When an employee signs a contract with his employer, he agrees to abide by certain house rules. Subsequently, the employee willfully violates the contract. After he is fired, he threatens to sue. Meanwhile, an online petition calling for his reinstatement emerges. Sounds pretty basic: the employer had every right to enforce the contract, and efforts by outsiders to bully the employer into acquiescence are unethical. But wait—this case involves homosexuality; to many this constitutes a game-changer. Different issues are at stake now.

A homosexual teacher at St. Lucy’s Priory High School outside Los Angeles was wed to another man on July 1. The school found out about it, and the teacher was terminated. The school said that what its teachers do in private is not its business. However, “public displays of behavior that are directly contrary to church teachings are inconsistent with these values.” They didn’t make up these rules on the fly. “These values are incorporated into the contractual obligations of each of our instructors and other employees.”

There are those who, like Republican gay activist David Lampo, consider it absurd to maintain that gay marriage threatens religious liberty. It would be instructive to know what in the world they think is going on in this case. The truth is that it has been known for years that gay rights and religious rights are on a collision course. Importantly, only one of those rights is enshrined in the First Amendment. Hint: it isn’t the one that deals with sex.

KENNETH D. WHITEHEAD

Russell Shaw, American Church: The Remarkable Rise, Meteoric Fall, and Uncertain Future of Catholicism in America (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2013).

This new book of Russell Shaw’s on the “American Church” is the best available current account that you are likely to find describing what the Catholic Church in America has become today and where she stands. It is readable, fast-paced, and accurately sourced. The author writes from a solidly orthodox standpoint; he believes the faith and loves the Church; and he is also quite knowledgeable about his chosen subject, occasionally even adding an insider’s revelation (he was in charge of media relations for the American Catholic bishops for 18 years). Although he is quite critical of some recent trends in the Catholic Church in America today, as the title of his book indicates, he is most distinctly not one of those carping liberal critics who thinks that the Church has got to “change” in order “to keep up with the times.”

Quite the contrary. He sees and views with no little alarm some of the results of the “Americanization” of Catholicism which has brought with it widespread attitudes and practices by some American Catholics that are simply incompatible with traditional and authentic Catholic belief and practice. In becoming assimilated to American life and society—in striving to prove that “good Catholics” could indeed be “good Americans”—many American Catholics have ended up buying into some American practices and attitudes that diverge, sometimes sharply, from what the Church continues to teach and enjoin.

From Catholic politicians who say they are “personally opposed” to abortion, but who nevertheless publicly promote it, to the Catholic married couples who employ forbidden birth control methods, these Catholics are actually demonstrating that Americanization has not resulted in maintaining their Catholic faith and practice. While there was a time when it could be argued that American democracy was for the most part quite compatible with true Catholicism, today’s galloping decadence and moral decline—Shaw calls it “toxic”—render increasingly difficult, if not impossible, the notion that today’s brand of “Americanism” can be considered compatible with authentic Catholicism.

But the author’s concern for the Church in America is not confined to the contemporary scene. He goes back to the beginnings of the Church in this country and shows how the successive waves of Catholic immigrants to these shores from Ireland, Germany, and later from Italy and Eastern Europe, brought about the “remarkable rise” of Catholicism in what was originally almost entirely a Protestant America. This rise was remarkable, and yet the bishops and the religious orders of the day largely succeeded in keeping the large number of Catholics who arrived in this country as loyal sons and daughters of the Church. At the same time, this same leadership saw the absence of any state religion in the United States as an opportunity for the advancement of Catholicism. Such figures as Father Isaac Hecker, founder of the Paulist Fathers, actually thought America was ripe for conversion to Catholicism.

This hope and estimate proved to be overly optimistic (as the author shows, the “public intellec- tual” and convert, Orestes Brownson, realized this at the time). In chronicling the establishment of a flourishing Catholicism in America, however, Shaw focuses on the career of James Cardinal Gibbons. The archbishop of Baltimore from 1877 until his death in 1921, Gibbons was the principal leader of the American bishops who successfully advocated assimilation to the American way. Catholics need to know this history if they are to understand the Church today, and Shaw has provided a convenient and accurate summary of its main features.

