Offensive ads depicting pop star Madonna and the Virgin Mary and Infant Jesus quickly came down from New York City public buses and telephone booths in the wake of a firestorm of protest initiated by the Catholic League in late September.

The ads, which bore the legend “The difference between you and your parents,” promoted VH-1, the video music sister channel to MTV. Officials of VH-1 publicly apologized for the ads.

Catholic League president William A. Donohue challenged the appearance of the ads on buses operated by the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA), a public agency. In an open letter to New York mayor David Dinkins which was released to the news media on September 20, Donohue noted that an ad depicting the Blessed Mother and Jesus would have been rejected out of hand as “religious” but that the VH-1 ad was apparantly acceptable because the Catholic symbols were being blasphemed.

New York Post columnist Ray Kerrison was attracted by the story and in a page three article in the September 27 issue of the Post noted the offensiveness of the ads, the insensitivity of public officials, and the Catholic League’s bold challenge to the mayor.

By mid-morning on the 27th, TV and radio crews were tripping over each other as they trooped in and out of Catholic League headquarters. Interviews with League president Donohue were carried on every major TV outlet in the metropolitan area and distributed nationwide by network radio and TV affiliates as well as by syndicated shows like “Hard Copy” and “A Current Affair.” The League’s cries of protest were even carried on London radio where Madonna was appearing in a concert being panned by critics and in Toronto, Canada.

Metropolitan Transit Authority and phone company public relations personnel found themselves swamped with inquiries from the media and calls of protest from irate Catholics. Their official positions and explanations changed almost hourly as the firestorm of protest grew. Initially, MTA officials simply said that the ad met their “advertising guidelines” and were protected by the First Amendment. When it became clear that this lame excuse wasn’t working, the media was told that the posters were scheduled to come down in a few days anyway, so why was everyone getting all excited about them?

By mid-day on Tuesday, League officials knew that the battle had been won when TV crews attempting to cover the story reported back to the League that they were having difficulty finding a poster to film!

The story’s impact was clearly felt at the grass roots level. The Catholic League office was swamped with requests for membership information and Catholic League president Bill Donohue found himself an instant celebrity on the street. On Tuesday afternoon, in an effort to escape the media blitz for a few minutes, he went for a brief walk and stopped to buy a hot dog from a street vendor. While standing there, a complete stranger walked up to him and told him what a great job he was doing.

And the story clearly had impact well beyond the shores of the Hudson river. In Chicago – to cite just one example – the entire Catholic League news release on the Madonna poster was read and commented on for several minutes on WGN, arguably that city’s largest radio station in the middle of their top-rated morning “drive time” broadcast hosted by Bob Collins. A glance at the partial media listing (page 5, page 6) on the following pages makes it clear that the story made the news across the nation.

In follow-up interviews, after it became clear that the offensive posters were becoming scarce, Dr. Donohue made it clear that as far as the Catholic League was concerned, the situation was still not resolved. Donohue noted the League’s concern about the policies which had made the ad’s posting possible. Those guidelines were – and remain – clearly inadequate if they permit such blasphemy to be publicly displayed. Donohue asked that the person who ultimately approved this outrageous poster be identified. MTA officials have so far refused to comment.

by Patrick Riley

A nationally heralded report that aims at “bridging the gap” between religion and the news media features a dismissive critique of a similar study sponsored by the Catholic League and the Knights of Columbus (Media Coverage of the Catholic Church) and chalks up perceived bias as simply lack of knowledge on the part of reporters.

According to the report, titled “Bridging the Gap: Religion and the News Media,” Media Coverage of the Catholic Church is “not convincing,” and merely articulates “what traditional Catholics dislike about news coverage of Catholic controversies.”

“Bridging the Gap” was published by the Freedom Forum First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University, which has behind it a three-quarter billion dollar fund established by presslord Frank E. Gannett, who died in 1957. The fund is administered by the Freedom Forum, chaired by Al Neuharth. Neuharth, founder of USA Today is a self-styled “S.O.B.” who portrays himself in his autobiography (Confessions of an S.O.B.) as a Machiavellian moral scofflaw.

The Freedom Forum First Amendment Center is chaired by John Seigenthaler, a former subordinate of Neuharth’s at USA Today who provides the study’s introduction. The report was written by John Dart, a religious affairs reporter at the Los Angeles Times, and Dr. Jimmy R. Allen, former president of the Southern Baptist Convention. Dr. Allen was on the losing side of a struggle that brought traditionalists into control of the Southern Baptist Convention.

