Bill Donohue

In the Olympics, we know who the fastest runner is by who crosses the finish line first. But it is not that easy to determine who is the best ice skater or springboard diver: whoever gets the highest composite score from a team of judges wins. When it comes to academic achievement, we rely on test scores.

Like the skater and the diver, judging academic success will never be as easy as determining who the fastest runner is; the fact that the judges usually differ is testimony to this verity. No matter, few conclude that it would be better not to have judges decide who should get the gold, silver and bronze medals.

Unfortunately, there is no shortage of prominent educators, politicians and activists who want to kill testing. While they focus on standardized tests, they typically object to testing in general. They do so because time and time again, black students do the worst, followed by Hispanics. Instead of helping these students clear the bar, they want to jettison it.

It is a lie to say that “students of color” can’t do well in school. Asians do. Indeed, most white kids can’t compete with them, never mind black and Hispanic kids.

We have known since the Coleman Report on education in the 1960s (named after sociologist James S. Coleman) that it is not what happens in school that is the primary factor accounting for academic proficiency—it is what happens outside of school. To be exact, it is what happens in the home that counts the most.

We know that Asians spend more time doing homework than any other racial or ethnic group; blacks spend the least amount of time. This underscores Coleman’s research. The reason for this condition is not hard to figure out: the typical Asian student comes from a two-parent home; the typical black student comes from a one-parent home. Kids raised in two-parent homes—including black kids—do better than kids raised in one-parent homes.

No state has declared war on school testing more than Oregon. It has suspended the graduation requirement for math, reading, and writing proficiency until the 2027-2028 academic year. It is doing so in the name of “equity.”

Oregon never seems to learn. The previous governor, Kate Brown, initiated the war on testing after it was learned in 2017 that students were going backwards in reading, writing and math. As I noted in The War on Virtue, it was reported that “roughly 60 percent of Oregon public school students fell short in mathematics as did 45 percent in reading and writing. It was the worst showing yet by Oregon schools, particularly in the language arts.”

The movement to kill standardized tests is based on the assumption that the tests are racist. This is more of a political statement than a conclusion based on scientific evidence, but it is nonetheless endorsed by the National Education Association. This is also the position of Ibram X. Kendi, the guru of Critical Race Theory: he has made a fortune making the case against racism by advancing a racist agenda against white people.

Standardized tests are not infallible and are open to criticism. But to dismiss them altogether does not do anyone a favor, including black students. For example, SAT scores remain a key indicator of how well a student will do in college. And it is precisely because standardized tests are a helpful guide to assessing academic success that we know that charter schools are of great benefit to minority students.

A Gallup poll published at the end of November found that black parents are very much in favor of testing, as are Hispanic parents. How else are they to know whether their child is succeeding or not? When asked how they would feel if they learned that their child received a B in math but was scoring below grade level on standardized tests, 72 percent of black parents said they would be extremely or very concerned about these results; for Hispanics the figure was 56 percent; for whites it was 52 percent.

To make matters worse, “equity education” in Oregon not only means a war on testing, it means a war on discipline. At the end of 2023, Portland Public Schools announced that teachers must work with disruptive students, taking into account their race; then they are to develop a “support plan,” eschewing punitive measures. What if the student engages in violence? He can be removed from the classroom but not the school. Mandatory suspensions are now banned.

This is madness. It is also racist. Racists make judgments about people based on their race, not their individual attributes. Lowering expectations for blacks is the most racist thing that white liberal educators have done to African Americans. It is also a recipe for failure.

Bill Donohue

Bill Maher’s HBO show on May 31 featured a discussion between the host and filmmaker John Waters on the subject of Pope Francis and clergy sexual abuse. Waters, who is a homosexual and former drug addict, addressed molesting priests, saying, “They’re not all gay—they’re pedophiles. That’s different.” Maher replied, “They’re not all pedophiles.” Waters answered, “Most are.”

So who’s right? Waters or Maher? Maher.

Researchers at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice issued the two most authoritative studies on priestly sexual abuse; most of the abuse took place between 1965 and 1985. They found that 81 percent of the victims were male and that 78 percent were postpubescent. When adult men have sex with adolescent males that is called homosexuality. As for prepubescent victims, they accounted for 3.8 percent of the abuse. That’s called pedophilia.

In short, there never was a pedophile problem in the Catholic Church—most of the molestation was done by homosexuals. For more detail on this subject see my book, The Truth about Clergy Sexual Abuse: Clarifying the Facts and the Causes. As I have said many times, most gay priests are not molesters but most of the molesters were gay.

