An ${R}^{2}$ term is added to the gravity Lagrangian, in an effort to eliminate the conformal divergences of Euclidean quantum gravity reported by Gibbons, Hawking, and Perry. The curvature is taken to be a Cartan curvature (one with torsion) rather than the standard Riemannian one, so that the ghost ordinarily associated with the ${R}^{2}$ term will be absent. After constrained torsion degrees of freedom are eliminated from the classical theory, one finds that the ${R}^{2}$ term disappears from the Lagrangian. Implications of this result for the spacetime-foam concept of Wheeler and Hawking are also discussed. Classically, the theory discussed here, with Lagrangian of the form $\ensuremath{-}\frac{R}{2K}+\frac{{\ensuremath{\lambda}}_{1}{R}^{2}}{2}$, is equivalent to Einstein's theory whenever the trace of the matter energy-momentum tensor vanishes and fermions are absent. Independently, Rauch, in a recent paper, has also shown that the two theories are equivalent.