Allen and Dart fail to make clear just why they adjudge the League’s media study “not convincing.” Despite their emphatic if subjective conclusion, the only criticism of their own that they offer is that the study “makes no note of the key role of religion writers in the stories analyzed by that study.” But they do not show that religion writers played the role they claim for them, or what that role would signify.

They offer no analysis, no reasons of their own for the League study’s failure to convince. Rather they uncritically echo remarks made by others. They make no mention of the study’s methodology, far less analyze it or even describe it. Strictly speaking, their critique does not justify any conclusion whatsoever.

With poetic symmetry, the Dart-Allen study reaches conclusions favorable to the industry that sponsored it, however remotely, namely the press media. On the basis of a survey whose actual questionnaire they do not reveal, it declares that “an anti-religious bias in the media is a myth.” With the finding that 72 percent of journalists surveyed say religion is meaningful in their lives, it confronts a widely quoted survey of the media elites published in 1981 by S. Robert Lichter and Stanley Rothman (Dr. Lichter happens to have been the director and author of the Catholic League – Knights of Columbus study!).

That earlier study found that fifty percent of those in the media fail to name a religious affiliation and only eight percent admit to going to church or synagogue weekly.

The First Amendment Center’s survey was broader than the Lichter-Rothman poll because it reached out to include local newspapers and churches, but it went only to journalists to write about religion. Lichter- Rothman, on the other hand, limited their survey to a much smaller number of media elite who influence the nation’s major electronic and print media.

All of this is not to imply that the Dart-Allen survey has no merit. It brings some important truths to the fore. But it is gravely defective, not only because of its factual mistakes and methodological errors but for philosophical reasons, such as when it repeatedly counterposes the media’s preoccupation with “facts” and religion’s concern with “faith” – as though faith cannot deal in facts, and as though religion has nothing to do with morals. Far from “Bridging the Gap,” this study widens it.

The First Amendment Center report needs a thorough, painstaking revision, and the Catholic League will be happy to help.

Dr. Patrick Riley is Catholic League Director of Research.

by Karen Lynn Krugh

In August she reported from Denver. This past month we find Karen Lynn Krugh reporting from the Christian Coalition conference in Washington.

For two days in September, over 2,000 members of the Christian Coalition descended on Washington, D.C. for their third annual conference. Far from being a gathering solely of Pat Robertson devotees, the group counts Catholics, mainline and Evangelical Protestants, Jews and others among its members and sup- porters. Catholic League President Bill Donohue and I attended the conference for a first-hand look at the organization’s goals and agenda.

Pat Robertson set the tone for the conference early on when he responded to the organization – and himself – being labeled “the religious right” by the media. “Who am I to the right of?” Robertson asked. “Well, I’ll tell you,” he continued. “I am to the right of the Washington Post and I am to the right of the ACLU.”

“Ninety-million Americans are functionally illiterate,” he told his audience, and while many attribute the ills of our nation to the breakup of the American family, Robertson pointed out the derision by the media of family values following the Republican National Convention last year. Robertson discussed the radical feminists’ contribution to the backslide of family values, noting their analogies of childbearing to a concentration camp and marriage to slavery. He heralded the pro-life stance, school choice for parents, prayer in schools, reduced taxes for familes, and limits to punitive damages.

The “breakout” sessions during the two days helped participants focus on specific issues. Of particular interest to the Catholic League was the session “Catholics and Evangelicals: Building a Winning Coalition,” which was moderated by Marlene Elwell. Speakers included Father Michael Scanlan, of the Franciscan University of Steubenville, and Keith Fournier, of the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), an organization established primarily to fight the ACLU.

We were a bit surprised when a head count in the room revealed the audience to be 50/50 Catholic and Evangelical. This particular session was intended to bring together factions formerly at odds in order to strengthen the efforts of the whole body. Despite the lack of balance (both speakers and the moderator were Catholics) and the title (which seemed to beg the question, “are there any other Protestants besides Evangelicals?”), I believe some progress was made. And while it was clear during the question and answer period that some old confusion and suspicions remain on both sides, it was nonetheless a positive beginning.

The Christian Coalition is non-partisan. They will not endorse candidates nor solicit funds for campaigns. They will, however, organize people on a grassroots, town-by-town and state-by-state, level in order to alert people to the views and voting records of state and local officials. The goal is to elect as many pro-family, pro-life and pro-liberty officials as possible.

