On June 14, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) issued a report on boarding schools for Native American children, some of which were run by the Catholic Church. From 1869 to the 1960s, the government removed thousands of these children from tribal lands and placed them in boarding schools. The express purpose was to assimilate them into American society.

There were more than 500 of these schools, more than 80 of which (16 percent) were Catholic-run. According to an investigation by the Washington Post (WaPo) at least 122 priests, sisters and brothers who were assigned to these schools were later accused of sexually abusing these children.

The report by the USCCB and the report issued by the Washington Post agree on some matters but differ on others. The bishops’ report includes an apology for inflicting a “history of trauma” on Native Americans, but the findings of the newspaper’s probe are much more critical.

The WaPo report was based on interviews with more than two dozen Indian boarding school attendees who claimed they were abused physically, sexually or emotionally in these boarding schools, three-fourths of which were run by the government. Oral histories, court documents, lawsuits, diaries, correspondence and the like were examined.
WaPo says it relied on information taken from the ProPublica database. This is the same organization that was mentioned by Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito when he was setup by a left-wing woman posing as a conservative; she surreptitiously taped him. He named ProPublica as the source of the hit jobs, mentioning their efforts to smear his Catholic colleague, Clarence Thomas.

Bill Donohue has had his own problems with ProPublica. In 2020, it issued a report, jointly done with the Houston Chronicle, that contended that the Catholic Church did not keep tabs on priests that it threw out of the priesthood. Guilty as charged! As he said at the time, neither does the media or any other organization. So what? Perhaps ProPublica expects the Church to stalk its dismissed employees.

But for the sake of argument, let’s say the methodology is acceptable. What exactly did WaPo find? Serious questions are extant.

The report cites a Department of Interior report from 2022 that investigated conditions in government-run boarding schools; it did not probe the ones operated by the Catholic Church. That report mentioned the word “Catholic” twice, both times in passing, having nothing to do with abuse.

More important, the timeline of the investigation under review extends back to 1869, so the kind of record keeping that lends itself to conclusive results is simply impossible. The WaPo report, which claims “pervasive” abuse in Catholic-run boarding schools, readily confesses that “lists of accused priests are inconsistent and incomplete, and many survivors have not come forward. Others are aging and in poor health, or, like their abusers, have died.”

Instead of admitting that this is a clear shortcoming, the journalists conclude this means that “the extent of the abuse was probably far worse.” Really? Let’s face it—they could have come to a very different conclusion. Precisely because the record-keeping was found wanting, it is hard to know the truth. It is even possible that good data would reveal how small this problem was. But such considerations would have gotten in the way of their narrative.

WaPo cites Rev. Mike Carson, who worked on this issue for the bishops, and he “also noted a likely dearth of records.” Similarly, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland acknowledges that given the situation, “I doubt that you could find a lot of Catholic records or federal government records about abuse and neglect toward the students.” Even in cases where, for example, the Jesuits kept tabs on alleged cases of abuse, WaPo quotes them as saying the list “does not imply the claims are true and correct or that the accused individual has been found guilty of a crime or liable for civil claims.”

There are other problems that should have given the journalists pause. In several parts of the report, they admit that the alleged victims whom they spoke to “kept secret” what happened. That being the case, how can Church officials be blamed? Indeed, after detailing one case of alleged abuse, they write that “It is unclear whether church officials were aware of the abuse at St. Mary’s at the time.”

Then there is the issue of the accused denying that they committed the offense. For instance, Sr. Sigfrieda Hettinger denied in 2015 that she abused a boy decades ago. “I loved them all. I never hurt them at all. I never touched them at all.” She died in 2016 at age 87. Was she telling the truth or lying? We don’t know. But in such cases, fairness dictates that we have to assume she was innocent.

There is another issue that needs to be addressed, one that is not discussed by the WaPo authors. They cite a Jesuit priest, Rev. Edmund J. Robinson, who was a serial offender. Could it be that a small number of priests were responsible for a disproportionate number of cases?

