William Donohue

October 2008

After George W. Bush won reelection in 2004, it was disclosed that “values voters” played a major role in defeating the Democrats. More than any other issue, it was abortion that proved decisive: the “values voters” preferred the pro-life position of the Republican Party.

It didn’t take long before some Democrats, especially Catholics and Protestants, decided that it was imperative not to allow the Republicans to take ownership of this issue. But they were faced with a big problem: the Democrats were unequivocally committed to abortion rights—for any reason and at any time during pregnancy.

Enter James Carville and Paul Begala. They argued that the Democrats would continue to lose election after election until they finally pared back in their support for abortion rights. Accordingly, they recommended that Democrats oppose partial-birth abortion and support parental notification laws. Their pragmatism, however, fell on deaf ears: the leadership of the Democratic Party would not budge in its pro-abortion position.

So the only thing left for Christian Democrats who were worried about ceding this entire issue to the Republicans was to create the fiction that it was possible to support abortion-on-demand by posturing a pro-life position. To accomplish this trick, they decided to defend abortion as a constitutional right—including partial-birth abortion—while promoting social policies that might reduce the need for abortions. They labeled this a “common ground” approach, one that serviced the “common good.” As they soon discovered, however, the central problem remained.

To begin with, they never found a plausible way to answer the most basic question of them all: When does life begin? Recall that when Sen. Barack Obama was asked this question by the evangelical heavyweight Rick Warren, he fumbled. Obama actually said that answering this question was “above my pay grade.” By contrast, when Sen. John McCain was asked the same question, he quickly said, “At conception.”

McCain’s pro-life voting record squares completely with his answer, but Obama’s pro-abortion record is not explained by his evasion. If abortion doesn’t kill innocent human life, then it must be assumed that Obama believes life begins some time after birth. But when? Recall that when he was in the Illinois state senate, he led the fight against mandating health care for children born alive as a result of a botched abortion. In other words, he supports selective infanticide.

Now those who are pushing the “common ground” approach must know that they, too, are a walking contradiction. They don’t want to make any abortions illegal, and indeed they refuse to criticize Obama for his off-the-charts advocacy of abortion rights. So when they say they want to reduce abortions, they are right back to where they started from. Why would it be necessary to reduce a medical procedure that doesn’t harm anyone? After all, no one says we need to reduce the need for root canals.

There are other problems for these folks, as well. The Platform of the Democratic Party does not seek a “common ground” approach to human trafficking—it supports laws that criminalize labor and sex trafficking. Yet when it comes to abortion, it balks at any legal remedy. Is this because the Democrats are more bent out of shape over human trafficking than abortion? To put it differently, making human trafficking illegal hasn’t stopped it from occurring, so why not legalize it and then support “common ground” strategies that reduce its occurrence?

These “values” Democrats will tell you that it would be wrong to criminalize abortion because that would bring us back to the days when women were imprisoned for having an abortion. MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, for example, says this all the time. But the fact of the matter is that women were not imprisoned for having an abortion in the pre-Roe v. Wade days—it was the abortionist who faced prosecution.

In Leslie J. Reagan’s pro-abortion book, When Abortion Was a Crime: Women, Medicine, and Law in the United States, 1867-1973, she makes it clear that women were not routinely prosecuted and imprisoned for having abortions during this period. Indeed, she lists only one such incident of this kind, and that was an unusual case in 1971 when a Florida woman was arrested for manslaughter. So the Matthews argument is nothing more than a scare tactic.

It must also be said that these “values” Democrats went mute when Nancy Pelosi totally misrepresented the Catholic Church’s teaching on abortion; none issued even the mildest rebuke. This certainly included Sen. Bob Casey, Jr., the so-called pro-life Catholic Democrat from Pennsylvania whose voting record on abortion lines up with NARAL—the most radical pro-abortion group in the nation—65 percent of the time.

Finally, the presidents of NARAL and Planned Parenthood spoke at the Democratic National Convention, and the most radical pro-abortion Political Action Committee of them all, EMILY’s List, hosted a big party. If this doesn’t signal what a fraud the “common ground” ploy is, nothing does.

ad published in the New York Times

October 9, 2008

On page 11 of Catalyst, we reproduced the ad honoring the legacy of Pope Pius XII on the 50th anniversary of his death; this ad appeared in the October 9 edition of the New York Times.

ad published in Washington Times

September 22, 2008

On page 10 of Catalyst, we reproduced the ad that ran in the Washington Times weekend edition; the ad called attention to Sen. Obama’s NARAL record and his support of selective infanticide.

William Donohue

September 2008

When I spoke to a reporter from Providence about a play that mocked the Eucharist, I unloaded. Fortunately, he listened to me explain the source of my anger. “Because this is the fourth incident this summer of someone playing fast and loose with the Eucharist,” I told him. He understood.

The first incident occurred when Washington Post religion editor Sally Quinn decided she would show how much she cared about the late Tim Russert by doing something she hated to do—receive Communion; Quinn is not Catholic. The second incident was worse: a brazen student from the University of Central Florida walked out of Mass with the Eucharist to protest some innocuous school policy. The third was obscene: University of Minnesota Professor Paul Z. Myers desecrated a consecrated Host to protest my criticism of the Florida student. So when the reporter called to ask why I was unhappy with some woman who decided to mock the Eucharist in a play, he touched a raw nerve.

For fifteen years I have been president of the Catholic League, and never have I seen such a series of assaults on the Eucharist. What’s going on? And what accounts for the total failure of the University of Minnesota to hold Myers accountable?

What’s going on is that militant atheism is all the rage. Books by Richard Dawkins (a personal friend of Myers who lies about me the same way Myers does), Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett and Christopher Hitchens have all sold well, and what they are selling is hate. Hatred of religion in general, and Christianity in particular. The bulls-eye, of course, is Roman Catholicism. I’ll give them this much: At least the religion bashers are smart enough to know who’s on top.

