The German Bishops’ conference has issued a document to be implemented in Catholic schools that rejects the Church’s teachings on sexuality. Gone is the teaching that there are but two sexes, male and female. The bishops, with three exceptions, teach that there is a “diversity of sexual identities.” Not only that, they falsely claim it is a “fact,” rooted in science.

Should teachers address a boy named Sam, who now claims he is a girl named Sue, as Sam or Sue? The bishops say teachers should use language that reflects “the diversity of sexual identities,” allowing students to make their own judgments. So the right answer is “Sue.”

This division in the Catholic Church is taking place at a time when Pope Leo XIV embarked on his first international trip, the purpose of which was a call for unity in the Christian world. He has his hands full.

Leo has already affirmed Church teachings on sexuality, saying the family is founded on the “stable union between a man and a woman. When he was the bishop of Peru he spoke against the idea that there is a “diversity of sexual identities,” which is what gender ideology holds to be true.

“The idea of promoting gender ideology is confusing because it seeks to create genders that don’t exist. God created man and woman, and the attempts to confuse ideas about nature will only harm families and people.”

This is consistent with what the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches. “God created man in his own image…male and female he created them.”

Leo’s predecessor, Pope Francis, was even more blunt. He once referred to gender ideology as “demonic.” In his 2016 exhortation, Amoris Laetitia, he wrote, “We cannot separate the masculine and the feminine from God’s work of creation,” saying the “biological elements” are “impossible to ignore.”

In 2019, the Vatican’s Congregation for Catholic Education issued an authoritative document, “Male and Female: He Created Them.” It said that gender ideology “denies the difference and reciprocity in nature of a man and a woman and envisages a society without sexual differences, thereby eliminating the anthropological basis of the family.”

In 2024, the Vatican Declaration on Human Dignity, Dignitas Infinita, underscored Church teachings on this subject. It said gender ideology “is extremely dangerous since it cancels differences in its claim to make everyone equal.” Similarly, this ideology “intends to deny the greatest possible difference that exists between living beings: sexual difference.”

Let’s pray that the German bishops find their way back.

Bill Donohue

Zohran Mamdani took over as mayor of New York City on January 1. In December, he chose someone just like himself—a unrepentant radical—to join his transition team, so it is likely we will be hearing more about him.

Alex Vitale and I have some things in common: we both have doctorates in sociology, have taught courses on criminology, and have written extensively on the subject. But that’s where the similarities end: I like cops and he hates them.

This wouldn’t mean much if he never left his Brooklyn College classroom. But once Mamdani put him in charge of public safety issues, we decided to give him a closer look.

Vitale is the author of The End of Policing, and a study guide that accompanies his book. The latter is the basis of my analysis of his work.

In Chapter 1, we learn that “racial profiling is still endemic.” He sees that as a problem. That’s funny—this was never an issue for Rev. Jesse Jackson. “There is nothing more painful for me at this stage of my life than to walk down a street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery—then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved.”

What Jackson understood intuitively is borne out in the statistics. In 2021, black New Yorkers were 24 percent of the population, but they made up 65 percent of those murdered in 2020 and 74 percent of the shooting victims. Just as important, the typical victimizer was also black.

Chapter 2 informs the reader that “police do not prevent crime.” But if he were right, then NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch would not have been able to drive down the crime rate. She did it by deploying more police to high crime areas. Of course, he wants to defund the police, as does Mamdani. They even want to abolish the prisons.

The problem for them is that blacks want nothing to do with their anarchic ideas. In 2020, when the “defund the police” movement was surging, 79 percent of blacks nationwide who said they had had an interaction with the police in the past year said they wanted the police to spend the same amount of time—or more time—in their neighborhood.

Cops don’t belong in the schools. That’s what we learn in Chapter 3. He calls their presence “damaging.” Yet a study published two years ago by the University of Albany found that police in the schools reduced fights and threats by 30 percent and increased detection of firearms by 150 percent. He also says that the money saved by moving cops out of the schools “could be given to schools directly to build a better academic program.” If he were sincere, he would endorse charter schools and school choice initiatives, but he doesn’t.

In Chapter 4, Vitale argues that the reason why the police don’t work effectively with mentally ill offenders is because they are “trained to view every scenario as a potentially deadly one.” Thank God for that. Only someone hopelessly naïve would confront a suspected violent offender—mentally acute or disabled—with a relaxed attitude.

