers participated in the most devastating attack on the city and the country in history.”

But on to the more important matters of the Faith.

Giuliani is a public adulterer. But unlike other adulterers who marry after a divorce, the former mayor of New York and leading GOP presidential candidate carried on his scandalous public behavior not only in front of his constituents in New York but also the entire nation via the national news media, which reported his carnal activities in detail.

A brief run-down of Giuliani’s marital adventures includes his first marriage to his second cousin, Regina Peruggi. After 14 years of marriage, he tossed her overboard and obtained a declaration of nullity from the Church on the grounds of affinity; i.e., because he married a second cousin. The man who arranged the dissolution of the marriage was Monsignor Alan Placa, an old high school chum. As The Village Voice reported in June, “this was ironic, because it was Placa himself who had advised the couple before the wedding that they didn’t need a dispensation. At least that was the recollection of Giuliani’s mother Helen in a taped interview. Helen says that Peruggi was offended by the annulment, and adds that her former daughter-in-law ‘went to diocesan headquarters to fight it.’”

If that sounds like a fellow named Henry VIII and his martial contretemps with Catherine of Aragon, it should, except that Peruggi wasn’t banished to a dark, dank castle as the Princess Dowager until she turned in for the Eternal Dirt Nap.

In any event, Giuliani next wed Donna Hanover, with Placa officiating at their Catholic wedding. That marriage lasted 18 years, until Giuliani began yet another affair, this one with Judith Nathan. The adultery of “America’s Mayor” was so flagrant that the mayor’s wife had to seek a restraining order to keep Nathan out of Gracie Mansion, the mayor’s house. She accused Giuliani of “open and notorious adultery.” Giuliani moved out of the mansion to live with two homosexual friends, and Placa, by then defrocked, attended the civil ceremony that united Giuliani and Nathan in unholy matrimony. With this “marriage,” the pair has six between them.

Pervert Protector

The obvious question is why Placa attended Giuliani’s third wedding without his Roman collar. That’s because Placa stands accused of molesting four boys. Even worse, he was the man who handled the accusations of this kind for the Rockville Centre Diocese on Long Island in the first place, meaning the proverbial fox was in charge of the hen house. He used the position, a Suffolk County grand jury reported in 2003, to conceal not only his crimes but also those committed by other priests. The grand jury report calls him “Priest F.”

Among other things, the grand jury report says, “he appears to have made feeble attempts at abusing a boy who was an alter [sic] server…[details deleted by Remnant Editor]”

Priest F was transferred to a school, where he was “cautious, but relentless in his pursuit of victims. He fondled boys over their clothes, usually in his office. Always, his actions were hidden by a poster, newspaper or a book. ... Everyone in the school knew to stay away from Priest F.” He once molested a boy behind a poster denouncing the Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion.

Because the statute of limitations for these crimes has elapsed, Placa cannot be charged or punished, but one of his accusers says Placa continued his homosexual predations until the accuser threatened to kill Placa.

Now, Placa works for Giuliani Partners LLC, a consulting firm Giuliani created just three months after 9-11, which collected, The Washington Post reported, $100 million in fees in five years. Naturally, Giuliani got rich, very rich, and very quick. This invites the question of why “America’s Mayor,” a man suddenly bloviating about religion, culture and “family values,” keeps company with a priest living under the cloud of accusations. In Giuliani’s world, only highly successful and wealthy but innocent financiers are the targets worth pursuing. And with federal marshals armed to the teeth, no less.

Abortion

Giuliani has always been clear on the abortion question…until recently. “He always achieved a 100 percent rating on the National Abortion Rights Action League’s questionnaire,” The Village Voice reported, “agreeing with the group on every nuance of the issue in 1993, 1997, and 2000.” The pro-aborts love Giuliani. They consider him a soul-mate. Along with receiving NARAL’s imprimatur, the former mayor held three anniversary celebrations for the Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion and hopped between the sheets with Planned Parenthood, which his regime showered with millions of taxpayer dollars.

Giuliani, who vowed to pay for his daughter’s abortion if necessary, may appear to have changed his position recently with such campaign trail applause lines as “I hate abortions” or “I would encourage someone not to take that option,” or “I am open to seeking ways of limiting abortion.” He’s even gone farther than this, much to the consternation, undoubtedly, of his pro-abort confederates. Repealing Roe vs. Wade would be “OK,” and he flatly declared that abortion is “morally wrong.” But this becomes so much twaddle when he follows with: “I believe you have to respect their [women’s] viewpoint and give them a level of choice. I would grant women the right to make that choice.”

Still, he can sound like Dobson himself, The Village Voice observed: “Using direct-mail gurus like conservative kingmaker Richard Viguerie, Giuliani spent $5 million on a fundraising appeal to Christian conservatives”, which bashed Hillary Clinton for “‘hostility toward America’s religious traditions,’ depicting her as a soldier in a ‘relentless 30-year war’ against that ‘religious heritage.’ Not only had Giuliani never mentioned this ‘war’ during the first six years of his mayoralty — or at any other time in a very public career — but for the first time he indicated that he favored posting the Ten Commandments in public schools and supported school prayer. ‘I think America needs more faith and more respect for religious traditions,’ he concluded, ‘not less’— one more reference to Clinton, and one more personal mission he’d never mentioned to New Yorkers.”