What these authors do is embolden their base. To be specific, they energize atheists to be more in-your-face about their convictions, the result of which is an agenda to attack Catholicism. And what better way to do so than by trashing the Eucharist? This may not explain what Quinn did, or for that matter what the Florida student and the playwright did, but it sure explains Paul Z. Myers’ boldness.

The sick climate that these zealots have created could not have succeeded without a little help from their friends. In the case of Myers, that means the administrators at the University. They had several options available to them, and they passed on every one of them. Predictably, they hid behind academic freedom, claiming they were impotent to do anything about Myers’ off-campus behavior.

This is utter nonsense, and I will prove it right now: Does anyone believe that the University of Minnesota would do absolutely nothing about a white professor who packed them in at a local comedy club on weekends doing his racist rendition of “Little Black Sambo”? Would the very same administrators plead helplessness about a professor who spoke to community groups off-campus about the mythology of the Holocaust?

Lest anyone not be convinced, need I remind you that Larry Summers was driven out of his job as president of Harvard University for remarks that radical feminists found objectionable. It cannot go unsaid that Summers’ comments were made off-campus. Moreover, when Summers spoke, it was made explicitly clear that he was not speaking as president,  but as an academic. But that didn’t matter to the ever-tolerant ones on the faculty—he offended them because he disagreed with them, and that was enough to get him kicked out.

Academic freedom was instituted to protect contrarian professors from being hounded out of the academy for challenging the conventional wisdom on a particular academic subject. It was not instituted to protect hate speech. Myers is free to say whatever he wants about his specialty, which is zebrafish, but he has no moral right to assault the sensibilities of any religious group. So what should the administrators have done?

At the very least, the president should have convened an assembly, with members of the press invited, to unequivocally condemn what Myers did. Even if what Myers did was outside the purview of the president’s authority, there was nothing stopping him from holding such a forum. And there was certainly nothing stopping the chancellor of the Morris campus from doing the same. She was actually worse—she tried to play both sides of the street.

As I said to Ray Arroyo, this may not be over yet. Over the summer, Myers’ personnel file ballooned: everything that happened regarding this issue is in it. Which means that he’d better be careful about bringing his religious bigotry to bear in the classroom. If just one Catholic student complains that he is being treated unfairly because of his religion, Myers will have to answer.

Because of the hate-filled milieu that Myers and his ilk have created, all kinds of copy-cats have come forth. Some have put videos of themselves up on the Internet. They all go after me big time, and that is as it should be. They know who the enemy is, and for that I am eternally grateful.

Kenneth D. Whitehead

September 2008

Chaput, Charles J., O.F.M. Cap., Render Unto Caesar: Catholic Witness and American Public Life, New York: Doubleday, 2008.

Denver Archbishop Charles J. Chaput is one of the American Catholic bishops today who most nearly approximates the ideal of what the Second Vatican Council said that a Catholic bishop ought to be, namely, one who presides “in God’s stead over the flock of which they are the shepherds in that they are teachers of doctrine, ministers of sacred worship and holders of office in government” (Lumen Gentium, 20). In the Church, it is “in the person of the bishop,” the Council further taught, “that the Lord Jesus Christ, supreme high priest, is present in the midst of the faithful” (Ibid.). That’s “in God’s stead” and Jesus Christ present “in the person of the bishop”—obviously, a very tall order!

Archbishop Chaput was originally a religious order priest, a Capuchin, and he has admirably filled, in a distinctly Franciscan fashion, the multiple roles that his episcopal office lays upon him. His tenure in Denver has been marked by intelligence, vigor, and zeal. He has emerged not only unscathed, but with his reputation enhanced from the unfortunate vicissitudes of the past few years in the Church. But it is the difficult situation in which the Church in the United States finds herself today—in which a secular culture openly hostile to Christianity now finds ample justification for sidelining the Church and questioning the competence of Catholics to pronounce on the great questions of the day—that has motivated Archbishop Chaput to write this book underlining the importance of applying authentic Catholic teaching and witness to American public life.

Archbishop Chaput believes that “the Church has the duty to teach the world.” This book very ably sets forth a fair amount of what the Church specifically does have to teach the world in the conditions that Catholics in America face today. For if the Catholic Church is not without her own problems, an increasingly wayward and morally decadent America is surely in much worse shape; and, moreover, often seems incapable of even identifying what has gone wrong, much less being able to do anything about it.

Our bishop-author provides a brief summary of the current situation that characterizes America today as follows:

“Traces of our country’s Christian origins remain visible. Americans are broadly a people of faith who value religion, fair play and common decency…Yet there is another America, a kind of dark mirror image of our ideals and self-understanding. This is an America of ethnic and racial injustice, selfishness, consumer greed, and careerism, where popular culture grows increasingly brutish and vulgar. This is an America where half of all marriages end in divorce, where four of every ten children are born out of wedlock, and roughly a million more children are killed each year in the womb. Millions are forgotten and left behind in poverty in this America. Religion is increasingly belittled in the political conversation in this America, and the conversation itself has grown uncivil, indifferent, and unreasoned. Finally, in this America, ordinary citizens show a growing cynicism about the future of our common life together….”

Archbishop Chaput worries that America, increasingly detached from its Christian roots, has become secularized to the point where the country no longer possesses within itself the capacity to distinguish what belongs to Caesar and what belongs to God. A radically de-Christianized America now regularly denies in various ways what yesterday was a generally accepted common morality based on the Ten Commandments. Today the traditional morality that was once taken for granted is today explicitly rejected on secularist grounds. One is reminded of the once famous saying of the World War I French premier, the radical Socialist Georges Clemenceau: “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s—and everything is Caesar’s”!

Things may not quite have reached that point in America today, although we are surely not far from it. Hence nothing is more important to the future of America than the Catholic witness which Archbishop Chaput thinks is urgently necessary—and which he believes must come about through a renewal of the Catholic faith and a revitalization of Catholic practice that can and must lead to a re-evangelization of the culture. In his view, Christianity originally arose and took hold primarily because Christians believed and lived their faith, and were seen by the world to do so.

