Given the controversial nature of this issue’s “President’s Desk,” we thought you’d like to know where Bill Donohue got his information.

· Allred’s admission that “two individuals,” Laci and Connor, died when the pregnant Laci Peterson was killed can be found in the transcript for “Hannity and Colmes,” Fox News Channel, June 5, 2003.

· Allred’s interview with O’Reilly is from his “O’Reilly Factor” transcript, Fox News Channel, May 9, 2000.

· Reference to the Fund for Feminist Majority video can be found in the August 28, 1989 edition of “Abortion Report.”

· The Publishers Weekly statement about Lunneborg’s book can be found on Amazon.com’s entry on her book, Abortion: A Positive Decision.

· Alexander Sanger’s remark about abortion as a “positive good” can be found on the back cover of his book Beyond Choice; it can be accessed via Amazon.com

· Beverly Harrison’s comment can be found in a piece written by Robert R. Reilly, “Culture of Vice”; see orthodoxytoday.org

· Caitlin Moran’s quote comes from her article, “Abortion: Why It’s the Ultimate Motherly Act,” found in the April 13, 2007 edition of the U.K. site, TimesOnline.

· Reference to Maguire’s comment can be found in an article by Gail Schmoller, “For Some Clergy, Legal Abortion is a Basic Right,” Chicago Tribune, April 21, 2004, p. C1.

· Erica Jong’s remark, and her Flo Kennedy attribution, can be found in her piece, “If Men Could Get Pregnant, Abortion Would be a Sacrament.” It is available at huffingtonpost.com; it was posted January 21, 2008.

· Gaylor’s book, Abortion is a Blessing, received the endorsement of Friedan and Steinem. See the back cover.

· The statements made by Patricia Baird-Windle, Mary Hunt, Carter Hayward and Ginette Paris can be found at hli.org/abortion_sacrament_quotes.pdf

On December 5, the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, led by Kevin J. “Seamus” Hasson, ran a full-page ad in the A-Section of the New York Times entitled, “NO MOB VETO.” The Catholic League was one of several organizations that endorsed the ad.

The purpose of the ad was to denounce the incivility that followed the debate over gay marriage in California; Proposition 8, the resolution affirming marriage as an exclusively male-female institution, passed over objections from gay activists. Some of those protests got ugly.

The ad said, in part, “The violence and intimidation being directed against the LDS or ‘Mormon’ church, and other religious organizations—and even against individual believers—simply because they supported Proposition 8 is an outrage that must stop.”

The backlash against the ad was also unseemly. The attacks on Bill Donohue were strong, and some were vile. But that didn’t stop him from debating the issue on radio.

This is sad given the fact that most Americans want homosexuals to be treated fairly. What they object to is the demand to revise the criteria for marriage. Marriage, as we often say, is less about adults than children. And that’s why gays should properly be disqualified as candidates for marriage.

By: Joseph Varacalli

Anne Hendershott, Status Envy: The Politics of Catholic Higher Education, Transaction Publishers

In a recent e-mail sent to me, a distinguished Catholic priest and well-known mover and shaker in Catholic circles made reference to “the forty years war (1965-2005) for the Catholic Church in America that was concluded with a definite victory in 2005 with the election of Pope Benedict XVI.” Father C. John McCloskey followed,  “The years ahead are just mop-up operations.” I hope, of course, that my friend and colleague is correct. However, after reading Anne Hendershott’s superb Status Envy: The Politics of Catholic Higher Education, I’m convinced that, at least in the realm of Catholic higher education, something stronger than mops will be necessary to clean up the spiritual and intellectual mess.

