Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on the latest example of media bias (the following are all internet stories):

“More than 12,000 Catholic Churches in the U.S. Applied for PPP Loans—and 9,000 Got Them” (cbsnews)

“9,000 Catholic Churches Received PPP Loans Meant for Small Business” (drudgereport)

“Thousands of Catholic Churches Received PPP Loans: Report” (thehill)

“Almost Half of All Catholic Churches in the US Were Given Small Business Loans as Part of Coronavirus Emergency Funding” (thesun)

“More than 12,000 Catholic churches in the US Applied for Federal Small Business Relief Loans” (dailymail)

All of these media outlets evince an anti-Catholic bias. The first to do so was CBS; others followed. As often happens, the bias is in the headline, not the story.

Take the CBS News story. The first few paragraphs focus exclusively on Catholic churches which have received federal funds, but then it mentions that Protestant and Jewish houses of worship have received funding as well.

So why did CBS give the impression, in its headline, that Catholic churches were the only ones benefiting? Alternatively, why didn’t it offer, for example, the following headline: “Mosques in the U.S. Applied for PPP Loans—and Many Got Them”? And why did Drudge falsely suggest that Catholic churches managed to get money not targeted for them?

Some media outlets were responsible.

“PPP Loan Applicant Poll Includes Thousands of Churches” (nbcsandiego)

“Many Houses of Worship Have Sought Government Aid” (npr)

It’s not as though the biased media stories were unaware of the federal government explicitly stating that houses of worship were eligible for relief under the Small Business Administration guidelines—CBS actually published an excerpt from them.

It is common practice in the media for someone other than the reporter to write the headline. This needs to stop. It is what causes sensationalistic and often biased headlines. If the reporter writes the headline, it is more likely to accurately reflect the story. In addition, readers would know who is to blame when wildly inaccurate headlines are published.

Contact Christa Robinson, Senior VP Communications at CBS: robinsonc@cbsnews.com

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on President Trump’s record on religious liberty:

Cardinal Timothy Dolan was recently criticized for speaking positively about President Trump’s record on religious liberty (he has not hesitated to criticize him on other issues), and I was only too happy to answer them.

I have a challenge to Dolan’s critics. Read the attached and then provide evidence that President Obama outdid Trump on this score. I would love to see it.

Trump is fair game for criticism on many issues, but when it comes to the defense of religious liberty, he is more Catholic than JFK was.

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on Cardinal Dolan’s critics:

Cardinal Timothy Dolan is the source of one of the most unprincipled and well-orchestrated attacks against a bishop to surface in many years. The politics that underscore the campaign are palpable.

The trigger for this onslaught was a conference call that 600 Catholic educators had with President Trump on April 24. The president asked Cardinal Dolan to begin the exchange; the New York archbishop obliged. Days later Dolan appeared on “Fox and Friends” and took the opportunity to praise the president for his outreach to the Catholic community and for what he has done to promote religious liberty.

This is pretty standard stuff. The president of the United States wants to curry favor with religious leaders and religious leaders want to curry favor with the president. They both have something to gain by coming together, at least on some issues. Conversely, both parties have much to lose if they decide not to play ball. Grownups understand how this works. Indeed, many bishops (including Cardinal Dolan) did not hesitate to praise President Obama, even though they disagreed strongly on some key issues.

Some of Dolan’s critics are not grownups—they are hopelessly naïve— hence their inability to process these events. Most of them are worse: they are simply duplicitous. No matter, they have their friends in secular circles covering for them.

“Progressive Catholics and others who want to keep their church out of politics were dismayed” [by Dolan’s cordiality]. This gem is courtesy of National Public Radio. The truth is that nothing makes progressive Catholics happier than when they are politicizing the Church. What they object to are instances when their politics are not being adopted.

Two columnists from the National Catholic Reporter, a publication that openly rejects the Church’s teachings on marriage, the family, sexuality, priestly celibacy, ordination, and other issues, were first out of the box to criticize Dolan. They were followed by a reporter for America magazine, a Jesuit publication whose theological meanderings have drawn the attention of the Vatican. Then came the letter to Dolan lecturing him on putting “access to power before principles.”

Talk about calling the kettle black. Those who signed the letter, at least those who have a public name, are not known for their principled fidelity to the Church’s teachings on an array of issues, most of them dealing with sexuality.

The letter campaign was funded by the number-one enemy of the Catholic Church: George Soros. The atheist billionaire funds John Gehring’s Faith in Public Life, and the letter to Dolan was written on the organization’s letterhead. Gehring was the first to sign it. It does not speak well for the Catholic signatories that they allowed themselves to be used by Soros.

