George Heartwell, mayor of Grand Rapids, Michigan, sent a campaign postcard to Catholic voters in late July that showed a picture of a local Catholic church on the front and the names of seven local Catholic leaders on the back. The mayor is an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ and an abortion-rights advocate. One of his challengers, city commissioner Rick Tormala, is a Catholic pro-life advocate; he labeled the Heartwell tactic “insulting and deceptive.”

It was clear that in this instance Tormala’s complaint was valid. Even if Heartwell were Catholic and pro-life, it still would have smacked of demagoguery for him to sell himself to Catholics in such a crass manner. But the fact that he is the darling of the pro-abortion community made his ploy all the more despicable.

The fact that Heartwell enlisted a small band of “social justice” Catholics—men and women whose interest in soup kitchens always seems to trump their interest in crisis pregnancy centers—means nothing. At the end of the day, religious profiling is totally unacceptable; Mayor Heartwell clearly crossed the line with his pandering postcards.

Disney president Robert Iger wrote a letter on July 25 to Rep. Edward Markey, chairman of the House Telecommunications & Internet Subcommittee, regarding smoking in Disney’s films. Here is an excerpt:

“We discourage depictions of cigarette smoking in Disney, Touchstone and Miramax films. In particular, we expect depictions of cigarette smoking in future Disney branded films will be non-existent.”

As a result, Iger also said that Disney “will place an anti-smoking PSA [Public Service An-nouncement] on DVD’s of any future film that does depict smoking. In addition, we will work with theater owners to encourage the exhibition of an anti-smoking PSA before the theatrical exhibition of any such film.”

The Catholic League took note of this development, especially as Disney owns ABC, the network that airs the anti-Catholic show “The View.” And under its Miramax label in the past, Disney has given us such anti-Catholic movies as “Priest,” “Dogma,” “Butcher Boy,” “40 Days and 40 Nights,” “The Magdalene Sisters” and “Black Christmas.”

Catholic League president Bill Donohue said that it would be refreshing if Iger would issue a similar letter, only this time targeting anti-Catholicism. Donohue even penned a model for him:

“We discourage depictions of Catholic bashing in Disney, Touchstone and Miramax films. In particular, we expect depictions of Catholic bashing in future Disney branded films will be non-existent. We will place an anti-Catholic bashing PSA on DVD’s of any future film that does depict Catholic bashing. In addition, we will work with theater owners to encourage the exhibition of an anti-Catholic bashing PSA before the theatrical exhibition of any such film.”

Donohue said that if Iger accedes to his request, there will be no fee for his service.

In the July 25 episode of the FX drama “Rescue Me,” Denis Leary’s character had an exchange with a new firefighter about the Bible. He said the Bible is to Catholics what “The Godfather” is to the Mafia. Continuing, Leary blasted the Catholic Church for being corrupt, maintaining that his time in the Church was effectively like being in prison. The biggest gangster on the face of the planet, he contended, was the pope.

Later in the episode, another firefighter returns to his apartment, one he shares with his girlfriend, a former nun. He finds her having sex—while wearing a habit—with his cousin.

Imagine what would happen if every Catholic priest, nun, brother and lay person in the United States who volunteers his or her time in hospitals, clinics, hospices, after-school programs, camps, soup kitchens, day care centers, mental institutions and the like were to go on strike for one day. Would the Denis Learys of this world still be painting them as corrupt and oppressive, led by the world’s biggest gangster? Or would they suddenly realize the yeoman work these selfless people do every day?

One more thing: What kind of creative genius at FX is responsible for portraying an ex-nun having sex with her habit on? Do they know of any ex-Muslim women who have sex wearing their hijab? For that matter, do they know of any imams who would make Al Capone look saintly? Why is it always us? Don’t these guys believe in diversity?

Or could it be that they know, deep down in their hearts, that we are the one, true religion? After all, that would explain their dismissive attitude toward all the other competitors.

The defense of Pope Pius XII is an on-going commitment for us, and to further that end we would like our members to know of the great work conducted by Howard Walsh of Keep the Faith. A Catholic League member, whose daughter Mary once worked at the league, Howard has been fighting the disgraceful reception that Pius XII has received by the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Israel.

