William A. Donohue

On April 27, we celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Catholic League at the New York Athletic Club. In attendance was the Archbishop of New York, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Bishop Peter Byrne, Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of New York, Bishop Joseph Coffey of the Archdiocese for the Military, and several priests, including Father Gerry Murray of EWTN fame.

Several notable lay people were also in attendance. They included Tom Monaghan, founder of Ave Maria University and Ave Maria Law School; Chris Ruddy, founder of Newsmax; Brent Bozell, founder of the Media Research Center; Lauren Green, Fox News religion reporter; Bob Royal, editor in chief of The Catholic Thing; George Schwartz, CEO of Ave Maria Funds, and many other distinguished persons.

EWTN host and Fox News contributor Raymond Arroyo was the Master of Ceremonies. As expected, he had everyone laughing. He introduced Walter Knysz, the chairman of the board of the Catholic League. He spoke at some length about our founder, Father Virgil Blum, and how we have grown since his death in 1990. Cardinal Dolan also addressed how the Catholic League has changed since 1973, offering his personal reflections about it. I wound up the program.

My comments were mostly on the changing face of anti-Catholicism. From colonial times to the mid-twentieth century, our nation’s “last acceptable prejudice” was driven by the WASP elite, mostly over theological differences.

The animus against Catholic individuals waned once JFK was elected president in 1960. However, hatred of the institutional Church continued, with even greater vigor. This time it was militant secularists who were the biggest bigots on the block, bashing the Church for its teachings on marriage and sexuality.

When I took over in 1993—I will be president and CEO for 30 years on July 1—most of the anti-Catholicism emanated from the media, the entertainment industry, the arts, education and activist legal organizations.

The first big change, I told the crowd, became evident in the late 2000s when Barack Obama was elected president. Now the government had become the biggest threat to Catholicism, especially with Obama’s Health and Human Services mandate; it tried to force the Little Sisters of the Poor, and other Catholic non-profits, to provide for abortion-inducing drugs in their healthcare plans.

Matters have only gotten worse under President Biden. Though he identifies as a Catholic, he is presiding over the most anti-Catholic administration in modern times, perhaps ever.

Never a pessimist, I ended my talk mentioning several things that give us hope. The extraordinary reaction to our Disney movie—millions have watched it—surely has something to do with the fact that Disney’s subscribers have taken a deep dive. The blowback that Anheuser-Busch is experiencing for hiring a transgender person to hawk Bud Light is encouraging. I offered many other examples.

I cited the movement by African Americans, Asians, Hispanics and Muslims toward a more aggressive embrace of traditional moral values as another example of how things are changing. I told the attendees that at the end of the day we have only two choices: we can either quit or fight. For us, it’s a no-brainer.

While there is reason to be optimistic, I would be lying if I said Catholics are not worried about our society.

During the cocktail hour, and later in the evening, I had a chance to talk to many people. Virtually everyone I spoke to, male or female, young or old, clergy or lay—it made no difference—is seriously concerned about the state of our country. On so many levels, our country is going south, especially culturally.

We are tired of being lied to. From Covid to transgenderism, we have been lied to incessantly. Indeed, in my closing remarks I said we should be skeptical of elites. To be specific, I said that the next time you hear some “expert”—the ones with the alphabets after their name—say something that strikes you as nutty, trust your gut, not them.

We know that the Catholic Church has the answers to what ails us. Unfortunately, that voice of reason is being thwarted by the ruling class, the elites who run our major institutions. They have broken bread with the so-called progressives, or what is more accurately called the woke mob. But they don’t have to have the last word.

Enough of that. Back to the party.

If there is one thing that happened at our Gala dinner that stood out, it was the way Cardinal Dolan worked the room. He met virtually everyone, going around from table to table. He won a lot of people over, and no one was happier with his affability and graciousness than the boys from my local pub. They are now his biggest fans. They are also the thirstiest people I have ever known.
On pp. 8-9, you’ll find an assortment of pictures from this event. It would not have been such a success without the work that our vice president put into it, Bernadette Brady-Egan. She will be VP for 28 years come July 1. This was one of her many shining moments.

William A. Donohue

War on Virtue: How the Ruling Class is Killing the American Dream is a book I had to get off my chest. To be blunt, I am seething mad at the smug, arrogant, patronizing, condescending and frankly racist white ruling class who are working overtime to undermine the prospects of realizing the American dream for millions of Americans, especially African Americans.

I was born in New York City and raised on Long Island, largely by my grandparents who moved from Ireland to the Bronx. As a boy, I was never interested in anything but sports and clowning around. I was always in trouble in elementary school and high school, and I got thrown out of college. I finally grew up when I enlisted in the Air Force.

My years at Beale Air Force base in northern California, during the late 1960s, were spent reading voraciously about the civil rights movement. This was a new experience.