Soros funds dozens of organizations, both nationally and internationally, that have attacked the Catholic Church. They range from Catholics for Choice, an anti-Catholic front group with no members, to a host of pro-abortion entities.

In 2012, I outed Gehring when he sought to manipulate the media against the bishops. In a document that was leaked to me, Gehring sent a memo to reporters on June 7 instructing them how to frame their questions to the bishops concerning their “Fortnight for Freedom” initiative, a religious-liberty series of events. For example, he recommended they ask, “Are you willing to sacrifice Catholic charities, colleges and hospitals if you don’t get your way on the contraceptive mandate?” Once I unmasked Gehring, the bishops ripped him in a long statement.

Gehring previously worked for Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good (perversely, he also worked for the bishops’ conference). It was a dummy Catholic front group, funded by Soros, that was created by John Podesta. Wikileaks disclosed that Podesta launched this group so they could infiltrate the Church and ultimately undermine it. This was part of the “Catholic Spring” revolution sought by the enemies of the Catholic Church.

Sister Simone Campbell was next to sign the letter. She showed how principled she was when she spoke at the 2012 Democratic National Convention supporting President Obama’s Health and Human Services mandate: it required Catholic non-profits to pay for abortion-inducing drugs in their healthcare plans. Campbell is also on record saying abortion should not be illegal—she would never say this about racial discrimination—and more recently she has thrown her support behind the Equality Act, the most anti-religious liberty piece of legislation ever written.

Sister Pat McDermott, President of the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas, is the third name listed on the letter. She proudly defended Sister Margaret Farley when the Vatican concluded that her book on sexuality contradicted the Church’s teachings; the nuns are big fans of gay marriage.

Another signatory, Father Bryan Massingale, is so wedded to the gay rights movement that he gave a talk in 2017 on this subject before New Ways Ministry. It is a rogue Catholic entity that has been condemned by senior bishops in the United States, as well as the Vatican, for its promotion of homosexuality. He teaches at Fordham, a Jesuit school where the chairman of the department of theology claims to be married to his boyfriend.

The latest attack on Cardinal Dolan is from Sam Sawyer, a Jesuit who works at America. He is in anguish. Dolan’s comments have caused “actual pain,” “fear,” and “suffering.” Wow! His threshold for pain must be quite low. Either that or he is playing us.

Sawyer is unhappy that Dolan and other bishops on the call “did not challenge the president or voice reservations about his policies.” He brands this a “pastoral failure,” and is particularly piqued at Dolan for the manner in which he made his remarks (they were too cheery).

Here is what America said in 2009 when some Catholics, including bishops, reacted negatively to the news that President Obama was invited to speak at the University of Notre Dame. “If the president is forced to withdraw, will that increase cooperation between the Catholic Church and the Administration, or will it create mounting tensions and deepening hostility?” Sounds like they wanted our side to play ball. So why the double standard?

In a plea to be realistic, the editorial said, “Taking account of what serves the greater good of the mission of the church is not opportunism. It is what Catholic tradition calls prudence.” Well said. But why wouldn’t this apply to Dolan as well?

“The bishops and the president serve the same citizens of the same country. It is in the interests of both the church and the nation if both work together in civility, honesty and friendship for the common good, even where there are grave divisions, as there are on abortion.” Why doesn’t this principled stand apply to Dolan?

Here’s my favorite. The editorial says that “it does not improve the likelihood of making progress on this and other issues of common concern if we adopt the clenched fist approach.” That is exactly what all of these critics are doing—adopting a “clenched fist approach” to President Trump, hammering Dolan for not punching back.

When Pope Francis came to the U.S. in 2015, he made an impassioned speech to some 300 U.S. bishops. He implored them to “face [the] challenging issues of our time,” hastening to add that they refrain from using “harsh and divisive language.” He understood that if the bishops are going to participate in the public square, they need to do so without alienating those they seek to persuade.

A conference call is not the right place to settle differences. That can be done in other settings. Those who run organizations know this to be true. Those who opine for a living haven’t a clue.

Bill In The News (Breitbart):

Catholic League president Bill Donohue has decried a coordinated left-wing attack on the project of the U.S. Commission on Unalienable Rights in an attempt to downgrade religious freedom and elevate LGBT and “reproductive” rights.

