By Kenneth D. Whitehead Many of the attacks on Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" should have been expected. They have mostly come from secular liberals who have already manifested their hostility to Christianity in the public life of the United States. As some wag noted almost as soon as the movie was announced: "If [...]
Special Report by Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights February 2004 PREFACE The purpose of this special report is to put the recent scandal in the Catholic Church in perspective. It does not seek to exculpate anyone who had anything to do with priestly sexual misconduct, but it does seek to challenge those who [...]
By the time the March edition of Catalyst arrives in your home, "The Passion of the Christ" will have opened in theaters nationwide; it opens February 25. Be sure to keep this handy guide nearby so you can monitor what the critics will be saying. Here is a list of some of the most irresponsible remarks made by [...]
By Father Benedict Groeschel, C.F.R. Shortly after Sunday, October 12, I was saddened to receive phone calls of outrage from friends who had watched a cynical attack on Padre Pio and Mother Teresa on the CBS show "60 Minutes." I was saddened because of the time people wasted watching this program, which like so much of [...]
By Rabbi Daniel Lapin Never has a film aroused such hostile passion so long prior to its release as has Mel Gibson's "Passion." Many American Jews are alarmed by reports of what they view as potentially anti-Semitic content in this movie about the death of Jesus, which is due to be released during 2004. Clearly the [...]
By Edward Klein In the faint pewter light of an Irish dawn, a young man riding bareback on an old gray draft horse emerged from a fog bank on the outskirts of New Ross, a river port south of Dublin. A cold, hard rain pelted the sides of his horse, and the fog roiled up above [...]
Louis Giovino, director of communications, recently interviewed Sol Stern, author of Breaking Free: Public School Lessons and the Imperative of School Choice(Encounter Books). Here is an excerpt from their exchange: Louis Giovino: Can you talk about your background? Sol Stern: I grew up in the Bronx. I'm actually an immigrant. I came to the U.S. from Israel [...]
By Kenneth D. Whitehead Daniel Silva, The Confessor, New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2003. HB; 401 pages. $29.95. What Notre Dame philosophy professor Ralph McInerny has aptly called "the defamation of Pius XII"—in his excellent book with that title—has unfortunately been so widely successful in the culture at large that many people simply take it for [...]
by Father Benedict J. Groeschel, C.F.R. I have been expecting a smear attack from the anti-Catholic segment of the media for years, and on March 2, 2003, it came. The Dallas Morning News, which I had never heard of, carried an article by Brooks Egerton entitled, “Priest plays down abuse crisis while helping clergy keep jobs.” The [...]
By Philip Jenkins For readers of Catalyst, expressions of anti-Catholic bigotry scarcely come as a surprise. Over the years, we have come to expect that media treatments of the Church, its clergy and its faithful will be negative, if not highly offensive, and Catholic organizations try to confront the worst manifestations of prejudice. When such controversies erupt, [...]
