The John Jay College of Criminal Justice released its long-awaited report on the “Causes and Context” of priestly sexual abuse on May 18. Bill Donohue will offer an extended analysis of the report in the next edition of Catalyst, and he will distribute his assessment to the bishops before they meet in Seattle on June 15 for their next session. There... [Read more...]
PELOSI FLIPSOn May 11, Rep. Nancy Pelosi indicated she may vote against the nomination of the new House Chaplain. We immediately criticized her reasoning. On May 12, she said she had changed her mind. Here’s what happened. When Rev. Patrick Conroy was selected by House Speaker John Boehner to be the new House Chaplain, the Jesuit priest won the plaudits of... [Read more...]
PROFESSORS AND THE POORHouse Speaker John Boehner was selected to give the commencement address at Catholic University on May 14, and three days before the event, a letter taking him to task was released; it was signed by over 75 Catholic professors. Their complaint? The Ohio Republican was chastised for not following the teachings of the Catholic Church on helping the poor.... [Read more...]
LADY GAGA’S CONFUSED STATEWhen we first learned that Lady Gaga was planning on releasing the video to her song “Judas” during Holy Week we couldn’t help but think “Here we go again.” Not only were we surprised that the video wasn’t released during Holy Week, we were also surprised when we found out that a video was leaked from her May HBO special showing the pop... [Read more...]
NEW QUESTIONS ABOUT SNAP PSYCHIATRISTIn the last edition of Catalyst we featured an article about Dr. Steven Taylor, a psychiatrist associated with the Survivors Network for those Abused by Priests (SNAP), who was sent to prison for the possession of child pornography. After it was published, new questions surfaced about Taylor. Dr. Taylor seems to have a very curious mindset, and an... [Read more...]
BOSTON GLOBE COVERUP?Recently, Boston Globe reporter Kevin Cullen wrote that Pope John Paul II “presided over a church that was guilty of one of the biggest institutional coverups of criminal activity in history.” He also gave credence to the charge that “Priests were raping children all over the world with impunity.” We noted that there were four errors in these... [Read more...]
BISHOPS INDICTED BY JUDGE “REFORMER”In a recent column that ran in the Chicago Tribune, Judge Anne Burke, former interim chairwoman of the National Review Board (an agency established by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to monitor priestly sexual abuse), indicted every bishop and misrepresented the situation in Philadelphia. Burke’s accusation of a cover-up in Philadelphia... [Read more...]
HEARING DENIED BY SUPREME COURTWe were recently informed that the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear our appeal challenging the San Francisco Board of Supervisors’ anti-Catholic resolution of March 2006. The resolution condemned the Catholic Church’s teaching on gay adoption and referred to the Vatican as a foreign country “meddling” in the affairs of the city. In an interview... [Read more...]
PHILLY PRIESTS SENT BOGUS SURVEYRecently, Voice of the Faithful, a dissident Catholic group, launched an agenda to manipulate priests and the public in the Philadelphia area. The Greater Philadelphia chapter of the organization sent a letter to the more than 900 priests in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia asking them to agree with its position that Pennsylvania lawmakers should abolish... [Read more...]
VATICAN ABUSE NORMS RELEASEDOn May 16, the Vatican released its guidelines on how to deal with claims of sex abuse to a mixed reaction. While we found them reassuring and authoritative, there were those, of course, who wouldn’t have been happy with anything. The three most noteworthy features of the Vatican’s new guidelines were (a) its commitment to the due process rights... [Read more...]