This book pursues this theme in the American context. The archbishop finds no incompatibility between Catholicism and the American system, properly understood. One problem has been, however, that too many Catholics have wrongly imagined that they had to cut and trim in order to accommodate their Catholicism to their Americanism. This is a problem that urgently has to be overcome by a return to the authentic sources of the faith.

The book contains a brief survey of Catholicism in America, along with an examination of how the American democratic system should be viewed from a Catholic point of view, and of what American Catholics should be doing to help revitalize their Church as well as American society and culture (very briefly, they should be more publicly professing and living their faith, and not allowing themselves to be deterred from bringing it frankly into the public square).

Archbishop Chaput is well versed in recent thought on church and state issues, as exemplified in the work on religious liberty by the late Father John Courtney Murray, S.J., for example, as well as in Vatican Council II’s Declaration on Religious Liberty, Dignitatis Humanae. As Pope Benedict XVI remarked during his recent visit to the United States, America can consider itself to be “the homeland of religious liberty,” and so it is both pertinent and timely that a knowledgeable American prelate should address this issue among others in this book.

Nevertheless, the challenge facing Catholics in America today is formidable. We need think only of the continuing tragedy and scandal of legalized abortion—which the Denver archbishop flatly declares “must be changed.”

If you have not read a good solid account of where Catholics publicly stand in America today, this is a book for you. Nobody has written a better account of the main public issues that must concern and engage American Catholics. Even if you have read other books along these lines, you will be interested in Archbishop Chaput’s “take” on issues that must inevitably concern us all. It is exhilarating to find an American Catholic bishop thinking and writing in the vein he has adopted.

On the much publicized and vexed question of whether the Eucharist should be denied to pro-abortion Catholic politicians, Archbishop Chaput notes how “one of the ironies of the 2004 elections was the number of non-Catholics, ex-Catholics, lax Catholics, and anti-Catholics who developed a sudden interest in who should receive Communion and when.” Although he defends the policy of the American bishops that the decision about this question must be left to the individual bishop, he himself quite admirably describes how he would handle the question in his own archdiocese. He writes:

“As a bishop, what would I do if a Catholic public official—a person publicly acting against Catholic teaching on a grave moral issue like abortion, euthanasia, human cloning, or embryonic stem-cell research—presented himself for Communion? If the official is not from my local church (that is, the diocese I serve as bishop), and I receive no contrary guidance from his own bishop, I would not refuse him Communion. I would assume his honesty and goodwill. And I would advise my brother priests in the diocese to do the same.

“But what if he does belong to my diocese? As a bishop, I have a duty in charity to help Catholic officials to understand and support church teaching on vital issues. That’s never a matter for public theater; it’s always a matter of direct, private discussion. If that failed, I would ask the official to refrain from receiving Communion. If he still presented himself, I would publicly ask him not to take Communion, and publicly explain why to my people and brother priests. If he still persisted, then and only then, I would withhold Communion from him—because of his deliberate disregard of the right of other Catholics and the unity of the church.”

This is precisely the policy that Cardinal Ratzinger, before his election as Pope Benedict XVI, outlined for the American bishops. (Although it applies in the case of the individual bishop, it does not explain how some of the most notorious pro-choice Catholic politicians in America were apparently invited to receive Communion at Pope Benedict’s Mass in Washington, D.C.!)

On the question of whether Catholics could in genuinely good conscience vote for “pro-choice” candidates, Archbishop Chaput frankly says, “The answer is: I couldn’t. Supporting a ‘right’ to choose abortion simply masks and evades what abortion really is, the deliberate killing of innocent life. I know of nothing that can morally offset that kind of evil.”

Archbishop Chaput grants that, faced with two “pro-choice” candidates, the Catholic might make a judgment to support one of them as “the lesser evil.” Any such vote, however, would always in his view have to have a proportionate reason “grave enough to outweigh our obligation to end the killing of the unborn.” He asks: “What would such a ‘proportionate’ reason look like? It would be a reason,” he says, “that we could with an honest heart, expect the unborn victims of abortion to accept when we meet them and need to explain our actions—as we someday will.”

There is more of this, much more, in Render Unto Caesar. It is accessible to all, and it is to be hoped it will be widely read and taken to heart.

Kenneth D. Whitehead’s new book, Mass Misunderstandings: The Mixed Legacy of the Vatican II Liturgical Reform is soon to be published by St. Augustine’s Press. Mr. Whitehead is a member of the Board of Directors of the Catholic League.

William Donohue

July-August 2008

In the 1960s, left-wing radicals loved to shout, “Power to the People.” They didn’t mean it then, and the aging extremists sure don’t mean it now. Laura Ingraham means it—she even wrote a splendid book by that title. Luckily for us, she’s not one of them. Indeed, she’s a proud Roman Catholic and a strong defender of democracy.

But not the Left. They hate democracy. Indeed, the thing they fear most is “Power to the People.” They don’t want, as Lincoln said, government by the people, for the people and of the people. They want government by them for us. Here are a few recent examples.

There has never been a state where the people have voted in favor of gay marriage. In 2004, the issue was placed on the ballot in 11 states, and it lost in every one of them. Not even the voters in Oregon, which are among the most liberal in the nation, were prepared to sanction marriage between two guys or two gals.

California is pretty liberal, too, and in 2000 the people voted to reject gay marriage. But on May 15, the California Supreme Court voted 4-3 to allow same-sex marriage. Chief Justice Ronald M. George, writing for the majority, said, “In view of the substance and significance of the fundamental constitutional right to form a family relationship, the California Constitution properly must be interpreted to guarantee this basic civil right to all Californians….”

This is a curious ruling. First of all, homosexuals cannot—because of nature—form families. Some disagree with this reasoning by pointing out that gays can adopt children. True enough, but that is only because of the union between a man and a woman. In other words, homosexual families depend upon the sexual capital of heterosexuals.

More important, if forming families is such a “basic civil right,” why isn’t it in the U.S. Constitution? Are we to believe that the Framers overlooked that one? And precisely where in the California Constitution does it say anything about this issue?

