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 give an overview of what the League has done this week including commentaries on the 20th anniversary of the Boston Globe investigation into clergy abuse and a Jesuit priest and former House Chaplain who justified abortion. To watch click here.

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on a Jesuit priest who justifies abortion:

At the turn of the century, I got into a big fight with Republicans over the effort of some evangelical congressmen who were trying to stop the nomination of Fr. Daniel Coughlin as the next House Chaplain. They did not hide their animus against a Catholic priest landing the job for the first time in American history. Many notable Catholics also took the side against Coughlin, saying he was too liberal. I had to fight them as well.

The issue for the Catholic League was plain: regardless of Coughlin’s views, he was clearly a victim of anti-Catholicism, and that is all that mattered to us. Eventually, I won and he became the first Catholic House Chaplain in 2000. Succeeding him was Fr. Pat Conroy, a Jesuit. He left that post in 2019.

Conroy is back in the news, this time for giving the green light to Catholics to be pro-abortion. Much of what he said in a Washington Post interview on January 5 is uninformed, and some of his comments are simply wrong.

“I want to know the American who thinks government should take away their choice in any area of their life—any area of their life (newspaper’s italic).”

That’s not hard to do. Simply read the surveys that reveal the support for Covid lockdowns—millions support allowing the government to take away the choices of citizens. Alternatively, go to Princeton or Yale and interview the administrators who are creating a police state environment in the name of combatting the flu.

Princeton issued an edict on December 27. “Beginning January 8 through mid-February, all undergraduate students who have returned to campus will not be permitted to travel outside of Mercer County or Plainsboro Township for personal reasons, except in extraordinary circumstances.” Yale announced a campus-wide quarantine until February 7, saying students “may not visit New Haven businesses or eat at local restaurants (even outdoors) except for curbside pickup.”

Conroy says, “A good Catholic in our system could be saying: Given women in our system have this constitutional right, our task as fellow Christians, or as Catholics, is to make possible for her to optimize her ability to make the choice.”

Let me pose an analogy, using slavery as the object of choice. “A good Catholic in our system could be saying: Given citizens in our system have this constitutional right [to slavery], our task as fellow Christians, or as Catholics, is to make it possible for them to optimize their ability to make the choice.”

Conroy insists that “a pro-choice Democrat isn’t a pro-abortion person.” Tell that to the pro-abortion protesters who were in the news a few weeks ago holding signs that said, “I Love Someone Who Had An Abortion.”

Similarly, Conroy says about the woman planning to abort her child, “she is the one to make her choice; we should not make it for her.” But choice  is a verb that has no moral meaning. It only takes on meaning when we know the object of choice. A doctor who chooses to bring life into the world is a good man. A doctor who chooses to kill it is not.

Conroy opines that “Thomas Aquinas says if your conscience says to do something the church says is a sin, you are bound to follow your conscience. That’s Thomas Aquinas!”

That is a highly selective reading of Aquinas.

To be sure, Aquinas prized conscience rights, but he did so with the understanding that it must be a well formed conscience. If it were not, then all choices, no matter how murderous, could be countenanced. Which explains why he said, “If…we consider one action in the moral order, it is impossible for it to be morally both good and evil.”

It is wrong to suggest that Aquinas said that conscience rights override Church teachings. “The universal Church,” he said, “cannot err, since she is governed by the Holy Ghost, Who is the Spirit of truth.” He also said, “Clearly the person who accepts the Church as an infallible guide will believe whatever the Church teaches.”

Regarding abortion, Aquinas said that abortions are a “grave sin” and were not only “among evil deeds,” they were “against nature.” In the 12th century, science had not yet learned that life begins at conception, which is why Aquinas accepted the prevailing view that life begins at some time after fertilization. But that didn’t stop him from condemning abortion.

If liberal Catholics regarded abortion to be as morally offensive as racial discrimination—it is actually much worse—they would not strain to justify it. That they continue to do so while feigning an interest in social justice is positively nauseating.

Contact Fr. Conroy: conroy@gonzaga.edu

BILL DONOHUE, president of The Catholic League shares his insights on the 20th anniversary of The Boston Globe’s reporting on the clergy sexual abuse crisis, and his latest book, The Truth About Clergy Sexual Abuse. To watch click here.