In her lucidly written, intellectually rigorous, and compelling narrative, sociologist Hendershott objectively documents and brilliantly analyzes a fundamental shift, most prominent since the mid-1960s, in the frame of reference and subsequent activities of most Catholic scholars and administrators involved in Catholic higher education in the United States. Promoted by vested political, prestige, and economic interests and inextricably intertwined with the mutually influencing realities of status envy, a crisis of faith, and the (illusory) quest for an autonomous individualism, this shift has entailed a rejection of Catholic informed social thought with its application to the broader world to the reduction and cutting down of the Catholic intellectual heritage to secular and politically correct modes of thought. That this rejection of the riches of the Catholic heritage continues mostly unabated in the face of a growing recognition on the part of even the non-Catholic community of the intellectual and moral bankruptcy of what passes for formal education in the society-at-large only adds incredulity as a response and the proverbial salt to the wound. Ironically, at this most perilous time in the history of the American Republic, when Catholic education could have been expected to have articulated a reasoned and empirically based response and critique to the degenerative developments in the larger culture, all that one sees and hears is a Catholic fifth rank marching to the drumbeat of secularists against the Catholic Church and the remnants of Western civilization. As Father Benedict Groeschel of the Cardinal Newman Society has recently stated, for serious Catholics devoted to the pursuit of truth and sound scholarship, “it’s time to take off the gloves; we can’t endure another decade of phony Catholic education.”

What are just a few of the issues broached in Hendershott’s magisterial treatise? She analyzes such topics as the nature of the culture war raging within the Church; the general progressive Catholic misinterpretation of the documents of the Second Vatican Council; the claim of progressive theologians that they represent an “alternative magisterium”; the impact of Monsignor John Tracy Ellis’ now (in)famous 1955 article, “Catholics and the Intellectual Life”; the 1967 Land O’Lakes Declaration demanding an unrestricted “institutional autonomy” (save from government authorities) and “academic freedom” (save from the “politically correct”); the large scale rejection and ignoring of both the spirit and law of Ex corde Ecclesiae; the defining down of authentic Catholic identity in part through widespread changes in the wording of mission statements; the discrimination against orthodox Catholic scholars in hiring practices at Catholic colleges; the reduction of the overall Catholic vision to the institutionalization of a this-worldly social justice, as defined by differing secular interest groups through variations of the “theology of liberation” (socialist, feminist, homosexualist); the de-catholicization of the Jesuit community in the U.S.; the impact of now dominant secular feminist and active homosexual movements within Catholic colleges pushing for support on such issues as legalized abortion, women’s ordination, and same sex marriage; the role of secular accrediting agencies in fostering the assimilation of Catholic colleges along lines acceptable to the current cultural gatekeepers and the need, conversely, to develop authentically Catholic accrediting agencies; the perceived (and artificially contrived) need to officially secularize colleges in order to receive government subsidies; the ineffective role played by most college trustees in guaranteeing an authentic Catholic education; the palpable animus of progressives against the pontificates of John Paul II and Benedict XVI and, conversely, Benedict XVI’s call for the “evangelical pruning” of dissenting and overtly nominal Catholic colleges; among many more.

Professor Hendershott is quite upfront in “naming names,” but is always honest and objective in discussing the key actors who played such a major role in the revolt of Catholic higher education against the Magisterial authority of the Catholic Church. She accurately recounts the words and actions of the dissidents that speak volumes in terms of their philosophies and programs promoted. Readers will find her volume replete with the names, among seemingly countless others, of such progressives as Father Theodore Hesburgh, Rosemary Radford Reuther, Father Robert Drinan, Mary Daly, Charles Curran, Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza, Father Richard McBrien, Monika Hellwig, Bernard Cooke, Father Roger Haight, Francis Kissling, Daniel McGuire, and Sister Jacqueline Grennan.

One very important part of Professor Hendershott’s analysis is her incorporation of the “actionist” and “social movement” perspectives found within the corpus of sociological thought. Hendershott is not arguing that the secularizing movement within Catholic higher education is merely the result of large scale, anonymous, supposedly inexorable external forces of social change. Rather she makes the case that what has transpired in Catholic higher education is largely the result of the quite conscious and calculating plans and actions on the part of active dissenters who promote, in sociologist Peter L. Berger’s phrase, “an internal secularization from within.” (For more on this theme, see my own books, Bright Promise, Failed Community: Catholics and the American Public Order, and The Catholic Experience in America.) The Catholic Left has successfully executed its long march through many of the organizations of the Church, none more so than in her educational institutions.

