Bill Donohue

Clara Jeffrey is the editor-in-chief of Mother Jones, a far-left political tabloid. The nicest thing we can say about her is that she has a phobia about Christianity.

When the plane she was recently on was about to land, the Alaska Airlines attendant wished the passengers a “blessed” evening. Most on board probably thought that was a sweet thing to say. But not Jeffrey. She was so engaged that she issued an “alert” on X accusing the attendant of fostering “Creeping Christian nationalism.” She berated the employee for not using adjectives such as “great, awesome, fabulous, amazing, fantastic.”

What kind of person gets exercised over a flight attendant wishing everyone a “blessed” evening? A left-wing fanatic, that’s who. Here are a few other tweets that Jeffrey has penned.

“Admitting women into the priesthood and allowing priests to marry would be the obvious way to begin to fix the Catholic Church’s sexual abuse (and declining laity in US/Europe) problem.” But it is not straight priests who were responsible for most of the molestation—it was homosexual priests. So why would ending celibacy matter to them?

“Women will feel increasingly alienated from a church that doesn’t treat them as fully equal. Seen from that vantage point, the Catholic Church seems to be embracing ultimate extinction.” Sorry, Clara, women go to Mass more than men and they are overrepresented in parish and diocesan offices. Moreover, it is the trendy religions that are dying, not those that are true to their moorings.

“We live in a white Christian ethnostate, where a radical minority is deploying anti-democratic structural advantages to subject the rest of us to their rule.” Got me on that one. I have no idea what in the world she is talking about. But it doesn’t sound good.

Mother Jones is consumed with the idea—it is more fictional than real—that we are on the verge of Christian nationalism. The writers seem to think that patriotic Christians are going to take over, mandating that all of us go goose-stepping off to church. They invented this bogeyman to energize their base. It’s also good for fundraising—there’s big bucks in demonizing white Christian men.

Here’s a sample of the titles of articles posted on the internet by Mother Jones writers in the past few years.

• “We Need to Worry About Christian Nationalism.”
• “The Looming Threat of Christian Nationalism.”
• “A New Documentary Goes Behind the Scenes of Christian Nationalism.”
• “Mike Johnson’s Long Flirtation With Christian Nationalism”
• “RNC Delegates Sound Off on Whether America Should Be a Christian Nation”
• “It’s a Good Time to Start Worrying About Christian Nationalism”
• “Mike Johnson Conducted Seminars Promoting the US as a ‘Christian Nation’”
• “Is Florida’s SAT Replacement Exam A) Christian Nationalism or B) Woke Propaganda?”
• “Confessions of a (Former) Christian Nationalist”
• “RFK Jr. Fundraisers Tied to J6ers, QAnoners, Christian Nationalists, and Far-Right Extremists”
• “Christian Nationalists Are Closer Than You Think to Running America”
• “For Christian Nationalists, the Trump Shooting Proves He Was Anointed by God”
• “Christian Nationalists Are Opening Private Schools”
• “Mike Johnson Has Ties to a Christian Movement That Played a Key Role in Spreading Trump’s Big Lie”

Last year, David Corn, one of the more prominent Mother Jones writers, took issue with me for a piece I wrote, “Christian Bashers Aim Beyond Mike Johnson.” He raised the question, “Is It Anti-Christian to Criticize Speaker Mike Johnson?” The answer is obvious—of course not. But, of course, that was not what I said.

I took issue with “the unrelenting attacks” on Johnson’s religion, which, I contended, were designed “to discourage younger Christian conservatives from running for office; they are also meant to discredit the Founders and our Judeo-Christian heritage.”

It is not mere “criticism” to label Johnson a “hard-core theocrat.” Nor is it fair to brand him a “Christofascist.” Writing that he is a “Bigger Threat to America than Hamas Could Ever Be” is simply mad. One nutjob even compared Johnson to a “mass shooter.”

The same mentality that objects to a flight attendant wishing passengers to enjoy a “blessed” evening is quick to cast proud Christians as a menace to democracy. Those hurling these invectives are the ones we need to fear, not the so-called Christian Nationalists.

Contact Mother Jones: press@motherjones.com

Bill Donohue

The Left is good at lying, especially when it comes to the poor and their upbringing.

