Bill Donohue

Ted Turner, founder of CNN, has died at 87. He had been suffering from a form of dementia, a brain disorder, for several years.

He was certainly a titan in the television industry, literally putting cable television news on the map. I enjoyed being a guest on CNN’s “Crossfire” and “Larry King Live” in the 1980s, and on many other of its shows for several decades.

Turner and I clashed a few times. But after we did, he acted responsibly.

In 1999, he said that everyone should promise to have no more than two children. He failed to mention that he had five. He was influenced by Paul Ehrlich, the “population explosion” guru who was proven wrong on just about everything he ever predicted. As I pointed out at the time, what made Turner’s position so troubling is that he was a big donor to the pro-abortion industry. He made this remark upon receiving an award from an abortion-advocacy group.

Turner was on a roll that night. He opined that the Ten Commandments were “a little out of date,” and that “if you’re only going to have 10 rules, I don’t know if prohibiting adultery should be one of them.” He made his pro-adultery quip while married to Jane Fonda.

Next he took on Pope John Paul II. “Ever see a Polish mine detector?” Then he said the pope should “get with it. Welcome to the 20th century.”

The day after he made those comments, I slammed him. The day after that he apologized. I said, “Mr. Turner’s apology is accepted and thus it brings to a close this incident.”

Two years later, in 2001, Turner insulted Catholics again. On Ash Wednesday, he stunned CNN employees in Washington. After seeing ashes on the forehead of some workers, he said, “What are you? A bunch of Jesus freaks? You ought to be working at Fox.”

I jumped all over him again, bringing up some of his more recent offensive remarks. For example, he said, “Christianity is for losers,” pro-life Christians were “Bozos,” Christianity is “very intolerant,” etc.

Within 48 hours of complaining about the Ash Wednesday incident, Turner said, “I apologize to all Christians for my comment about Catholics wearing ashes on their foreheads on Ash Wednesday. I do not believe in any form of prejudice or discrimination, especially religious intolerance.”

I accepted his apology, saying, “We hope this is the last time we have to press Turner for an apology.” It was.

May Ted Turner rest in peace. When he erred, he apologized, and that matters. Forgiveness has a special place in Catholicism.

Fr. Gordon J. MacRae

(This story originally appeared on Beyond These Stone Walls)

I wrote a post recently entitled “Book of Tobit: The Angel Raphael on the Road with Pornchai Moontri.” It was an allegory, like the Book of Tobit itself. An allegory is a sort of genre of Sacred Scripture in which a story is told more for its meaning than for its historical value. Every parable of Jesus falls into this same genre. A part of the story of Tobit, and his son Tobias and their interactions with the Archangel Raphael in disguise were all part of the allegory. That does not mean the allegory did not happen. It means only that the truth of the story does not depend upon someone believing it. There was one aspect of the Book of Tobit story that became a centerpiece of my blog linked above. At the beginning and the end of the Book of Tobit there is a mysterious dog whose presence, meaning and purpose remain a mystery.

My friend Pornchai Max and his grueling assimilation to his native Thailand after a forced absence of 36 years and all the torment he endured in that time, also included the presence of a mysterious dog named Hill. When that post was published on April 29 this year, a number of our readers wanted to know what became of Hill. So I went back this week and added an important addendum, which you can read for yourselves by clicking on it at the end of this post.

Now I want to back up about 19 years, in 2007 when Max learned that he would be deported to Thailand at the end of his sentence. He would be taken to Bangkok and left there. ICE would have no further responsibility for him.

Bangkok, the Capitol of the Kingdom of Thailand, is a massive city of about 9.5 million people. In Thai, the great city’s name is almost unpronounceable to the Western World, and the longest name of any city on Earth at 156 characters. I don’t expect you to memorize it, but in the Thai language Bangkok’s name is: Krungthepmahanakorn Amornrattanakosin Mahintrayuthaya Mahadilokpob Noparat Rajataniburirom Udomrajanivej Mahasatharn Amornpimarn Awatarnsat Sakatadtiya Wisanukamprasit.  For daily use in Thai, the name is simply abbreviated to “Bangkok Krung Thep” which in English means “City of Angels.” When Max first told me of this in a phone call, he said, “I’m not kidding. They called it that even before I got here!”

This is a complicated but amazing story that meanders down a long and winding road. Our presentation of it begins in 2006 in a New Hampshire prison cell and threads its mysterious connections all the way around the globe. I n the end you may find any lingering doubts about Divine Mercy falling away. Divine Mercy has opened impenetrable doors for Pornchai Moontri, many of them in otherwise unreachable places.

If you have read my post, “The Parable of a Priest and the Parable of a Prisoner” then you know that Max had been in prison for 29 years, more than half his life, for a crime committed as a teenager, a crime that was set in motion by someone else. You also know that Max was moved from a maximum security solitary confinement unit in Maine to the New Hampshire Prison where we met and became friends late in 2006. That story is told powerfully at the link above.

I had another friend in this prison from Cambodia whom I had helped with the deportation process. He was brought to this country as a child of two, and committed a petty crime at age 18. After a long failed process of appeals, he was deported at age 25 to Cambodia, but spoke not a word of Khmer. One year after his deportation, I received a note from his sister telling me that he disappeared in the capital city of Phenom Penh. He had never been seen or heard from again.

We learned an important but scary lesson from what happened to my Cambodian friend. Since Max was brought to the U.S. as a young child, and has no known family or contacts in Thailand other than distance cousins, the experience of our friend in Cambodia chilled me to the core. I became determined that Max would be ready to live and cope somehow in the immense City of Bangkok when the time came. We had a few years to prepare, but I did not even know where to begin.