What drew me to the civil rights movement was jazz. At a young age, I fell in love with Billy Holiday, Louis Armstrong, Dave Brubeck, Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, and many others. The only magazine I read with any regularity was Downbeat, the premier jazz magazine. No one can read about jazz without learning about black history.

In the course of my readings, I learned much about the racism and discrimination that blacks had to endure. This really struck home during the civil rights movement. Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. captured my attention. So did Robert Kennedy, whom I shook hands with about a week before he was assassinated.

Prior to this time, I had no political preference. But that soon changed, and, like so many other young people at that time, I became a liberal.

While in the Air Force, I had taken courses at the nearby community college, and for the first time in my life, I excelled in school. When I was discharged, I completed three years of college in two years at New York University. It was then that my flirtation with liberalism ended.

At NYU, I wrote satirical articles for the student newspaper, taking turns lampooning conservatives one day, and liberals the next; I was finding myself politically. After a while, I noticed that my pieces satirizing liberals were no longer published. When I confronted the editors, they acted as though no politics were involved. They were lying, and I told them to their face. I quit.

I soon began to read a lot of articles and books on subjects that I was studying, but were written from a conservative perspective; they challenged the assigned readings in my sociology and political science courses.

Next I found myself debating liberal students in the classroom; I realized they couldn’t mount a credible defense. Then I started questioning my professors, and when I realized that they would either explode at me, or failed to persuade, I realized I was happy being a conservative.

After graduating, I went to the New School for Social Research, another Greenwich Village institution. It was even more radical than NYU. Upon receiving my Masters, I went back to NYU for my Ph.D.; I worked during the day at a Catholic school in Spanish Harlem and took classes at night.

My left-wing professors, and mostly left-wing classmates, proved to be unconvincing. But that alone did not push me to the right—it was their unabiding hypocrisy that pushed me over the edge. For example, they spoke endlessly about oppression, yet they defended the genocidal maniac, Mao Zedong. They expressed solidarity with blacks, but when I asked my Ph.D. classmates to go to Spanish Harlem on weekends to tutor my black and Puerto Rican students, none volunteered.

After working with blacks in Spanish Harlem, and again as a professor in Pittsburgh—I was the faculty advisor to the basketball team, working closely with black students—I came to know that if teachers made it their priority to see to it that they learned, and had high expectations of them, most did well. I also identified with these students; I, too, came from a fatherless family.

Today, it is the white ruling class that has given up on them. These elites don’t treat African Americans as equals. If they did they would encourage the inculcation of the vital virtues—self-control, personal responsibility and perseverance. Instead, they are undermining them.

We will never have racial equality until more blacks earn their way to the middle class. It can’t be forced top down.

To do that the ruling class has to stop undermining the black family with hand-out programs and promises of reparations. They need to stop dumbing down standards and start helping blacks to succeed; they also need to support school choice. They need to stop declaring war on the police—blacks don’t want it. They need to stop telling all white people they are racists (this does nothing but create division and does not improve the life of one black person).

In short, the white ruling class is the problem.

William A. Donohue

Fr. Virgil Blum founded the Catholic League in April 1973. On April 27, we will celebrate our 50th anniversary.

Fr. Blum was a Jesuit professor of political science at Marquette University, and he made it his mission to found an organization that would allow lay Catholics to become the defenders of the faith. That was the same year that the Supreme Court legalized abortion, and although this was an issue vital to Fr. Blum, his number-one issue for the Catholic League was fighting anti-Catholicism. His own pet peeve was the battle for school choice.

Blum chose to call his new organization the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights. He did so because both religious and civil rights were being threatened by the onslaught of militant secularism that emerged in the 1960s. While many important battles have been won since that time, the threat continues to mount.

Blum died in 1990. For the next couple of years, the Catholic League floundered under the leadership of several persons. When I took over in 1993, it was a financial and organizational mess. Fortunately, that is no longer true.

In 1992, Pittsburgh Bishop Donald Wuerl asked me to consider running the Pittsburgh chapter of the Catholic League. I was teaching at La Roche College, now a university, in the North Hills, ten miles from downtown Pittsburgh. Wuerl knew of me by reading my op-ed articles in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and through my radio and TV appearances.

When I met with him at a luncheon at the Duquesne Club, there were many prominent Catholics in attendance. The guest speaker was president of the Catholic League. He took me aside and said he wanted me to be his director of communications, and that the headquarters was relocating from suburban Philadelphia to New York City, my home town. As it turned out, he never contacted me, and when I contacted him, he pretended that he never asked me to work with him.

At that point, I told Bishop Wuerl that since the Catholic League did not seem to know what they were doing, it would make more sense for me to start my own rival organization. He agreed. After I wrote about my plans in the diocesan paper, some lay Catholics found out about it and notified the new chairman of the board of the Catholic League, Fr. Philip Eichner.

Eichner was in charge of finding a new president and CEO, and he called me at the college asking if I would consider being interviewed for the position. I said no. I told him that from what I knew, the Catholic League was badly run and I wanted nothing to do with it. He was not at all defensive. Indeed, he agreed with my observation, but hastened to note that he was new and things were about to change with the relocation to New York City.