Professor Hendershott, as such, offers serious Catholics some hope for the future of both the Church and American civilization through her discussion of the Catholic educational counter-reformation now starting to make its presence felt. As the author points out, just as dissenters have brought Catholic institutions of Catholic higher education down, the concerted planning and activities of orthodox Catholics can and are involved in a form of “counter-insurgency,” i.e., with the grace of God, building up from the ashes. Encouraged, in part, through singular individuals stepping up to the plate in the Church’s time of need and by such Catholic academic groups as the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars, the Cardinal Newman Society, and the Society of Catholic Social Scientists, this orthodox Catholic counter-reformation has involved the recapturing of some long-established Catholic colleges, the creation of new ones, and the relative strengthening of others. These colleges, counter to the typical progressive caricature, are retreating neither from the world nor from non-Catholic ideas. What they are doing, however, is engaging in the evangelization of the broader culture and providing articulate Catholic and natural law responses to, and critiques of, the cognitive and normative claims of secular and non-Catholic worldviews. An excellent resource on the topic of the turn back to orthodoxy in Catholic higher education is theNewman Guide to Choosing a Catholic College.

One particular vignette in the volume deserves special attention. It involves the following claim made by Monsignor George A. Kelly regarding the attitude and response of Father Theodore Hesburgh to the non-compliance by Catholic progressives to Ex corde Ecclesiae. Hendershott recounts the story: “A prominent Notre Dame official went to Father Hesburgh as to a mentor, worrying that the implementation of the Vatican document Ex corde Ecclesiae might bring the American bishops into the governance of the University. The retired president consoled his worried friend, ending his counsel with this message: ‘What is the worst thing that can happen to us? John Paul II will tell the world that Notre Dame is not a Catholic University. Who will believe him?’”

In one of his many classic books, Battle for the American Church Revisited, Monsignor Kelly gives what should be the standard orthodox Catholic response to Father Hesburgh’s arrogance and religious disobedience. For Monsignor Kelly, “(Catholic) college and university presidents should be given a fixed time to indicate their acceptance of the norms (associated with Ex corde Ecclesiae) and a reasonable period to adjust their catalogs and operating procedures accordingly…. Institutions that do not choose these ordinances are to be denied use of the name Catholic. The faithful are entitled to know the names of those institutions accredited by bishops as Catholic. The Church may lose a goodly number of colleges in the process. Let them go.” In other words, the Bishops of Catholic America should call the bluffs of many in the progressive Catholic educational establishment and willingly accept any subsequent institutional losses. The Bishops and all concerned Catholics then should proceed unabated with the resurrection of Catholic higher education—for the sake of individual souls, the health of the Church, and the welfare of civilization.

May the publication of this book give substantial hope and inspiration to the remaining and future defenders of the Catholic ideals of the integration of faith and reason and orthodoxy in religious commitment with true academic excellence. I end this review, as does Professor Hendershott, with reference to the vision of John Henry Newman, who, in his Idea of the University, stated that the University must be “the seat of wisdom, the light of the world, and the minister of the faith.”

Joseph A. Varacalli, Ph.D., is Director of the Center for Catholic Studies at Nassau Community College and a member of the Catholic League’s Advisory Board.

Hot button issues on the November ballot triggered passions in many parts of the country. In some cases, things got ugly. Nowhere was the situation worse than in California, Washington and Michigan.

Some of the proponents of gay marriage, abortion and euthanasia engaged in a bigoted protest against people of faith, including Roman Catholics. Not content to simply register their convictions in the polling booth, they resorted to confrontation politics. And in many cases, they violated the law, with impunity.

In California, an initiative that affirmed the traditional understanding of marriage as being between one man and one woman passed by a thin majority. Unhappy with the democratic process, radical gays tied up traffic by blocking intersections in many cities. They also bashed Catholics and Mormons for strongly supporting the pro-marriage resolution. A bigoted video attacking Mormons for supporting traditional marriage was aired on television.

In Palm Springs, California, an elderly lady carrying a cross showed up at a pro-gay marriage rally. The angry crowd knocked it from her hands and then stomped it on the ground. A local CBS anchor incredibly said that this incident showed, “There is a lot of anger and a lot of hate, quite honestly, on both sides.”

Californians also voted on an initiative requiring parental notification in cases of a minor contemplating an abortion; it narrowly lost. Prior to the election, opponents of parental rights took to the streets outside a Catholic church in Coronado seeking to intimidate those going to Mass.

The state of Washington held a referendum on legalizing physician-assisted suicide. Some of those unhappy with the Catholic Church’s opposition to the death initiative trotted out the old canard about the Church seeking to “impose” its views on others. No one repeated this mantra more than Ann Martens, spokeswoman for the resolution.