Among the speakers at the conference was Mary Cummins, widow, mother and grandmother, who successfully fought former New York City School Chancellor Fernandez when he tried to introduce his “rainbow curriculum.” The fact that this 70-year-old grandmother could literally fight city hall and win – in what the couple next to me referred to as “that den of iniquity” – was a source of encouragement for all. The message was not only that one person can indeed accomplish a great deal, but that no battle, no goal is out of reach. Similar success was visible in the efforts of another speaker, Dr. Richard Neill, a Fort Worth dentist, who single-handedly persuaded more than 195 advertisers to pull their sponsorship of the Phil Donahue show.

The success of the Christian Coalition is inspiring. Since its inception in 1989, it has achieved many of its goals, including the distribution of nonpartisan voter guides and a nonpartisan voter registration campaign. Congressional lobbying and the election of pro-family candidates at every level across the country have also occupied much of its time. It is considered to be one of the most effective grassroots organizations in America, having grown from four people in 1989 to almost one-half million members today.

As Catholics and as Christians, we can take heart. Battles have been fought and won. And while many battles lie ahead, we can continue to win and grow stronger as a nation of faith by working together and focusing on what we have in common and not on what divides us.

Rabbi Daniel Lapin, the senior rabbi of the Pacific Jewish Center in Venice, California, eloquently addressed the question “Why Jewish Conservatives are Working with Christians.” As he began his speech, he looked out and said, “Who is asking this question?” Lapin responded, “My great-great grandfather.” And how did he answer his great-great grandfather? “We are all a people of faith,” he told him. And it was quite clear that his audience understood why indeed we should all be working together.

Robertson took the occasion of the conference to issue a clear warning. “We will oppose any goverment policy or official which sets out to destroy this nation.” Paraphrasing George Bush, he concluded, “Read Our Lips: If you advocate the agenda of the radical left, you will not be re-elected.”

For Catholics – most of whom are strangers to political activism – such words are both threatening and challenging. We must come to embrace the idea that we really can effect change in the communities in which we live and work if we only have the will. Working together with others who share many of our deeply held beliefs and values is a big step in that direction.

Dr. Joycelyn Elders, President Clinton’s nominee for the post of Surgeon General, is on record as being anti-Catholic.

The Catholic League, in a July 22 news release, quoted several public statements by Elders indicative of her hostility towards the Catholic Church. (The full text of the League news release appears on pg. 2).

Bishop James T . McHugh, chair of the USCC pro-life committee, in a letter to Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, criticized Elders for her “bigoted and contemptuous remarks about Catholics and other Christians.”

Msgr. William F. Murphy, in a Boston Pilot column, called Elders “an anti-Catholic bigot [who] advocates extreme positions regarding health care, sex education and abortion referrals for young people.” Msgr. Murphy, secretary for community relations in the Boston Archdiocese, went on to note the American “double standard” which accepts anti-Catholicism but condemns all other forms of bigotry.

The League’s charges against Elders received national exposure during a heated exchange on CNN’s Crossfire between former White House chief of staff John Sununu and Dr. Reed Tuckson, President of the Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science.

Tuckson praised Elders’ “behavior, thought, word” as something “all Americans could be proud of.”

Sununu countered: “The Catholic League disagrees with you. Catholic groups across the country disagree with you. These are the folks against which her language was directed. You certainly should understand from the history of the country that those are the kinds of things that divide and don’t unite the country.”

Later in the broadcast Catholic opposition to Elders was tied to the Church’s stand on abortion. Kay Coles James of the Family Research Council quickly noted: “It is not politically correct to to be anti-black. It is not politically correct to be against women. It is not politically correct to be anti-Semitic, but in America today, it’s totally acceptable to make the comments that she made about the church, not only the Catholic Church, but the comments she made about the Christian community as well.”

A letter from League president William Donohue has been sent to all members of the U.S. Senate. In his letter, Dr. Donohue cited the blatantly anti-Catholic comments of Elders and pointed out that there is no place in public office for such bigotry.

In a lead editorial on Monday, August 2, the Washington Post called Catholic League criticism of Dr. Joycelyn Elders “right.”

The editorial dismissed opposition to Elders because of her stands on “sex education, abortion and contraception.” But when it came to the League’s criticism of Elders as anti-Catholic, the Post acknowledged there was a problem:

Over the years, Dr. Elders, as a state official, has given as well as got in controversies about her positions and her manner of advocacy. But she has a different charge as the nation’s highest ranking public health official. The federal post can be used to spur a national response to critical public health problems. It is not, however, a stage from which a surgeon general is free to put down, put off or trash segments of the American public with whom he or she disagrees. We have in mind the broadside that Dr. Elders leveled against the Catholic Church during a pro-choice rally in Little Rock last year. The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights said it smacked of ignorance or malice and that it was “a rank distortion of history to say that the Catholic Church was ‘silent’ or did ‘nothing’ about past instances of societal injustice.” The League was right. With all her professional accomplishments, that aspect of Dr. Elders‘ approach to public discourse is troubling.

