Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on criminalizing speech in the United Kingdom:

A sexually confused teenage English boy, Jackie Green, now 25, decided when he was 15 to “transition” to a girl. Never mind that this is impossible—Jackie still possesses a Y chromosome and will never menstruate—he is now the subject of a big debate in London.

The reason this bizarre issue is in the news is because a journalist, Caroline Farrow, referred to him as a him and not a she. For this violation, Farrow has now been summoned to appear before the police and could wind up in prison.

This all began last September when Farrow appeared on ITV’s “Good Morning Britain” with Susie Green, mother of the sexually confused boy, Jackie. They debated whether it is appropriate to tell the parents of a sexually confused child whether their child has “transitioned.” Green is an advocate for the sexually confused and defends keeping the parents in the dark. Farrow disagrees.

After the debate, Farrow wrote a few tweets wherein she referred to Jackie as a him and not a she. Susie Green quickly filed a formal complaint with the police under the Malicious Communications Act, a hate crimes statute.

After a six-month-long investigation, Farrow was notified on March 18 to attend a police interview. If found guilty, she could be sent to the slammer for two years.

Consider the context of this madness. Britain is currently witnessing a knife crime epidemic—thousands of knives were surrendered just today as part of a national amnesty—yet the cops have time to become the language police.

Farrow is a Catholic mother of five. One might think she has a right—this is after all, home to the Magna Carta—to free speech. But that is now debatable.

Farrow and her family have been subjected to incredible abuse, much of it obscene, including published photos of her children. All of this is happening because she referred to a sexually confused boy, who thinks he is a girl, as a boy.

It is just a matter of time before this kind of lunacy hits our shores. The intolerance that marks the radical elements in the LGBT community is stunning, and much of it is aimed at people of faith.

Maybe some journalist will ask the U.S. presidential candidates what they think about criminalizing the speech of practicing Christians, Jews, Muslims, and Mormons. Should they be allowed to voice the correct pronoun when discussing the sexually confused? Or should they be punished for doing so?

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on an article posted March 17 on the website of Rolling Stone:

If there were an award for yellow journalism, Rolling Stone would be at the top of the list.

In 2015, the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism demolished a piece by Sabrina Rubin Erdely about gang rape at the University of Virginia. In 2011, I demolished an article by the same writer for her hit job on the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. Now Rolling Stone is back with a scurrilous story by Nicholas Lord on Australian Cardinal George Pell.

Lord begins his article by citing the recent case where Pell was sentenced for sexual abuse. The author accuses Pell of cornering “two thirteen-year-old choirboys in the sacristy of St. Patrick’s Cathedral” wherein he forced “one boy to perform oral sex while the other flinched away.”

What Lord did not say is that the boy who “flinched away” died of drug abuse, but not before telling his mother on two occasions that Pell never abused him or anyone else. Importantly, over 20 witnesses who marched in a procession with the two boys the morning of the alleged abuse said the boys never left the line of march to be with Pell in the sacristy after Mass. A priest who helped Pell with his vestments in the sacristy that day confirms that no boys were present.

Lord says another boy was molested by Pell at a camp. He leaves out salient facts.

The accusation by a Melbourne man who said he was abused by Pell in 1962, when he was 12-years-old, was thrown out by a judge when nothing could be substantiated. Not a single person who worked at the camp supported the charges, and all of them signed statements that were favorable to Pell.

Moreover, the accuser had been convicted 39 times for offenses ranging from assault to drug use. Indeed, he was a violent drug addict who served four years in prison. He drove drunk, beat people, and took amphetamines. I guess Lord missed all of that.

Lord accuses Pell of doing nothing to stop Australia’s worst sex offender, Gerald Ridsdale, who raped victims in a presbytery in Ballarat where both men resided.

Conveniently, Lord does not mention that the authorities dismissed a case against Pell and he was completely exonerated. Also, Pell was accused of joking about Ridsdale’s crimes at a funeral Mass in Ballarat. But there was no Mass that day and the priest whom Pell was allegedly joking with was living someplace else when the supposed incident took place.

Lord rolls out Lyndon Monument and Damian Dignan, both of whom claim Pell abused them. What a pair they are.

If Lord were not so lazy, or vindictive, he would know that Monument was a big boozer, a drug addict, a drug dealer, and a thug who beat and stalked his girlfriend. An ex-con, he has also been arrested for burglary, assault, and making threats to kill. Damian also has a record of violence, and has been arrested for drunk driving.

