When the Catholic League learned that the Kansas City Star commenced a sex survey of Roman Catholic priests, it immediately decided to follow suit by issuing its own survey of the newspaper’s staff.

On October 15, Mark Zieman, editor and vice president of the Kansas City Star, sent a letter to Roman Catholic priests, all of whom were randomly selected from the 1999 Kenedy Official Catholic Directory, explaining the nature of the confidential survey; the survey only addressed HIV and AIDS. Our survey, personally addressed to each staff person, was sent to managing editor Steve Shirk for distribution.

“We have come to understand that the disease also had a devastating impact on groups whose members are unable to speak up about the difficulties they have endured,” wrote Zieman. On November 4, William Donohue issued the following news release explaining the Catholic League’s interest in exploring the sex lives of Zieman’s staff:

“I knew my doctorate in sociology would come in handy in this job some day, and today certainly is that day. Being journalists, the reporters and editors at the Kansas City Star know nothing about objectivity, and that is why no control group was used in their survey. We have provided one by drawing on the journalists who work at the newspaper; this is also indicative of our commitment to inclusiveness.

“The language we used is almost identical to the newspaper’s survey. But there were some changes. For example, instead of asking, ‘Do you know priests with HIV or AIDS?’, we asked, ‘Do you know any journalist who doesn’t have HIV or AIDS?’ And so on. Our objective was also stated somewhat differently: ‘Our objective is to undermine your efforts at Peeping-Tom journalism. By getting our survey out first, we hope to submarine your newspaper’s voyeuristic invasion of the privacy of Roman Catholic priests.’ Alas, we hope the newspaper appreciates our inquiry.”

Donohue appeared on the CBS TV affiliate in Kansas City making the point that the Kansas City Star was guilty of “Peeping Tom journalism.” Donohue cited the newspaper’s closing questions in its survey as proof that an agenda was at work: those questions asked priests whether the Church should change its teachings on homosexuality and celibacy.

When “Dogma” opened on November 12, William Donohue and Patrick Scully went to see it. Here are the comments that Donohue released to the press about the movie:

“The most extensive laughter was when the sarcastically-written disclaimer appeared on the screen. Once the film began, that was just about it. Never in my life have I attended a ‘comedy’ that received less laughs than ‘Dogma’; it is no wonder that the woman next to me literally fell asleep. However, those who like Columbine-type violence will not be disappointed, nor will adolescents who get excited upon hearing the F-word.

“That film critics like the New York Times reviewer, Janet Maslin, and Time magazine’s Richard Corliss, thought it a gas means either that they will laugh at anything, or they can’t resist giving high marks to any movie that insults Catholicism. The only way to find out for sure is for someone in Hollywood to make a stupid comedy that insults Protestants or Jews (preferably both), and then run it by the likes of Maslin and Corliss.

“Discussing his career as a writer, Kevin Smith recently said that he plans to bail out the minute he runs out of things to say. Someone should tell him the clock has already run out. ‘Dogma’ gets an ‘F.’”

On November 14, Donohue appeared on CNN to debate the merits of the movie. Opposing him was a Paulist priest.

A beastly art exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum of Art drew a strong response from the Catholic League and quickly attracted international attention. A British art exhibit, “Sensation,” not only displayed dead animals and sexually mutilated bodies, it featured a painting, “The Holy Virgin Mary,” that was laced with elephant dung and spotted with pictures of vaginas and anuses.

In mid-September, when a reporter for the New York Daily News notified the Catholic League of the impending exhibit, we immediately secured a copy of the “Sensation” catalog. On September 16, we issued our first news release on the subject and shortly thereafter New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani labeled the exhibit “Catholic bashing” and threatened to close the museum; he succeeded in stopping all checks to the museum.

The league’s first response was to call for a boycott of the Brooklyn Museum of Art. In the pages of the Tablet, the newspaper of the Brooklyn diocese, we placed an ad asking all Catholic teachers not to take their students to any exhibit at the museum over the course of the current academic year. We also wrote to every member of the City Council requesting that the museum be defunded.

After months of controversy, “Dogma” opens November 12. It was featured at the New York Film Festival on October 4-5; a protest rally greeted the movie outside Lincoln Center. The entertainment media, in particular, continue to seek the Catholic League’s voice on the film.

John Podhoretz of the New York Post branded the movie “virulently, even obsessively anti-Catholic.” Even John Pierson, a friend and collaborator of Smith’s, said the Catholic League’s attacks “are accurate on a surface level.”

More important, Smith hasn’t hidden his true feelings on “Dogma.” When Howard Stern said to him, “…and it’s got some Jesus Christ thing in it so all the religious folks are already hating it,” Smith replied, “Then we must be doing something right.”