How could two men living in a prison cell in New Hampshire with no resources, no online access, and a severely limited budget find and connect with people on the other side of the world? How could I interest anyone in Thailand with the plight of a young man taken from there at age 11, his mother murdered, only to come to the United States to end up homeless and in prison as a teenager? This was not a good place from which to start.

THE SILENCE

“I don’t even know where to begin,” Max told me dismally. “I don’t even know how to learn about Thailand.” I knew I had to start writing, but this was two years before even the idea of this blog was conceived. A day in the prison library produced some addresses. First, I wrote of Max’s situation to Catholic Charities in the Diocese of Manchester (NH). They are, after all, a global network. No response, but no real surprise there. Then I wrote to the national office of Catholic Charities. No response. Then I wrote to the Office of Immigration and Refugee Assistance sponsored by my Diocese. No response. Then I wrote to the Catholic Legal Immigration Network at Boston College. No response. I knocked at the door of every official Catholic agency I could find. No one answered. I knocked, and I waited, and I knocked some more.

I cannot convey in words the utter frustration of writing repeatedly only to have my overtures met with silence. I decided that the problem was not Pornchai’s plight, but rather mine. I told Max that we will have to write all these letters again, but coming directly from him. So we redrafted all the letters under his name. More knocking; more waiting. More silence.

When all of our letters from prison were relegated to the netherworld without responses, I took it personally. I knew we needed a different approach. I asked Max to candidly write his life story — which is an amazing story in and of itself — in as few pages as possible, and let me send it to the few Catholic contacts I had who did not ignore our plight. One of them was Bill Donohue, President of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights. Once he read “Pornchai’s Story,” he wrote back immediately asking if he could publish it on the Catholic League website. From there, it slowly made its way around the world. We knocked and knocked, and waited some more.

The late Father Richard John Neuhaus — a courageous Catholic writer and editor of First Things magazine — sent Max a personal letter to tell him how very important his story is, not only for Max, but for the Church. Father Neuhaus promised to pass the story along to others. This was a year before Father Neuhaus faced his own untimely death from cancer in January, 2009. More knocking, and more waiting.

Max started receiving letters from other important figures in the Church. One came from His Eminence Cardinal Kitbunchu, Archbishop Emeritus of Bangkok. Max was bowled over by that letter. Another came from the Rome Office of Ambassador Mary Ann Glendon, who had been appointed by President George W. Bush as U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See.

Bill Donohue extending to Max honorary membership in the Catholic League and promised to promised to promote his story. My article for Catalyst appeared at the same time, in the July/August 2009 issue. It was “Due Process for Accused Priests.” As an unintended consequence, Pornchai’s story and mine became linked together.

Pornchai’s Story

Here is Pornchai’s Story:

[From Dr. Bill Donohue: ] As we begin the New Year, we’d like to share with you this moving account of one young man’s conversion story.

My name is Pornchai Moontri, and as I write this I am prisoner #77948 in the New Hampshire State Prison. I come to the Catholic faith after a painful journey in darkness that my friend, Father Gordon MacRae, has asked me to write candidly. This is not something I do easily, but I trust my friend.

I was born in Bua Nong Lamphu, in a small village in the north of Thailand near Khon Kaen on September 10, 1973. At the age of two, I was abandoned by my mother and a stranger tried to sell me. A distant teenaged relative rescued me. He walked many miles to carry me away to his family farm where I worked throughout my childhood raising water buffalo, rice, and sugar cane. I never attended school, however, and never learned to read and write in Thai. Though my childhood involved hard work, I was safe and happy.

When I was 11 years old, my mother re-emerged in Thailand with a new husband — an American air traffic controller from Bangor, Maine. I was taken from Thailand by them against my will, and brought to the United States. This transition was a trauma to be endured. A month after my arrival in Bangor, my new stepfather’s motive for importing a ready-made Thai family became clear. I was forcibly raped by him at age 11, an event that was to be repeated with regularity over the next three years. I was a prisoner in his house, and resistance was only met with violence against me and against my mother. I was all of 100 pounds. I cannot describe this further. Welcome to America!

Being one of only three Asians in 1985 Bangor, and speaking little English, I did not readily comprehend my new names. “Gook,” “V.C.” and “Charlie” meant nothing to me, but I could sense the scorn with which such names were delivered. Because my English was poor, I was treated as though I was stupid. Part of my humiliation was that I had to get a paper route at age 12, and my earnings were taken from me to pay for the “privilege” of living in my captor’s house. Stephen King’s home was on my paper route. Mr. King once gave me a Christmas bonus of 25¢ for delivering his newspaper all year. The horror stories he wrote about Maine are all true. Remember the one with the evil clown? It’s true.

When I was 14, my English was better. I was a little bigger, and a lot stronger — and nothing but angry. Anger was all I had. So with it I fled that house and became a homeless teenager in and around Bangor. One day the Bangor police actually picked me up and forced me to go “home.” I would rather have gone to one of the ones Stephen King wrote about. I just fled again and again, and ended up at the Good Will Hinckley School for people like me. I was there for a year and got kicked out for fighting. I was always fighting. I fought everyone.

Back on the streets of Bangor, I began to carry a knife. At 17 and 18, a lot of people were after me. I lived under a bridge for a while and sometimes my mother would bring me things. I tried to climb out of the deep hole I was in by signing up for night classes at age 18 to finish my high school diploma. I was kicked out of Bangor High School for punching the principal.

