Michael McDonald, communications director in the news (NH JOURNAL):
“Christopher Columbus is a symbol of the important role Catholics have played in this country going back to before the founding,” READ MORE HERE
Catholic League president Bill Donohue questions why some black leaders are championing abortion for blacks:
White supremacists have always championed population control for blacks, whether it be in the form of birth control or abortion. Today this cause is being led by black Congresswomen.
Last month, 20 black Congresswomen—all Democrats—led by Rep. Ayanna Pressley, wrote a letter to President Biden pleading with him to address the impact of abortion restrictions on black women (note: they incorrectly used the term “pregnant people,” implying men can get pregnant). Anticipating the reversal of Roe v. Wade, they said this decision “will be devastating” to black women.
The effects of abortion on the unborn child—sudden death—was not the problem. The alleged “increase in maternal deaths” was the problem. Thus did they slice and dice this issue.
This week, Pressely went further, stating that the pro-life movement is “rooted in white supremacy.” She is factually wrong: it is the pro-abortion movement that has been “rooted in white supremacy” all along.
Margaret Sanger founded Planned Parenthood for the purpose of decreasing the black population. She was a white supremacist, par excellence. Initially, Planned Parenthood focused on birth control, but it eventually became the major driver of abortion in the United States.
Sanger was a eugenicist who shared the identical mindset of the Nazis. She sought to extinguish those “meaningless, aimless lives which cram this world of ours…. Such human weeds clog up the path, drain up the energies and the resources of this little earth.”
Who she had in mind is incontestable—she meant blacks. They were the “undesirables” in need of being “weed[ed] out.” Her eugenicist journal, Birth Control Review, boasted that “Many of the colored citizens are fine specimens of humanity.” Thus did she sound very much like a slavemaster at an auction.
Not all blacks, however, were a choice cut. “A good share of them, however, constitute a large percentage of Kalamazoo’s human scrap pile.” This was written in 1932, the year before Hitler took over in Germany. In fact, Sanger published several articles by Nazi officials; they were dealing with the “human scrap pile” of Jews on their way to the concentration camps.
Edwin Black wrote an influential book about Sanger’s contribution to the eugenics movement, War Against the Weak. While he defended her against her critics, he admitted that she “surrounded herself with some of the eugenics movement’s most outspoken racists and white supremacists.” She also “openly welcomed” racists and anti-Semites into “the birth control movement.”
The ruling class has long supported Sanger, especially the Rockefellers. In 1972, John D. Rockefeller presented President Richard Nixon with a report arguing that “if blacks could have the number of children they want and no more, their fertility and that of the majority white population would be very similar.” This was the polite WASP way of dealing with the “urban problem.”
What has since changed is the advent of black Congresswomen joining the white supremacist cause of decreasing the black population. It’s working: In 2020, 86% of Planned Parenthood’s clinics were located in or near minority neighborhoods. Moreover, in the CDC’s latest report on abortion, it found that the abortion rate for blacks (38.4 percent) was higher than that of whites (33.4 percent) or Hispanics (21.0 percent). Blacks are approximately 13 percent of the population.
When I taught in Spanish Harlem in the 1970s, I was able to tell my black and Puerto Rican students that Rev. Jesse Jackson called abortion “black genocide.” But like almost all pro-life Democrats in the 1970s, Jackson became a pro-abortion advocate.
Rep. Pressley is not only ignorant of history—she has become an existential threat to the health and safety of African Americans. How ironic that she is now on the same side as the Klan.
Contact Pressley’s press secretary: mae.eldahshoury@mail.house.gov
Catholic League president Bill Donohue sent the following letter today to the FBI:
July 12, 2022
Mr. Douglas Williams
Special Agent in Charge
Federal Bureau of Investigation
New Orleans Field Office
2901 Leon C. Simon Boulevard
New Orleans, LA 70126
Dear Special Agent Williams:
As president of the nation’s largest Catholic civil rights organization, I am inquiring about the Federal Bureau of Investigation looking into alleged sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of New Orleans. Particularly, I am interested in why the decision to open this investigation was made.
News reports say that the FBI probe extends back decades, seeking to find instances of priests who may have taken minors across state lines to molest them. One of the accused under investigation is a 90-year old former priest who was kicked out of ministry.
I’m sorry, but this doesn’t pass the smell test.
Having written a book on this subject, The Truth about Clergy Sexual Abuse: Clarifying the Facts and the Causes, I can assure you that wherever adults and minors interact there will always be some individuals who will take advantage of this situation. This is nothing unique to the Catholic Church, and indeed it is a serious problem in the public schools today.