A major theme of Shaw’s book, in fact, deals with what he calls the “Gibbons Legacy.” Indeed, references to this phrase by both the author and by Philadelphia Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap., in the latter’s introduction, suggest that it was the original title of the book. However that may be, Shaw’s treatment of Cardinal Gibbons, and of episcopal colleagues of his such as the archbishop of St. Paul, John Ireland, results in a ready and understandable explanation of how the Church in America developed.

Throughout his narrative, the author is also conscious of how the Church in America is related to the universal Church, and he provides a brief but clear account of such little understood issues as the so-called “Americanist heresy.” Noting how Pope Leo XIII in his Testem Benevolentiae of 1899 judged that what the pope styled “Americanism” was unacceptable from a true Catholic standpoint, Shaw shows how the seeds of today’s liberal Catholicism and dissent from Catholic teaching were already present in the original drive for Americanization and assimilation to American culture. That this American culture would eventually become transformed into the secularist, materialist, and relativist system which we see today—and which plainly diverges from anything acceptable to Catholic orthodoxy—was something that Leo XIII feared all along, but which the American bishops of the Gibbons type apparently did not see or anticipate. Meanwhile, however, American Catholics allowed to go by the board, and even sometimes dismantled, many of the Church structures and practices that had traditionally buttressed the faith and practice of Catholics.

In illustrating what in his title he calls the “meteoric fall” of the Church in America, Shaw correctly cites the spectacular drops in Mass attendance and other sacramental participation. Similarly, he takes note of the mass defections of priests and religious that followed Vatican Council II, and the large numbers of the laity that have strayed. No less than 22 million Catholics have left the Church—one in three of those who were once Catholic. Ex-Catholics constitute the second largest “denomination” in America after the Catholic community itself!

Among other polls, Shaw instances the 2011 survey which found that even among Catholics who describe themselves as “highly committed” to the Church, some 49 percent say it is possible to be a “good Catholic” while deliberately missing Mass on Sundays; 60 percent disagree with the Church’s teaching forbidding birth control; 46 percent dissent from the teaching against divorce and remarriage; and even 31 percent disagree with the Church’s firm teaching against abortion. The author cites yet other polls in the same vein, and this, along with not a little anecdotal evidence that he mentions in passing, perhaps understandably, leads to the conclusion that the future of the Church in America is “uncertain.”

And certainly, there is the added fact that a majority of American Catholics voted for the radically pro-abortion Barack Obama, while America’s premier Catholic institution of higher education, the University of Notre Dame, actually awarded this same pro-abortion president an honorary degree, thereby going directly against the announced position of the American bishops that Catholic institutions should not honor those who speak and act against Catholic teaching.

Following the massive public dissent from Pope Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae by Catholic theologians—and the equally massive shift in the behavior of the Catholic laity in the 1960s and 1970s—it seemed that “some form of ‘liberal’ or ‘progressive’ Catholicism, freed from (or, more neutrally, disengaged from) the philosophical and theological underpinnings of the past, would emerge as the ‘serious’ Catholicism of the future.” This did seem to be the case to many observers, and not a few of them apparently continue to believe pretty much the same thing today. On the basis of the facts, arguments, and statistics adduced by Shaw, then, it is not easy to dismiss out of hand his conclusion that the future of the Catholic Church in America is indeed “uncertain.”

Students of Catholic history, however, aware of the Catholic Church’s well-known and often-demonstrated ability to revive after periods of decline, and like the phoenix bird to rise again out of the ashes, have in very recent years been able to point to many signs of revival. The pontificates of both Blessed John Paul II and Benedict XVI have been particularly positive in helping to inspire such a revival. For example, the issuance of the Catechism of the Catholic Church in the early 1990s, along with the revision of the Roman Missal later in the same decade, as well as the new English liturgical translations, have been particularly influential in helping restore both authenticity and greater stability to contemporary Catholic faith and practice in the United States. In other words, there is hope. The pontificate of Pope Francis seems to be shaping up in the same way. The Catholic Church is, after all, still the true Church of Christ, who promised to be with her “always”(Mt 28:20).

Shaw mentions some of the signs of this revival. They include: new Catholic schools and colleges that are truly Catholic; reversion to a more authentic Catholic character by some of the older institutions that had gone astray; new media ventures such as EWTN and Catholic radio; new periodicals and publishers, as well as the new Catholic Internet; new orders, institutes, and organizations promoting Catholic spirituality, causes such as the pro-life and pro-family movements; the appearance of a new generation of gung-ho “John Paul II priests”; and, above all, bishops standing up to the current secularist juggernaut in areas such as healthcare, marriage, and the like. The response of the Catholic people generally to the bishops’ call for resistance to the HHS mandate is particularly noteworthy.