We know from the John Jay studies on this issue nationwide that between 1950 and 2002, 149 priests (3.3 percent) who had more than ten allegations of abuse were responsible for abusing 2,960 victims, thus accounting for 26 percent of all the allegations. As Donohue said in his book, The Truth about Clergy Sexual Abuse: Clarifying the Facts and the Causes, this means that “a very small percentage of accused priests are responsible for a substantial percentage of the allegations.”

The same may be true in the case of the Indian boarding school story.

Moreover, WaPo journalists offer no comment on something that should have concerned them. Why is it that when the federal government commissioned a study of this issue in 1928, this report “chastised the schools for the mistreatment and malnourishment of students,” but never said a word about physical or sexual abuse? Was it a cover up? Or was there nothing to report? It seems plausible that a probe that took notice of “mistreatment” would have cited serious cases of abuse.

The credibility of the WaPo authors is seriously undermined by their decision to cite the Catholic Church’s legacy of abuse in Canadian boarding schools for indigenous peoples. That story has positively been proven to be a hoax. It does not help their cause to say that Pope Francis apologized for what happened—he did so before the story was proven false.

In 2021, the Catholic Church was accused of creating “mass graves” for indigenous children in the residential schools. But it didn’t take long before it was totally debunked. In 2022, Jacques Rouillard, professor emeritus in the Department of History at the University of Montreal, questioned, “After seven months of recrimination and denunciation, where are the remains of the children buried in the Kamloops Indian Residential School?”

A second round of accusations emerged in the summer of 2023 when excavations of the “mass grave” began. In August, the National Post reported that “No evidence of human remains has been found during the excavation of a Catholic church basement on the site of a former Manitoba residential school.” Again, the body count was zero.

There is also the matter of the scope of the WaPo investigation. Why didn’t they investigate the boarding schools run by the government? After all, they operated most of them. Are they content to rely on the Department of Interior study? Similarly, they mention that several Protestant denominations also operated these schools. Why were none of them probed?

As Donohue has pointed out many times, wherever adults regularly interact with minors, unfortunately we find abuse. So why is it that time and again, the public schools get a pass, Hollywood gets a pass, etc.? Why is it always the Catholic Church that is the source of investigation? Isn’t this religious profiling? And wouldn’t that suggest that bigotry is at work?

By contrast, the USCCB report has two mentions of “violence” and six mentions of “abuse,” but none have anything to do with wrongdoing on the part of the Church.

The bishops’ report rightfully cites heroes such as Dominican Fr. Bartolomé de Las Casas, the sixteenth century defender of human rights for Indians, and St. Junípero Serra, the eighteenth century missionary who was canonized by Pope Francis for his courage in calling out colonizers for their mistreatment of Native Americans.

There is not a single person, from any other religion, who did more to champion the rights of Indians than these two priests.

The bishops’ report does not sanitize anything. It admits that many Native Americans feel abandoned by the Church, citing a “lack of understanding of their unique cultural needs.” Hence, the apology. But the report also notes the “joy,” as well as the “sorrow,” that so many experienced. It also makes note of the many wonderful priests and nuns who did yeoman work among indigenous Catholics.

The motive to assimilate Native Americans was noble, though looking back at it from today’s vantage point it may seem overbearing. But it is important to acknowledge, as the bishops’ report does, that in places like Alaska, “many Church-run boarding schools were created to shelter youth who were orphaned during epidemics or whose parents were experiencing illness or dire poverty and could not care for them.”

Moreover, “Many Native alumni of those boarding schools who are still living today express gratitude for the care and educational opportunities they received from the men and women religious who administered mission schools.” Similarly, it bears noting that many of these indigenous peoples “willingly embraced the Gospel when missionaries offered it to them.”

In fact, many tribes “requested Catholic missionaries.” Let’s also not forget that “Many early Indigenous converts to Catholicism faced persecution and even martyrdom for their belief, either within their own communities or from others outside their communities.”

We shouldn’t have to rely on Catholic sources to highlight the great work done by the missionaries. This is a matter of history, not religion. But the animus against the Church today is palpable, especially in elite quarters.

It is important that the truth be told. The WaPo report contains some disturbing information, and undoubtedly instances of abuse occurred. But when the data are incomplete, it’s time to tap the brakes and not come to condemnatory conclusions.

