Bill Donohue

The movie “Spotlight” is bound to spark more conversation about the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church. Unfortunately, much of what the American public knows about this issue is derived from the popular culture, something this film will only abet. Therefore, the time is ripe to revisit what the actual data on this subject reveal.

When the Boston Globe sent the nation reeling in 2002 with revelations of priestly sexual abuse, and the attendant cover-up, Catholics were outraged by the level of betrayal. This certainly included the Catholic League. The scandal cannot be denied. What is being denied, however, is the existence of another scandal—the relentless effort to keep the abuse crisis alive, and the deliberate refusal to come to grips with its origins. Both scandals deserve our attention.

Myth: The Scandal Never Ended

When interviewed about the scandal in 2002 by the New York Times, I said, “I am not the church’s water boy. I am not here to defend the indefensible.” In the Catholic League’s 2002 Annual Report, I even defended the media. “The Boston Globe, the Boston Herald, and the New York Times covered the story with professionalism,” I wrote.

A decade later things had changed. In the Catholic League’s 2011 Annual Report, I offered a critical assessment of the media. “In a nutshell,” I said, “what changed was this: in 2011, unlike what happened in 2002, virtually all the stories were about accusations against priests dating back decades, sometimes as long as a half-century ago. Keep in mind that not only were most of the priests old and infirm, many were dead; thus, only one side of the story could be told. Adding to our anger was the fact that no other institution, religious or secular, was being targeted for old allegations.”

It became clear that by 2011 we were dealing with two scandals, not one. Scandal I was internal—the church-driven scandal. This was the result of indefensible decisions by the clergy: predatory priests and their enabling bishops. Scandal II was external, the result of indefensible cherry-picking of old cases by rapacious lawyers and vindictive victims’ groups. They were aided and abetted by activists, the media, and Hollywood.

Regarding Scandal II, more than cultural elites were involved. “In 2011,” I wrote, “it seemed as if ‘repressed memories’ surfaced with alacrity, but only among those who claimed they were abused by a priest. That there was no similar explosion of ‘repressed memories’ on the part of those who were molested by ministers, rabbis, teachers, psychologists, athletic coaches, and others, made us wonder what was going on.”

The steeple-chasing lawyers and professional victims’ organizations had a vested economic interest in keeping the scandal alive; the former made hundreds of millions and they, in turn, lavishly greased the latter. But it wasn’t money that motivated the media and Hollywood elites to keep the story alive—it was ideology.

To be specific, the Catholic Church has long been the bastion of traditional morality in American society, and if there is anything that the big media outlets and the Hollywood studios loathe, it is being told that they need to put a brake on their libido. So when the scandal came to light, the urge to pounce proved irresistible. The goal was, and still is, to attenuate the moral authority of the Catholic Church. It certainly wasn’t outrage over the sexual abuse of minors that stirred their interest: if that were the case, then many other institutions would have been put under the microscope. But none were.

There is no conspiracy here. What unfolded is the logical outcome of the ideological leanings of our cultural elites. Unfortunately, “Spotlight” will only add to Scandal II. How so? Just read what those connected with the film are saying.

Tom McCarthy, who co-wrote the script with Josh Singer, said, “I would love for Pope Francis and the cardinals and bishops and priests to see this [film].” Would it make any difference? “I remain pessimistic,” he says. “To be honest,” he declares, “I expect no reaction at all.”

Mark Ruffalo plays a reporter, and, like McCarthy, he says, “I hope the Vatican will use this movie to begin to right those wrongs.” (My italic.) He is not sanguine about the prospects. Indeed, he has given up on the Church.

The view that the Catholic Church has not even begun to “right those wrongs” is widely shared. Indeed, the impression given to the American people, by both the media and Hollywood—it is repeated nightly by TV talk-show hosts—is that the sexual abuse scandal in the Church never ended. Impressions count: In December 2012, a CBS News survey found that 55 percent of Catholics, and 73 percent of Americans overall, believe that priestly sexual abuse of minors remains a problem. Only 14 percent of Americans believe it is not a problem today.

Commentary by those associated with “Spotlight,” as well as movie reviewers and pundits, are feeding this impression. But the data show that the conventional wisdom is wrong. The fact of the matter is that the sexual abuse of minors by priests has long ceased to be an institutional problem. All of these parties—Catholics, the American public, the media, and Hollywood—entertain a view that is not supported by the evidence. “Spotlight” will only add to the propaganda.

