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Another example of our cultural implosion is the decision of New Haven high schools to offer diplomas without the phrase "in the year of our Lord." Bill Donohue offered this thoughts on the matter as follows:

"The United States was founded by Christians, and approximately 80 percent of Americans remain Christian today. It only makes sense, then, to recognize our heritage in our customs and traditions. What this New Haven school is doing is more than a detour from our moorings, it is unconscionable: attempts to scrub clean any reference to our founding is a disservice to the students and their community. And to base this decision, in part, on the need not to "offend anyone," is disingenuous--it offends beyond belief the vast majority of Americans. This is political correctness gone mad."

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Alex Wilhelm has a lengthy article posted on the Huffington Post [click here] today detailing all kinds of reasons why Bill Donohue needs to resign as president of the Catholic League. Donohue said no.

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Click here to read the USA Today article by Philip Jenkins on the disparity of coverage regarding the Church’s sex abuse scandal.

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For the 5th consecutive year, a bill that would amend the statute of limitations for sexually abused minors has died in the New York State legislature. Unlike other years, this year's bill covered public institutions, as well as private ones like the Catholic Church. Predictably, it was met with strong opposition from the public school establishment.

This is a victory for civil liberties and a loss for the vindictive forces seeking to plunder the Catholic Church.

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May 12, 2010

The Catholic League is happy to note that New York Assemblyman Richard Brodsky will not seek passage of a bill that would have presumed consent of organ donation. We joined Assemblyman Dov Hikind and several Jewish organizations in fighting this bill.

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Last night's "South Park" episode ridiculed Comedy Central for censoring Trey Parker and Matt Stone: the writers panned the station for not allowing them to depict Muhammad the way they do other religious figures. 

Included in the episode was a character of Catholic League president Bill Donohue; he was previously featured in another show. But in last night's episode, Donohue had no speaking role, an indication, some are speculating, that Comedy Central is wary he might mimic his Muslim brothers if provoked.

When asked whether this was true, Donohue said, "I don't use machetes when I'm angry—I usually just reach for another cold one."

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America magazine blogger Michael Sean Winters warns his fellow Catholic liberals that they ought to think twice about advocating lay leadership in the Catholic Church. He writes that "liberals should be especially aware that if there were elections for lay leaders, it is more likely than not that Bill Donohue and George Weigel and Raymond Arroyo would win at the Catholic polls." But Winters isn't too happy with such a prospect. "I will take my chances with the clericalist patriarchy, thank you very much."

Bill thanks Michael for thinking of him, even if his comment is not exactly a vote of confidence. He adds that voting is for wimps, which is why he prefers a coup.

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JERUSALEM, APRIL 12, 2010 (Zenit.org).- The Jewish former mayor of New York is affirming that "continuing attacks" by the media on the Church and Benedict XVI have become "manifestations of anti-Catholicism."

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In a letter to the editor in today’s New York Times, Julie Green Bataille, Associate Vice President for Communications at Georgetown University, responds to Maureen Dowd’s April 7 column, “The Church’s Judas Moment.” In the column Dowd’s brother Kevin wrote, “Georgetown University agreeing to cover religious symbols on stage to get President Obama to speak [in April 2009] was not exactly fierce,” to which Bataille offers spin that would make the most dishonest blush.

Bataille notes “numerous religious symbols remained visible throughout the hall during the president’s remarks.” It matters not that crosses and stained glass windows were on display in the hall. What matters most is that only the religious signage (including the name of Jesus) that was behind the president—therefore in plain sight of television cameras—was covered to provide a “standard backdrop.” 

Catholics were upset with the university—one that refuses to display crucifixes in its classrooms—for selling out its Catholic identity and could not care less that religious imagery was on display outside the shot of a camera lens. The cowardice of Georgetown was appalling last year and the continued spin tells us all we need to know about what is going on there.

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This weekend we will know whether the American people will be saddled with a fiscal nightmare for decades to come, or will escape relatively unscathed. We will also know whether we will take the first deadly step down a slippery slope that will lead to social engineering on a massive scale. We most certainly will know whether Americans will be forced to subsidize the killing of innocent human life. If all that isn't enough to make a healthy man vomit, we will know whether we have entered a stage that Tocqueville warned about in the early 19th century--a condition known as democratic despotism. Finally, the fact that they have chosen to deliberate all this madness on a Sunday--in a nation where 8 in 10 are Christian--is an affront to the religious sensibilities of most Americans. A more shameless gang would be hard to find.

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Catholic League members will be happy to learn that our good friend Kevin (Seamus) Hasson of the Becket Fund just won a major victory in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirming the constitutionality of "one nation under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance.

Click here for the Becket Fund's press release.

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A rabbi, Baruch Lebovits, is on trial in Brooklyn for repeatedly molesting a troubled teenager in 2004 and 2005. His accuser testified in court yesterday that he was offered money by a member of the Hasidic community to recant his allegations. Lebovits faces up to four years in prison. He also awaits trial for accusations by two other people.

The New York Post and the New York Daily News reported this story on pages 28 and 18, respectively. The scandal-loving tabloids have frequently featured front-page stories when the alleged perpetrator was a Catholic priest. Funny how an accused rabbi does not merit the same treatment.

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Catholics United, a front group funded by George Soros, attacked the decision by Washington Archbishop Donald W. Wuerl to end health benefits going forward for spouses of employees because of Washington D.C.’s new gay marriage law. Its executive director, Chris Korzen, made the following statement to the Washington Post:

"Here we have an opportunity to make sure human beings have health insurance, which everyone believes is a value. And instead of doing everything we can, we're in a sense holding that hostage to culture war issues. . . . I don't see how that's a win for Catholic values." 

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Joseph Stack, the enraged man who flew his plane into the IRS building in Austin, was initially seen by several liberal-left pundits as prototypically right wing; the most common suspicion was that he was a tea party activist. But then it was shown that he was also anti-Catholic, and that confused the left to no end. In his suicide note, Stack railed against the “wonderful ‘exemptions’ that make institutions like the vulgar, corrupt Catholic Church so incredibly wealthy.”

As a matter of fact, the anti-Catholic camp is quite ecumenical—members can be found on the right, as well as on the left. But it is revealing that the left lays claim to Catholic bashing.

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There is no end to the comedians who like to rip the Catholic Church for the sexual abuse scandal, but precious few seem to have any interest in the contribution that the public school industry has made to this problem. That’s too bad, because there is plenty of script available.

Take New York City, for instance. The New York Post reported on Feb. 9 that Alan Rosenfeld has been charged with ogling girls as young as 13, but still manages to keep his job. Though he hasn’t worked since 2001—he is assigned to what they call a “rubber room”—he has managed to receive $700,000 in salary.

Rosenfeld is not alone. There are more than 600 educators who are being bankrolled by the taxpayers for doing nothing: they, too, occupy a seat in the “rubber room.” One teacher, Francisco Olivares, allegedly impregnated a 16-year old when he began teaching 32 years ago. He still collects $94,000 a year.

Why is this happening? Because of the teachers unions and antiquated laws that give them cover.

This story never ends, yet the Bill Mahers of this world never open their mouths when it comes to teachers and their unions. Even though conditions in the priesthood have improved markedly, while the sexual abuse scandal continues to grow among the ranks of teachers, it’s still priests the so-called comedians go after.

And some wonder why the Catholic League, which fights anti-Catholicism, is busier than ever.

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Michael Meyers, executive director of the New York Civil Rights Coalition, wrote an op/ed in the New York Daily News called "It's the NAACP vs. the schoolchildren." Please click here to read this important article. 

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Please click here to see which Catholic senators voted against the Nelson amendment to the healthcare bill. The amendment would prohibit federal funding of abortion.

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We could not help but notice New York State Senator Velmanette Montgomery's comment in support of gay marriage yesterday:

"The churches would not exist if there weren't choir directors, many of whom are gay."

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August 28, 2009

A front-page article in today’s New York Times reads, “Some Roman Catholic Bishops Assail Health Plan.” Some? It cites not a single bishop who supports the Obama health care bills. So why the qualifier?

The bishops, while supportive of universal health care, have said they will not support any bill that provides for abortion coverage. Unfortunately, the bills being considered do exactly that; amendments to get abortion out of these bills have universally failed.

Justin Cardinal Rigali is identified as a bishop who is opposed to any bill that includes abortion coverage. What’s wrong with this is that it gives the impression that he is just another Catholic voice: In fact, the Archbishop of Philadelphia speaks for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops on pro-life issues.

Another problem is identifying Rockville Centre Bishop William Murphy as being sympathetic to the health care bills. Yet on his website it explicitly says that he “has never announced support for one particular vision of health care reform legislation. To suggest otherwise is false.”

The New York Times article says that “Catholic Charities and the Catholic Health Association endorsed the president’s plan without reservation.” Not true. On its website, Catholic Charities says quite clearly, “Let there be no doubt, Catholic Charities USA does not support nor will it support any provision or amendment that fails to uphold the sanctity and dignity of human life.”

Similarly, the Catholic Health Association [CHA] is equally clear: “CHA has not endorsed any of the health care reform bills, but our message to lawmakers is clear: health reform should not result in an expansion of abortion, and must sustain conscience protections for health care providers who do not want to participate in abortions or other morally objectionable procedures.”

The newspaper accurately says that Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good supports Obamacare. What it fails to mention is that the dissident Catholic lay group is a creation of George Soros.

All in all, this was the most distorted article to appear in the mainstream media on Catholics and health care reform. That it was written by a normally responsible journalist, David D. Kirkpatrick, makes it all the more disturbing.

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Frances Kissling, former head of Catholics for Choice, is known for two things: her hatred of all things Catholic and her love for abortion. In a piece she did for Salon.com she says she speaks for “feminists and progressive Catholics” when she proclaims her “love” for nuns.

Has Kissling had an epiphany? Not quite. Her is what she says: “One sister I know is a clinic escort at her local reproductive health clinic; others are active in gay and lesbian ministries and one, close to 90, has been a leader in the movement for sex worker rights.”

In other words, the nuns Kissling and her ilk love are pro-abortion, pro-homosexuality and pro-prostitution. But of course: there is much for them to love about nuns who hate the teachings of the Catholic Church.

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Georgetown’s Center for Applied Research has released a study showing that men and women entering the priesthood and joining an order of nuns are more likely to be non-white and conservative than their predecessors. Asians, Pacific Islanders, Latinos and Africans make up an increasing share of the new recruits. Also, young women joining an order of religious are twice as likely to join an order where wearing a habit is expected than not.

Those who have been screaming for diversity should be happy. But they won’t be. That’s because ancestry was never the real issue—being a traditionalist or a progressive is what matters most to the diversity dons.

Sister Mary Bendyna, who authored the study, explained why women wanting to become a nun don’t choose to join those orders which are dying out: “Volunteering, social work, working for the poor—they can do that elsewhere.” Precisely.

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August 3, 2009

The Milwaukee affiliate of Voice of the Faithful is calling it quits. They correctly diagnosed the problem: they lost their way, ticked off conservatives and became a clone of Call to Action. Their last event will be September 26—Father Richard McBrien of Notre Dame has been tapped to preside over the funeral. We expect it won’t be long before the parent group packs it in as well.

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Jessica Bennett, writing in a July 29 Newsweek web column on polyamory, puts the most positive face on swinging yet to appear in a mainstream media outlet. She maintains that having multiple partners among consenting adults is at the cutting edge of the new sexual revolution. The article ends with a quote from a swinger named Scott who feels sorry for the rest of us. “The people I feel sorry for are the ones who don’t ever realize they have any other choices beyond the traditional options society presents,” he says. So thoughtful.

The only problem these folks seem to acknowledge is parenting. Yes, that can be difficult at the breakfast table the next morning. As for how children fare, Bennett found a professor (we knew she would) who said the kids do just fine in poly families.

What was not mentioned, of course, is that the bed jumpers have a much higher rate of sexually transmitted diseases than the rest of us. It would be interesting to know if Scott thinks that is unfair and who is to blame. Or is genital herpes just the cost of doing business? And talking about costs, perhaps under the new health care bill we should levy a surcharge on those whose diseases are behaviorally driven. We could call it Donohue’s stimulus plan!

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On July 27, Darlene Haynes was found mutilated to death in Worcester, Massachusetts. Her child is reported missing: the murderer cut her uterus open and stole the 23-year-old’s baby of eight months.

Now the woman’s aunt, Sandra Grandmaison, is demanding “we want our baby back,” explaining, “We want our grandchild back, and we want to know why.”

We’d be curious to know what the pro-abortion community would say to Ms. Grandmaison. We’d also like to know if her grandchild would be covered by the universal health-care bills currently being considered.

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July 17, 2009

Philip Pullman, author of child-friendly atheist books like The Golden Compass, has been told by British authorities that he must register with the newly developed antipedophile database if he still wants to visit kids in the schools; the ruling applies to those who regularly work with children. In a snit, Pullman said the proclamation was “quite dispiriting and sinister,” labeling it an “absurd rule.”

Now perhaps the Brits have gone overboard, but we are nonetheless delighted that kids will be free from Pullman’s dogmatic proselytizing. He’s been working overtime for years promoting videos and books aimed at brainwashing children about just how awful Christianity is and how glorious atheism is. Now, at least, many more kids will be spared his moonshine. All thanks to his liberal buddies in the British government.

The Catholic League is delighted that its 2007 boycott of the film version of The Golden Compass worked so well that it persuaded the producers not to move forward with the second movie based on Pullman’s trilogy, His Dark Materials. As of now, there are no plans to make The Subtle Knife, and we hope it stays that way. Atheism is screwy enough, but when it is sold backdoor to little kids, it is downright pernicious.

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Voice of the Faithful is now preparing its obituary. After lecturing the Catholic Church for years on such matters as financial accountability, the organization is in financial ruins. According to Voice officials, it needs $60,000 just to pay its summer bills. Good luck: it is well-known that Voice members are incredibly stingy.

To the extent that the Church made necessary reforms, it effectively spelled the demise of Voice. It was always a close cousin to Call to Action, another moribund organization, and now the cat is out of the bag. To think that Voice can exist as a volunteer group is delusional. Quite frankly, Voice is toast.

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In a society where pushing the envelope has become sport, it is increasingly difficult to move audiences. But “The Stoning of Soraya M” is evidence enough that art can still be a provocative medium.

The movie is the dramatic story of an Iranian woman falsely accused of adultery by her husband. Her stoning by a mob, which includes her father, husband and two sons, would be sickening in a science fiction film. That it actually happened—and continues to happen—makes it all the more surreal.

The movie, which opens today, is a gripping statement about man’s capacity for injustice. It deserves a wide audience.
 
                                                                   -Bill Donohue

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June 24, 2009

A news report shows that when the infamous Roe v. Wade decision was granted by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1973, President Richard M. Nixon worried that abortion would promote “permissiveness.” But he also thought that abortion would be justified in cases of interracial pregnancies. “When you have a black and a white,” he said, “abortion is necessary.”

No one in the pro-abortion camp has any principled reason to object to Nixon’s selective justification for abortion. Indeed, pro-abortion advocates cannot logically claim that abortion is morally neutral and then object to abortions for reasons they find objectionable.

Who are they to decide what is a good reason or a bad reason? Who are they to decide that a woman’s right to choose must accord with liberal rationales for abortion? Ultimately, if extracting a baby from a mother’s womb is the moral equivalent of a tooth extraction, then all abortions are morally equal.

Remember a while back when liberal gays learned that a “gay gene” may exist? They were scared to death that prospective parents might elect to abort such kids. Now we have the prospect of those who will condemn Nixon on this issue.

Ironically, the man who sits in the White House is just the kind of guy Nixon thought our society would be better off without. That the current occupant is also a pro-abortion extremist makes the story all the more bizarre, if not sickening.

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“Irena’s Vow,” the fantastic Broadway play about a Polish Catholic woman who hid 12 Jews in the house of a German major during the Holocaust, is scheduled to close on June 28. To get discounted tickets (some of the proceeds benefit the Midtown Pregnancy Center), click this link: http://www.insupportoflife.org/. 
 

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“Irena’s Vow” is an extraordinary Broadway play that has a special appeal to Catholics and Jews. It is the real-life story of a Polish Catholic housekeeper, Irena Gut Opdyke, who hid twelve Jewish refugees in the house of a German major during the Holocaust. There is no greater testimony to the faith than this heroic venture. It was Irena’s deep love for Catholicism that allowed her to demonstrate her love to these Jewish men and women in need.

Catholics who go to this play will not only be moved by this riveting account, they will help support the work of all those wonderful persons associated with this dramatic production.

                                                                       -Bill Donohue

“Irena’s Vow” is playing at the Walter Kerr Theatre, 219 West 48th Street, New York City. It is 90 minutes long with no intermissions.

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They did it again today. The gals at the ABC-TV show, “The View,” went off in a rambling, barely coherent discussion of Catholicism.

Always led by Barbara Walters (does she secretly pine to be Catholic?), Joy Behar told us what Confession used to mean to her back in the days when she was “brainwashed.” Unfortunately, her unwashed brain now shows all the signs of corrosion.

Then there is Elisabeth Hasselbeck, the ex-Catholic whose preoccupation with all matters Catholic suggests she is still not at home with her Evangelical status. She told us today that she used to say things in Confession just to “entertain” the priests. Just think how far she’s come—now she entertains unemployed women with her remarkable insights.

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Father Alberto Cutié, the Catholic priest who was having an affair with a Florida woman, has decided to jump ship and join the Episcopal Church; he plans on joining their clergy, as well.

The real story here is the subtext: the only reason this man is a media sensation is because those who have been agitating for women priests in the Catholic Church know that they must first get the Church to lift the mandatory celibacy rule if they are to have a realistic shot at winning. So that is why they are using Cutié as a useful prop to bash celibacy.

What they don’t get is that celibacy is a discipline that could be lifted, but the Church’s teaching on a male priesthood is a firmly grounded doctrinal matter that Pope John Paul II ruled was a closed issue.