The Supreme Court divided 5-4 in deciding the First Amendment’s establishment clause does not bar a school district from providing a sign language interpreter to a profoundly deaf high school student at the Catholic high school he attends.

Chief Justice William Rehnquist, joined by Justices Byron White, Antonio Scalia, Anthony Kennedy and Clarence Thomas, wrote the majority opinion in Zobrest v. Catalina Foothills School District.

“When the government offers a neutral service on the premises of a sectarian school as part of a general program that ‘is in no way skewed towards religion,'” wrote the Chief Justice, “it follows under our prior decisions that provision of that service does not offend the Establishment Clause.”

The opinion pointed out that the chief beneficiary of the aid would be Jim Zobrest, while any benefit accruing to the school would be incidental.

Citing the Court’s decisions in Mueller v. Allen (upholding a Minnesota law allowing taxpayers to deduct certain educational expenses even though a majority of the deductions were claimed by parents with children attending sectarian schools) and Witters v. Washington Dept. of Services for Blind (upholding state aid to a blind person studying at a private Christian college to become a pastor, missionary or youth director) Chief Justice Rehnquist noted that “we have consistently held that government programs that neutrally provide benefits to a broad class of citizens defined without reference to religion are not readily subject to an Establishment Clause challenge just because sectarian institutions may also receive an attenuated financial benefit.”

Justice Blackmun, joined by Justices David Souter, John Paul Stevens and Sandra Day O’Connor, wrote in dissent that the majority erred in deciding the constitutional question presented in Zobrest, arguing instead that the Court should have sent the case back to a lower court to consider the statutory and regulatory issues presented.

In Part II of his dissent Justice Blackmun, joined only by Justice Souter, wrote that provision of a state-employed sign-language interpreter to Jim Zobrest in his Catholic school would violate the Establishment Clause because the interpreter “would serve as a conduit for petitioner’s religious education” thereby involving government “in the teaching and propagation of religious doctrine.”

The Zobrest family was represented by the distinguished constitutional attomey, William Bentley Ball of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, a former member of the Catholic League’s Board of Directors.

The Catholic League joined a broad based coalition which included the Christian Legal Social, the National Association of Evangelicals and the Association of Christian Schools International in filing a friend of the court brief on behalf of Jim Zobrest and his family.

The Zobrest case: Round two

While most readers will think that this decision in the United States Supreme Court marks the end of the Zobrests’ long and arduous quest for justice, you may be surprised to learn that the Zobrests may not have seen the last of courts and judges just yet.

Despite the high court win, there are still several legal questions to be settled regarding the specific statutes and regulations governing the provision of a sign language interpreter for Jimmy Zobrest.

Zobrest attorney William Bentley Ball – a nationally recognized authority on religious freedom rights who has served on the Catholic League board – argued the case through the court system for four years on a pro bono basis, waiving all of his fees. According to Ball, John Richardson (the attorney for the Catalina Foothills school district) has indicated that he would recommend trying to work out a settlement thus avoiding further litigation. The board has spent more than $90,000 on their attorneys and technically now owe fees to Ball.

Several stories on the Zobrest case have construed the decision as a major victory for school choice, but a careful reading of this very narrowly drawn decision may not sustain such a broad interpretation.

Douglas Kmiec, a law professor at Notre Dame, noted in a Chicago Tribune op-ed piece that the Zobrest decision suggests that “aid can only be successfully channeled to a religious entity through parents or students for highly limited purposes, not for the cost of the overall education program or teachers generally.” Kmiec also pointed out that Zobrest was a 5-4 decision, with retiring Justice White in the majority.

One of the happiest people in this story is, of course, Sandy Zobrest, Jimmy’s mother, who was inter- viewed shortly after the decision by Mary Benson of the Lakeshore Visitor, weekly of the diocese of Erie, Pennsylvania. Mrs. Zobrest made it clear that this was a fight for rights that required an enormous amount of energy and personal sacrifice, concluding, “If you don’t know your options, how can you fight for anything?”

And in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Attorney William Ball had his own special way of celebrating this important victory. After he called Sandy Zobrest with the good news he headed off to a nearby church to offer a prayer of thanks.