Gay fascists stormed an evangelical church in Lansing, Michigan after the election was over. Ironically, these extremists, from a nationwide group called Bash Back!, are opposed to gay marriage; they fear marriage  would make homosexuals more like heterosexuals. No matter, their tactics were branded Nazi-like by Bill Donohue. Indeed, it was the Catholic League that was responsible for getting the media to pick up on this startling story.

This kind of hate speech by the anti-marriage, anti-family, anti-child fanatics was underreported by the mainstream media, many of whose members are sympathetic to their cause.

This year the Christmas stirrings started early. The anti-Christmas folks wasted no time protesting the holiday.

In November, the American Humanist Association launched its “Godless Holiday Campaign.” It placed ads in newspapers that read, “Why believe in god? Just be good for goodness’ sake.” The same ad is now posted on Metro buses in Washington, D.C.

Roy Speckhardt, executive director of the group, remarkably said that “Morality doesn’t come from religion”; he said it comes from individuals. As we pointed out, codes of morality have always been grounded in religion. Furthermore, there is nothing that cannot be justified if the only moral benchmark is what men and women posit to be right and wrong.

On November 15, a press conference was called by New York City Councilman Tony Avella on the matter of allowing the display of a crèche in the public schools. Avella is introducing a measure that would demand all councilmen to vote up or down on this issue; currently, Jewish and Muslim religious symbols are allowed in the schools, but only Christian secular symbols are permitted. Bill Donohue spoke at this event.

Also, Long Island chapter president Jim Krug supported a decision reached by Grucci, the internationally known fireworks company, to pull out of an annual Christmas event after it was announced that the Christmas Boat Parade was renamed the Holiday Boat Parade.

The anti-Christmas fever never stops.

William A. Donohue

We have been in the throes of a culture war for the past half-century, but never has it been more imperative to buckle your seat belts until now. Quite frankly, the culture war is about to explode.

The culture war pits traditionalists against modernists. To be more specific, it pits those who ascribe to the timeless values that inhere in faith, family and country against those who reject faith and family—traditionally understood—and who equate patriotism with jingoism.

Who are these people who comprise the ranks of the modernists? They are people so thoroughly secularist that they literally loathe religion. They are people who think that anyone who supports marriage as an institution exclusively designed for one man and one woman is a bigot. And they are people who think that the U.S. government is the cause of American bashing around the world.

Where do we find such persons? Many work in Hollywood, the media, the universities, the arts and in the non-profit sectors of the economy. They are fundamentally unhappy with themselves, God, nature, the U.S. and Western civilization. And that is why many hate the Catholic Church: It is a traditionalist institution that not only embraces God and nature, it is responsible for making Western civilization the greatest civilization in the history of the world.

We’re in for it. Why? Because the modernists feel emboldened after the November election. Please don’t misunderstand me—I am not blaming Barack Obama for all of what is about to happen. I am blaming many of those in the occupations I cited who see in his victory a golden opportunity to wage war on traditionalists. They are already revving it up; just wait until they kick it into high gear.

The modernists will be paying close attention to what Obama does in his very first days in office. If he does what he has pledged to do—push for the Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA)—then that will prove to be pivotal in the culture war. We won’t have to wait long on whether his promise to Planned Parenthood will be realized, and that is because two days after he is sworn in, it will be the 36th anniversary of the infamous Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion.

In 1993, two days after he was sworn in as president, Bill Clinton rapped pro-lifers in the face when he overturned every Executive Order limiting abortion. Will Obama choose the day pro-lifers assemble in Washington for the Right to Life March to stick it to them? If he affirms his support for FOCA, that will prove to be incendiary.

FOCA is not just another pro-abortion piece of legislation. It is the most radical, comprehensive pro-abortion bill in the history of the United States. No nation in Europe has anything like it. If passed by the Congress, and signed by Obama, it would effectively nullify every state restriction on abortion. That means that all parental consent laws would go by the wayside. It means that partial-birth abortion would be legal again. It even means that Catholic hospitals and Catholic doctors may lose their right not to perform abortions.

The Office of the General Counsel of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has prepared an analysis of FOCA that is as accurate as it is scary. Among the many provisions it is likely to invalidate are “laws protecting the conscience rights of doctors, nurses and hospitals, if those laws create even minimal delay or inconvenience in obtaining an abortion or treat abortion differently than other medical procedures.”