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The New York Times' recent profile of Bill Donohue contained errors and the newspaper has issued the following correction:

An article on Friday about William A. Donohue, president of the conservative Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, erroneously attributed a comment about the movie “Angels and Demons.” It was the Rev. James Martin, the culture editor of America, a liberal-leaning Jesuit magazine — not Mr. Donohue — who said: “They even have a scene where rats eat a bunch of cardinals. Can you imagine any other religion where this would not be viewed as rank religious bias?”

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There were a few lines in a news story in the May 16 edition of the New York Times on Pope Benedict XVI’s trip to Israel that caught our eye. Speaking of the Holy Father, the story said “he did not seek forgiveness for Germans or for the Roman Catholic Church during World War II. He laid the blame squarely on the Nazi regime….”

We have news for the New York Times: Nazis, not the Catholic Church, were responsible for the Holocaust. Ergo, the burden is not ours. Indeed, the mere suggestion that Catholics caused the Holocaust is obscene. Indeed, millions of Catholics were murdered in the Holocaust as well. So who is going to apologize to them?

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Admittedly, a sex story about a good-looking celebrity priest hitting on a divorcee is newsworthy, but it doesn’t explain the legs (of the story, that is). No, the reason why the media can’t get enough of this is due to Catholicism’s culturally incorrect vow of celibacy. How can it be, the media savants ask, that an otherwise normal man would volunteer to join an organization that proscribes sex? Can’t be the money. Could it be that he’s offering it up for a cause greater than sex? And what could that be?

Louis Armstrong was once asked, “How would you define jazz?” His answer was classic, and it applies like a glove to the question, “And what could that be?” Louis answered, “If you gotta ask, then you just don’t know.”

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Bishop Lawrence E. Brandt of the Diocese of Greensburg, PA, has issued a statement on the University of Notre Dame's invitation to President Obama to deliver this year's commencement address. Please click here to read his statement.

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A Pew Research survey shows Catholics approve of the decision by Notre Dame to invite President Obama to give the Commencement address and receive an honorary degree by a decisive margin, 50-28. But the difference between practicing and non-practicing Catholics is profound. Practicing Catholics disapprove by a margin of 45-37 while non-practicing Catholics approve 56-23.

None of this is surprising. Practicing Catholics voted narrowly for McCain over Obama while non-practicing Catholics went big time for Obama. Those who don’t go to church too often tend to be pro-abortion and those who go to church on a regular basis tend to be pro-life.

Practicing Catholics, of course, are the ones who pay the bills. By definition, those who rarely go contribute little. Moreover, as Arthur C. Brooks has shown, the data clearly demonstrate that the most generous Americans are the most conservative and the most religious; the stingiest are the most liberal and the most secular. Meaning that even when non-practicing Catholics do go to church, they are not likely to give much.

Perhaps it’s time pollsters stopped counting non-practicing Catholics as Catholics. After all, those who rarely attend AA meetings aren’t a true reflection of the utility of AA programs. And vegetarians who regularly eat meat—save for occasions when they dine with practicing vegetarians—aren’t a true reflection of vegetarian sentiment on any given issue. In other words, non-practicing Catholics are not a true representation of Catholic opinion.

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Please click here to watch a video, which addresses the two bills that seek to amend the statute of limitations for civil cases involving child sexual abuse in New York State.

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In the April edition of Men’s Health, Allan from San Antonio asked  advice columnist Nicole Beland the following question: “My sexually repressed wife can’t even say ‘sex’ without whispering. How can I help her open up?”

Here’s how Beland started her response: “It’s not easy to undo damage caused by years of exposure to Catholic-school nuns or overly conservative parents.”

It would never occur to Beland that a woman who is sexually repressed might have been molested by her stepfather growing up. No, for Beland it is empirically obvious that Sister Mary Alice did it. Either that or the Fox News Network.

Imagine some poor soul asking about his sexually promiscuous wife. Imagine Beland answering, “It’s not easy to undo damage caused by years of exposure to Jewish school teachers or overly liberal parents.” Yeah, keep imagining.

This wouldn’t matter if the magazine had a low circulation. But it pulls in big numbers—over 1.8 million per issue. Contact the executive editor of Men’s Health, Bill Phillips at Bill.phillips@rodale.com

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April 22, 2009

Please click here to read the top story on Yahoo about the feud between Ron Howard and Bill Donohue over "Angels & Demons."

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Please click here to read what Page Six in the New York Post had to say about the Howard-Donohue feud over the upcoming film "Angels & Demons."

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Several people have contacted the league about the rumor that the anti-Catholic play "Corpus Christi" is being turned into a movie to be released this summer. Please be advised that this is a hoax.

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Please click here to read an article in the Washington Post on the impact of the closures of Catholic schools and their importance in serving disadvantaged students.

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At a gala event celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, a group of homosexuals who dress up as nuns, they were given a proclamation from the California state senate by State Sen. Mark Leno of San Francisco. The anti-Catholic group then participated in a block party where, of course, some of the men danced naked. As usual, there were no arrests.

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Please click here to read an article by Advisory Board member Deacon Keith Fournier on the work of the league as exemplifed by our Annual Report on Anti-Catholicism.

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Click here to read the insightful letter on the Chicago Tribune's anti-Catholic bias written by Rev. Thomas J. Paprocki, the auxiliary bishop of Chicago.

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Archbishop Timothy Dolan, who will be installed on Wednesday as the archbishop of New York, granted an exclusive interview to the Associated Press. Click here to read what he had to say about his priorities.

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Peter Singer is a Princeton professor who believes it is okay for parents to kill their kids until their offspring are 28 days old. He also believes in bestiality: dogs, he says, can convey to their master whether they consent to intercourse. Now he is pushing clam rights.

In today’s New York Times, Nicholas Kristof writes that because Singer is uncertain about the capacity of shellfish to suffer, he tends to avoid eating them. Which means that Singer apparently believes that newborn kids who are knifed to death don’t suffer, but clams on the half shell might. Whether clams can consent to sex, Singer does not say.

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Click here to read Bill Donohue's response to Tony Blair's comments on Pope Benedict's recent statements about condoms.

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Which state has less religious men and women than any other? Vermont.
Which is the only state to have a socialist senator? Vermont.
Which state has the second lowest birth rate in the nation? Vermont
Which state has the second highest proportion of whites? Vermont.
Which state legislature was the first to legalize gay marriage? Vermont.

In other words, Vermont is a lily-white state populated by left-wingers who are anti-traditional marriage and anti-family. Exactly what we would expect of a population where more people believe in nothing than anywhere else in the nation.

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Please click here to read Maggie Gallagher's excellent column on proposed legislation in New York State, which would treat private and public institutions unequally regarding child sexual abuse cases.

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Please click on this link to find out what Francis Cardinal George, the Archbishop of Chicago, had to say about Notre Dame's invitation to President Obama to speak at this year's graduation.

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After Virginia Gov. Timothy Kaine approved “Choose Life” license plates on Monday, he said, “If Planned Parenthood...or another similar organization ever chooses to seek a specialty license plate in Virginia, I believe the constitution would require the state to approve that plate to protect against any viewpoint discrimination.”

We agree. And we await Planned Parenthood’s submission of a “Choose Death” license plate.

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Please click on the link to learn the latest on the flap surrounding President Obama's upcoming commencement speech at Notre Dame.

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Data collected on priestly sexual abuse have consistently shown that 81 percent of the victims are male. The data in the latest study, the 2008 Annual Report on this issue, show that 84 percent of the victims were male.

For years we have been told that homosexuals are over represented because priests only had access to boy altar servers. But there have been girl altar servers for many years now, yet straight priests are even less represented now than before. There is obviously a serious problem here, but cowardice and political correctness stand in the way of an honest discussion.

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March 12, 2009

On today's edition of "The View," Elizabeth Hasselbeck was at it again.  Contrary to what many Catholics believe, she is no friend of the Church. The hosts of the show were discussing a Vatican newspaper article about the washing machine being  what liberated women the most in the 20th century; Hasselbeck stated that the Church should not render an opinion on such matters because it does not ordain women. She figured the Church would have agreed "by now" to ordain women. Her latest sucker punch shows that she is ignorant of Catholic teachings. The Church has survived not by following conventional wisdom, but by following wisdom from a higher source. Although Hasselbeck left the Church, she cannot seem to stop sticking her nose in where it does not belong.

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The Associated Press covered the rally that Catholics held in Hartford, CT yesterday to protest the bill that would have led to the state's involvement in the Church's finances. Its first sentence said "hundreds" of Catholics protested; its next sentence said "about 3,500 people" rallied. 

It is not surprising that Catholics get undercounted by the media. That it would be exposed in one article is amazing.

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On its blog, Americans United for Separation of Church and State reluctantly offered a mild defense of the Catholic Church in its stand against the Connecticut bill that would have allowed state interference in Church finances. However, Americans United also took the opportunity to lecture the Church about the First Amendment, making absurd comparisons throughout the article. Americans United has once again exposed its phony agenda.

Click here to read the article.

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Below please find the email that Clark Hoyt, Public Editor of the New York Times, sent to Bill Donohue:

Dear Bill,
 
I read with interest the post headlined "Photo Politics" on the Web site of the Catholic League.  It complains about a photograph in The Times that was taken on Ash Wednesday at the Shrine of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton near Battery Park.  I've heard from a number of your members objecting to the picture.  It is clear to me that some of them did not see the picture but were reacting to your description of it.  Some complained that it was on the front page.  It was not, although I think it would have been perfectly appropriate for the front page.
 
Your main objection seems to be that the picture showed only Father Zogby and a single worshipper receiving ashes from him.  You said thousands received ashes at that church on that day and asked why The Times would choose a picture showing the priest, a lone parishioner and no one else in the church.  Then you said, "To be honest, we're really not wondering at all:  We know exactly what the newspaper is up to."
 
I won't try to read your mind to figure out what you believe the motivation was.  But I think you are taking offense where none was intended or given.  I asked Michele McNally, the editor in charge of photography at The Times, about the picture.  She said the paper ran it because it was "a gorgeous photograph of a profound religious experience."  I have to say that I saw the picture in exactly that way.  It was shot from high in the church as Father Zogby rubbed ashes on the forehead of a woman cloaked in black.  Because the figures are relatively small in a photograph composed to accentuate the cross formed by the marble floor, I think it speaks to the power and mystery of your faith.  It is a beautiful picture, not a disrespectful one.
 
I think you got caught up in headcount issues and failed to appreciate a photo that was a sensitive rendering of a religious moment.
 
I would appreciate it if you would post this, so that those you asked to write me can see my response.
 
Best wishes,
 
Clark Hoyt
Public Editor
The New York Times

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Bishop Richard Williamson of the St. Pius X Society has issued an apology for his remarks regarding the Holocaust.  Please click here to read his statement.

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In the “A” section of today’s New York Times, there is a huge photo—approximately a quarter page in size—of a priest giving ashes to a woman on Ash Wednesday. The photo, shot from above, shows no one in the church but the two of them. The caption below says, “The Rev. Ed Zogby marked a worshiper’s forehead with ashes at the Shrine of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton near Battery Park. Ash Wednesday is the first day of Lent.” There was no attendant story.

We checked to see approximately how many Catholics were at the church yesterday to receive ashes. Thousands showed up. Not bad for a shrine in lower Manhattan. We also learned that the photographer was there at the time thousands were in attendance (he stayed for quite a while).

So it makes us wonder, why did the New York Times deliberately choose this photo? And why did it give it such prominence? To be honest, we’re really not wondering at all: We know exactly what the newspaper is up to.

By the way, in today’s New York Post there is a story about Ash Wednesday. Referring to the crowds at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, it says it was “the largest Ash Wednesday congregation in recent memory.” That, of course, is not exactly the kind of message the New York Times wants to send.

Contact NYT Public Editor Clark Hoyt at public@nytimes.com

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We thought you'd like to know how progressives view penance.  Here is what Roger Ray had to say about the issue in today's edition of the News-Leader, a Springfield, Missouri newspaper:

"As a member of a progressive Christian church, I am more likely than most to encounter folks who angrily reject all penitence and prayers of confession as being associated with the neurotic guilt and neo-puritanical judgment of their past church experiences. One friend recently told me, 'I just don't believe in sin.'"

Thanks, Roger, for providing this insight.  It explains a lot.

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February 19, 2009

Amy Sullivan, a writer for Time magazine who shills for the Democrats, posted a piece today saying that the Catholic Church’s campaign against the Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA)—the most radical piece of pro-abortion legislation in history—is much ado about nothing. Following the talking points of her pro-abortion friends in the Catholic community who insist they are against abortion, she says “no such bill has been introduced.”

The fact is that Rep. Jerry Nadler and Sen. Barbara Boxer previously introduced FOCA, but they got nowhere. The fact is that they have publicly pledged to reintroduce the same bill this term. The fact is that the reason they haven’t done so yet is due to pro-life Catholics who are honestly pro-life.

What it comes down to is this: pro-abortion Catholics are angry that pro-life Catholics have succeeded so far in intimidating FOCA supporters from going forward.

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Catholic Democrats, a pro-abortion group, issued a statement yesterday on the “common concerns” that were discussed at the meeting between House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Pope Benedict XVI. What they did not mention was the pope’s rebuke of Pelosi.

Catholics for Choice, an anti-Catholic group, said it was “encouraged that this important dialogue took place.” What they did not mention was the pope’s rebuke of Pelosi.

If we were on their side, we would advise them not to issue statements that embarrass their pro-abortion friends. Lying is one thing, but to look foolish doing so is quite another. The fact is the pope put Pelosi in her place.

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On the Feb. 16 episode of the Fox Network show “House,” negative stereotypes of Catholic priests were promoted: the featured priest is a big drinker; he is hospitalized for hallucinating about Jesus; he is accused of being a pedophile; he hates his “job”; he loses his faith; the Church refuses to believe his claims of innocence; he gets bounced from parish to parish; he is believed to have AIDS, etc.

Eventually, the doctors realize that the priest doesn’t have AIDS and doesn’t have a disease that causes hallucinations. Also, the priest is found innocent and his faith is restored.

But it is a little too little and a little too late: all along the stereotype of priests as child molesters was milked to the hilt. And that’s exactly the kind of impression that the writers and producers desired.

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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi met with Pope Benedict XVI today.  Please click on the attached links to learn what His Holiness said to Pelosi and for Bill Donohue's take on the meeting:

Victor L. Simpson, "Pope to US Speaker Pelosi: Reject abortion support," AP, 2-18-09

Mike Soraghan, "Concerns, hopes as Pelosi meets pope at the Vatican," The Hill.com, 2-17-09

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Protestant author Ray Comfort recently said that “the Vatican has chosen to officially believe Darwin rather than Jesus.” He accuses the Catholic Church of failing to exercise “common sense” and of failing to think “too deeply” about evolution.

The best-selling author doesn’t mince words: “The Vatican, in essence, is saying ‘Don’t believe Jesus or Genesis. Believe Darwin instead.’” He even goes so far as to say that “In the name of diversity, the Vatican is encouraging atheism, and that’s a terrible betrayal of Christianity.”

Comfort is wrong. The fact is that in the 1950s, Pope Pius XII said there was no conflict between evolution and the doctrine of faith, as long as God was not excluded. Pope John Paul II affirmed this teaching in the mid-1990s.

In other words, the Catholic Church teaches that God is the author of all creation. How stages of human development have unfolded is a legitimate area of scientific inquiry, and it has nothing to do with rejecting God as the Creator.

Moreover, to say that one must believe in either Jesus or Darwin smacks of an inability to “think deeply” about the subject. Even more preposterous is the assertion that the Vatican is encouraging atheism. What’s next? The pope is the Anti-Christ?

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Last night’s episode of “30 Rock” threw a few jabs at Catholics. Many of the familiar stereotypes were there: a church full of pregnant women, the alleged silliness of the confessional, questions regarding priestly celibacy, judgmental authority figures, etc.

What was new was the decision to focus on Latino Catholics. We can probably expect more of this as Latinos account for about a third of all Catholics in the U.S. It remains to be seen how such fare will be received in their community.

We are so happy that viewers saw all those pregnant women in a Catholic church. Makes us proud.

You may want to contact NBC president Jeff Zucker and say hello. Contact him at Jeff.Zucker@nbcuni.com

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Charles Darwin was born 200 years ago yesterday, and from the noise coming from some quarters, one would believe that he was an atheist. Nonsense. To be sure, he was a self-described agnostic, but he had no use for militant atheists. Consider what he said to Edward Aveling in 1881, a dogmatic atheist: “Why should you be so aggressive? Is anything gained by trying to force these new ideas upon the mass of mankind?”

Also, Darwin and the Catholic Church were of the same mind in one very important matter: “It seems to me absurd to doubt that a man may be an ardent Theist & an evolutionist.”

The next time some sage feeds you propaganda about Darwin, tell him to explain these two quotes.

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Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good issued a study about abortion data, which analyzed the effect of state welfare programs on the rate of abortion.  The conclusion was increased social spending decreased the amount of abortions.  Professor Michael J. New points out the study was flawed and that the data actually undermined the conclusions of Catholics in Alliance.  Click here to read his analysis.

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In one of the most crass examples of ripping off Christianity to make a cheap political point, Catholics United, a left-wing front group for the Democratic party, is running two radio commercials promoting President Obama’s stimulus package. What is despicable about the ads is not the content—which is inane—it’s the message it is sending on its website. To be specific, it titles its campaign, “The Economic Stimulus: What Would Jesus Do?”

Catholics United answers the question by clearly suggesting that Jesus would endorse Obama’s stimulus plan. And all along religious conservatives have been accused of saying God is a Republican. It doesn’t get much more shameless than this.

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February 2, 2009

Please click here to read Rabbi Irwin Kula's insightful response to the controversy surrounding the lifting of excommunication of the St. Pius X Society, which extends to Bishop Williamson. 