The fact is that four unelected judges decided to make up a right out of whole cloth and impose their vision of the family on the public, going against the express will of the people as recorded in Proposition 22 in 2000. It so happens that the very same issue will be before the voters in California in November. But not if the ACLU and gay rights groups have their way—they are trying to stop the measure from being on the ballot!

Want to see another example of tyranny disguised as democracy? Following the California ruling, Gov. David A. Paterson of New York directed all state agencies to change their policies regarding the recognition of gay marriages performed in other states. In one full swoop, he overturned 1,300 statutes and regulations governing marriage. This was striking on several levels.

New York State does not have a law recognizing gay marriages. Yet its chief executive wants to allow married gays from California to enjoy rights in New York that the people in the Empire State never voted to recognize for their own homosexual residents. It is worth noting, too, that Governor Paterson was never elected the governor of New York: He succeeded Gov. Eliot Spitzer—another gay marriage advocate—when  Spitzer had to quit over his involvement in a prostitution ring. Yet this unelected man has now decided that he knows what is best for the people, their will to the contrary.

In Florida, “Power to the People” came under attack in June when left-wing activist organizations, working in tandem with the selfish interests of the teachers unions, decided to sue the state to stop the people from having the right to decide for themselves whether they want school choice programs.

In November, the people of Florida are slated to vote on school voucher programs, but in June the enemies of religious freedom took steps to stop them: the ACLU, the ADL, Americans United for Separation of Church and State and People for the American Way filed suit trying to block the people from voting on two amendments to their state’s constitution. Their fear, of course, is that if the people have their way, too many of them—especially the poor—will elect to send their kids to a Catholic school.

Forget the issues for a moment. What is at stake is greater than the consequences of toying with the institution of marriage or allowing parents to exercise school choice. What is at stake is democracy. Should unelected judges, and unelected governors, along with unelected activist lawyers, be making decisions about matters that are the proper reserve of the people?

What is so amazingly hypocritical about all this is that these same people are the ones who accuse the Catholic Church of trying to “impose” its will on the people. As Pope John Paul II said many times, we don’t impose anything—we propose. But the Left knows a few things about imposing its will, and it will stop at nothing to achieve it.

“Power to the People”? You bet. But beware of those who sing the lyrics while violating its precepts.

Reviewed by Mike Sullivan

July-August 2008

THE THREAT OF THE NEW ATHEISM

Scott Hahn & Benjamin Wiker: Answering the New Atheism: Dismantling Dawkins’ Case Against God, Emmaus Road Publishing

Is it time to crack down on religion?

After all, religion is responsible for all the trouble in the world, isn’t it? The September 11 attacks were in the name of religion. Galileo was silenced in the name of religion. Everywhere you look in the world, you see riots, and massacres, and wars—all in the name of religion. It’s not just one religion, either—it’s all religions.

Religion is at the root of every problem in the world. It’s time we got rid of religion.

Now, if all that seems like a shallow argument to you, it’s probably because you spent half a minute thinking about it. Many of the conflicts in the world today are religious, that’s true. But it wasn’t too long ago that the great danger facing the world was institutional atheism. Half the world was officially Communist and anti-religious. We can imagine that religion is the root of all evil only if we forget Stalin and Mao and Pol Pot.

Nevertheless, some of the brightest minds in the English-speaking world right now argue that religion is the problem. And we know they’re the brightest minds because they keep telling us they are.

Atheism is certainly nothing new. Long before the time of Christ, the ancient Athenians were charging inconvenient philosophers with “atheism.” So there was a word for people who didn’t believe in any gods—the same word we use today, in fact.

We hear charges of “atheism” at least as far back as the 6th century B.C. Plato talks about people who say that the universe arose “not through intelligence…nor through some god, nor through art, but…by nature and chance.” Plato’s own teacher Socrates was accused of atheism, although the Socrates who appears in Plato’s dialogues is far from an atheist.

Most of the ancient philosophers whose works have survived are not explicitly atheist, but some are close. Epicurus and Lucretius, for example, allowed for gods in their system, but not gods who cared at all about humanity. The universe was created by random collisions of atoms, not by an almighty Creator. Whatever gods there might be were indifferent to what we did.

These ancient atheists grew out of a pagan culture, so if they were rebels, they were naturally rebelling against the colorful stories of pagan mythology. The Middle Ages didn’t have time for atheist philosophy, so atheism died with the ancients.

Modern atheism arose about five hundred years ago in the midst of a Christian culture, and hence defined itself by an explicit rejection of Christianity. Some religious philosophers, like the Deists, rejected the Triune God of Christian doctrine, but accepted that there was a God. But there were others—pure atheists—who completely rejected belief in any deity at all. Both groups rejected and rebelled against Christianity.

The French Revolution showed what atheism is capable of when it combined theory with unchecked power. Bishops and priests were executed, religious rounded up, churches desecrated, all in the name of liberating the people from tyranny. Never mind that the people themselves were tenaciously religious. The people must be liberated in spite of themselves.

In the 1800s, Karl Marx and other thinkers systematized this anti-religious hostility. When the followers of Marx gained power in Russia, they were even more ruthless than the French revolutionaries in their suppression of religion. Similar horrors followed dogmatic Communism wherever it came to power.

But most of the English-speaking world was spared this excessive institutional atheism. The United States, in particular, has always zealously guarded the freedom of anyone to practice any religion that does not seriously interfere with public order.

That’s why we’re so surprised and baffled by what we call the New Atheism. For the first time in our relatively tranquil history, we’re facing a determined attempt not just to keep organized religion out of government (which most religious Americans agree is a good idea), but to suppress religion completely.

Led by the Four Horsemen, as they like to call themselves—Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett—these New Atheists argue that religion, is simply delusion and at the root of all our problems. They have websites and well-orchestrated media events, and collectively they sell millions of books. Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion has been on the bestseller list since its release in 2006.