The issue of abuse must also be put in context. If corporal punishment was commonplace at the time, why should we be horrified to learn that it existed in Catholic institutions? It must also be asked how common was abuse within the Native American community? Not to ask questions like these reveals a bias, thus further undercutting the credibility of those pointing fingers.

The Senate Indian Affairs Committee is interested in having a federal commission do a more thorough investigation of the assimilative policies of Indian boarding schools. If they do so, they need to raise issues that seem to have escaped the WaPo journalists, as well as many others. That would include this committee.

Pedophilia, which is sex between an adult and a prepubescent child, is different from homosexuality, which is sex between adults of the same sex. Though they are different, unfortunately there are prominent gay leaders who 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.

June was Gay Pride Month. We called attention to this issue, asking gay leaders to speak to it with clarity. If everyone can’t agree that the sexual abuse of children is an abomination, we will never get rid of this problem.

The following is our report on this subject. For a slightly longer version, which notes the sources for these entries, see our website for our news release of June 3rd, titled, “Pedophilia and Homosexuality Revisited.”

Harry Hay

Harry Hay was “The founder of the gay movement in America.”

“…[I]f the parents and friends of gays are truly friends of gays, they would know from their gay kids that the relationship with an older man is precisely what thirteen-, fourteen-, and fifteen-year-old kids need more than anything else in the world. And they would be welcoming this, and welcoming the opportunity for young gay kids to have the kind of experience that they would need.”

Larry Kramer

Larry Kramer was a leading gay rights activist and founder of the “queer-led” terrorist organization ACT UP.

“In those cases where children do have sex with their homosexual elders… I submit that often, very often, the child desires the activity, and perhaps even solicits it, either because of a natural curiosity… or because he or she is homosexual and innately knows it…. And unlike girls or women forced into rape or traumatized, most gay men have warm memories of their earliest and early sexual encounters; when we share these stories with each other, they are invariably positive ones.”

Harvey Milk

Harvey Milk was the first openly gay man to be elected to public office; he served as a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1978.

“[Harvey] Milk’s sexual history with young people is well documented. Milk’s biographer Randy Shilts in ‘The Mayor of Castro: the Life and Times of Harvey Milk,’ spends half a dozen pages detailing the 33-year-old’s sexual relationship with a 16-year-old.”

Craig Rodwell

Craig Rodwell, a leading gay activist, told his biographer that from the age of 13 to 14 he had sex with “hundreds of men.” Rodwell went on to say, “This is what I lived for, literally. And that’s all I thought about all day long, just so I could get downtown and go cruising.…It had a great sense of freedom about it and adventure and, oh, I met all kinds of guys….”

Prostasia Foundation

While it claims to be a “child protection organization,” Prostasia is in fact one of the leading advocacy groups to normalize sexual relationships between adults and minors, or as it prefers to call them “Minor-Attracted Persons.” The group regularly downplays the criminality of such relationships and instead focuses on reducing the “stigma” surrounding individuals who engage in such abhorrent acts.

Prostasia blog editor Sheila van den Heuvel-Collins tweeted, “Merry Christmas to everyone, including the nepiophiles [someone who has sex with infants], pedophiles, hebephiles [someone who has sex with minors between 11 and 14] and ephebophiles [someone who has sex with adolescents between 15 and 19] who have to put up with stigma every single day of the year.”

B4U-Act

Another advocacy group for “Minor-Attracted Persons,” B4U-Act also works to normalize perverse relationships between adults and minors. In addition to countering “stigma,” B4U-Act has additionally supported studies to provide a “scientific basis” for its advocacy. Some of these studies have been conducted at Nottingham Trent University in the United Kingdom, Royal Ottawa Mental Health Centre, and McGill University in Montreal.

NAMBLA

The North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) was founded in 1978 with the stated goal of ending “the extreme oppression of men and boys in mutually consensual relationships.”

“NAMBLA is working to change public perceptions and laws about consensual sexual relationships between adults and minors. Today, the law and public prejudice make little or no distinction between a man who forcibly rapes a child and one who genuinely cares for and loves a boy. Some judges have condemned boy-lovers as being ‘worse than murderers,’ even though their only ‘crime’ has been to share their body and affection with a boy in a friendship that includes mutually enjoyable sexual experiences. It is a shame that in American society, it is a greater crime to love a child than it is to beat—or even kill—a child.”