The first question asked of Kamala Harris by David Muir in the debate between her and Donald Trump was, “When it comes to the economy, do you believe Americans are better off than they were four years ago?” She responded, “So, I was raised as a middle-class kid.” Not only was that a dodge—her answer had nothing to do with the question—it was a lie.

In a lengthy piece on Breitbart about her biography, it was said that “a close look at her childhood shows that Harris and her younger sister grew up with many opportunities that many ‘middle class’ children do not have, such as living abroad, private school education, and growing up in some of the wealthiest locales in the world.”

Today, Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, have an estimated net worth of $8 million and they live in a house in Brentwood, California worth over $5 million (double what they paid in 2012). The 3,500-square-foot estate has four bedrooms, five bathrooms, and a private pool. Her neighbors include Gisele Bündchen, Dr. Dre, LeBron James and Gwyneth Paltrow.

None of this would matter much if it weren’t for Harris portraying herself as an average American, and as someone whose background allows her to be the champion of the dispossessed. In actual fact, she has a slavemaster pedigree.

Her father, Stanford professor Donald Harris, is a descendant of Hamilton Brown, a slaveowner in Jamaica. He owned over 120 slaves in the early nineteenth century. He not only was a big sugar plantation slavemaster, he was an outspoken foe of the abolitionists. Moreover, he hated William Wilberforce, the most prominent public opponent of slavery.

Harris does not like to talk about her father’s slavemaster roots, and neither does she like to talk about her mother’s slavemaster roots. Indeed, her mother’s side of the family is a classic case of privilege and an exemplar of oppression.

“In Indian society, we go by birth. We are Brahmins, that is the top caste.” That is how her mother, Shyamala, described her roots.

A caste system is a type of social stratification that differs from a class system in that it does not permit mobility, either upward or downward. It’s a closed system.

At the top are the Brahmins, mostly priests and academics. The second of four castes are known as the Kshatriyas; they are the warriors, administrators and rulers. Vaishyas are the third layer, consisting of artisans, merchants, tradesmen and farmers. Then come the commoners, the Shudras, mostly peasants and servants. Last are the Dalits; they are the ones who scrub the toilets, etc.

The Brahmins received some of their bounty from selling slaves. In the case of Harris’ mother, Shyamala Gopalan, her roots are that of the Tamil Brahmins, also known as Tambrans.

Tambrans are from the southern tip of India, Tamil Nadu. They were the most advantaged group residing in the Tamil-speaking region of the country. As hereditary Hindu priests, they took over many of the elite positions in the colonial government, something which today is a source of embarrassment. This explains why Harris never mentions the words Tamil and Brahmin in her 2019 book about her life, The Truths We Hold. She doesn’t want the world to know about her elitist roots.

Slavery was not outlawed in India until 1843, yet it still exists today in parts of the country. Ironically, it still exists in the spinning mills of Tamil Nadu, Harris’ mother’s hometown area. According to a young scholar in India, “the history of Brahmins is underwritten by centuries of enslaving many millions of others.” This is the privileged basis of Harris’ mother’s ancestors.

The caste system extends back 1,500 years. The Brahmins not only held all the major positions of power in India, but unlike everyone else, they lived in rent free villages. They maintained their grip on power by practicing endogamy, marrying only their own kind; the marriages were arranged.

At the bottom of the caste system are the Dalits, also known as the Untouchables. As one contemporary Indian writer puts it, “India’s history is smeared with brutalities against lower-caste people by those higher up on the caste ladder.” The Untouchables are the most oppressed in the Hindu caste system, a function of their being considered impure.

Harris says we need reparations in the U.S. because of slavery and  discrimination. But she never addresses the oppressive conditions of the Dalits and Shudras, nor does she call for the abolition of slavery in India where it still exists.

Perversely, Harris demands that to facilitate discussions on reparations for African Americans we need to do a study of slavery and the effects of discrimination. Fine. Let us also do a study of her slavemaster pedigree. Then she can begin writing checks to those who survived the oppression visited upon their forefathers by her ancestors.

Harris likes to mouth the wonders of inclusion, yet she is the beneficiary of centuries of exclusion. Time for her to fess up.

Bill in the News (Breitbart): “Trump is pro-life, pro-school choice and pro-religious liberty,” Donohue writes, while Harris is “anti-life, anti-school choice and anti-religious liberty.”

