Few Americans will publicly admit that they don’t believe in free speech, yet attacks on it are commonplace. How can this be? While some are simply lying, others entertain a notion of free speech that allows them to be censorious while professing allegiance to it.

Two years ago, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) released a survey of 45,000 college students from 201 colleges. It found that liberals were the most intolerant of free speech.

That same year Real Clear Opinion released a survey on this topic and found that Democrats were the least supportive of free speech and the most supportive of censoring speech they found disagreeable. In fact, a third said Americans have “too much freedom.” The figure for Republicans was 14.6 percent.

An event took place in April that sheds light on this issue.

On April 8, former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett spoke at Princeton University. At least he tried to.

About 150 people showed up outside the building where he was to speak, chanting anti-Semitic slogans. After he spoke for about 15 minutes, some 20 people, most of whom were students, shouted him down, accusing him of genocide. Shortly after they were escorted out, a pro-Hamas activist started screaming at him, stopping his address. Ten minutes later the fire alarm went off, shutting down all the microphones.

Princeton is an elite school, but it has little respect for free speech. In the 2025 survey by FIRE of 251 colleges, Princeton ranked 223, meriting a rating of “below average” on the free speech scale. The situation is so bad on campus, especially with regard to stifling the speech of Jewish students, that the Trump administration has halted dozens of research grants to the Ivy League school.

The state of free speech is also precarious.

In a poll of voters taken in November, it was found that a majority of those who voted for Donald Trump rated “the future of free speech in this country” as “the single most important factor” affecting their vote. Only a minority of those who voted for Kamala Harris felt this way.

Why do so many liberals have a big problem with free speech? It basically comes down to one thing: they are obsessed with control. And if they can control your speech, they are well on their way to succeeding.

Bill Donohue has decided to address a story that is developing in Anytown USA. The venue is a local gym for adult men and women.

Reporter: Why are teenage boys allowed to compete in pre-teen boy games in Anytown?

Mayor: They are not. The only boys who can compete in pre-teen sports are those who identify as pre-teen.

Reporter: But I just witnessed what is obviously a teenager competing in a pre-teen event.

Mayor: Your perception is not determinative. We spoke to the boy you are talking about, and he says he is pre-teen.

Reporter: But it is obvious that teenage boys are bigger and stronger than pre-teen boys.

Mayor: That may be true, but it is also true that there are pre-teen boys of various sizes.

Reporter: This is crazy. We already have sports for teenage boys, so why the need for them to compete with pre-teens?

Mayor: They are not. The real issue is who determines who a teenager is.

Reporter: That’s easy. Birth certificates settle this issue.

Mayor: Birth certificates simply prove the age that someone was assigned at birth.

Reporter: Are you implying that is not enough evidence?

Mayor: You don’t get it. There is a spectrum of age groupings. Quite frankly, it is entirely possible for someone to consider himself to be younger, or older, than the age assigned at birth.

Reporter: If this continues, there will be no pre-teen sports programs left.

Mayor: This misses the point. The government has no right to tell anyone what sex or age someone is. We live in a free country, and we need to respect the autonomy, and conscience rights, of everyone. We also believe in being inclusive, letting everyone compete according to the sex and age they identify with.

Reporter: Does this apply to occupations as well?

Mayor: What do you mean?

Reporter: Can someone claim to hold a certain job even if it appears to outside observers that he is lying?

Mayor: You are being argumentative.

Reporter: Not at all. I am simply following your logic. From this day forward I will consider myself to be Mayor of Anytown USA.

Mayor: But I am the mayor.

Reporter: Not anymore. You were elected. My self-identification matters more. And guess what? You’re fired.

Mayor: This is outrageous.

Reporter: By the way, I have also decided to identify as a woman. Can you tell me where the ladies shower room is? Your wife just entered.

by Bill Donohue

This article originally appeared in the American Spectator on March 20.

If there were a proposal to erect a statue of St. Michael the Archangel on a municipal building, it would be understandable if some objected. However, it would not be understandable to object on the grounds that a depiction of St. Michael stepping on the neck of the Devil ineluctably conjures up images of George Floyd. But that is exactly the position of the ACLU of Massachusetts.

Having authored a Ph.D. dissertation, two books, and a monograph on the ACLU, I am convinced that most of its board members and senior officials harbor a deep animus against religion. Nothing bothers them more than Christianity, especially Catholicism. This is much more than a phobia: religion is seen as a threat to liberty.

When the ACLU was founded in 1920 by Roger Baldwin (the ACLU today falsely claims that Baldwin was one of 10 who founded the organization), all the provisions of the First Amendment, save for religious liberty, were listed as part of their ten objectives. That was not an oversight: Baldwin was an atheist.

Still, the reasoning of the ACLU of Massachusetts is off-the-charts, even by ACLU standards. It is challenging a decision made by the mayor of Quincy to erect two statues of Catholic saints outside the Quincy Public Safety Building. Mayor Thomas Koch chose St. Florian and St. Michael the Archangel; they are the patron saints of firefighters and police officers, respectively. The ACLU says the statues violate the separation of church and state.