The New Atheists are positively evangelical. They want to make a convert out of you, although if you’re a “dyed-in-the-wool faith-head” they’ll settle for peppering you with insults and sarcasm instead.

But if atheists have always been with us, why are we worrying now? After all, the Church has engaged non-believers for over two thousand years.

What we call the “New Atheism” is a bit different than its predecessor. It’s more aggressive, and it has more power. The leaders of the sect are well placed in the academic world, and they have a strong determination to mold government policy.

And you wouldn’t like the government if the New Atheists molded its policy. Richard Dawkins has asserted that teaching your religion to your child is a form of child abuse and should be criminalized. Other New Atheists have argued that churches should have to post a sign reading “for entertainment purposes only,” since after all they’re no less a fraud than telephone psychics.

The New Atheists see religion as a disease to be exterminated. Their dream, in short, is not a government neutral to religion, but a government actively hostile to religion.

What is most worrying is that the New Atheists seem to gain the most followers precisely among the most ambitious and intelligent young people—the people who will be actively shaping government policy in the years to come. Attracted by the intellectual rebelliousness of the movement, young people fall for its insidious message: join us and you can be one of the smart people.

How do we counter the New Atheists where they’re doing the most damage?

First, we need to be polite. That’s all the more important when our opponents descend to the level of playground taunts. If a New Atheist joins our discussion, we need to be welcoming, not hostile. We need to act like Christians, which is all the harder when our opponents have no such limitations. But we must remember that, with truth there is strength. We Christians don’t need to resort to playground taunts, cheap shots, or to hostile defensiveness. We have the truth and we are called to share it.

Once we’ve determined to be polite, we need to answer reasoned arguments with reason. There’s a real need for good resources to counter the atheists’ favorite arguments. Scott Hahn and Benjamin Wiker have blazed the trail in Answering the New Atheism, in which they counter Richard Dawkins’ surprisingly feeble arguments in The God Delusion.

This is a good way to start. Hahn and Wiker are never afraid to meet Dawkins head-on. They take his favorite arguments and show us where the holes are, meeting reason with reason. The New Atheists thrive on the impression that religion and reason are antithetical; we should never give them that ground. We need to demonstrate to the undecided that reason is on religion’s side.

We should also realize that, in many things, the aggressive atheists are on our side. We, the reasonable Christians who value freedom and stand up for the oppressed, should be their natural allies. They see the rabid fundamentalism that infects so much of the world with endless violence, and they deplore it. We deplore it, too. They see the poor oppressed by the rich, and they demand justice. We demand justice, too.

In many areas, our fight is not against the atheists, but against the mistaken perceptions of Christianity they promote. The evangelical atheists assume that religion must inevitably breed mindless fanaticism. Countering that image means not just answering the atheists’ arguments against God, but also correcting their false impressions of religion.

People who are most attracted to the New Atheism are likely to be people who think of themselves as good and reasonable. They genuinely care about people as human beings. When they see suffering, they want to help. If they think religion is the cause of the suffering, they turn against religion. And, after all, if they see Christians beating up Muslims, Muslims beating up Hindus, Hindus beating up Christians—well, what are they supposed to think? If they don’t know anything about our religion, then that’s what they think our religion is about.

But whose fault is it if they don’t know anything about our religion? True, they haven’t bothered to find out about it. But it’s just as true that we too often haven’t bothered to tell anyone about it.

Is the New Atheism a danger to the Church? Yes, it is. By substituting secularity with secularism—neutrality toward religion with hostility toward religion—New Atheists can make the world difficult for Christians to live in.

But the real danger is not from the fanatical atheists themselves, but from our own indifference. If we don’t make the effort to reach out to the people who are most ambitious, who are most intelligent, who care most about the shape of the world around them, then we deserve the punishment in Christ’s parable of the worthless servant (Matthew 25:14-30). What little we have should be taken away and given to someone who will make something of it.

We need to confront the New Atheism on its own turf, candidly admitting where we agree with the atheists, and explaining our differences patiently and reasonably. But beyond the argument of words, there is another, even better argument.

The Christian life has always been the most compelling argument for Christianity. Living like a Christian—loving our enemies and letting everyone see our joy in the truth—is the most convincing way of spreading the Gospel. When we face the New Atheists, we should look like Christians: not shouting, angry fanatics, but charitable, intelligent people who are willing to listen as well as to make pronouncements.

We have the power to guide what the people around us think about religion. What we say is important, but what we do is even more important. Even when right reason doesn’t prevail, living the Christian life will win the argument.

Mike Sullivan is president of Catholics United for the Faith and Emmaus Road Publishing.

William Donohue

June 2008

Libel laws in this country divide the population in two: private persons and public persons. Following New York Times v. Sullivan in 1964, the former category is entitled to plenty of protection while the latter is not. In other words, if someone smears the average person, he or she can sue and has a good chance of winning. If someone smears me, I have to prove that the offender knew that what he was saying was false when he said it and that he had malicious intent. In other words, good luck.

Is this fair? Probably. After all, if free speech is to be prized, then those who hate me need to be protected in exercising their free speech rights. I am, after all, a public person. Imagine what it would be like if every time you wrote something about some public person whom you can’t stand you had to worry about being sued. You’d likely shut up. The loser, then, would be free speech.

Having granted all this, even though people have a legal right to bash me, no one has a moral right to misrepresent me. And this happens all the time, especially lately. Why especially lately? Because we are all over the place—TV, radio, newspapers, magazines, the Internet—we are riding high. And while our fans love it, our adversaries do not.

The Internet is a medium that can be used or abused. For researchers like me, I love it. But I also know that the quality, in terms of accuracy, ranges from A-Z. An undiscerning user can easily be misled, the results of which can be far reaching.

Recently, there has been a spew of articles, investigative reports, blog stories and immense chatter about the Catholic League. In one such instance, a pro-abortion group got a generous grant from an elite foundation to do a hit job on me. They looked for dirt but couldn’t find any. So what did I do? I wrote them a letter correcting their typos.