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on the growing trend of racism against white people:

A long-standing liberal tenet—that we should condemn all forms of prejudice and discrimination equally—came under attack in the 1960s when President Lyndon Johnson decided that equal opportunity was outdated: he said the new goal should be equal outcomes.

Ironically, this new thinking, which has since become a staple of liberal thought, was announced at the very moment when equal opportunity was finally emerging, thanks to the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

Affirmative action, and the quotas which it entailed, was the start of legally discriminating against white people. Today the idea of justifying racism against whites is expressed in many government policies, most of which have nothing to do with affirmative action.

On December 27, the New York State Department of Health issued a new policy on the distribution of anti-Covid treatments. To be a recipient, the patient must “have a medical condition or other factors that increase their risk for serious illness.” One of the risk factors is being a “non-white race or Hispanic/Latino ethnicity,” meaning that white people have been shoved to the back of the line.

A doctor who justified the racism said that blacks and Hispanics were harder hit with Covid, which is true. It is also true that being overweight makes it more likely that one will acquire Covid, and both minority groups are more likely to be overweight than whites. Is that a function of racism, or is it a volitional outcome?

At the federal level, the Biden administration had been in office for just a month before it hit the ground running, going after white people. The Covid-19 relief bill offered debt forgiveness to farmers, provided they were not white. Recipients had to be “Black/African American, American Indian or Alaskan native, Hispanic or Latino, or Asian American or Pacific Islanders.”

Biden also punished white business owners. He explicitly said that his “priority will be black, Latino, Asian and Native-American-owned businesses” and “women-owned businesses.” Most white men also got the shaft when Biden said that restaurant owners would get priority in receiving federal funds if they were women, veterans and members of “socially and economically disadvantaged” groups.

These policies are a back-door way of granting reparations. Biden knows that the subject of reparations is divisive, so he is enlisting the support of the administrative state to accomplish this end.

It is not just in government where racism prevails against white people. Woke corporations have gotten into the act as well.

At American Express, complaints by white employees surfaced after it was announced that “marginalized” workers would be given priority over “privileged” employees determining promotions. Critical race theory training sessions have convinced white workers that they are likely to be passed over for a promotion—no matter how competent they are—to satisfy this new policy. Some have quit as a result.

Making white people today pay for the sins of white people yesterday can run into problems with the courts. In October, a former senior officer at a North Carolina-health based care organization won $10 million when a jury found that his sex and race illegally led to his termination: he was canned so that a “more diverse” workforce could be achieved. Imagine trying that in the NBA—firing black basketball players so that more Pacific Islanders can play.

In 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that white firefighters were discriminated against when a test was discarded after blacks didn’t do too well on it: eliminating the test prevented the white guys from being eligible for promotion. The decision, Ricci v. DeStefano, came about when Frank Ricci sought to get a promotion but was denied even though he scored sixth highest on the exam out of 118-test takers. He was so determined to succeed that he quit his second job so he could enlist in preparatory courses to pass the test. A dyslexic, he paid $1,000 to have someone read textbooks onto audiotapes.

In 2017, a poll found that 55% of white people believed there was discrimination against white people in America. Similarly, last year researchers at Tufts University revealed that many whites believe “reverse racism” is a real problem. Yet there is precious little being said about this issue by the media, never mind activist organizations.

What is driving this condition? Elites believe that the best way to achieve racial equality is by mandating equal outcomes. They are thrice wrong:  such attempts create a white backlash; they will never substantially yield black progress; and they deflect attention away from the root causes of racial inequality.

The latter have less to do with discrimination today than they do a host of serious familial and behavioral problems in the black community. Every honest person who has studied this issue knows this to be true, but most are afraid to say so. The failure of the ruling class to admit to this, and to act on it, is the number-one reason we have this problem today.

In the end, whitey really is the problem, but not for the reasons attributed to him.

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on the 20th anniversary of the Boston Globe series on priestly sexual abuse:

On January 6, 2002, the Boston Globe began a series of stories on its investigation into clergy sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of Boston. It would prove to be the most damaging report on the Catholic Church in U.S. history, shocking Catholic and non-Catholic alike. It also inspired reporters across the nation to take a close look at this subject, resulting in more bad news. The good news is that 20 years later, much has changed for the better.

Regrettably, most of the major media outlets are not exactly religion-friendly, and many are downright hostile, especially to Roman Catholicism. As I detail in my new book, The Truth about Clergy Sexual Abuse: Clarifying the Facts and the Causes, this explains why they have no interest in reporting on the progress that has been made.

