When Jews and Protestants are being considered for a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court, they are rarely, if ever, asked by legislators to explain how their religious convictions might affect their legal thinking. The same is not true of Catholic nominees: their faith often becomes center stage at the hearings.

Our Catholic Supreme Court Justices are under the microscope again, only this time liberal commentators are afraid they may not be Catholic enough!

Maureen Groppe is a senior reporter for USA Today. A recent column she wrote says it all. “Will the Majority-Catholic Supreme Court Listen to the Church on Immigration?” She is particularly impressed that the bishops’ conference is making a moral case against Trump’s position on birthright citizenship.

The bishops’ conference uses stronger language with regard to abortion. It labels it “intrinsically evil.” Yet when Catholic Justices overturned Roe v. Wade, sending the issue of abortion back to the states, pro-abortion groups blasted them and law journals ran articles about conflating religious convictions and legal reasoning. The American Bar Association held a webinar on this subject.

“Will the Majority-Catholic Supreme Court Listen to the Church on Same-Sex Marriage?” Imagine a news story on this subject that invites the reader to question the autonomy of Catholic Justices. Would USA Today run it?

We all have biases, but when it comes to being clueless about harboring them, no one beats liberals. They live in a world where their political thinking is constantly reinforced, leaving them hopelessly blind to their own prejudices.

April 8, 2026

Hon. Cory Booker
306 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington D.C. 20510

Dear Sen. Booker:

On the April 6 edition of the Fox News show, “Special Report with Bret Baier,” you accused ICE agents of “dragging Americans out of churches.” This is a very serious charge. It is also manifestly untrue.

Perhaps you are thinking about an incident at North Hills United Methodist Church in the San Fernando Valley on February 26. There was a migrant who was arrested, but he was apprehended while running across the church parking lot.

The only source that supports your accusation is from a piece in the “People’s World” (formerly known as the “Daily Worker,” an organ of the Communist Party of the United States) on December 2, 2025. It is titled, “ICE Now Grabbing People Out of Churches.”

The article begins by saying ICE “is ushering in the Christmas season by launching immigration raids inside churches across the country.” This is a lie. Not one example is cited.

Oh, yes, we learn about a Chicago woman who says she saw “ICE vans and agents swarming in front of her house, which is very close to the church.” There was also an arrest made of a “Latino man trimming a church lawn in Charlotte, N.C.” Speculation about ICE raiding churches at Christmas was also made, but there is no evidence that they did.

By making unsupported accusations about ICE agents, you wind up smearing them, frightening Americans, and undercutting your credibility. Please retract your statement. Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

William A. Donohue, Ph.D.

President

cc: U.S. Senators

Islamists, or Muslim extremists, are on the war path slaughtering Christians in many parts of Africa. And what do those in the big media say about it?

The New York Times falsely claims that there is no Christian genocide happening in Nigeria. This has also become the favorite talking point of the mainstream media.

Where is the evidence that a Christian genocide is not taking place in Nigeria? The Times provides a link to a story it ran in January claiming that “Spotty research from a Christian activist has been used by Republican lawmakers to justify U.S. intervention in the country [Nigeria].”

In fact, this news story should be studied in journalism classes as a classic case of how “spotty research” is done. It focuses on the comments made by one guy, a screwdriver salesman, who argues that Christians are being singled out for slaughter.

No serious scholar leans on anecdote for evidence. What about the annual reports on human rights in Nigeria released by Freedom House, Aid to the Church in Need, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, U.S. State Department and Open Doors?

Radical Muslims are clearly committing genocide against Christians in Africa. Shame on those who claim otherwise.

On April 16, on “Fox & Friends,” Brian Kilmeade was critical of Pope Leo XIV, and in the course of his remarks he said the following: “Historically, Pope Pius XII did nothing knowing, documents show that 6 million Jews were being slaughtered. The Vatican knew about it, did nothing, signed a deal with the Nazis not to invade.”

Shaking his head in agreement was Rich Lowry, editor-in-chief of National Review.