The “fact checkers” at the Associated Press, CNN, the Washington Post and WCBS radio (NY) are claiming that former president Donald Trump was wrong to say in the debate that not only do late-term abortions and partial-birth abortions still occur, babies are being killed after an abortion, and that the Democrats support it. They are wrong. Trump is right. Here are some facts they overlook.

• 1977: Dr. C. Everett Koop, later U.S. Surgeon General, told the American Academy of Pediatrics, “Well, you know that infanticide is being practiced right now in this country…I am concerned that there is no outcry…I am concerned about this because when the first 273,000 German aged, infirm, and retarded were killed in gas chambers there was no outcry from that medical profession either, and it was not far from there to Auschwitz.” He titled his speech, “The Slide to Auschwitz.”
• 1995: Partial-birth abortionist Dr. George Tiller said, “We have some experience with late terminations; about 10,000 patients between 24 and 36 weeks and something like 800 fetal anomalies between 26 and 36 weeks in the past 5 years.”
• 1997: Ron Fitzsimmons, executive director of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers, admitted on national TV that he “lied through [his] teeth” when he “just went out there and spouted the party line” about how rare partial-birth abortions are.
• 2001-2003: Illinois State Senator Barack Obama opposed bills that would have mandated that a child born alive as a result of a botched abortion be given medical care.
• 2003: The U.S. Senate voted 64-33 to outlaw partial-birth abortion. Of the 33, 29 were Democrats, 3 were Republican, and 1 was an Independent.
• 2007: Senator Joe Biden, who voted for the ban on partial-birth abortion in 2003, changed his mind and said the ban on killing a baby who is 80 percent born is “paternalistic.”
• 2019: The pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute admits that at least 12,000 late-term abortions take place annually in the U.S.
• 2019: New York State Gov. Andrew Cuomo signs a bill that removes legal penalties to any medical staff personnel who intentionally allow a child born as a result of a botched abortion to die.
• 2019: Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam said that if a mother sought to abort her baby, but the baby was born anyway, “the infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and her family decide, and then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.” He added that the baby would be “kept comfortable” before they put him down or let him die.
• 2019: Montana Gov. Steve Bullock vetoed the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act, a law that would have required children born alive who survived an abortion to be treated like any other human being.
• 2019: The Born-Alive Infant Abortion Survivors Protection Act was blocked by Senate Democrats Bernie Sanders, Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren; all were presidential candidates.
• 2019: The Washington Post conceded that at least 10,000 late-term abortions take place each year.
• 2023: All but two congressional Democrats voted to kill the Born Alive-Infant Abortion Survivors Protection Act.

It’s time the media stopped lying and covering up for those who support late-term abortions, partial-birth abortions and infanticide.

Caitlin Clark has done more for women’s basketball than any other person. One would think that the superstar would be treated with applause by fellow players, the media and pundits. While many have lauded her, she has been savaged by others. The stench of bigotry is in the air.

Clark is a white heterosexual Irish Catholic with a boyfriend. That is hardly exceptional, but unfortunately for her, that matters to some of her critics.

Clark’s Catholic faith is important to her. In 2018, she gave an interview to the Des Moines Register about her time at Dowling Catholic High School. “We get to live our faith every day. Dowling starts every day with prayer and ends every day with prayer. This is a big reason why Dowling has such a special culture and is such a special place to go to school.”

Sports columnist and podcaster Jason Whitlock notes that “Caitlin Clark’s sanity cannot survive the racial, sexual, and political blender participation in the WNBA will cause. She’s a 22-year-old white woman with a boyfriend raised in the Catholic faith. She’s playing in a league that is hostile to virtually everything about her – skin color, sexuality, and faith.”

Clay Travis, the host of “Outkick,” notes that “Caitlin Clark is white and straight in a league that is primarily minority and lesbian. I told you this was going to be an issue, and now you got everybody acknowledging it all over the place.”

We are happy to report that basketball great LeBron James came to Clark’s defense.