In the 1970s, which was when priestly sexual abuse was at its height, there was an average of 6,155 accusations made against current clergy members. The average number of substantiated accusations made in the last ten years is 5.9. In other words, this problem is largely behind us. For the media not to report on this is scandalous.

When the Boston Globe broke this story, I wrote the following at the end of 2002: “It was a rare event in 2002 to read a newspaper account of the scandal that was patently unfair, much less anti-Catholic. The Boston Globe, the Boston Herald and the New York Times covered the story carefully and with professionalism.”

Four years later I was just as impressed with the Boston Globe. I credited reporter Brian McGrory for slamming church-suing lawyer Mitchell Garabedian after the attorney twice sued a priest who was exonerated of all charges against him. The priest died in 2011, a broken man. McGrory said what Garabedian did was “a disgrace.” I called Garabedian and asked him if he had any regrets about going after the priest. He responded like a maniac and blew up at me.

Over time, the Globe changed. Its once objective stance gave way to writing pieces about the Catholic Church that were more of an editorial than a news story. The animus it sported was palpable. Worse, under McGrory, who was promoted to editor of the newspaper in 2012, the Globe became duplicitous.

On November 14, 2018, there was a front-page story in the Globe alleging more than 130 bishops, or about a third of those still living, had been accused of “failing to adequately respond to sexual misconduct in their dioceses.” It received wide media coverage, and it was released just prior to a bishops’ conference in Baltimore.

As a sociologist, I had some serious problems with the methodology of the study, and so I emailed the Globe about them. I wanted to see the data, but they said no. I asked several more times, limiting my scope each time. It made no difference.

This was the same newspaper that had won a Pulitzer Prize for its reporting on the Boston archdiocese—accusing the Church of not being transparent—now deciding that transparency does not apply to itself.

The hypocrisy extends beyond the newspaper: Boston’s liberal elites, in and outside the Catholic Church, are just as phony.

One of the most famous perverts in the Boston archdiocese was Father Paul Shanley. The “hippie priest,” who raped children and adults—provided they were male—was the darling of the Boston literati and political class. They loved his public defiance of the Church’s sexual ethics, and his rebellious character.

In the 1970s, when Shanley was on the prowl, Boston was home to some of the most pro-homosexual activist organizations in the nation, including the pedophile group, NAMBLA (the North American Man/Boy Love Association). Shanley attended its first conference in 1978.

Boston is a college town, and like most of them, it is proud of its liberal politicians, including those known for their predatory behavior. The Kennedys are a prime example. John, Bobby, and Teddy made the rounds with celebrities and many others and never paid a price for it at the ballot box; they learned their ways from their father, Joe, who was another philanderer.

The voters were just as kind to homosexuals who bounced around with their lovers. Rep. Gerry Studds was censured by the House in 1983 for his sexual romp with a teenage boy, but he continued to be reelected. Rep. Barney Frank hooked up with a male prostitute in 1989, but that didn’t bother his constituents, most of whom voted for him time and again with wide margins.

The Boston electorate also likes pro-homosexual legislation. In 2004, Massachusetts became the first state to recognize gay “marriage.” It did so with the help of four priests who testified the year before against a bill that would define marriage as an institution between a man and a woman.

These same people—who voted for straight and gay promiscuous men, and who loved Shanley—went ballistic when the Globe published stories about sexually active priests. Apparently, there is nothing wrong with being sexually reckless, unless one is a priest.

The Catholic Church has cleaned up its act. Too bad its critics have yet to catch up.

Fr. Philip Eichner died on January 1 at the age of 86. He was chairman of the board of directors of the Catholic League from 1992 to 2016. He was also the president of Chaminade High School (1967-1992) and president of Kellenberg Memorial High School (1987-2018), two outstanding Catholic schools on Long Island. May he rest in peace.

A wake will be held at Kellenberg on January 4 from 3:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m.

Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights
2021 Year in Review

Michael P. McDonald, Director of Communications

If one considers the hostility the Catholic Church and traditional Judeo-Christian values faced from the Biden Administration, corporations, education, and the perpetually aggrieved activist class, 2021 was a long year. However, the Catholic League managed to achieve many victories.

Out of all the enemies hostile to the Catholic Church, the government poses the most danger of them all. Particularly, with Joe Biden holding the presidency, the forces of the federal government ushered in many anti-Catholic policies. That this occurred under a self-described “devout Catholic” made this all the more infuriating.