In fact, this has long since been a problem in the Catholic Church. In the last annual report on this issue (the 2021 report), conducted by an independent organization, the data show that there were exactly 6 substantiated accusations made against the 48,856 members of the Catholic clergy. That comes to .01 percent.
I defy anyone to find a single organization in the nation, secular or religious, which has less of a problem with this issue today than the Catholic Church. Which begs the question: Why has the FBI decided to focus its attention today on the alleged misdeeds of a Catholic diocese many decades ago?
Are we to believe that young people were not taken across state lines a half-century ago by men who were not priests—in Louisiana as well as in the other 49 states? Are we to believe that this is not happening right now at our southern border?
I would appreciate hearing from you about this matter. I can assure you that we are committed to getting to the bottom of it.
Sincerely,
William A. Donohue, Ph.D.
President
cc: Director Christopher Wray, Federal Bureau of Investigation
Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on the legacy of “The Playboy Philosophy”:
Hugh Hefner founded Playboy in 1953 and cleverly sought the support of the ruling class. He wanted to break new ground, creating a girly magazine that featured distinguished public figures, including those in government, law, education, finance, the arts, the media, music, entertainment, acting, sports, and the corporate world. By drawing on celebrities, business tycoons and the literati, he made Playboy respectable.
If the magazine was seen as respectable, Hefner was anything but. He had sex with men, women and dogs. He was accused of raping multiple women, forcing some to have an abortion, and got “Deep Throat” star Linda Lovelace so high on alcohol and drugs that he and his Playboy Mansion guests got her to perform oral sex on a German Shepherd.
If all Hefner did was to live the life of a pervert, that wouldn’t have had such a societal effect. What did have a lasting effect were the several installments of “The Playboy Philosophy.” It was launched almost 60 years ago in December 1962.
Hefner came from what he called a “very repressed” Christian family, blaming his Protestant parents for this condition. He set out to rectify the problem by attacking religion, using “The Playboy Philosophy” as his weapon.
Hefner believed that man was born free and without original sin. He prized the individual, calling him “the all important element in our society.” Christians, of course, believe that the family is “the all important element in our society.” Predictably, he believed that “Group good should not be allowed to overshadow individual good.”
We get a closer look at what motivated Hefner to found Playboy when we learn what he thought the goal of society should be. He could have chosen justice, the common good, liberty or equality, but instead he said, “the primary goal of society should be individual happiness.”
By happiness, not surprisingly, he meant pleasure. “Happiness and pleasure are mental and physical states of being and society should emphasize the positive aspects of both.” It would be hard to find a more anti-Christian philosophical statement than this.
Hefner was prone to caricature his foes, especially people of faith. “This nonsense about the body of man being evil, while the mind and spirit are good, seems quite preposterous to most of us today.” But whoever said the body was evil? It is true that his Christian critics often said he debased the human spirit with his fixation on sex, and indeed degraded men and women in the process, but that is a far cry from saying they believed the body was evil.
The founder of Playboy also attributed to his critics the belief that “nudity and obscenity [are] nearly synonymous.” This was typical of “The Playboy Philosophy”—passing off baseless assertions as truth. He further maintained that “a satisfactory definition of obscenity can never be established.” Spoken like a man who was a master of moral relativism. No wonder he spoke with utter derision about laws based on Christianity and Judaism that forbid incest and bestiality [this may explain his interactions with Fido].
Hefner rightly saw in Christianity, especially Catholicism, a sexual ethic that is the antithesis of “The Playboy Philosophy.” He claimed there was not enough separation of church and state and that freedom from religion was being neglected. As usual, he was given to overstating reality. “Church-state legislation has made common criminals of us all.” His proof? Alfred Kinsey, the sex creep who allowed children to be sexually abused in his research undertakings.
Finally, “The Playboy Philosophy” treated selflessness as a sin. “We oppose the tendency to meaningless selflessness in our present society”; he singled out self-sacrifice and self-denial for condemnation.
Hefner’s obsession with satisfying primordial individual appetites did not allow him to appreciate that selflessness is a virtue, one that is best expressed when we sacrifice for the good of others. Mother Teresa exemplified this virtue better than anyone.
For Hefner, there was nothing more important than happiness, which he defined as pleasure. Therefore selflessness was seen as irrational. This juvenile understanding of the human condition colored much of his thinking.
Moral decline in America is the result of many factors, but only a fool would conclude that “The Playboy Philosophy” did not contribute to it.
The following article was written by the Catholic League communications director Michael P. McDonald:
While National Public Radio’s (NPR) decision to break with its thirty-plus-year tradition of reading the Declaration of Independence on the 4th of July to discuss Critical Race Theory has drawn the ire of many commentators, on the very same day, NPR, using the taxpayers’ dollars, ran a more pernicious segment on “the importance of inclusion in sex education.”