The ACLU is well aware that religious statues adorn many buildings in the nation’s capital, including the Capitol Building, the Supreme Court, the Library of Congress, the Lincoln Memorial, and other public buildings. Even in Massachusetts, the Boston Public Library features the outstanding work of John Singer Sargent: his religious murals, including “Madonna of Sorrows,” are classic. At the State House, there are statues and paintings of famous Christians, clergy, and laity alike.

But none of this is enough to allay the fears of the ACLU.

In the ACLU’s letter to Mayor Koch and the Quincy City Council, it said that “we note that the contemplated statue of Saint Michael is not only troubling … it depicts a figure stepping on the neck of a demon. Such violent imagery is particularly abhorrent in light of the murder of George Floyd and other acts of police brutality throughout the country.”

In other words, the revered saint who battled Satan and who is known as the guardian prince of Israel—he stood ready to defend God’s chosen people— reminds the ACLU of a serial violent criminal who resisted arrest and was subdued by the cops; he had four times the lethal dose of fentanyl in his system. Maybe if St. Michael had been depicted as engaging in dialogue with the Devil, instead of crushing his head, the ACLU would have applauded.

Would Baldwin have agreed with the ACLU? Only in part.

When I interviewed him in his home in New York City in 1978, we discussed an array of issues. He was cordial and forthcoming. But when it came to religion, he was an extremist. Here is an exchange I will never forget (See my book, The Politics of the ACLU: Transaction Press, 1985).

Donohue: The ACLU has even gone so far as to deny the right of people to voluntarily take the time during the day, as a schoolchild, to say a prayer.

Baldwin: Not on school time.

Donohue: Well, whose rights are being infringed upon if there is a silent prayer voluntarily said by a student?

Baldwin: If they don’t say anything? You mean if they don’t—

Donohue: Right. Are you afraid they are going to proselytize the rest of the class?

Baldwin: Well, they’ve tried to get around it. They’ve tried to get around it even further than you by calling it meditation.

Donohue: What’s wrong with that?

Baldwin: You don’t say anything about God or religion or anything. I suppose you can get by with that but it’s a subterfuge, because the implication is that you’re meditating about the hereafter or God or something.

Donohue: Well, what’s wrong with that? Doesn’t a person have the right to do that? Or to meditate about popcorn for that matter?

Baldwin: I suppose that—it sounds very silly to me because it looks like an obvious evasion of the constitutional provision.

Back to St. Michael. Baldwin surely would have opposed erecting the statue, but he would have done so on conventional church and state grounds. Even if he were appraised of the George Floyd incident, he clearly would not have equated St. Michael stepping on the head of the Devil with a cop kneeling on Floyd. I spent many hours with him. He may have been an extremist on church and state, but he was not crazy.

It is hard to know what is sicker—a Colorado bill that would gut parental rights or the basis upon which it rests.

The bill would punish parents who do not align themselves with the wishes of their transgender children. Indeed, it grants the government the right to take them away from them. All they have to do to trigger this brazen denial of parental rights is to refer to their children in terms that reflect their nature-determined sex.

That’s right, the authorities can seize your son, Sam, if he wants to be called Sally and you call him Sam. The bill would make this illegal. It’s called “Deadnaming.” Your child can also be taken from you if you refer to Sam as “he” or “him,” instead of “she” or “her,” or “they” or “them.” This is called “misgendering.”

In other words, the rights of mentally challenged children—who are contemplating, or have completed, a regimen of puberty blockers and genital mutilation—trump the rights of parents who want to help them. Parents who violate these provisions are deemed guilty of “coercive control” under the law. The bill also says that the courts do not have to respect laws in other states that make it illegal for parents to allow their child to “transition” to the other sex.

In an unusual move, the bill passed the mostly Democratic Colorado House of Representatives on Sunday, April 6. In doing so, it clearly stuck it to Christians who opposed it. Indeed, they were told by the bill’s sponsors that parental rights should not even be discussed!

It will now be heard by the mostly Democratic Colorado Senate Judiciary Committee. If it passes, it will go to the mostly Democratic Colorado Senate. The Democratic governor, Jared Polis, is a homosexual fan of radical gay and transgender rights.

No state has anything like this on the books. Even Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed a similar bill.

The Colorado bill that passed, HB 1312, explicitly refers to the legislation as the “Kelly Loving Act.”

Kelly Loving was murdered in 2022 at a nightclub in Colorado Springs. Five were killed and 25 injured when a madman opened up on them with an AR-15 rifle. But it wasn’t an ordinary club—it was an LGBTQ hot spot. And Kelly was no ordinary person: he falsely claimed to be a woman. It appears Kelly was named Jonathan Ray Loving, and later adopted a female name after becoming confused about his sex.

After the massacre, President Joe Biden denounced it as an attack on LGBTQ people, saying, “We cannot and must not tolerate hate.” The mayor in Colorado Springs said the shooting “has all the appearances of being a hate crime.”

But is it a “hate crime” when transgender people kill transgender people? People of the same race kill people of the same race all the time, and no one calls such acts a “hate crime.” Yet as we have shown before, transgender-on-transgender crime is commonplace.