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Frances Kissling, who for decades headed Catholics for a Free Choice, has a piece in today’s Salon.com accusing the Catholic Church of promoting anti-Semitism for centuries. She begins her screed by saying, “OK, Bill Donohue, just get it over with and call me anti-Catholic.”

Donohue responded as follows: “Kissling is anti-Catholic.”

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Based on the Raymond Khoury novel, the NBC mini-series "The Last Templar" is a poor knock-off of "The DaVinci Code" that tries to fuse fast action with religious mystery.  According to the reviews, it fails miserably at both.  The story is about the hunt for a relic of the Knights Templar; the relic leads to their hidden treasure, the lost diary of Jesus.

The book apparently did not transfer well to the small screen.  The Los Angeles Times reviewer comments, "What begins as a more than slightly fantastic revision of the Templar legend takes an ill-advised turn toward theological theorizing and New Agey spiritual advice."  USA Today concurs:   "Soon, we're trodding the well-worn Da Vinci path of faith-bursting relics and Catholic conspiracies."  Even entertainment periodical Variety understood the limits of this production: "As for a thread regarding [the main character's] lack of faith, any serious contemplation of religion seems several notches above [its] pay grade." 

If it's this bad, Catholics have nothing to worry about.

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The image of Our Blessed Mother remains under attack.  In Chicago, an image believed to be the Virgin Mary on an expressway underpass has been repeatedly defaced.  Demonic graffiti is the latest assault on the image.  In Kansas, vandals smashed part of a statue of Mary, along with statues of Christ, St. John and St. Bernadette, which were arranged in the grotto at the Redemptorist Parish of Our Lady of Perpetual Help.

Finally, in Chile, a well known fashion designer recently dressed his models up like Our Lady but with little covering for the models' breasts.  His show was condemned by the local Catholic diocese and others, but it proceeded.  Ricardo Oyarzun defended his religious-themed show as "artistic expression," per Reuters.

Oyarzun's statement about "artistic expression" is the same old tripe uttered when a Catholic symbol is attacked.  We do not see people like him defacing or demeaning images of Mohammad's daughter, Fatima.  That would take guts.

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To his credit, President Barack Obama did not shy away from mentioning God several times in his Inaugural Address. We couldn’t help but notice, however, that the very same pundits and organizations that branded President George W. Bush a “theocrat” for referencing God were noticeably silent in their reaction to Obama’s God-talk.

Maybe that’s because they think he is a closet secularist who is just going through the motions to please the faithful. At least that’s what the American Humanist Association seems to think: it took out a full-page ad in the Washington Post yesterday hailing Obama as “Living Proof that Family Values Without Religion Build Character.”

In other words, it’s not the religious message that atheists object to most of all—it’s who the messenger is. If he’s believable, he’s a threat. If he’s posturing, he’s okay. How that’s for character?

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On January 9, the game show “Jeopardy” featured the following comment: “He denounces materialism from balcony of marble, gold-doomed building…while wearing giant gold cross.” The question for the contestants was, “Who is the pope?”

We never knew that “Jeopardy” had a political side. But now that we know, we’d like to offer the following entry: “They denounce bigotry on every occasion while constantly serving up anti-Catholic fare.” The right answer, of course, is the entertainment industry.

Our submission is being forwarded to Harry Friedman, the executive producer of “Jeopardy.”

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Bernard Madoff, who allegedly fleeced countless numbers of persons and organizations, was also a generous supporter of the abortion rights industry, managing the assets of groups like the Picower Foundation.  This now-defunct foundation funded the organizations that handled the vast majority of abortion rights litigation in this country.  The good news  is that the losers are "the Center for Reproductive Rights [which] needs to make up a $600,000 shortage in 2009; Planned Parenthood [which] is out $484,000; the ACLU's Reproductive Freedom Project [which] is off $200,000," per Slate.com.  Their loss is a win for the unborn.

UPDATE: The shortfall for Planned Parenthood is even more significant than initially reported.  Between the loss of foundation funding and the downturn in the economy, Planned Parenthood is laying off approximately 20% of its staff.  This just goes to show that every cloud has a silver lining.

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The Catholic League notes with great sadness the passing away of Father Richard John Neuhaus. He was a brilliant and devoted son of the Church who will be sorely missed. Indeed, he is irreplaceable.

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The Catholic League notes with great sadness the passing away of Father Richard John Neuhaus. He was a brilliant and devoted son of the Church who will be sorely missed. Indeed, he is irreplaceable.

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We’ve gotten a number of inquires about the movie “Doubt.” The reason we said nothing about it is because the film, like the play, was focused on a particular miscreant priest, and at no time did it take liberties by making sweeping condemnations of all priests. That’s not an unimportant distinction: it’s the difference between being critical and being bigoted. Moreover, when Meryl Streep was interviewed, never did she take a cheap shot at the Catholic Church.

In short, there was nothing to complain about.

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The Catholic League notes with deep regret the passing of Paul Weyrich.  He was a principled and patriotic man whose contribution to social conservatism will never be forgotten.  He will be sorely missed.

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Don Feder sets Newsweek straight on its article claiming that the Bible favors gay marriage in GrassTopsUSA Exclusive Commentary:

IN ARGUING FOR GAY MARRIAGE, NEWSWEEK SHOULD FORGET THE BIBLE, STAY WHERE IT’S BETTER ACQUAINTED 

           

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Deborah Lauter, national civil rights director for the ADL, says there is a difference between vandals who steal Baby Jesus from a nativity scene and vandals who steal the menorah: “If Baby Jesus is removed, it tends to be seen as a prank. Vandalism or theft of a menorah is just more sensitive. You feel like you’re really being targeted for your religion.”

If Catholics turned this around—claiming the theft of a menorah was no big deal—they’d be accused of anti-Semitism. But no one from the Catholic League, at least, would ever say such nonsense.

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Jason Whitlock is a sports writer for the Kansas City Star.  On the eve of the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, he decided to mock the Blessed Virgin Mary for no reason in his article, "Pass rusher would be answer to a prayer."  In discussing the local football team's loss, he writes, "It's sort of like questioning Mary's virginity.  You mention the rumors you heard about her and Joseph at Noah's Party Cove bash, and you're likely to be escorted out of church by force."

This comment, which shows Whitlock's ignorance about the Virgin birth as well as about when Mary and Noah lived, was followed by another insinuation about Mary at the end of the article: "The Chiefs might need a savior after this season.  Let's hope Noah throws another party and Mary and Joseph disappear for a few minutes again."

Actually, let's hope Mr. Whitlock's obnoxious column disappears from the Kansas City Star.

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Gazette.net reports that the 26th annual "Christmas Revels," a French-Canadian style celebration, will be held this month at George Washington University.  The December 3 article on the website points out that the show focuses on the longest night of the year, the winter solstice.  "Despite 'Christmas' in the title, this is not a religious pageant, but rather an inclusive seasonal celebration that is meaningful to the community at large, regardless of background."

In recent years, "holiday" has been increasingly substituted for "Christmas" by the PC police.  Christians have fought back and are daring to say "Merry Christmas!" again.  However, in the case of "Christmas Revels," it is a sham. The use of the word Christmas in the title of a show about the winter solstice is false advertising.   

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December 1, 2008

Lee Corso, a commentator on ESPN, has a problem with Notre Dame.  On October 1, 2005, on the show "College GameDay," he made a mock sign of the cross and predicted that Purdue would "beat the Catholics."  On November 29, 2008, he struck again on the same show.  In discussing Notre Dame football coach Charlie Weis' contract, he opined:

"[T]he Catholic Church, the first collection is for the parish and maybe the priest to go on vacation, the second collection is for the poor people in Michigan, the third collection is now gonna be for Charlie Weis and to try to buyout his contact....I have a better idea.  I think they ought to call the Vatican and have them sell one of their paintings and have them give the money to Notre Dame and if they want to pay off Charlie Weis, take the money from the Vatican's painting, give the money to Charlie and say goodbye." 

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Catholics for Choice is a pro-abortion group that has been twice condemned by the U.S. bishops for being a fraud.  They continue to mislead about the Church's teachings on abortion.  In a recent letter to the editor of the New York Times, president Jon O'Brien wrote:

"Catholic tradition requires Catholics to follow their own well-formed consciences even if it conflicts with church teaching.  As the Catechism notes, 'a human being must always obey the certain judgment of his conscience.'

Mr. O'Brien, in selectively quoting from the Catholic Catechism, ignores the statement that followed the section he quoted which undermines his assertion:

"Ignorance of Christ and his Gospel, bad example given by others, enslavement to one's passions, assertion of a mistaken notion of autonomy of conscience, rejection of the Church's authority and her teaching, lack of conversion and of charity: these can be at the source of errors in judgment in moral conduct."

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Nordstrom's Palm Beach Gardens location was selling a tee shirt, which featured an image that resembled Madonna and Child; the problem was that Mary was shown as a skeleton. Shopper Judy Carbo complained that this shirt was offensive to Catholics and Nordstrom removed the shirt from its store.

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Rabbi Michael Lerner is asking his followers to write to the Vatican objecting to the pending excommunication of Father Roy Bourgeois, a priest who recently presided over the staged “ordination” of women who consider themselves to be priests. Lerner would do well to mind his own business.
 
This is not the first time that Lerner has had the chutzpah to lecture the Catholic Church and brand it authoritarian. Known as the religious guru of the Democratic Party, Lerner rejects the institution of marriage and shows little respect for the autonomy of religious organizations. The National Review got it just right when it recently said that “Lerner is to Judaism what Barney Fife is to law enforcement.”

In short, Rabbi Michael Lerner is an angry left-wing radical with a penchant for sticking his nose in where he doesn’t belong.

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November 7, 2008

On November 6, Cardinal Bertone, the Vatican’s secretary of state, said that Jewish groups who recently depicted Pope Pius XII as being “indifferent to the fate of the victims of Nazism” were “outrageous.” They are also profoundly ignorant of history and guilty of scapegoating.

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Here’s a challenge to all those pro-abortion Catholics masquerading as pro-life by citing their allegiance to economic policies that may reduce the incidence of abortion: Check out the latest Rand Corporation study on teens who watch a lot of sexual content on TV and join with real pro-life Catholics in calling for a more responsible Hollywood.

We already knew that young people who are exposed to a lot of sexual content start having sex at an earlier age. Now we know that teens who watch the most sex on TV are twice as likely to be involved in a pregnancy as those who watch the least amount of sex. Dramatically, the amount of sexual content on TV has doubled since 2001. And while the study does not address abortion, it is obvious that abortion rates are higher among those who watch the most sex on TV.

In other words, it is not a spike in the minimum wage that will translate into lower abortion rates; it is things like a decrease in irresponsible TV content that will do so. However, to do this requires a willingness to stand up to the same Hollywood crowd that backs pro-abortion candidates. That’s not something that real pro-life Catholics have a problem with, but it is sure to be problematic for Catholics who feign pro-life. Do they really have it in them to challenge their ideological kin?

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October 28, 2008

The videos depicting various desecrations of the Eucharist by the person calling himself 'fsmdude' have been removed from YouTube.  Over forty videos were voluntarily taken down by 'fsmdude'.  He did this after YouTube responded to the Catholic League's demand for action by age-gating his videos and placing a warning on the website for those trying to access his videos.

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Two deceitful letters were published in the Washington Post on October 25. The first one, by Jon O’Brien of Catholics for Choice, said that “In Catholic theology there is room for the acceptance of policies that favor access to the full range of reproductive health options, including contraception and abortion.” This is a lie. The Catholic Church has always been opposed to both contraception and abortion. But lying is nothing new to this pro-abortion, anti-Catholic group.

Alexia Kelley at Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good takes exception with the Washington Post for listing it as a group that contends “Catholic teachings do not forbid voting for a pro-choice politician.” But that is exactly what Kelley’s mission is—to confuse the laity, and the public, about the Church’s teaching on abortion.

It would be so nice if these groups just told the truth.

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Please click here to read Bill Donohue's letter to the New York Daily News about its double standard in reporting on clergy sex abuse.

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The FBI found him hiding in his bedroom. Rabbi Israel Weingarten, 58, was arrested in upstate New York on charges he sexually abused his own daughter. The abuse began when his daughter was 9 years old; it continued until she was 18. The former yeshiva schoolteacher molested his daughter on a weekly, and sometimes daily, basis. He moved her around from Belgium, Israel and the U.S. to avoid prosecution.

If this had been a Catholic priest, it would have been front-page news. But because it was a rabbi, it merited stories on p. 18 in the Daily News and p. 21 in the New York Post; both were short pieces. The New York Times ignored the story altogether, even though it was picked up by AP.

The Jewish Forward and the Jewish Week have had several stories lately about the efforts of Assemblyman Dov Hikind to still this problem in his community. The New York politician says that an “avalanche of people” have come forward with reports of the sexual abuse of minors at the hands of Orthodox Jews. We commend him for his efforts. But we also take note that these stories are ignored by the same New York media outlets that were all over the same crimes when committed by priests.

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October 7, 2008

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Never before have there been as many pro-abortion apologists as there are now. These apologists maintain that it is entirely possible to be pro-life while supporting pro-abortion candidates, just so long as these candidates sponsor legislation that reduces the need for abortion. Yet the apologists would never support a candidate who said he opposes laws that criminalize wife beating but is nonetheless adamantly opposed to it.  Nor would they be persuaded that such persons deserve our support if they sponsor legislation that reduces the incidence of wife beating.

Only when it comes to abortion do the apologists scrap a legal remedy. To be specific, it is dishonest for Catholics United to say that “legal protections for the unborn are an important part of a pro-life strategy,” and then support candidates who are opposed to every legal protection ever proposed. Is it too much to demand that lying has no legitimate role to play in these discussions?

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The Internet site, Beliefnet, offers a wide variety of views on religion, and has done some fine work. However, sometimes its commitment to pluralism becomes corrupting. To wit: It has accepted an advertisement for Bill Maher’s “comedy” mocking Catholicism, Protestantism, Judaism, Islam and other religions. Looks like greed affects more than those on Wall Street.

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New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s office yesterday released the annual Mayor’s Management Report. It shows that the Health Department gave away 39,070,000 male condoms to community groups in fiscal year 2008, which ended June 30. News story are reporting that this figure is more than double the rate from the previous fiscal year.

What is not being discussed by the media, however, is what the data show regarding the incidence of syphilis: while the distribution of condoms increased by 120 percent in one year, the number of syphilis cases increased by 20 percent.

If condoms are the answer to STDs, then syphilis cases should have declined markedly. The fact that syphilis cases spiked should prove sobering. But, alas, New York City has learned absolutely nothing: next year it plans to distribute 51.6 million condoms. Watch for the rate of STDs to increase as well.

Do condoms increase STDs? It would be difficult to prove that they do, though it is entirely possible that the promiscuous distribution of condoms by government agencies fosters a climate of complacency, one ill-suited to inducing the virtue of self-restraint. One thing is for sure: condom distribution does not curb STDs. Indeed, Mayor Bloomberg is perpetuating a dangerous hoax on young people by ratcheting up condom distribution—even when it is crystal clear that this policy is backfiring.

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Abortion survivor Gianna Jessen addresses Sen. Barack Obama in an ad produced by BornAlivetruth.org concerning his four votes against medical assistance for babies who survive abortion. 

Please click here to see the ad.

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Four young persons, three women and a man, were butchered to death by Satanists in Russia. But that’s not all—they were then roasted and eaten; their private parts were cut off. The victims were stabbed 666 times—the number that symbolizes the Antichrist.

There is an outbreak of mutilations and killings in Russia by Satanists. They leave a cross upside-down to mark their work.

It has been reported that “Devil worshippers believe in putting themselves first and their core values include pride, indulgence, ambition and meeting sexual desires.”

Why is this significant? Because those who kill innocent persons in the name of Christ reject Christ’s teachings and that of the Catholic Church. Those who kill in the name of Satanism are being faithful to their creed. Indeed, what devil worshippers believe in, the Catholic Church rejects as sinful.

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The Administrative Committee of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops announced that the full body of U.S. bishops will discuss the implications of political support of abortion during its annual assembly, which will be held November 10 - 13, 2008.  The decision to address this timely topic stems from recent controversial statements by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senator Joseph Biden regarding Catholic teaching on when life begins.

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Bill Donohue was asked by the celebrity page of the New York Post on September 10 to offer a comment on a new book, 101 Places To Have Sex Before You Die; one of the  recommended places is the confessional.

Here was Bill’s response to "Page Six": “The kind of people who would have sex in the confessional would also have sex in the graveyard. And I don’t mean with each other.”

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The lead letter in the September 9, 2008 New York Times states that there  are troubling similarities between Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and President George W. Bush.  What is the writer's first listed objection?  It is the fact that both leaders are "deeply religious."

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In the September 8 New York Times, there is a story about the continuing conflict between NBC and MSNBC over news reporting and analysis. While several NBC employees spoke to Times reporters, all did so anonymously. That’s because “the network does not permit it [sic] people to speak to the media without authorization.”

Now if a bishop were to tell his priests that they are not authorized to speak to the media without prior clearance, he’d be accused of censorship. Indeed, he’d probably be called a fascist. But when the media silence their own, it’s considered good journalism. Their hypocrisy reeks to high heaven.

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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has accepted the invitation from San Francisco Archbishop George Niederauer to discuss her recent statements concerning the Catholic Church's position on abortion as it relates to the question of when life begins.  He invited her to meet with him privately so he can explain the Church's clear teachings to her.  It is not yet known when this meeting will take place.

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The student senate of the University of Central Florida (UCF) finally delivered justice to Webster Cook, who earlier this summer took home the Eucharist before returning it a week later in an attempt to make a political statement.  After impeaching Cook for his misconduct, the senate voted to remove him from office after a lengthy investigation into his actions.  In taking the Eucharist, he had misrepresented himself as being on student government business. 