Harris supports abortion-on-demand, never favoring a single restriction on what she euphemistically terms “reproductive freedom.” READ MORE HERE

Bill in the News (Newsmax): Catholic League President Bill Donohue skewered Democrat presidential nominee Kamala Harris for skipping the Al Smith charity dinner next month while noting she “talks like a preschooler,” is short on policy and worse on persona. READ MORE HERE

This article originally appeared in The American Spectator on September 26, 2024

Bill Donohue

Vice President Kamala Harris has turned down an invitation to speak at the Al Smith Dinner in New York City. Her staff says she will be busy campaigning, but that is a poor excuse: every presidential candidate, save for Walter Mondale in 1984, has accepted the invitation (New York Archbishop John Cardinal O’Connor did not extend an invitation to either candidate in 1996 and that is because he could not bring himself to invite President Bill Clinton; he had just vetoed a ban on partial-birth abortions).

The Al Smith Dinner, named after the first Catholic to run for president in 1928, is well attended by elites from government, the media, business and the entertainment industry. It is an opportunity to showcase one’s policies and persona. This is the real reason Harris is taking a pass: she fails on both counts.

Neither Harris nor Trump is Catholic, but that doesn’t matter as much as their policies. Trump is pro-life, pro-school choice and pro-religious liberty. She is anti-life, anti-school choice and anti-religious liberty. Given this reality, a Catholic setting is not exactly the kind of venue that Harris would relish.

On abortion, Harris has never found one she couldn’t justify. A proponent of abortion-on-demand, she claimed during the debate with Trump that he was wrong in saying that she would allow abortions “in the seventh month, the eighth month, the ninth month.” She answered, “That’s not true.”

It is true and it is what Roe v. Wade allowed. To deny that late-term abortions exist is simply wrong. In 2019, the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute admitted that at least 12,000 late-term abortions take place annually in the U.S. In 2023, a fact-checker at the Washington Post conceded that at least 10,000 late-term abortions take place each year.

Harris has consistently voted against every school choice measure ever proposed. Beholden to the teachers’ unions, she will not allow indigent minorities the same right to send their children to the school of their choice that more affluent Americans enjoy.

When it comes to religious liberty, Harris is a co-sponsor of the Equality Act and the sponsor of the Do No Harm Act. Both would exempt the bill’s provisions from the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), the most consequential religious-liberty legislation ever adopted. This says it all.

Without RFRA, Catholic doctors and hospitals could be forced to perform abortions and sex-reassignment surgeries. This is what Harris wants. So radical is she on this issue that in 2019 she answered an ACLU survey saying she would have taxpayers fund sex-reassignment surgery for illegal aliens and federal prisoners.

Important as these policy reasons are, there is a bigger reason why Harris is not going to the Al Smith Dinner. Her persona is the problem.

The event is known for allowing the candidates to “roast” each other. This is right up Trump’s alley—he is lightning fast and loves to roast his foes on a regular basis. But for Harris, this kind of setting would be a disaster.

Let’s face it—she talks like a pre-schooler. Gibberish. Hands waving, she has a hard time stringing two coherent sentences together. No matter what the question is, she begins by personalizing her response, all the while thinking of something—anything—to say. This event demands that the participants be quick on their feet, and that is not exactly her strong suit. And she won’t have her dancing sidekick, Tim, or her billionaire buddy, Oprah, there to bail her out.

Senator Chuck Schumer wants Harris to attend the Al Smith Dinner. It’s time Trump sent him a MAGA hat.

Bill Donohue

Every survey shows that most Americans do not consider Donald Trump to be a particularly devout Christian. Indeed, only 14 percent of U.S. adults say the word “Christian” describes the former president. Even among evangelical Protestants who think favorably of Trump, only one in five strongly associates the term “Christian” with him.

This obviously does not bother his supporters, but it sure bothers others. The others are those who are unhappy with the faithful for standing by Trump, a man they say is characterologically flawed. They are basically saying that religious Americans who are in Trump’s corner are hypocrites.

R. Marie Griffith is a religion and politics professor at Washington University in St. Louis. Speaking of the faithful who support Trump, she says, “They really don’t care about, is he religious or not.” According to Newsweek, this signifies a “disconnect” between personal faith and political support, one that “prioritizes political goals over traditional religious values.”