Pope Francis is obviously worried about “fags” in the seminaries, and even in the Vatican.

On May 28, it was reported that in a private meeting with 250 Italian bishops the week before, the pope said he opposed having openly homosexual men in the seminaries. He said the seminaries were already too full of “frociaggine,” or “faggotry.” After being criticized, the Vatican said the pope “extends his apologies.”

Later the Italian news agency, ANSA, reported that when the pope met privately with priests at the Pontifical Salesian University in Rome on June 11, he said, “In the Vatican, there is an air of ‘faggotry.'”

The use of the gay slur is not the real issue, though it is surprising to hear the pope speak this way twice within three weeks, and just two weeks after his apology was issued for the first infraction. The real issue is the prevalence of homosexuals in the seminaries and in the Vatican.

As Bill Donohue recounts in his book, The Truth about Clergy Sexual Abuse: Clarifying the Facts and the Causes, the damage that homosexuals—not pedophiles—have done to the Catholic Church cannot be overstated. They are responsible for 81 percent of all the cases of the sexual abuse of minors from 1950 to 2002; almost all of the males were postpubescent.

Pope Francis didn’t need the data to know that homosexuals have taken over too much of the Catholic Church. He has previously spoken openly about the “gay lobby” and the “gay mentality” in the Church.

When a bishop told the Holy Father that it was no big deal that several priests in his diocese were homosexuals—it was just an “expression of affection”—the pope strongly disagreed. “In the consecrated life and in the priestly life, there is no place for that kind of affection,” the pope said. He also warned priests against aligning themselves with the “gay movement.”

Pope Benedict XVI has also warned of the damage that homosexuals have done to the priesthood. This explains why he said that those with “deep-seated homosexual tendencies” should not be ordained. Pope Francis has continued this policy.

It is not just Pope Francis who has expressed concern about the number of homosexuals in the Church. Father Andrew Greeley said in 1989 that “Blatantly active homosexual priests are appointed, transferred and promoted. Lavender rectories and seminaries are tolerated. National networks of active homosexual priests (many of them administrators) are tolerated.” In 2000, he testified that seminary professors “tell their students that they’re gay and take some of them to gay bars, and gay students sleep with each other.”

In 2002, Bishop Wilton Gregory (now a Cardinal) said, “One of the difficulties we do face in seminary life or recruitment is when there does exist a homosexual atmosphere or dynamic that makes heterosexual men think twice” about joining the priesthood. He said it is “an ongoing struggle” and that the Church must be careful not to be “dominated by homosexual men.”

Pope Francis is clearly worried that there are still too many homosexuals in the priesthood. Calling gays “fags” should not mask what is bugging the pope. His critics are trying to divert attention from the real problem.

The Biden Administration never stops telling us about the virtue of diversity and how we must respect it. Yet when it comes to the diversity that foreign countries exhibit, especially in matters relating to sexuality, it shows nothing but contempt. Instead of respecting the diverse cultural norms and values that exist in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and Asia, the Biden administration is shoving down their throats the corrupt sexual agenda of western nations.

[We prepared a report, “Biden Admin LGBT Imperialism,” that documents the extent to which the administration is guilty of cultural imperialism. See our website.]

President Biden hit the ground running, rolling out a slew of radical LGBT policies literally two weeks after he was inaugurated. He issued a memorandum on “Advancing the Human Rights of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and Intersex Person Around the World.” It was given a national security number (NSM-4) to show its importance.

But who asked Biden to promote his queer agenda around the world? And why the urgency? Aside from elites and wealthy left-wing advocacy organizations—who do not represent the masses—no one did.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken is enthralled with this agenda. Early on he bragged that “We are engaging around the world in cultural diplomacy.” Wrong. The administration is engaging in cultural imperialism.

When U.S. embassies fly Pride Flags in countries that are averse to this indoctrination—including the Holy See—they are showing how little they respect the diversity that these nations represent. When the United States Agency for International Development tells educators what pronouns to use, and advises that when they learn of a girl who thinks she is a boy that they are under no obligation to tell her parents, this is a classic example of cultural imperialism.