We applaud the students who did more than the school in punishing this student's outrageous behavior.  Last month, a UCF-convened panel dismissed all charges against Cook.  Not even a warning was given to him.  It was this student's protest that led to the public desecration of the Eucharist by University of Minnesota Morris professor Paul Z. Myers.  He too was not sanctioned by his institution for his hateful acts.

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The Democratic National Convention is awash in sexuality. On Monday, there was a “Sex, Politics and Cocktails” party hosted by Planned Parenthood that, naturally, passed out tons of condoms. It got a lot of competition from a Rolling Stone-Trojan Condoms bash that featured a “Condomvention” on sexual health; it was held right near their inflatable penis-shaped tent.

The pro-abortion contingency was represented by the presidents of NARAL and Planned Parenthood, both of whom spoke at the Convention. Emily’s List sponsored a select gathering of pro-abortion women and there were diversity parties everywhere for the LGBT crowd.

Many notables attended these events, though no one reportedly saw either Eliot Spitzer or John Edwards.

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Some of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's fellow congressmen, who are pro-life and Catholic, have responded to her statements about the Catholic Church's teachings concerning when life begins.  Please click here to read their correspondence to her.

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The Catholic League will be sending out copies of the report, Islam in the Classroom: What the Textbooks Tell Us, to Catholic educators and bishops.  Please click here to read an article by the author of the report, Gilbert T. Sewall of the American Textbook Council, that was published in the New York Post.

Please click here to access Mr. Sewall's full report on how Islam is treated versus how Christianity is portrayed in some textbooks. 

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August 13, 2008

The University of Central Florida convened a panel of students and administrators to address whether Webster Cook, the student who absconded with the Host and then returned It a week later, violated the code of student discipline.  The panel  voted unanimously to dismiss all the charges against him despite the range of options available to punish this despicable act.  At the very least, a disciplinary warning is warranted to send a message that the concerns of Catholics are taken seriously.  In contrast, the student government took swift action by impeaching Mr. Cook.  Its investigation, which could lead to his dismissal from his government position, should be completed by the end of the month. 

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Timothy Shriver, chairman of the Special Olympics, is rightfully upset about the movie “Tropic Thunder.” The film offers a stereotypical portrayal of the mentally retarded and callously refers to them as “retards.” So what does Shriver want to do? “Ban the movie,” he says.

“Ban the movie”? Just imagine if the Catholic League said that about some movie it was protesting (it never has). But don’t look for the charge of censorship to roll off the lips of Shriver’s critics: unlike films that bash Catholics, cruel depictions of the retarded are upsetting to them.

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It is being reported that President George W. Bush will attend church while in Beijing for the Olympic Games.  He is then expected to make a statement, urging the Chinese government to allow religious freedom.  It is a courageous thing to do and we hope that he also addresses the persecutions suffered by Catholics and other religious minorities.

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The Confraternity of Catholic Clergy has issued a press release about Professor Paul Myers and his act of desecration of the Eucharist.  Please click on this link to read their statement.  Myers responded in his usual cavalier manner. 

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In light of the desecration of the Eucharist by University of Minnesota Morris professor, Paul Myers, Bill has sent the following letter to the president of the University of Minnesota.  Please click here to read the letter.

To read the press release referenced in the letter, please click here.

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July 22, 2008

The Catholic League continues to follow the situation with the University of Central Florida student who held the Eucharist hostage for a week.  Webster Cook is a student senator and he has been impeached by his fellow senators for allegedly misrepresenting himself as being on official student government business at the Mass where he took the Host.  As a result of the impeachment, there will now be an investigation to see if he should be removed from his office.  This process can take up to four weeks. 

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Professor Paul Myers responded to the controversy surrounding the UCF student, who held a consecrated Host hostage for a week, with venomous attacks on the Eucharist, threatening to desecrate Hosts if others could obtain them for him.  The league sprung into action, contacting the president of the University of Minnesota, which allowed the link to his blog to be accessible from the professor's faculty page.  The president responded that Professor Myers' views do not represent the school and that his blog was no longer accessible from Myers' faculty page.

Click here to read the president of the University of Minnesota's letter.

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New Line Cinema had planned to make all three of Philip Pullman's books that comprise His Dark Materials into major motion pictures.  Due to the successful boycott led by the Catholic League, the first film, "The Golden Compass," was less than a commercial success.  It now appears that the second book, The Subtle Knife, will not make it to the big screen after all.  Pullman recently admitted that the league's boycott hurt ticket sales for "The Golden Compass," thus killing plans to film the whole series. 

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The California Supreme Court ruled that the voter initiative to affirm that marriage is between a man and a woman can be placed on the November ballot.  This is a victory for the people of California who can decide whether to allow same-sex marriage after the California Supreme Court recently legalized it by a 4 to 3 vote.  The following organizations had petitioned the Court to not permit the ballot initiative: ACLU, ADL, Americans for Separation of Church and State, People for the American Way and numerous teachers unions and education organizations.

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Mary Honeyball, a member of the Labour Party in England, has attacked the Catholic Church and Catholic political leaders due to their opposition to a bill promoting embryonic stem cell research. Ms. Honeyball later went on to attack the Catholic League. In a letter to an English newspaper, Honeyball called the league "dangerous." She utilized information from Catholics for Choice to support her contention that the league "bullies and intimidates anyone who dares criticise the Catholic Church, shutting down any dialogue on the Church's political methods or doctrine." We are happy she took note of us!

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July 8, 2008

The resolution of the matter concerning the UCF student who absconded with the Eucharist and held It for a week remains pending. We will not know the outcome until the student judicial review process is completed. 

Below is the statement issued by the president of the University:

UCF takes this situation seriously and we are glad to know the student has returned the Eucharist and written a letter of apology. We encourage students to express their views respectfully, and we expect them to comply with university codes of conduct.

Any disciplinary action will be handled through the university’s student judicial system, per our published procedure.
 
John C. Hitt
President, University of Central Florida

We will continue to monitor this matter to see that justice is done.

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Archbishop Raymond Burke of St. Louis has been chosen by Pope Benedict XVI to be the Prefect of the Apostolic Signatura, the highest court in the Vatican.  He will hear appeals of decisions issued by lower Church courts.  A canon lawyer, Archbishop Burke has been a champion of orthodoxy in St. Louis since he became the archbishop in January 2004.  He was previously the bishop of La Crosse, Wisconsin. 

Archbishop Burke garnered national attention in 2004 when he declared that pro-choice politicians should not present themselves for Holy Communion.  He further stated that he would deny the Eucharist to the Democratic nominee, John Kerry, due to his support of abortion.

We wish Archbishop Burke well and know that he will be a great success in this new position!

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June 24, 2008

Those who have tried to sell the notion that economic issues can draw religious conservatives to move left cannot be too happy with the findings of the latest Pew survey. As reported in today’s New York Times, “The survey confirms findings from previous studies that the most religiously and politically conservative Americans are those who attend worship services most frequently, and that for them, the battles against abortion and gay rights remain touchstone issues.”

The story quotes John C. Green, an author of the Pew report, as saying,  “It suggests that the efforts of Democrats to peel away Republican and conservative voters based on economic issues face a real limit because of the role these cultural issues play.”

In other words, attempts to equate issues like the minimum wage and Third World debt with abortion and gay marriage have failed.

The only ones who will be surprised by this are the ones who tried to make the equation. They just don’t get it.

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The Department of Education released its report evaluating the voucher program which has been operative for two years in Washington, D.C.  It shows a positive impact on students' reading achievement and increased parental satisfaction.

Please see below for links to articles on the voucher program:

Institute of Educational Sciences, Department of Education, Press Release, 6/16/08: "Report Reaffirms Academic Gains for DC Opportunity Scholarship Participants"

William McGurn, Wall Street Journal, 6/17/08: "School Choice Is Change You Can Believe In"

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It looks as though Sen. Barack Obama’s Catholic National Advisory Council is still missing in action. No word from his campaign has come forth providing evidence of its existence, and there is still no mention of the group on its website. Beliefnet spoke to one of the group’s members, an unemployed liberal, and she says she chats on the phone with other members. But that’s it.

This issue has a foul odor to it: If indeed the Advisory Council is extant, why doesn’t the Obama campaign flag it the way it used to do?

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Here we go again. More bad news about sexually transmitted diseases is followed by more calls for more condoms. They just don’t get it.

One in four—26 percent—of adult New Yorkers have genital herpes (compared to 19 percent nationwide). And who is being hit the hardest?  Homosexuals, blacks and women. Look for some politically correct dope to blame straight white guys.

The New York City Health Department’s answer, of course, is not to counsel restraint. That would be judgmental. So their considered judgment is to hawk another round of condoms. Yeah, that will work—just like it has all along.

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We thought our supporters would like to read the following correspondence by Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput. It is directed to Catholic Democrats.

Dear Mr. Roth,

In a May 14 posting on your website, Patrick Whelan claims that:

“[Kansas City’s Archbishop Naumann] was a keynote speaker at a Denver conference in the fall of 2007 at which all the Republican presidential candidates appeared.”

I read this news with considerable interest since I was at that conference – in fact the Archdiocese of Denver sponsored it -- and no Republican presidential candidates were anywhere in the audience.  The conference is annual and non-partisan; in fact it focuses on John Paul II’s encyclical, The Gospel of Life – something every Catholic, of whatever political party, should have a grounding in.

I’m sure you’ll want to publicly correct this mistaken information as soon as possible.

By the way, the Democratic presidential candidates would have been most welcome at the Denver conference.  I didn’t see them in the audience either.

Be assured of my good will and prayers.

Sincerely yours in Christ,

+cjc

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May 20, 2008

The homepage of a group called Roman Catholics for Obama '08 misrepresents Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput's words on whether Catholics can vote in good conscience for a pro-choice politician.

The group quotes the archbishop as saying:

"So can a Catholic in good conscience vote for a pro-choice candidate? The answer is: I can't, and I won't. But I do know some serious Catholics -- people whom I admire -- who may. I think their reasoning is mistaken, but at least they sincerely struggle with the abortion issue, and it causes them real pain. And most important: They don't keep quiet about it; they don't give up; they keep lobbying their party and their representatives to change their pro-abortion views and protect the unborn. Catholics can vote for pro-choice candidates if they vote for them despite -- not because of -- their pro-choice views."

In his web column of May 19, Archbishop Chaput comments on the group's use of this quote:

"What's interesting about this quotation - which is accurate but incomplete - is the wording that was left out. The very next sentences in the article of mine they selected, which Roman Catholics for Obama neglected to quote, run as follows:

"But [Catholics who support 'pro-choice' candidates] also need a compelling proportionate reason to justify it. What is a 'proportionate' reason when it comes to the abortion issue? It's the kind of reason we will be able to explain, with a clean heart, to the victims of abortion when we meet them face to face in the next life - which we most certainly will. If we're confident that these victims will accept our motives as something more than an alibi, then we can proceed."

The archbishop ends with some advice for the group:

"Changing the views of 'pro-choice' candidates takes a lot more than verbal gymnastics, good alibis and pious talk about 'personal opposition' to killing unborn children. I'm sure Roman Catholics for Obama know that, and I wish them good luck. They'll need it."

To read the full column, click here.

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David R. Carlin, former Democratic majority leader of the Rhode Island Senate and author of Can a Catholic Be a Democrat, discusses Sen. Obama's National Catholic Advisory Council in this piece from InsideCatholic.com.

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Fairness & Accuracy in Media (FAIR), a liberal media watchdog group,  is now challenging our statement of May 2 calling into question the fairness of its story, “Pope Gets Pass on Church Abuse History.”

In that report, FAIR accused then Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) of sending “a letter to church bishops invoking a 1962 doctrine threatening automatic excommunication for any Catholic official who discussed abuse cases outside the church’s legal system.” We said the charge was bogus and explained why (click here).

Now FAIR is standing by its story, initially lifted from a British tabloid, claiming that although the Vatican 1962 document in question applied to solicitations made in the confessional, it can be read to include acts outside the confessional. It then quotes a priest who, in fact, provides no evidence from the document that would substantiate FAIR’s initial accusation.

Indeed, the title of the 1962 document, “ON THE MATTER OF PROCEEDING IN CASES OF SOLICITATIONS,” was deliberately chosen to reflect the Vatican’s concerns regarding improper solicitations that might take place within the confessional. It did not reach the question that FAIR alleges it did.

Moreover, if the initial FAIR story were accurate, it should be able to produce the indicting letter by Cardinal Ratzinger that it claims supports its accusation. So where is it? Trying to spin its way out of its own jam is bad enough, but when the pope is unfairly maligned, it is despicable. FAIR is never to be trusted again on matters Catholic.

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Irena Sendler, a Polish Catholic who helped save thousands from the Nazis, died this morning at the age of 98. Between 1940 and 1943, Sendler and other members of an underground organization smuggled Jewish children—from infants through teens—out of the Warsaw Ghetto. Sendler worked to give these kids a chance at survival by passing them off as Catholics. She kept detailed records so they could one day be reunited with their families. Despite enduring arrest and torture at the hands of the Nazis, Sendler never revealed the location of these records.

In 1965, she was honored by the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial for her life-saving efforts. Her story was recently made into a play by Kansas high school students impressed by her selfless service to others, and she received official honors from her native Poland just last year. Despite these accolades, Sendler never considered herself a heroine, and said, “We who were rescuing children are not some kind of heroes. Indeed, that term irritates me greatly. The opposite is true—I continue to have qualms of conscience that I did so little.”

It is unfortunate that Sendler’s faith is not mentioned in the otherwise fitting tributes to her life that were released today from the Associated Press and Agence France Press. It is all too common for news stories to make note of a subject’s Catholic faith if the subject of the article is cast in a bad light. Furthermore, the Catholic Church is often unfairly and inaccurately maligned for not doing more to help Jews during the Holocaust. It would have been appropriate for these two major news outlets to recognize the Catholic faith that one brave Polish woman held so dear. 

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Archbishop Joseph Naumann of Kansas City has stated that Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius should not present herself for Holy Communion. The governor, a Catholic who sits on Sen. Barack Obama’s Catholic National Advisory Council, is a long-time supporter of abortion rights.

As Archbishop Naumann recently wrote, Gov. Sebelius’ support for abortion can be seen in her recent veto of the Comprehensive Abortion Reform Act, which indicates that “the governor does not approve of legislators devoting energy to protecting children and women by making it possible to enforce existing Kansas law regarding late-term abortions.” Archbishop Naumann also pointed out that Sebelius has accepted campaign contributions from Dr. George Tiller, the notorious late-term abortionist.

It is telling that Sen. Obama should have chosen Gov. Sebelius to advise him on matters Catholic. After all, when in the Illinois state senate, the presidential contender led the fight to deny care to babies born alive as a result of botched abortions. That he should choose a Catholic politician who so disregards the Church’s respect for life speaks volumes about his intentions for this council.

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Click here to read the Pew Forum's findings on the image Americans have of Pope Benedict XVI in the wake of his recent visit.

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“What if the greatest story ever told was a lie?” This is the tag line to “Bloodline,” a new film opening in New York this Friday. Bruce Burgess, the producer, has previously made documentaries exploring the Bermuda Triangle and searching for Bigfoot. So it comes as no surprise that he is floating claims that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene, sired children, and that His body is still entombed in France today.

Such charges are nothing new. The folks behind the Jesus Seminar have been floating such theories for years. The ridiculous lies behind the fictional Da Vinci Code and the more recent Discovery Channel airing of “The Lost Tomb of Jesus” have been debunked time and again. Yet the hucksters are still at it.

“Bloodline” is playing in limited locations. We’re betting the reactions of the audience will be limited too. The producers sent the Catholic League a free copy of the film. We can safely say that anyone who buys a ticket will be thinking, “I can’t believe I paid ten bucks for that.”

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May 5, 2008

Michael Preisler, a member of the Catholic League, is a Polish Catholic who survived Auschwitz. Click here to read about his work educating others on the reality of life in Poland during the Holocaust.

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Yesterday, the Rev. John Hagee appeared as a guest on Dennis Prager’s radio show. On the program, Hagee denied that he is anti-Catholic, claiming, “The charges made against me by specifically the Catholic League are simply false.”

For his part, Prager mentioned his long-standing friendship with the Catholic League and his intention to bring Bill Donohue on his program soon. However, he also praised Hagee as one of the most “courageous” and “important” leaders of the day. The radio host declared, “There are times in life where there are conflicts and there are times where there are gratuitous conflicts. This is gratuitous. There should be no conflict between any Catholic institution and John Hagee.”

John Hagee is a man with a history of bandying about false accusations against the Catholic Church—one of his favorite lies is that Hitler was acting in accordance with the Vatican and the “Roman Church.” He also isn’t fooling anyone by saying he wasn’t speaking of the Catholic Church when he threw out insults like “false cult system” and the “great whore.” He used them while slamming the Catholic Church. Furthermore, anti-Catholic Protestants have used such demonizing language against the Church for years.

Donohue would welcome the chance to go on Prager’s show and discuss Hagee. The preacher can spin all he likes, but he won’t convince the country he isn’t anti-Catholic. His record is too long and too vitriolic.

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What His Holiness said at the White House on Wednesday was the truth, and nothing but the truth: “Any tendency to treat religion as a private matter must be resisted.”

We hope all those who would like to privatize, if not censor, religion are listening. What the pope said will surely embolden millions of Catholics to take a more aggressive public role exercising their religious liberty rights. We also hope that the ACLU, the ADL and Americans United for Separation of Church and State get the message.

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Rabbi Tzvi Hersh Weinreb, who represents North American Orthodox synagogues as executive vice president of the Orthodox Union, dismissed the controversy surrounding the Latin version of the Good Friday prayer for the Jews. “Their prayers are their business, our prayers are our business,” the rabbi told the press. We hope everyone takes note of his sensible and considerate take on the issue.