Those who write on obscure blog sites don’t bother me because only idiots would cite them as a credible source. But when the Washington Post allows bloggers to attack me with abandon, that’s another thing altogether. So it was with Anthony Stevens-Arroyo who wrote “Catholic League Shenanigans” on May 16.

Here is how he starts: “The Catholic League is not the ‘All Catholic’ League. It is not official Catholicism: still less does it speak for each and every one of the nation’s 60 million Catholics.”

That’s right, the Vatican is the “All Catholic” League and we never claimed to represent “each and every one of the nation’s 60 million [we’re actually closer to 70 million, but never mind] Catholics.” But I hasten to add that the Catholic League is listed in theOfficial Catholic Directory and is not, therefore, some wayward organization that goes about willy nilly slapping the name Catholic on its masthead.

The next part is priceless. “As someone who once endeavored to work with the League, I was disappointed to learn that it is run out of a single office by a single ego. So while I find newsworthy the recent exchanges between the League’s president, Bill Donahue [sic] and Evangelical pastor, John Hagee, they don’t amount to dogma.”

I asked our staff if anyone had ever heard of this guy, and no one had. So I take it that when he says he “endeavored” to work here, what he really means is that he didn’t get an interview. Perhaps that’s because he can’t spell my name. In any event, it is true that we don’t have multiple offices, but it is not fair to say that our office has just one ego—there are ten others. All of whom can spell my name.

Stevens-Arroyo questions why the Catholic League “waited until February of 2008 to become angered by Hagee’s career of bigotry over two decades?” He says it is because February was when Hagee endorsed McCain.

Now if he had bothered to read our website, he would have learned that I first wrote to Hagee in 1997. Therefore, the answer he supplies to his own question implodes. But this is small potatoes compared to this gem: “The Catholic League demanded the dissolving of Obama’s Catholic support committee, accusing all of the members of disloyalty to the faith and labeling the actions of the Democratic Senator as ‘Hitlerian.’”

In actual fact, I never made such an accusation. What I did was to report on the NARAL voting record of those members of Obama’s advisory group who were, or currently are, public office holders. And I never labeled “the actions” of Obama “Hitlerian.” What I said is that Obama made a “Hitlerian decision” when he voted to allow a baby who survives an abortion to die without attending medicinal care. I stand by that accusation.

Stevens-Arroyo makes a desperate, and failed, attempt to equate abortion with “major Catholic teachings like forgiveness of Third World debt” and other related issues. But there is no Catholic teaching on this subject, nor is there a listing for it (unlike abortion) in the Catholic Catechism.

So continue to use the Internet, but beware of the charlatans, demagogues and liars who populate it.

Reviewed by Bill Donohue

June 2008

ROOT CAUSES OF HAPPINESS

Q: “Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall, Who is the Happiest of Them All?”
A: You are.

That’s right, in general, those who are the most likely to be reading this article are the happiest of them all. The obverse is also true: The odds are that those who would never read anything associated the with Catholic League are the most unhappy of them all. This isn’t poppycock, and it isn’t being said to make you happy. It just happens to be true.

Happily, Arthur C. Brooks provides us with all the evidence we need to make these assertions. The Syracuse professor of Business and Government Policy has given us another brilliant book, Gross National Happiness, that is as enlightening as it is fun to read. It is worth noting, too, that Brooks is a proud Roman Catholic.

Brooks is one of those rare birds in academia—he actually draws his conclusions from the data. And data he has: Brooks has scoured the social science research on the subject of happiness and has turned up some extraordinary findings.

To be sure, there is nothing extraordinary about learning that optimists are happier than pessimists, or that those who have many friends are happier than those who do not. But it may come as a surprise to find out that money by itself doesn’t buy happiness (success and peer recognition do matter). What is truly surprising is the extent to which at least half of our happiness stock is genetic: Nature plays at least as big a part as nurture in determining our level of happiness.

These findings are interesting, but what really makes Brooks’ volume so important, especially for Catholic League members, is his sociological insights: he identifies a constellation of social attributes, as well as ideological predilections, that are clearly linked to happiness.

It is hardly a risky bet to claim that the typical Catholic League member is a religious person of conservative values who prizes his family. Nor is it a risk to say that he enjoys working hard (or did so before retirement) and is known to be generous. Well, it is precisely those characteristics that Brooks identifies as being integrally related to happiness.

This would seem to suggest that our secular brethren who espouse a liberal ideology are nowhere near as likely to be as happy as we are. This is exactly what Brooks found. Moreover, secularists are also much less likely to be generous—both with their money and their time. Married persons are happier than singles, and the former make for much better parents than do cohabiting couples. And as critical as any variable, those who ascribe to a traditionalist understanding of morality are happier than those who reject it.

So here we have it: religious people are happier than secularists; conservatives are happier than liberals; those who volunteer are happier than those who don’t; those who are charitable are happier than those who aren’t; married persons are happier than single persons; those who work the hardest are happier than everyone else; and traditionalists are happier than the “free spirits.”

Brooks lays all of this out in great detail, and he explores the public policy implications of his findings, e.g, it is in everyone’s interests that we protect our religious heritage. Why? Quite simply, religious persons make for better citizens: they give more and are much more likely to be happy.

As Brooks writes, “it is not just in the interest of religious folks to protect our religious traditions, but also in the interest of secularists.” (His italics.) That’s a hard nut for secularists to swallow, but the fact is that they are benefiting from the moral capital (and its ensuing happiness quotient) of the faithful.

A question that Brooks does not directly address, but is worth considering, is whether there is a commonality that runs through the “happiness” variables? To simplify this matter, consider the following bipolar variables: married v. single; religious v. secular; giver v. non-giver; conservative v. liberal; traditionalist v. postmodernist. Why are the former variables associated with happiness and not the latter?

There is a mountain of psychological and sociological evidence that suggests that fully atomized individuals are positively dysfunctional. Put differently, those for whom the unencumbered self is the end all and be all of liberty are sick. It cannot be said too forcefully: The lone individual is a nightmare. Why? Because part of being human is the ability to connect ourselves to something greater than ourselves, which is why those who find communion with God, family and friends are freer than those who refuse to submit to moral codes.