Not really. What it suggests is that Christians who like Trump are mature voters: They are not choosing the most pious candidate—they are choosing the person who is the most likely to promote their values. Whether the candidate is religion-friendly matters gravely, not his personal relationship with God.

In June, we published a report, “Biden and Trump on Religious Liberty,” that compared the Trump-Pence administration’s record on this subject to that of Biden-Harris. “In his four years as president,” I noted, “Trump addressed religious liberty issues 117 times. From the beginning of his presidency in January 2021 to May 1, 2024, Biden addressed these matters 31 times.”

I added that while quantitative data were important, qualitative analysis was also critical. On this score, Trump wins easily: he expanded religious liberty while Biden often contracted it.

Our report looked at the following issues: Faith-based initiatives; Conscience rights; Abortion; HHS Mandate; Foster Care; Gays; Transgenderism; and International Issues.

“No one seriously believes that Trump is a man of deep faith,” I said. “But his policies on religious liberty are a model of excellence. Biden, on the other hand, tries hard to convince the public that he is a ‘devout Catholic’ yet his religious-liberty rulings are unimpressive, and in some cases are subversive of this First Amendment right.”

Harris’ views on religious liberty are inextricably linked to the administration she serves. This explains why Sen. Mike Lee recently said that “Kamala Harris doesn’t believe that religious institutions should be able to live according to their faith. Rather, they must bend the knee to the popular social justice movement of the day.”

Lee does not exaggerate. Harris is a co-sponsor of the Equality Act and she introduced the Do No Harm Act. Both would gut religious liberty protections by sidelining the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act. And unlike Trump, who gave us Supreme Court Justices who respect the First Amendment guarantee of religious liberty, Harris would go the other way.

There is no disconnect between people of faith who are unimpressed with Trump’s personal Christian credentials and his phenomenal record of promoting religious liberty for all Americans. After all, they know what the choices are.

Harris, who is a religious hybrid (she was raised Baptist and Hindu), is not exactly known as Ms. Devout. But she is known as someone who entertains a militant secularist mindset. It is the latter that counts.

Persona matters but policies matter more. That’s the mature way of sizing up candidates for public office.

Bill in the News (Catholic News Agency): Meanwhile, Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, told CNA that the dinner plays to Trump’s strengths and Harris’ weaknesses, creating what he called a “lose-lose situation” for the vice president. READ MORE HERE

There is a ballot initiative in New York State this November that is downright dangerous.

Bill Donohue wrote a lengthy rebuttal and it is now available online in English and Spanish.

 It is also published in booklet form, in both languages. We are doing a mass mailing to our allies across the state. Most will get a digital copy; they can print it in booklet form if they have Adobe.

It is being widely distributed in the state not only to Catholics, but to non-Catholics as well. We will mail the booklet to approximately 1,200 Catholics, 120 Hispanic groups, 120 Jewish groups, 100 Muslim groups and 120 conservative groups.

Thanks to the support of New York Archbishop Timothy Cardinal Dolan it is being placed in the hands of all New York bishops and many others.

This should be of interest to non-New Yorkers as well. If these activists succeed with their extremist agenda in New York, they will bring their proposal to other states.

On Election Day, November 5, voters in New York State will cast their ballot for Proposition One. It would amend section 11 of article 1 of the New York State Constitution in two ways: Paragraph A would offer equal protection before the law to eleven new demographic categories;  Paragraph B would revise the legal meaning of discrimination.

Prop One is being promoted as a pro-equality initiative. In reality, it is a huge stealth campaign. Those behind Prop One have a very different agenda. Their real goal is to undermine parental rights, eviscerate religious liberty and legalize selective discrimination.

Currently, the New York State Constitution says that no one can be subjected to discrimination on the basis of race, color, creed or religion. Paragraph A of Prop One would add the following demographic categories: age, sex, gender identity, gender expression, and reproductive healthcare and autonomy. Paragraph B justifies reverse discrimination. The implications are dramatic.

Please read our assessment of Prop One. And please alert your family and friends to it. It the most deceitful and dangerous initiative ever introduced. It needs to be defeated.

Bill Donohue

At every level, non-Catholics are flocking to Catholic schools. The reasons vary, but no one argues with the numbers.

The rise of anti-Semitism on college campuses, many of them at elite institutions, has driven Jewish students to seek a more welcoming environment at Catholic colleges and universities. Earlier this year a Jewish student and her parents admitted they chose Saint Louis University because it is a place where she will be respected.