One night, at age 18, something that lived in me got out. I got very drunk with friends, and we walked into a Bangor Shop & Save supermarket to buy cigarettes. I barely remember this. In my drunken state, I opened a bottle of beer from a case and started to drink it. The manager confronted me and ordered me to leave. I tried to flee the store, but the manager and other employees then tried to keep me there. I tried to fight them off to flee. When I got outside, a manager from another Shop & Save had witnessed the incident and pounced on me. I was 130 pounds and was pinned to the ground by this 190-pound man. I think something snapped in my mind. IT was happening again. I fought, but his dead weight was suffocating me. The newspapers would later tell a different story, but this was the truth, and it is all I remember.

In jail that night, I was questioned for three hours. I was told that I had stabbed a man and was charged with attempted murder. I have no memory, to this day, of stabbing the man. The next morning, I awoke in a jail cell and was told that I was charged with Class A murder. The man had died during the night. I was told that I blew a .25 on the Breathalyzer, but the result was so high it was discarded as an error.

My stepfather could have hired expert counsel, but it was clearly not in his best interest that my life be evaluated, so I was left in the care of a public defender who wanted this high profile case off his desk. There was talk about the Breathalyzer, and “level of culpability,” and things like “defensive vs. offensive wounds,” but in the end there were no theories, no experts and no defense. I was terrified of being abandoned. My mother came to me in jail and pleaded with me to protect her and “the family” by not revealing what happened in my life. So I remained silent. I offered no defense at all. My co-defendant told the truth of my being pinned down, but he was not believed. I was convicted of “Class A murder with deliberate indifference” and sentenced, at age 18, to 45 years in a Maine Prison. Maine has no parole.

I was also sentenced with the soul of the innocent man whose life I took — despite my being unable to remember taking it. The mix of remorse and anger was toxic in prison, and I gave up. Prison became just an extension of where I had already been. My anger raged on and on, and I spent 13 of my 15 years in prison in Maine’s “supermax” facility for those who can’t be trusted in the light of day.

Five years into my imprisonment, I learned one night in my supermax cell that my mother and stepfather had relocated to the Island of Guam where my mother was murdered. She was pushed from a cliff. [The story that was told to Pornchai, but it was false.] The only suspect was her husband but there was no evidence. I was now alone in my rage.

After 14 years of this, the Maine prison decided to send me to an out-of-state prison. I had no idea where I was to be sent. I arrived in the New Hampshire State Prison on October 18, 2005 dragging behind me the Titanic in which I stored all my anger and hurt and loss and loss and loss — and guilt.

I started my time in a new prison by getting into a fight and ended up in the same old place — the hole. When some months went by, I was given another chance. I was sent to H-Building where I met my friend JJ, an Indonesian who was waiting to be deported. JJ introduced me one day to Gordon, who he said was helping him and some others with appealing their INS removal orders or with preparing themselves to be deported. He seemed to be the only person who even cared. JJ trusted Gordon, so I had several conversations with him. A few months later, I was moved to the same unit in which he lives in this prison. We became friends.

By patience and especially by example, Gordon helped me change the course of my life. He is my best friend, and the person I trust most in this world. It is the strangest irony that he has been in prison for 13 years accused fictionally of the same behaviors visited upon me in the real world by the man who took me from Thailand. I read the articles about Gordon in The Wall Street Journal last year. I know him better, I think, than just about anyone. I know only too well the person who does what Gordon is wrongly accused of. Gordon is not that person. Far from it. It is hard for me to accept that laws and public sentiment allow men to demand and receive huge financial settlements from the Catholic Church years or decades after claimed abuse while all that happened to me has gone without even casual notice by anyone — except, ironically, Gordon MacRae.

On September 10, I will be 34 years old. I have been in prison now for nearly half of my life, but in the last year I have begun to know what freedom is. My anger is still with me and it always lurks just below the surface, but my friend is also with me. We both recently signed up for an intense 15-week course in personal violence. He is doing this for me. I spend my days in school instead of in lock-up now, and I will soon complete my High School diploma. Gordon helped me obtain a scholarship for a series of non-credit courses in Catholic studies at Catholic Distance University. In the last year, with help and understanding, I have completed programs offered in the New Hampshire prison. One day I felt strangely light so I looked behind me, and the Titanic was not there. I parked it somewhere along the way. I have put my childhood aside. Now I am a man.

In March of this year, after 15 years in prison, I was ordered by an INS court to be removed from the United States and deported to Thailand at the end of my sentence in 17 to 20 years or so. Gordon hopes that I can seek a sentence reduction so that I can return to Thailand at an age at which I may still build a life. There are many obstacles. The largest is that I do not speak Thai any longer and I never had an opportunity to learn and to read and write in Thai. We are working hard to prepare me for this. Though years away, it is a very frightening thing to go to a country only vaguely familiar. I have not heard Thai spoken since age 11, 23 years ago. There is no one I know there and no place for me to go. I have no home anywhere.

Along this steep path, I have made a decision to become Catholic. The priest in my friend has not been extinguished by 13 years in prison. It is still the part of him that shines the brightest. Gordon never asked me to become Catholic. He never even brought it up. I t is the path he is on and I was pulled to it by the force of grace, and the hope that one day I could do good for others. Gordon showed me a book, Jesus of Nazareth, in which Pope Benedict wrote: “The true ‘exodus’…consists in this: Among all the paths of history, the path to God is the true direction that we must seek and find.”