Biden wasted no time attacking teachings at the heart of the Church. On January 20th, his first day in office, Biden issued an executive order allowing males who claim to be female the right to compete with females in high school and college sports. He also approved of them showering together.

On January 22, Biden said he was “committed to codifying Roe v. Wade.”

Then, on January 28, he issued an executive order to rescind the Mexico City Policy, the rule that bars U.S. foreign aid to international non-profit organizations that provide for abortion or abortion counseling. Biden also asked the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to begin the process of rescinding the Trump administration’s Title X family planning rule; among other things, it denies funds to Planned Parenthood and other abortion mills.

On February 14, the White House announced that the Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships “will not prefer one faith over another or favor religious over secular organizations.” But the whole point of creating an office of faith-based programs was to prioritize religious social service agencies.

Biden’s decision to appoint Melissa Rogers to head this endeavor was even more telling. He could not have chosen a more seasoned secularist to steer these faith-based entities.

On May 14, our worst fears for the office were confirmed. Rogers met with representatives from six secular organizations. None of them were religion-friendly and some are positively militant in their agenda.

Even on issues where Biden should have found common ground with the Church, he found ways to alienate the bishops. For instance, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) formally opposed the American Rescue Plan Act. Their concern was that there was nothing in the legislation that prohibited funding for abortions.

In an even more serious break with the concerns of the bishops, Biden pushed for action on the Equality Act. The effect of this legislation is to promote the most comprehensive assault on Christianity ever written into law.

The Equality Act has two major goals: it would amend the 1964 Civil Rights Act to include sexual orientation and gender identity to the definition of sex; it would also significantly undermine the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) by allowing gay rights to trump religious rights.

In May, Biden raised more than eyebrows when he omitted any mention of God in his National Day of Prayer proclamation. What he did was unprecedented: No previous president has failed to mention God since this celebration was created in 1952 by a joint resolution of Congress and signed into law by President Harry Truman.

On September 20, the White House issued a statement saying, “The Administration strongly supports House passage of H.R. 3755, the Women’s Health Protection Act of 2021.” But because there is not an abortion that Biden could not justify, the proposed law has nothing to do with women’s health—it is a pro-abortion bill.

This legislation is anything but “women friendly.” It would abolish the requirement that abortion can only be performed by a physician and eliminates health and safety regulations that are specific to abortion facilities. Further, the bill promotes the falsehood that abortion restrictions are racist. Similarly, it promotes the insane notion that men can become pregnant: it has more than two dozen references to “pregnant people”; this is roughly twice as often as they speak of “pregnant women.”

With the alarming pace Biden moved to undermine the teachings of the Church, the Catholic League prepared a report, “President Biden’s Policies: Departures from Catholic Teachings,” that outlines many instances where his decision-making on important moral issues is at variance with established Catholic teachings.

Biden surrounded himself with henchmen who have long track records of hostility to religious liberties. Xavier Becerra was President Biden’s worst nominee for a Cabinet post. The man is a menace to life and liberty and has no business serving in this capacity. The Catholic League found 16 serious flaws with his nomination. While we sent our detailed list of complaints to the Senate, they voted 50-49 to confirm him as Secretary of HHS.

In October, President Biden nominated Joseph Donnelly to be the new U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See. When Donnelly served as a congressman, he was largely pro-life, but when he became a U.S. Senator, he pivoted and joined the pro-abortion camp. There is a reason why Donnelly was co-chair of Catholics for Biden. Like our “devout Catholic” president, he turned rogue.

Biden additionally nominated Dr. Atul Gawande to serve as the assistant administrator of USAID’s Bureau for Global Health. Gawande is a pro-abortion zealot writing a graphic piece for Slate in 1998 defending partial birth abortion. If this was not enough, several of his colleagues in the past objected to his utilitarian ethics. The Catholic League supported efforts to defeat his confirmation led by Sen. Marco Rubio.  However, at the end of the year, Gawande was confirmed by a vote of 48-31 in a deal that included multiple other nominees.

We did better at securing victories on the state level.

In January, North Dakota State Sen. Judy Lee introduced legislation that would bust the seal of the confessional. The Catholic League quickly jumped into the fray. We mobilized our supporters to put pressure on the legislators to kill this bill. Soon after our supporters expressed their outrage, the legislation was withdrawn.