There are signs, then, that the Catholic Church in America does have a future. This future no doubt remains “uncertain,” as Shaw contends. But there are also many grounds for hope. Shaw’s book, American Church, is thus eminently worth reading: it allows us to see where we have been and where we are. Where we are going is still in God’s hands—and in ours!

Kenneth D. Whitehead, author of a number of books, notably One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic: The Early Church Was the Catholic Church (Ignatius Press, 2000), is a member of the board of directors of the Catholic League.

Russell Shaw serves on the board of advisors of the Catholic League, and is the author of numerous books and articles.

On September 6, the California Senate passed SB 131, the bill that makes it easier for alleged victims of sexual abuse to sue if the molestation happened when they were a minor. But it does not apply to the public sector, just to institutions such as the Catholic Church.

Bill Donohue wrote a letter today to California Governor Jerry Brown about the bill. He will decide its fate; he has until October 13. To read the letter, click here.

Bill Donohue comments on candidates for office in New York City who took their campaign to area houses of worship yesterday; the primaries are tomorrow:

Yesterday, New York City candidates took their campaigns into African-American churches all over the city.

No one seems to care, but if the reverse were true—Catholics welcoming and endorsing politicians at Mass—holy hell would ensue. It just goes to show what an utter sham this business is about violating church and state lines.

No newspaper has been more critical of Catholic priests and bishops who merely address public issues from the pulpit than the New York Times. Worse, no newspaper has been less critical of black churches for routinely thumbing their nose at the First Amendment than the New York Times. At work is more than rank political partisanship: liberal white racism explains a lot.

To read how New York City candidates stumped in churches, click here.

Bill Donohue comments on New York City Controller-candidate Scott Stringer’s sexual connections:

We know Scott Stringer voted to retain the tax-exempt status of an organized band of child rapists (click here), and that he initially voted against Megan’s Law, a registry that tracks convicted sex offenders (click here). This got me thinking: Does Stringer have any more sexual baggage? It turns out he does. His close ties to Terry Richardson, the fashion photographer who exploits women of all ages, including his own mother, is something that deserves a public airing.

Stringer has a reputation for championing women’s rights, but his record and his associations make mince meat of this claim.

Stringer’s press secretary is Audrey Gelman (she also stars in the obscene HBO show, “Girls”). Her boyfriend is Terry Richardson, and he is the link to fat cats in the fashion industry who are financing Stringer’s campaign. All of them know of Richardson’s perversions. As the Wall Street Journal said last month, Stringer has “fashion photographer Terry Richardson on his team.” Indeed, Richardson opens the doors for Gelman, who in turn “corrals” fashion industry donors to give to Stringer.

If we can judge a politician by the people on his team, then Scott Stringer’s character is deeply flawed. There is too much about Richardson’s sordid history to fit on this page. To read a summary of it, click here.

Bill Donohue comments on the latest revelations regarding New York City Controller-candidate Scott Stringer:

The New York Post reports today that Scott Stringer initially voted against Megan’s Law, the registry that tracks convicted sex offenders once they leave prison; he later voted for it. He said his vote against the law was fear that sex offenders would be driven underground. No one believes him, and with good reason: Stringer has a history of defending sex offenders.

Yesterday, I wrote an open letter to Scott Stringer asking him to come clean and tell New Yorkers the real reason why he voted to retain the tax-exempt status of Zymurgy, an affiliate of the North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA); the organization, now defunct, promoted child rape. Stringer is hiding behind a bogus legal argument.

Stringer’s sexual baggage doesn’t end here. Tomorrow, I will unveil my own research on him. Stay tuned.

Want to know why I won’t let up on Stringer? Because I am sick and tired with New York elites who continue to bash the Catholic Church for the crimes of a small band of rotten priests while supporting the rights of sex offenders.