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Pope Benedict XVI has done everything he can to remain faithful to Catholic teaching on the subject of salvation and at the same time reassure Jews that the Latin prayer is not being used as cover to ignite a conversion war. While most Jews have accepted the pope’s recent statement on this subject, the ADL has not. Instead, in its news release of April 4, it says, “the statement does not go far enough to allay concerns about how the message of this prayer will be understood by the people in the pews.”

There is something downright disturbing about this language. Is it the ADL’s contention that those rank-and-file type Catholics are just waiting to beat the conversion drums and go out and find Jews to proselytize? It’s time the ADL gave this a rest before it triggers a backlash.

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March 20, 2008

WTOP, a news radio station in Washington, D.C., is currently playing a commercial that ridicules the Sacrament of Reconciliation. The spot, paid for by a Presbyterian Church in the nation’s capital, mimics a man confessing his sins to a priest. The priest repeats the man’s sins back to him, and with each sin (e.g., having lustful thoughts while viewing lingerie ads and coveting a neighbor’s lawn equipment) a cash register clicks, as if to tally up the sum of each sin. At the end, a voice tells listeners that with the Presbyterian Church, their spiritual journey doesn’t have to be “a guilt trip.” According to station managers, this ad has been aired for two runs a year since 2004.

It is interesting that those who made this spot felt that in order to spur interest in their church, they had to mock a Catholic sacrament. Rather than boasting of a strong faith formation or meaningful religious services, these folks must rely on trivializing attack ads to gin up their declining membership.

It is also troublesome that such an ad is running during Holy Week. This most sacred season is often the time when those with an animus toward the Church level their assaults. We’re used to it. What we are not accustomed to, however, are these assaults coming from our fellow Christians. We hope that in the future, those responsible for this advertisement will choose to highlight Presbyterianism, rather than to belittle Catholicism. 

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March 17, 2008

On March 13 & 14, The Cavalier Daily, a student-run newspaper at the University of Virginia, ran two cartoons, both of which were offensive to Christians.  We blasted the newspaper for their bigotry and pointed out its hypocrisy.

On March 15 the newspaper removed the cartoons from its website and issued a statement of regret.  The editor has pledged to review their cartoon policy.

We are happy that the staff at The Cavalier Daily came to their senses and recognized that anti-Catholic bigotry has no place on the pages of its newspaper.

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Last night, ABC’s “World News with Charles Gibson” ran a story about the health benefits of being an optimist. At the end of the segment, viewers on the East Coast were presented with a scene from “Monty Python’s Life of Brian” in which crucified men (one is the character Brian, mistaken in the plot for the Messiah) sing and whistle the song “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life.”

It didn’t take ABC long to realize that airing a scene mocking the crucifixion was completely unnecessary and inappropriate. Not wishing to further offend Christians, the network changed the scene for subsequent broadcasts in other time zones and apologized to those viewers who voiced their objections.

We are pleased that officials at ABC acted quickly to correct their actions, and appreciate their willingness to convey their apologies. Their handling of the problem speaks well of the network. We can’t help but wish, however, that instead of a trivial and offensive closer to the segment, something with real substance had been chosen.

The audience would have been well served to be reminded that faith in God also is beneficial to your health. A study from the University of Pennsylvania found that people who regularly practice their faith have lower rates of drug and alcohol abuse, depression and other health ailments. Other studies from Duke University Medical Center have found that religious people spend less time in hospitals and recover from illness more quickly than their secular counterparts. Additionally, using date collected over thirty years, scientists at the California Department of Heath Services, the Public Health Institute and the University of California, Berkeley, found that those who attend church services weekly tend to live longer than others.

This is the sort of information that would have made a fitting end to ABC’s story.

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Everyone is pointing out the obvious: Eliot Spitzer is an arrogant man who thought that the same rules that apply to everyone else don’t apply to him. Yes, his hubris is insufferable, but there is something else going on as well.

One would be hard pressed to find a public official anywhere in the nation who entertains a more libertine understanding of sexuality than Eliot Spitzer. For example, his unbelievable passion for abortion rights led him to declare Crisis Pregnancy Centers the enemy when he was New York Attorney General. He intimidated them, harassed them and used bogus arguments to try to shut them down. But he met resistance, from the Catholic League and others, and had to pull back.

The majority of the residents of New York State—including the majority of those who live in New York City—are opposed to same-sex marriage. Spitzer favors it. He’s not satisfied with civil unions—he wants gay marriage.

Spitzer has been working hard to declare abortion a “fundamental right,” one so inviolate that it could never be overturned by the courts. He has also warned that no institution could “discriminate” in forbidding abortion services. Though officials in his administration have told us this would not mandate Catholic hospitals to perform abortions, the fact that the issue has been raised is worrisome.

Now he has been involved in a prostitution ring for years (allegedly practicing unsafe sexual acts) and declares his behavior to be “private” in nature (evidently, he believes the laws against prostitution—laws which he previously prosecuted and is now sworn to enforce—do not address public matters). His comment that politics is not about individuals, but ideas, is similarly bizarre. It’s not my persona that matters, he seems to be saying, it’s my ideas. Ideas, he adds, that are “progressive.”

It is also revealing to note that the group he was scheduled to meet with—before being told that he had an emergency meeting with the Feds—was Family Planning Advocates. This is the lobbying arm of Planned Parenthood.
 
In other words, in addition to his arrogance, the man is a walking embodiment of the Playboy Philosophy: He is a true libertine. And like all libertines, he not only destroys himself, he ineluctably destroys those around him.

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Tonight, Comedy Central will premier a new show, “Lewis Black’s Root of All Evil.” The show will feature the cantankerous Lewis as a “judge” who must grapple with two other comics, each trying to argue a side of a supposedly humorous question. The first episode, “Oprah vs. the Catholic Church” will ask whether the talk show host or the Bride of Christ is more “evil.”

According to preview videos and printed reviews, Black charges that the Church hinders “social progress” and that the pope gives lectures bashing other religions. The program features abundant jokes about molester priests. One would hope that a network devoted entirely to comedy would be able to come up with a few new gags rather than rely on the old bigoted chestnut about the priest and the altar boy. But Comedy Central has a long history of attacking the Church, and this is just more of the same.

We’ve read several reviews of the premier show. Some indicate that there will be minor jabs at the Catholic Church, and others that the attack is quite vicious. We’ll report back tomorrow to weigh in.

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We previously wrote about attempts by Colorado lawmaker Rep. Gwyn Green to pass House Bill 1011. The bill would lift the statute of limitations on all future cases involving the sexual abuse of children and grant a two-year period that offers those who are currently barred from doing so the chance to file a lawsuit.

Our concern with this piece of legislation was that it would only affect private institutions, such as Catholic schools, while public institutions would largely be immune. (A separate and wholly unequal bill was aimed at public schools.) We are pleased to note that the Colorado’s House Judiciary Committee killed Green's objectionable bill yesterday.

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On February 19, we commented on a proposed Maryland bill that would suspend the statute of limitations on child sexual abuse cases for almost two years. We took issue with this piece of legislation because while it would effect private institutions like Catholic churches and parochial schools, government institutions such as public schools would largely be exempt.

We are happy to report that after facing harsh opposition, the delegate who sponsored the bill, Eric Bromwell, has withdrawn it. According to The Examiner, Del. Bromwell states he will give “serious consideration” to resubmitting the bill during the next legislative session. As we said previously, any legislation on such matters should apply equally to all institutions—public and private. If that were the case, the Catholic League would not object. 

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We received several phone calls and e-mails about a situation in Albany, Oregon. A public school principal suspended two teenage boys for refusing to remove crucifixes and rosary beads from around their necks. Because the educator had reason to suspect the students’ wearing of these religious symbols was related to gang activity, the Catholic League has no problems with his action.

Though a flat-out ban of religious symbols worn by students would certainly be objectionable, this is not the case here. The principal has stated that religious items are permitted. However, he reserves the right to order their removal on a case-by-case basis, should he have reason to believe they are meant to indicate gang affiliation.

It is unfortunate that gangs are a problem in our country’s schools, and unfortunate that many gangs pervert Catholic symbols and devotionals in order to identify themselves and intimidate others. The Oregon principal seems to be doing what he must to protect all of his students, and keep the kids focused on education.

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In response to the Catholic League’s news release of February 7, “Politics of Sex Abuse in Colorado,” state Representative Morgan Carroll sent us this e-mail:

Attacking a fellow member or her religion is not a particularly professional way to argue a bill on the merits.  If you have policy problems with removing the SOL protecting sex offenders, please share your reasons, but so long as you are simply attacking a colleague or her motives, I, for one, find it offensive.  It hurts your credibility on the issues and instead makes it look like you guys are about politics over policy.  In an effort to be more effective, you may wish to reconsider your approach and simply debate the pros / cons of the issues.

Thanks,

Morgan

Catholic League president Bill Donohue responded to Carroll as follows:

One of your colleagues makes a libelous remark about the Catholic Church, wears her Catholicism on her sleeve, boasts of her support from the abortion industry and introduces a bill that discriminates in its application against private institutions vis-à-vis public institutions, and you have the gall to lecture me about politics?

No wonder the American people hold politicians in such a low regard. You, sir, are Exhibit A.

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Last week Bill Donohue was asked on the Fox News Network to comment on his charge that Bill Maher is “Americans #1 bigot.” In his concluding remarks, Donohue opined that he would love to get in the ring with Maher in Madison Square Garden so he could “floor him.”

When Maher was asked last night by Larry King to respond to Donohue’s quip, he said—in a serious tone—that Donohue “threatened to beat [him] up” and that he would “defend” himself if necessary.

To which Donohue said today, “At 6 feet 2 inches tall and 235 pounds, Maher is lucky to know that I don’t pick on people who are not my size, and this is doubly true when they’re half my size.”

It is obvious that this humorless “comedian” needs to get a life. He also needs to see a shrink about his pathological obsession with all things religious, especially Roman Catholicism.

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This week, Pope Benedict XVI had to cancel a talk at Rome’s Sapienza University because 67 professors said they would stop him from speaking. The high priests of tolerance explained their exercise in censorship by saying they disagreed with the pope’s writings on science. The few instances they cited were all erroneous.

Ironically, the pope was to talk on one of his favorite subjects—the need to embrace both faith and reason—and was stopped by those who obviously believe in neither.

Oh, yes, the fascist professors owe their livelihood to Pope Boniface VIII: he founded the university in 1303 (it became independent in 1870). That’s what the Catholic clergy do—they promote faith and reason.

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On the January 9 edition of “The View,” panelist Joy Behar made it plain that she needs a shrink. She said the reason why there are so few saints anymore is because of “psychotropic medication.” She continued, “I think the old days, the saints were hearing voices and they didn’t have any Thorazine to calm them down.”

Besides being flatly wrong—a record number of saints have been named over the past few decades—it is Behar who needs to consult a shrink. Her musings about all things Catholic suggests a pathological condition so severe as to make those who hear voices positively sane by comparison.

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On December 21, 2007 we posted a statement on Mike Huckabee’s scheduled appearance at Rev. John Hagee’s church on December 23. We have subsequently learned that presidential hopeful John McCain reached out to Hagee last fall.  Hagee introduced McCain on September 20, 2007 during his “No Surrender Tour” at an event in South Carolina.

The Catholic League has long considered Rev. Hagee to be a bigot, and the reason we are citing the McCain appearance now is because we want to treat the Arizona senator the same way we treated the former governor of Arkansas.

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As we begin the New Year, we'd like to share with you this moving account of one inmate's conversion story. (Posted with permission of the author.)

My name is Pornchai Moontri, and I am prisoner #38284 in the New Hampshire State Prison. I come to the Catholic faith after a painful journey in darkness that my friend, Father Gordon MacRae, has asked me to write candidly. This is not something I do easily, but I trust my friend.

I was born in Bua Nong Lamphu, a small village in the north of Thailand near Khon Kaen on September 10, 1973. At the age of two, I was abandoned by my mother to be sold. A distant teenaged relative rescued me. He walked many miles to carry me away to his family farm where I worked throughout my childhood raising water buffalo, rice, and sugar cane. I never attended school, however, and never learned to read and write in Thai. Though my childhood involved hard work, I was safe and happy.

When I was 11 years old, my mother re-emerged in Thailand with a new husband – an American air traffic controller from Bangor, Maine. I was taken from Thailand by them against my will, and brought to the United States. This transition was a trauma to be endured. A month after my arrival in Bangor, my new stepfather’s motive for importing a ready-made Thai family became clear. I was forcibly raped by him at age 11, an event that was to be repeated with regularity over the next three years. I was a prisoner in his house, and resistance was only met with violence against me and against my mother. I was all of 100 pounds. I cannot describe this further. Welcome to America!

Being one of only three Asians in 1985 Bangor, and speaking little English, I did not readily comprehend my new names. “Gook,” “V.C.” and “Charlie” meant nothing to me, but I could sense the scorn with which such names were delivered. Because my English was poor, I was treated as though I was stupid. Part of my humiliation was that I had to get a paper route at age 12, and my earnings were taken from me to pay for the “privilege” of living in my captor’s house. Stephen King’s home was on my paper route. Mr. King once gave me a Christmas bonus of 25¢ for delivering his newspaper all year. The horror stories he wrote about Maine are all true. Remember the one with the evil clown? It’s true.

When I was 14, my English was better. I was a little bigger, and a lot stronger – and nothing but angry. Anger was all I had. So with it I fled that house and became a homeless teenager in and around Bangor. One day the Bangor police actually picked me up and forced me to go “home.” I would rather have gone to one of the ones Stephen King wrote about. I just fled again and again, and ended up at the Good Will Hinckley School for people like me. I was there for a year and got kicked out for fighting. I was always fighting. I fought everyone.

Back on the streets of Bangor, I began to carry a knife. At 17 and 18, a lot of people were after me. I lived under a bridge for a while and sometimes my mother would bring me things. I tried to climb out of the deep hole I was in by signing up for night classes at age 18 to finish my high school diploma. I was kicked out of Bangor High School for punching the principal.

One night, at age 18, something that lived in me got out. I got very drunk with friends, and we walked into a Bangor Shop & Save supermarket to buy cigarettes. I barely remember this. In my drunken state, I opened a bottle of beer from a case and started to drink it. The manager confronted me and ordered me to leave. I tried to flee the store, but the manager and other employees tried to keep me there. I tried to fight them off to flee. When I got outside, a manager from another Shop & Save had witnessed the incident and pounced on me. I was 130 pounds and was pinned to the ground by this 190-pound man. I think something snapped in my mind. IT was happening again. I fought, but his dead weight was suffocating me. The newspapers would later tell a different story, but this was the truth, and it is all I remember.

In jail that night, I was questioned for three hours. I was told that I had stabbed a man and was charged with attempted murder. I have no memory, to this day, of stabbing the man. The next morning, I awoke in a jail cell and was told that I was charged with Class A murder. The man had died during the night. I was told that I blew a .25 on the Breathalyzer, but the result was so high it was discarded as an error.

My stepfather could have hired expert counsel, but it was clearly not in his best interest that my life be evaluated so I was left in the care of a public defender who wanted this high profile murder off his desk. There was talk about the Breathalyzer, and “level of culpability,” and things like “defensive vs. offensive wounds,” but in the end there were no theories, no experts and no defense. I was terrified of being abandoned. My mother came to me in jail and pleaded with me to protect her and “the family” by not revealing what happened in my life. So I remained silent. I offered no defense at all. My co-defendant told the truth of my being pinned down, but he was not believed. I was convicted of “Class A murder with deliberate indifference” and sentenced, at age 18, to 45 years in a Maine Prison. Maine has no parole.

I was also sentenced with the soul of the innocent man whose life I took – despite my being unable to remember taking it. The mix of remorse and anger was toxic in prison, and I gave up. Prison became just an extension of where I had already been. My anger raged on and on, and I spent 13 of my 15 years in prison in Maine’s “supermax” facility for those who can’t be trusted in the light of day.

Five years into my imprisonment, I learned one night in my supermax cell that my mother and stepfather had relocated to Guam where my mother was murdered. She was pushed from a cliff. The only suspect was her husband but there was no evidence. I was now alone in my rage.

After 14 years of this, the Maine prison decided to send me to an out of state prison. I had no idea where I was to be sent. I arrived in the New Hampshire State Prison on October 18, 2005 dragging behind me the Titanic in which I stored all my anger and hurt and loss and loss and loss – and guilt.

I started my time in a new prison by getting into a fight and ended up in the same old place – the hole. When some moths went by, I was given another chance. I was sent to H-Building where I met my friend JJ, an Indonesian who was waiting to be deported. JJ introduced me one day to Gordon, who he said was helping him and some others with appealing their INS removal orders or with preparing themselves to be deported. He seemed to be the only person who even cared. JJ trusted Gordon, so I had several conversations with him. A few months later, I was moved to the same unit in which he lives in this prison. We became friends.

By patience and especially by example, Gordon helped me change the course of my life. He is my best friend, and the person I trust most in this world. It is the strangest irony that he has been in prison for 13 years accused fictionally of the same behaviors visited upon me in the real world by the man who took me from Thailand. I read the articles about Gordon in The Wall Street Journal last year. I know him better, I think, than just about anyone. I know only too well the person who does what Gordon is wrongly accused of. Gordon is not that person. Far from it. It is hard for me to accept that laws and public sentiment allow men to demand and receive huge financial settlements from the Catholic Church years or decades after claimed abuse while all that happened to me has gone without even casual notice by anyone – except, ironically, Gordon MacRae.

On September 10, I will be 34 years old. I have been in prison now for nearly half of my life, but in the last year I have begun to know what freedom is. My anger is still with me and it always lurks just below the surface, but my friend is also with me. We both recently signed up for an intense 15-week course in personal violence. He is doing this for me. I spend my days in school instead of in lock-up now, and I will soon complete my High School diploma. Gordon helped me obtain a scholarship for a series of non-credit courses in Catholic studies at Catholic Distance University. In the last year, with help and understanding, I have completed programs offered in the New Hampshire prison. One day I felt strangely light so I looked behind me, and the Titanic was not there. I parked it somewhere along the way. I have put my childhood aside. Now I am a man.