The media, of course, as well as gay activists and liberal Catholics, continue to lie about this issue. They mouth the refrain issued by Waters, hoping to exculpate homosexuals. But blaming pedophiles for homosexual-driven offenses is simply dishonest.

It’s worse than this. The fact is that some of the most prominent gay leaders have been supportive of adults having sex with minors, and some even justify man-boy rape. Moreover, while there are heterosexual pedophiles as well, the only ones who have an organization dedicated to pedophilia are gays. See our report on this issue.

June is Gay Pride Month. It’s time that gay leaders spoke to this issue with clarity. If everyone can’t agree that the sexual abuse of children is an abomination, we will never get rid of this problem.

Bill Donohue

Whenever there is a whiff of bad news about the Catholic Church, the mainstream media never miss a beat in reporting it. But when there is good news, they go mute. The latest example is the news about the almost complete eradication of clergy sexual abuse. Not one secular media outlet in the United States ran a story on this issue.

Every year, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) issues an annual report on clergy sexual abuse. The audit is prepared by StoneBridge Business Partners, which works in cooperation with the National Review Board for the Protection of Children and Young People, a lay advisory board established by the USCCB.

The 2023 report, which covered allegations made between July 1, 2022 and June 30, 2023, found that there were 1,308 allegations involving 17 current year minors. Four of the allegations were made by males and 11 by females; 2 were listed as unknown. Of the 17, only 3 were substantiated.

During this period, there were 47,987 members of the clergy. This means that 0.006 percent of them had a substantiated case of sexual abuse made against him by a minor. (In the previous year’s report, there were 7 substantiated cases.) Of the accused, 91 percent are either dead or have been kicked out of ministry.

If there had been a sharp uptick in the number of cases, it would be all over the news. Such a story would have been picked up by the Associated Press, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, the Washington Post, NPR, PBS, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC—and every left-wing internet and social media site. But because this problem has all been wiped out, practically no one knows anything about it.

The fact that more females than males are making these allegations suggests that the crackdown on homosexuals in the priesthood has worked. They are responsible for 8-in-10 cases of the sexual abuse of minors (only a very small percentage of these offenses have ever been committed by pedophiles). For more detail on this see my book, The Truth about Clergy Sexual Abuse: Clarifying the Facts and the Causes.

Congratulations to the bishops for implementing the necessary reforms. And shame on journalists and the talking heads for the total media blackout. There is no other organization in the nation where adults regularly interact with minors that has a better record on this issue than the Catholic Church.

Bill in the News (Breitbart): When the news broke, the Vatican was swift to offer an apology, insisting that the pope “never intended to offend or express himself in homophobic terms,” while notably not denying that he uttered the expressions attributed to him.

Commenting on the news, Catholic League President Bill Donohue, a sociologist who wrote the groundbreaking 2021 book The Truth about Clergy Sexual Abuse: Clarifying the Facts and the Causes, noted Wednesday that homosexual priests have been responsible for most of the cases (81 percent) in which a minor has been sexually abused. READ MORE HERE

Bill Donohue

Pope Francis and Richard Dreyfuss are both in the hot seat for making remarks that some interpret as offensive. The pope has apologized but not Dreyfuss. Are they guilty as charged, or are people overreacting?

Italian bishops told media sources this week that when the pope met with them in a closed-door meeting last week, he spoke out against having homosexuals in the seminaries. He said, “There’s already too much ‘faggotry’” in the seminaries, including “even those who are only semi-oriented.” He expressed his concerns over seminarians who are supposed to be celibate but live a “double life,” living secretly as gay.

Due to the fact that homosexual priests (not pedophiles!) are responsible for most of the cases where a minor has been sexually abused—8 in 10 of these cases—the Vatican sought to correct this problem in 2005 when it barred those with “deep-seated homosexual tendencies” from entering the seminaries. Subsequently, the number of abuse cases has declined to almost nil.

Is the criticism of Pope Francis warranted? Is the word “faggot” objectionable?

It wasn’t too long ago that the word “queer” was deemed offensive, but this is no longer the case. Now it’s standard in the mainstream media to refer to homosexuals as queers. According to LGBTQ Nation, the term has been “reclaimed” (which explains why they added the “Q” to their acronym). They say that “The use of the word ‘queer’ has become so widespread that it’s now represented by the letter ‘Q’ in the initialism LGBTQ+.” But we still don’t know who the + people are.

If it is okay to call homosexuals queers, is it time to reclaim the word “faggot”? Some are already doing that.