I am taking a correspondence course in Catholic studies through the Knights of Columbus and I look forward to the studies through Catholic Distance University. I go to Mass with Gordon when it is offered in the prison, and our faith is always a part of every day. When I return to the place I haven’t seen since age 11, I want to go there as a committed Catholic open to God’s call to live a life in service to others. It is what someone very special to me has done for me, and I must do the same.

My friend asked me to sit down today and type the story of my life and where I am now. He asked me to let him send this to a few friends who he says may play some role — directly or indirectly — in my life some day. The account is my own. What Father Gordon added was hope, and somehow faith has also taken root. In prison, hope and faith are everything. Everything!

[Written by Pornchai Moontri in 2008 and published by the Catholic League.]

Thanks to Bill Donohue and the Catholic League, “Pornchai’s Story” made its way around the world and was read to Catholics in Thailand. Pornchai Moontri’s Divine Mercy Bridge to Thailand was built despite many obstacles.

Bill Donohue

No institution today has a better record handling the sexual abuse of minors than the Catholic Church. Its record from the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s was bad, but given the reforms initiated in 2002, it has all but eradicated this offense. The same is not true of other institutions, and none has made less progress than the public schools.

Recently, New York City has made a good effort to check this problem, but serious issues remain. Legislation passed on January 29, 2026 allows victims of sexual misconduct to file a civil claim against perpetrators; an 18-month lookback window exists until July 29, 2027. It applies to any form of “gender-motivated violence.” Survivors can also bring claims against institutions that enabled these offenses.

While this should have been done decades ago, it is a step in the right direction. Still, there is cause for concern.

The Office of the Special Commissioner of Investigations for the New York City School District recently issued its annual report for 2025. There were 11,775 complaints, 897 of which were for sexual misconduct or inappropriate behavior. A total of 157 were investigated, 62 of which were substantiated.

This means that only 17.5 percent of the complaints for sexual abuse were investigated. In the Catholic Church, 100 percent of these complaints are investigated.

Following the Catholic Church, New York City public schools have a training course on sexual harassment. In the academic year that ended in August 2022, 62 percent of those who were required to take the course did so; this is down from 79 percent the previous year. In the Catholic Church, 100 percent regularly do so.

It took until May 2025 before New York State had a rule suspending teaching licenses over sexual abuse claims; before that school districts had to file charges with the state to have a tenured educator fired, and that took forever. In the Catholic Church, a priest is removed from ministry once an accusation has been deemed credible.

We need public data on the fate of public school employees who refuse to participate in training programs. In the Catholic Church, there is no tolerance for failing to comply.

If the Catholic Church sported these abysmal numbers, the media would be all over it. But because New York City public schools are the guilty ones, there is little interest in reporting on this story.

It has been clear for a long time that the most vocal critics of the Catholic Church have never really been interested in protecting minors from predators. No, their primary interest all along has been “getting the Church.” This would make for a great news story, but don’t hold your breath waiting for it.

The Ruth Institute’s free report “Refuting the Top 5 Gay Myths“

Jennifer Roback Morse, Ph.D. and D. Paul Sullins, Ph.D.

If you thought that persons who are sexually attracted to the same sex must be gay or lesbian and can only enjoy intimacy in same-sex relations, you would be mistaken. No that thinking this would be your fault. In the onslaught of secular media and the sometimes fumbling responses of Catholic leaders, Catholic teaching on same sex attraction is about as misunderstood as it is controversial.

The Church has been reluctant to refer to individuals as “gay” or “lesbian,” as if their patterns of attractions define a person’s identity. The Church also teaches that homosexual temptations are not the same as homosexual acts. At root, the Church always affirms, and our deathly culture almost uniformly denies, that same-sex attracted people can, to their benefit, resist and change homosexual behavior. No one need be locked into sin.

Scientific research strongly supports the Church’s view. Studies of the human genome and of identical twins have cast serious doubt on the often-heard claim that sexual orientation is an innate immutable trait, comparable to race. Furthermore, social science research going back to the 1990’s has found that people can, and often do, change their patterns of sexual attractions and behaviors. Yet, as with a lot of research that supports the Church, these studies have been vigorously suppressed by secular academics and journals. Persons who have changed sexual orientation are functionally invisible in cultural and policy debates, including the debates over so-called conversion therapy.

The Ruth Institute, a pro-family organization in Lake Charles, Louisiana, decided to do something about this, in a project called Leaving Pride Behind. We sought out and surveyed people who once would have called themselves “gay” or “lesbian” but no longer do. We gathered a sample of 183 men and women who filled out an extensive survey about their journeys into and out of an LGBT experience or identity. We asked questions about religion, child abuse and various types of therapy. We asked “before and after” questions about patterns of sexual attractions and behaviors.

Fr. Paul Sullins, Ph.D., Senior Research Associate at the Ruth Institute, has just published the first round of data analysis from this survey, in Cureus, a peer-reviewed Springer Nature journal. This paper shows:

1. Same-sex attractions can often, though not always, change, more so for women than for men. Almost nine in ten women in the sample (88%) had changed sexual attraction from mostly or fully homosexual to mostly or fully hetereosexual. Fewer men, but still a sizable minority (39%), had experienced this much change in attractions.
2. Regardless of how much their attractions changed, all of the individuals in this sample had almost completely eliminated their same sex behavior. 100% of men and women reported “slight” or no same sex behavior.
3. Therapy can help, but is not necessary, to change sexual orientation. General therapy, not necessarily focused on changing same sex attraction, was more helpful for some individuals in reducing same sex attraction than therapy with a distinct goal of reducing same sex attraction. And therapy with the explicit aim of changing sexual orientation sometimes reduced other psychologically troubling issues, for instance, depression for women and self-harm for men.