Not surprisingly, Monument and Dignan have also made accusations against former teachers. Regarding Pell, they claim he inappropriately touched them while throwing them off his shoulders in a swimming pool in the 1970s.

True to form, Lord is dead wrong about crimen sollicitationis. He refers to it as a directive issued by Pope John XXIII which “threatened to excommunicate Catholic officials who reported pedophile priests.”

In fact, the 1962 document, “The Crime of Solicitation,” was about the seal of confession. It allowed for a priest to be thrown out of the priesthood if he engaged in sexual solicitation when hearing confession. It also made it clear that if the penitent were to tell someone what happened in the confessional (perhaps another priest), he or she had 30 days to report the incident to the bishop or face excommunication.

If anything, this showed how serious the Vatican was about the offense—it threatened to punish the penitent for not turning in the guilty priest.

Why did Rolling Stone publish this trash? The answer is given, rather unwittingly, by Lord. “To liberals [in Australia], Pell was the enemy. He fought the ‘secular agenda,’ gay rights, abortion, IVF, euthanasia, sex outside of marriage.”

That’s right. Cardinal Pell is the poster boy for Catholic-hating secularists, not only in his home country but around the world. They hate him for his orthodoxy and the fact that he was, until recently, the third most senior cleric in the Catholic Church. No matter, he will go down in history as the biggest scapegoat for clergy sexual abuse in the history of the Catholic Church.

Those who know the facts about former cardinal Theodore McCarrick, and Cardinal George Pell, know there is a world of difference between the two of them. Pell does not deserve to be spoken about in the same breath as McCarrick, but to those who hate the Church, they are one and the same. This is pure bunk.

Contact Rolling Stone editor: Jason.Fine@rollingstone.com

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on how Sen. Kamala Harris treats life and death issues:

Last week, Sen. Kamala Harris was asked by National Public Radio (NPR) about her position on the death penalty. She is against it. When pushed further, she stuck to her guns.

NPR: “For any crime?”

Harris: “Correct.”

NPR: “Not even, I don’t know, treason?”

Harris: “Not in the United States, no.”

NPR: “There’s nothing that rises to that level?”

Harris: “Not in the United States, no.”

Last year, Harris addressed the issue of aborting a child right up until birth. Here is what she tweeted on January 29, 2018:

“Tonight, the Senate is voting on whether to impose a 20-week abortion ban. Women have the constitutional right to make their own decisions about their reproductive health. It shouldn’t be infringed upon. Get out your bullhorns. Everyone should be shouting about this.”

There we have it. Harris says that those who endanger the safety of all Americans by attempting a violent overthrow of the government, or spying on the military for a foreign enemy, should have their lives spared, but innocent children who are moments from being born are not entitled to have their lives spared.

Harris is a declared candidate for president of the United States.

Contact Harris’ chief of staff: Rohini_Kosoglu@harris.senate.gov

Bill Donohue

The heroics of St. Patrick are not appreciated as much as they should be. He is the first person in history to publicly condemn slavery, and one of the first leaders to champion the cause of equal rights.

There is much to celebrate on March 17. Fortunately, his writings, though slim, are eye-opening accounts of his life: Letter to the Soldiers of Coroticus and Confession reveal much about the man. Along with other sources, they paint a picture of his saintliness.

Patrick was born in Britain in the 4th century to wealthy parents. It is likely that he was baptized, though growing up he did not share his family’s faith. He was an atheist.

When he was 15, he committed what he said was a grave sin, never saying exactly what it was; it appears it was a sexual encounter with a young girl. No matter, it would haunt him throughout his life.

At age 15 or 16 (the accounts vary), Patrick was kidnapped and enslaved by Irish barbarians. They had come to plunder his family’s estate, and took him away in chains to Ireland. While a slave, he converted to Christianity, praying incessantly at all hours of the day. After six years, he escaped, and made his way back home.

His family thought he was dead, and with good reason: no one taken by Irish raiders had managed to escape and return. St. Patrick biographer Philip Freeman describes how his family received him, stating “it was as if a ghost had returned from the dead.”

After he returned home, he had a vision while sleeping. He felt called to return to Ireland. This seemed bizarre: this is where he was brutalized as a slave. But he knew what Jesus had commanded us to do, “Love thy enemy.” He was convinced that God was calling him to become a missionary to Ireland. So he acted on it, despite the reservations of family and friends.