Besides the incredibly dumb remark about the Vatican deciding not to invade—invade with what?—Kilmeade knows nothing about this subject.  He is dead wrong. Apparently, Lowry is just as clueless.

The Vatican archives show concretely that the debate is over. Pope Pius XII did more to save Jews than any other world figure. Here is a quick summary of his heroics taken from Bill Donohue’s book, Why Catholicism Matters.

1940

• In the December 23, 1940 issue of Time magazine, Albert Einstein was quoted as saying, “Being a lover of freedom, when the Nazi revolution came to Germany, I looked to the universities to defend it, but the universities were immediately silenced. Then I looked to the great editors of the newspapers, but they, like the universities, were silenced in a few short weeks….Only the Church stood squarely across the path of Hitler’s campaign for suppressing the truth.”

1941

• In its Christmas Day editorial, the New York Times said, “The voice of Pius XII is a lonely voice in the silence and darkness enveloping Europe this Christmas.”

1942

• In its Christmas Day editorial, the New York Times wrote, “No Christmas sermon reaches a larger congregation than the message Pope Pius XII addresses to a war-torn world this season.”

1943

• Hitler’s biographer, John Toland, said, “The Church, under the Pope’s guidance, had already saved the lives of more Jews than all other churches, religious institutions, and rescue organizations combined, and was presently hiding thousands of Jews in monasteries, convents, and Vatican City itself.”
• Speaking about events in 1943, Sir Martin Gilbert, perhaps the foremost historian of the Holocaust, noted that “the test for Pacelli was when the Gestapo came to Rome in 1943 to round up Jews. And the Catholic Church, on his direct authority, immediately dispersed as many Jews as they could.”
• In 1943, the World Jewish Congress thanked the pope for persuading Italian authorities to remove 20,000 Jewish refugees from internment camps in Northern Italy.
• On July 25, 1943, Hitler began his plan to kidnap the “Jew-loving” pope.

1944

• Jewish scholar Jeno Levai describes what happened in the spring of 1944 in Hungary. “Over 20,000 passports had been issued by the papal Nuncio—on the average of 500 a day.”

1945

• Anton Zolli, the Chief Rabbi in Rome, converted to Catholicism. He explained why in his book, Why I Became a Catholic. “No hero in history has commanded such an army; none is more militant, more fought against, none more heroic than that conducted by Pius XII in the name of Christian Charity.” He chose the name Eugenio (after Eugenio Pacelli, Pius XII) as his baptismal name.

1958

• When the pope died, Golda Meir, Israel’s foreign minister (she would later become prime minister), telegraphed the Vatican saying, “When fearful martyrdom came to our people in the decade of Nazi terror, the voice of the Pope was raised for the victims. The life of our times was enriched by a voice speaking out on the great moral truths above the tumult of daily conflict. We mourn a great servant of peace.”
• Among the Jewish organizations that praised the pope were the following: Anti-Defamation League, the Synagogue Council of America, the Rabbinical Council of America, the New York Board of Rabbis, the American Jewish Committee, the World Jewish Congress, the Central Conference of American Rabbis, and the National Council of Jewish Women.

Former Israeli diplomat and author Pinchas Lapide estimated that approximately 860,000 Jewish lives were saved by Pope Pius XII. One thing is certain: no leader, religious or secular, did more to save Jews than Pope Pius XII. He is more than a “Righteous Gentile”—he deserves to be made a saint.

If Kilmeade knew anything about the critics of Pius XII, he would know that many have had to walk back their accusations.

In 2017, the BBC announced the results of an internal probe of the war record of Pope Pius XII. It said it was wrong to characterize him as being “silent” during the Holocaust. In 1999, the author of Hitler’s Pope, John Cornwell, admitted that he was wrong in making this assessment, and retracted his charge that the pope supported Hitler.

Catholic League board of advisors, University of Mississippi law professor Ronald Rychlak, has also written voluminously about the yeoman efforts of Pius XII during the Holocaust. Gary Krupp, a Jewish student of this subject, who was once critical of the pope, has a drove of documents on his website, Pave the Way Foundation, that detail the great work of this wartime pope.