The studies purporting to “prove” therapy is dangerous never include people who have “left pride behind” and usually exclude women. In other words, they evaluate change therapy by looking only at people who failed to change. What kind of grade would marriage counseling get if we only asked people who subsequently divorced?  This is why our study is so important, to show the many successes from sexual orientation therapy.

Our findings show that the world-wide drive to ban all forms of sexual reorientation therapy is deeply misguided. Women who experience persistent same sex attraction are the most likely to benefit from this therapy.  Denying women therapy, based on studies that only include men, is patently unfair. Therapy that does not have the explicit goal of reorienting sexual desires can sometimes result in a reordering of desire. Sweeping bans on “conversion therapy” will likely have a chilling effect on even this type of therapy.

The drive to ban Sexual Reorientation Therapy under the tendentious label of “conversion therapy,” assumes no one can change their sexual orientation, and that even the efforts to change are intrinsically harmful. Every single person in our survey is a standing rebuke to these assumptions.

This is why the entire gay lobby goes into overdrive to discredit them. “You must be lying about living a chaste life.” “You were not really gay in the first place.” And so on.

Our study does not claim to be representative of the entire relevant population. We honestly have no idea how well our sample represents the experiences of everyone who has ever been plagued with unwanted same sex attraction and has left them behind, or who has made substantial changes in their behavior. At this point we are satisfied with showing that these are real people whose stories deserve to be part of the international conversation about “conversion therapy.”

The thoughtful responses from this group of people show that people can indeed change their behavior, feelings and self-understanding. Continuing to ignore them as if they did not exist is simply not acceptable. Our culture tells someone with same-sex attraction that they are locked into a destructive identity from which there is no escape. They don’t really believe this, or they wouldn’t outlaw efforts to try to change. Catholic truth offers something better: a liberation from besetting sin to live a life of freedom and holiness. Rather than be tangled in fruitless sexual desires, it is possible, as many have found, to Leave Pride Behind.

Jennifer Roback Morse, Ph.D. is the Founder and President, and Fr. D. Paul Sullins, Ph.D. is the Senior Research Associate respectively of the Ruth Institute. The Ruth Institute equips Christians to defend the family and build a civilization of love.

Bill Donohue

On April 29, Zohran Mamdani, the Marxist millionaire Muslim Mayor of New York City, met briefly with King Charles in Manhattan. He later said that if he had had a moment alone with him, he probably would have told him to return the Koh-i-Noor diamond to India; the British acquired it in 1849. The 105-carat diamond is now part of the British Crown Jewels.

Why is it important to Mamdani that the diamond be returned to India? It matters to him because in his ideologically charged mind, the Brits are the bad guys. They were colonialists, weren’t they? True enough. But the Muslims who had it before them were barbarians, weren’t they?

What about the Pakistanis and the Afghans? They say they deserve to have the gem, and their case cannot easily be dismissed. Why doesn’t Mamdani mention them? Because his mother is from India?

The history of the diamond begins with Zahir-ud-din-Babur. He and his followers invaded India in 1526 and established the Islamic Mughal dynasty. He was a descendant of Genghis Khan, and at the ripe old age of twelve he ascended to the throne. Not a peaceful man, he conquered one region after another. Indeed, he took over what is today Pakistan, Bangladesh and eastern Afghanistan.

According to Anita Anand and William Dalrymple, who wrote a book on this subject, “it’s impossible to know exactly where the Koh-i-Noor came from and when it first came into the Mughals’ possession.” That being the case, it makes sense that multiple claims of ownership would exist.

Though Zahir-ud-din-Babur had nothing to do with the coveted diamond, his Mughal dynasty did. The authors say that in 1628 Mughal ruler Shah Jahan commissioned “a magnificent, gemstone-encrusted throne.” It took seven years to make; the diamond was lodged at the very top, surrounded by rubies, garnets and other jewels.

The year before Shah Jahan commissioned the jewel, he defeated his youngest brother and crowned himself emperor. He was involved in one military operation after another, and he came out on top when he killed all of his surviving brothers.

The Islamic Mughal’s reign ended when Persian ruler Nader Shah invaded Delhi in 1739. He proved to be one of the most powerful rulers in Iranian history. His empire was enormous and he made Shia Islam the state religion of Iran.

He was also a mass murderer, responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of people. In addition, he was a notorious rip-off artist: he stole so many gems that it took 700 elephants, 4,000 camels and 12,000 horses to pull it. As for the Koh-i-Noor, he wore it as an armband. When he fled, he took the diamond with him, traveling to modern-day Afghanistan.

The diamond did not return to India for 70 years. After decades of bloody wars among competing rulers, it was returned to India and claimed by Sikh ruler Ranjit Singh in 1813. When he died in 1839, years of non-stop violence followed. It was after the bloodshed stopped that the British laid claim to it, securing a legal transfer.

In other words, there are many heirs to the Koh-i-Noor. Everyone who once possessed it said it was theirs to keep. Until the next conquerors claimed it. It is therefore presumptuous for Mamdani to say that the British should give it back to India.

The British colonialists were the last to possess it. If this is unfair, how fair was it for Muslim warriors to claim ownership? How fair is it that the Pakistanis don’t have it today? What about the Taliban in Afghanistan? Shouldn’t they have first dibs?