Dozens of international left-wing organizations “recently signed a statement lecturing the U.S. State Department’s Commission on Unalienable Rights,” Dr. Donohue noted, including “the Center for Reproductive Rights, Human Rights Watch, and the International Women’s Health Coalition.” READ MORE HERE

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on the latest attack on religious liberty:

The assault on religious liberty quickened when dozens of international left-wing organizations recently signed a statement lecturing the U.S. State Department’s Commission on Unalienable Rights. Leading the pack are the Center for Reproductive Rights, Human Rights Watch, and the International Women’s Health Coalition.

Their opposition to religious liberty was on grand display. As usual, it’s all about sex. In their world, every time religious liberty clashes with abortion rights or the LGBT agenda, the former must bow to the latter.

The letter addressed to the Commission on Unalienable Rights says, “we urge the Commission to reject the prioritization of freedom of religion as a cloak to permit violations of the human rights of women, girls, and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people.”

The hostility to religious liberty could not be more evident. In their formulation, religious liberty is not a foundational right. No, it is a “cloak” designed to rob people of their newly discovered rights.

The fact is that religious liberty has long been recognized throughout the world as a foundational right. Therefore, it should never be put on the same moral or legal plane with reproductive or sexual rights. To do so is to devalue religious liberty. This, of course, is exactly what these organizations seek to do.

It is illuminating to note that early on in the letter, the signatories list reproductive rights as “essential to the realization of fundamental human rights, including the rights to health, life, equality, information, education, privacy, non-discrimination and protection from torture and other ill-treatment.” These sages obviously don’t see the irony in mentioning the right to life in a statement that rejects it. And, of course, religious liberty is intentionally left out of their list of “fundamental human rights.”

It has not escaped the Catholic League that many of the most prominent organizations attacking religious liberty have a history of bashing religion, especially Catholicism. Let’s begin with the three organizers.

Center for Reproductive Rights has attacked the Catholic Church with such venom that I once registered a formal complaint with the United Nations after it released its highly politicized report, “The Holy See at the United Nations: An Obstacle to Women’s Reproductive Rights.” It is funded by George Soros.

Human Rights Watch also labels the Holy See “obstructionist” for standing up for the rights of the unborn. When Filipino bishops merely stated the Church’s position on contraception and abortion, it launched an attack on them. It is funded by George Soros.

International Women’s Health Coalition went bonkers when the Commission on Unalienable Rights was launched. “Despite its innocuous name, the concept of natural rights and natural law is rooted in 13th century theology and used anti-rights actors to attack women’s and LGBTQI rights.” It noted that Mary Ann Glendon was chairing the commission, no doubt another red flag.

Much the same could be said about the other signatories. Here is a sampling.

Guttmacher Institute has consistently criticized Catholic hospitals for buying secular hospitals. It is appalled when Catholic-owned hospitals follow Catholic norms.

Human Rights Campaign opposes laws that allow a religious exemption for adoption agencies, and relentlessly opposes religious liberty whenever it clashes with the LGBT agenda.

International Planned Parenthood Federation has attacked the Catholic Church for its sex education curriculum and has sought to delegitimize the Holy See’s role at the U.N.

NARAL Pro-Choice America opposes Catholic hospitals exercising their right to buy secular entities, and has a well-documented record of anti-Catholicism dating back to its origins in the 1960s.

Catholics for Choice is an anti-Catholic front group that specializes in disseminating disinformation about the Catholic Church, especially its teaching on the sanctity of life. It is funded by George Soros.

Center for Constitutional Rights provided assistance to an anti-Catholic victims’ group when it petitioned the International Criminal Court to prosecute Pope Benedict XVI for allegedly covering up clergy sexual abuse. Its bogus campaign failed. It is funded by George Soros.

National Center for Transgender Equality opposes the conscience rights and religious freedom protections afforded by the Trump administration.

Planned Parenthood Federation of America has a long history of attacking Catholic teachings on sexuality. It also opposes Catholic faith-based initiatives. It is funded by George Soros.

Population Institute calls the Holy See an “anti-contraception gestapo” and works to undermine its work at the U.N.

In other words, these left-wing organizations have long harbored an animus against the Catholic Church. Were it not for its atheist-billionaire benefactor, George Soros, many would be struggling and some crash.

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on a new book that is bound to be controversial:

We will have to wait until November before the English version of a biography of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI is available, but the book by Peter Seewald is already generating controversy. Benedict says his writings have been misrepresented beyond recognition, so much so that it has devolved into a “malignant distortion of reality.” Worse, attempts to silence him have been ongoing.