The person who killed Kelly Loving was Nicholas Franklin Brink. But he later changed his name to Anderson Lee Aldrich because he did not want to be associated with his father. When he went on his killing spree, he was a 22-year-old sexually confused person who falsely claimed to be neither a man nor a woman. He called himself “non-binary” (there is no such thing) and wanted others to falsely refer to him as “they” or “them.”

The killer’s father was a porn actor, and after his parents divorced—he was one-year-old—he grew up mentally disturbed and was arrested several times (a SWAT team had to be sent to his house when he threatened to blow it up). In 2021, he told his grand-aunt he wanted to kill Christians.

Colorado Democrat Rep. Yara Zokaie, who co-sponsored the bill in the House, credits the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) with justifying excluding parental rights from discussion on the bill.

SPLC is a well-funded hate group that is cited by the media as a specialist in identifying hate groups. Following suit, Zokaie censored those who sought to speak against her bill, saying, “we don’t ask someone passing civil rights legislation to go ask the KKK for their opinion.”

A search of the website of SPLC found that the first eleven posts under the banner “parental rights” are all about race, poverty, neo-Nazis, migrants and LGBTQ rights. In short, they have absolutely nothing to do with parental rights. The twelfth post is on parental rights. However it does not mean what is traditionally understood: it defends the right of parents to keep obscene books in elementary school libraries, not the right of parents who object.

Recent elections and surveys prove that attacks on the rights of women and parents is a losing game. But for some reason many Democrats are not listening, and nowhere is this more evident than in Colorado.

Theodore McCarrick died April 3 at the age of 94. The defrocked cardinal was known for decades as one of the most influential prelates in America. He was also a masterful fundraiser and a notorious homosexual whose predatory behavior is legendary.

Contrary to what the Washington Post editorialized in 2019, it was not the media that revealed McCarrick’s offenses—it was New York Archbishop Timothy Cardinal Dolan.

Dolan’s Independent Reconciliation and Compensation Program was responsible for outing McCarrick. Dolan went public after one of McCarrick’s victims came forward. As Bill Donohue said in his book, The Truth about Clergy Sexual Abuse, “How many rapists who work in the media—think of CBS and NBC—have had one of their senior officials turn them in? None.”

McCarrick was not content to be a good priest. The report on him, known as “The McCarrick Report,” found that when he was Archbishop of Newark, he told two bishops of his quest to succeed Cardinal John O’Connor as the Archbishop of New York (he had been an auxiliary bishop there in the late 1970s-early 1980s). He “pounded the table and blurted out ‘I deserve New York.'”

In the mid-1990s, McCarrick called to congratulate Bill Donohue for fighting anti-Catholicism. He had been in the job for only a few years. Donohue was struck when McCarrick told him of his desire to come across the Hudson and become the successor to Cardinal O’Connor. Why, Donohue wondered, would he tell him? It was obvious that he was consumed with this issue.

None of this would have come as a surprise to those who knew him when he was a monsignor in the late 1960s. He was assessed by his superiors as being overly “ambitious.”

In the 1980s, McCarrick first served as the Bishop of Metuchen, and then as Archbishop of Newark. This is when he began his predatory behavior. It was at his beach house on the Jersey Shore where he would invite seminarians to stay with him. He would intentionally invite more men than he had beds for. This set the stage: he would invite one of them to sleep with him. He often succeeded. He also had sex with seminarians in the Waldorf Astoria in Manhattan.

McCarrick justified his behavior by telling the seminarians that “priests engaging in sexual activity with each other was normal and accepted in the United States, especially in that diocese.” While this was an obvious rationalization, it was not altogether incorrect. The homosexual network at that time was extensive.

His sexual romps were known to many of the New Jersey bishops, but they did nothing about it. Nor did they say a word when McCarrick grabbed the crotch of a priest at the dinner table—they simply looked away.

Were there any good guys? Yes. Cardinal O’Connor was not afraid to act. After fielding several complaints, he reported McCarrick to Vatican officials. But McCarrick had friends everywhere, and those who surrounded Pope John Paul II took his side when he contested O’Connor’s account. It took Pope Benedict XVI to get beyond this. In 2006, he accepted McCarrick’s resignation, something he had to offer when he turned seventy-five.

Travel restrictions were placed on McCarrick but he ignored them. He ignored them under Benedict and even more so under Pope Francis. He did exactly what he wanted to and no one stopped him.

Unfortunately, McCarrick’s death does not put to rest all concerns.

The person who is currently in charge of the Vatican’s administrative duties is also the person who lived with McCarrick in Washington, D.C. for six years (McCarrick consecrated him in 2001), yet he claims that he never heard of any wrongdoing. Indeed, he “never suspected or ever had reason to suspect, any inappropriate conduct in Washington.” As Donohue said in his book, “That would make him unique.”

His name is Cardinal Kevin Farrell. He is now the Camerlengo, or Chamberlain, responsible for overseeing the daily operations of the Vatican. He was very close to Pope Francis, who elevated him to several high posts. Pope Francis also said he never heard about McCarrick’s predatory conduct, though others say they told him.

Farrell admitted in 2019 that he received a $29,000 gift from Bishop Michael Bransfield to refurbish his Rome apartment. A probe found that he had been using diocesan funds for these gifts and his own personal spending. He then returned the money; Bransfield was removed from office.