The problem with Mamdani is his childlike innocence in assessing historical quarrels. The fact is that history is strewn with injustice and no one comes to the table with his hands clean. But in Mamdani’s Marxist mind, there are good guys and bad guys, victimizers and victims, and in this case the British colonialists are the bad guys and the Muslim barbarians are the good guys.

Mamdani reeks of self-righteousness. There are winners and losers in history, and only a fool believes the losers are always morally superior to the winners.

Bill Donohue

The report by the Trump administration’s Task Force on Anti-Christian Bias is commendable. It lays out, in great detail, the extent to which Christians have had their First Amendment rights violated by the Biden administration, as well as by some states.

None of this is news to the Catholic League—we provided a trove of documents to the Task Force and I personally met with one of the top lawyers working in the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice (DOJ)—but it is important that the public learn just how malicious the Biden administration was in its treatment of Christians.

The report correctly notes that there was a different worldview between that of Christians and that of the operatives in the Biden administration. But that was true when President Obama was in office, yet he did not brand Catholics who opposed abortion, gay marriage and sex-reassignment surgery as “domestic terrorists.” That is not a small difference.

The Biden DOJ was not content to see its policies prevail; rather, it was driven by a desire to punish Christians with whom they disagreed with. Here are ten examples.

• When dossiers are prepared on pro-life Christians, and information is collected on their children, that is nefarious.
• When a judge is labeled a “very Catholic magistrate,” that is treacherous.
• When a Christian nurse is forced to participate in an abortion, that is malicious.
• When a Christian family is told it cannot be foster parents because they disagree with gender ideology, that is wicked.
• When Catholics are restricted from going to Mass because of unproven, and unevenly applied, restrictions due to a health scare, that is indefensible.
• When pro-life protesters are treated as if they were violent thugs, that is despicable.
• When gay pride flags are flown at the U.S. Embassy to the Holy See, that is unconscionable.
• When Christians’ parental rights are violated by educators, that is reprehensible.
• When pro-life students are told to remove their religious symbols when they enter a federal building, that is outrageous.
• When the religious rights of Christians are put on the chopping block by secular zealots, that is pernicious.

The Biden administration targeted Christians in a way that is unprecedented. That Biden called himself a “devout Catholic” makes his machinations all the more astounding.

While this is bad enough, the disinterest in reporting on this by the mainstream media is more than distressing—it is totally irresponsible. If it were some other demographic group that was being profiled by the federal government—one of the protected classes—all hell would break loose.

The Task Force did its job. But our job at the Catholic League is not over. When vigilance atrophies, so do our rights. It’s not in our DNA to let that happen.

Bill Donohue

Besides an insatiable appetite for control, what defines the Left is an equally insatiable appetite for envy. No one epitomizes these vices today better than New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a young Muslim man born to privilege who has never had a real job.

He recently stuck his face into a camera and said, “When I ran for mayor, I said I was going to tax the rich. Well, today we’re taxing the rich.” He had his proverbial snarky grin on his face, delighted with his decision to fleece the upper class. If he had any integrity, he would include himself and his parents in his rape-the-rich game.

Mamdani has made it plain that he supports the “abolition of private property.” Or as he likes to put it, “If there was any system that could guarantee each person housing—whether you call it the abolition of private property or you call it a statewide housing guarantee—it is preferable to what is going on right now.”

Calls for the “abolition of private property” are what made Karl Marx famous. It is a basic tenet of communism. Now if Mamdani were honest, he would have to rid himself of his private property holdings, and those of his uber-rich parents. They all sing from the same communist playbook, but in real life they are capitalists par excellence.

Mamdani loves private property so much that he owns four acres of land in Jinja, Uganda. It is worth an estimated $250,000. Not bad for a plot of land with nothing on it (at least for the moment). As one Ugandan told a reporter, “One thing for sure is that Zohran owns not only one land here, but many.” He may not be required to report private property holdings that do not generate income, so he can skirt scrutiny. This is the kind of capitalist trick that if done by others would drive him mad.

The working class can barely afford to pay for one wedding, but Mamdani had no problem paying for three of them. The biggest one was in Uganda. He made sure to keep the riff-raff far away. He hired heavily armed men and masked special forces to guard his family’s estate, making ICE agents look angelic.

Mommy and daddy are filthy rich. Mira Nair is an international filmmaker and Mahmood Mamdani is a Columbia University professor. He makes $300,000 a year, which is not exactly chump change, especially for a Marxist. She is worth an estimated $5 million. She sold her Manhattan apartment in 2019 for $1.45 million.

Family holdings in Uganda are extensive, going beyond Jinja. Their prize possession is a luxury 5-bedroom villa on two acres of land. It has a pool, gardens and a spectacular view of Lake Victoria. It is worth more than 1 million dollars.

Despite all his loot, Mamdani wants to rape the rich. He is not driven by justice—he is driven by envy. Envy is not identical to jealousy. The jealous want what others have; the envious want to deprive others of what they have. That defines Mamdani.

The Catholic Church considers envy to be one of the seven capital sins. Robert Nisbet, the great American sociologist, got it right when he said, “Of the seven deadly sins, of all states of the human mind indeed, envy is the basest and ugliest. It is also the most corrosive of spiritual and moral fiber in the bearer and the most destructive of the social fabric.”

It is bad enough that Mamdani stokes the flames of envy, but what makes him even more detestable is his rank hypocrisy. Pope Francis did not know him, but he knew of his ilk. “Hypocrites are people who pretend, flatter and deceive because they live with a mask over their faces and do not have the courage to face the truth.”