I was impressed with Eichner’s honesty and agreed to be interviewed. Those who joined him on the search committee knew of my TV appearances with Larry King, Phil Donahue, “Crossfire,” and other shows. The committee also knew of my two books and my stint as a resident scholar at The Heritage Foundation.

I started at the Catholic League on July 1, 1993. At that time we were located in the headquarters of the Archdiocese of New York. It was my great honor to have the strong support of Cardinal John O’Connor.

People asked me how I was going to jump start an organization that was losing money hand over fist, and was an organizational disaster. Do I know rich people? Not a one, I said. But I do know how to work the media and get us into the news. Once we became known—it didn’t take long—we would find it easier to grow.

The board asked me to visit the chapters around the country, and to stop by the Milwaukee office (it was still in charge of maintaining our membership rolls). When I returned, I asked the board in November 1993 to close all but two offices (in short order, those two would also close). I had to stop the financial bleeding. Quite frankly, we were not getting what we paid for.

The newsletter had to go. Instead, I decided to have a 16-page journal cataloging what we do. I chose the name Catalyst because I wanted to convey the idea that we are a forward-looking organization.

I am proud to have such a small but dedicated staff. Bernadette Brady-Egan started as vice president exactly two years to the day after I did. She is an operations specialist par excellence.

What makes me the proudest is the fact that we are one of the only grass-roots advocacy organizations left in the country. Almost all the others are funded by foundations or sugar daddies. Not us.

What the next 50 years will bring is anyone’s guess. But it is my sincere hope that the Catholic League will continue to thrive and beat back the bigots with vigor.

Being ethically inconsistent is a trait that is universal, no matter how hard we try to be consistent. Usually, it doesn’t matter too much, and that is because our shortcomings are limited to a small group, mostly family, friends, neighbors and work associates. But when it comes to public persons—those whose values and behavior affect a large segment of society—it matters a great deal.

Regrettably, we live in a time when a record number of public persons has let us down. From congressmen to school superintendents, surveys reveal tremendous disappointment. What’s worse is when we are lied to by these people, or when they become rank hypocrites: it gets infuriating when we learn that there is one standard for them, and another for us.

In this regard, Disney is among the worst. It continues to make children’s movies that are politically charged, inappropriate, and in some cases indecent. Yet it always obeys its bosses in Muslim-run Middle Eastern nations, as well as in Communist China—Disney gives them a pass and refuses to insist that they show the same entertainment fare that they foist on us at home.

It was reported in February that in deference to their Communist masters, Disney deleted an episode of “The Simpsons.” Why would they do that? The show mentioned forced labor in China.

If there is one thing that Disney, the Muslim-run nations, and Communist China have in common, it’s that they loathe Christians. For instance, Disney continues to make movies that offend Christian sensibilities. Muslim and Chinese dictators up the ante: If they are not culturally raping Christians, stopping them from practicing their religion, they are literally killing them.

There are people at Disney who hate America. That is a strong charge, but how else to explain why they lie to children about American history.

A recent episode of Disney+’s “Proud Family” titled “Louder and Prouder,” featured a song that began with the lyric, “This country was built on slavery—which means slaves built this country”; it was repeated over and over.

Then there is the plea for cash. “We the descendants of slaves in America have earned reparations for their suffering. And continue to earn reparations every moment we spend submerged in a systemic prejudice, racism and white supremacy that America was founded with and still has not atoned for.”

In truth, slaves—who were sold by their African ancestors to the Europeans—were only a small minority, so to claim that they built this country is preposterous. More important, those who enslaved blacks, which included black slavemasters, are all dead, so to shakedown innocent persons to pony up for offenses they never committed is morally abhorrent.

Even more important, were it not for Christianity, and the natural law principles embedded in our founding documents, slavery would not have been outlawed. And by the way, slavery exists today in many countries, mostly in Africa. Who’s going to shakedown today’s masters? Rep. Ilhan Omar? Somalia, her home country, is a slave nation.

Disney has no monopoly on dishonesty. At the Grammys, when Beyoncé accepted an award, she said, “I’d like to thank the queer community for your love.” She cried saying it, so we know she was sincere. But was she?

Two weeks earlier Beyoncé sang in Dubai, where it is illegal to be gay. Moreover, she conveniently chose not to sing any of her pro-LGBT songs, lest she offend her gracious hosts. Her deference may also have something to do with the fact that she was paid $24 million for her gig. Looks like her love for the queer community has its price

Politicians have long lied to us, so no examples need to be given. But what about those in the business community? To be sure, they have lied to us in the past about their products and services, but at least they didn’t pose as patriots while trying to subvert American values.