When the Catholic League was protesting the Brooklyn Museum of Art exhibit, “Sensation,” Smith joked that “I’m really glad we kept the scene with the elephant-dung Madonna.”

There is little doubt that the Catholic League protest has unnerved Smith. He has used obscenities when speaking of the league and has admitted that since we began our protest, life has been “horrible” for him.

Movies that generate this much controversy usually do well initially. But the true test comes in the weeks following the debut. No matter how the movie does at the box office, the resistance we’ve provided is the most important tally of all.

October 4: Les Kinsolving of WCBM radio, Baltimore, in the Briefing Room of the White House, presents White House Press Secretary Joe Lockhart with a Catholic League “Vomit Bag”: “Bill Donohue of the Catholic League distributed vomit bags at the museum on Saturday and I know he’d like you to have one….” Lockhart accepted the bag and offered to give Kinsolving a plane ticket home.

The attack on Pope Pius XII reached new heights with the release of a book by British author, John Cornwell. In Cornwell’s Hitler’s Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII (Viking Press), the Cambridge University researcher alleges that Pius XII was an anti-Semite who helped Hitler come to power. The October edition of Vanity Fair ran an excerpt from the book that triggered immediate controversy.

Cornwell is the author of a previous book, A Thief in the Night: The Mysterious Death of Pope John Paul I, that, though critical of the Vatican, nonetheless concluded that there was no conspiracy to kill Pope John Paul I.

William Donohue read the Vanity Fair article and released the following comment to the press:

“Scholarship which purports to be ground-breaking must offer evidence that is ground-breaking. On this score, John Cornwell fails miserably. His article is laced with conjecture and innuendo of the most scurrilous kind. Not satisfied to advance the old canard that Pius XII was ‘silent’ during the Holocaust, Cornwell now wants us to believe that the pope was an active agent servicing Hitler. Make no mistake about it, all of this is being done in an attempt to derail the beatification of this saintly man.

“In 1945, when the war was over, and again in 1958, when Pius XII died, the world Jewish community rightly acknowledged his heroism. They knew that no one did more to save Jews than Pope Pius XII. Cornwell offers no evidence that these Jews were fooled.

“Just recently, Lorenzo Cremonesi, Jerusalem correspondent for the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, went public with a document that he found in the Israeli archives: in a letter dated October 27, 1945, Msgr. Montini (the future Pope Paul VI) gave a detailed account of a private audience between Pius XII and Leo Kubwitsky, then-secretary general of the World Jewish Congress (WJC). On behalf of the WJC, Kubwitsky gave Pius XII a gift that would be worth more than one million dollars in today’s currency; Kubwitsky expressed ‘his gratitude to the august pontiff for his work in support of persecuted Jews.’

“As for Vanity Fair, it is a sure bet that its editors would never publish an excerpt from a book that defends Pius XII.”

Cornwell, a former seminarian, said 10 years ago that he was a self-described “lapsed Catholic for more than 20 years.” He now says he is a “practicing Catholic.” Members should know that on September 10, Cornwell turned down an offer by Donohue that the Catholic League was prepared to give him an all-expenses paid week in New York provided that he agree to debate Donohue on radio and TV.

Following the Catholic League’s public statements against the U.S. Navy, an apology was granted to the Knights of Columbus by Captain R.W. Jerome, the officer who had barred the Knights from meeting in a naval chapel in Chesapeake, Virginia.

In the last issue of Catalyst, we reported that Captain Jerome had taken action against the Knights because of their alleged “discrimination” against women. We replied that the Department of Defense bars “unlawful discrimination,” something which the Knights were clearly not guilty of. Captain Jerome offered the apology to national Knights of Columbus Supreme Knight, Virgil Dechant.

Captain Jerome also sent a letter to Edward T. Callahan, a retired Navy commander and grand knight of the local chapter. Callahan then offered the following statement to the press:

“The captain [Jerome] has retracted his charge that we are an unlawfully discriminating organization. He’s apologized for that mischaracterization. We’ve accepted his apology. And we as a community are beginning the process of healing.”

From the beginning, the Catholic League said that it would support whatever decision the Knights of Columbus made—whether to sue or not—and that is why we are very pleased with this outcome. The matter has now been put to rest.

Regarding Lt. Berry, the Becket Fund is now representing him.

The battle over “Dogma” is in full-swing. The Catholic League is in possession of the script and will soon make available a booklet that describes why the film is so offensive (it is scheduled to open in October). On June 22, at a press conference on the film, William Donohue dubbed it “Howard Stern-type humor,” filled with filthy language and irreverent situations.