A priest was recently quoted saying that Farrell is holding “the fort down until the conclave elects a new pope.” Now that McCarrick is dead, it would be helpful if he told us more about his interactions with him. It would also be instructive to know why he thinks he was held in the dark when so many others at least heard of McCarrick’s offenses.

The Catholic League has filed an amicus brief in New Jersey defending the rights of priests. We are represented by the Pittsburgh office of Leech Tishman; our attorney is Russell Giancola. The lead attorneys for the case are from Cooper Levenson in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

This case began almost seven years ago. Following the Pennsylvania grand jury report in 2018, the Attorney General in New Jersey, launched an investigation of the clergy who worked in the state’s dioceses. Prosecutors wanted a grand jury empanelled but the Diocese of Camden objected, saying they had no authority to do so. It is the Camden Diocese that we are defending.

The Diocese of Camden is on solid grounds. In New Jersey, grand juries are established to investigate public agencies such as prisons and police departments. Targeting private individuals or private institutions are not permitted. Therefore, to go after the Catholic clergy—investigating alleged molestation of minors dating back to 1940—is unwarranted.

In May, 2023, Superior Court Judge Peter Warshaw took the side of the Camden Diocese. He said that state law allows special grand juries to investigate public officials or government agencies, not a private entity like the Catholic Church or individual priests. He also questioned the fairness of the probe: the accused priests will not be given a chance to defend themselves. Judge Warshaw said this amounts to a “hit-and-run.”

Subsequently, the New Jersey Supreme Court ordered the records unsealed and agreed to hear arguments in the case in April. This means our lawyers must act with dispatch.

A grand jury allows no cross examination so the accused have no legal recourse when their names are bandied about in the media. This is outrageous, and it is doubly outrageous when we note that, as always, it is the Catholic Church that is being targeted. It is never some other religion and it sure isn’t the public schools, the source of sexual abuse today.

On a related note, we have complained for decades about the decision made by dioceses in the United States that post the names of accused priests on the internet or in some other public spot. No other institution does this—just the Catholic Church. But in March, Pope Francis formally rejected this practice. Henceforth, dioceses are discouraged from publishing such a list.

Priests should have the same rights as every other American, but they do not. Due process demands that they are assumed innocent until proven guilty. Also, most of the bad apples are dead or are no longer in ministry. So this grand jury is a sham.

We will keep you posted.

In March, a Kansas-based group, The Satanic Grotto, announced that it was planning to hold a “Black Mass” on grounds surrounding the Kansas State Capitol in Topeka at the end of the month.

The Satanic Grotto admitted that the purpose of the “Black Mass” is to engage in blasphemy targeted at Catholics. On Facebook, it said, “We will be performing rites to the Black Mass and indulging in sacrilegious blaspheme [sic].”

We contacted the governor and the entire Kansas legislature, advising a course of action.

While it is true that blasphemy is generally seen as protected speech under the First Amendment, in Lynch v. Donnelly (1984), Chief Justice Warren Burger explicitly said that the Constitution “affirmatively mandates accommodation, not merely tolerance, of all religions, and forbids hostility to all (our italics).”

Every Christmas season, the Catholic League receives a permit to display a nativity scene in Central Park. Central Park, unlike property near City Hall, is considered a public forum, a place where freedom of expression carries no appearance of government endorsement.

Ergo, for the government of Kansas to allow an event on the grounds of the statehouse—the express purpose of which is to insult Catholics—might give the impression that it is endorsing this sacrilege. It would therefore be party to the kind of “hostility” to religion that the Supreme Court said was unconstitutional.

We suggested that an alternative site be chosen.

William A. Donohue

On his first day in office, President Trump issued an executive order declaring there are only “two sexes, male and female.” It says a lot about our society that this even has to be said. This same phenomenon—denying the existence of human nature and Biology 101—exists throughout western civilization. At bottom, this is a war against God. It is a war the deniers cannot win.

Those promoting the fiction that there are an endless number of sexes, which they incorrectly call genders, are overwhelmingly rich, white, liberal, secularists with postgraduate degrees. No wonder it is their children who are the most likely to call themselves something other than male or female. (For more on this, see my book, Cultural Meltdown: The Secular Roots of Our Moral Crisis.)

The latest Gallup poll shows that 9.3 percent of Americans now identify as “LGBTQ+” persons. This is in stark contrast to what the Trump administration is doing. The National Park Service recently changed the Stonewall National Museum website to only refer to lesbian, gay and bisexual, hence the designation LGB.

This upset Kathy Hochul, the Catholic governor of New York; she said it was “cruel.” No matter, transgender people have been eliminated. To be frank, they never existed (sex is binary). Also, the “Q” is redundant and the “+” is plain dumb.

Gallup tells us that 1.4 percent of Americans say they are lesbians; 2.0 percent claim to be gay; 5.2 percent identify as bisexual; 1.3 percent believe they are transgender; there are a few other odd categories. Among the so-called LGBTQ+ population, Gallup found that 56.3 percent identify as bisexual and 13.9 percent believe they are transgender.