Mamdani doesn’t have the courage to tell the truth about his enormous wealth. Instead, he pretends to be one of the masses. But he never was and he never will be. He is a nepo-baby foreign investor who is not subject to the consequences of his own economic policies. “Do as I say, not as I do” never sounded more obscene.

Bill Donohue

Sharia is the law that is derived from Islamic texts and traditions. Whether it is more of a friend or foe of liberty is disputed, but both sides can’t be right.

On March 20, the New York Times ran an editorial taking aim at President Trump’s “Islamophobia.” Without assessing its merits, what interests the Catholic League is whether its interpretation of Sharia is correct. It defines it as “a set of principles, based on the Quran, that guide life for Muslims, much as biblical precepts guide Christians and Jews.” “Extreme versions” exist, it allows, “including Afghanistan and Iran.”

Agreeing with the Times is the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Muslim civil rights organization.

Sharia, it says, “plays the same role in Islam that canon law plays for Catholics and halacha plays for Jews, a voluntary moral compass, not an alternative legal code.” It goes on to say that “Like other faith communities in the US and elsewhere, we see no inherent conflict between normative values of Islam and the US Constitution and Bill of Rights.”

A week prior to the Times editorial, Rep. Mike Johnson, Speaker of the House, expressed his concern about those who “come to a country and not assimilate but to impose Sharia law.” The problem there, he notes, is that “Sharia law is in conflict with the Constitution.”

Agreeing with Johnson is the European Court of Human Rights.

In 2003, the Grand Chamber ruled that “It is difficult to declare one’s respect for democracy and human rights while at the same time supporting a regime based on sharia, which clearly diverges from Convention values…” Similarly, according to Islamic scholar Robert Spencer, Sharia law is “contrary to America’s founding principles and may violate federal law and the Constitution.”

Islamic texts may not settle the issue, but they do not seem to support the position taken by the Times and CAIR.

The Quran (5:44) declares that failing to “judge by what Allah has revealed” makes one a disbeliever. This would appear to render the U.S. Constitution subordinate to Sharia. Furthermore, the Traveller, a classic Islamic manual of Islamic law, notes that “Jihad is a communal obligation.” At best, this affirms the need for a militaristic struggle; at worst it is a call to arms.

Leaving aside the scholarly debate, what matters in the end is how Sharia is interpreted by those who implement it.

Freedom House annually reports on the state of freedom worldwide, rating every country as Free, Partly Free, or Not Free. Almost all the countries with a Christian majority are rated Free or Partly Free, and all but one with a Muslim majority (Senegal) are rated Not Free or Partly Free. That says it all.

It is undeniably true that the more fully Sharia is implemented, the greater the threat to civil liberties. In other words, in its purist form, Sharia is wholly incompatible with the tenets of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. But Christianity is not.

The three nations which have full Sharia implementation are Iran, Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia. They enforce Sharia as the sole or primary source of all law, including Islamic text legal punishments (amputation, flogging, stoning) and capital penalties for apostasy, blasphemy, adultery, and theft.

Islamic Republic of Iran

Freedom House:

Iran’s constitution requires all laws to conform to Twelver Shia (Ja’fari) Sharia. Islamic text legal punishments are authorized and regularly applied. Iran’s constitution recognizes only Zoroastrians, Jews, and “Christians by birth” (Armenians, Assyrians, etc.) as protected minorities with limited rights. All others, plus converts, are treated as threats to the Islamic state. Apostasy and blasphemy are punishable by death.

• Iran holds regular elections, but they are not free or fair. The unelected Guardian Council vets and disqualifies candidates, and real power lies with the Supreme Leader and unelected institutions that control the security forces, judiciary, and economy. Media are heavily censored, journalists are arrested or killed, and independent. The judiciary is not independent and serves as a tool of repression: arbitrary arrests, torture, unfair trials, and executions are common.

Afghanistan

Freedom House:

• Since overthrowing the elected republican government in August 2021, the Taliban has ruled Afghanistan as an Islamic Emirate with Sharia as the sole legal framework. The Taliban leader exercises unlimited authority by decree, with no constitution in place. Islamic text legal punishments are enforced nationwide. No non-Islamic public worship is permitted, and apostasy carries a death sentence. Women are almost entirely excluded from public life, including education and employment.
• All political parties and opposition groups are banned. There are no elections, no representative bodies, and no independent media.

The conclusion is obvious: Sharia is the enemy of liberty. We enjoy our freedoms precisely because of our Judeo-Christian heritage.

Bill Donohue

Racism is a curse, and it is therefore understandable that news stories about the corrupt Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) are focused on its funding of the Ku Klux Klan. What is frequently overlooked is its record of targeting Christians, especially Catholics.

Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, nailed it when he said SPLC was guilty of “manufacturing racism to justify its existence.” That’s akin to firefighters setting fire to a row of houses so they can put it out, and then demanding an increase in salary and benefits. SPLC has also invented anti-Catholicism to serve its political agenda.

Eleven charges have been brought against SPLC by a federal grand jury, including six counts of wire fraud, four counts of bank fraud and one count of money laundering. It paid at least $3 million to eight individuals, including those linked to the Klan and neo-Nazi groups. While there is no evidence that it paid anti-Catholics, it is undeniably true that it worked to promote anti-Catholicism.