In 2002, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) commissioned researchers from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice to conduct a major study of priestly sexual abuse; it covered the years 1950 to 2002. It found that accusations of the sexual molestation of minors were made against 4,392 priests.

This figure represents 4 percent of all Catholic priests. What was not widely touted is that 43 percent of these allegations (1881) were unsubstantiated. To qualify as “unsubstantiated” the bar was set high: the allegation had to be “proven to be untruthful and fabricated” as a result of a criminal investigation.

In other words, roughly 2 percent of priests were likely guilty of molesting minors. Accusations proven to be false should carry no weight in assessing wrongdoing, yet the fabrications are treated by the media as if they were true. It must also be said that this rate of false accusations is much higher than found in studies of this problem in the general population.

More than half of the accused priests had only one allegation brought against them. Moreover, 3.5 percent accounted for 26 percent of all the victims. As computed by professor Philip Jenkins, an expert on this subject, the John Jay data reveal that “Out of 100,000 priests active in the U.S. in this half-century, a cadre of just 149 individuals—one priest out of every 750—accounted for a quarter of all allegations of clergy abuse.”

These data give the lie to the accusation that during this period the sexual molestation of minors by priests was rampant. It manifestly was not. Even more absurd is the accusation that the problem is still ongoing.

In the last ten years, from 2005 to 2014, an average 8.4 credible accusations were made against priests for molestation that occurred in any one of those years. The data are available online at the USCCB website (see the reports issued for these years). Considering that roughly 40,000 priests could have had a credible accusation made against them, this means that almost 100 percent of priests had no such accusation made against them!

Sadly, I cannot name a single media outlet, including Catholic ones, that even mentioned this, much less emphasized it. The Catholic News Service, paid for by the bishops, should have touted this, but it didn’t. This delinquency is what helps to feed the misperception that the Church has not even begun to deal with this problem.

In 2011, researchers from John Jay issued another report, “The Causes and Context of Sexual Abuse of Minors by Catholic Priests in the United States, 1950-2010.” While the document was often critical, it commended the Church for its forthrightness in dealing with this problem. “No other institution has undertaken a public study of sexual abuse,” the report said, “and as a result, there are no comparable data to those collected by the Catholic Church.” Looking at the most recent data, the report found that the “incidence of child sexual abuse has declined in both the Catholic Church and in society in general, though the rate of decline is greater in the Catholic Church in the same time period.”

So much for the myth that the Church has not yet “begun” to address this issue. Every study by the John Jay researchers shows that most of the abuse took place between 1965-1985. This is not hard to figure out: the sexual revolution began in the 1960s and fizzled out by the mid-1980s. Libertinism drove the sexual revolution, and it hit the seminaries as well, especially in the 1970s. Matters slowed once AIDS was uncovered in 1981. It took fear—the fear of death—to bring about a much needed reality check.

Myth: Celibacy is the Root Cause

On October 28, 2015, a columnist for the Boston Globe wrote an article about “Spotlight” titled, “Based on a True Story.” Similarly, script writer Tom McCarthy said, “We made a commitment to let the facts play.”

No one disputes the fact that predatory priests were allowed to run wild in the Boston Archdiocese; the problem was not confined to Boston, but it was the epicenter. That molesting priests were moved around like chess pieces to unsuspecting parishes is also true. Ditto for the cover-up orchestrated by some bishops. This is the very stuff of Scandal I. Where the factual claims dissolve, however, is when the script claims to know what triggered the scandal.

“Spotlight” made its premiere on September 3 at the Venice Film Festival. A review published by the international French news agency, AFP, noted that “in Spotlight’s nuanced script, few in the Catholic hierarchy have shown any inclination to address whether the enforced celibacy of priests might be one of the root causes of the problem.”

The celibacy myth was debunked by the John Jay 2011 report. “Celibacy has been constant in the Catholic Church since the eleventh century and could not account for the rise and subsequent decline in abuse cases from the 1960s through the 1980s.” But if celibacy did not drive the scandal, what did? The John Jay researchers cite the prevalence of sexually immature men who were allowed to enter the seminaries, as well as the effects of the sexual revolution.

There is much truth to this observation, but it is incomplete. Who were these sexually immature men? The popular view, one that is promoted by the movie as well, suggests they were pedophiles. The data, however, prove this to be wrong.

