William A. Donohue For the past five-and-a-half years, I have had to reason by analogy with the media, educators, activists, artists and others, just to get my basic point across. Unfazed by anti-Catholicism, our adversaries generally respect the rights of gays, blacks and Jews. Even when they don’t, they generally know enough to keep their mouths [...]
William A. Donohue Just a few days before the gala opening of the Terrence McNally play, "Corpus Christi," I had a chance to preview it. The basic message is this: Jesus was no more divine than the rest of us and the reason why he was crucified was because he approved of homosexuality. That is why [...]
William A. Donohue This past summer, New York Times columnist Frank Rich accused the Catholic League of being "too thin-skinned." Though we were not the only example he provided, he began and finished his piece with us. He is concerned that when groups like the Catholic League protest plays like "Corpus Christi," the result is self-censorship. His ultimate [...]
William A. Donohue In the past five years, the Catholic League has grown faster than any other civil rights organization in the country. Inextricably tied to that achievement is our public visibility: it has grown enormously, as has our impact on the culture. That’s because of you. If there is one refrain that I’m tired of [...]
William A. Donohue This past spring, while addressing the Orlando chapter of Legatus, I entered into a discussion with a man who questioned why there was so much Catholic bashing these days. I could have given him a long dissertation on the subject, but chose not to. Instead, I simply said, "Because they really do hate [...]
William A. Donohue A few years ago, Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote a brilliant article explaining how our society was "defining deviancy down." What he observed was the disturbing tendency to approve of behavior that previously had been labeled deviant. He was right in his assessment, but he didn’t adequately address its root causes. Over the past [...]
William A. Donohue After President Clinton took Communion at a South African Roman Catholic church, a well-known journalist, himself not a Catholic, defended the president by saying that what he did was an example of ecumenism. He further held that the Catholic Church should be more inclusive, maintaining that it made good sense to welcome people [...]
William A. Donohue On a recent television show that I was on, one of the other guests remarked that Catholicism risked becoming obsolete because its message wasn’t relevant enough to today’s Catholics. I thought this was a strange comment, especially coming from a Catholic university professor. The good news is that she’s wrong. Those [...]
William A. Donohue On April 16, the Catholic League will celebrate its 25th anniversary with a dinner at The Plaza in New York City (see p. 7 for the details). There is much to celebrate, as well as much to focus on down the road. Were it not for Virgil C. Blum, S.J., there would be no [...]
There are many genres of anti-Catholicism, the most well-known of which are discriminatory practices against individual Catholics and bigoted assaults on the institutional Church. Both forms continue to exist, but the contemporary strain of Catholic bashing that is most common, if less visible, is best understood as a manifestation of cultural politics. Culture is an expression [...]