There is a new database called the 1792 Exchange. Its goal is to alert the public to dishonest companies who try to hide their left-wing agenda. For example, most of these entities promote the Equality Act, the proposed congressional legislation (backed by President Biden) that would force Catholic doctors and hospitals to perform abortions, as well as sex-reassignment surgeries; they either cooperate or they will be shut down.

Now it is one thing for a corporation to deviate here and there, quite another when it becomes a radical activist. According to the database, the following ten companies are the worst at adopting the politics of the Left: Alaska Airlines; Allstate; Comcast; CVS; Ford; Kohl’s; Kroger; Marriott; Mattel; and Pfizer.

Dishonesty is the new norm. To be sure, most of those who work in these corporations are good Americans, but the sad fact is that those at the top cannot be trusted.

The elites have let us down. The ruling class does not believe in the same traditional moral values that most Americans still believe in. We need to make them the outliers—the odd man out—and not let them sideline us.

William A. Donohue

No institution in American history has been more resolute in its opposition to abortion than the Catholic Church. Protestants and Jews were almost in lockstep praising Roe v. Wade in 1973, largely because our side was against it. Then things changed.

In the 1970s, evangelical Protestants moved away from their reflexive anti-Catholicism and took a more sober look at what abortion entailed. They joined our side. Regrettably, most of the mainline Protestants—the United Church of Christ, Methodists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, American Baptists, and Episcopalians—stayed in the abortion rights camp.

Among Jews, those who are observant—the practicing Jews—may not share the Catholic understanding of abortion altogether, but they are much closer to us than they are to their secular cousins; they clearly reject abortion-on-demand. Unfortunately, most Jews are secularists and are therefore on the pro-abortion side.

The political parties flipped in the 1970s. The Republicans, led by the WASP elite, were always on the side of the abortion activists. They founded Planned Parenthood with Rockefeller money, quietly saying that abortion was the answer to the “urban problem,” meaning blacks. By the end of the decade, most Republicans became pro-life.

Until the 1970s, the Democrats, led by Catholics, wanted nothing to do with abortion. But the radical feminists booted Catholics from power and took over the party. In the early 1970s, Sen. Edward Kennedy wrote passionately against abortion (I have a copy of one of his letters) and Rev. Jesse Jackson said it was “genocide” against black people. Both became abortion proponents by the end of the decade.

All along, the Catholic Church stood fast. We were the only ones who were both consistent and on the right side of the issue. We should never forget that, and indeed more Catholic students should be made aware of this verity.

After almost a half century of legal abortion, the issue was returned to the states last year. We are now in the post-Roe era, and this means we must adjust our strategies to meet current needs.

Ever since the Dobbs decision overturned Roe, many in the pro-life camp decided to change state laws in a dramatic fashion, hoping to make abortion illegal in every case, or at least in most cases. Voters, who certainly did not approve of the very liberal abortion laws in the states prior to Dobbs, did not want to go full circle either. They hit the pause button on initiatives that would ban virtually all abortions.

The all-or-nothing strategy doesn’t work. We need to start with the most indefensible of all abortions—late term abortions—and work our way back. If we have a choice of trying to ban all abortions, and failing, and banning many of them, and succeeding, the latter is preferable. After all, each abortion not performed means another life saved.

We also need to challenge the myth that everyone who is an abortion rights advocate is not truly pro-abortion. While this may be true of most Americans on the abortion rights side, it is not true of all of them, and it most certainly is not true of abortion activists who exploit women by telling them they should feel good about their abortions.

The Nation magazine is the oldest radical left-wing publication in the country. In the last century, it proudly defended Stalin, even after his mass murders were exposed. Virulently pro-abortion, it recently offered a Thanksgiving gift to its readers. It published the comments of nine women who bragged about their abortions. Six of them admitted to having more than one.

The common denominator was their happiness over having children when they felt like it. One woman said, “I am thankful for both of my abortions. I am thankful that I didn’t want to be a parent then, so I didn’t have to be a parent then (her italics).” Another woman said, “I am thankful for the freedom of self. Some people may call this selfish, but I don’t think it is.” The others voiced similar sentiments.

Their self-absorption is stunning. It’s all about me. What I want and when I want it. They make it sound like they are ordering from a fast-food joint, tailoring their order to fit their wants.
The men in their lives come out as winners. After they get what they want, they hand over their credit card and tell their pregnant girlfriend (if she is even that) to get rid of the baby on her lunch hour.

Young women need to be educated. Not about sex—unwanted pregnancies and STDs have spiked since sex ed became mandatory decades ago—but about being exploited. They need to know that there are legions of men who will use them as a means to their ends. They need a radical wake-up call.

The young men also need to be educated, morally speaking. They need to learn why engaging in reckless sex hurts themselves and others, and they need adult men to tell them this to their face.

We won on Roe, and now we have to set our sights on more victories. We need to adjust our sails, without ever losing our resolve.

William A. Donohue

When I was in the 7th grade, I was asked by one of my nun teachers who was the person I most admired. I said Walt Disney. When asked why, I simply said it is because he makes so many people happy.