When the word got out that “Spotlight” was going to hit the big screen, Mike Fleming, Jr. got an Exclusive for Deadline Hollywood; his piece appeared on August 8, 2014. The headline boasted that it was a “Boston Priest Pedophile Pic.” In his first sentence, he described the film as “a drama that Tom McCarthy will direct about the Boston Globe investigation into pedophile priests.” This narrative is well entrenched in the media, and in the culture at large. Whenever this issue is discussed, it is pitched as a “pedophile” scandal. We can now add “Spotlight’s” contribution to this myth.

One of the most prominent journalists on the Boston Globe “Spotlight” team was Kevin Cullen. On February 28, 2004, he wrote a story assessing a report issued by the National Review Board, appointed by the USCCB, on what exactly happened. He quoted the head of the Board’s research committee, well-respected attorney Robert S. Bennett, as saying it was not pedophilia that drove the scandal. “There are no doubt many outstanding priests of a homosexual orientation who live chaste, celibate lives,” he said, “but any evaluation of the causes and context of the current crisis must be cognizant of the fact that more than 80 percent of the abuse at issue was of a homosexual nature.”

Bennett was correct, and Cullen knew it to be true as well. “Of the 10,667 reported victims [in the time period between 1950 and 2002],” Cullen wrote, “81 percent were male, the report said, and more than three-quarters [the exact figure is 78 percent] were postpubescent, meaning the abuse did not meet the clinical definition of pedophilia.” One of Bennett’s colleagues, Dr. Paul McHugh, former psychiatrist-in-chief at Johns Hopkins University, was more explicit. “This behavior was homosexual predation on American Catholic youth,” he said, “yet it is not being discussed.” It never is.

So it is indisputable that the Boston Globe “Spotlight” team knew that it was homosexuality, not pedophilia, that drove the scandal. Yet that is not what is being reported today. Indeed, as recently as November 1, 2015, a staff reporter for the Boston Globe said the movie was about “the pedophile priest crisis.” This flies in the face of the evidence. In fact, the John Jay 2011 report found that less than 5 percent of the abusive priests fit the diagnosis of pedophilia, thus concluding that “it is inaccurate to refer to abusers as ‘pedophile priests.'”

The evidence, however, doesn’t count. Politics counts. The mere suggestion that homosexual priests accounted for the lion’s share of the problem was met with cries of homophobia. This is at the heart of Scandal II. Even the John Jay researchers went on the defensive. Most outrageous was the voice of dissident, so-called progressive, Catholics: It was they who pushed for a relaxation of sexual mores in the seminaries, thus helping to create Scandal I. Then they helped to create Scandal II by refusing to take ownership of the problem they foisted; they blamed “sexual repression” for causing the crisis.

So how did the deniers get around the obvious? Cullen said that “most [of the molested] fell victim to ephebophiles, men who are sexually attracted to adolescent or postpubescent children.” But clinically speaking, ephebophilia is a waste-basket term of no scientific value.

Philip Jenkins once bought into this idea but eventually realized that the word “communicates nothing to most well-informed readers. These days I tend rather to speak of these acts as ‘homosexuality.'” Jenkins attributes his change of mind to Mary Eberstadt, one of the most courageous students of this issue. “When was the last time you heard the phrase ‘ephebophile’ applied to a heterosexual man?” In truth, ephebophilia is shorthand for homosexuals who prey on adolescents.

Even those who know better, such as the hierarchy of the Church, are reluctant to mention the devastating role that homosexual priests have played in molesting minors. In April 2002, the cardinals of the United States, along with the leadership of the USCCB and the heads of several offices of the Holy See, issued a Communiqué from the Vatican on this issue. “Attention was drawn to the fact that almost all the cases involved adolescents and therefore were not cases of true pedophilia” they said. So what were they? They were careful not to drop the dreaded “H” word.

Further proof that the problem is confined mostly to gay priests is provided by Father Michael Peterson, co-founder of St. Luke’s Institute, the premier treatment center in the nation for troubled priests. He frankly admits, “We don’t see heterosexual pedophiles at all.” This suggests that virtually all the priests who abused prepubescent children had a homosexual orientation.

The spin game is intellectually dishonest. When adult men have sex with postpubescent females, the predatory behavior is seen as heterosexual in nature. But when adult men have sex with postpubsecent males, the predatory behavior is not seen as homosexual in nature. This isn’t science at work—it’s politics, pure and simple.