Sexuality and the life issues are what angers his most vociferous critics. That’s because they touch on the most sacred ground coveted by secularists. “One hundred years ago,” Benedict says, “everybody would have considered it to be absurd to speak of a homosexual marriage.” The same goes for “abortion and to the creation of human beings in the laboratory.”

Pink News, a gay media outlet from the U.K., was not happy with Benedict’s statement on gay marriage. It also accused him of “aggressively oppos[ing] same-sex marriage” during his tenure as pontiff. It contends he was replaced by Pope Francis who, while not changing Church teachings on marriage, has “pursued a more outwardly liberal PR drive.”

The fact is there is zero difference between Benedict and Pope Francis on the subject of gay marriage. Here is what Francis has said: “Children have a right to grow up in a family with a father and a mother capable of creating a suitable environment for the child’s development and emotional maturity.” He knows how important this is. “At stake is the identity and survival of the family: father, mother, and children.”

What is most distressing are the attempts to silence Benedict. His critics want him to stay in a retirement home and watch TV. But he won’t do that. Indeed, he is happily defiant. But he is not naïve. Those who do not accept gay marriage, he notes, must be prepared to suffer the consequences. “Today one is being excommunicated by society if one opposes it.”

Benedict does not exaggerate. It is virtually impossible for any academic to get tenure if it is disclosed that he does not approve of two men marrying. Similarly, if it is discovered that a candidate for a junior position supports the Judeo-Christian understanding of sexuality, he will never be seated.

“Modern society is in the middle of formulating an anti-Christian creed,” Benedict says, “and if one opposes it, one is being punished by society with excommunication.” With few exceptions, no one who sits on the editorial board of any major newspaper would be allowed to keep his place at the table if he decided to become pro-life. He would be shown the gate.

Attacks on marriage, properly understood, are commonplace. So are efforts to protect the sanctity of life de novo. Campaigns against genetic engineering are similarly condemned. Benedict sees this as the work of the “spiritual power of the Anti-Christ.”

Benedict claims that those who sought to silence him when he was pope came less from within the Church than from without. “Blockages came more from the outside than from the Curia.” This was certainly true when 67 professors from Rome’s La Sapienza University protested his scheduled address in 2008. His speech was cancelled because his writings on science angered the “tolerant” ones.

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI is a true gift from God. He is a man of powerful intellect, and, just as important, he is a man of tremendous courage. His thuggish foes can scream all they want, but he will not be silenced.

Bill In The News (Breitbart):

Catholic League President Bill Donohue has denounced an attack that Democrats, following a George Soros-funded activist’s lead, have waged against Cardinal Timothy Dolan.

“Catholic malcontents, who are infinitely more concerned about the weather than the intentional killing of innocent children, are upset that Cardinal Timothy Dolan was gracious in his recent remarks about President Trump. They are an embarrassment,” notes Dr. Donohue in his May 1 statement, according to a Catholic League article entitled “Soros-Funded Attack on Cardinal Dolan.” READ MORE HERE

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on another attack on Cardinal Timothy Dolan:

Catholic malcontents, who are infinitely more concerned about the weather than the intentional killing of innocent children, are upset that Cardinal Timothy Dolan was gracious in his recent remarks about President Trump. They are an embarrassment.

The first person listed as a critic of the New York archbishop in the Crux article is John Gehring. He is funded by the atheist billionaire George Soros. End of story.

If I were on their side, I would not be so stupid as to flag a guy who owes his livelihood to an anti-Catholic and anti-Semitic bigot. But I am so happy they did.

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on an accusation facing Joe Biden:

If Joe Biden were a priest, he would have been removed from ministry pending a more thorough investigation. Instead, he is holed up in his basement talking to the media. Until May 1, no one from the media asked him one question about sexually assaulting Tara Reade.

On April 29, the Free Beacon reported that in 19 interviews he granted over a 5-week period, he fielded 142 questions, but not one was about Reade. In fact, when Biden was interviewed on April 28, even though he teed it up for reporters by discussing domestic violence and challenges that women face, none asked him about his accuser. That changed when Biden was questioned by Mika Brzezinski on the MSNBC show, “Morning Joe.”

Five people have corroborated at least some parts of Reade’s account. She says Biden, then a senator, digitally penetrated her against her will in 1993. She says she reported the assault to three of his staffers. She also filed a Senate complaint. What happened? She was subject to reprisal. She said her assignments were downgraded, and she was moved to an isolated workstation. She was also told she had 12 months to find another job.