Patrick became a priest, practiced celibacy, and was eventually named a bishop. Contrary to what many believe, he did not introduce Christianity to Ireland, nor was he Ireland’s first bishop. But he did more to bring the Gospel to Ireland than anyone, converting legions of pagans, especially in the northern parts of the island.

His missionary work in Ireland has been duly noted, but his strong defense of human rights has not been given its due.

No public person before him had denounced slavery, widespread though it was. Jesus was agnostic on the subject, Aristotle thought it was a natural way of life, and neither master nor slave saw anything fundamentally wrong with it. Patrick did.

Though he did not invoke natural law specifically, he was instinctively drawn to it. He taught that all men were created equal in the eyes of God, and that the inherent dignity of everyone must be respected.

Patrick did more than preach—he lashed out at the British dictator, Coroticus, harshly rebuking him for his mistreatment of the Irish. In fact, Patrick found his Irish converts to be more civilized than Coroticus and his band of thugs.

Patrick was way ahead of his time in the pursuit of human rights. Not only were men of every social status entitled to equal rights, so were women. In his Letter to the Soldiers of Coroticus, he scolds “the tyrant Coroticus—a man who has no respect for God or his priests.” More important, he made a startling plea: “They must also free Christian women and captives.” His reasoning showed the power of his faith when he said, “Remember, Christ died and was crucified for these people.”

He did not mince words. “So, Coroticus, you and your wicked servants, where do you think you will end up? You have treated baptized Christian women like prizes to be handed out, all for the sake of the here and now—this brief, fleeting world.”

What makes this all the more dramatic is the way the pagan world thought about women: the idea that women were equal to men was totally foreign to them. But the women understood what Patrick was saying, and gravitated to him in large numbers. The Christian tenet that all humans possess equal dignity had taken root.

Did the Irish save civilization, as Thomas Cahill maintains? Freeman thinks not—”it had never been lost.” But everyone agrees that had it not been for St. Patrick, and the monasteries that followed, much of what we know about the ancient world would not exist.

Indeed, it is difficult to fathom how classical Greek and Roman literature would have survived had it not been for the Irish monks who attracted students from many parts of Europe. They are responsible for preserving the great works of antiquity. And all of them are indebted to St. Patrick.

It is believed that he died on March 17, sometime during the second half of the fifth century. That is his feast day, the source of many celebrations in his honor. His impact extends beyond the Irish and the Catholic Church—human rights are a global issue—making him a very special person in world history.

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on troubles at the Southern Poverty Law Center:

Is there a cover-up in play at the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC)? Why was its famous co-founder, Morris Dees, fired? Why are the media not demanding transparency? This matters to the Catholic League because SPLC has a long record of targeting legitimate Protestant and Catholic organizations.

So far at least, the Alabama Political Reporter, the Los Angeles Times, and the New York Times are the only media outlets that are doing the kind of digging we would expect from serious journalists. SPLC is content to say that undisclosed problems have arisen which led to Dees’ firing.

Internal emails obtained by the Alabama Political Reporter show that “the problems—which employees said spanned from sexual harassment to gender- and race-based discrimination—were more systemic and widespread, creating an atmosphere over several years in which female and minority employees felt mistreated. The employees also said that they felt their complaints were either not heard or resulted in retaliation from senior staff.”

The Los Angeles Times found something similar. “One letter—signed by about two dozen employees and sent to the board of directors before news broke of Dees’ firing—said that internal ‘allegations of mistreatment, sexual harassment, gender discrimination, and racism threaten the moral authority of this organization and our integrity along with it.'”

Charges of sexual harassment are of primary interest to the Catholic League: SPLC has been a relentless foe of traditional sexual morality. It also brands as hate speech comments that reflect the Judeo-Christian understanding of sexual ethics.

Worse, it even lists some legitimate Christian organizations, most prominently the Family Research Council (FRC), as hate groups, simply because they adhere to such precepts. In the case of FRC, being listed as a hate group inspired a madman to go on a shooting rampage at its headquarters.

Then there is the double standard. No bishop could ever be removed from office without a public accounting. Moreover, Dees himself has been mentioned as allegedly engaging in some sort of misconduct. What did he do? When did he do it? Who knew all along?

Imagine a news release issued by a diocese saying its bishop has been asked to step down, saying only that workplace problems such as sexual harassment have been noted by many employees. Imagine further that the media are told “nothing more is going to be said!”

That’s what’s going on with SPLC. “Asked about the nature of Dees’ alleged misconduct,” the Los Angeles Times reports, “a spokesman for the organization said in an email: ‘We can’t comment on the details of individual personnel decisions.'”