I have said it many times before, and I will say it again: most gay priests are not molesters but most molesting priests have been gay. It gets tiresome, however, to trot this verity out every time I address this issue. That’s because it means nothing to elites in the dominant culture. Just whispering about the role gay priests have played in the sexual abuse scandal triggers howls of protest.

There is plenty of evidence that Hollywood has long been a haven for sexual predators, both straight and gay. The same is true of many religious and secular institutions throughout society. But there is little interest in the media and in Tinsel Town to profile them. They have identified the enemy and are quite content to keep pounding away.

There is no doubt that the Boston Globe “Spotlight” team deserved a Pulitzer Prize for exposing Scandal I. Regrettably, there will be no Pulitzer for exposing Scandal II.

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on two stories in the New York Times that malign the Catholic Church in Ireland:

Newspapers are supposed to report news, but when they don’t—when they recycle old news—it calls into question the motive. That’s what the New York Times did recently.

On January 14 and January 16, it ran two “news” stories besmirching the Catholic Church in Ireland: neither broke any new ground and both misreported the facts.

The January 16 story by Ed O’Loughlin reports on discussions in Ireland on what to do about the Magdalene Laundry on Gloucester Street, the last of its genre; these were homes and workplaces for homeless and dispossessed women. “Poor nutrition and hygiene, cold and damp lodging and little or no medical supervision were the norm.”

That is not true. Proof? All one has to do is read the McAleese Report, issued in 2013. It is the most comprehensive collection of data ever obtained on the Magdalene Laundries, complete with statistical analysis. It totally demolishes the myths about the horrid conditions that the nuns subjected the women to, including stories of torture.

Did O’Loughlin even bother to read this government report? He certainly could not have written such dribble if he read the comments made by Dr. Michael Coughlan, Dr. John Ryan, Dr. Donal Kelly, Dr. Harry Comber, and Dr. Malachy Coleman. They unanimously dispute the horror tales.

What unites the O’Loughlin article with the January 14 story by Dan Barry is their misreporting of what really happened in the Mother and Baby Home in Tuam, near Galway.

“A few years ago,” Barry writes, “an amateur historian shook Ireland to its core with a ghastly allegation: Hundreds of bodies of young children appeared to have been buried in an abandoned septic tank by Catholic nuns who for decades had managed a home for unwed mothers and their offspring in the County Galway town of Tuam.” (My italics.)

The “amateur historian” is Catherine Corless. Barry says that “she wrote an article in the local journal in 2012 that strongly suggested that the remains of hundreds of children, all born to unwed mothers and all baptized in the Catholic faith, had not been buried in consecrated ground, but in parts of a disused septic system dating to when the home was a 19th-century workhouse.” (My emphasis.) He further notes that the “suspicions were confirmed in March by forensic investigators,” commissioned by the government.

Similarly, O’Loughlin refers to Corless as a “dogged local historian” who made headline news when “she published evidence” that nearly 800 children had died in the Tuam home, and that the remains of “some” were found in the septic tank. (My emphasis again.)

As I have noted several times before (see the Catholic League website), the “mass grave” story, as it is called, is a hoax, a cruel myth promoted by those whose agenda it is to smear the Catholic Church.

Barry notes the bodies “appeared to have been buried” in a septic tank.  Appeared? Either they were or they weren’t. Alternatively, he says that in her 2012 article, Corless “strongly suggested” this was true. A suggestion, strong or weak, is not a substitute for an empirical finding. O’Loughlin ups the ante even further claiming that Corless found “evidence” to support her claims.

Have Barry and O’Loughlin read the 2012 article by Corless? Apparently not. I have. In her piece titled “The Home,” which was published in the Journal of the Old Tuam Society, Corless made no mention of any “mass grave.” If anything, she offered evidence that contradicts what she later claimed.

Here is what Corless said: “A few local boys [in 1975] came upon a sort of crypt in the ground, and on peering in they saw several small skulls.” She mentioned there was a “little graveyard.” That is not the makings of a mass grave.

The primary source for her “mass grave” thesis is Barry Sweeney. When he was 10, he and a friend stumbled on a hole with skeletons in it. In 2014, he was asked by the Irish Times to comment on Corless’ claim that there are “800 skeletons down that hole.” He said, “Nothing like that.” How many? “About 20,” he said. He later told the New York Times there were “maybe 15 to 20 small skeletons.” It would behoove Barry and O’Loughlin to read the New York Times more carefully.