The manipulation of religious groups, as has been done in Botswana, to promote LGBT policies that they reject, is another example of this malady. It got so bad in Ghana they even threatened to withhold funding unless officials there adopted laws on sexuality that the Biden administration favors. And why was it necessary to fund a film to be distributed in Portugal that features drag queens and depictions of incest and pedophilia? Do we have perverts working for us?

Most of the world wants nothing to do with this sick agenda. We need to respect it.

We recently celebrated the Fourth of July, and as usual some sages told us how slavery is as American as apple pie. They have no idea what they are talking about.

As Harvard sociologist Orlando Paterson has shown, there is not a place on the globe that has not known slavery. Aristotle thought it was so much a part of the human condition that he justified it on the basis of the natural law. It took the Catholic Church to proclaim that slavery violated the natural law.

The New York Times’ “1619 Project” tells readers that America was founded in slavery. Wrong. It was founded in a revolution in 1776. Just as wrongheaded is Linda Thomas-Greenfield, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under President Biden. She told reporters in 2021 that “the original sin of slavery weaved white supremacy into our founding documents and principles.” This is a bastardization of history.

Those who accept the ambassador’s view claim that the Constitution justified slavery and that it regarded blacks as three-fifths human. This is false.

The Constitution makes no mention of the words “slave,” “slavery,” “race,” “white,” “black,” or “color.” And nowhere does it say that blacks are three-fifths human. The three-fifths language is in Article I, Section 2, which speaks to the issue of apportionment. To determine the number of representatives each state should have, the total was to be determined by “adding to the whole number of free persons, including those bound to service for a term of years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three-fifths of all other persons.” In other words, count free persons, do not count those Indians not taxed, and add three-fifths of the slaves. This last part has been grossly distorted.

The Northern delegates did not want to count slaves at all, and the Southern delegates wanted them counted as equal to free persons. According to the twisted logic offered by left-wing ideologues, this would suggest that the North was more pro-slavery than the South. This is absurd.

If blacks weren’t counted at all, it would weaken the Southern base: the slave states would have only 41 percent of the seats in the House of Representatives. If they were counted as equal to whites, the slave states would have 50 percent of the House seats. The compromise—counting slaves as three-fifths—meant that the slave states wound up with 47 percent of the seats. That is the truth of the story.

The Constitution, without mentioning slavery directly, provided that the international slave trade would end on January 1, 1808. The president who made good on that pledge was Thomas Jefferson.

When the United States was founded, the only place in the world that had banned slavery was Great Britain. It was abolished in the United States in 1865. Africa banned it in 1981, yet it still exists there today in Mauritania and Somalia.

The Europeans did not kidnap African slaves. They bought them. Moreover, the African slavemasters facilitated the transfer by bundling the slaves in cages for the white boys. Common sense should tell us that if a handful of white boys showed up in Africa looking for slaves, why didn’t the Africans say to them—they vastly outnumbered the Europeans—yes, there is going to be slavery, but you are going to be the slaves and we are going to be the masters?

Defending slavery were white “progressives.” George Fitzhugh was America’s first sociologist. He railed against capitalism but defended slavery.

In his work, “The Universal Law of Slavery,” written in 1850, Fitzhugh explained that “the Negro is but a grown up child and must be governed as a child, not as a lunatic or criminal. The master occupies toward him the place of parent or guardian.” He said slavery had a positive effect. “The negro slaves of the South are the happiest, and in some sense, the freest people in the world.”

Blacks, he said, could not compete with the white man under capitalism, so it was better to keep them in slavery.

“The negro is improvident [and] would become an insufferable burden to society. Society has a right to prevent this, and can only do so by subjecting him to domestic slavery. In the last place, the negro race is inferior to the white race….”

During the Progressive Era, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Richard T. Ely was one of the most prominent leaders in the social-justice crusade. He was considered sympathetic to blacks, yet he expressed the same views as Fitzhugh. “Negroes, are for the most part grown up children, and should be treated as such.”

It must be said that not much has changed. Today’s “progressives” have low expectations for blacks, which is why they are bent on lowering the bar for black students—they should instead be helping them to clear it! White liberal racism is endemic.

America bashers love to ruin our Fourth of July. They are as ignorant as they are malicious.