Kilmeade is a talking head—he is not an historian. He is way out of his league on this subject.

Bill Donohue

I have known Sean Hannity for years, and he is a good guy. But I cannot allow our friendship to get in the way of my job. He made comments on his April 16 Fox News show about the clergy sexual abuse scandal that are dead wrong. Apparently, he also offended Catholics on his radio show recently.

Sean started out by saying he was raised Catholic, went to Catholic schools and attended a seminary high school. He said he broke away from the Catholic Church because of the clergy sexual abuse scandal. That is his business. But it is my business to correct the record when misstatements of fact abound about this subject.

Sean said, “I left the Catholic Church in large part because of institutionalized corruption. And it was at the parish level to the bishop level, cardinals, all the way to Rome. And you know, the very top scandals, terrible behavior, frankly, went not only unchecked, but they never fully corrected it or dealt with it. And others at the Vatican have totally lost sight of the true meaning of the bible and its teachings.”

His sweeping statements do not hold up under scrutiny.

There was a scandal in the Catholic Church, but its heyday ended approximately a half-century ago. Most of the offenses took place between the mid-1960s and the mid-1980s. How widespread was it at its height? The Washington Post published a survey in 2002 showing that less than 1.5 percent of the estimated sixty thousand or more men who served in the Catholic clergy were accused of the sexual abuse of minors. A New York Times survey reported that 1.8 percent of all priests ordained between 1950 and 2001 were accused of sexually abusing minors.

The John Jay College of Criminal Justice issued a study in 2004 that   found that in the period 1950-2002, 4 percent of the Catholic clergy were accused of sexually molesting minors. It also found that 149 priests, or 3.5 percent, who had more than ten allegations of abuse were responsible for 26 percent of all the allegations. In other words, of the 4,393 priests who had an accusation made against them between 1950 and 2002 (not all of which were substantiated), a mere 149 of them accounted for more than a quarter of the allegations.

This is a far cry from what Sean would have us believe. A more egregious error is assuming that nothing has changed.

Data from the last year that we have reliable information on, July 1, 2023 to June 30, 2024, show that of the 48,176 members of the clergy, exactly two had a substantiated accusation made against him during this period. This means that a whopping 0.004 percent of priests had a substantiated case of sexual abuse made against them by a minor.

Unfortunately, in any institution where adults regularly interact with minors, sexual misconduct is a problem. But there is no institution in  American society today, religious or secular, that has less of a problem with the sexual abuse of minors than the Catholic Church. To imply otherwise is irresponsible.

We know that 81 percent of the victims were male, and that 78 percent were postpubescent, meaning that the lion’s share of the abuse was committed by homosexuals (3.8 percent were pedophiles). Of course, don’t expect the media to report these facts, including Fox News, which is part of the cover-up.

I wrote a book on this subject in 2021, The Truth About Clergy Sexual Abuse: Clarifying the Facts and the Causes. When it was released, I was asked to sit for an interview at Fox News. The executives who run the cable TV station said that my book was so controversial (I bet none of them read it) that they would only agree to a debate between me and someone else. Not surprisingly, every notable liberal Catholic turned down the debate. So it never aired. Would that not be called “institutionalized corruption,” Sean?

Most priests, at every level, are good men and they do not deserve to be spoken about with derision. The scandal should never have happened, but it is totally unfair to generalize from the few to the collective, regardless of the demographic.

If Sean wants to debate me, he can give me a call. He has my work and home numbers.

The above article by Bill Donohue scored with the media. Below is what Yahoo! Entertainment, and Yahoo News UK, said about it.

“The backlash from heavy hitters like Bill Donohue of the Catholic League underscores a critical point: you cannot claim to be a defender of Western traditionalism while simultaneously taking a sledgehammer to one of its primary pillars. Donohue’s blistering retort, which pointed out that Hannity’s characterization of the clergy abuse scandal as a perpetual, systemic issue does not hold up under the weight of historical scrutiny or data, effectively stripped away the ‘common sense’ veneer Hannity often uses to shield his arguments.”