Keep the Faith has started a petition drive demanding that Yad Vashem end its hostility to Pius XII. It has also released a CD that contains informative discussions by Father Kenneth Baker and Sister Margherita Marchione; both of them have impeccable credentials and they persuasively make the case that Pius XII did more to save Jews during the Holocaust than any other world leader.

For more information, contact:

Keep the Faith
70 Lake Street
P.O. Box 277
Ramsey, NJ 07446

(201) 327-5900
(see www.keepthefaith.org)

Nothing riles us more than to see self-righteous anger directed at our religion by professed experts from some other religion. Such was the case recently when Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite attempted to tie the renewed interest to the Latin Mass to the sex abuse scandal that has marked the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. Thistlethwaite is president of the Chicago Theological Seminary, a United Church of Christ institution.

“At a time when the Catholic Church in the U.S. needs to be working on becoming more open and more accountable to its laity to prevent more child sexual abuse,” writes Thistlethwaite, “the reintroduction of the Latin Mass signals that the Catholic Church as a whole is moving in a reactionary direction, becoming more closed rather than more open.” She continued by saying, “This is a worship practice where the ordinary people could not understand the language and the clergy become remote figures, conducting mysteries in secret on the altar.” In conclusion, she charges that “the Catholic Church is once again circling the wagons, rejecting necessary reforms and consolidating its power in the hierarchy.”

Bill Donohue couldn’t stomach listening to this rant and so he wrote Thistlethwaite a stinging rebuke. The fact that she never answered him is testimony to her inability to defend her demagoguery. His letter is reprinted here.

The Catholic League’s patience with “The View” ran out on May 31. That was the day the ABC show attacked Catholicism for the 15th time since September; it was the second hit to occur within a two-week period. Our response was to finger the show’s co-owner, Barbara Walters, as the guilty party in a New York Times op-ed page ad on June 12.

On the May 31 show, Walters, along with Joy Behar, Elisabeth Hasselbeck and guest co-host Whoopi Goldberg, criticized the actions of a Catholic priest in Wisconsin. Having learned that his organist/choir director was selling sex toys, the pastor advised the woman that the products she peddled were incompatible with Catholic teaching. When she refused to quit her sales job, the priest removed her from her position.

During the discussion, Behar said, “She is selling [the sex toys] to married couples, which the Catholic Church wants you to procreate.  How do they think we have been doing it all these years? With sex toys, that’s how.” Goldberg asserted that the woman now “can’t get a spiritual advisor” because she has “a different way of doing things.” Walters reinforced Goldberg’s notion by asking, “Why can’t someone who is a hooker at night…on Sunday go to whatever church or temple and try to get spiritual?” Hasselbeck questioned the merit of “probing into your private life in terms of how well you can do your job or keep your job.”

The panelists’ disregard for the truth was bad enough—for instance, there is no report of the woman being denied spiritual advice, or even the sacraments, because of the nature of her job—but what was especially appalling was the co-hosts’ intrusion into the internal matters of the Church.  Clergy of all religions make judgments about the moral propriety of their employees every day, without attracting any attention.  Yet when a Catholic priest does it, the ladies of “The View” launch into a sophomoric rant questioning his right to run his parish as he sees fit.

Two weeks earlier, on May 18, Behar took a cheap, gratuitous shot at priests, labeling them pedophiles. Both Behar and Rosie O’Donnell are embittered ex-Catholics—who are often the worst of all anti-Catholic bigots.

On the day our ad ran, Walters replied to us indirectly, saying on air, “I want to remind all of you that I am not responsible for anybody else’s views, except mine.” This is nonsense. She co-owns the show—they work for her! The good news is the ad triggered national TV and radio interviews for Bill Donohue. Thus did we get the word out about Walters.

We have an update on the anti-Catholic resolution that was passed by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors last year: we filed a complaint of judicial misconduct against Judge Marilyn Hall Patel, and it has been accepted as worthy of investigation.

Readers of Catalyst will recall that the Catholic League objected when the resolution in question was adopted on March 21, 2006 condemning the Catholic Church for its teachings on homosexuals and adoptions. The public officials branded the Vatican a “foreign country” that had meddled in the affairs of San Francisco simply for holding a contrary belief! The Church’s teachings were labeled “hateful,” “insulting and callous,” etc. The Thomas More Law Center, representing the Catholic League, sued the board on First Amendment grounds.