Biden denies the accusation. One way to find out who is telling the truth is to unearth the Biden documents that are sitting in the University of Delaware Library to see what Reade’s Senate complaint says (assuming it has not since miraculously disappeared). According to the Washington Post, there are 1,875 boxes, including 415 gigabytes of electronic records. We also need to see the police report she filed in early April of this year.

Biden told Brzezinski that if there were a complaint made by Reade, it would be in the National Archives, not in the papers at the University of Delaware. He said he had no problem if a search were made of the files at the National Archives to see if a complaint by Reade can be found, but he balked when asked about opening up the papers at the University of Delaware.

Brzezinski asked him why it would not be acceptable simply to do a search of Tara Reade’s name in the University of Delaware papers? He dodged the question on two occasions, refusing to give the okay. She also noted that the university papers were initially slated to be made public, but then that decision was reversed: it was decided to keep them under seal. Biden had no comment.

On April 29, an editorial in the Washington Post called for an inventory of the papers at the University of Delaware, saying they “could contain confirmation of the complaint Ms. Reade made.” That needs to be done, especially in light of Biden’s refusal to ask the university to cooperate.

For decades, critics of the Catholic Church have said that it has gone too easy on accused priests. They want to see every piece of paper in an accused priest’s personnel file. Furthermore, they demand that the name of every accused priest be posted on the website of his diocese.

Joe Biden is not stepping down pending an investigation. Moreover, he refuses to ask the University of Delaware to release its secret files on him (they are being kept secret until he “retires from public life”), yet every journalist in the world insists that the Church should not be allowed to keep secret files on priests. And not only will Biden’s name not be posted on any website of the accused, no one will demand that it should be.

Is Biden guilty of sexual assault? We do not know. Is there a way to find out? Certainly. But not until he is treated with half the scrutiny afforded accused priests, and not until we see the secret files at the University of Delaware.

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on the ethics of atheists:

Do human beings possess natural rights, rights given by God that all governments must respect? Or is this plain nonsense?

A recent Pew Research Center survey shows how this philosophical question comes into play in real-life settings. If ventilators are in short supply, whom should we service first? Those who are most in need at the moment? Or those most likely to recover?

The answer, like so many ethical issues, turns on religion. The majority of those who are religiously affiliated say those who are most in need of a ventilator should take priority, while the majority of the unaffiliated (mostly agnostics and atheists) say those who are the most likely to recover should get it.

Similarly, when questioned about the role of religion in one’s life, religious Americans favor giving the ventilator to those in need at the moment; those for whom religion does not play a role prefer giving it to those most likely to recover.

On a related issue, a Pew survey in 2013 found that religious Americans were the least likely to say suicide is a moral right; the unaffiliated were the most likely to support it.

A 2018 Gallup poll disclosed that euthanasia and doctor-assisted suicide varied widely on the basis of religiosity: religious Americans were the least likely to support these options; the unaffiliated were the most likely to support them.

In 2010, the British Medical Journal found that atheist and agnostic doctors, as compared to those who are religious, were almost twice as likely to decide, by themselves, that it is proper to hasten a person’s death if the patient is very sick.

To put it differently, those who are not religious are more likely to devalue the sanctity of human life. This is not a desirable outcome for anyone, especially the vulnerable.

This all traces back to natural rights. Those who take their religion seriously are more likely to believe in natural rights: they believe all humans possess equal rights, and that they cannot be overridden on the basis of utility, or what works best overall. So when ventilators are in short supply, those who are most in need deserve to get them—we are all equal in the eyes of God. Their rights should never be subordinate to those who are the most likely to live.

Those who believe otherwise embrace a utilitarian ethics.

Atheists embrace the utilitarianism as espoused by Jeremy Bentham. The British philosopher maintained that morality was best served by providing for the greatest good for the greatest number of people. Such a philosophy advantages the powerful and the healthy—it can be used to justify slavery and euthanasia—which is why it is fundamentally an amoral ethics.

Bentham called natural rights “nonsense upon stilts.” Not surprisingly, he was an atheist. For him, the idea that innocent human life is sacred was chimerical. What counts, he believed, was serving the best interests of the majority of people, even if it comes at the expense of others.

Atheism is amoral because its ethics devolves to the individual. It’s all about me, not we. It is this kind of thinking that allows irreligious doctors to decide whether their patients should live or die. Ironically, even atheists who are sick would not want to have such a physician.

Society prospers morally when we have more religious persons, not less. This does not mean that all atheists are immoral or that all religious persons are moral. But it does mean that society, as a whole, is better off, generally speaking, when it is populated by people of faith, and not their atheist counterparts.