Chapter 5 tells instructors that the police don’t work well with the homeless because of “a lack of compassion.” Really? I see cops interact with the homeless every day in New York—my office is across the street from Penn Station—and I have never once seen a cop mishandle, or be rude to, the homeless.

Vitale shows his compassion by endorsing “drop-in centers and emergency shelters” for the homeless, but even here he fails the test. Showing his radically secular stripes, he insists the caregivers must be “nonreligious.” In other words, he wants to discriminate against the clergy.

The next two chapters are on prostitution and drugs, respectively. Naturally, he wants to decriminalize both. Vitale needs to visit Jackson Heights, a Queens neighborhood that has been overrun by street prostitution, drugs, robberies, and muggings, and tell the residents that their quality of life is peachy keen.

In Chapter 8, we learn that “gang suppression” is the problem, not gangs themselves. So how do we deal with gangs? Vitale promotes “restorative justice.” This is a “nonpunitive” measure that in practice means having social workers talk to the thugs.

Chapter 9 targets “border patrolling.” He wants it to end. His entire focus is on the “rights” of those who have crashed our borders and have committed unspeakable crimes. He needs to meet with the surviving crime victims of illegal aliens.

Chapter 10 contends that “The threat of potential violence or destruction of property is not a sufficient excuse” for police violating the First Amendment rights of “protesters.” He cites what happened in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014. What he did not say is that these “protesters” went on a violent rampage after a robbery suspect got into an altercation with the police—he assaulted a cop, reached for his gun, resisted arrest, and was then killed after charging the officer.

I challenged him to a debate, but he never responded. Typical.

It is not just Vitale who is a menace to New York. Mamdani has chosen several left-wing activists to work on safety issues, and every one of them share the same anti-cop attitude.

No matter, we are tracking everything that Mamdani, and his staff, do, and we will not hold back in confronting them. Look for a section on the front page of our website, “Mamdani Watch.” We are going to be very busy in 2026.

Bill Donohue

Chubb Insurance is the largest publicly traded property and casualty insurance company in the world, valued at approximately $115 billion. “We stand behind the promises we make to conceive, craft and deliver exceptional insurance coverage and service, and to pay our claims fairly and quickly.” That’s how it describes its organizational culture.

Anyone who knows anything about the way it has handled clergy abuse claims against the New York Archdiocese knows this is patently false. Quite frankly, it is a master of delaying, denying and defending its services, and this is hardly confined to Catholics. More about Chubb in a moment. First, this issue must be looked at in context.

The clergy sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church took place largely between the mid-1960s and the mid-1980s. It occurred for reasons I detailed in my book, The Truth about Clergy Sexual Abuse: Clarifying the Facts and the Causes. Because of a law in New York State that allows the accused to file a lawsuit, regardless of how long ago the alleged abuse took place, claims against the archdiocese have mounted over the years.

This has now come to a head. On December 8, the New York Archdiocese announced it was raising at least $300 million to negotiate settlements that would benefit some 1,300 people who contend that they were abused as minors. To pay for this, the archdiocese reduced its operating budget by 10 percent, fired staff, and sold “significant real estate assets,” including its headquarters at 1011 First Avenue. The building was sold last year for more than $100 million.

The alleged cases date back to World War II. No other organization, secular or religious, has been subjected to anything like this, the most egregious example being the New York City public schools, where the sexual abuse of minors is ongoing. This is not a coincidence. There are ideological and financial motives for going after the Catholic Church.

One of the lawyers suing the archdiocese today is Jeffrey Anderson. He once admitted that his goal was “suing the [expletive]” out of the Catholic Church. In fact, he has made hundreds of millions of dollars doing exactly that.

Chubb is also compromised. It simply wants to cash its checks and move on. Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Archbishop of New York, isn’t fooled. Here is what he said on October 1, 2024.

“It has always been our wish to expeditiously settle all meritorious claims. However, Chubb, for decades our primary insurance company, even though we have paid over $2 billion in premium by today’s standards, is now attempting to evade their legal and moral contractual obligation to settle covered claims which would bring peace and healing to victim-survivors.”