In March of this year, after 15 years in prison, I was ordered by an I.N.S. court to be removed from the United States and deported to Thailand at the end of my sentence in 17 to 20 years or so. Gordon hopes that I can seek a sentence reduction so that I can return to Thailand at an age at which I may still build a life. There are many obstacles. The largest is that I do not speak Thai any longer and I never had an opportunity to learn and to read and write in Thai. We are working hard to prepare me for this. Though years away, it is a very frightening thing to go to a country only vaguely familiar. I have not heard Thai spoken since age 11, 23 years ago. There is no one I know there and no place for me to go. I have no home anywhere.

Along this steep path, I have made a decision to become Catholic. The priest in my fiend has not been extinguished by 13 years in prison. It is still the part of him that shines the brightest. Gordon never asked me to become Catholic. He never even brought it up. It is the path he is on and I was pulled to it by the force of grace, and the hope that one day I could do good for others. Gordon showed me a book, Jesus of Nazareth, in which Pope Benedict wrote: “The true ‘exodus’…consists in this: Among all the paths of history, the path to God is the true direction that we must seek and find.”

I am taking a correspondence course in Catholic studies through the Knights of Columbus and I look forward to the studies through Catholic Distance University. I go to Mass with Gordon when it is offered in the prison, and our faith is always a part of every day. When I return to the place I haven’t seen since age 11, I want to go there as a committed Catholic open to God’s call to live a life in service to others. It is what someone very special to me has done for me, and I must do the same.

My friend asked me to sit down today and type the story of my life and where I am now. He asked me to let him send this to a few friends who he says may play some role– directly or indirectly – in my life some day. The account is my own. What Gordon added was hope, and somehow faith has also taken root. In prison, hope and faith are everything. Everything!

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December 21, 2007

Reporters have asked us what we think about Rev. John Hagee now that Mike Huckabee is going to appear with him on December 23 at Hagee’s church. Here’s a quick glimpse, written by Bill Donohue.

Over ten years ago, I wrote to John Hagee asking him to stop with his Catholic bashing. Specifically, I complained about the falsehoods told about the Catholic Church in his video, Southern Steps: Jerusalem & Bible Prophecy. Hagee never replied.

On April 3, 2000, a Polish Catholic Holocaust survivor, Michael Preisler (Auschwitz No. 22213), wrote to Hagee saying the following: “On May 11, July 11 and December 23, 1999, I asked you to remove the falsehood in your book, Final Dawn Over Jerusalem, accusing Polish Catholics like me of creating the ovens at Auschwitz.” Hagee never replied. Preisler is co-chair of the Holocaust Documentation Committee of the Polish American Congress and a member of the Catholic League.

More recently, Hagee, in his latest book, Jerusalem Countdown (revised edition, 2007), wrote (on p. 114) the following: “Most readers will be shocked by the clear record of history linking Adolf Hitler and the Roman Catholic Church in a conspiracy to exterminate the Jews.”

I could go on and on. Hagee has a long and disgusting record of Catholic bashing. Here are a few more gems from Jerusalem Countdown:

·     “Anti-Semitism in Christianity began with the statements of the early church fathers, including Eusebius, Cyril, Chrysostom, Augustine, Origen, Justin, and Jerome.... This poisonous stream of venom came from the mouths of spiritual leaders to virtually illiterate congregants, sitting benignly in their pews, listening to their pastors. They labeled the Jews as 'the Christ killers, plague carriers, demons, children of the devil, bloodthirsty pagans who look for an innocent child during the Easter week to drink his blood, money hungry Shylocks, who are deceitful as Judas was relentless.'"

·    "The Roman Catholic Church, which was supposed to carry the light of the gospel, plunged the world into the Dark Ages.... The Crusaders were a motley mob of thieves, rapists, robbers, and murderers whose sins had been forgiven by the pope in advance of the Crusade.... The brutal truth is that the Crusades were military campaigns of the Roman Catholic Church to gain control of Jerusalem from the Muslims and to punish the Jews as the alleged Christ killers on the road to and from Jerusalem."

·     "The Spanish Inquisition was perhaps the most cynical plot in the black history of Catholicism, aimed at expropriating the property of wealthy Jews and converts in Spain for the benefit of the royal court and the Roman Catholic Church."

·     "Adolf Hitler attended a Catholic school as a child and heard all the fiery anti-Semitic rantings from Chrysostom to Martin Luther. When Hitler became a global demonic monster, the Catholic Church and Pope Pius XII never, ever slightly criticized him. Pope Pius XII, called by historians 'Hitler's Pope,' joined Hitler in the infamous Concordat of Collaboration, which turned the youth of  Germany over to Nazism, and the churches became the stage background for the bloodthirsty cry, 'Pereat Judea'.... In all of his [Hitler's] years of absolute brutality, he was never denounced or even scolded by Pope Pius XII or any Catholic leader in the world. To those Christians who believe that Jewish hearts will be warmed by the sight of the cross, please be informed—to them it's an electric chair."

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Bill Donohue got a surprise gift in the mail today, courtesy of New Line Cinema. Two copies of the Leaders’ Resource DVD for the New Line film, “The Nativity Story,” was sent, along with promotional material.

Donohue promptly called John Gooden in California to thank him, mentioning that though the Catholic League had its problems with New Line’s “The Golden Compass,” we were happy to promote “The Nativity Story” last year and would do so again now that it is out on DVD.

So we are happy to recommend “The Nativity Story,” and we are even happier that New Line Cinema was gracious enough to send the gift.

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New Line Cinema has a dud on its hands. They spent upwards of $180 million making “The Golden Compass,” and American audiences just aren’t buying it. After debuting with a mere $26 million, it plummeted to a measly $9 million its second weekend out.

Compare the numbers for “Golden Compass” with those of the Will Smith flick “I Am Legend,” also rated PG-13: “Legend” brought in over $76.5 million opening weekend. And “Alvin and the Chipmunks” opened at number two, raking in $45 million.

The success of “Chipmunks,” “Legend,” and the recent Disney film “Enchanted” (which opened with $34.4 million and took in $16.4 the next week) gives lie to the claim that the problem is just that people aren’t going to the theater. While it may be a tough time for studios across the board, there are still plenty of families willing to plunk down the cash for movie tickets. That is, of course, if the movie isn’t based on the first book of a profoundly anti-Christian and pro-atheist trilogy.

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In the “People” section of the December 17 issue of Time magazine, it is reported, “The Catholic League called for a boycott of the film THE GOLDEN COMPASS, saying it promotes atheism. The league previously boycotted The Da Vinci Code.”

In fact, the Catholic League did no such thing about either the book or the film version of “The Da Vinci Code.” We did ask the producers to run a disclaimer before the movie stating it was based on fiction, not fact (on the intro page to the novel, author Dan Brown had claimed otherwise). However, at no time did we start, or join, a boycott.

This is an indication of sloppy journalism. But Time doesn’t stand alone. On November 30, the UK paper the Telegraph wrote that the Catholic League “wants the film [“The Golden Compass”] banned or, at the very least boycotted.” While we did call for a boycott of “The Golden Compass” (as Time indicated) we never tried to ban or censor anything. We respect the author and filmmaker’s First Amendment rights, and we simply exercise our own.

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Several groups are waging campaigns to salvage Christmas from the denizens of multiculturalism who seek to downplay the birth of Jesus as just another day in the “holiday season.” The low-priced items described below are a great way to let others know you wish them a very Merry Christmas..

The Catholic Daughters of the Americas, Court John Paul II, are offering car magnets and pins reading “It’s OK to say Merry Christmas to Me!” Proceeds from these items will be donated to charity. To reach the Catholic Daughters, call 845-893-6368 or email cdjpii@aol.com.

Parishioners at Our Lady of Victories in Harrington Park, NJ are not only offering Christmas bumper stickers, but they came up with the novel idea of “calling cards.” Customers bothered by a retailer’s decision not to recognize Christmas in their “holiday” advertising can leave behind a card stating “In response to the secularization of Christmas; we choose to support Christmas friendly vendors. See you next year? Merry Christmas!” Contact the members of OLV at 201-244-5130 or 201-895-4456.

Operation: Just Say Merry Christmas has designed rubber wristbands that boldly let others know what words they can say to acknowledge the true meaning of this Holy Season. Visit OperationJustSayMerryChristmas.com or dial 513-608-7608.

Lastly, a coalition called the Pilot Program to Keep Christ in Christmas is offering car magnets depicting a silhouette of the Nativity scene and the words “Keep Christ in Christmas.” Log on to www.kcnativitysets.com or leave a message at 847-380-2404.

Merry Christmas!

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Matthew Murray, the gunman who stormed a Christian youth mission center and then a nearby church this on December 9, held a deep hatred for Christianity, according to the Associated Press and CNN affiliate KUSA. Murray, who took the lives of four people before dying himself during a shootout with a security guard, targeted his victims because of their religion.

A look back at an internet-message board he frequented, aimed at those who have left evangelical churches, reveals that on the morning of his killing spree he raged “You Christians brought this on yourselves.” He also wrote, “All I want to do is kill and injure as many of you…as I can especially Christians who are to blame for most of the problems in the world.”

In the past, other posters to the website Murray frequented had recommended he seek professional counseling. One poem he posted, “Crying all alone in pain in the nightmare of Christianity,” spurred a psychologist to offer such services, but Murray dismissed the idea.

Murray was once associated with the youth center that he shot up, having been rejected from a mission trip to Bosnia. According to the center’s director, the young man was not able to go on the trip for health reasons. Additionally, he had performed a song by Marilyn Manson (a self-described Satanist) at a mission concert.

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In her review of Mitt Romney’s historic speech last week, columnist Kathleen Parker took an insulting—and wholly gratuitous—stab at Catholics: “No religion can bear close scrutiny if we go literal. Who among Christians wants to explain the Immaculate Conception? A talking snake? The rather peculiar ritual of ‘grokking’ Jesus by eating stale wafers and sipping cheap wine?”

“Close scrutiny” of her own words makes us wonder what her problem is. That she ends her piece by congratulating Romney for promoting religious tolerance suggests that she is clueless about her own contribution to religious intolerance.

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According to Catholic News Service, the review of “The Golden Compass” that was released on Nov. 29 by the Office for Film and Broadcasting of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has been withdrawn.

The USCCB has not stated why the review has been pulled.

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To learn what’s on the minds of contemporary atheists, check out Mark Morford’s piece in today’s San Francisco Chronicle. With lines such as "they [Christians] raise their flags and cock their Bibles and pat themselves on their arrogant backs, conveniently forgetting that the only real difference between radical Islam and Christianity's own bloody, murderous past is, well, a bit of time, with a splash of geography" he illustrates the hate so many hold toward people of faith.  

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In today’s edition of the Washington Times, a group of mostly lefty Christians has charged that Bill O’Reilly, John Gibson and Bill Donohue should stop fighting the secular war on Christmas and instead join their efforts to combat poverty and war. They are particularly incensed by Donohue’s use of the term “cultural fascists.” Donohue replied as follows:

“As someone who taught in the ghetto helping the urban poor to lift themselves out of poverty, I need no lectures from those whose idea of helping the poor is opening a can of soup for them. And as a veteran, I have done more to promote the cause of peace than all the surrender types have ever done. Indeed, they owe their very existence to people like me.

As for the term “cultural fascists,” I suggest my critics get up to speed: See my news release of 11-27-07—I use the term “multicultural monsters.”

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 The Catholic League has long noted that incidents of anti-Catholicism receive scant attention in the press. One recent example can be found in today’s issue of Newsday. The paper, dealing with Don Imus’s return to radio, includes a list of other prominent people who have paid a price for making offensive remarks. Mentioned are those who have insulted blacks, Jews, and the Chinese. Not listed are men such as Penn Jillette and Bill Maher, both of whom have made outrageously bigoted and disrespectful comments towards Catholics.

On his Showtime program, Jillette called Mother Teresa “Mother F--king Teresa” and referred to her fellow religious sisters as “F--king c--ts.” On his CBS radio talk show, he also discussed a rumor that Paris Hilton would portray the saintly nun in a film, saying “Paris Hilton is so far above Mother Teresa on the moral scale, she should not lower herself" by accepting the role.

Bill Maher, who has a long history of bigotry against Catholics, has said things such as: It's easy to start a religion! Watch, I do it for you: I had a vision last night! A vision! The Blessed Virgin Mary came to me--I don't know how she got past the guards--and she told me it's high time to take the high ground from the Seventh Day Adventists and give it to the 24-hour party people. And what happens in the confessional stays in the confessional. Gay men, don't say you're life partners, say you're a nunnery of two. 'We weren't having sex, officer; I was performing a very private Mass, here in my car. I was letting my rod and staff comfort him. Take this and eat of it, [our emphasis] for this is my roommate Barry. And for all those who believe there is a special place for you in Kevin.’

But Maher and Jillette, for all their hate, don’t merit mention in Newsday’s list. And that is because no one ever suffers a penalty for attacking the Catholic Church. While folks lose their jobs over slurs against other groups, anti-Catholic bigots barely merit a raised eyebrow. The double standard is amazing.

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Poor Kathy Griffin. At the pinnacle of her career, she’s consumed by hate. When she received her Emmy award in September for her reality show, she shrieked “Suck it, Jesus, this award is my God now.” And last night on her Bravo special “Kathy Griffin: Straight to Hell,” she lashed out again.

Griffin warmed up by attacking the Catholic League for its criticism of her September stunt, saying “Don’t pull your Catholic kid f**ker bulls**t with me, mother f**kers.” What is most disturbing is that she went on to abuse all Catholics and paint all priests as molesters by saying, “The Catholics, they should f**king talk. They got bigger fish to fry than my little jokes. I remember Father Porter.”

So that’s how it is. This ex-Catholic and self-proclaimed “complete militant atheist” gets her jollies by smearing the reputations of the innocent, trashing the Church and knocking Jesus. It’s sad that she feels she must resort to puerile attacks to get laughs. And sadder still that her audience eats it up. Pity Miss Griffin. Being driven by rage can’t be all that much fun.

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According to USA Today, the latest FBI data shows that in 2006, there was an increase in the number of hate crimes motivated by bias against religion. While hate crime against people of faith in general shot up 19% from 2005, the increase in hate crimes against Catholics increased by approximately 33%. (The increase for crimes against Muslims and Jews was 22% and 14%, respectively.)

Anyone wishing to read the full report may do so by visiting the FBI's website at http://www.fbi.gov/page2/nov07/hatecrime111907.html

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Never before in American history have more people known about, and used, condoms than today. And now comes a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that “A new U.S. record” has been set: chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis are rapidly increasing.

Two months ago, it was reported that New York City health officials had found a startling increase in syphilis, and that “the increase appears to be concentrated mostly among men who have sex with men.” According to the Associated Press, “The increase in syphilis cases came in the same year that the city distributed more than 17 million free condoms in an effort to step up its condom giveaway efforts to help reduce sexually-transmitted diseases.”

But is anyone listening? The condom hoax is in high gear. The blame goes to city officials, the health community and those who engage in reckless sex. Not until promiscuity is curbed will the rates decrease. And that’s something no condom can fix.

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Many fans of crosswords look forward to tackling the New York Times’ Sunday issue. Several enthusiasts contacted the Catholic League, however, to report that they were troubled by a question in yesterday’s puzzle. The work, titled “Putting on Some Weight,” featured several answers that contained the word “ton.” For instance, the clue “I’m not interested in having tea!” led to the answer, “DON’T GIVE ME ANY LIPTON.”

Puns are standard fare for crossword puzzles, but one example from yesterday’s game is a little too cute. The clue for Number 98 across asked “Crucifix?” The corresponding answer was “SEXTON SYMBOL.” Surely the authors of the puzzle, and the editors of the New York Times, would do well to avoid such cheekiness when it comes to the figure of Christ crucified.

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Jerry Springer, who makes his living interviewing sad-sacks, bigots and the sexually depraved and then selling the vile vignettes to viewers, featured a guest today named Jerry Pope who calls himself “the Pope.” Claiming to be the Vicar of Christ, Pope drapes himself in red vestments and a miter. He also claims to be a pimp, and trotted some of his prostitutes onstage along with him. (He boasted of having “sampled the merchandise his call girls have to offer.) When Pope’s daughter came from backstage and begged her father to change his life, he ordered one unfortunate woman to attack her.

Amidst all of this degeneracy, Springer and a guest by the name of Reverend Shnorr (who appeared to be a drunk in a wrinkled suit waving a Bible) chastised Jerry Pope for mocking the Catholic Church.

Save it, Springer. Rather than criticizing guests for impersonating the Holy Father, perhaps you could cease setting the stage for such antics. Decent people do not exploit gigolos and prostitutes (or anyone pretending to be either) to make money. But those responsible for “The Jerry Springer Show” certainly do.

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Yesterday on National Public Radio’s “Talk of the Nation,” Northwestern University professor Garry Wills argued that because the Bible doesn’t specifically mention abortion, it’s not a religious issue. He further added, “Is the fetus a person, and when? It’s not by definition a person and the Catholic Church and others didn’t consider it to be that down through the ages.”  Wills claimed that St. Thomas Aquinas did not consider an early-stage fetus to be infused with a soul.

News flash for Wills: Thomas Aquinas never approved of abortion, and in fact outright condemned it.  Aquinas’ ideas on the soul were based on 13th century science’s understanding of early human life, which was lacking in today’s prenatal technology that leans heavily in favor of the belief that life begins at conception.

Wills also failed to mention that many of the Church’s earliest thinkers, treatises, and councils – the Didache, the Letter of Barnabas, Athenagoras, Tertullian, Hippolytus, Basil the Great, John Chrysostom, the Council of Ancyra, and others – all specifically condemned abortion.

