IRD Advisor to Be Nominated as U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican

By Frederick Clarkson, Tue Nov 06, 2007 at 11:55:12 PM EST

I recently referenced Andrew Weaver's report of last year in Media Transparency, which detailed the role of neoconservative Catholics close to the Bush administration in the leadership of the Institute on Religion and Democracy. IRD is, of course, the Washington, DC-based organization that busies itself trying to disrupt and dismantle the major denominations of mainline Protestantism in order to, according to its own internal documents, "discredit and diminish the Religious Left's influence" (as Max Blumenthal reported on Salon.com a few years ago.) Weaver, a Methodist minister, called the role of leading neoconservative Catholics in IRD

"...the most grievous breach in ecumenical good will between Roman Catholics and Protestants since the changes initiated by Vatican II."

Imagine the outcry from Catholic leaders, a fully justified response, if a highly influential group of Protestants obtained a million dollars a year from left-wing sources to generate a propaganda campaign against the leadership of the Catholic Church over the issues of the ordination of women and divorce. Moreover, this Protestant-directed group constantly sought to undermine Catholic leaders and missions through twisted and demeaning distortions of what they said, while seeking no reforms in their own communions. This is exactly the situation we have at IRD.