The idea of surrendering oneself to God and loved ones is not something which resonates well with those for whom submission is a dirty word. Religious persons, especially Catholics, know exactly what Pope John Paul II meant when he said that the Ten Commandments were the foundation of liberty. But to the tin ear of the secularists, such notions are incomprehensible at best and downright dangerous at worst.

In any event, Brooks gives us much to think about, and he does so in a style that is as entertaining as it is educational.

Please see below for some of Professor Brooks’s most insightful comments:

• “Your state of mind is due in significant part to the wiring you get from your parents.”
• “Happy people treat others better than unhappy people do. They are more charitable than unhappy people, have better marriages, are better parents, act with greater integrity, and are better citizens. Happy people not only work harder than unhappy people, but volunteer more, too—meaning that they increase our nation’s prosperity and strengthen our communities. In short, happy citizens are bettercitizens.”
• “Religious people of all faiths are much, much happier than secularists, on average. In 2004, 43 percent of religious folks said they were ‘very happy’ with their lives, versus 23 percent of secularists.”
• “People who live in religious communities—even correcting for other cultural factors in these communities—do better financially than those who live in secular communities.”
• “Traditionally religious people do not tend to be ignorant or uneducated. Religious individuals today are actually better educated and less ignorant of the world around them than secularists. In 2004, religious adults—those who attended a house of worship every week—were a third less likely to be without a high school diploma, and a third more likely to hold a college degree or higher, than those secularists who never attended a house of worship.”
• “Religious people are 38 percent more likely than secularists to give money to charity and give about four times more money away each year (even holding incomes constant). They are 52 percent more likely than nonreligious people to volunteer. Religious people are even 16 percent more likely than secularists to give money to explicitly nonreligiouscharities, and 54 percent more likely to volunteer for these causes.”
• “Religious Americans create much larger families than secular Americans do, and religious parents tend to have religious kids.”
• “In 2004, 42 percent of married Americans said they were very happy. Only 23 percent of never-married people said this, as well as 20 percent of those who were widowed, 17 percent of divorced people, and 11 percent of those who were separated (but not divorced) from their spouses. Married people were six times more likely to say they were very happy than they were to say they were not too happy.”
• “The evidence is overwhelming that unmarried, cohabiting adults give children a worse home life than married parents do, on average.”
• “Secular liberals are about eight times likelier than religious conservatives to support abortion on demand, which may indicate a greater willingness to terminate an inconvenient pregnancy.”
• “Religious people feel freer than secularists.”
• “Those who favor less government intervention in our economic affairs are happier than those who favor more.”
• “More than just enjoying the freedom to worship as they choose, many of the happiest people in America achieve their happiness throughtheir faith.”
• “Premarital sex, drug use, you name it—the moral traditionalists have it all over the moral modernists when it comes to happiness.”
• “The recipe for happiness is a combination of individual liberty, personal morality, and moderation. This age-old formula is overwhelmingly supported by the data.”
• “‘Very happy’ people work more hours each week than those who are ‘pretty happy,’ who in turn work more hours than people who are ‘not happy.’”
• “Job satisfaction actually increaseslife happiness.”
• “Work also brings happiness because it gives our lives meaning—and meaning brings happiness, sooner or later.”
• “People who give charitably are happier than people who don’t.”
• “America was built as a nation of givers. Religious pilgrims were some of our earliest ancestors. Thousands of miles away from their homes and governments, they were confronted by a vast frontier that could only be managed if private individuals took the needs of their community into their own hands. This has led to the simple and enduring fact that no country gives and volunteers privately like America does. This fact is more than just a curiosity or source of national pride. It is part of the reason we are generally happier than people in other developed countries.

William Donohue

May 2008

In the mid-1990s, Father Andrew Greeley released a book wherein he argued that “Catholics have sex more often than do other Americans, they are more playful in their sexual relationships, and they seem to enjoy their sexual experiences more.” Was he right? Who knows? One thing is for sure: at least he challenged the conventional wisdom that Catholics are plagued with sexual hang-ups. It is also worth noting that if Catholics are so guilt-ridden about sex, it needs to be explained why they have such large families vis-à-vis the adherents of most other religions.

The time has long past when Catholics should be defensive about Catholic sexual ethics. After all, it is not those of us who put a premium on restraint who are ruining their lives with psychological and physiological problems of a mountainous sort—it is those who have chosen to do the opposite and abandon restraint altogether. Let me share with you an anecdote on this subject.

The last group debate of “Firing Line” that Bill Buckley did was on the merits of the ACLU. Held at Bard College several years ago, I was one of the participants on Bill’s side. The upstate New York college has a reputation for being cutting-edge radical, so it was not surprising that when ACLU president Nadine Strossen attacked me for being against sex education, the earrings-in-the-nose crowd smirked. But their smile didn’t last long: I quickly informed them that I was not unequivocally opposed to sex education (there are responsible curricula available), and then I hit them with a question that literally wiped the smile off their faces. I asked them why, if restraint is so bad, do they spend so much time going to funerals. There wasn’t a peep.

Sexual license—the very opposite of what the Catholic Church teaches—kills. It kills psychologically, socially, spiritually and physically. For instance, the reason why legions of heterosexuals and heterosexuals wind up with sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) is because they don’t value restraint. As a result, some die young. Which explains the funerals.

Of all the killer STDs, none is worse than AIDS. But like all other STDs, it is (with some exceptions) behaviorally induced; promiscuous drug use, especially when combined with dirty needles, and reckless sex, straight or gay, accounts for most of the AIDS cases. It follows that because the disease is behaviorally induced, it is behaviorally preventable. Those who don’t take drugs are not going to get AIDS. Those who don’t engage in dangerous sex acts, and those who don’t sleep around, are not going to get AIDS. But those who rebel against an ethos of sexual reticence are not so lucky—they are precisely the ones who suffer. It really isn’t too hard to figure out.