Another major victory we scored this year, ensuring the due process rights of accused priests, was in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. On July 21, the court ruled 5-2 that the statute of limitations begins when an alleged crime took place not when the so-called victim recalls the alleged offense. In their ruling, the court cited an amicus brief from the law firm Jones Day hired by the Catholic League.

Over the summer, we learned that Judicial Watch was representing the Center for Medical Progress in a quest to obtain documentation of alleged human organ harvesting at the University of Pittsburgh. According to their probe, organs were harvested while the baby’s heart was still beating.

On August 17, Bill Donohue wrote to Pennsylvania Auditor General, Timothy L. DeFoor, asking him to determine whether state and federal funds were being used by Pitt for arguably criminal activity. This was another victory because in September the university agreed to have its fetal tissue research practices independently reviewed.

While the forces of the federal government working against traditional Catholic values created challenges, we unfortunately witnessed a massive sea change on the part of the corporations.

For instance, Major League Baseball (MLB) decided to get involved in politics and promote social justice causes in America; however, MLB has no problem working with Communist China to increase revenue. This is the same communist regime that is committing the biggest violation of human rights, particularly the right to religious liberty, in the world today. To call out MLB for this hypocrisy, Bill Donohue wrote an open letter to the Commissioner of Baseball, Rob Manfred, and called on our supporters to contact him as well. Manfred got belted by our email base.

To cite another example, Cigna’s employment policy reads like something that was penned by some fanatical dean on a college campus. Asking employees if they are Christian is troubling, but what makes it so serious is that it is being done for malicious reasons. Instructing Christian staffers that they are unjustly benefiting from what Cigna calls “religious privilege” is obscene. When we listed the email contact for the head media staffer, our subscribers jumped on it and registered their outrage.

Disney has a long history of offending Catholics. For many years, it partnered with the movie distribution company, Miramax, owned by Bob and Harvey Weinstein, releasing a series of anti-Catholic films. When it took over ABC, it was responsible for more bigoted fare.

In today’s woke culture, Disney has apologized to just about every group they have offended over the years. Every group except for Catholics that is. To remedy this, we once again enlisted our supporters to express their ire with this situation to the head honchos at Disney.

While corporations are largely succumbing to cancel culture and woke ideologies, the Catholic League continued to fight and has been successful in making them relent on some of their more egregious violations.

On January 24, Catholic World Report (CWR) received notice from Twitter that its account had been locked for hateful conduct when it described HHS Assistant Secretary Rachel Levine as “a biological man identifying as a transgender woman.”

Three hours after we listed the email address of a key official at Twitter, asking our subscribers to protest its decision to freeze CWR’s account, Twitter reversed itself.

Institutions of higher learning have long used their positions to promote radical left-wing causes. In 2021, we have seen this radical spirit seep down into larger swaths of the education establishment.

A sex education bill was being considered in some states that was the most wildly irresponsible assault on common decency and common sense ever proposed. It had little to do with sex education; rather, it was a radical sex engineering bill. Indeed, it was the most extreme attempt to transform the norms and values of young people ever envisioned. We fought it and will continue to do so wherever it appears.

As the new school year began, what children learn became one of the biggest flash points in the culture war. With this as our backdrop, the Catholic League reviewed many prominent history and government textbooks.

 One thing became abundantly apparent from our deep dive into these textbooks; namely, the current curriculum provides a biased perspective against traditional and Catholic values. By and large, these textbooks present religion, traditional values, and conservatism in a negative light.

In 2021, activist organizations also joined the culture war on Catholicism.

The bishops were their favorite targets. Ultimately, this stemmed from Biden’s radical departures from Catholic teachings. On June 16, the bishops met to discuss how to address this situation. They agreed to formulate a teaching document on the Eucharist. On November 15, they met to complete their task. While the final document did not address the problems Biden created, that did not stop the activists from attacking them.

We often heard that the bishops were partisan hacks attacking Biden to do the Republican Party’s bidding. They were wrong to make such a claim. The Catholic League issued a report showing that some bishops gave praise or criticism to presidents from both parties based on particular policies.

Nevertheless, the National Catholic Reporter continued to promote this idea. We reached out to our supporters who kindly bombarded the Reporter with emails.

In addition to the Reporter, Faithful America and Faith in Public Life, two groups funded by atheist billionaire and Catholic-hater George Soros, also attacked the bishops. Again, our supporters let their voices be heard.