Judge Patel ruled against us, but it was not her conclusion that led us to file a complaint of judicial misconduct. Rather, it was her sneering response and her amazing statement that “The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith provoked the debate, indeed may have invited entanglement by its [doctrinal] statement.”

We are pleased to report that on June 6 we received a letter from the clerk’s office of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit saying that a docket number has been assigned to this matter and that a copy of the complaint has been forwarded to judges for review.

In our estimation, Judge Patel is not fit to rule on issues affecting the Catholic Church.

William A. Donohue

It was Marx who said that religion was the “opiate of the masses,” and it was the late French sociologist Raymond Aron who once said that Marxism was the “opiate of the intellectuals.” With slight emendation, it can be proffered that atheism is today’s “opiate of the intellectuals.”

Christopher Hitchens is not just an atheist, he is an angry atheist. I have debated him many times, in person and on television, and at various times have come to like him, then not like him, and so forth. He’s an interesting guy. On the life issues, he’s opposed to abortion yet welcomes euthanasia. He’s a left-wing critic of American foreign policy, though he vigorously defends our involvement in Iraq. But he’s also a socialist who has made a comfortable living in capitalist America (the English transplant recently became a citizen). The one subject where he does not vacillate is religion: he is a hater, through and through.

Hitchens would have us believe that religion, not atheism, is responsible for most mass killings in history. For example, he contends that the murderous acts committed by the totalitarian regimes of communism and fascism—both full-throated atheistic states—must be understood not as the consequence of radical secularism, but religion. But even if Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and Hitler were messianic thugs, they were at bottom atheist thugs, men who took their ideological cues from secular visions of the society. And remember, Saddam Hussein was not a believing Muslim.

According to Hitchens, the Jacobins who slaughtered Catholics during the French Revolution, and the Bolsheviks who triggered the violence that became the hallmark of the Soviet Union, were really “alternative religions.” He argues that “Communist absolutists did not so much negate religion…as seek to replace it.” He even blames Confucianism for the murderous regime in North Korea.

The attempt by Hitchens to rationalize the violence inherent in secular regimes is matched only by his forced dismissal of the heroic work of the Catholic Church during the Holocaust. Take, for example, the way he addresses Einstein’s great praise of Pope Pius XII. Time magazine once ran an historic quote by Einstein that showed how incredibly disappointed he was with the universities and newspapers for saying nothing about Hitler.

“Only the Church stood squarely across the path of Hitler’s campaign for suppressing truth,” the non-believing Jewish scientist said. “I never had any special interest in the Church before, but now I feel a great affection and admiration because the Church alone has had the courage and persistence to stand for intellectual truth and moral freedom. I am forced thus to confess that what I once despised I now praise unreservedly.”

Hitchens, relying on the work of William Waterhouse, doubts whether Einstein ever made these comments. He says that Time did not give any source for these remarks, the “rhetoric is too florid,” there was no mention of “the persecution of the Jews,” and that it is “silly” to think Einstein would claim to have “despised” something in which he “never had any special interest.” Waterhouse also argues that if Einstein was praising Pius XII, his words must have been written after 1938. “But the text certainly sounds as though it refers to a time shortly after the Nazis came to power,” he says.

This is all nonsense. It is common practice today, and it was more so back then, for magazines to carry stories without a byline. Do Hitchens and Waterhouse think Time just decided to make this up out of whole cloth? Do they think that Einstein would have allowed them to put words in his mouth? After all, the quote in question appeared in the December 23, 1940 edition of Time; Einstein didn’t die until 1955. This quote was often cited and Einstein had plenty of time to object, but he never did.

“How strange is the lot of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he sometimes thinks he senses it.” This is the kind of florid style we might expect of a poet—not a scientist—but in fact those are the opening words of Einstein’s essay, “The World As I See It.”

It is so obvious that Einstein was talking about “the persecution of the Jews” that only those living in denial would claim otherwise. Moreover, it is not all uncommon for someone to express disaffection—not merely disinterest—when he says he has no special interest in something. I have never had any special interest in becoming a Marxist, and indeed I despise Marxism; there’s nothing silly about such usage. Finally, since it wasn’t until “Kristallnacht” in November 1938 that the Nazis really began their pogroms, it is quite likely that Einstein’s remarks were made after that time; Pius XII began his papacy in 1939.