It’s true that “abortion is wrong” never appears in the Bible.  Neither does “embittered ex-seminarians shouldn’t distort Church teaching to serve their own agendas.” But both are implied.

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Believe it or not, President Bush did not pick a pro-abortion scholar to be the new Vatican ambassador. He picked Harvard professor, and Catholic League board advisor, Mary Ann Glendon. This is obviously a big surprise to the Associated Press (AP).

In one of the AP’s stories on Bush’s nomination, the headline read, “Bush Picks Anti-Abortion Harvard Professor To Be Vatican Ambassador.” Now imagine how it would sound in reverse: “Bush Picks Pro-Abortion Harvard Professor To Be Vatican Ambassador.”

To top things off, in the body of the article Glendon is called “an anti-abortion scholar and opponent of gay marriage.” Has anyone ever heard of “a pro-abortion scholar”? And what exactly is so remarkable about being in favor of traditional marriage? There isn’t a single poll that indicates Americans want gay marriage, and indeed every time voters get a chance to express their view on this issue, they vote against it.

The media elites just don’t get it. They live in a world of their own. To call them parochial would be a colossal understatement.

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Michael Gerson, former chief speech writer for President Bush, notes in today’s Washington Post that not only do secular Americans prefer the Democrats over Republicans by a margin of 3-1, they bear a strong animus against Christians.

According to Gerson, “One study found that strongly Democratic voters are 5 percent less favorably disposed toward Roman Catholics than are strongly Republican voters, 10 percent less favorable toward Protestants and 23 percent less favorable toward Christian fundamentalists.” Gerson further observes that two election scholars who looked at the data concluded that “One has to reach back to pre-New Deal America…to find a period when voting behavior was influenced by this degree of antipathy toward a religious group.”

We might add that it was Jeanne Kirkpatrick who first noticed the secular penetration of the Democratic party. It began with the presidential election of 1972 and is more evident today than ever before. This does not bode well for either the Democrats or Christians.

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Every Halloween, the ghouls come out of the woodwork. But these ghouls are not supernatural. Rather, they are those who take a fun children’s holiday and turn it into a chance to bash the Catholic clergy.

A number of costume stores are carrying two particularly odious getups. Made by Spirit Halloween, a division of Spencer Gifts, the “Happy Priest” outfit makes the person who wears it look like a priest with a visible erection, and the “Thank You Father Nun” disguise depicts a pregnant religious woman. What you won’t see in stores, however, are offensive costumes depicting rabbis or imams in vulgar positions. Apparently, Spencer Gifts prefers to attack only Catholic leaders. (The company did not respond to a letter from the Catholic League asking about this.)

Haunted houses are another venue for those who wish to mock the Church to have their fun. According to the Chicago Sun Times, visitors to Evil Intentions in Bolingbrook, Illinois will see “skeletons dressed as priests and nuns—crucified upside down.” This is because, according to the attraction’s owner, “We try to attack everything…We attack the whole religious aspect of things.” Yet no mention is made of any other faiths being maligned at Evil Intentions. Even more disturbing is that the house treats visitors to “dead babies strung up on barbed wire.” This sort of sickness is unfathomable.

Moreover, the Chicago Tribune has reported that another Illinois haunted house has recently gotten in on the act. Dungeon of Doom in Grayslake had one cast member dressed “as a priest with a large, bloody cross ‘burned’ on his forehead.”

While it can be frustrating for parents taking their kids out for some Halloween fun to be confronted with such sights, they should remember that speaking up about it can truly effect change. As a store owner in Vails Gate, New York told the Times Herald Record when asked about why he sells the costumes described above, “If I’d gotten a complaint, I would have thought it over.”

Update, 10-31-07: The Times Herald-Record has reported that the manager of The Party Store in Vails Gate, New York (quoted above) has removed the offensive costumes from his aisles. He is to be commended for listening to the concerns of Catholic shoppers. 

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When asked by the New York Daily News about Britney Spears's latest photo shoot, which depicts racy scenes with a priest in the confessional, Catholic League president Bill Donohue had this to say: "This is all the puzzle pieces coming together. This girl is crashing. She's not even allowed to bring up her own kids because she's not responsible enough. Now we see she can't even entertain."

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James Watson, the Nobel Prize winner and co-discoverer of DNA, resigned from his position as chancellor of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory after an uproar over remarks he made questioning the intelligence of blacks. It is not only recently that Watson has made such comments—in 2000, he told an audience at the University of California at Berkeley that African Americans are genetically prone to laziness, obesity, and have more active sex drives than whites. Furthermore, Esquire’s January edition of this year quoted Watson as condoning anti-Semitic remarks because “some anti-Semitism is justified.”

What is interesting is that those who have been crying foul over Watson’s recent remark don’t seem too upset over the scientist’s position on infanticide. He has long held that only an infant more than three days old should be considered a “person,” and suggested handicapped children should be killed at birth.

It sounds like in today’s society, offending blacks is cause for termination, but advocating the murder of babies won’t even raise any eyebrows. We’re glad that Watson is no longer at the helm of Cold Spring Harbor, but we think his exit should have been called for a long time ago.

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We noticed with interest that “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” bleeped a comment by Halle Berry that its in-house censors didn’t like. According to today’s New York Post, on October 19 Berry pointed to photos of herself using a computer program that distorts images. Upon seeing a picture of herself with a big nose, she exclaimed, “Here’s where I look like my Jewish cousin.” The last part was bleeped.

What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. So the next time Jay makes an offensive crack about priests, we look for equal treatment. But we won’t hold our breath as those who write his monologues get paid to offend. Catholics, that is.

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The Catholic League commends Martha Irvine and Robert Tanner of the Associated Press (AP) for their 3,272 word article “Sexual misconduct plagues US schools.” AP reporters studied disciplinary records of teachers in every state and the District of Columbia and “found 2,570 educators whose teaching credentials were revoked, denied, surrendered or sanctioned from 2001 through 2005 following allegations of sexual misconduct.” This thorough investigation reveals how deep the problem of sex abuse in public schools truly runs.

We regret, however, that the writers didn’t take the teachers unions to task for failing to do more to make sure offending teachers never return to the classroom. Though certainly some offenders are punished, many teachers who are suspected of serious offenses are protected by union rules, and merely moved to another classroom. This practice is so common it is called “passing the trash.” In New York City, for instance, it is virtually impossible to fire a teacher because of molestation. In some cases, teachers are assigned to sit in empty classrooms (collecting paychecks), in the wake of serious charges.

We do appreciate why the teachers unions feel strongly that the rights of accused teachers must be remembered along with the accusations of students. We agree, and add that the same consideration should be shown to anyone under suspicion of a crime, including Catholic priests. It is all too often that people legitimately concerned about sexual abuse of children wish to toss out clerics at the slightest suggestion of offense, whether the accusation has merit or not.

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As we noted in a recent news release, on October 9 ABC’s “Boston Legal” featured a Catholic nun in full habit uttering a sexual innuendo having nothing to do with the storyline at hand. We branded the show’s creator, David E. Kelley, “Tinseltown’s Ace Bigot.” Kelley has a long-standing animus toward Catholicism. 

On October 16, Kelley was at it again. That night’s “Boston Legal” episode featured a Mexican father who wanted to take his son back to Mexico so that the boy could participate in bullfighting. The same nun from the previous episode translated the father’s testimony:  

“Bullfighting is a tradition in my country. I would have done it if I had the gift. To climb in, see that big bull stallion. To have that big bull charge me, just me and that stallion bull. One time, me and a big horny bull. Oh, oh … !” She became increasingly excited as she spoke. 

We're not holding our breath waiting for "Boston Legal" to feature such a gratuitous scene with an imam or a rabbi. When it comes to ridiculing religion, Kelley's sexually charged brand of "humor" only seems to cut one way.

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“My Sweet Jesus,” another life-sized chocolate sculpture of a naked crucified Jesus by artist Cosimo Cavallaro, will be displayed in a New York gallery on West 22nd Street from October 27 through November 24. Unlike last spring, when we launched a boycott against Manhattan’s posh Roger Smith Hotel (the boycott was dropped when the hotel cancelled the exhibition of an identical Cavallaro statue, “My Sweet Lord”), the Catholic League will not protest this showing.

When the Roger Smith Hotel originally planned to host “My Sweet Lord,” the work was set to be unveiled on April 1, Palm Sunday, and run through Easter Sunday. In addition, the midtown hotel’s gallery is located on street level, easily visible through windows to the public. Any child strolling with his parents through the popular area could have been subjected to the piece. And comments by the artist certainly didn’t help matters—he previously invited the public to come inside and take a bite of Jesus.

Since “My Sweet Jesus” isn’t going to be displayed on the ground floor of an established hotel in midtown, and since Halloween is more appropriate for Cavallaro’s crafts than Easter, our central objections are not applicable this time around. The Catholic League doesn’t approve of the piece, but this upcoming display won’t be as public, nor will it be an ostentatious assault on Christian sensibilities during Holy Week. 

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On Monday October 22 at 7:30 pm, The King’s College will host a debate between Dinesh D’Souza and Christopher Hitchens. The subject will be “Is Christianity the Problem.” 

The debate will be held at the New York Society for Ethical Culture, 64th Street and Central Park West, in New York City. For more information, visit The King's College website at http://www.tkc.edu/advancement/media/newsrelease.asp?id=55.

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“Elizabeth: The Golden Age,” a new film about Queen Elizabeth opens today in theaters. There is nothing new, however, about the way British Catholics are depicted compared to their Protestant counterparts.

According to the New York Times, the portrayal of the “Catholic-led holy war” waged by Spain’s King Philip II against Elizabeth, “with its ominous monks and Latin chants, reeks of ‘The Da Vinci Code.’”  And the National Catholic Register's  critic reports that the flick shows that “everything bad, evil and corrupt in the world ultimately is the bitter fruit of…Catholicism.” In contrast, Protestantism represents “conscience, religious freedom, and of course heroic resistance to Catholic oppression.”

Such bigotry against Catholicism is rather old-fashioned. The notion that Catholics are conspiratorial, socially backward and not to be trusted by their enlightened, Protestant neighbors was abandoned long ago by many across the pond. It is far from dead, however. Even now, in the twenty-first century, neither a Catholic nor anyone married to a Catholic may hold the throne in the United Kingdom. This is one of the lingering effects of Elizabeth’s reign.

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October 9, 2007

"The Catholic League is pleased to announce that it has been contacted by the office of the New York State Division of Human Rights regarding the controversy over the public display of religious objects at Country Pointe at Coram in Medford. We are encouraging owners of condominiums who have a grievance to lodge a formal complaint with the Division of Human Rights. The community’s homeowner’s association is entitled to establish any legal strictures it wants, but it has no right to violate religious liberty.  Whether it has or not is not certain. What is certain is that this confrontation could have been avoided altogether had respect for diversity been operative."

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The September 30 episode of the CBS show, “Cold Case,” featured sexually active Christian teens enrolled in an abstinence program. In the show, a trampy girl was stoned to death for breaking her chastity vow. To top it off, the Jerry Bruckheimer production depicted a minister preaching the virtues of abstinence while masturbating.

We have an idea for “Cold Case.” Do an episode on kids who reject abstinence and use condoms. But do an honest episode. Depict the way teens normally use condoms—which is to say improperly—and then show pictures of the aborted babies. It might also be worthwhile to show a Planned Parenthood counselor doing what they often do—covering up cases of statutory rape.

Bet Bruckheimer never thought of that one.

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The CW television network premieres a new sitcom, “Aliens in America,” tonight. The show is about a family called the Tolchucks that takes in a Pakistani Muslim foreign exchange student. While the Tolchucks are portrayed as slightly dysfunctional, the Muslim boy is friendly, helpful and devout—a real joy to be around. The contrast between the foreign Muslim boy and the American family is integral to the plot. As producer David Guarascio told The Times Union, “We wanted to bring a character who had a sense of his own faith, and who had a strong relationship with God into this family that really doesn’t have one.”

According to USA Today, the pilot “includes scenes that satirize perceptions about terrorism” and was screened by the Islamic Center of Southern California. Additionally, the Hollywood bureau of the Muslim Public Affairs Council provided advice to the producers about the show’s religious and cultural content.

It is admirable that the show will include a positive character who is devoted to God—something that is pretty hard to find in today’s television lineup. Christians are hoping they too will see a positive reflection of their faith in the upcoming season, though we won’t hold our breath waiting for the networks to screen any shows with Catholic or Protestant organizations.

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White House Press Secretary Dana Perino dropped the ball today when asked by Baltimore reporter Les Kinsolving to comment on the Miller boycott.

Kinsolving:  “The President does not believe that the First Amendment prohibits him from speaking out against the Miller Brewing Company’s widely reported financing of an obscene parody of ‘Jesus Christ’s Last Supper’ in San Francisco, does he?”

Perino: “Well, you’re clearing the room, Les. I’m going to decline to comment.”

Well, we won’t decline to comment on Perino.

She was asked a legitimate question about an viciously obscene and anti-Christian event—one that President Bush would never speak approvingly of—and she got cold feet. Perino did so because she followed the lead of NBC reporter Kelly O’Donnell who stormed out of the room muttering her disapproval of Kinsolving’s question.

We’d love to know what is bugging O’Donnell (does she like public displays of S&M and Christian bashing?), but the larger issue is why the Bush administration appointed a coward as its press secretary. Tony Snow would never have allowed a member of the press corps to set the table.

Many thanks to Les for having the courage of his convictions.

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According to this article from Cybercast News Service (CNS News), House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was asked about the poster for the Folsom Street Fair (it depicts the Last Supper with men in S&M outfits replacing Christ and the apostles and sex toys replacing the Eucharistic) she responded as follows. Her response, and the full question asked by the CNS resporter, is below:

CNSNews.com:  "I'd like to get local for a second and talk about what's going on in San Francisco. Your spokesman told the Bay Area Reporter that the Folsom Street Fair advertisement mocking the last supper would not harm Christianity. I'm wondering if you find the advertisement personally offensive."

"And as a follow up, the city's Grants for the Arts program, funded by the city's hotel tax, subsidizes the fair. Do you think that it's fair to tax everyone who visits San Francisco and stays in a hotel to support the fair?"

Pelosi: "Well that's not really a local question. That's a constitutional question. That's a religious question. That's as big a global question as you can ask. I'm a big believer in First Amendment and therefore, as I said in my statement, I do not believe that Christianity has been harmed by the Folsom Street Fair advertising."

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September 26, 2007

According to the Associated Press, the Italian doctor who suggested Pope John Paul II was euthanized "acknowledged she didn't have access to John Paul's medical records." Despite this, and other errors in her argument that have been countered by the Vatican, the doctor continued to allege that the pontiff's death was the result of assisted suicide.

Click here for the full story. 

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Click here to read Father Jonathan Morris's response to the Time magazine article suggesting that Pope John Paul II was euthanized. Father Morris brands the piece "blatantly irresponsible" and points out "the author's false statements about what the Catholic Church teaches regarding end-of-life care."

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John Aretakis, a trial lawyer who specializes in suing the Catholic Church, has been fined by a federal judge for a frivolous lawsuit. Click here to read a full account in the North Country Gazette.

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Public school calendars in New York's Monroe-Woodbury school district list two Jewish holidays, but no Christian holidays. In response to requests by Christian parents for equal representation, the local Times Herald-Record gave "Jeers" to "some parents with not enough to keep them busy."

Bill Donohue responded to the paper with the letter below:

Dear Letters Editor:

No wonder so many in your area called our office about your incredibly inane editorial criticizing Catholics for protesting the censorship of Christian holidays--while publishing Jewish ones--in the Monroe-Woodbury school calendar ("Jeers," 9-17). Your quip that some parents don't have enough "to keep them busy" smacks of elitism and a rank double standard: If Christmas were mentioned and Jewish holidays were excised, do you really believe Jews wouldn't (rightly) protest?

Your "solution" is so politically correct it's nauseating: delete all school holidays by name and just list "days off." What this demonstrates is your real hatred of diversity--you just want to neuter all religious holidays in the name of "tolerance." It's about time you practiced it, instead of invoking it like a mantra.

One more thing. Don't your editors have enough to keep them busy without dictating morality to local parents?

William Donohue
President
Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights
New York, NY

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From today’s Jerusalem Post:

"Orthodox teachers of Kabbala reacted with disdain Sunday to pop idol Madonna's Rosh Hashana visit in Israel, during which she took part in a study session of Judaism's most esoteric texts.

"'It is a known fact in Kabbala that impurity and evil are inherently attracted to sanctity,' said a director of one of the most respected Kabbala yeshivot in Jerusalem who preferred that he and his institution remain anonymous.

"'That's why people of Hollywood, a place of iniquity and lasciviousness, are naturally attracted to the holiness of Kabbala.'"

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Managers of a student newspaper at the University of Virginia, the Cavalier Daily, recently forced a staff cartoonist, Grant Woolard, to resign. This action stemmed from a controversy surrounding a drawing of Mr. Woolard’s that, according to the Washington Post, depicted “nine darkened figures with bald, enlarged heads, dressed only in loincloths, fighting each other over a tree branch, pillow, chair, boot and stool. The caption for the melee: ‘Ethiopian Food Fight.’” 

Minority groups on campus, under the leadership of the local NAACP, showed up at the Cavalier’s officers and demanded that Woolard be ousted.  They were quickly obliged. The paper’s editor-in-chief explained, “The instant the public raised a question about it, we realized it was a mistake.”  In addition, the Washington Post reports that a debate still rages on campus over whether the paper’s managing board of editors should submit their resignations as well.

The Cavalier’s editors wasted no time in acting on this issue. However, when the Catholic League objected to anti-Christian cartoons the paper published in September 2006 (one of which was also drawn by Woolard), they did not show the same haste. The editors initially refused to apologize (though they had previously apologized for a cartoon that upset gays) and stood by the cartoons, dubbing them acceptable satire. Eventually, the cartoons were removed from the paper’s website and a statement of regret was posted. But Woolard was kept on.