SPLC has long attacked those who stand for traditional moral values. It has a “hate map” on its website that details those groups it labels as “hate groups.” Besides naming a handful of small wacky right-wing groups, it includes reputable conservative organizations such as Alliance Defending Freedom, Family Research Council and Moms for Liberty. None of these are hate-mongers. The real hate-mongers are those like SPLC who smear responsible entities.

Guess who SPLC denies are “hate groups”? Antifa and Black Lives Matter. Antifa is a loosely knit bunch of urban terrorists, and Black Lives Matter is a racist bunch of thugs. But not to SPLC. “Designating Antifa as Domestic Terrorist Organization Is Dangerous,” and “Black Lives Matter Is Not a Hate Group.” The violence these two groups have engaged in is well documented. By contrast, the conservative organizations it cites as “hate groups” have never threatened, harmed or killed anyone.

SPLC does not list the Catholic League as a “hate group,” per se, but it has several listings of us. To take one example, we defended President Trump’s banning of trans persons from the military. It was horrified when I said, “Kudos to Trump for banning men and women who switch their genitals from the military. The armed forces are not a lab for sexual engineers.”

It is telling that it blames me for promoting hatred because I have objected to publicly funded artistic displays that show large ants crawling all over Jesus on the Cross. I am the problem for objecting, not the bigots who defile Christ. And so on.

It also got bent out of shape when I commented on an animal shelter that resisted a dog owner’s request that his pet be euthanized because the owner thought the animal was homosexual. To which I said, “Being gay is not only a bonus for humans these days, it is a definite plus for dogs as well.” Normal people laugh; abnormal people go berserk.

On a more serious note, SPLC has a history of objecting to bigots who hate Jews and blacks, but it has nothing to say when learning that the same person is also anti-Catholic. That does not offend them.

The granddaddy of them all is when it advised the Biden Justice Department how to sabotage Catholicism.

The FBI, under Biden, conducted a spy operation on traditional Catholics. It did not monitor dissident Catholics who are pro-abortion. No, it only went after those who were—in its own words—“pro life,” “pro-family,” and who “support the biological basis for sex and gender distinction.” They were literally called “domestic terrorists.”

Guess who the Biden FBI leaned on for advice? SPLC. To be sure, there were some FBI agents who warned against using SPLC as a reliable source, but they were overruled. The FBI-SPLC connection was aimed at spying on traditional Catholics so they could smear their reputation and thereby undermine their efforts. Just as SPLC “manufactured racism to justify its existence,” it manufactured anti-Catholicism to justify its existence.

A more despicable organization would be hard to find. It was morally bankrupt from the beginning.

SPLC was founded by Morris Dees. He was fired in 2019. According to the Los Angeles Times, some two dozen employees sent a letter to the board of directors before the news broke of Dees’ firing. They said that “internal ‘allegations of mistreatment, sexual harassment, gender discrimination, and racism threaten the moral authority of this organization and our integrity along with it.’”

Perversely, Dees championed himself as the enemy of white supremacy, yet his own people said he was a racist. But now we know he was not alone in hating blacks. To wit: SPLC likes to grease the Klan.

Similarly, Dees was not the only one responsible for eviscerating the integrity of SPLC. He had nothing to do with declaring war on Catholics. That was left to his successors.

SPLC is positive proof that “The fish stinks from the head down.” Lock ‘em up!

Bill Donohue

We have previously noted that Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha has decided to conduct an investigation only of sexual misconduct by priests, allowing the clergy of every other religion a pass. Worse, he is giving a free pass to the public schools, where the problem—unlike that in the Catholic Church—is ongoing.

Neronha is conducting a witch hunt: none of the accused in his report are in active ministry. Just as unethical are the lawyers at Pintas & Mullins, a big law firm in Chicago. They are the ones who are fielding clergy abuse claims from alleged victims of priests in Rhode Island.

On the law firm’s website, it has a section, “Rhode Island Clergy Abuse Claims.” It only applies to the Catholic Church. Ministers, rabbis and imams who rape kids are of no interest to these guys. Just priests.

In a section titled, “Sexual Assault Lawyers Fighting for You,” it says, “It should be underscored that these abuses extend to every faith and type of religious institution, including Islam, Judaism, Mormonism, and various denominations of Christianity, as well as in schools connected with these religions.” This is a subterfuge. They say they are ready to hold these offenders accountable, yet there is no hot line for them—only for Catholic victims.

On April 21, I called the hot line (800-798-8155) and asked if they would accept cases from victims of ministers, rabbis, imams and public school teachers. The woman stumbled, and in a roundabout way said they would. I then asked why they don’t have a hot line for these people. She got nervous and tried to worm her way out of it. I then asked if she were aware that all 75 priests in Rhode Island whom they have an interest in are either dead or have been kicked out of ministry. Sheepishly, she said she knew that. I told her that they were guilty of religious profiling and that they would be hearing from us.

About a month ago, on March 25, I wrote a letter to William Pintas at the law firm. I explained why I was writing and then asked three questions.

• Do you have other websites advertising your law firm’s services for victims abused by other religious groups?
• How many victims abused by other religious groups has your law firm represented?
• Is there a similar website for victims who were abused in Rhode Island’s public schools?

As to be expected, he did not reply. What was he going to say?

Religious profiling is no less invidious than any other type of profiling. The Rhode Island Attorney General and Pintas & Mullins are wearing their anti-Catholicism on their sleeve. To single out the Catholic Church for a probe of sexual misconduct is just as bigoted as singling out African Americans for street crime.

Contact Pintas & Mullins: questions@pintas.com