Bill Donohue

It didn’t take long. J.D. Vance, Donald Trump’s pick to be his vice president, is a convert to Catholicism, and already that is a source of anger among the haters. He is being dubbed an “integralist” and a “Christian nationalist.” Our interest has less to do with Vance than it does the nature of attacks on Catholics of a traditional stripe.

Anthea Butler teaches at the University of Pennsylvania and is a regular guest on MSNBC. The religion professor contends that God is “a white racist.” She claims Vance is “aligned with what is called Catholic integralism, the belief that Christians can use a ‘soft power’ approach to exert influence over society.” She cites his opposition to killing babies in the womb as one such example of what she means.

Jack Jenkins is the national reporter for the Religion News Service. He also believes Vance is guilty of Catholic “integralism.” He is unhappy with Vance for not answering questions about “his own thoughts regarding Catholic integralism.”

What is Catholic integralism? That was the title of an article by Steven P. Millies in 2019. It’s an old idea, he says, one that seeks “the integration of religious authority and political power.”

So who are these “integralists” who want a theocracy? To prove his point he says “Pope Francis remains a head of state today.” He is also upset with Catholic writer Sohrab Ahmari for saying we need to “fight the culture war with the aim of defeating the enemy.” That makes him an “integralist.”

Kevin Augustyn authored an article on this subject for Discourse magazine that is even better. “This ideology is growing, vibrant and influential, but it is inherently illiberal and dangerous to American democracy.” He says the believers maintain that it is wrong to separate church and state. So who are they? He does not say. He quotes none of them.

He also claims that “some integralists” are committed to a “totalitarian vision that justifies such things as the disenfranchisement of women, Jews, atheists and indeed all non-Catholics; the persecution of heretics and sexual minorities; the kidnapping of secretly baptized children; and the abolition of religious toleration even for other Christians.”

These “integralists” sound like maniacs. So who are they? He does not say. He quotes none of them.

Justin Dyer is executive director of the Civitas Institute and a professor of government at the University of Texas at Austin. He wrote a piece for the Washington Post last year on “the logic of integralism” that is precious.

He says Catholic integralists believe in lots of weird things. “Nothing is truly private” and “there is no private life or private conscience.” So who are they? He does not say. He quotes none of them.

These writers would have us believe that this is the way Vance thinks. But no one seems to be able to come up with anything he has said that sustains this charge. In fact, what Vance has said is true and admirable.

“My views on public policy and what the optimal state should look like are pretty aligned with Catholic social teaching. That was one of the things that drew me to the Catholic Church. I saw a real overlap between what I would like to see and what the Catholic Church would like to see.”

If that makes him an “integralist,” we need more of them. I hasten to add that some of the books I have authored were specifically written to give sustenance to what Vance believes. Guess that makes me an “integralist” as well, though I didn’t know it until now.

Christian nationalism is the big bogeyman for Christian bashers. So we knew someone would charge Vance as being a devotee. The first to do so is a U.S. Senator, Chris Murphy from Connecticut. He says Vance was picked “to help shape this transition away from democratic norms, this transition to a white, patriarchal, Christian-dominated nation.”

So what did Vance say to merit this accusation? He does not say. He quotes nothing he ever said.

So who is Sen. Murphy? He grew up in a congregational church and now admits he rarely goes to church. He blames his children and his schedule.  He says he is “not a regular churchgoer these days, in part because of kids. In part because of a busy schedule.”

His “busy schedule” has earned him an “F” lifetime rating on life issues from Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America. His lust for abortion extends to infanticide: he has consistently voted against efforts to protect children who are born alive after failed abortions. Planned Parenthood consistently gives him a rating of 100%. He also earned a 100% rating from the Human Rights Campaign, the big anti-science and anti-women LGBT group.

As I said at the beginning, these attacks are not merely aimed at Vance—they are aimed at all traditional Catholics. These haters want to demonize us and drive us out of the public square. But they are in over their heads—our side is growing and getting bolder. We will make sure of that.