The reason we have AIDS, and other STDs, is because we have made restraint a dirty word. So instead of telling people to slam on their brakes, we counsel research, technology and education. Never mind that all three have proven to be a monumental failure, and that only a return to Catholic sexual ethics will save us from ourselves, our society appears to have learned absolutely nothing.

In 2006, the U.S. spent an average of $48 per diabetes patient on research. We spent $144 for those suffering from Alzheimer’s and $154 for those suffering from Parkinson’s. For AIDS patients, we spent $3,084. And what are we told is the answer to AIDS? More research. The tragedy is that those with Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s did nothing voluntarily to cause their malady.

Technology, in the form of condoms, pills and the like, are also supposed to save us. But they never do, and no one has demonstrated this better than Edward C. Green, director of the AIDS Prevention Research Project at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies.

In a piece he recently co-authored in First Things, Green concluded that “In every African country in which HIV infections have declined, this decline has been associated with a decrease in the proportion of men and women reporting more than one sex partner over the course of a year—which is exactly what fidelity programs promote.” He adds, “The other behavior that has often been associated with a decline in HIV prevalence is a decrease in premarital sex among young people.” As for the utility of condoms reducing HIV/AIDS, he properly calls it a “myth.”

In other words, in countries like Uganda, which have adopted Catholic sexual ethics, AIDS is declining. In the wealthy and well-educated countries in southern Africa, where condoms are promoted and restraint is shunned, AIDS is taking a terrible toll. Which raises the question: Why are the educated so dumb?

In 1987, six years after AIDS was discovered, gay journalist Randy Shilts wrote a provocative and startling honest book about the gay lifestyle. He said that the two segments of the homosexual community who refused to change their behavior were the most educated and those who frequented the bathhouses. The latter was easy to understand—it was in the bathhouses were lethal sex practices occurred. But the well educated? Shilts said it was their sense of invincibility that led them not to change.

The learned ones still don’t get it. Thanks to a recent national study of STDs among young girls, we know that approximately 20 percent of white teenage girls and 50 percent of African-American teenage girls are infected with at least one of four STDs. The situation is so sick that in Leflore County, Mississippi, health officials are offering 9-year-olds vaccines for the most common STD, the human papillomavirus.

In response to this study, Chicago talk-radio host Laura Berman spoke for many when she said, “we as a country have allowed our school system to limit sex education in the classroom.” Really? Never before have more boys and girls learned at such a young age the entire panoply of the sexual experience, including practices that are as dangerous as they are disgusting. Never before have more young people been indoctrinated with the most “value-free” propaganda about the wonders of condoms, pills and other devices. And yet the rates of STDs continue to skyrocket.

The entire failure of “progressive” sex education started in Sweden in the 1950s, and it was instituted at a time when illegitimacy rates were declining; they’ve been cresting ever since. In short, when adolescents knew the least about sex, they engaged the least in it. Now that they’ve all become sexual Einsteins, they’re burdened with unwanted pregnancies, abortions and diseases. Does this mean that the answer is to keep kids ignorant? No. It means that sex education programs must stress the 3 “R’s”—responsibility, respect and restraint; they should also stress that the proper context is the institution of marriage.

If you really want to see stupidity at work, consider New York City. In 2006, the government gave away 17 million free condoms. The result? The rate of syphilis went through the roof (in that same year, the rates of chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis nationwide broke all previous records). So what did New York City do last year? It more than redoubled its efforts: it distributed 36 million free condoms. By the way, it also embarked on a new advertising campaign, the theme of which is “Get Some.”

The biggest losers in this totally mindless sex-crazed crusade are young women. Think about it. What segment of society has always been the most irresponsible—in any society? Young men. They account for more violence and predatory behavior than other demographic group. And who are their sexual victims? Young women. So when government workers are telling guys on the street corner to “Get Some,” we shouldn’t be surprised if they do just that. Without their trusty condoms, it needs to be said.

And why, if condoms are so available, do matters not improve? Several years ago I debated a health official on the “Today Show” about this issue. He made the point that laboratory studies show that if used properly, condoms can save lives and stop unwanted pregnancies. He had no response when I told him that the real laboratory was the back seat of a Chevy. He looked positively dumbfounded when I said that the Centers for Disease Control says there are about 15 steps that must be taken for condoms to work, and that the average teenage boy doesn’t have enough discipline to do his homework on time—never mind faithfully execute the 15 steps.

So what is the answer? We didn’t get kids to stop smoking by simply preaching abstinence in the classroom. We got Hollywood to stop glorifying smoking. When I was growing up, TV talk-show hosts and their guests smoked on the air, and there was hardly a detective or a bad guy in a drama who didn’t light up as well. Now almost no one is seen smoking. If Hollywood exercised half as much restraint in dealing with sexuality—from TV commercials to the big screen—we wouldn’t be drowning our kids in this sexual swampland.

The only way to curtail the negative consequences of promiscuity is to deal with sexuality the way we’ve dealt with smoking, and that means a full-court press involving every segment of society. Right now we are sexually engineering young people from K-12, using sexual situations in advertisements, television, newspapers, magazines and movies to lure them. Indeed, we have eroticized the culture to such an extent that it would be mind-boggling if we didn’t suffer from a surfeit of sexually driven problems.

Hollywood and Madison Avenue, of course, are not likely to cooperate. The cultural and corporate mavens are infinitely more concerned about the effects of second-hand smoke and trans fats than they are illegitimacy, abortion and disease. As long as the sex is consensual, they preach, that’s all that matters. But bribery, the drug market, prostitution and dueling are all consensual acts, yet we outlaw them all, never mind fail to give our blessings to them. In other words, consent is not an absolute moral good.

In short, Catholic sexual ethics is what works. What doesn’t work is the rejection of it. Because the evidence is so clear that the current approach—the one that stresses research, technology and education—has done nothing but increase sexual problems of all sorts, it is incumbent on Catholics to stand up and proudly promote Catholic teachings on this subject.