Bill Donohue

Sharia is the law that is derived from Islamic texts and traditions. Whether it is more of a friend or foe of liberty is disputed, but both sides can’t be right.

On March 20, the New York Times ran an editorial taking aim at President Trump’s “Islamophobia.” Without assessing its merits, what interests the Catholic League is whether its interpretation of Sharia is correct. It defines it as “a set of principles, based on the Quran, that guide life for Muslims, much as biblical precepts guide Christians and Jews.” “Extreme versions” exist, it allows, “including Afghanistan and Iran.”

Agreeing with the Times is the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Muslim civil rights organization.

Sharia, it says, “plays the same role in Islam that canon law plays for Catholics and halacha plays for Jews, a voluntary moral compass, not an alternative legal code.” It goes on to say that “Like other faith communities in the US and elsewhere, we see no inherent conflict between normative values of Islam and the US Constitution and Bill of Rights.”

A week prior to the Times editorial, Rep. Mike Johnson, Speaker of the House, expressed his concern about those who “come to a country and not assimilate but to impose Sharia law.” The problem there, he notes, is that “Sharia law is in conflict with the Constitution.”

Agreeing with Johnson is the European Court of Human Rights.

In 2003, the Grand Chamber ruled that “It is difficult to declare one’s respect for democracy and human rights while at the same time supporting a regime based on sharia, which clearly diverges from Convention values…” Similarly, according to Islamic scholar Robert Spencer, Sharia law is “contrary to America’s founding principles and may violate federal law and the Constitution.”

Islamic texts may not settle the issue, but they do not seem to support the position taken by the Times and CAIR.

The Quran (5:44) declares that failing to “judge by what Allah has revealed” makes one a disbeliever. This would appear to render the U.S. Constitution subordinate to Sharia.  Furthermore, Reliance of the Traveller, a classic Islamic manual of Islamic law, notes that “Jihad is a communal obligation.” At best, this affirms the need for a militaristic struggle; at worst it is a call to arms.

Leaving aside the scholarly debate, what matters in the end is how Sharia is interpreted by those who implement it.

Freedom House annually reports on the state of freedom worldwide, rating every country as Free, Partly Free, or Not Free. Almost all the countries with a Christan majority are rated Free or Partly Free, and all but one with a Muslim majority (Senegal) are rated Not Free or Partly Free. That says it all.

The report that follows shows that the more fully Sharia is implemented, the greater the threat to civil liberties. In other words, in its purist form, Sharia is wholly incompatible with the tenets of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. But Christianity is not.

CIVIL LIBERTIES IN COUNTRIES WITH SHARIA

This report surveys ten countries across three categories, drawing on Freedom House Reports (which score Freedom out of 100).

Full Sharia Implementation

These countries enforce Sharia as the sole or primary source of all law, including Islamic text legal punishments (amputation, flogging, stoning) and capital penalties for apostasy, blasphemy, adultery, and theft.

Islamic Republic of Iran

Freedom House: 10/100 (Not Free)

• Iran’s constitution requires all laws to conform to Twelver Shia Sharia. Islamic text legal punishments are authorized and regularly applied. Iran’s constitution recognizes only Zoroastrians, Jews, and Christians as protected minorities with limited rights. All others, plus converts, are treated as threats to the Islamic state. Apostasy and blasphemy are punishable by death.
• Iran holds regular elections, but they are not free or fair. The unelected Guardian Council vets and disqualifies candidates, and real power lies with the Supreme Leader and unelected institutions that control the security forces, judiciary, and economy. Media are heavily censored, journalists are arrested or killed, and are not independent. The judiciary is not independent and serves as a tool of repression: arbitrary arrests, torture, unfair trials, and executions are common.

Afghanistan

Freedom House: 8/100 (Not Free)

• Since overthrowing the elected republican government in August 2021, the Taliban has ruled Afghanistan as an Islamic Emirate with Sharia as the sole legal framework. The Taliban leader exercises unlimited authority by decree, with no constitution in place. Islamic text legal punishments are enforced nationwide. No non-Islamic public worship is permitted, and apostasy carries a death sentence. Women are almost entirely excluded from public life, including education and employment.
• All political parties and opposition groups are banned. There are no elections, no representative bodies, and no independent media.