In other words, if FOCA were ever to become law, not only will the rights of the unborn be stripped for all time, the rights of the born who defend them will be stripped as well. Sadly, because the abortion rate among black girls is so high, it means that America’s first African American president will preside over an increase in the death of black babies.

If Obama touts FOCA on January 22, it will spark not simply the pro-abortion industry, it will ignite all the modernists who have a real problem with faith, family and country, traditionally understood. With no one left to demonize in Washington, radical secularists will take after the Catholic Church and every other traditionalist institution. Look for them to target any religion that doesn’t ascribe to its modernist interpretation of discrimination, all with an eye towards gutting its tax exempt status.

Much of the action will take place outside the beltway, in local communities across the nation. There will be culture war battles on a myriad of fronts. Fortunately, it will bring traditional Catholics, evangelical Protestants, Muslims, Mormons and Orthodox Jews closer together. We should not be reluctant to form coalitions across faith lines.

So buckle your seat belts. The polarization that has marked the culture war thus far is about to worsen. At stake is the very moral foundation this country was built on, and the values and social institutions it reflects. As you might expect, we will not walk away from this fight. We will not sit on the sidelines—we will be gladiators, not spectators.

On Election Day, Californians voted on Proposition 4, a measure that would require minors to obtain parental notification before an abortion is performed; there was a provision for judicial override in unusual circumstances—unfortunately the measure did not pass. However, leading up to the election, some of those opposed to the proposition engaged in Catholic bashing.

Some of the Catholic bashing that accompanied the crusade against Proposition 4 was subtle, and some of it was overt. The subtle variety was on display in news releases that continued to cite the Knights of Columbus as a donor in favor of the resolution: The Knights’ contribution was actually quite small, but by flagging the Catholic lay group, opponents were throwing a red flag to anti-Catholic bigots. This is exactly what we expected of such groups as the ACLU, NOW, the Feminist Majority, Planned Parenthood, and NARAL; their record of bigotry is quite long.

Besides some anti-Catholic bloggers, opponents of parental rights conducted a demonstration on October 26 outside of a Catholic church in Coronado; those coming and going to Mass were specifically singled out.

A video on the subject, dubbed “Therapy” by the Vote No on Proposition 4 activists, had two young men sitting on a couch discussing the issue. The pro-parental consent fellow, of course, was depicted as making his case based on emotion, not evidence. Worse, he confesses that he is trying to “impose [his] moral view on others”; he cites his reliance on the Bible. In actual fact, it was the anti-parental consent crowd which was imposing its moral views.

The Sierra Club also got involved in fighting Proposition 4. So is its message—less kids, less pollution? The group admits that it is pro-abortion on its website. What we didn’t know was that it was comfortable consorting with anti-Catholics.

Along with the Catholic Church’s support for Proposition 4, it also endorsed Proposition 8, the successful pro-marriage measure. The Church’s support for both of these propositions triggered an avalanche of vitriolic criticism. Here is a sampling:

· The National Catholic Reporter blasted all the bishops—“Not one among the bishops has had the courage”—to take on pro-life Catholics who have allegedly “distorted” the abortion issue

· Rabbi Brad Hirschfield criticized Cardinal Egan for opposing abortion, saying, “We need to stop litmus testing each other over single issues” like abortion

· Catholics for Choice said that pro-abortion Catholics “are in good company, and in good conscience” for rejecting the Church’s teaching on this subject

· Rev. Daniel Kanter, a Unitarian, said the Church “employs a measure of fear” to get Catholics to oppose abortion

· Rev. Jonathan Tran, a Baptist, opined, “If the Church doesn’t tell us what to do with our ballots…and genitalia, who will?”

· Professor Frank K. Flinn said the Church has not always been opposed to abortion, implying that the Catholic Catechism, the bishops and the pope are all wrong

· Rev. Geoffrey Farrow, a gay priest, said the Church’s opposition to gay marriage represents a “hurtful” theology

· Los Angeles Times writer Steve Lopez said that “Speaking up for the dignity of gay people must be a greater sin than being accused of molesting minors”

Even worse were American Atheists, Americans United for Separation of Church and State and the Freedom from Religion Foundation. All accused the Catholic Church of abusing its power by favoring Proposition 8, yet none said anything about the more than 100 houses of worship and religious organizations which opposed it. Their hypocrisy is appalling.