The next time some “in your face” reporter demands that a diocese be more transparent about a priest who has been removed from ministry, it should say it is taking a page out of the SPLC playbook and say, “We can’t comment on the details of individual personnel decisions.” And then walk away. Let them all howl.

Contact Richard Cohen, president of SPLC: richard.cohen@splcenter.org

Bill In The News (CatholicPhilly):

 In a time of anger and frustration over the church’s handling of clergy sexual abuse cases, some Catholics might be tempted to withhold donations to the church — especially when urged to do so in a recent column by Marc Thiessen in the Washington Post.

But Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, disagrees. He argues that calls for Catholics to punish the church of today for leaders’ actions in the past fail to take into account the progress that the church has made with regard to the abuse crisis, let alone the limits of it. READ MORE HERE

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on a recent survey of Catholics:

A recent Gallup survey shows that news stories about clergy sexual abuse have Catholics questioning their affiliation with the Church. Before examining why, an analysis of the data is warranted; it reveals a nuanced portrait of Catholics.

The survey found that 37% of Catholics said they are questioning whether to remain in the Church; the figure in 2002 was 22%. Who are these Catholics? Most of them seldom or never go to church: 46% of these Catholics are questioning whether to remain versus 22% of those who attend church weekly. In other words, those with one foot out the door are more likely to consider exiting, which is precisely what we would expect.

A more interesting picture emerges when Catholics are asked how much confidence they have in the priests in their parish versus priests in general. Six in ten have confidence in their own priests (41% said “a great deal” and 18% said “quite a lot”) versus only a third for priests nationwide (20% said “a great deal” and 12% “quite a lot”). The figures for the bishops are similar to the latter.

Not surprisingly, Catholics who are regular attendees have a great deal of confidence in their priests, sporting a figure of 86%; but only 39% of those who seldom or never attend church feel this way. Most of the latter probably wouldn’t be able to name the priests in their parish.

The difference between Church-goers and lapsed Catholics is most revealing when considering the second bank of questions. There is a reason why Church-goers have a lot of confidence in their priests: though it was not mentioned in the survey or in the concluding analysis, almost all priests have never had an accusation made against them.

Thus, the everyday experience that Catholics who are regular church-goers have is a positive one—they and their priests are untouched by the scandal. But they read a lot about other priests, clergymen they do not know, and that explains the big drop in confidence for priests nationwide.

What Catholics are reading, of course, matters. For example, most of the news stories on the recent Vatican summit left the impression that the sexual abuse scandal is ongoing. It is not. It is certainly not true in the United States: most of the offenses that took place were in the last century.

Here’s a quick anecdote that demonstrates why Catholics may think that conditions have not improved.

“New Jersey Priest Accused of Sexual Abuse Found Shot to Death.” That was the headline flashed before the reader in a New York Times story on March 13. It’s misleading—he was an ex-priest. He was defrocked in 1992 after earlier charges of abuse, homosexual in nature, were revealed.

The Times did identify him as a “former priest” in the article (he was also a former public school teacher, but that got little attention). However, his ex-priest status was not noted in the headline (which is the way other newspapers treated this story).

The point is that many people these days only glance at the headlines and then move on to a story they want to read. The reader was left with the impression that nothing has changed in the Catholic Church. In reality, what never changed was the New York Times.

This is just one example among many. Time and again the media have put the worst possible face on the scandal, leaving the public to believe that it will never end.

The fact is there are reporters, pundits, educators, activists, entertainers, lawyers, and professional victims’ groups, as well as Catholic dissidents, who don’t want it to end. Their goal is to keep it alive so they can push for their secular reforms.

Beware of being played by those with an agenda.

Bill In The News (CatholicPhilly):

Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, based in New York, similarly took offense at Davidson’s remarks, saying in a March 11 statement that the comedian “libeled all priests.”

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on why he is appealing to Michigan officials to probe the public schools:

As we pointed out recently, perverts and rapists are preying on public school students in Michigan today, yet neither Governor Gretchen Whitmer nor Attorney General Dana Nessel are asking for an investigation of the schools. That’s because they are too busy hounding the Catholic Church.

Nessel recently started an investigation of clergy sexual abuse, but not of ministers, rabbis, or imams—only Catholic priests—and Whitmer is asking state legislators for a $2 million supplemental allocation to pay for the Catholic probe.