Bill in the News (Catholic Connection): Catholic League President Bill Donohue reacts to President Biden withdrawing from the race. To listen click here. (Bill’s Segment Begins at 14:37)

Bill Donohue

The media are so fixated on finding a political motive that explains why  Thomas Matthew Crooks tried to assassinate Donald Trump that they are overlooking other factors. There are psychological and cultural variables that are vastly more important.

Crooks was a registered Republican who made a small donation to a left-wing group when Biden was inaugurated. As an explanatory variable, that’s a dead end.

A much more fruitful approach would be to consider the psychological profile of Crooks: it matches to a tee the characteristics of other mass shooters. Also worthy of probing is the culture that gives rise to these shootings. I have written extensively about this issue and have taught sociology courses on it. Here is my analysis.

Crooks was a loner. He was quiet and had few friends; he was known to just stare at his classmates when they sought to engage him. A student who went to the same high school as Crooks, Kendall Spragg, noted that he would sometimes eat lunch by himself. “He really didn’t fit in with everybody else,” he said. These attributes are commonplace among mass shooters.

• In 2023, Audrey Hale, a girl who mistakenly thought she was a boy, killed six people at Covenant School. Averianna Patton, who knew her, said she was “very quiet, very shy.” Another person who knew her, Mia Phillips, observed that “We felt she was shy.” Maria Colomy, her teacher, commented that “She was very quiet.”
• In 2022, Salvador Ramos shot and killed young students and their teachers in Uvalde, Texas. His boss at Wendy’s noted that “He felt like the quiet type, the one who doesn’t say much. He really didn’t socialize with employees.”
• In 2022, Payton Gendron became known as the “Buffalo Mass Shooter.” According to the Associated Press, “he had long been viewed by classmates as a loner.” One of his peers said, “Most people didn’t associate with him,” characterizing him as “socially awkward and nerdy.” The same person remarked that “He would say he was lonely.”
• In 2021, Robert Aaron Long went on a rampage in Atlanta. One of his classmates, Nico Straughan, noticed the mass shooter was a “very quiet” individual. Another classmate, Jonathan Desire, said he was “quiet, calm, and collected.” Another fellow student concurred, saying, “he didn’t have a ton of friends and really kept to himself.”
• In 2021, the mass shooter from Boulder, Colorado, Ahmed Al Aliwi Alissa, had no friends. His brother labeled him “very anti-social.” A high school classmate said he “didn’t really have a lot of friends.”
• In 2019, the mass shooter from El Paso, Texas, Patrick Wood Crusius, typically sat alone in the school bus. “He wouldn’t talk to people,” said one of his neighbors. “No one really knew him.”
• In 2019, Connor Betts, a mass shooter from Dayton, Ohio, was labeled by one of his classmates at a “loner.” Another said he was a “quiet” kid who kept to himself.
• In 2018, Stephen Paddock shot and killed 60 people when he went on a shooting spree in Las Vegas. He was a loner who could never establish a long-term relationship with anyone, including his family.
• In 2018, Dimitrios Pagourtzis shot and killed 10 people at Sante Fe High School in Texas. He was known as a “weird loner.” One of his classmates said, “He stuck to himself. He had a few friends but never really talked to many people.”

Being a loner does not cause someone to be a mass shooter, but when it is coupled with other factors, it manifests itself as a leading red flag indicator.

Loners crave the same type of bonds that all of us do. When they are unable to achieve them, it creates psychological havoc. Unfortunately, we are mass producing the kind of social soil that makes it harder to bond with others. Dysfunctional families, mixed messages on what is morally right and wrong, long hours spent on social media, obsessing over video games, the lack of religious affiliations—all of these factors make it harder to form lasting social bonds.

All of us want affection and recognition. When it is denied, it can lead to behaviors that are toxic. Though it is hard to comprehend, many mass shooters find recognition—it’s more like a rush—in doing something spectacular, making it is impossible for everyone to ignore them.

Busting down the walls of ennui—the horror of boredom—is important to those who live an asocial life. Parents, teachers, counselors, coaches and the clergy need to know what the red flags of a mass shooter are and intervene to ameliorate conditions before it is too late.

We were not made to be alone. That is not part of God’s design. A mature society would concede as much and tailor its policies, programs and strictures accordingly. We should be fostering social bonds, not obliterating them.