The day after the mass shooting of Catholic schoolchildren, Bill Donohue wrote to President Trump asking him to do more about anti-Christian bigotry. After commending him and FBI Director Kash Patel for treating this incident seriously, he said the following.
“What happened in Minneapolis was not an isolated incident. Attacks on Catholics, and indeed all Christians, have risen sharply in recent years. Our website provides plenty of documentation on this issue, including violent assaults on persons and property.
“It is indisputable that the mass shooter hated lots of demographic groups, but he saved his real hostility for Catholics. He did not choose a public school to attack, nor did he wait until the children were in the classroom to go on his killing spree—he deliberately chose to kill them while they were praying in church.
“We know from what he has said in writing, and on video, that his rampage was born of an anti-Catholic animus. He laughed at Jesus dying on the Cross, cursed at Catholics for worshipping him, mocked the Eucharist, and expressed his admiration for Satan. He may have had serious issues, but he was also very calculated in his game plan.
“The time has come to deal with this problem in greater detail.
“On February 6, you announced the formation of a Presidential Commission on Religious Liberty, putting Attorney General Pam Bondi in charge. She was authorized to create a task force to ‘eradicate anti-Christian’ bias. The focus, you said, would be to stop ‘all forms of anti-Christian targeting and discrimination within the federal government.’
“On February 19, I wrote to Attorney General Bondi alerting her to the trove of documents that we have on this subject. I asked her to provide us with a contact person. On March 24, she did, and subsequently we turned those documents over to Michael Gates, Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice. On May 20, I met with him in Washington, D.C. Furthermore, on May 20, we sent all the members of the Commission information on how to access the documents that we gave to the DOJ.
“I would like to recommend that the Commission not limit itself to anti-Christian bigotry emanating from the federal government. To be specific, anti-Christian bigotry stemming from civil society needs to be addressed, either by this Commission or a new one. Its seeds lie outside government, especially in those institutions that shape the content and contours of our culture.”