That was then. Over the years, beginning in large measure in the 1990s, Disney turned against its family-friendly image, making and distributing fare that sharply broke with its moorings. I know because one of the first big victories I had was in 1995 when I confronted Disney senior officials, ordering them out of the headquarters of the New York Archdiocese, where we were located at that time.

The occasion was the movie “Priest,” a diabolical film that featured totally dysfunctional priests, all of whose problems were a function of their priesthood. Miramax, owned by Harvey and Bob Weinstein (Harvey is in prison for his sexual escapades) was the distributor of the film, and it had just been bought by Disney.

I held a press conference denouncing the movie, and when I learned that some of the Disney top brass were in the audience, I told them to get out. They did, much to the delight of the TV crew who were looking for a good story. Disney/Miramax did one anti-Catholic movie after another, leading to more confrontations.

Disney acquired Capital Cities/ABC in 1995, and in short order they produced several Catholic-bashing shows, the most prominent of which was “Nothing Sacred.” We killed that one, too.

Fast forward to this year. On March 28, Disney released a statement condemning a Florida bill that barred teaching students K-3 about sexuality and gender identity. Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the bill, arguing that children that young should not be subject to such content.

I was taken aback by what the “family-friendly” giant did. Walt would never sanction this form of child abuse. I figured that evangelicals would be aghast at Disney’s stance as well, so I called my friend Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, asking if he would join me in requesting a meeting with Bob Chapek, the CEO of Walt Disney Company. If Chapek stiffed us, I said, we would respond with vigor.

When Chapek never responded, I decided something must be done to register our outrage. If the Catholic League were to produce a documentary on how Disney has changed from its beginnings—it has joined forces with the most radical elements of the gay and transgender movement—that could have a significant cultural impact.

So what’s going on at Disney these days? Disney Corporate President Karey Burke boasts that she has “one transgender child and one pansexual child,” and that Disney has “many, many, many LBGTQIA characters.” She said her goal is to have a minimum of 50% of characters being of an “LGBT” orientation and racial minority. Roy P. Disney, grand nephew of Walt, has a transgender child.

Former writers tell how Disney is sexualizing children. One of them said the company has “a history of exposing its young actors to convicted child molesters,” and is bent on grooming kids with gay and transgender messaging.

In fact, its latest animated feature film, “Strange World,” includes the first openly gay teen romance in a children’s movie. Its upcoming “Baymax!” features a transgender man buying tampons, and floats the idea that men can have periods, too. They are targeting kids as young as two-years-old. They even have a line of queer clothing.

Disney is bent on normalizing aberrant sexual behavior, but not everywhere. It knows that the Communist Chinese don’t buy into this insanity, and neither do Muslim-run nations in the Middle East. So guess what? Disney, ever the unethical capitalist, has decided to respect their wishes and not send them their slimy fare.

There are signs that Disney is in over its head. Hundreds of Christians showed up at a rally in the spring pushing back against its morally debased presentations and activities. Similarly, it has been warned by investors not to push their sexual agenda too far. Not only that, but a “silent majority” of Disney employees have had it with the company’s radical politics.

Last year, noted transgender clinical psychologist Erica Anderson, who helped to promote this movement, stunned liberals when she said, “I think it’s gone too far.” She noted that they’ve gone beyond asking for tolerance. She is not alone. In a recent poll, nearly 75% of American voters said the targeting of underage minors in the transgender movement has gone too far.

The participants in the movie were chosen by Jason Meath, the film maker, and me. We have a star-studded cast. Jason has done a magnificent job with the documentary and has been a joy to work with.

“Walt’s Disenchanted Kingdom: How Disney is Losing its Way” is a film I never envisioned producing. But if we lose Disney to the radical left that is at war with our Judeo-Christian heritage, that is a very bad sign. Our goal is to help turn things around.

William A. Donohue

There have always been extremists on the right and the left who are completely intolerant, and while both sides need to be condemned, the real danger comes more from the left. Not because the right-wing extremists are less intolerant, but because those on the left are more numerous and they occupy the command centers of our culture.

I know from a lifetime of working with those in education, activist circles and the media just how intolerant the left can be. Indeed, I could fill a book with my personal experiences. They have kept me from getting jobs, and have tried to get me kicked out of jobs, including this one. They are masters of the politics of personal destruction.

More objectively, we have the wholesale attacks on free speech and the destruction of property conducted by the likes of Antifa, the urban terrorists. Let’s not forget about the Silicon Valley elites who gave us the cancel culture. We also have recent polling data that prove my point.

In 2020, a Cato survey found that 77 percent of conservatives, 64 percent of moderates, and 52 percent of liberals were afraid to say what they think. Why are conservatives the most afraid? It’s not because the moderates are guilty of creating a “chilling effect” on the free speech of conservatives. We know who the guilty are.