The truth of the matter is Einstein did praise the pope, and no amount of spin from the opiate class can change history.

By David R. Carlin

Once upon a time—let’s say from the time of Franklin Roosevelt till the time of Lyndon Johnson—the Democratic Party was the clear party of choice for American Catholics.  The party had a special concern for the urban working classes and for the children and grandchildren of immigrants; its social justice ideas were often very similar to the social justice ideas outlined in papal encyclicals such as Rerum Novarum andQuadrigessimo Anno; it was emphatically patriotic and, like the Vatican, emphatically anti-Communist; it was strong on military defense; and it did almost nothing to defy or to undermine Catholic moral values.  It was a party that Catholics, at least Catholics of the kind that flourished in those long-ago days, could feel very comfortable with.

I myself was one of those Catholic Democrats.  Born in 1938, the second year of FDR’s second term, I first voted for president in 1960, the year that represented the summit of Catholic satisfaction with the Democratic Party, since that was the year John Kennedy was elected president.  I was elected as a Democrat to the Rhode Island Senate in 1980; in 1989-90 I was the Democratic Majority Leader of the Senate; and in 1992 I was the Democratic candidate (alas, a losing candidate) for the United States House of Representatives.

During my political career, despite my prominent position in the party, I was becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the new direction the national party had taken.  Today I am worse than uncomfortable; I am downright distressed and disillusioned.

The Catholics of the United States have changed greatly since those far-off days of FDR and LBJ.  They used to be, religiously speaking, a relatively homogeneous group, but they are now divided between what may be called “real Catholics” and “nominal Catholics.”  By “real Catholics” I mean those who go to church every weekend, who actually believe the doctrines of the Church, and who make a serious effort (while not always succeeding) to let their lives be guided by the moral rules and moral values endorsed by the Church.

By “nominal Catholics” I mean those who are quite opposite.  They rarely or never attend Mass, and they have a “pick and choose” attitude when it comes to faith and morals.  They are Catholic in the sense that they were baptized Catholic and have not yet sent in a letter of resignation.  And of course there are shades of gray between these two extremes: Catholics who may be called semi-real or semi-nominal.

If Catholics have changed over the last three or four decades, so has the Democratic Party “changed utterly” (to use the words of Yeats).  From being a party that Catholics could feel very comfortable with, it has become a party that Catholics—at least “real Catholics”—feel profoundly uncomfortable with.  Not to put too fine a point on it, the national Democratic Party has become an anti-Christian party.

At about this point some Catholic Democrat will tell me that my assertion is preposterous.  I’ll be told that Catholic politicians who play a leading role in the Democratic Party—for instance, U.S. senators and representatives—are for the most part Sunday churchgoers of good moral character.  No doubt this is true, but the Democrats who sit in Congress are only the tip of the party iceberg:  nearly 90% of the typical iceberg is under water.  That is to say, the relatively invisible people who mainly determine the policies of the party are the political contributors and activists, not to mention those who spread pro-Democratic propaganda from the “command posts” of American culture—by which I mean the press, the entertainment industry, and our leading colleges and universities (including law schools).

Julius Caesar once said that money is the “sinews of war,” and it is most definitely the sinews of modern American politics.  The old local Democratic political “machines” used to deliver the vote for Democratic governors and senators and representatives, but these machines largely vanished decades ago.  And so now the vote has to be delivered (or perhaps a better word would be “incited”) by TV advertising, and it is a notorious fact that TV advertising is colossally expensive.  Politicians running for higher office, then, need great amounts of money, and they therefore have to cater to those who contribute.  (“He who pays the piper calls the tune.”)

The demographic base of the old machines consisted of working-class and lower-middle-class voters; and so, with the waning of the machines, there has been a corresponding waning of influence in the Democratic Party of these voters.  An influence vacuum was created, which was soon filled by upper-middle class professionals with enough disposable income to be able to throw cash at politicians who hold views pleasing to these contributors.  Not only that, but these relatively well-to-do Democratic contributors usually hold an ideology; that is, they are secularists (or semi-secularists) and moral liberals.