The press conference, which was held at the New York Catholic Center, was very well attended by the media. It was called to formally protest “Dogma,” to reply to a threatening letter that was sent by attorneys for Bob and Harvey Weinstein (see p. 4), and to launch a petition drive asking Disney to sever all ties with the Weinsteins (see p. 9); the brothers were told by Disney in April not to release the movie under the Miramax label—it was this decision that led the duo to spend $14 million of their own money to purchase the film.

The letter from Los Angeles attorney Dan Petrocelli pledged to hold the league responsible for any violence that might occur over the movie. Donohue immediately faxed Petrocelli the following memo: “You erroneously sent your threatening letter to 101 First Avenue. Our address is 1011 First Avenue. Please make a note of it.”

In a news release on the subject, Donohue said that “Fascistic attempts to silence us will never win.”

Donohue sent a letter to Michael Eisner at Disney asking him to dump Miramax; on June 23, in a New York Times op-ed page ad, the league made public its appeal to Eisner (see p. 2). A letter was also sent to Tina Brown, the former editor of the New Yorker and now chief at Talk magazine (a new venture funded by the Weinsteins) asking her to publicly comment on the Petrocelli letter.

Finally, a letter was sent to Hillary Clinton requesting that she break her relationship with the Weinsteins, two of her best Hollywood friends that are also among the most generous donors to the Clinton Legal Expense Trust.

The First Lady was also asked to denounce “Dogma” the way she did “My Best Friend’s Wedding”; she berated the latter movie because Julia Roberts smoked too much in it. “Since anti-Catholicism is a more potent toxin than smoking,” wrote Donohue, “I ask that you now speak out against ‘Dogma.’”

Father Thomas Haren walked into the Library of Congress on January 22^nd and was told by a security guard that he had to remove the sweatshirt he was wearing over his Roman collar. He was informed that his sweatshirt was “political” and therefore could not be worn in the library. The sweatshirt read, “St. Jerome Church Marches for Right For Life.”

When he returned to Cleveland, Father Haren complained to the head of security for the Library of Congress. He got no response. Then he wrote to James Billington, the Librarian of the Congress, and got nowhere. Next stop was to contact his congressman, Dennis Kucinich, who, in turn, wrote a letter making plain his objections. But no one answered. Lawyers got involved after that, but they, too, got the same treatment. Then Father Haren contacted the Catholic League.

William Donohue told the Library’s general counsel that he would take this case to the courts, the media, or both. In short order, Father Haren received an apology from the Library’s Director of Security.

“We agree that the Library acted inappropriately by denying you entry to the Library because you were wearing a garment with a church-related statement,” said the director. “I apologize to you for the inconvenience and any embarrassment caused by this regrettable incident.”

The International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) has announced that it is launching a massive campaign directed at undermining the Vatican’s role in the United Nations. The IPPF, which is headquartered in London, is urging “governmental, non-governmental and other institutions to endorse existing appeals for a review of the Vatican’s status with the United Nations.” To counter this move, the Catholic League is embarking on a project that will make public the anti-Catholic element in Planned Parenthood’s history.

The decision to target the Vatican is being led by IPPF Director-General Ingar Brueggemann. It comes in the wake of protests by the Vatican to Planned Parenthood’s response to the refugee problem in Kosovo. The Vatican has objected to the IPPF policy of distributing condoms and abortion-inducing pills to the refugees fleeing Kosovo.

In an amazing example of spin control, Brueggemann accused the Vatican of being “indifferent” to the “human suffering” that it is causing by opposing the IPPF’s pro-abortion policies. That innocent children are being killed by the IPPF’s “humanitarian” efforts is apparently lost on them.

In a release to the press, the Catholic League made plain its counter-strategy:

“Only an organization driven by fanaticism would think that the men, women and children in Yugoslavia who are being victimized by Slobodan Milosevic are in dire need of condoms. What these people need is precisely what Catholic Relief Services offers, namely food, clothing, shelter and medicinal supplies.

“Drunk with ideology, the IPPF now seeks to punish the Holy See by challenging the Vatican’s non-member state permanent observer status in the U.N. In defense of the Vatican, the Catholic League is contacting U.N. officials informing them of the anti-Catholic strain that has marked Planned Parenthood’s record. To that end, the Catholic League is compiling evidence of this bigotry, and will make public its findings in the not-too-distant future. Our objective is to inform government officials in the U.S., and at the U.N., of the bigoted legacy of Planned Parenthood. The record will show that this organization has no legitimate place at the public policy table in any nation.”

Members are urged to write to Mrs. Gillian Sorensen, Assistant Secretary General for External Relations, Room S-3840A, United Nations, New York 10017. Tell her it is high time that it is anti-Catholicism that is driving the IPPF’s efforts to oust the Holy See from the U.N. We’ll supply her with the evidence.