Saudi Arabia

Freedom House: 9/100 (Not Free)

• Saudi Arabia’s Basic Law says the country’s constitution is the Quran and other Islamic texts, that the regime derives its authority from them, and that courts apply Islamic Sharia along with regulations issued in conformity with Islamic texts. Saudi Arabia has an absolute monarchy. No officials at the national level are elected. Conversion from Islam is a capital offense. Non-Muslims cannot practice their faith publicly, and proselytizing is banned.
• The regime relies on pervasive surveillance, the criminalization of dissent, and oil-funded spending to maintain power. Dissent is punished with long prison terms, including for social media posts.

Partial Sharia in Authoritarian States

In these Gulf monarchies, Sharia governs personal status and family law for Muslims. Criminal law is primarily secular, though apostasy and blasphemy remain criminal offenses in theory. Civil liberties are independently suppressed by authoritarian governance.

United Arab Emirates

Freedom House: 18/100 (Not Free)

• The UAE is a federation of seven emirates led by hereditary rulers. Limited elections exist only for a federal advisory body, but political parties are banned, and all real power rests with the ruling families. Sharia governs personal-status matters (marriage, divorce, inheritance, child custody), which discriminate against women and non-Muslims. There is no independent media.

Qatar

Freedom House: 25/100 (Not Free)

• The hereditary ruler holds all executive, legislative, and judicial power. Sharia-based personal-status law requires male-guardian approval for many actions and enforces unequal inheritance and divorce rules. Over 85% of the population are non-citizens with almost no religious or civil rights.
• Registered Christian groups may worship in approved churches, whereas many other non-Muslim groups are generally limited to private worship and lack formally recognized places of worship. Proselytizing for religions other than Islam is criminalized, as is blasphemy.
• There are no political parties, no free elections, and no realistic path for the opposition to gain power.

Partial Sharia with Democratic Participation

These countries combine partial Sharia application with some degree of electoral democracy, press freedom, and civil society.

Malaysia

Freedom House: 53/100 (Partly Free)

• Malaysia operates a dual legal system: secular courts coexist with state-level Sharia courts that govern personal status and moral offenses for Muslims. No nationwide Islamic text legal punishments are imposed. The country holds competitive elections in which opposition parties win seats, maintains some independent media and online expression, and permits freedom of assembly.
• Sharia-related restrictions remain significant. Apostasy is effectively impossible and can lead to detention or “rehabilitation.” Moral police conduct raids on unmarried couples.

Indonesia

Freedom House: 56/100 (Partly Free)

• Indonesia has made democratic gains since the fall of its authoritarian regime in 1998, with regular competitive elections, relatively free media, and multiple peaceful transfers of power. Indonesia’s national legal system is not based on Sharia, but it is not purely secular either; religion remains deeply embedded in the constitutional order.
• Nationally, blasphemy laws have led to arrests for social media posts. Indonesia’s new criminal code has introduced apostasy-related restrictions.

Nigeria

Freedom House: 44/100 (Partly Free)

• Nigeria’s federal constitution is religiously neutral, and since 1999, twelve northern states have operated Sharia-based criminal systems alongside secular courts. Those systems include Islamic text penalties in law, and courts have imposed punishments such as caning, amputation, and death by stoning for adultery, though stoning is uncommon in the modern era.
• National elections occur but are marred by irregularities, violence, and vote buying. Military and law enforcement agencies often engage in extrajudicial killings, torture, and other abuses. Journalists covering sensitive topics face harassment and arrest.

Pakistan

Freedom House: 32/100 (Partly Free)

• Pakistan holds regular elections under a competitive multiparty system, but the military exerts enormous influence over elections, government formation, and policy. Pakistan’s personal and family law is based on Sharia, and its criminal code includes strict blasphemy provisions carrying the death penalty.
• Dozens have been sentenced to death for blasphemy; though actual executions by the state are rare, vigilante killings and mob attacks are common. Islamist militants conduct terrorist campaigns against the state and regularly attack religious minorities. Media freedom is curtailed, and the judiciary’s independence has been eroded.