Chubb is still reneging on its responsibilities. It says the archdiocese’s policy covers accidents, “but does not provide compensation for knowingly allowing a pattern of abuse to persist for many years.” This is a sanitized way of saying what it has previously said with greater bluntness.

Chubb has said that it is not obligated to settle claims against the archdiocese because the abuse of victims was “expected or intended.” This is an outrageous lie. Indeed, it intentionally maligns Cardinal Dolan’s predecessors, effectively saying that people like Cardinal John O’Connor deliberately intended to harm children. That would make them evil.

What is truly evil is what Chubb is alleging.

I worked with Cardinal O’Connor for many years. He was one of the greatest priests I ever met. Not only was he kind and responsible, he reached out to his staff, lay and clergy alike, who were going through a rough patch, offering the services they needed. He never willfully sought to hurt anyone, and this certainly included children. To imply otherwise is a vicious smear on his character.

Chubb’s position is morally indefensible and legally spurious. It is not only feeding anti-Catholicism, it is making mince meat out of its purported interest in standing by its promises. It is just as preposterous to argue that it is “delivering exceptional insurance coverage and service,” paying its claims “fairly and quickly.” Just the opposite is true.

It is one thing for an insurance company to balk on its financial commitments; it is quite another when it imputes vile motives to its carriers, and this is doubly true when it is aimed at the Catholic Church. Its credibility is shot.

The FBI still needs to answer more questions about the would-be Trump assassin. Here is the text of a letter written by Bill Donohue on Nov. 24 to Rep. Pat Fallon and Rep. Mike Kelly about this issue.

Thank you for speaking out about the less-than-candid information that has been disclosed regarding Thomas Crooks, the man who attempted to assassinate President Trump. You have both noted the shortcomings of the FBI disclosures on this subject, and have called for a new probe.

On November 20, FBI Director Kash Patel and FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino were interviewed by Fox News reporters and they said the evidence was clear that Crooks acted alone and that there was no foreign involvement of any kind. This is good news, but it does not answer all outstanding questions.

The Catholic League urges you to call for a new investigation. While there are many aspects to this case, what concerns us most are the details about Crooks’ sexual identity and like interests.

Patel says there is “no evidence” of his involvement with those who run in trans circles. That may be but it does not empty our concerns.

He was living with a man who was in the process of transitioning from male to female, and he himself identified as “they/them.” He had a “muscle mommy fetish” and was also attracted to the “furry” community, people who identify as animals and who are sexually attracted to them. None of this is normal.

We are well aware of the travails of those who are caught up in these sexual lifestyles, and of the violence that marks their behavior. We are also aware of calculated efforts to keep the public in the dark about this matter.

Without full knowledge of what motivated Crooks, we will not be in a position to check the behavior of those who share his profile.

Transgender Day of Remembrance was held on November 20. According to GLAAD, the gay rights organization, it is “an annual commemoration of those whose lives were lost in acts of anti-transgender violence.” What they don’t say is that most of the violence against these people is being committed by other trans people. They would have the public believe that they are being killed by hate-filled heterosexuals.

Transgender Day of Remembrance honors the memory of Rita Hester, a man who falsely claimed to be a woman; he was killed in 1998. Others who are memorialized antedated the Hester murder. They are Chanelle Pickett, Debbie Forte and Monique Thomas; they were also men who falsely claimed to be women.

The more we know about these murders, all of which occurred in Massachusetts, the less convincing the narrative is that heterosexuals are a threat to the trans community.

After all these years, Hester’s case remains unresolved, but there are clear indications that he was done in by his own. His real name was William Hester; he changed his name when he “transitioned.” The 6-foot, 2-inch man liked to hang out in trans bars in Boston, dressed as a woman. After he left the Silhouette Lounge one evening, he went home to his apartment. Neighbors heard a lot of banging sounds and a loud yell. He was stabbed 20 times.

The police said there were no signs of forced entry, and that “the killer might have known the victim.” This suggests he was murdered by another trans person (they tend to associate with those of the same identity), though everyone is reluctant to draw the obvious conclusion.

Chanelle Pickett’s real name was Roman Pickett. Dubbed a “transsexual” by the Boston Globe, he was strangled to death five hours after he met William C. Palmer Jr. in a Combat Zone bar, located in the redlight district, in 1995. They hooked up at the Playland Café, one of Boston’s well-known “transsexual pick-up bars.” They smoked crack cocaine before heading to Palmer’s bedroom, where they had sex.