In the course of its reporting, NPR assaulted parental rights, promoted pleasure-oriented sex education, and downplayed the dangers of sexually transmitted diseases (STD). Any radio station advocating for such harmful ideas should run the risk of losing its broadcast license, but for NPR to do so with public funding goes beyond the pale.
To frame this conversation, NPR host Leila Fadel began by attacking parental rights. Fadel noted that on July 1st Florida’s Parental Rights in Education law went into effect. Rather than using its proper name, she labeled it the “don’t say gay law.” Moreover, Fadel said the whole point of the Florida law, and similar legislation proposed in other states, is “to restrict the rights of LGBTQ youth.”
A fairer analysis would have pointed out that the Florida law aims to protect young children from inappropriate instruction about sex while also empowering parents to have more control over what their children learn about this subject. However, these facts only get in the way of rehashing trite partisan talking points.
NPR’s “Life Kit” reporter Lilly Quiroz spoke with “sexuality educator Milena Gioconda Davis,” who told the audience that sex “would be, like, pleasure-oriented experiences or interactions that involve some sort of arousal.”
Quiroz also interviewed Ericka Hart, “a sexuality educator with a focus in racial, social, and gender justice.” She, too, believes that sex education should be pleasure-oriented. She argued that “young people should explore their genitals” so that they can “say, like, this is what feels good for my body—right?—and this is what doesn’t feel good for my body.”
If this was not harmful enough, the segment ended with an effort to remove the “stigma” associated with STDs. For this, Quiroz brought back Gioconda Davis to explain that the idea that STDs “make you dirty…is just a terrible lie. And also…if you get an [STD], your sex life is over. Like, no—most [STDs] are curable or treatable, and it doesn’t have to be, like, this mark of shame.”
This is not even sound advice, and nothing about it is educational. Rather than teach children that STDs can cause irreparable harm—even death—and the best way to avoid STDs is to practice abstinence, NPR would rather focus on removing the stigma associated with these diseases.
NPR grew out of a movement in the early 20th century to use radio broadcasts to help educate local communities and provide a public service. Today, it appears that NPR has entirely abandoned this calling.
At no point in this segment did NPR offer anything of educational value. Instead, it used the American taxpayers’ hard-earned dollars to attack the rights of parents, promote pleasure-oriented sexual education, and downplay the dangers of STDs. It did all of this on our dime. It is past time to defund NPR.
Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on how being pro-Christian is being interpreted as being anti-gay:
The media, educators, activists, and government figures are increasingly branding those who hold to a Christian understanding of marriage—the union between a man and a woman—as being anti-gay. Unable to persuade rationally, they resort to labeling Christian sexual ethics (which was taken from Judaism) as an expression of bigotry. This is flagrantly obscene.
This sick game has been going on for some time. Here’s a short list of examples.
It’s gotten so bad that even a conservative newspaper, the New York Post, calls anyone who believes in traditional marriage “anti-gay.”
Most of these zealots would ban the Bible if they could. Perversely, they are the ones who are acting like bigots, not faithful Christians.
We don’t call those who disagree with Catholicism “anti-Catholic.” We reserve that appellation for people like Trevor Noah and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, both of whom earned their stripes by making patently anti-Catholic comments. Gay writers and sympathizers ought to be just as careful in discussing Christians who simply hold to traditional views of marriage.
Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on a new Pew survey of transgender persons:
As I pointed out in Common Sense Catholicism, higher education corrupts our capacity to exercise common sense. This is most glaringly obvious among white people; they have spent more time in school than blacks. The latest Pew Research Center survey on transgender persons unwittingly offers more proof of this observation.
Respondents were asked whether being a man or a woman “is determined by sex assigned at birth” or if it “can be different from sex assigned at birth.”
This inaccurately worded question, written by well-educated researchers, underscores my point about the corrupting power of higher education.
Sex is never assigned—it is determined by the father and is detectable during pregnancy. If it were assigned there could be no “gender reveal” parties (this is also inaccurate—it is the baby’s sex that is being revealed by technology, not his or her gender).
It would be more accurate to say that our sex is recorded, not assigned, at birth; the person doing the officiating is simply validating the obvious.
Most important, our sex cannot change. It’s impossible. We are either conceived as a male or a female and no amount of cross dressing, puberty blockers, chemical castration and genital mutilation can ever change that.
Still, it is amazing to read that 38 percent of those surveyed believe our sex can change. Who are these people?
