Is Randall Terry a pro-life hero?

In the past few days I have received at least a dozen emails decrying the arrest of Randall Terry and a few of his supporters at the Cathedral of St. Thomas More on October 5th. (Arrests also took place at the Cathedral in Baltimore in September.) All of the emails contained Terry's press release which starts, "It is with great grief that I report to you that I, Randall Terry, along with Brian Sherwood and Joseph Landry, were arrested on Respect Life Sunday, October 5, at St. Thomas More Cathedral in Arlington, VA...." While I'm not opposed to leafletting church lots I think Terry's tactics in these cases are disturbing and, frankly, I question his motives.

A friend of mine who was at the Cathedral both in the morning and in the afternoon when the arrests took place said that Fr. Lundberg, the associate pastor, did not want to have the leafletters arrested. The diocesan policy was explained to them and they were asked to move to the public sidewalk off the property where they could have continued giving out their fliers. (Incidentally, the pastor, Fr. Robert Rippy, was away and the associate is very pro-life.) But moving to the public sidewalk would have meant no publicity and without it Terry can't raise the big bucks to keep himself going. The press release was on the internet immediately after the arrests. Clearly, it was written and ready to go. So the leafletters wanted the arrests.

I was involved in some of the earliest sit-ins at abortion mills back in the 1970s. I also participated in Operation Rescue in the 80s. I admired Randall Terry at the time. But his actions since then have cast a serious shadow on his credibility: his abandonment of his wife of 18 years, his Las Vegas divorce and remarriage to a staffer who worked on his Senate campaign, his claiming to have no money for child support while he was fundraising from the pro-life movement to build a $400,000+ house in a gated Florida community, his lawsuit over the name Operation Rescue, his use of confrontational tactics to gain publicity and use it for fundraising. All these things are seriously problematical.

I also find Terry dishonest. He pulled out of the NOW vs. Scheidler case in 1998, but tried to capitalize on the publicity when it was finally resolved in 2006 as though he had remained a defendant. His defection actually hurt the remaining defendants. Randall Terry was also paid $10,000 from the Terri Schindler-Schiavo Foundation for his few months of work trying to prevent Terri's murder. As someone who also fought for Terri, that makes me somewhat nauseated.

I urge readers to look into Randall Terry's background and ask themselves what's really motivating these actions at churches. Is Randall Terry's first concern the defense of the unborn? Or is he looking for a new cash cow and media attention to rebuild his empire as a leader in the pro-life movement? The bishops certainly deserve plenty of criticism, but not for this I think.

If you have money to spare for the pro-life movement send it to a real pro-life hero, Joe Scheidler and his Pro-Life Action League, or to a local crisis pregnancy center. If you are thinking of giving to Randall Terry, get a financial statement first. When people visit his Society for Truth and Justice and click on the donation icon, exactly where is their money going? How much salary is Terry paying himself, what kind of expense account does he give himself, and what accounting procedures are being followed? Is he a good steward for the Lord? Or is he a steward for himself? It's a question that needs asking.

Mary Ann Kreitzer is a founder of the The Catholic Media Coalition and blogs at http://www.lesfemmes-thetruth.blogspot.com/