Corless herself admitted in 2014 that she learned from local residents that the Tuam graveyard outside the Home was dotted with “tiny markers there.” There were “bits of stones left to indicate graves.” Those “tiny markers” suggest this was a cillin graveyard, or a graveyard for children. A “mass grave” is not dotted with “tiny markers” or “bits of stones.” Yet Corless has been able to get away with these contradictory explanations.

In a 2014 news story by Douglas Dalby of the New York Times, he says of Corless’ account that she “surmised that the children’s bodies were interred in a septic tank behind the home.” (My italic.) His verb is accurate. To surmise is to guess—it is proof of nothing.

It also doesn’t help the cause of Barry and O’Loughlin—and it is a cause that they have embarked upon—for Barry to write that Corless’ “suspicions were confirmed in March by forensic investigators.” Wrong. March is when Katherine Zappone, Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, released her Interim Report on this subject. Nowhere in the report does she use the term “mass grave,” or imply anything like it.

Finally, there is the matter of Catherine Corless. She is neither an “amateur historian” nor a “local historian.” She is not a historian—local, regional, or national. She doesn’t even have an undergraduate degree. She is a typist.

What the New York Times has published is pure propaganda, designed to feed the worst impression about the Catholic Church in Ireland. There is no other plausible interpretation.

Contact: nytnews@nytimes.com

No one has been more obscene, and more relentless, in attacking the pope, cardinals, bishops, and priests than Bill Maher; he does so every week on HBO. Twenty times this year alone Maher used his platform to attack Catholics.

After Maher’s obscene attack on March 22nd, the Catholic League went to work compiling an exhaustive list of Bill Maher’s anti-Catholic remarks dating back to 1998.  It was unclear where HBO officials stood with respect to Maher’s remarks: either they agreed with what he had to say, or they were afraid of him.

Since HBO had not taken any action in response to Bill Maher’s bigotry, the Catholic League contacted the board of directors at Time Warner, the parent company of HBO. After the season finale of “Real Time” which aired November 22nd, the Catholic League sent every member of Time Warner’s board of directors a copy of 54 anti-Catholic statements made by Bill Maher on TV. The league called for the show to be canceled once and for all.

Additionally we wrote to the more than 400 active and retired bishops across the United States and urged them to contact Time Warner’s CEO. Many bishops responded and echoed our call for Maher to be taken off television.

What bothers us about Maher is his obsession with portraying all bishops and priests—including the pope—as sexual abusers. This is malicious and morally indefensible.

Included here are examples of Maher’s hate speech that he spewed in 2013. Our entire report, “Bill Maher’s History of Anti-Catholicism,” is available on our website under the “Special Reports.”

November 22, 2013, “Real Time with Bill Maher” [HBO], Maher and guest Dan Savage on priests and gay marriage: Maher commented on gay couples who adopt children, alleging that a Hawaiian bishop said these kids had a greater chance of committing suicide. Here is how Savage responded: “That’s total bulls***. He’s confusing children of gay parents with children who are raped by Catholic priests. Sorry, I am just done being lectured about children and their safety by Catholic-f***ing bishops, priests, cardinals.” Shortly thereafter, Savage again remarked about “kiddie-f***ing Catholic priests.”

November 19, 2013, “The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell” [MSNBC], on religion: Maher was a guest on the show. While discussing the government shutdown that occurred in October and the threat of another shutdown, Maher said: “I never understood why people who hate government go into government, that’s why I’m not a priest.”

November 15, 2013, “Real Time with Bill Maher” [HBO], Maher attacks the Pope: In Maher’s rant, he took after the pope, Sarah Palin, and Palin’s daughter, Bristol.

The skit was a series of mock tweets featuring the pope and Palin:

• Pope: “Listening to you, I’m reconsidering my stance on birth control.”
• Palin: “Yeah. How’s that sex with teenage boys working out for you?”
• Pope: “I don’t know. How’d it work out for your daughter?”

November 8, 2013, “Real Time with Bill Maher” [HBO], Maher mocks Christianity: During a segment titled “Cheap of Faith” Maher discusses how Christians don’t want to help or feed the hungry because it goes against the Bible. He believes that Christians should admit they are selfish because their beliefs do not mirror the actual teachings of Jesus. Maher states that “there is always a good moral Christian reason to tell everyone you meet to f*** off and die.”