An even more recent survey, conducted in February, and commissioned by the New York Times and Siena College, found that only 34 percent of Americans said they believed that all Americans enjoyed freedom of speech completely. It also revealed that 84 percent said it is a “very serious” or “somewhat serious” problem.

As we shall see, Republicans and conservatives are the least likely to enjoy freedom of speech.

On several issues, respondents were asked, “Do you feel more free, less free, or as free as you did before to express your viewpoint in most situations on a daily basis today than you did 10 years ago?” What they found was striking.

When it comes to expressing yourself on politics, 28 percent of Democrats and 13 percent of Republicans said they felt more free; the figures for liberals and conservatives were 29 percent and 16 percent, respectively.

On the subject of religion, 33 percent of Democrats felt more free as compared to just 14 percent of Republicans; it was 32 percent for liberals and 18 percent for conservatives. We know from many studies that Democrats and liberals are much more likely to be secularists, therefore Republicans and conservatives, who are more likely to be religious, suffer the most.

The findings of the Catholic League’s survey, which were released in September, found that 62 percent of Catholics agree that “it is getting harder to practice your faith publicly in America.” While two out of three practicing Catholics (weekly and monthly churchgoers) say it is getting harder, even 58 percent of those who rarely or never go to church agree that it is.

When asked how free they are about discussing gender identity, the majority of Democrats (54 percent) said they felt more free today but only 20 percent of Republicans felt that way. Similarly, the figures for liberals and conservatives were 58 percent and 18 percent, respectively. That’s quite a difference. In other words, those who have the greatest reservations about gender identity are the most afraid of speaking their mind.

When asked about race relations, more than twice as many Democrats (37 percent) as Republicans (15 percent) felt they were more free to discuss this issue today than they were 10 years ago. This suggests that those who don’t follow the thinking set by elites on racial issues are seen as a problem.

None of this is hard to figure out. The ruling class has adopted the politics of the left, making it harder for conservatives and people of faith to speak their mind in public.

Further proof of the intolerant streak on the left can be ascertained by examining the responses to a question about the limits of free speech. “While I support free speech, sometimes you have to shut down speech that is anti-democratic, bigoted or simply untrue.”

The poll found that 4l percent of Democrats and 16 percent of Republicans agreed with this statement; the figures were 39 percent for liberals and 25 percent for conservatives.

Notice that respondents were not asked if they supported the abridgement of speech for reasons that threatened public safety: the issue was speech that someone might object to, and that is a very different matter.

It is this kind of thinking that led the University of California, Berkeley, to recently create “Jewish-free zones” on campus, places where students can safely discuss support for Israel. That’s just how sick this state of affairs has become. This proves a point I have long made: there is more free speech allowed in neighborhood pubs than in neighborhood colleges and universities.

We are at a serious juncture in American history. If people cannot express their political views—especially on college campuses—the entire nation is at risk.

William A. Donohue

While doing the research for my book, The Truth about Clergy Sexual Abuse, I came to the conclusion that many of the Church’s harshest critics were phonies. They didn’t care a lick about the sexual abuse of minors. If they did, they would condemn it wherever it exists, but not only do they look the other way when the offenders work in Hollywood, the media and the schools, they often defend it.

What’s wrong with child molestation? The question needs to be asked because the tolerant ones in higher education seem to like it, otherwise they wouldn’t be defending the architect of the sexual revolution—and known pervert—Alfred Kinsey.

In September, Indiana University, home to The Kinsey Institute, honored the zoologist turned sexpert by erecting a large bronze sculpture of him on the Bloomington campus, marking the 75th anniversary of the institute. As will be made clear, the man was a sado-masochistic, child-abusing, voyeuristic pervert who had sex with men and beasts.

Kinsey became quite a star after World War II when he published two tomes on the sexual practices of men and women. According to Dr. Judith Reisman, who wrote prolifically about Kinsey, in the course of his research he sexually abused over 300 children. Kinsey biographer James H. Jones, who received high marks from Kinsey’s followers, admitted that children were masturbated and penetrated by at least one pedophile.

One of Kinsey’s informants, “Mr. X,” kept a record of his sexual achievements. When he wasn’t busy sexually abusing children (600 boys and 200 girls), he managed to find the time to have intercourse with seventeen blood relatives, including his own grandmother.

In a review of the 2004 movie, “Kinsey,” New York Times critic Caleb Crain wrote that Kinsey gathered data on “attempts to bring to orgasm boys between the ages of 2 months and 15 years, in some cases over a period as long as 24 hours.”

When asked about this, Reisman condemned Kinsey for his criminal behavior. “When you rape children, it’s still a crime. And if you solicit it, and if you support it, it’s still a crime.” The real story is: Why didn’t everyone else condemn him?

Kinsey hated Christianity, spending his entire life trying to get back at his Methodist family, especially his father. According to Joseph Epstein, Kinsey was so enamored of his hedonistic beliefs that he blamed Christianity, not libertinism, for the breakdown of the modern family. Furthermore, he labeled celibacy, delayed marriage and asceticism as “cultural perversions,” but not pederasty.