André Wheeler is a self-described black queer. Four years ago he admitted that growing up he was aghast at the term “faggot.” But then he heard more and more people in social media dropping the word and found that his objections began to wither. He points out that Dan Savage, the anti-Catholic queer writer, began calling his sex advice column “Hey Faggot” in the 1990s. Wheeler confesses that he still winces when he hears the word “faggot,” but “I also want to reclaim” it.

That being the case, one could argue that the pope’s reference to “faggots” in the seminaries is not necessarily objectionable. It may be that the perception of this term is evolving.

Richard Dreyfuss of “Jaws” fame upset some people over the weekend when speaking at a Massachusetts theater, The Cabot. He said that “the parents of trans youth, allowing them to transition, was bad parenting and that someday those kids might change their minds.”

Officials at The Cabot were quick to issue a statement slamming Dreyfuss for his “distressing and offensive” remarks, and apologized to those who were hurt. Naturally, they said he violated the “welcoming and inclusive environment for all members of our community.” Except for him, that is.

In my upcoming book, Cultural Meltdown: The Secular Roots of Our Moral Crisis, I devote a lengthy chapter to transgenderism, the pernicious ideology that falsely claims there are more than two sexes. Worse than this is the exploitation of children by those in education and medical circles; enabling kids to “transition” is child abuse.

Ergo, what Dreyfuss said is an understatement. The apologies should be issued by his critics for contributing to this alarming problem.

Even if one allows that the pope should not have used the word “faggotry,” and even if one allows that Dreyfuss should have stayed away from politics, it is much more disconcerting to read the sanctimonious comments of their critics.

As for the Catholic League, we will refrain for now from talking about “faggots” (keeping an eye on its evolving acceptance), but will continue to condemn gender ideology.

Bill Donohue

Brandon McManus, the kicker for the Washington Commanders, has been hit with a lawsuit by two flight attendants who claim that when he was the kicker for the Jacksonville Jaguars he made unwelcome sexual advances while on board a plane last September; it was on the flight to London that the alleged sexual assault took place. The lawsuit also names the Jaguars, alleging that the team did not create a safe environment.

We have no opinion on this matter: we assume McManus is innocent—he claims he is—until proven otherwise. But we do have an opinion on the NFL.

Earlier this month, when the kicker for the Kansas City Chiefs, Harrison Butker, a Catholic, gave a Catholic speech at a Catholic college, he was given two standing ovations by the graduating class at Benedictine College. But because his speech mentioned the positive role that stay-at-home moms play, his free speech was condemned by those who fancy themselves as beacons of tolerance.

The NFL joined that chorus. “His [Butker’s] views are not those of the NFL as an organization. The NFL is steadfast in our commitment to inclusion, which only makes us stronger.”

So what has the NFL had to say about McManus? “We are aware of the matter but will decline comment.”

In other words, the NFL has no stomach for kickers who are traditional Catholics but it has nothing to say about kickers who are accused of sexually assaulting women. Is that because the Jaguars are party to the lawsuit and that implicates the NFL?

There have been roughly 5,400 news stories about Butker since his May 11 speech. He has been lied about—how many actually read his speech?—and subjected to incredible vitriol for simply defending traditional values. Butker said on May 24 that “At the outset, many people expressed a shocking level of hate. But as the days went on, even those who disagreed with my viewpoints shared their support for my freedom of religion.”

The NFL has been quoted approvingly every day since it released its statement. By throwing Butker under the bus, it gave cover to those who exercised a “shocking level of hate.” Now it sits comfortably in silence while alleged behavior against women—not speech about women—is in the news.

I am writing to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell about this matter. I urge you to contact his office.

Contact Goodell’s communication chief: Brian.McCarthy@nfl.com

Bill Donohue

Congressional investigators recently uncovered that the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor awarded a $500,000 grant to Humanists International (HI), an organization that promotes atheism. While this money was supposed to be used to encourage religious tolerance particularly of minority faiths, and protect the religious liberties of people abroad, the Biden administration has gifted the funds to their radical atheist friends who actively undermine religious freedoms.

One glaring example of the programming this grant supports is HI’s work in Nepal to “conduct advocacy and membership activities promoting humanism,” and to “increase and diversify their membership work.” In other words, the State Department gave funding to HI to host a membership drive in Nepal.

This is wrong on many levels.

Firstly, these types of grants were not designed to gain converts for a particular religion, but rather to ensure that the basic human freedom to be true to your faith is respected. Yet somehow the Biden administration believes it is appropriate for the atheists to use this money to win “converts.” Rest assured that if some Catholic relief organization included proselytizing as part of its work the Biden administration would have pulled the plug on that programming.