Now what do I mean by a “secularist”?  I mean a person with three striking traits:  (1) In his personal life he has no use for religion; he is normally an atheist or agnostic (and if an agnostic, his agnosticism is barely distinguishable from atheism).  (2) He considers religion to be not just useless, but positively harmful; and therefore he is anti-religious, especially anti-Christian.  He doesn’t mind “liberal” Christians all that much, since their Christianity is a kind of semi-secularism; but he detests and fears Christians of a more orthodox kind, whom he suspects of wishing to impose a “theocratic” regime on the United States.  (3) He believes in and promotes a new morality that is intended to replace traditional Christian morality, e.g., the morality of the Ten Commandments.  This is a morality of moral liberalism, whose two fundamental principles are: the Personal Liberty Principle (you are free to do whatever you like provided you don’t harm non-consenting others in a tangible way), and the Tolerance Principle (you must tolerate the conduct of anyone who is not harming others in a tangible way).

The Personal Liberty Principle and the Tolerance Principle have most notably been invoked to justify a new personal morality whose characteristic note is sexual freedom.  In other words, they have been used to justify the sexual revolution: premarital sex, unmarried cohabitation, easy divorce, cheap and readily available contraception, a somewhat lax attitude toward adultery (remember the tolerance moral liberals exhibited toward Bill Clinton’s relationship with Monica Lewinsky), abortion, pornography, and homosexuality, including in recent years same-sex marriage.  “How do any of these things hurt innocent bystanders?” asks the moral liberal.  “And if they don’t hurt, then they are morally permissible.”  (It’s a bit puzzling that moral liberalism feels that abortion is justified, since abortion obviously causes harm to another.  Moral liberals get around this difficulty by the clever device of not thinking about it.)

Another way of putting all this is to say that there is a “culture war” going on in the United States between moral liberals and moral conservatives; or more exactly, between secularists and Christians.  The secularists, who hold Christianity in disdain, would like to drive Christianity out of the public arena and into a corner, where those nitwits who like to practice it would still be free to do so, to the infinite amusement of the more “enlightened” people.  Christians of the old-fashioned kind, both Catholic and Protestant, would like to preserve their religion, not just as a private hobby, but as an important factor in the public culture of the United States.  As for the third party in this culture war, the liberal Christians: they have a nostalgic and sentimental attachment to Christianity, but in most of the actual battles between moral liberals and moral conservatives—e.g., battles about abortion and homosexuality— they come down on the side of moral liberalism, although they do so (let it be noted to their credit) with something of a long face.

This culture war has long since spilled over into politics.  And in politics the Democratic Party has allied itself with the secularists/moral liberals, while the Republican Party has decided to ally itself with the Christians/moral conservatives.  I don’t mean to say that the Republican Party has become the Christian party.  For one thing, while the party is anti-secularist, it has many features that are not especially Christian.  For another, as history teaches, it would be very dangerous for Christians to identify their religion with a political party.

But although I won’t say that the Republican Party has become the Christian party, I will say that the Democratic Party has become the anti-Christian party; for to take sides with the secularists/moral liberals in the culture war, as the Democrats have done, is to take sides against Christianity.

And so, the Democratic Party has gone from being a Catholic-friendly working and lower-middle class party to being a secularist and upper-middle class party.  Can a Catholic be a Democrat today?  It is virtually impossible, assuming that the Catholic in question is a “real Catholic,” is acquainted with policies of the party such as its support for abortion and homosexuality, and is capable of reasoning logically.  And this is what is actually happening: Increasingly, “real Catholics” are leaving the Democratic Party, although “nominal Catholics” (who are really semi-secularists) remain.  Since there are millions of “real Catholics” in America, their exodus from the party should cause alarm among party leaders.  But apparently it does not, at least not much, they are so in thrall to their secularist/moral liberal supporters.

Nonetheless I confess (with some embarrassment and perhaps even shame) that I remain a registered Democrat, even though this doesn’t mean that I can be counted on actually to vote for Democrats.  But I feel that my protest against the anti-Christian course the party has taken will be more effective if I remain officially a Democrat.  After all, it was my party before it became the party of the secularists.  Why should I allow them to drive me out?

David R. Carlin is the author of Can a Catholic Be a Democrat?: How the Party I Loved Became the Enemy of My Religion, published by Sophia Institute Press.

As soon as Rosie O’Donnell joined the panel of co-hosts on ABC’s “The View” last year, we knew that the program would provide a forum for the comedienne to spew her anti-Catholicism.  What we saw between September 2006 and May 2007, however, exceeded our expectations.  On 15 separate occasions, the Catholic Church was attacked on the program—and not just by O’Donnell.  What follows is a brief description of the incidents.