In describing Jones’ biography on his subject, Crain notes that “Kinsey had had affairs with men, encouraged open marriages among his staff, stimulated himself with urethral insertion and ropes, and filmed sex in his attic.”

Speaking of the film, Crain says “the most controversial scene in the movie is Kinsey’s infamous meeting with a sexual omnivore, whose history of sexual encounters with men, women, boys, girls, animals and family members took 17 hours to record.”

It’s no wonder anthropologist Margaret Mead, who had an affair with her equally famous colleague, Ruth Benedict, and an adulterous relationship with anthropologist Edward Sapir, said that in Kinsey’s view there was no moral difference between a man having sex with a women, or a sheep.

True to form, a year or so before he died in 1956, Kinsey circumcised himself with a pocketknife.

To this day, many pedophiles and intellectuals adore Kinsey. Here is how the nation’s most prominent homosexual child molesting organization, NAMBLA, remembers him on its website (note: there are no organized heterosexual groups dedicated to child rape). The following is a quote from Kinsey’s Sexual Behavior in the Human Female.

“When children are constantly warned by parents and teachers against contacts with adults, and when they receive no explanation of the exact nature of the contacts, they are ready to become hysterical as soon as any older person approaches, or stops and speaks to them in the street, or fondles them, or proposes to do something for them, even though the adult may have had no sexual objective in mind (my emphasis).”

In other words, men who fondle children are not a problem—those who object are. Which explains why Kinsey wrote, “The current hysteria over sex offenders may very well have serious effects on the ability of many of these children to work out sexual adjustments some years later….”

Miscreant priests who molested minors are mostly dead or have been thrown out of the priesthood, and none are being honored. The same is not true in higher education.

Why aren’t the raging students who smashed statues of the Founders, as well as Catholic heroes such as Fr. Junípero Serra (made a saint by Pope Francis), taking their sledgehammers to the sculpture of Kinsey?

Indiana University is not exactly a hotbed of radicalism, so anyone who thinks the tribute to Kinsey is unique is sadly mistaken. There are few colleges and universities that wouldn’t honor him.

Those who defend Kinsey without knowing about his sick history are an embarrassment—there is no excuse for their ignorance. Those who know about it and still defend him are moral monsters.

Bill Donohue

Over the past several decades, there have been many reports on alleged wrongdoings by members of the Catholic community. Unlike most Catholics, I have had the time to read a good number of them—it’s part of my job—and I am fortunate enough to have the training as a sociologist to read them with a seasoned eye. My decades of dealing with the media have also enabled me to critically evaluate their coverage.

The media know that the average person has neither the time, the interest or the training necessary to read these reports. Regrettably, there are many reporters who, either out of laziness or malice, take what the executive summary of these reports has to say and treat it as if it were the gospel truth.

No one denies that there have been injustices committed by religious orders of men and women, and by members of the hierarchy. As Catholics we acknowledge that all of us are sinners, and that a sinless Church is a fiction. It is also true, however, that too many of us are gullible, accepting reports issued by academics or government bodies on alleged wrongdoing as if they were flawless.

The latest example of this is the way the media treated the Report by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada on alleged abuses of Indigenous children in the country’s residential schools, some of which (slightly less than half) were run by Catholic religious orders; the others were run by the government or by Protestants.

It was the government that authorized placing Indigenous children in the residential schools where they would live and learn. They did so because they regarded Indigenous persons to be primitive, if not savages. Accordingly, they felt it was their duty to assimilate them into Canadian society. [See pp. 4-5 for more on this subject.]

Aboard the papal plane coming home from Canada, a reporter asked Pope Francis why he didn’t rescind the “doctrine of discovery,” or the 15th century papal decree that granted discovery rights to land discovered by European colonizers. The pope was put on the defensive and did not offer an explicit response. That’s too bad because the “doctrine of discovery” was officially repudiated by the Catholic Church in 1537.

Before, during and after the pope’s visit, the media in America, Canada and Europe made much hay out of alleged “mass graves” of children that were found on Catholic grounds. But this myth had already been exploded by anthropologists and historians: not a single corpse has ever been found. In short, there was no genocide.

The media were aglow with reports of killings and molestation, but as discussed in this issue (see p. 5), they were false. A reporter for the Washington Post claimed that Indigenous children were subjected to “hunger” and “sexual violence.” I checked the Report and found that the only references to hunger were in an Anglican school and a public school. In the 535-page Report, there are three vague references to “sexual violence”; none came from the testimonials of the Indigenous persons.

Often forgotten in these accounts was the goal of the missionaries. Even the Report admits that their goal was “to bring Christianity and civilization to the Indigenous peoples of the world,” and that this was “a sincerely and firmly held belief.” Unfortunately, this admission was not given the kind of high profile it deserved.