Secondly, HI is a collection of some of the most rabid anti-Catholic organizations, and their disdain for religious liberty is palpable. In the United States, the HI coalition includes American Atheists, the American Humanist Association, and the American Ethical Union along with several other organizations. In addition to their participation with HI, these radicals also belong to the Coalition of Secular Americans. Under Biden, these militant secularists have had greater access to the administration particularly through the Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships Office. Is it any wonder then, that HI received this grant?

Drawing inspiration from its anti-Catholic membership, HI has a history of attacking the Church. While it is unsurprising that an atheist group would support abortion, transgenderism, and the radical LGBT agenda, HI has condemned Catholic teachings on these subjects and maintains the notion that the Church is a great impediment to human flourishing.

Finally, and most importantly, Nepal does not have a great record when it comes to protecting religious liberty. Even the State Department’s most recent “Report on International Religious Freedom” notes several serious violations.

In the report, the State Department notes that in 2021 four Christians, including two Catholic nuns, were arrested for violating Nepal’s law against proselytizing. Additionally, Catholics in Nepal have noted an increase of inflammatory material on social media and a rise in discriminatory and divisive religious content on traditional media. This has led many Catholics to conceal their faith from their local communities out of fear of discrimination and violent attacks. Protestants and Muslims have noted similar violations of their rights as well.

According to its constitution, Nepal is a “secular country.” While Hindus enjoy many privileges, atheists are largely accepted in Nepal as the Communists currently hold a majority in its parliament.

Fortunately, Representatives Michael McCaul (R-TX), Chris Smith (R-NJ) and Brian Mast (R-FL) recently called out the State Department for its support of HI. While the State Department has promised to “take immediate action” and “recoup the misused funds,” it is with good reason these three are skeptical that the State Department will follow through. After all, the Biden Administration has been placating these militant atheists for years, even using programs designed to help faith-based organizations to do so.

Email the head of the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, Deputy Assistant Secretary Robert S. Gilchrist: gilchristrs@state.gov

Bill Donohue

Effective in February, the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) will be called Scouting America. The name change was occasioned by years of harassment, lawsuits and bad decisions. The policy changes that the BSA have made are tantamount to surrender. The organization will never be the same.

In the early 1990s, I was asked by the Claremont Institute’s Center for the Study of Natural Law to write a monograph about legal attacks on the BSA. “On the Front Line of the Culture War: Recent Attacks on the Boy Scouts of America.” It was published in 1993; a second edition was published in 1996.

Before writing my piece, I spoke to an official of the BSA in Irving, Texas explaining what I was doing. He was not at all concerned about the mounting lawsuits, and tried to belittle the issue. He proved to be as clueless as many bishops in the Catholic Church were at that time over the same issue.

Both institutions refused to take the homosexual crisis seriously, and both paid a huge price, financially and reputationally, as a result. We are talking about billions of dollars in both instances. The damage that homosexual Scoutmasters and homosexual priests have done is astounding. Their victims are legion.

In the 1990s, the BSA was sued for its policies on gays, God and girls. It banned openly gay youngsters, required scouts to profess allegiance to God and banned girls. In 2013, it ended the ban on gays and in 2018 it allowed girls to join. While it still encourages Scouts to believe in God, it allows youngsters who belong to non-theistic religions (e.g. Buddhists and Hindus) to be Scouts in good standing.

In short, in the name of inclusivity, the BSA caved. It used to be a paragon of diversity, but it decided to throw diversity to the wind and bow to the demands of inclusivity. Ironically, like virtually every institution these days, it professes an allegiance to both diversity and inclusion, not realizing that a commitment to one excludes a commitment to the other. It’s a mantra, not a reasoned idea.

When the BSA was sued for banning gays, Lee Sneath, its spokesman, said that “as an organization that stresses the values of the family, we believe that homosexuals do not provide the proper role model for youth membership.” Though that policy is no longer extant, it was based on sound moral principles.

As political scientist Harry Jaffa explained, “From ancient—and biblical—times, this practice [homosexuality] has been regarded by the greatest legislators and moralists as a vicious sexual perversion. It is condemned equally by the Old and New Testaments, and by Plato in his Laws. Thomas Jefferson, in a criminal code written during the American Revolution, made it a felony in the same class as rape. In this he only followed the common law.”

Sneath was not off base when he argued in the early 1990s that the Scouts “provide a natural hunting ground for pedophiles.” It is undeniably true that homosexual Scoutmasters, having easy access to young boys, were responsible for the rampant sexual abuse. Judge Sally G. Disco of the Los Angeles County Superior Court understood that the exclusion of homosexuals was critical to the Boy Scout mission, but her position has long fallen out of favor with the courts.