A jury found Palmer guilty of assault and battery, but not murder. He told the court he did not know Pickett was trans. But this account was shot down by several others, including Pickett’s brother, who also falsely claimed to be a woman. They said he was a frequent customer at the trans bar. Moreover, six trans people came forward admitting they had sex with him, and two of them testified against him.

Debbie Forte’s real name was John J. Forte Jr. He was dressed as a woman the night he was murdered by Michael Thompson in 1995. The killer said they were “messing around” and after he discovered Forte had a penis, he killed him. There is no evidence to the contrary.

Monique Thomas’ real name was Rufus Thomas. He was killed by George Stallings two months before Hester was murdered by asphyxiation. His body was found next to his bed. That does not appear to be a coincidence. We know that after he was sexually abused by a family member growing up, he became confused about his sexuality.

In other words, in three of the four most heralded cases where a trans person was killed—they are the basis of Transgender Day of Remembrance—the killer was apparently a trans person himself. And since we know that most of the violence against trans people today is an inside job, the day of remembrance should focus on the violence within their own community.

Bill Donohue

Christianity in the Crosshairs is available from TAN Books at tanbooks.com. Type the name of the book in the search engine at the top of the page and get 50% off with the coupon code CGS50.

Amazon is currently sold out but is taking orders that will ship next month. It is also available from Barnes & Noble, Target and other booksellers online.

The average Joe spends his time at work, and with his family and friends. He may vote, but politics is not his passion. He basically wants to be left alone. But the ruling class—the decision makers who run our institutions—won’t let him. They are interested in getting him to do what they think is in his best interest. They don’t need to consult him, and that is because they know better.

Radical intellectuals and activists are just as arrogant, and just as intrusive. They entertain grandiose plans about socially engineering society, and they have all sorts of plans on how to steer the average Joe. Just like the ruling class, they feel confident in making decisions for him.

What unites the ruling class and radicals is power. They lust for it. Why? Their goal is to control the average Joe, getting him to dance to their every beat. But he is not easy to control, and that is because his primary allegiances are to his family and religion. If they can pry him away from the grip of his family and religion, there is a good chance he will find a sense of community with them. Then they can proceed to implement their vision of the good society.

Standing in their way, more than any other factor, is Christianity. It is committed to the family and traditional moral values, and that is something that makes elites uneasy and radicals unhappy.

It used to be that the ruling class and radicals stood in opposition to each other, but something new has been happening. There has been an alignment of large sectors of the ruling class and radicals. They may still clash, but more often than not they have joined hands. There is one big wrinkle—the success of Donald Trump. It is clear that he has punctured the ruling class bubble (which explains why many hate him). But there are still large sectors of elite decision makers who have broken bread with radical thinkers and activists. They have Christianity in the crosshairs.

The ruling class has almost nothing in common with the average Joe. They are wealthy, well educated and are mostly secularists who devalue, if not disparage, Christianity. President Ronald Reagan knew them well. In a famous speech he gave branding the Soviet Union the “evil empire,” he quoted from C.S. Lewis’s Screwtape Letters. Lewis warned that the greatest evil in the world was being done by the “quiet men,” the clean-cut men who run our institutions.

Yes, it is the “quiet men” who run our institutions that we need to guard against, many of whom have adopted the radical agenda. What they seek was best said by Bill Ivey, a ruling class member who advised Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign in 2016. Speaking of elite Democrats, he said, “we’ve all been quite content to demean government, drop civics and in general conspire to produce an unaware and compliant citizenry.”

That is their goal—to establish a “compliant citizenry.” To achieve this goal they rely on “soft totalitarianism.” Unlike the violence that is practiced by the architects of “hard totalitarianism” (Hitler, Stalin and Mao), they seek to seduce and coax the average Joe to do what they want him to do. Pope Saint John Paul II warned about this development, saying the elites want a subservient population.

Radicals despise religion, in general, harboring a special hatred for Christians. They know that as long as the average Joe lays anchor with his religion, he is not likely to bow to their secular appeals. In some instances, radical activists resort to violence, as in firebombing crisis pregnancy centers. Appeals have also been made by educators and celebrities to shoot Trump supporters.

