The bishop’s disapproval was expressed in a letter by him in response to a CWL package containing the agenda and background information on the upcoming Provincial CWL Convention. The package, sent out by CWL Ontario president Betty Anne Brown included the letters of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops and individual bishops supporting the March, but excluded comments by the bishops who oppose it. The bishop said in his letter, “in all fairness, I would suggest that you circulate as well the official statements of other Bishops” opposed to the March.

In her letter to the bishop, Brown said, “I am sorry that you promulgated your opinion without passing it by me first.” And apparently in response to the bishop’s invitation to the CWL to dissociate from the march, Brown tersely reminded Bishop De Angelis that “we are an autonomous women’s organization in which males do not have a vote on policy.”

Brown affirmed in her letter that “we are and always have been pro-life,” but goes on to use the pejorative term “anti-abortion people” to describe pro-lifers. Brown conveyed the false impression that pro-lifers have tried to assert that the CWL is not pro-life. In fact, it is precisely because the CWL is a Catholic organization and pro-life that the CWL executive’s endorsement of the pro-abortion March has caused such controversy, mostly among grassroots CWL members who have overwhelmingly disapproved of the march endorsement. Brown attacks “anti-abortion people,” accusing them of being “jealous of our influence and the fact that we are listened to by governments. It is they who are trying to discredit us. We will not fall to their smear campaigns.”