The reason the BSA excluded girls should be obvious. There is such a thing called the Girl Scouts. But in a time when the president of the United States wants to punish institutions that don’t allow males to compete with females in sports, and to shower with them, the obvious needs explaining. Breaking News: Males and Females are biologically different.

It wasn’t just left-wing organizations like the ACLU that helped bring down the BSA; it was the establishment. Levi Strauss, Bank of America and Wells Fargo yanked their donations to the BSA in the summer of 1992 over the exclusion of homosexuals.

The United Way of DeKalb County, Illinois denied funding to the local BSA council, as did the United Way of the San Francisco Bay Area. (Nationwide, the United Way contributed roughly 25 percent of the BSA budget at that time.) The National Park Service jumped on the bandwagon by terminating all agreements with the BSA.

In other words, the Left and the ruling class worked in tandem to defeat the BSA.

In 1993, when I wrote my monograph for the Claremont Institute, the BSA had 4.3 million members. In 2020, it had half that number. Today it is down to around a million

The Scout Oath remains the same today as it did when it was published in 1911. “On my honor I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country and to obey the Scout Law; To help other people at all times; To keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight.”

The Oath hasn’t changed, but the will to operationalize it certainly has.

Bill Donohue wants to share with the public his letter to the principal of a Catholic school. If you would like to contact the school, here is its email address: office@stbonaventureschool.org

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      May 22, 2024

Ms. Mary Flock
Principal
St. Bonaventure Catholic School
16377 Bradbury Lane
Huntington Beach, CA 92647

Dear Principal Flock:

News reports say that you ordered a middle-school student, Jimmy Heyward, to remove from a speech he planned to give “all parts about patriotism.” His speech reportedly speaks positively about veterans, the National Anthem and the Pledge of Allegiance.

In a statement issued by your school to the media, it says that “school administrators felt encouraged by the words of patriotism but were discouraged by what is perceived as some negative comments and sought adjustments to make it more positive.”

I am a veteran. I am also the president and CEO of the nation’s largest Catholic civil rights organization. Accordingly, I would like you to share with me, and with the public, precisely which parts of the speech you found objectionable.

Sincerely,

William A. Donohue, Ph.D.
President

This is the article that appeared in the May 2024 edition of Catalyst, our monthly journal. The date that prints out reflects the day that it was uploaded to our website. For a more accurate date of when the article was first published, check out the news release, here.

Prior to Easter, some news stories claimed that the Biden administration said it would not tolerate any reference to the Christian roots of Easter at the annual “egg roll” party on Easter Monday. The White House pushed back saying that its ban on religious symbols and themes was no different than what previous administrations did. Predictably, the media parroted the same line.

The Biden administration was wrong. The media were wrong. The liberal “fact checkers” were wrong. As we proved, they were all guilty of misinformation: Religious Easter Eggs were allowed under President George W. Bush.

We posted online a photo of a religious-themed Easter Egg that was one of 51 that were on display in 2002. It represented the state of New Mexico; no one complained.

This Easter Egg was an image of El Santuario de Chimayo, a small shrine located in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains of Chimayo, New Mexico. It has been a place of worship since 1813, and is one of the most important Catholic pilgrimage centers in the United States.

The New Mexico artist responsible for this submission is Stan Franklin, a resident of Bosque Farms, New Mexico. According to one news story, he “chose a church theme to portray the Land of Enchantment. In pen, ink and acrylic paint, the drawing depicted the destination of the Good Friday Pilgrimage to Chimayo.”

The Biden administration maintained that it was following the rules established by the American Egg Board (AEB), and officials there say they are following rules established by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

On Easter Sunday, AEB released a statement saying that this event does not show “preference to any individual religious or political viewpoints as AEB is prohibited from doing….”

It makes sense that AEB cannot show “preference to any individual religious or political viewpoints.” It’s a government agency. But that hardly settles the issue.

As we pointed out, public school teachers cannot show preference to any religion. But they are also banned from stopping students from religious expression. If a student in a music or art class decides to sing a religious hymn or draw a religious symbol, the teacher has no legal right to stop him.

Similarly, it is one thing for AEB not to promote religion; it is quite another for it, or the USDA, to prohibit individuals from depicting a religious theme in a government-sponsored event.

The White House was wrong historically and constitutionally. And the media were just as corrupt for not reporting this story accurately. We are proud that we were the only organization in the nation which got this story right.