Who are the most likely to claim they belong to this population? Young people, girls, Democrats, liberals, and those who live in cities or the suburbs. Why is this not surprising?

In the 12 years that Gallup has been tracking this issue, those who identify as “LGBTQ+” has tripled. This suggests that this phenomenon has everything to do with culture, not biology. To put it simply, we are witnessing the queering of America.

If anyone doubts that this is a culturally induced condition, consider that young people in California are 40 percent more likely to identify as transgender than the national average. It is not a coincidence that California is one of the most liberal states in the nation.

Transgenderism is flowering in colleges for the same reason. Liberal professors, most of whom are militant secularists, are indoctrinating their students with this mind-altering poison.
At Brown University, four in ten students (38 percent) say they are “LGBTQI+.” The “I” stands for intersex, which is another fiction. While it is true that there is a rare disorder that allows for both male and female genitalia, all of those people are intrinsically male or female—there is no third form.

Between 2010 and 2023, the gay and lesbian population increased by 26 percent, and the percentage identifying as bisexual increased by 232 percent. Those identifying as “other sexual orientations” within the so-called LGBTQ population increased by almost 800 percent.

These people are in serious need of professional help, making the parents of prospective college students wonder whether they should consider enrollment in a community college or a trade school. Why send your kid to an Ivy League school where he may come home at Thanksgiving giving thanks to his discovery that he is a girl?
Fortunately, the Trump administration is not putting up with this madness.

On February 19, The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued an official statement defining sex as an immutable biological classification of male or female. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. explained, “This administration is bringing back common sense and restoring biological truth to the federal government. The prior administration’s policy of trying to engineer gender ideology into every aspect of public life is over.”

HHS defines a female to be “A person of the sex characterized by a reproductive system with the biological function of producing eggs (ova).” Accordingly, it defines woman to be “An adult human female.” (Are you listening Ketanji Brown Jackson?) A male is defined as “A person of the sex characterized by a reproductive system with the biological function of producing sperm.” Accordingly, it defines man as “An adult human male.”

This may come as a shocker to the Washington Post—it published an incredibly irresponsible piece on the same day of the HHS ruling denying that sex is binary—but to most Americans not drugged with ideology it makes perfect sense. The newspaper continues with the fiction that “Sex is widely understood to refer to a label assigned at birth,” when, in fact, it is simply recorded at birth. No one “assigns” our sex—it is determined exclusively by our father and can be detected in utero.

The queering of America serves no legitimate interest. It only serves to encourage the agenda of severely addlepated men and women, as well as those who are profiting from them either ideologically or financially.

Bill Donohue

Opus Dei is loved by millions of Catholics all over the world for its yeoman efforts in getting Catholics to practice their religion more seriously. Founded in 1928 by a Spanish priest, Josemaria Escrivá, it is a spiritual home to lay Catholics and clerics who are committed to living the faith on a daily basis; most are laypersons. Escrivá was canonized by Pope John Paul II in 2002.

Militant secularists, and many so-called progressive Catholics, hate Opus Dei. Why? It symbolizes everything they detest: it is unashamedly Catholic, orthodox, and wildly successful.

The latest effort to trash Opus Dei is a book by Gareth Gore, Opus. Like so many who hate the organization, he is caught up in the mystique of Opus Dei. He can’t understand why men and women are drawn to an entity that is so deeply religious, especially given the decidedly secular bent of western civilization.

To be sure, Opus Dei is one of the most countercultural organizations in the world: it openly rejects the secular playbook promoted by the ruling class. This is not lost on Simon & Schuster.

The publisher flags the book by saying Opus Dei opposes “reproductive freedom” and “LGBTQ+ rights.” Correct. Practicing Catholics defend life from the moment of conception to natural death; they understand marriage to be the exclusive union of a man and a woman; and they know that sex is binary. In other words, Catholic teachings are in harmony with what nature ordains and science decrees. Gore disagrees with nature and science.

Why is it that many authors who abhor Catholicism are so sloppy in their writings? Is it because they know they will get a cheerful reception from their ilk and will therefore not be held accountable for their errors? This was certainly true of my old debating partner, Christopher Hitchens. He was extremely well read and very bright, but he was also a lousy researcher. His misstatements of facts about Mother Teresa were astounding.

Gore is another sloppy writer. Indeed, he is worse than Hitchens. His book is strewn with hyperbole, innuendo and out-and-out falsehoods. Yet he had the audacity to say in an interview that his book is “100 percent correct.” Here are a few examples of his inattention to detail.

“During a trip to Nicaragua, the pope refused to let one cardinal kiss his ring because he had disobeyed a papal order.” But Ernesto Cardenal was not a cardinal—he was a priest. More important, he was Minister of Culture who worked for the communist dictator, Daniel Ortega, the Sandinista thug who has impoverished and enslaved the people of Nicaragua (he is still doing this today). With good reason did Saint John Paul II rebuke him.

Gore says that Mother Teresa of Calcutta attended the beatification of Saint Josemaria—she did not. Also, when he died the servants did not have to be awaken in the middle of the night to make preparations—he died in the middle of the day.