It is telling that the management of the Cavalier Daily is sensitive about the concerns of blacks and gays, but not of Christians. It seems that while racism and gay bashing are treated seriously on the campus, religious bigotry is not seen as such a problem. 

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On September 15, raunchy talk-show host Jerry Springer will kick off the 13th season of Fox’s “MADtv” by introducing a series of some of the show’s past comedy skits.  One such segment lampooned the Catholic priesthood’s sex abuse scandals.  

While most people would expect a program like “MADtv” to cause offense on a frequent basis, a look at the show’s history reveals little in the way of derogatory treatment of certain demographic groups.  We found nothing in the way of complaints about the show from blacks, Hispanics, Jews, gays, or Muslims; one has to go back to 2000 for a sole complaint from an Asian-American advocacy group.  

It’s the same old story–in the popular culture, most groups are off-limits when it comes to causing deliberate offense, but Catholic priests are fair game.

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On its website today, New York magazine gave Kathy Griffin “kudos” for unleashing a “joyfully blasphemous rant” upon receiving her Emmy award. Griffin’s words, “Suck it, Jesus, this is my God now” were so offensive and vulgar that most other news outlets won’t reprint them. Yet the Gotham publication goes so far as to gush, “Thank God we can always count on Kathy Griffin to inject a little energy into a boring awards show.”

The publication’s appetite for bigoted celebrity outbursts, however, seems to come and go. Foul-mouthed comediennes who insult Jesus and all Christians may meet with approval, but other celebrity offenders haven’t been so lucky. 

Don Imus earned a spot in New York’s list of “Great Moments in Bigoted Slurs” for his remarks about the Rutgers women’s basketball team. Isaiah Washington called a cast mate a “faggot” and was branded “despicable” and a “leading homophobe” by the weekly. Mel Gibson also earned the “despicable” label (twice) for his drunken anti-Semitic outburst, and was even described as being on par with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Both Gibson and Michael Richards (the comic of “Seinfeld” fame who went on a tirade against blacks) were listed among the “Great Moments in Racism.” And the use of the word “faggot” by Ann Coulter and Eminem was enough to drive the magazine’s pollsters into Union Square to ask passersby for their thoughts on the matter. 

Yet Kathy Griffin faces no such scolding. Instead, she is hoisted up as a hero. While anti-Semitism, gay slurs and racism are (rightfully) condemned by New York’s avant-garde, Christian-bashing is cause for celebration. And the editors aren’t afraid to admit it.

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The evidence is unmistakable: 81 percent of the victims of priestly sexual abuse were male, the majority of whom were postpubescent. Since 100 percent of the victimizers were male, we’re talking about homosexuality, not pedophilia. Yet the cultural elite refuse to deal with reality, and have indeed waged an unprecedented cover-up.

Two items in today’s New York Times are relevant. There is a review of a mime performance, “America LoveSexDeath,” that makes mention of one of the acts, “The Priest and the Altar Boy.” From another source, it is reported that this act “depicts a priest undressing a child clearly meant to be five or six and leaves little of the ensuing activity to the imagination.” It is a sure bet that not a single artist in the nation would ever do a performance based on the typical case, namely one which depicted a gay priest hitting on a postpubsescent male.

The Times also has a news piece by Ian Fisher covering the pope’s trip to Austria. He writes that among many Austrian Catholics, there is “lingering anger over pedophilia scandals.” But the scandal has been a homosexual one all along, and anyone who reads the data knows this to be true.

Lying about the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church is commonplace. And the central reason why the lying continues is because the elites do not want to bash gays (which is fine). They just want to bash priests.

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On August 28, in a debate with Bill Donohue, militant atheist Christopher Hitchens said on the MSNBC show, “Hardball,” that “Mother Teresa did not believe that Jesus was present in the Eucharist….” Donohue denied this was true.

Hitchens was relying on a Time magazine article of August 23 wherein it said that “for the last nearly half-century of her life she [Mother Teresa] felt no presence of God whatsoever.” (Our emphasis.) The claim was said to be supported by Rev. Brian Kolodiejchuk, the editor of the newly released book, Mother Teresa: The Private Writings of the “Saint of Calcutta.”

We called Father Brian last week in San Diego and was told by a nun (he was traveling) what we thought was the case: there is a profound difference between “feeling” and “believing.” Did Mother Teresa not always feel the presence of Jesus in the Eucharist? Yes. Did she therefore not believe in the Real Presence? Nonsense.

On p. 213 of the new book, it talks about Mother Teresa’s “early love of the Eucharist.” She shared her thoughts about this matter with Father Joseph Neuner, who wrote, “Though she no longer felt Jesus’ presence, she ‘would not miss Holy Com. [Communion] for anything.’”

On the same page are the reflections of a senior sister in her order, the Missionaries of Charity. Here is what she said:

“Mother received Holy Communion with tremendous devotion. If there happened to be a second Mass celebrated in Mother House on a given day, she would always try to assist at it, even if she were very busy. I would hear her say on such occasions, ‘How beautiful to have received Jesus twice today.’ Mother’s deep, deep reverence for the Blessed Sacrament was a sign of her profound faith in the Real Presence of Jesus under the appearances of bread and wine. Her adoring attitude, gestures such as genuflections—even on both knees in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament exposed, and that well into old age—her postures such as kneeling and joining hands, her preference for receiving Holy Communion on the tongue all bespoke her faith in the Eucharist.”

Looks like Hitchens got it wrong again. Mother Teresa loved the Eucharist and passionately believed in the Real Presence.

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New York senator and presidential would-be Hillary Clinton was recently asked about Catholic hospitals that do not wish to provide women with emergency contraception, which in some cases can act as an abortifacient.  According to the Associated Press, Senator Clinton replied that “conscience clauses” are appropriate in some situations, but “if there is a justifiable reason for some professional not to offer services, then wherever that professional works, there has to be immediate offering of services.” 

In other words, Senator Clinton says she would support certain individuals following their consciences and religious dictates, but not any institution as a whole.  So Catholic hospitals would be required to violate Catholic teaching and belief. 

Thus does the senator try to play to both sides, and ultimately fails to support those hospitals run by religious institutions that seek to operate within the guidelines of their respective religious faiths. 

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SACRED DOUBT 

by Rabbi Irwin Kula 

Rabbi Irwin Kula, a good friend of the Catholic League, is the President of CLAL—The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership.  He is the author of Yearnings: Embracing the Sacred Messiness of Life (Hyperion, 2006). 

Mother Teresa’s passionate expression of doubt in her recently released “dark letters” is a reflection of the profundity of her faith and firmly places her in the tradition of the great spiritual figures shaped by the exquisite anguish of finite human beings genuinely yearning for the infinite.  This window into Mother Teresa’s agonizing spiritual darkness and wrenching doubt about God, Jesus’ love, and prayer invites not only deep respect for her spiritual honesty but reflection about the character of authentic faith, especially in these days when faith is confused with certainty and doubt with weakness.  

Mother Teresa’s letters are undermining to all fundamentalist faiths—be they religious or secular.  She was not some God-intoxicated mystic confidently empowered to sacrificially offer her life in service to the poorest people on this planet. Yes, we might have liked her to have been in ecstatic union with God as it would allow us to get off the hook by either idealizing her as someone with extraordinary faith, the sort of faith we normal human beings could never possess, or by seeing her as massively psychologically deluded, the sort of delusion normal human beings ought never suffer.  But it appears there is no escaping Mother Teresa’s challenge.  

Neither an extraordinary faith in some simplistic sweet and light filled new age God, nor a belief in some fundamentalist God who ultimately saves if just heeded, nor some liberal secular humanism about doing good, enabled her to endure decades of wiping leprous sores, of feeding the hungriest of the hungry or of suffering with the dying of so many. It turns out that what motivated Mother Teresa was the depth of her doubt. She served, she bandaged, she fed, she healed, she worked, she smiled and she loved without any of the ongoing awareness of God’s presence that we assume she surely possessed.  

Mother Teresa’s honesty about her spiritual emptiness is uncomfortable because we tend to see genuine faith and love as free of doubt.  But nothing could be further from the truth. A mature faith, a rich love, a genuine relationship with God or with another person (it is no accident that every mystical tradition analogizes the two relationships) is born of the grit and insecurity of life.  We yearn for that place with God or with another person that can banish anxiety, anguish, and insecurity.  But any faith that is certain is no faith at all just as any love never doubted is very shallow love.  

The paradox of love and faith is that the more deeply we love the more we risk and the greater the intimacy we desire the more vulnerable we need to make ourselves.  We may try to convince ourselves otherwise with declarations to our lovers like “till death do us part” or proclamations about God’s unconditional love for us but the awesome truth about faith and love is that we can never be one hundred per cent sure we are loved by another human being or by God or whether we genuinely love another person or God with all our heart and might.  Maybe this is why we need to hear “I love you” so often from those whom we most love and why so much traditional prayer proclaims our love for God and why so much new age meditation invites us to feel bathed in cosmic love. We can never be certain. 

What makes Mother Teresa so much more fascinating now that we know about her painful doubt is that we realize her choice to live in service of others and mitigate suffering was a choice made every day to love in the grip of doubt, to do good without the certainty that doing good would make any ultimate difference, and to be bound to a vision and a call, once had but never to be confirmed again, that love was ultimately Real. No false dogma or illusions of certainty, rather the pain of living with the possibility of ultimate meaninglessness and abandonment. And how could it have been otherwise for Mother Teresa? Day in day out, caring for the most destitute on our planet, knowing (not just feeling) the depths of people’s suffering, and seeing the insignificance of her own actions relative to the enormity of that suffering, any posture but doubting God would have been a lie.   

For Mother Teresa doubt was not simply part of faith and love; anyone who has ever loved deeply knows that doubt and faith are always in a dance. Doubt is a necessary path to greater intimacy whether with God or another human being. No doubt means no growth in love or in holiness. The profound teaching reflected in Mother Teresa’s “dark letters” is that: Doubt is a result of receiving guidance; doubt is a consequence of love, NOT a way of preventing or undermining it! Certainty is the enemy of compassion, doubt an invitation to prove, with our actions, that Reality/God/Self/ Cosmos, whatever we name that which we have all yearned for, if not tasted, is fundamentally Loving.   

Mother Teresa connected her feeling of spiritual abandonment into an act of ego abandonment and it gave her unique access to the meaninglessness, loneliness and suffering in life that most of us will do anything—drugs, shopping, watch television, celebrity worship, meditate, worship God—to avoid feeling. That access compelled her to impose compassion upon the suffering, solidarity upon the loneliness, and love upon the meaninglessness. In her extreme devotion and doubt Mother Teresa is an absorbing contemporary model. For many of us devotion requires certainty and doubt undermines devotion. The paradox of faith, as illuminated by Mother Teresa, is that to all appearance God is indeed absent, contrary to our religious fundamentalist’s dogmatic assertions, and yet there is a possible faith, contrary to our secular fundamentalists, that can supply what is lacking even in faith—a faith that combines active and engaged devotion to healing people’s pain and fiercely honest doubt about whether such action makes any ultimate difference.   

From this sacred contradiction may well flow the sort of joy that must have been the reason for Mother Teresa’s ever present smile. The joy my tradition calls “simcha shel mitzvah” the joy of doing that which one knows one must do. Perhaps, in these days when certainty not only undermines our search for the truth and our capacity to love but threatens us with destruction, what we need is Mother Teresa type doubt— sacred doubt—that births humility and compassion that paradoxically proves faith more than any creed or dogma.  

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August 24, 2007

As reported by Jan Moller in today’s Times-Picayune, Louisiana Protestants don’t support a television commercial made by the Louisiana Democratic Party.  The commercial accuses Republican gubernatorial hopeful Bobby Jindal of bigotry against non-Catholic Christians.   

The advertisement claims that in an article he wrote in 1996, Jindal “insulted thousands of Louisiana Protestants. He has referred to Protestant religions as scandalous, depraved, selfish and heretical.”  However, as we noted in a recent news release, Jindal’s words were taken out of context.  Indeed, much of what the Democrats attribute to him are actually the words of John Calvin.  

Despite any intentions held for the commercial, Louisiana Protestants aren’t susceptible to the smear job against Jindal.  When asked by the Times-Picayune to name Protestant leaders who would agree that the 1996 article was offensive, a Democratic Party spokeswoman failed to produce a single one.   

Indeed, the Rev. David E. Crosby, senior pastor of New Orleans’ First Baptist Church, told the paper that “Anybody who reads [Jindal’s] whole article and ends up angry just needs to grow up.”   

Further, the Interfaith Alliance, described by the Times-Picayune as “a Washington D.C., grass-roots group that was formed as a liberal counterweight to more conservative Christian groups,” also condemned the ad.  The organization’s president, Baptist pastor Rev. C. Welton Gaddy, wrote to the state party’s chairman and requested the ad be pulled. 

Despite all this, party leaders are standing behind their smear-job.  As of this writing, it is still featured prominently on the homepage of Louisiana’s Democratic Party. 

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In September, Doubleday will release a book by Father Brian Kolodiejchuk called Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light.  Father Kolodiejchuk, the postulator for Mother Teresa’s sainthood cause, has collected the amazing woman’s writings into a volume that shows the intensity of her holiness.  Particularly revealing are the sections that highlight the severe “dark night of the soul” that haunted Mother Teresa for years.   

An interesting article in Time that ran yesterday quotes Christopher Hitchens discussing what is revealed about Mother Teresa in the book:  

“She was no more exempt from the realization that religion is a human fabrication than any other person, and that her attempted cure was more and more professions of faith could only have deepened the pit that she had dug for herself.”    

[Hitchens] likens her to die-hard Western communists late in the cold war: “They thought, ‘Jesus, the Soviet Union is a failure, [but] I’m not supposed to think that.  It means my life is meaningless.’ They carried on somehow, but the mainspring was gone.  And I think once the mainspring is gone, it cannot be repaired.” 

Hitchens still doesn’t get it.  While others are awed by Mother Teresa’s life of good works and love for the Lord, even during the years she felt distant from Him, the famed atheist sees even more to loathe.  But this is no surprise coming from Hitchens, whose book ranting against the saintly nun, The Missionary Position, contained not one footnote to support his charges.   

Hitchens can rage all he likes.  Most people will not be swayed.  As Time reports Father Kolodiejchuk has said, "The tendency in our spiritual life but also in our more general attitude toward love is that our feelings are all that is going on…And so to us the totality of love is what we feel. But to really love someone requires commitment, fidelity and vulnerability. Mother Teresa wasn't 'feeling' Christ's love, and she could have shut down. But she was up at 4:30 every morning for Jesus, and still writing to him, 'Your happiness is all I want.' That's a powerful example even if you are not talking in exclusively religious terms." 

After all, as Mother Teresa herself wrote, "I accept not in my feelings--but with my will, the Will of God--I accept His will."

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August 21, 2007

We pass no judgment on the late Leona Helmsley, but we are amused to find that the same woman who fired two men because they were gay (she settled out of court with the first man and lost in court to the second one), and made numerous anti-gay comments, is viewed as a heroine by two of New York’s liberal columnists. 

To Gail Collins of the New York Times, Helmsley was a brave feminist who stood up to all those bad men. To Ellis Hennican of Newsday, she was misrepresented in the media and misunderstood by the public. To the Catholic League, we are impressed by the fact that neither one of them had a word to say about her history of gay bashing. 

Mel Gibson. Michael Richards. Isaiah Washington. Imus. All of them got wound up and made callous statements. But Leona—she can intentionally fire gays because they are gay and still pass muster with the liberal elite. Once again, the messenger counts more than the message.

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Last night, the Showtime network debuted its new series, “Californication,” starring David Duchovny.  The main character, Hank is a writer who has a published a book called God Hates Us All. Unhappy about the film adaptation of his work, struggled with his young daughter, and missing his ex-girlfriend, Hank is troubled by a bad case of writer’s block.   

The opening scene of the pilot shows Hank enter a Catholic Church,* smoking a cigarette.  He drops the butt in the holy water font, walks up to the altar, and begins a conversation with Jesus on the crucifix.  A nun approaches him, and Hank begins telling her about his writer’s block in foul language.  The nun responds that she would normally tell him to say the Lord’s Prayer as penance for his cursing. In this case, however, she decides to offer him oral sex.  Hank puts up his hand to block Jesus’ view as the nun begins to perform the act.  At this point, he wakes up with another woman, revealing the church scene to be merely a dream. 

If this is what passes for “edgy” at Showtime, we’ll take a pass on the upcoming season of “Californication.”  

*NB:  We have since learned that the church used in this scene is actually St. Vibiana's, the former cathedral for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. This raises serious questions about the propriety of using a building which was once consecrated for the setting of a trashy program.  The Catholic League will follow up on this matter. 

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In today’s New York Times, the obituary on Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger, a Jewish convert, says that “Like John Paul, Cardinal Lustiger was a conservative. He opposed abortion and the ordination of women and married men to the priesthood, and he sought to preserve the priestly vow of celibacy.”

Holy smokes! Sounds like Cardinal Lustiger was Catholic.

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During today's airing of the ABC television show "The View," the panelists discussed gay marriage. Joy Behar was all for it, saying, "Gay people would like to say that they are married, instead of just a civil union." She then asked, "Why don't certain people, we know who they are, not want gay people to marry?"

We don't doubt that by "certain people," Behar probably meant Catholics and Evangelicals. But we have some news for her: There's never been a survey taken that indicates the American people support the idea of two men getting married. Indeed, even in New York City, a plurality of those asked have said that marriage should remain a union between one man and one woman. Perhaps Behar should ask why "American voters" aren't in favor of radically altering an ancient institution. But then she'd have to admit that she doesn't speak for most people.

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