On November 5, we noted the role that Catholics played in securing marriage and family rights in the election.

Were it not for Catholics, the institutions of marriage and the family would have taken a hit in places like Arizona, Florida and California. Indeed, in Florida and California, their vote proved to be decisive.

Arizonians rejected gay marriage by a vote of 56% to 44%, though the margin among Catholics was less—51% to 49%. In Florida, the Catholic vote proved to be controlling: overall, the ban on gay marriage won by 62% to 38%, but among Catholics it was 66% to 34%. Californians narrowly defeated gay marriage by a margin of 52% to 48%, but Catholics rejected it by an impressive 60% to 40% differential. A vote in California to support parental consent lost by 52% to 48%, but it won among Catholics by a hefty 58% to 42%.

On both issues, Catholics and Protestants who are regular churchgoers clearly supported a ban on homosexual marriage and affirmed their support for parental consent. Unmarrieds and those who don’t go to church overwhelmingly voted for the right of two men to marry; they also voted to deny mothers and fathers of their right to be notified in advance if their child is considering an abortion.

Those who supported traditional values, then, tended to be religious and married while those who sport a preference for moral relativism tend to be secular and single. The implications were clear: tax laws, and other public policy initiatives, which are both family-friendly and church-friendly, are critically important.

On Sunday, November 9, a band of about 30 gays stormed a church in Lansing, Michigan. Some were well dressed—as if they were legitimately attending the church service—and were stationed inside Mount Hope Church; others were outside of the building dressed in pink and black. The group of self-described homosexual anarchists, Bash Back!, claimed the evangelical church is guilty of “transphobia and homophobia.”

The protesters outside the church were beating on buckets, shouting “Jesus was a homo” on a megaphone and carrying an upside-down pink cross. Inside the church, the well-dressed protesters set off fire alarms, stormed the pulpit and unfurled a huge rainbow-colored flag with the inscription, “IT’S OKAY TO BE GAY! BASH BACK!” The church was vandalized, obscenities were shouted and worshippers were confronted. There were no arrests.

Bash Back!, a nationwide organization, had been planning on terrorizing the church for a month before executing their protest.

The facts are indisputable—all one has to do is visit the website of Bash Back! There one will find that on October 12 and 23, a memo was sent to members of the group to commemorate the founding of “Michigan’s newly formed chapter” asking “Queers and Trannies” to join in storming the church. The group boasts that in 2008 there has been “an explosion in Radical Trans/Queer organizing,” citing progress that has been made from “Maine to the Midwest to The Bay Area.” Bash Back! was founded to fight “State recognition in the form of oppressive institutions such as marriage and militarism”; it says both are “steps towards heteronormative assimilation.” The radical nature of the organization has led it to protest pro-gay marriage organizations like the Human Rights Campaign.

Eaton County Sheriff Mike Raines was able to ID the protesters, but unfortunately the pastor of the church did not want to press charges; therefore, the guilty got off scot-free.

This urban fascism was labeled by the left-wing site, the Daily Kos, as a “funny story,” and it conducted a survey on the subject. Only 19 percent thought what Bash Back! did crossed the line.

Homosexuals unhappy with election results rejecting gay marriage bashed the five groups most responsible for their loss: African Americans, Roman Catholics, Evangelical Protestants, Latinos and Mormons. No group was hit harder than Mormons. Here is a sample of their behavior:

· Protesters in many California cities took to the streets snarling traffic and endangering public safety

· Houses and cars were vandalized

· Mormons who removed offensive signs from their property were beaten

· “Mormon scum” was shouted at worshippers

· Latinos carrying pro-marriage signs were assaulted

· An elderly woman was roughed up and the cross she was carrying was smashed to the ground

· “Bigots Live Here” was scrawled on a Christian church

· The Book of Mormon was set on fire in a Mormon chapel

· Catholic churches were trashed and swastikas were placed on their lawns

· African Americans were called the “N-word”

· Rioting protesters shouted “Separation of Church and Hate”

· Supporters of traditional marriage were called “Nazis”

· A white substance, resembling anthrax, was sent to the Knights of Columbus and to Mormon temples