Republic of the Sudan

Freedom House: 1/100 (Not Free)

• Sudan has a hybrid system. Muslim personal and family law remains heavily shaped by Sharia, including through the Personal Status Law for Muslims of 1991. Some Islamic text legal punishments and other severe Sharia-derived penalties still remain in Sudan’s criminal laws.
• No elected government exists. There is no electoral commission, no independent judiciary, and no credible path to elections.

The conclusion is obvious: Sharia is the enemy of liberty. We enjoy our freedoms precisely because of our Judeo-Christian heritage.

There is nothing phobic about disliking someone, unless it is wholly irrational. For example, lots of people dislike New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, and with good reason: they find his policies to be downright inane, even dangerous. Yet he and his supporters never stop accusing his critics of “Islamophobia.”

A phobia is an “extreme or irrational fear or dislike of a specified thing or group.” The word should be used judiciously, and not trivialized.This certainly applies to Mamdani. Quite frankly, he and his backers are milking “Islamophobia” for political gain.

The latest iteration of Mamdani’s linguistic politics occurred after two Muslim men came to New York City from Pennsylvania armed with a cache of bombs looking for trouble. They wound up throwing them at anti-Mamdani protesters outside the mayor’s residence on March 7. Though the bombs did not detonate, the madmen told the cops they wanted the death count to be “even bigger” than the 2013 Boston marathon bombing.

Mamdani appeared more vexed by his non-violent foes than by his violent allies, accusing them of—you guessed it—”Islamophobia.” This is getting old. Consider the following.

Last year, a New York Post editorial noted that Mamdani “wrote and sang a rap song giving his ‘love’ to the Holy Land Five, American Hamas financers convicted and sent to prison for up to 65 years.” It was correct to say this has nothing to do with “Islamophobia.” It is a statement of fact.

Similarly, Jonathan Tobin, writing for the Jewish News Syndicate, warns us, “Don’t Fall for Mamdani’s Islamophobia Gaslighting.” He offers as proof a 9/11 example. “Muslims have been speaking as if they, and not the nearly 3,000 persons murdered by Islamists on that awful day, were the real victims of Al Qaeda’s assault on America.”

When Andrew Cuomo ran against Mamdani for mayor last year, Mamdani’s staffers claimed it was “Islamophobic” for the Cuomo team to shop a photo of their hero showing him with a “darker and thicker” beard. It apparently never occurred to them that it might have more to do with making him look grubby, and therefore unappealing.

We know that Mamdani lied when he said his aunt was afraid to wear her hijab after 9/11. His only aunt lived in Tanzania on 9/11 and photos of her show her without a hijab. The “aunt” he was referring to was actually his cousin. But the urge to deceive, to claim “Islamophobia,” proved to be irresistible.

Jonathan Greenblatt, the head of the ADL, said Mamdani never visited a synagogue. He was wrong about that. Most people would conclude he made a mistake. Yet the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the anti-Israeli Muslim civil rights group, called it “Islamophobia.”

Actor Michael Rapaport criticized Mamdani for eating at pricey restaurants while living in a rent-stabilized apartment. He was accusing him of hypocrisy, but that is not the way his fans saw it. They accused Rapaport of “Islamophobia.”

The Center for the Study of Organized Hate published a report the day before the mayoral election titled, “Islamophobia And The New York City Mayoral Election.” It was cited by many who are convinced this phobia is ubiquitous. On closer inspection, it fails miserably in making its case.

The Report boasts that “we focus on the overt Islamophobia that permeated and substantially increased from June 24 to October 31.” The document says, “we identified 35,522 original Islamophobic and xenophobic posts authored by 17,752 unique accounts on X.” The Report considers the following words used by Mamdani’s critics to be evidence of “Islamophobia.” “Extremist,” “Radical,” “Radical Muslim,” “Unamerican,” “Anti-American,” “Enemy,” and “New York Has Fallen.”