Their allies in the ruling class are more careful, preferring to unleash the FBI to spy on ordinary Catholics. The Biden administration took direct aim at pro-life Catholics and Protestants, thus doing the dirty work egged on by radical intellectuals and activists.

To be sure, there are good members of the ruling class and there are good intellectuals, professors and activist Americans who seek to make our society better. But there are way too many on the other side, elitists, writers and activists who are working overtime to hurt our country. They have chosen to disable the family and religion because if they succeed in doing so they will be well on their way to securing victory.

The ruling class and radicals want us to despair. Let’s make sure they fail.

Conor Gallagher, CEO of TAN Books (Saint Benedict Press), sat down with Bill Donohue to discuss the mounting cultural and political pressures on Western civilization—and why Christianity remains the primary target. Drawing from his new book, Christianity in the Crosshairs, Bill argues that the West’s understanding of human dignity, liberty, and moral order flows directly from Christianity, and that efforts to marginalize the faith are inseparable from broader attempts to reshape society.

Over the course of the hour-long conversation, Bill also explains:

• The connection between welfare policy and the breakdown of the African-American family
• The vital cultural need for strong fathers
• The role of family life and parenthood in providing meaning in life
• And much more!

To watch, click here.

Bill Donohue discusses his new book, Christianity in the Crosshairs: Ruling Class and Radicals Find a Common Enemy. To watch, click here.

Conor Gallagher, CEO of TAN Books (Saint Benedict Press), sat down with Bill Donohue to discuss the mounting cultural and political pressures on Western civilization—and why Christianity remains the primary target. Drawing from his new book, Christianity in the Crosshairs, Bill argues that the West’s understanding of human dignity, liberty, and moral order flows directly from Christianity, and that efforts to marginalize the faith are inseparable from broader attempts to reshape society. To watch, click here.

Bill Donohue

We live in a world where self-absorption reigns supreme. Accordingly, the concept of self-denial is incomprehensible to most, and an anathema to others. Yet this is what Lent means. It is the most countercultural idea in America, and indeed in the entire Western world. That’s because we’ve lost our moorings, which are grounded in Christianity.

The dominant culture celebrates self-indulgence, not self-denial. Drug users are only one example.

The streets of New York abound in smoke—the sweet smell of marijuana is everywhere. This is also true in many urban areas, as the pace of legalization quickens. Some, like the editorial board of the New York Times, which supported legalization, are now shocked to learn that a record number of Americans are hooked on drugs, jamming hospitals and driving recklessly. Habitual users are psychotic, functioning like zombies. Their non-stop vomiting should be a wake-up call, but it isn’t. This is the cost of “liberation.”

The dominant culture also celebrates gambling, yielding similar results.

We not only can bet on games, we can bet on each play. Bookies have been replaced by phones, and allegiance to the home team is waning as the only thing that matters is winning. Some ballparks, like the home of the Washington Commanders, even have betting stations for fans too bored to simply watch the game. A growing number of young men are addicted to gambling, finding themselves deeper in debt. This is the cost of “liberation.”

Many young women chose sex to satisfy their craving for self-indulgence. If they wind up pregnant, they find their “solution” at a Planned Parenthood clinic. Young promiscuous men are just as irresponsible, looking to medical technology to rid themselves of their self-induced diseases. This is the cost of their “liberation.”

Self-denial is admittedly not easy, and it is more difficult in societies that glamorize self-indulgence. But it is a virtue that actually does liberate.

One way to show someone that we love them is by making sacrifices that redound to their benefit. Making sacrifices requires a degree of self-denial, giving up something to aid someone else. Mother Teresa could not have comforted those in her employ without great sacrifice, and it was her capacity for self-denial that allowed her to prevail.

Like any virtue, self-denial atrophies if it is not practiced, the results of which are inauspicious for everyone. A society that views self-denial as oppressive is nurturing narcissism, not selflessness. Yet that is what we are doing, led, as always, by the ruling class.

Self-indulgence is not only self-destructive, it is ultimately anti-social. We are all affected by those who allow their appetites and passions to conquer them, and that is why it is incumbent on those who occupy mantles of moral authority—clergy, parents and teachers—to welcome Lent, regardless of their religious convictions.