Contact Stringer: bp@manhattanbp.org

Below is the text of a letter that Catholic League president Bill Donohue wrote to Scott Stringer, the Manhattan Borough President and candidate for New York City Controller:

Hon. Scott Stringer:

The Daily News reports today that in 1996 you voted against withdrawing the tax-exempt status of Zymurgy, an organization affiliated with the North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA). When Zymurgy filed papers in 1994 seeking this status, it said it wanted to “foster, promote and advance greater knowledge and understanding of human sexuality….” Gov. Mario Cuomo granted the group its non-profit status; he assumed the stated intention was sincere. It was not.

When you voted against pulling the tax-exempt status of Zymurgy, you already knew that its real goal was to promote child rape, yet you did so anyway. Were it not for Attorney General Dennis Vacco, who persevered on appeal to deny the child molesting activists their tax-free status, they might still be in business.

Your spokeswoman, Audrey Gelman, said you voted the way you did for constitutional reasons. No one believes you. There is no constitutional imperative allowing an organized band of child rapists not to pay taxes. Moreover, were the lawmakers who disagreed with you, which was most of them, acting unconstitutionally? You need to educate us.

The motto of NAMBLA/Zymurgy is, “Eight Is Too Late.” That’s right—if a kid hasn’t been violated by age eight, it’s not worth the effort. This is the group you defended. We need a complete and honest response: Why did you side with them? We will blanket the Catholic community with this release, and we will disseminate your response, if you have one.

 Contact Stringer: bp@manhattanbp.org

Bill Donohue comments on reactions to Miley Cyrus and the Miss World pageant:

Last Sunday, at the MTV Video Music Awards, Miley Cyrus simulated masturbation with a giant foam finger, grabbed her crotch, rubbed herself against a man old enough to be her father, pretended the man was performing anal sex on her, and walked around in a nude latex bikini. Her mother loved it. So did her manager. Millions of young girls and guys loved it as well.

Next month, the Miss World pageant will be held in Indonesia. Some Muslims are urging the government to cancel the event. According to the leader, Riziek Shihab, “The Miss World pageant is only an excuse to exhibit women’s body parts.”

Who are the real feminists? Miley’s fans? Or the Muslims? If debasing women is the yardstick, the Muslims win.

A perusal of the websites of the National Organization for Women and The Feminist Majority yields nothing about Miley, nor even a word about sexploitation. However, there is a great deal of commentary on abortion and lesbianism.

In this regard, the Catholic position is instructive.

Pope Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical, Humanae Vitae, was a clarion call to men and women: today’s culture allows men to sexually exploit women, cheapening relations between them. Pope John Paul II spoke eloquently about the commodification of sexuality, offering us a “Theology of the Body.”

We don’t have to agree with those who want to ban beauty pageants to know that their concerns are not trivial, especially in a day and age when Miley (and her dutiful mother) may be lurking right around the corner.

Bill Donohue comments on a threatened lawsuit by American Atheists; they are seeking to stop the erection of a memorial cross in Princeton, New Jersey:

New Jersey has a 9-11 memorial, and one of the local firefighters would like to display a beam in Princeton that was taken from the World Trade Center. American Atheists are objecting because the beam has a cross cut out on one side. To David Silverman, that is “grossly offensive.” So he is threatening to sue.

Silverman says that to allow the memorial cross is to give the “appearance that all of the people who suffered and died on 9-11 and their families are being memorialized by a Christian symbol.” It would be more accurate to say that Silverman and his minions are the only ones who would draw such a silly conclusion, but even if they did, that is no grounds for censorship. This is a free speech issue, and banning expression based on its content is unconstitutional. If Princeton yields, it could be sued for violating the First Amendment.

Silverman’s complaint that those who are not Christian will find the memorial cross “grossly offensive” is a bigoted comment on Jews and other non-Christians; it assumes that most are raving anti-Christians (he needs to leave his hate-filled circle and meet regular Americans). Moreover, his position is also sorely undercut by the person promoting the cross, Princeton Fire Chief Roy James. “I’m a Jew,” he told Todd Starnes of Fox News, and “I’m fighting to have this cross there because I believe that someone’s story is behind that.”

We are asking our members to contact Princeton Mayor Liz Lempert.

Contact: llempert@princetonnj.gov

Bill Donohue has written a piece for Newsmax on the Obama administration’s recent filing of an amicus brief in favor of religious invocations at government meetings. In his article he considers possible motives for the administration’s position. To read it, click here.