However, attacks on the bishops were not limited to failed journalists or Soros-funded paid activists. Even politicians heaped insults on the bishop. Rep. Jared Huffman tweeted, “If they’re [the Catholic bishops] going to politically weaponize religion by ‘rebuking’ Democrats who support women’s reproductive choice, then a ‘rebuke’ of their tax-exempt status may be in order.” After our supporters lambasted him, he changed his tune.

Unfortunately, the activists did not just limit their attacks on the Church to insults and threats. In 2021, we saw a continuation of the vandalism and destruction of Catholic property.

If there was one Catholic target the activists loved going after in 2021, it was St. Junípero Serra. The 18th century priest did more for the rights of indigenous peoples than any of his contemporaries, yet activists across California, including Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, have removed his statue and name from the public square.

Even this year’s commemoration of September 11th offered the activists a chance to attack. At least for patriotic Americans, the 20th anniversary of 9/11 carries great significance, but it has a special meaning for Christians. We recalled the sacrifice of millions of faithful Americans who have given their lives to defend this great nation over the years. The activists used the occasion to compare faithful Americans to the Taliban.

Over Thanksgiving, it was revealed that the Salvation Army’s elites made common cause with the activists in promulgating Critical Race Theory. The International Salvation Army issued a lengthy report, “Let’s Talk About Racism,” that accuses white people of being racists and therefore must apologize while arguing that America is an inherently racist society.

The Catholic League issued a comprehensive report analyzing the initial statement from the Salvation Army and the hypocrisy in their efforts to cover their tracks. Once again, our supporters expressed their ire and hopefully the elites at the Salvation Army will stop this nonsense that gives a bad name to their noble volunteers.

It is all the rage among elites in many quarters to sanction sex transitioning for minors. The Catholic League had enough of this madness and called it for what it is—child abuse.

We raised the alarm all year on this issue. Over the summer, we produced a detailed report that highlighted the most serious physical and psychological harm that these procedures can cause. Additionally, we looked at how the subject is taught in school.

In 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court made several strong rulings defending religious liberty. First, the Court dealt a blow to church restrictions in California. This led to a slew of victories over states limiting the ability to worship. Later in the year, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that Catholic foster care agencies can reject gay couples from adopting children. This was a huge victory for religious liberty.

However, not everyone is a fan of religious liberty. For instance, at the end of the year, Mollie Paige Mumau, who was listed as a member of the board of directors for the National Education Association (NEA), took to social media attacking those who sought a religious exemption from vaccine mandates. She specifically said they deserved to lose their jobs, get seriously ill, and die. Additionally, she recommended that they be shot for not getting the vaccine.

Bill Donohue sent a letter to the NEA urging the leadership to remove Mumau from her position on the board. Within a week, she was no longer employed at her school leaving her with no standing in education. The Catholic League was the only civil rights group in the nation to weigh in on this fight.

Another fight the Catholic League found itself embroiled in December revolved around politicians sharing Christmas pictures on Twitter that had nothing to do with Christmas. Bill Donohue contacted the offices of Rep. Thomas Massie and Rep. Lauren Boebert when they shared pictures of their families in front of Christmas trees with guns. He asked them to remember that Christmas is not about the 2nd Amendment, but instead it is about Jesus.

Speaking of Christmas displays, the Catholic League continued its decades long tradition of displaying a nativity scene in Central Park. We do this every year not only to honor the birth of Christ, but also to help educate others who wish to display a Crèche on public property about the rules.

Just days before Christmas, we had a very satisfying ending to a dispute with Costco. The editorial director of the store’s monthly magazine, Costco Connection, wrote a short essay in the December edition about the month’s holidays. He insulted Christians with a short and snide account of Christmas. By contrast, he offered a longer and glowing treatment of Hanukkah and Kwanzaa. Our email subscribers jumped all over this and let him know what they thought of his article. He then nervously called Bill Donohue trying to walk it back. But the damage was done, and he got nowhere with Bill, who set him straight.

Ultimately, the forces working against us will fail, and no small part of their inevitable failure stems from the Catholic League’s dogged determination to fight for what is right. We will continue to speak the truth and boldly take a stand.

In a bold defense of the Church, Bill Donohue released his new book The Truth About Clergy Sexual Abuse: Clarifying the Facts and the Causes. In its pages, he sets the record straight and defends the Church.

