On today’s episode of “The View,” Barbara Walters indirectly replied to the advertisement the Catholic League placed in the New York Times today. Coming back from a commercial break, she stated, “Listen, I have, we have been talking and I want to remind all of you that I am not responsible for anybody else’s views except mine.”

Must we remind Ms. Walters that as co-owner and co-producer of the show, she is not an innocent bystander? Rather, she is in a position to challenge any untoward comment made by her co-hosts about any group. That she chooses not to do so when Catholicism is bashed speaks volumes.

The advertisement below appeared in the op-ed pages of the June 12 New York Times:

The Barna Group has released the findings of its latest survey, this time matching Christians with those who have “no faith.” Most atheists and agnostics (56%) think radical Christianity is just as threatening as radical Islam. The faithless, which comprises 9% percent of the population, are less likely than the faithful to volunteer, participate in community activities and donate to charitable causes. They are also less likely to report being “at peace” and more likely to feeling stressed out.

In other words, the faithless have a warped idea of reality, are selfish with their time and money, and are generally unhappy campers. Just what we would expect.

Realizing they didn’t have the votes to win, California lawmakers who wanted to legalize assisted suicide withdrew their bill yesterday. This is good news for everyone, save the advocates of a culture of death. The Catholic League not only objected to the bill, it blasted the anti-Catholic bigots associated with its promotion.

The New York Times is reporting today that a Japanese professor has found a way to make skin cells work like stem cells, it makes untenable the argument that we must pursue federal funding of embryonic stem cell research. All along there have been signs that the scientific community would soon make moot the need to kill nascent human life so that others may profit, and now the evidence is conclusive.

Last night, the top three Democratic candidates for president, Sen. Hillary Clinton, former Sen. John Edwards and Sen. Barack Obama, were questioned about their faith and how it affects their policy decisions. All three candidates are Christians, but only Edwards spoke of Jesus and Christianity. Obama and Clinton spoke of their “faith” and their “religion,” without ever getting specific.

All of this was scripted. Edwards was told to make a direct appeal to Christians and Clinton and Obama were told to keep it generic lest they alienate the secular base of the Democratic party. Look for this to become a pattern.

It’s often said that statistics don’t lie, but they can paint a misleading picture if presented the right way—or, rather, the wrong way. For instance, a June 1 Associated Press article on faith and politics reported that Catholic voters “support legalized abortion in all or most circumstances by 53 percent to 43 percent, according to 2004 exit polling.”

Such polls typically make no effort to distinguish truly practicing Catholics from those who haven’t been to Mass in ages. When that distinction is made, the numbers are much more revealing. A 2006 poll by Purdue University professor James Davidson, supported by the Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame, found that 72 percent of weekly Mass attendees are against abortion. As for Catholics who seldom or never go to Mass, only 29 percent oppose it.

Christopher Hitchens, atheist author and journalist, appeared on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360°” last night. On the same day of the Rev. Jerry Falwell’s death, Hitchens offered these descriptions of Falwell: “ugly little charlatan,” “horrible little person” and “evil.” Hitchens added to these insults in his exchange with Cooper:

Cooper: Christopher, I’m not sure if you believe in heaven, but if you do, do you think Jerry Falwell is in it?

Hitchens: No. And I think it’s a pity there isn’t a hell for him to go to.

Cooper: Do you believe he believed what he spoke?

Hitchens: Of course not. He woke up every morning, as I say, pinching his chubby little flanks and thinking, I have got away with it again.

Cooper: You think he was a complete fraud, really?

Hitchens: Yes.

Cooper: You don’t think he was sincere in what he spoke?

Hitchens: No. I think he was a conscious charlatan and bully and fraud.

Hitchens: Lots of people are going to die and are already leading miserable lives because of the nonsense preached by this old man, and because of the absurd way that we credit anyone who can say they’re a person of faith… The whole life of Falwell shows this is an actual danger to democracy, to culture, to civilization.

Such comments—particularly when made on international television on the same day of a man’s death—go far beyond disagreement and into the realms of rank incivility. This sort of attack should not be surprising, however, coming from Hitchens. It was only this past Sunday, May 13, that Hitchens bared all of his feelings about God to Sean Hannity on the Fox News Channel’s “Hannity’s America.” Hitchens offered viewers this glimpse into his mind:

I say I am an antitheist because I think it would be rather awful if it

According to a Reuters story of May 14, “Outraged Indian leaders said on Monday they were offended by Pope Benedict’s ‘arrogant and disrespectful’ comments” regarding the indigenous people of the Americas becoming Christian.

A quick look at the pope’s words, however, reveals such charges to be unfounded. The pontiff said:

“From the encounter between that [Christian] faith and the indigenous peoples, there has emerged the rich Christian culture of this Continent, expressed in art, music, literature, and above all, in the religious traditions and in the peoples’ whole way of being, united as they are by a shared history and a shared creed that give rise to a great underlying harmony, despite the diversity of cultures and languages…

“Yet what did the acceptance of the Christian faith mean for the nations of Latin America and the Caribbean? For them, it meant knowing and welcoming Christ, the unknown God whom their ancestors were seeking, without realizing it, in their rich religious traditions. Christ is the Saviour for whom they were silently longing.”

Perhaps what is driving this resentment of the pope is the lingering charge that the Catholic Church is somehow responsible for the death of indigenous people. As Reuters reports: “Millions of tribal Indians are believed to have died as a result of European colonization backed by the Church since Columbus landed in the Americas in 1492, through slaughter, disease or enslavement.”

Leaving aside the dubiousness of Reuters’ charge (“are believed to have died…”) it is interesting to note how the Church is blamed for the actions of all European settlers. The reader would be led to believe that because Church leaders did not condemn colonization in its entirety, the Church is responsible for every atrocity committed by every European in the New World.

What’s more, the vast number of those Indians who died were the victims of disease. Faulting the Church because the Indians lacked the immune systems to fight smallpox is absolutely absurd.

To be sure, many Indians suffered after colonization. However, a great many were killed or enslaved by rival tribes in the time before the arrival of the Europeans. Those looking to blame the Church for all of the suffering of the indigenous people of the Americas have to come up with something more concrete than what Reuters is offering.

On the front page of today’s paper, the New York Times offered the headline “In Large Immigrant Family, Religion Guided 3 Held in Fort Dix Plot” for an article about the men arrested for plotting a terror attack against soldiers in New Jersey. Inside the paper, another headline reads, “Suspects Are Described as Working People for Whom Religion Was a Guide.”

It is curious that the Times twice uses the word “religion” to describe what influences the men, and doesn’t use the term radical Islam in either headline. This fits the agenda of those such as Christopher Hitchens and other secularists who blame all religions for many of the world’s ills.

When asked about the pope’s comments regarding possible excommunication of Catholic politicians who support abortion rights, Senator Patrick Leahy (VT) had this to say: “I’ve always thought also that those bishops and archbishops who for decades hid pederasts and are now being protected by the Vatican should be indicted.”

If this is the new face of religion-friendly Democrats, they’ve got a long way to go.