Predictably, whites, who have stayed in school the longest, are the most gullible: 38 percent say we can change our sex. Blacks have more common sense: only 31 percent believe it can be changed.
Young people have the least common sense, which is why they are split 50-50 on this issue. They are also the most likely to have been indoctrinated in the fantasies of gender ideology.
The survey conclusively shows that the longer one stays in school, the less common sense he is likely to have.
Those with a high school education or less turned out to be the brightest: 33 percent believe our sex can change; the figure for those with some college is 39 percent; it jumps to 45 percent among the most educated (bachelor’s degree or more). No doubt those with graduate degrees are the dumbest, with those in the humanities and social sciences leading the way.
Higher education is supposed to make us brighter. It is supposed to encourage us to look at data and be persuaded by empirical evidence. It is supposed to develop our ability to reason and think logically. Instead, it is disabling our mental faculties, leaving us prone to ideological whims.
The time has come for college students to learn how to think in a commonsensical manner. They need to be tutored by working-class men and women who have not gone beyond high school. Maybe then the “well educated” would know the difference between a man and a woman.
Catholic League Forum is a weekly Q&A discussion between Catholic League president Bill Donohue and director of communications Mike McDonald on contemporary issues of interest to the Catholic community. This week, Bill and Mike discuss three recent rulings from the Supreme Court that are victories for school choice, life, and religious liberty. To watch click here.
This is our last weekly episode of the Forum until fall 2022. However, we may release periodic videos that deal with breaking news issues. We will keep you notified of these videos throughout the summer.
Have a happy summer!
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican from Georgia, recently insulted Catholics when she said, “Satan’s controlling the Church.” Bill Donohue quickly called on her to be sanctioned by her colleagues in the House of Representatives.
Below is the text of the letter Donohue sent to Rep. Theodore E. Deutch, Chairman of the House Ethics Committee and Rep. Jackie Walorski, Ranking Member of the Committee; a copy was sent to every member of the Committee.
As president of the nation’s largest Catholic civil rights organization, I am requesting that you levy sanctions against Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene for her virulent anti-Catholicism.
On April 21, Greene was interviewed by Michael Voris, the head of Church Militant. In their discussion about the role of Catholic Charities working with immigrants, Greene said the Catholic Church was run by Satan.
Here is what she said. “I thought we had a separation of church and state, right? No, what it is, is Satan’s controlling the church.”
I asked for an apology and she publicly said there would be none. She responded by saying that her sweeping condemnation of the entire Catholic Church was meant only to apply to the bishops, as if that makes her hate speech acceptable.
Greene has a history of offending African Americans and Jews, so bigotry is something that is apparently baked into her.
The time has come for her to be either reprimanded or censured. Her irresponsible behavior has already caused her to be removed from committee assignments. Accordingly, her burst of anti-Catholicism now demands stronger sanctions against her.
Greene responded with boilerplate. She said she wanted Donohue to apologize to her and that he should have had someone from his office contact her before making accusations.
Greene was raised Catholic, left the Church and became an evangelical. She is an embittered ex-Catholic.
News of the clash between her and Donohue was widely picked up by the media. It made the front page of Yahoo! twice in one day.
We are well aware that Greene has a pro-life voting record and that she has been good to veterans, etc. But we cannot, and will not, allow anyone to tell us that the Catholic Church is run by Satan and get away with it. No one gets a pass when they slander the Church. (See p. 3 for more on this issue.)
We live in a time when elites are not content to simply disagree with others: they go for the jugular. The politics of personal destruction has now been extended to the politics of institutional destruction. Whether it is the Catholic Church, or the Supreme Court, that some want to malign, they must be answered with vigor.
“Roe says what all basic mainstream religions have historically concluded—that the right—that the existence of a human life and being is a question. Is it at the moment of conception? Is it six months? Is it six weeks?”
That’s what President Biden said following word that a draft of the Roe v. Wade decision had been leaked to the press.
Bill Donohue released the following statement to the media: “What ‘basic mainstream religions’ have to say about when life begins is interesting, but it should not be controlling. What matters is what science says. We have known for a long time that life begins at conception.”
Donohue said that people can debate all they want about when “personhood” begins, but they must be careful lest they slide down the eugenics slope.
The ultimate issue, he said, is this: “If what develops at fertilization proceeds undisturbed, the result many months later will be a baby boy or girl. Just as important, all of the characteristics that constitute the uniqueness of this new life were there from the time of conception. This is Biology 101.”
We are proud to note that the Catholic Church does not follow the science—it has been well out in front of it. There is no more “question” about when life begins: the answer is there for anyone not living in a state of delusion.
Biden’s biology is flawed. He needs to get up to speed.