The well respected Catholic Information Center in Washington, D.C. has not been staffed by an Opus Dei priest for the past forty years; that didn’t happen until 1992. Gore also says that there are “hundreds of similar centers around the world.” In fact, there are only two.

Gore can’t get over how financially successful Opus Dei is. So what? Does anyone complain about Harvard’s outsized endowment? It has well over $50 billion. To show how truly sloppy he is—his editors are just as remiss—he writes that “millions of dollars were spent on a huge school-building program across Spain.” Yet his footnote refers exclusively to summer camps!

It is to be expected that Gore would not pass up the chance to trot out a case of the sexual abuse of minors. But when he cites the case of a married layman who was guilty of molestation, accusing Opus Dei of never reporting it, he is showcasing his sophomoric research. The abuse occurred in the man’s home and Opus Dei never knew about it.

An Opus Dei member, Bob Best, is said to have given Escrivá a gift, which the founder then “handed it to some Spanish bankers, who used it to sign a check to pay for a new Opus Dei project.” Wrong. The gift was given to Opus Dei members, not “bankers.” This is incontestable—there is a tape of the exchange. Also, Best did not join Opus Dei when he was in high school; he joined when he was at Villanova. Another error: Gore tries to link the Culture of Life Foundation to Opus Dei, but there is no institutional connection.

Just as easy to disprove is the canard about Opus Dei “recruiting” members, instructing them to keep their vocation secret, not even telling their families. Gore says this is part of the founders “instructions” given to Opus Dei members. Wrong again. There is no mention of this in the “instructions.”

Some years ago it was rumored that FBI director Louis Freeh was an Opus Dei member. This has been definitively proven to be false, yet Gore continues to say it was “widely rumored.” His ignorance is stunning.

Malice, not ignorance, is at work when Gore portrays the late Cardinal George Pell as a pedophile. As anyone who knows anything about this issue, the fabricated charges against Pell were thrown out of court. Indeed, he was unanimously acquitted. I have personally written a great deal about this subject, and I find mindboggling that Gore’s editors would allow him to promote this invidious falsehood.

It is so typical of left-wing writers to malign the Catholic Church for reaching out to young people, depicting such efforts as something nefarious. Gore does the same to Opus Dei.

We learn that young people are not attracted to Opus Dei because of what it stands for; they are “recruited” and “captured” by its adult members. Gore must be thinking of the way left-wing college professors manipulate and recruit unsuspecting students, indoctrinating them in the latest Marxist iteration.

It is equally obnoxious for Gore to accuse Opus Dei of “swindling” people. Like every voluntary organization, Opus Dei raises funds to pay for its expenses. When the ACLU raises money, it’s seen as something routine, if not noble. But according to Gore, when Opus Dei raises money, they do so by asking donors to “come up with lists of people who could be swindled.” This is libelous.

Gore makes no bones about his politics. “For all its talk about allegiance to the Vatican, the Church, and the teachings of Jesus Christ,” he writes, “Opus Dei seems unconcerned that many of the conservative forces it now embraces in the United States are openly hostile to the pope—even going so far as to undermine his authority and plot against him.”

Leaving aside the conspiratorial tone—no one is “plotting” against the pope—it is true that many conservatives, including non-Catholics, have been less than enthusiastic about some of the things the pope has said. For example, he is openly hostile to market economies, refuses to condemn Communist China’s crackdown on Catholics, and has portrayed conservative Catholics, especially those attracted to the Latin Mass, as pariahs.

More significant, it is rich to read Catholic bashers complain about conservative critics of the pope. They have been trashing Church teachings on marriage, the family, ordination, celibacy and sexuality for decades, and their treatment of Pope Benedict XVI and John Paul II was often brutal, yet today they call for everyone to fall in line—perhaps because they perceive the current moment as more favorable to their views.

Gore mentions The Da Vinci Code many times in his book. In doing so he gives credence to the book as if it were a work of non-fiction. This is nonsense. This matters because he insists that his book is “100 percent correct.” Thus does he give cover to the falsehoods in The Da Vinci Code.

I have written extensively on this issue. The fact is that the book by Dan Brown, and the movie that was based on it by Ron Howard, is a work of fiction.

Brown begins his book with a page titled, “Facts.” Listed as “facts” are three demonstrably false and defamatory statements. Brown’s first “fact” alleges that a secret society, the Priory of Sion, kept alive the story that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married. But the fact is this tale was exposed as a hoax that was made up in the 1950s by an anti-Semite Frenchman (who was sent to prison for fraud).

The second “fact” alleges that a “religious sect” called Opus Dei was an evil organization. This tells us everything we need to know about Brown.

The third “fact” is the most malicious: it claims that historical documents show that the divinity of Jesus was forged in fourth century. Pure nonsense.

There are 25 references to the divinity of Christ in the Gospels and more than 40 references in the New Testament. Not only that, the letters of Paul were written in the 40s and 50s—earlier than the Gospels. All of these writings are much closer to the time of Jesus than the so-called Gnostic Gospels, and even those books—which were excluded from the New Testament—regard Jesus to be the Son of God.