Buried on p. 68 of the Report is an even more important admission. The missionaries opposed integrating the Indigenous children into the public schools. Why? They did so for three reasons: “1) teachers in public schools were not prepared to deal with Aboriginal students; 2) students in the public schools often expressed racist attitudes towards Aboriginal students; and 3) Aboriginal students felt acute embarrassment over their impoverished conditions, particularly in terms of the quality of the clothing they wore and the food they ate.”

In other words, the Indigenous students no doubt fared better in the Catholic residential schools than in the public schools. As detailed in the Report, the priests and nuns had beneficent intentions. Yet the media completely ignored this aspect—it would have gotten in the way of their narrative about the horrendous consequences of the residential schools.

Did reporters read this part of the Report and not say anything about it? That would make them totally biased. Or did they not bother to read the Report, relying on snippets of compressed information spoon-fed to them by Canadian officials? Either way, they did a disservice to the public.

Then there is the issue of what the missionaries were dealing with. University of Chicago anthropologist Lawrence H. Keeley writes that “Depictions of precivilized humans as saints and civilized folks as demons are as hypocritical as they are erroneous.” Reporters who deny this are part of the problem.

It is a credit to the Catholic missionaries that they acted in the best interest of the people they served. It is also a credit to the Indigenous persons that they persisted in maintaining some of their more noble customs and traditions.

In the May issue of Catalyst, I wrote how elites in our society are bent on dividing us. This month I want to look at technology’s contribution to polarization. Not to be misunderstood, I am not against technology; my observations deal exclusively with its ineluctable effects on our culture.

When I was growing up on Long Island, we had ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS and three local channels on TV. I later learned that having seven channels was actually a high number compared to other parts of the country. This meant that most Americans pretty much watched the same news shows, and while differing views were commonplace, we could all agree on what the news of the day was.

Today we still get news from the big three—ABC, CBS, and NBC—but they carry far less weight than in the past, with far fewer people watching them. Many prefer to get their news from cable TV, but the people who watch Fox News and Newsmax, which appeal to conservatives, seldom watch CNN or MSNBC, which appeal to those on the left, and vice versa.

The big difference is not the slant—it is the news stories that are not covered. For example, CNN and MSNBC will not cover news stories that upset its liberal viewers, the result being that their audience is often in the dark about major events (e.g, the bogus Russian collusion story, Hunter Biden, etc.).

It used to be that families disagreed over the news of the day. Now one side doesn’t know what the other side is talking about.

It’s not just news stories that have changed. The proliferation of TV channels and social media platforms means we don’t watch the same entertainment shows. As a youngster, I remember that nearly everyone watched the Jackie Gleason show, “The Honeymooners,” as well as the “The Ed Sullivan Show,” the number-one entertainment program. Now some watch rappers while others watch the rodeo.

In the late 19th and early 20th century, families were big, houses were small and cars were few, if non-existent. Now families are small, houses are big and cars are everywhere.

Think of the row houses in big cities at that time. There was no TV and no air conditioning. So where did everyone go during the summer? They hung out outside on the stoop, the sidewalk and the street. All the neighbors knew each other and the kids played ball and other games while adults partied and had a few cold ones. They actually talked to each other. There was no need to schedule a “block party”—they happened spontaneously every weekend.

Now family members have several rooms to isolate from each other. They don’t have to be outside in the heat; they can stay inside in the AC and watch TV, play video games and engage in social media, all by themselves. They don’t have to talk to anyone.

How sad. What we are witnessing is the collapse of a common culture. People get their news and entertainment from a multiplicity of sources, and are content to absorb themselves on their phones. They must have their phones—all the time.

There are other problems. Email is a fast and effective way to communicate with others about everyday matters, but it is a lousy way to communicate when it comes to serious issues. It is easy to misinterpret someone when the issue is a hot one.

When we are with someone, we can pick up on facial expressions, body language and the like, and we have an opportunity to get instant clarification. This is not true of email correspondence, which is why we often come away hurt. It is easy to be mistaken. Did he really mean what I think he meant? Did she not get back to me because she’s angry at me? It is so easy to mistake the sentiments of someone when we are not with them.

In other words, there is no substitute for face-to-face interaction. That takes time and effort, but it’s worth it, especially when the issue is sensitive.

Gen Z (1997-2012) is the youngest segment of our adult population. The “zoomers” are known for many things, but none is more disturbing than the high degree of loneliness that so many are experiencing. It is a major problem, and it affects girls worse than boys. Indeed, social media is a big generator of loneliness among young girls.

When I was a kid, if I saw someone walking down the block with ear phones talking to himself, I would be tempted to call the asylum. Now I look away. Similarly, when I was young and took a train or bus, people spoke to those near to them. Now they speak to someone no one can see on their phone. And because we are a captive audience, we all have to hear the conversation of these narcissists.

No wonder we are a divided people. We no longer have anywhere near the same common experiences. We have plenty of autonomy, but the underside is we lack a sense of community. Unfortunately, when that goes, much is lost.