Additionally, the Catholic League launched a new YouTube series. The “Catholic League Forum” takes a timely look at the big issues threatening our Church and freedoms in pithy and entertaining segments.

With so many forces working against us, the Catholic League not only continues to find new ways to fight but more importantly score significant victories. While no one can guarantee what 2022 might bring, with the fantastic support of our members, the Catholic League will continue the staunch defense of the Church and undoubtedly secure more victories.

The Catholic League’s 2021 Year in Review is now available. It contains an overview of some of our most important battles and victories over the last year. To read it, click here.

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 give an overview of the Catholic League’s 2021 Year in Review. They discuss and reflect on the important battles and victories the League had over the last year. To watch click here.

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on outgoing New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio:

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio’s last day in office is New Years Eve.  What he has done to the world’s greatest city is incalculable: he has been an unmitigated disaster.

He is often compared to Mayor David Dinkins, but the comparison is unfair. While Dinkins did great damage, which was undone by Rudy Giuliani, he was merely incompetent. De Blasio’s war on New York City was deliberate, a clear example of what happens when a Marxist takes over.

De Blasio’s life has been built on a series of lies. He was born Warren Wilhelm Jr. in 1961. When he graduated from New York University in 1983, he changed his name to Warren de Blasio-Wilhelm. In 2002, he changed his name again, settling on Bill de Blasio. More important, he never stops bragging how he is the champion of the poor, yet when he ran for mayor in 2013, he accepted $50,000 from a group of slumlords.

When the New York Times nailed him for his allegiance to “democratic socialism” (which is an oxymoron), he said he never used those words. When shown the proof that he had, he answered, “It doesn’t matter.”

The lying is not confined to politics. De Blasio lied to his own children about where he and his wife honeymooned: he said they went to Canada, when in fact they went to Cuba, which was illegal. This made sense. After all, he had previously traveled to Nicaragua to support the Communist Sandinista regime, so why not break bread with Castro’s Cuba?

Marxists hate religion, especially Catholicism. After de Blasio was elected in November 2013, he appointed 60 New Yorkers to his transition team, all of whom represented the various demographic constituents. The clergy selected included every prominent group, except for Catholics, even though Catholics are a majority of the population.

Just three weeks into his first term, de Blasio’s love for abortion rights was evident when he supported “100%” what Gov. Andrew Cuomo said about so-called extreme conservatives. Those who are “pro-life,” the disgraced former governor said, “have no place in the state of New York, because that’s not who New Yorkers are.” Spoken like a true liberal advocate of women’s rights.

Two-and-a-half months into his administration, de Blasio told Irish Catholics to take a hike: he refused to march in the St. Patrick’s Day Parade, falsely claiming that homosexuals were barred from participating. Yet in 2017, the Marxist millionaire applauded when the Puerto Rican Day Parade chose to honor a known thug, Oscar Lopez Rivera, co-founder of the FALN, a terrorist organization.

De Blasio is the unmitigated enemy of the poor. Blacks and Hispanics want charter schools and support school choice initiatives, but the mayor has done everything in his power to stop them from having the same choices afforded white affluent New Yorkers. He has also worked against elite public schools, even though his son attended one of them. Under his predecessor, Michael Bloomberg, failing public schools were shuttered. Under de Blasio, they were awarded additional funding.

Crime has exploded in New York—murder has skyrocketed—yet de Blasio says there are less arrests for other crimes. That’s true. When the cops are told to stand down, muggers can do whatever they want, with impunity. There is little in the way of law and order in the city, thanks to de Blasio. The biggest victims, or course, are blacks.

When some Black Lives Matter protesters rioted in 2020, often joined by Antifa, another band of urban terrorists, de Blasio cheered them on, and did nothing to help the police or crime victims. He also gave the rioters a dispensation from his social distancing edict—they could march hand in hand. Yet he tried to close down houses of worship during the pandemic.

When de Blasio took over on January 1, 2014, he gave his “Tale of Two Cities” address, condemning the “economic and social inequalities that threaten to unravel the city we love.” He failed. Indeed, he made things worse. As the New York Times said on December 14, 2021, “The city’s unemployment rate of 9.4 percent is more than double the national average.”

The new mayor, Eric Adams, has his work cut out for himself. We wish him well. De Blasio is finished. He should do us all a favor and move to a place where he would be right at home. North Korea comes to mind.