It is important to note that even fair-minded liberal reviewers of Gore’s book see right through his agenda. That is why Matt Murray, the executive editor of the Washington Post, took issue with his “rather partisan” approach, saying it sometimes comes across as a “slog.” Indeed, Murray says that “Gore can’t hide his disdain for the founder.” This accounts for his “snarky” style and his “tone of snideness.” Gore’s disdain also extends to questioning “truths,” which is why he puts the word in quotes.

When this review was published, Gore went ballistic, invoking obscenities. Instead of defending his work, he chose to berate Murray for taking “time out of his busy schedule to basically say that my book doesn’t include enough positive stuff about Opus Dei.”

With good reason does Murray say that “some chapters read more like a prosecutor’s brief” than a fair assessment of Opus Dei. This leads him to conclude that the book lacks a “nuanced understanding of the organization.” Gore greets this criticism with indignance, but that doesn’t prove Murray wrong.

It is said that education can conquer ignorance. Not if it is willed. Ideologues are not persuaded by empirical evidence, data, and logic. They are informed by a set of tightly woven ideas that are impervious to reason.

To be fair, there are conspiratorial kooks on the right who claim bogeymen are trying to undermine America. However, they are mostly without effect, owing to their notorious stupidity. But those on the left, especially those who write books which appear to be well sourced, are not so easily identified. That’s why they are a much bigger menace.

Historian Arthur Schlesinger, Sr. once said that anti-Catholicism is the nation’s “last acceptable prejudice.” Gareth Gore’s book is the latest proof that he was right.

Bill Donohue

As we approached the 10th anniversary of homosexuals marching under their own banner in New York City’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade, it behooved us to understand how this happened.

To begin with, gays were never banned from marching. As I said on radio and TV in New York for two decades, no one ever asked anyone what they did in bed and with whom. Gays were banned from marching under their own banner, and that is because to do so would deflect from what the day is all about—honoring St. Patrick. For the same reason, pro-life groups were banned from marching under their own banner.

The first gay group to march was in 1991. Mayor David Dinkins entered into a discussion with the Ancient Order of Hibernians (AOH), the parade organizers, and a compromise was reached: members of the Irish Lesbian and Gay Organization (ILGO) could march with the mid-town chapter of the AOH, accompanied by the mayor.

When ILGO sought to march in the 1992 parade, they were barred. They were accused of “outrageous behavior” when they marched in 1991, making obscene gestures in front of St. Patrick’s Cathedral and in front of the reviewing stand at 5th Avenue and 67th Street.

On January 21, 1992, the Hibernian National and State Boards issued a joint statement asserting that “no organization or organizations are allowed to use New York City’s 231st Annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade on March 17, 1992 as a vehicle to publicly insult any person or group watching or reviewing the parade.” They repeated the charge that ILGO engaged in “outrageous behavior and conduct.”

ILGO did not give up and proceeded to march, illegally, in the 1994 parade. They were arrested for marching without a permit on March 17, but that didn’t make any difference to Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Robert Sackett. On November 2, 1994, he threw out the charges, saying the arrest of the ILGO members was a “blatant denial of First Amendment rights.”

A week later, here is what I said about that ruling.

“Judge Sackett is an embarrassment of the courts. For him to simply disregard the fact that ILGO (a) had no permit to march (b) never sought one in the first place (c) was never denied the right to protest elsewhere and (d) had already lost in the courts in its bid to march in the St. Patrick’s Day Parade, demonstrates that Judge Sackett shows no respect for the law.”

In 1995, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that banning ILGO from the Boston St. Patrick’s Day Parade was constitutional. It was a private parade, the high court said, and the organizers had a First Amendment right to freedom of association, essentially affirming their right to craft their own rules.

Meanwhile in New York, the AOH handed the parade over to a new group, the St. Patrick’s Day Parade Committee, headed by John Dunleavy. Even though the Supreme Court upheld the right of parade organizers to ban ILGO, they attempted to march in the late 1990s, and were arrested for doing so. I took pictures of them and was assaulted by one of the lesbians. I did not hit her back knowing the media would capture my retaliatory move, and blame me.

Why was ILGO so determined to march? It had nothing to do with honoring St. Patrick. This is not an opinion—it is what they said.

In 2017, Anne Maguire and Maxine Wolfe published their reminiscences on an array of subjects, one of which was the parade. Maguire, who was co-founder of ILGO, talked about the politics of the group. She explicitly said that the protests at the St. Patrick’s Day Parade “sort of dovetailed with ACT UP.” She also admitted that “the vast majority” of ILGO members were illegal aliens who sought to mobilize politically.

Maguire said that within their first year in the U.S., “somebody brought up in a meeting, ‘Wouldn’t it be kind of funny if we marched in the St. Patrick’s Day parade?'” To which most of them said, “Are you kidding me?” This is how it all began—as a lark.

They asked for a permit, were denied, and “it just completely blew up.” They saw homophobia everywhere, from being denied a permit to “ACT UP and AIDS.”

Maguire’s admission that there was a nexus between the parade and ACT UP is telling: she was referring to what ACT UP did on December 10, 1989 at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. That was the day when gays crashed the Sunday 10:15 a.m. Mass, celebrated by Cardinal John O’Connor. ACT UP activists interrupted the Mass, handcuffed themselves to the pews, blew whistles, shouted obscenities and spat the Host on the floor. One of the most prominent members at the “Stop The Church” protest who was arrested was Ann Northrop.