“We are an observant Jewish family who chose the Catholic, Jesuit Saint Louis University for our daughter, and she has been delighted,” the girl’s father said. A kosher kitchen was installed for her and it has inspired other Jewish students to transfer. Her father did not mince words. “In today’s ominous campus atmosphere, a strong Catholic university may be a better option for Jews than an Ivy League school.”

Franciscan University of Steubenville is also welcoming Jewish students. It has joined a coalition of 100 organizations, lead by Yeshiva University, to expedite the transfer of Jewish students to Catholic colleges. The coalition has condemned Hamas, pledging a receptive milieu for these students.

For different reasons, non-Catholics have long expressed an interest in elementary and secondary Catholic schools. Nationally, more than one in five students (22 percent) in Catholic schools are not Catholic. Indeed, some Catholic schools have quietly set a quota on the percentage of non-Catholic students they will accept, hoping to maintain its Catholic identity.

Many African Americans choose a Catholic school because it is a safer place for them to learn. That was certainly my experience teaching in a Catholic elementary school in Spanish Harlem in the 1970s. Critically important, of course, is the academic performance of these students: they do better than their public school cohorts. The Catholic graduation rate for high school students is typically close to 100 percent, and 85 percent attend a four-year college.

There is another factor that is often overlooked. Religious schools, not just Catholic ones, have proven to be outposts of civic engagement and tolerance.

In a recent review of over 13,000 studies, a meta-analysis published in the Educational Psychology Review by five scholars in the United States and the United Kingdom, found that “Religious private schooling, particularly, is strongly associated with positive civic outcomes. The evidence is especially strong that private schooling is correlated with higher levels of political tolerance and political knowledge and skills.”

A teacher whom I know used to teach at St. Dominic High School in Oyster Bay, Long Island. She recalls not only having a fair number of Jewish students, she had quite a few gay students who transferred from a local public school.

At first she was a bit puzzled, but then realized that “these children had been bullied at their various public schools and labeled ‘queer’ and that St. Dom’s offered them a safe, loving home where respect, love and dignity was afforded every student.” As she pointed out, this is not what the media report.

Most Catholic schools do remarkable work, and it is too often underappreciated. They should be available to all parents, not simply those who can afford to pay tuition.

School choice programs are the greatest single lever of upward social mobility in the nation, something that African Americans, Asians and Hispanics know first-hand. Were it not for the teachers’ unions, and the money they throw at candidates for public office, more of them would be able to access quality private and parochial schools.

Bill Donohue

There is a ballot initiative in New York State this November that is downright dangerous. I wrote a lengthy rebuttal and it is now available online in English and Spanish. It is also published in booklet form, in both languages. We are doing a mass mailing to our allies across the state. Most will get a digital copy; they can print it in booklet form if they have Adobe. Click here to read it. To read it in Spanish, click here.

It is being widely distributed in the state not only to Catholics, but to non-Catholics as well. We will mail the booklet to approximately 1,200 Catholics, 120 Hispanic groups, 120 Jewish groups, 100 Muslim groups and 120 conservative groups.

Thanks to the support of New York Archbishop Timothy Cardinal Dolan it is being placed in the hands of all New York bishops and many others.

This should be of interest to non-New Yorkers as well. If these activists succeed with their extremist agenda in New York, they will bring their proposal to other states.

On Election Day, November 5, voters in New York State will cast their ballot for Proposition One. It would amend section 11 of article 1 of the New York State Constitution in two ways: Paragraph A would offer equal protection before the law to eleven new demographic categories;  Paragraph B would revise the legal meaning of discrimination.

Prop One is being promoted as a pro-equality initiative. In reality, it is a huge stealth campaign. Those behind Prop One have a very different agenda. Their real goal is to undermine parental rights, eviscerate religious liberty and legalize selective discrimination.

Currently, the New York State Constitution says that no one can be subjected to discrimination on the basis of race, color, creed or religion. Paragraph A of Prop One would add the following demographic categories: age, sex, gender identity, gender expression, and reproductive healthcare and autonomy. Paragraph B justifies reverse discrimination. The implications are dramatic.

Please read our assessment of Prop One. And please alert your family and friends to it. It the most deceitful and dangerous initiative ever introduced. It needs to be defeated.