If using these words to describe Mamdani is phobic, what would we call it when he called Obama “evil”? Was he suffering from a phobia when he said, “Hasn’t Barack Obama shown that the lesser evil is still pretty damn evil?”

Mamdani may not like it when he is labeled an “extremist” or a “radical,” but those are the kinds of words that reasonable people use to describe someone who refuses to recognize the state of Israel; welcomes a pro-Hamas activist into his home; promotes a boycott of Israel; accuses Israel of “genocide”; and still refuses to condemn those who want to “globalize the intifada.”

The Communist Party USA is one of Mamdani’s leading cheerleaders. His frequent invocation of Marxist terms, calling for the “abolition of private property,” for instance, also gives just cause to those who see him as the “enemy.” His hatred of Columbus, and his refusal to march in the Veterans Day Parade, give rise to reasonable charges that he is “Anti-American.”

Mamdani’s primary campaign received lavish funding from CAIR: it funneled $100,000 to the largest pro-Mamdani PAC. No wonder many regard Mamdani as a radical Muslim—CAIR was named as a co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation case; it provided over $12 million to Hamas.

By routinely hurling charges of “Islamophobia” at his critics, Mamdani and his supporters are trying to silence them, branding them as fear-mongers. But like the proverbial “boy who cried wolf,” they are overplaying their hand.

Bill Donohue discusses his book Christianity in the Crosshairs on “EWTN Bookmark.” To watch, click here.

Fact checking is a non-stop business at the Catholic League, and we are proud of our record. Michael McDonald, our director of communications, uncovered some aspects of an alleged war between the Pentagon and the Vatican that sets the record straight.

It was recently reported that the Department of War threatened the Vatican with military action. It was a bogus story, but it made the rounds on the Internet.

There are two culpable sources: the Free Press and Christopher Hale. The Free Press has done some fine reporting, so this is more of an anomaly. Hale is a left-wing Catholic whose ethics is on a par with his fidelity to Church teachings. Once the story was debunked, Hale was still sticking to his guns; the Free Press backed off.

On April 8, the Free Press reported on an allegedly tense and confrontational meeting between representatives from the Vatican and Trump administration officials. The meeting quickly became hostile, so said the anonymous sources cited for the article. Allegedly, the Papal Nuncio to the United States was given “a bitter lecture warning that the United States has the military power to do whatever it wants—and that the Church had better take its side.”

The Free Press noted that “As tensions escalated, one U.S. official went so far as to invoke the Avignon Papacy, the period in the 1300s when the French Crown leveraged its military power to dominate the papal authority.” The reporter was good enough to admit that this came from anonymous sources. But it is also true that he has drafted numerous articles that pit the Vatican and the Department of War against each other.

Hale claims on his blog that unnamed Vatican officials told him they “saw the reference to an Avignon Papacy as a threat to use military force against the Holy See.” He is so radical that even the far-left and anti-Catholic National Catholic Reporter notes that Hale’s activities on his blog are “partisan wish-casting” in a crude effort “to co-opt the papacy to fit into a progressive political agenda.”

On April 9, the Department of War issued a statement claiming that the portrayal of the meeting with the Papal Nuncio is “inaccurate.” The spokesman said the reporting has been “highly exaggerated and distorted,” insisting that “the meeting between the Pentagon and Vatican officials was a respectful and reasonable discussion.”

Further, United States Ambassador to the Holy See Brian Burch spoke with the Papal Nuncio who also “confirmed the recent media characterizations of his meeting…are fabrications and were just invented.” The ambassador also quoted him saying the meeting “was frank and cordial,” and that there was no mention of the Avignon Papacy.

These new revelations generated more interest, and several outlets ran stories featuring statements that corrected the fabricated narrative put forward by Hale. These outlets included the Washington Post, the Hill and Forbes.

Even the hardcore ideologues at the New Republic and the Daily Beast ran a news story on the meeting referencing the Department of War and Vatican statements, distancing themselves from Hale.

Hale discredited himself—again.