Public school systems that allow their schools to be used after hours by community groups cannot refuse to extend the same privilege to religious groups, the Supreme Court has ruled.

In an opinion written by Justice Byron White, the Court reaffirmed the principle that “the First Amendment forbids the government to regulate speech in ways that favor some viewpoints or ideas at the expense of others.”

The case, Lamb’s Chapel v. Center Moriches School District, was filed in 1990 by an evangelical Christian Church, Lamb’s Chapel, which had been refused permission by the school district in Long Island, New York to use a room at the Center Moriches High School after school hours in order to show a film with a Christian perspective on family life and child rearing.

Although the school district routinely allowed community groups to use school premises, it denied the church’s request because of a policy that barred the use of school premises “by any group for religious purposes,” while at the same time permitting “social, civic, or recreational use” of school buildings by community groups.

Calling the district’s refusal “plainly invalid,” Justice White wrote that because the district allowed other speakers to address family life and child rearing, it could not deny a forum to a group wishing to address those subjects from a religious perspective.

Although the Lamb’s Chapel decision was based on the free speech guarantee of the First Amendment, the Court used the case as an opportunity to reaffirm the validity of the three-part test for determining whether government action violates the establishment clause of the Constitution first enunciated by the Court in Lemon v. Kurtzman. The Lemon test, a precedent which dates to 1971, has been the subject of much recent criticism, particularly from conservative justices. There was speculation last year and again during this term that the Court would jettison Lemon and fashion a new formula for deciding establishment clause cases.

Justice Scalia, who filed a separate opinion concurring in the judgment, expressed his disapproval of Lemon in typically colorful language. “Like some ghoul in a late-night horror movie that repeatedly sits up in its grave and shuffles abroad after being repeatedly killed and buried,” Justice Scalia wrote, “Lemon stalks our establishment clause jurisprudence once again, frightening the little children and school attorneys of Center Moriches.” Justice Thomas joined Justice Scalia’s opinion and Justice Kennedy also filed a separate concurring opinion criticizing Lemon.

The Catholic League joined a coalition that included the Christian Legal Society, the United States Catholic Conference, the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs and the National Association of Evangelicals in filing a friend of the court brief in this case.

The Supreme Court has ruled that ordinances enacted by a Florida city banning ritual animal sacrifice violate the free exercise clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution.

In Lukumi v. City of Hialeah, the Court decided that the ordinances passed by the City Council of Hialeah, Florida infringe on the religious freedom rights of the adherents of Santeria, an Afro-Cuban religion. Animal sacrifice is an integral part of the Santeria religion, which has over 50,000 adherents in southern Florida.

Although all nine justices agreed the ban was unconstitutional, they used different rationales to reach that decision.

Justice Kennedy, writing for the Court, found the ordinances unconstitutional because their goal was to suppress the Santeria religion. “The principle that government may not enact laws that suppress religious belief or practice is so well understood,” Justice Kennedy wrote, “that few violations are recorded in our opinions.”

Justice Blackmun, joined by Justice O’Connor, wrote a separate opinion concurring in the judgment and stating that the Constitution protected religion not just from laws specifically directed at religious practice, but from laws of general applicability that incidentally burdened religion.

Justices Blackmun and O’Connor were dissenters from the Court’s sharply criticized 1990 ruling in Employment Division v. Smith which changed the standard the Court used for deciding free exercise issues and they used their opinion in Lukumi as an opportunity to reiterate their disapproval of Smith.

In a separate opinion, Justice Souter agreed with the decision but urged the Court to re-examine the rule it announced in Smith. Justice Souter was not a member of the Court when Smith was decided.

The Catholic League joined a coalition in filin!! a friend of the court brief in Lukumi. The League’s brief argued that the Hialeah ordinances violated the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment because they specifically targeted the sacrifice of animals in a religious ritual, while allowing the killing of animals for other purposes. The brief also urged the Court to reconsider its ruling in Smith, which the brief argued, was wrongly decided.

Some have wondered why the League chose to participate in the Lukumi case. The answer to that question can be found in the League’s dedication to the proposition that all legitimate religious practices, even those rejected by the majority as obscure or abhorrent, are protected by the First Amendment.

It would have been convenient to tum our backs on this case, ignoring the discriminatory actions taken by a municipality against an unpopular religious minority. But, as noted by the Williamsburg Charter, it is important to remember that “rights are best guarded and responsibilities best exercised when each person and group guards for all others those rights they wish guarded for themselves.”