Our Jewish brethren have a word for this: chutzpah.

The Mayor’s Private Faith

One question, of course, is how Giuliani answers reporters who wonder how his alleged faith squares with the scandalous, anti-Christian, anti-Catholic public policies he proposes. Well, it doesn’t. Last month, the Holy Father denounced Mexican politicians who support abortion. Reporters naturally asked what Giuliani thought of this, and he didn’t disappoint: “Issues like that are for me and my confessor,” he glibly replied. “I’m a Catholic, and that’s the way I resolve those issues, personally and privately.”

When Archbishop Raymond Burke of St. Louis said he would deny Holy Communion to Giuliani, “America’s Mayor” unbosomed this riposte to the Associated Press: “Archbishops have a right to their opinion, you know. There’s freedom of religion in this country. There’s no established religion, and archbishops have a right to their opinion. Everybody has a right to their opinion.”

So for Giuliani, a man The Washington Post called a “devout Catholic” even as he defended the “right to choose,” when the Vicar of Christ and one of his princes expound the dogmatic, magisterial teaching of Holy Mother Church, they are expressing mere “opinion.” Not truth, just opinion. For Giuliani, it’s “personal.”

But of course, Giuliani is not a devout Catholic. In 1993, he admonished a reporter for inquiring after his attendance at Mass, then admitted he attends only “occasionally” because he was not a “strict Catholic.” As the Associated Press reported, “when a voter in Iowa asked him in August if he was a ‘traditional, practicing Roman Catholic,’ he said: ‘My religious affiliation, my religious practices and the degree to which I am a good or not-so-good Catholic, I prefer to leave to the priests.’”

Well, the priests have spoken. So has the Vicar of Christ. And so, of course, has Giuliani, and not just in words. His invalid marriage to Nathan is public, contumacious adultery, and the public policies he has pursued and proposes on homosexuality and abortion contravene Church teaching. So why do prominent Catholics such as Sean Hannity back him anyway?

What His Candidacy Means

Hannitized Catholics are one reason, if not a principal reason, abortion is legal in the United States. Some 60 to 70 million Americans are Catholics, about 26 percent of the population. In 2006, 154 members of Congress were Catholics, nearly 30 percent. Add to these numbers Catholic journalists, doctors, lawyers and judges. If Catholics lived their faith when they vote, abortion would be illegal. Nor would Americans suffer under other sinful laws regarding everything from homosexual “marriage” to taxpayer-subsidized contraception.

Which means defeating Giuliani is a moral imperative. A Giuliani victory for the GOP nomination (or, heaven forbid, for the general election) would set yet another bad example for Catholics seeking a reason not to compromise their faith these days. By scandalizing the faithful, Giuliani would mislead them, prompting many of them to believe Catholic teaching on abortion can be ignored in the voting booth if the voter deems other issues equally important. This is precisely what Hannity argues.

Hannity’s defense of the cross-dressing friend of the homosexual and abortion lobbies makes sense only by realizing that Hannity, whatever his loquacity and oratorical skills, is an unreflective demagogue who, again, also publicly defies Church teaching on contraception, abortion and homosexuality. As Father Tom Euteneuer of Human Life International learned, Hannity is a pompous ruffian when he meets an opponent of superior intellect and learning. When that good priest challenged Hannity’s advocating contraception, the man who attended Catholic seminary mugged Euteneuer on national television. But worse than that, Hannity misleads Catholics. Using faulty logic, he harangues good Christians, including Catholics, about the virtues of a vote for Giuliani.

Of course, Catholics cannot vote for Giuliani, at least not in the GOP primaries, for two good reasons: His living in manifest and obstinate sin and his scandalous, obdurate defiance of Church teaching on marriage, abortion and homosexuality. Again, Archbishop Raymond Burke says Giuliani will not receive Holy Communion in his archdiocese, which puts “America’s Mayor” in the same hot seat the Hornblower of the Swift Boats occupied in 2004. But whether Catholics will do right is, as everyone knows, never a sure thing, and we can only pray that he won’t receive the Catholic vote, that Catholics will lead, not follow, Dobson and his evangelical followers. Catholics could put Giuliani in the White House … or send him back to New York. The latter would be better for the country, the Church and Giuliani himself. He isn’t equipped for the presidency morally or spiritually, which, quaint as it sounds, are more important than politics.

If Giuliani wins, Catholics and the country lose.

R. Cort Kirkwood is the author of Real Men: Ten Courageous Americans To Know and Admire (Cumberland House). He last wrote for The Remnant about Claus Von Stauffenberg, the Catholic and German officer who led the plot to kill Adolf Hitler.