The Eucharist was ridiculed twice.  On September 28, 2006, O’Donnell mimicked receiving communion and not letting it touch her tongue by contorting her face into various strained positions.  In February, O’Donnell was at it again, making grotesque facial expressions and laughing about the Host.

All of the co-hosts had a good laugh at the Christian practice of Baptism in April of this year.  After they proved themselves thoroughly ill informed on Limbo and actual Catholic doctrine (though they purported to speak authoritatively on the subject), Elisabeth Hasselbeck mocked the idea of her own child’s baptism, and Joy Behar referred to it as “a nice little sponge bath.”

Showing she can’t pass up any chance, no matter how much of a stretch, to make a lame attempt at comedy at the expense of Christianity, Behar referred to Hasselbeck putting herself in a “Christ-like position” when Hasselbeck stretched out her arms to demonstrate a rule of hunting.

In February of 2007, Behar donned her psychologist’s hat and advised people to “follow their heart” when it comes to celibacy.  The sage then intoned, “That is why a lot of the priesthood is so screwed up right now.”  Jumping on the bigoted bandwagon, O’Donnell chimed in: “Celibacy is not part of the human condition. It is not normal, right, everyone is a sexual being.”

According to these two ex-Catholics, Catholics in general don’t read the Bible.  In March Behar offered this excuse as to her own ignorance: “I never read the Bible as a child because I was Catholic.”  O’Donnell concurred, saying, “I didn’t know anything about it.  Again, Catholic, you just read the Missalette.”  The following month, Behar suggested that the Catholic Church fosters superstition, saying, “When I was a kid I used to be [superstitious] because the Catholic Church has a lot of that sort of thing in it, but then I sort of grew out of it.”

The Holy Father has been slandered more than once.  Despite the fact that then-Cardinal Ratzinger was put in charge of investigating cases of abuses after the sex abuse scandal broke in 2002, O’Donnell claimed in October that “the person who was in charge of investigating all the allegations of pedophiles in the Catholic Church from the eighties until just recently was guess who. The current pope.”  Later that month, O’Donnell again misstated the facts, alleging, “The current pope was the person who was supposed to investigate these charges of sex abuse in the Church in the last 20 years.”

These supreme wits have trotted out the bigoted cliché that all priests are pedophiles.  During a discussion in May about male nannies, Behar jokingly asked Walters if she would have hired “a priest perhaps” to watch her daughter.

O’Donnell took the occasion of the Supreme Court upholding the partial-birth abortion ban to question the right of Catholics to participate in public life.  She fumed, “You know what concerns me? How many of the Supreme Court judges are Catholic, Barbara?” Walters then responded, “Five.” O’Donnell said in reply, “Five. Five are Catholic. Separation of church and state, America.”

The panelists have frequently cast the Church as repressive.  In September, O’Donnell astonishingly claimed that “Radical Christianity is just as threatening as radical Islam in a country like America where we have separation of church and state.”  In October, Behar made a crack about “the Sisters of Mary Magdalene” grabbing up porn stars and putting them in convents.

In a discussion about a pastor who asked the parish organist to quit her post when he learned she also sold sex toys, the ladies felt very free to involve themselves in a private matter between a priest and a church employee.  Behar moaned, “She is selling [the sex toys] to married couples, which the Catholic Church wants you to procreate.  How do they think we have been doing it all these years?  With sex toys, that’s how.”  Guest host Whoopi Goldberg falsely asserted that the woman now “can’t get a spiritual advisor” because she has “a different way of doing things.”  Walters backed up Goldberg’s twisting of the truth by saying, “Why can’t someone who is a hooker at night…on Sunday go to whatever church or temple and try to get spiritual?”  Hasselbeck complained about “probing into your private life in terms of how well you can do your job or keep your job.”

On October 12, in a very telling moment about the show’s attitude toward Catholics, Behar actually defended anti-Catholicism.  When Walters read a letter from a viewer pointing out that it’s considered okay to say bad things about Christians, but not about Jews, Behar replied, “You can arouse people’s anti-Semitic feelings very easily and it is not like just a joke.  It becomes ‘Let’s round them up and kill them.'”  In other words, certain groups are protected, but the Catholics are fair game.