Why only Catholic priests? Was there some breaking news that priests are on a rampage molesting students? No. It is due to one thing: the Pennsylvania grand jury report released last year that detailed wholly unchallenged and unsubstantiated charges against priests, most of whom were dead or out of ministry.

Why was the Pennsylvania grand jury report launched? Not because of some pending crisis initiated by law enforcement or reporters. It began because one bishop turned in one high school faculty member who was accused of an offense in the 1990s.

Now ask yourself this question: If a school superintendent turned in a teacher for an old offense, would Pennsylvania’s Attorney General launch an investigation of every public school in the state dating back to when Truman was president?

In any event, what does this have to do with Michigan? Nessel argues that if there were cases of abuse in Pennsylvania—dating back to World War II—then surely there must be cases in Michigan. Surely there are. Ditto for the public schools. So why aren’t lawmakers being asked to investigate them?

Does Michigan have a problem with public school students being sexually abused? Clearly it does. How do we know? Because in the 50- state analysis of this issue conducted by USA Today, published in 2016, Michigan was rated among the worst in the nation: It received a grade of “F.” Also, in 2017, CARE House ranked Michigan 6th in the nation in the number of cases of human trafficking.

Accordingly, I am writing to Governor Whitmer and the entire state legislature asking for an investigation of sexual abuse in the public schools. If they decide to cherry pick the Catholic Church, they would be guilty of religious profiling. Moreover, the courts may see them as engaging in religious discrimination. Surely many Catholics, and non-Catholics, would.

The Catholic League takes this issue seriously. That is why we filed an amicus brief defending the rights of priests in Pennsylvania last year. We won, 6-1, in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court last December.

We will be monitoring all Michigan public officials on this matter, and will take whatever steps are necessary to assure justice. We will also keep Michigan Catholics in the loop as events unfold.

Contact Governor Whitmer’s chief of staff, JoAnne Huls: HulsJ1@michigan.gov

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on an opinion piece by syndicated columnist George Will that appeared in the March 12 edition of the Chicago Tribune:

Opinion writers who opine about matters they are not well grounded in are a problem. George Will is such a man. A devout atheist, he takes the Catholic Church to task for offenses, real and contrived, relying heavily on the work of Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, the man behind the discredited Pennsylvania grand jury report on the Church.

If Will took the time to read the grand jury report, which I did, and if he took the time to read the John Jay reports on the issue of clergy abuse, which I did, he would not appear so gullible.

I debunked the grand jury report when it was released. One of the myths I addressed is taken up by Will. He begins his article by saying, “‘Horseplay,’ a term to denote child-rape, is, says Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, part of a sinister glossary of euphemisms by which the Catholic Church’s bureaucracy obfuscates the church’s ‘pattern of abuse’ and conspiracy of silence.”

Will took Shapiro’s bait. First of all, most of the alleged victims were neither children nor were they raped: inappropriate touching of adolescents—which is indefensible—was the typical offense. So stop the hyperbole, Mr. Will.

Also, the word “horseplay” was not part of the lexicon of Church officials: it appears once in over 1300 pages of the report, and it was used to describe the behavior of a seminarian. Once again, Will fell for Shapiro’s ploy.

Don’t take my word for it—read what Peter Steinfels said about Shapiro’s grand jury report; he is a former religion reporter for the New York Times.

After reading the report, fact checking the accusations, and speaking to those familiar with the report, including people in Shapiro’s office, Steinfels concluded that Shapiro’s most serious and sweeping indictments of the Church are “grossly misleading, irresponsible, inaccurate, and unjust.”

Don’t take Steinfels’ word for it—consider what happened in December. That’s when the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled 6-1 in favor of eleven accused priests who claimed that releasing their names to the public would violate their reputational rights as guaranteed by the Pennsylvania Constitution. The Catholic League filed an amicus brief in this case.

The court ruled that the report contained “false, misleading, incorrect and unsupported accusations.”

Will needs to rewrite his article, rebutting what I said, what Steinfels wrote, and what the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled.

He should know better than to cite a grand jury report as the basis of his article. The priests named in the grand jury report were never afforded the right to challenge the accusations. That is because such reports are investigative, not evidentiary.

In 2015, after Will accused Pope Francis of standing against “modernity, rationality, science, and ultimately…open societies,” I wrote the following about him: “He is an educated man, but his grasp of Catholicism is on a par with that of Bill Maher’s.” Looks like nothing has changed.

Contact: georgewill@washpost.com