Northrop blamed Cardinal O’Connor for AIDS, not promiscuous homosexuals. How did the archbishop cause AIDS? By saying that monogamy protects against the sexually transmitted disease! This is like blaming obesity on those who diet.

Further proof that ILGO’s interest in marching in the parade was a lark, having everything to do with making a political statement and nothing to do with honoring St. Patrick, was made plain by Maguire. In 1996, a year after the Supreme Court ruled against ILGO, she wrote the following.

“What is clear about ILGO and the St. Patrick’s Day parade is that most [ILGO] people, particularly those of us who are most actively involved, had no inclination to be associated with, never mind march in, the parade. [The protest], very simply, is where our ‘coming out’ took place.”

This is exactly what the AOH had been saying all along.

In September 2014, as I previously recounted in the March Catalyst, Dunleavy was pushed aside by the vice chairman of the St. Patrick’s Day Parade Committee, John Lahey, president of Quinnipiac University. At a press conference held at the New York Athletic Club, welcoming a gay group to march, OUT@NBCUniversal, Lahey and others spoke, but Dunleavy did not. He was treated like dirt by the heavyweights who sucked up to the media. I was never invited, and we all know why.

Lahey paired with elites from other universities, corporations, lawyers and the media to take the reins from Dunleavy. Dunleavy was a former transit dispatcher, a great blue collar guy from Ireland. He was outclassed by these sharks. It did not matter to the elites that the Supreme Court declared that parade officials had a First Amendment right to bar ILGO. What mattered is that they wanted the affirmation of elites unconnected to the parade.

Lahey and company would have us believe that the parade was being threatened with a boycott from its sponsors, and that they could not have it televised on NBC without their advertising support. It is true that Guinness, Heineken and the Ford Motor Company were planning to do just that. It is also true that Manhattan College, Fairfield University and the Irish government were pressuring parade officials.

What Lahey did not say is that they could have looked for other alternatives. What about WPIX? Would they have agreed to televise the march? What about EWTN, the Catholic media giant? What about looking for new sponsors? Quite simply, they used this as an excuse to get what they wanted all along—the elites were all on the same side.

I know that their hearts were not in it because in the spring of 2014, right after the St. Patrick’s Day Parade, the issue of gays marching in 2015 was coming to a head. I met with seven owners of Irish pubs in New York City; they owned roughly 25 percent of the Irish bars. All but one agreed to my plea to boycott Guinness. Some chose to cut the price of Guinness’ competitors, thus enticing drinkers to choose an alternative; others simply took out the Guinness tap. But it was not enough to change things, and that is because parade officials wanted nothing to do with it.

On September 17, 2014, I wrote Dunleavy a letter restating how I was lied to about gays marching in the parade. I mentioned to him that one of the parade officials, John Fitzsimmons, an attorney, had called me at the end of August. I knew him well and would have fielded the call but I was in Montauk, Long Island taking a break. The call was about including a gay group in the parade in 2015. Here is part of what I said.

“I told Bernadette [the vice president] to let John know that it was okay by me [to include a gay group], as long as (a) there was a formal change in the parade rules governing marching units allowing those that have their own cause to march, and (b) a pro-life group would be marching under its own banner as well. John said he believed that a formal revision of the rules had been made, but that he had to ‘check his notes.’

“John called back saying that he checked with you about this issue, and that he also checked his notes. He said there was, in fact, a formal change in the rules, and that a pro-life group would be marching. Bernadette then urged him to pick a pro-life group so that it could be announced at the same time as the NBC gay group [which had already been approved]. He agreed to do this.”

It was plain that I had been lied to by Fitzsimmons, so I closed my letter to Dunleavy saying, “John is the source of the problem.” (Both Fitzsimmons and Dunleavy have since passed away.) I pulled our Catholic League unit the next year and we will never march again.

On the day that gays first marched in the St. Patrick’s Day Parade under their own banner, March 17, 2015, Northrop said she still wasn’t happy. She was angry that a gay group was chosen by NBC, which televised the march, saying “it’s all a corporate deal. It has nothing to do with really opening up the parade and welcoming gay people in and certainly not Irish gay people.”

It’s never enough for narcissistic gays—it’s always about them.

To show how crazed Northrop is, consider that she once celebrated the news that human cloning could make men obsolete. “Essentially, this is sort of the final nail in men’s coffins. Men are now totally irrelevant, if [cloning] is, in fact, true and possible and becomes routine. Men are going to have a very hard time justifying their existence on the planet, I think.” Male hatred is not unusual among radical lesbians, but this comment is hard to beat.

Ten years after the first gay group marched up Fifth Avenue, there is still no pro-life group allowed to march. Each year Irish Pro-Life USA, founded by John Aidan Byrne, requests a permit to march, and every year he is denied. Parade organizer Hilary Beirne never gets back to him.

In other words, the St. Patrick’s Day Parade officials allow homosexual groups to march but not pro-life Catholics. In short, we can thank the Irish elites, in the U.S. and Ireland, for ganging up on John Dunleavy.