November 1, 2013, “Real Time with Bill Maher” [HBO], Maher brands Pope a child rapist: Maher showed a picture of a young boy who approached Pope Francis, and then sat on the pope’s chair. Pope Francis welcomed him, but Maher’s picture showed the pope’s hand on the child’s head and Maher said “No, Pope Francis, I thought you were different,” implying that the pope is a child rapist.

October 30, 2013, “Piers Morgan Live” [CNN], on religion: Maher was a guest on the show. While discussing the government shutdown, Maher says that “If you hate government, you shouldn’t do it. That’s why I’m not a priest.”

October 25, 2013, “Real Time with Bill Maher” [HBO], repeatedly insults and attacks Catholics, Christians and Pope Francis: Maher made reference to German Bishop Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst and claimed that Pope Francis “fired the [German] bishop of bling” because he was “getting the altar boys drunk on Cristal.”

Later on, Maher’s panel of guests consisted of Michael Moore, Al Sharpton, Valerie Plame and Richard Dawkins. According to Maher, liberals are “worried they’re going to be called racist if they criticize Muslims.”

Sharpton: “There were Christian klansmen that were Christians, KKK members who burned crosses.”
Plame: “Yeah, but now there are Christian Dominionists that are just as extreme.”
Maher: “This is not just the same. Look, I’m no f**king Catholic or Christian, but one is herpes [Christians] and one is cancer [Muslims].”

October 9, 2013, “The Arsenio Hall Show” [WPIX], on religion: Maher was a guest on the show. While discussing the government shutdown, Maher said “You should not be in government if you hate government. That is why I am not a priest.”

August 2, 2013, “Real Time with Bill Maher” [HBO], implies that Pope Francis and all clergy are homosexual:  “… In other gay news, did you see the pope got drunk again and, ah, I love this pope, he just says what he thinks. He said gay Catholics shouldn’t be marginalized. He said, ‘Who am I to judge them?’ And I think it’s like anybody else, you know, when you get to know gay people, they don’t, you know, come off as gay, they come off as people. You stop being anti-gay. And who has more gay friends and co-workers than a pope?”

Later in the show Maher announced he would be taking a five week vacation and predicted what the headlines will be while he’s off. He displayed several mock headlines including a mockup of the headline, “Pope Francis Moves to Massachusetts Marries Longtime Companion.” Below the caption was a picture of Pope Francis and an elderly man.

July 19, 2013, “Real Time with Bill Maher” [HBO], on World Youth Day: “This is World Youth Day for the Catholic Church … I mean this is a big jamboree – look at that! This is where all the kids in the world get together with priests. What could go wrong?”

July 16, 2013, “Real Time with Bill Maher” blog, on Pope Francis clearing Pope John Paul II for sainthood after a second miracle was confirmed: “I’m sorry, for those believers out there, aren’t these ‘miracle’ tales kind of a tell that this religion is completely full of s**t?”

June 14, 2013, “Real Time with Bill Maher” [HBO], on Pope Francis and the alleged “gay lobby” in the Vatican: Maher implied that Pope Francis is homosexual when he said the following: “The other big story, Pope Francis…This week he said there is a gay network inside the Vatican…They go by the code names cardinals and priests…Hey, Padre, I hate to tell you, there’s also a gay network here, it’s called BRAVO. And this fall they’re presenting the real homosexuals of Vatican City.  ‘Whatever, Monsignor, I didn’t come here to make friends’ (gay affectation)….and he has vowed to find out where all this gayness was coming from. And then he gathered up his long white dress, he turned on his bright red heels and he flounced right out of the steam room.”

May 31, 2013, “Real Time with Bill Maher” [HBO], on Pope Francis, the Church, and priests: The following occurred between host Bill Maher and Paul Rudnick, author of the anti-Christian play, “The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told”:

Maher: “I want to ask you and everybody else about something that happened this week that was important to me because I am an atheist…You know when somebody says something obvious, ‘Oh, is the pope Catholic?’ I think he might not be. I think the Pope might be an atheist.  There I said it. Like I think Obama is, because, he said this week, Pope Frank said, ‘The Lord has redeemed all of us, not just Catholics, even the atheists.’ And I was like, I am going to book my flight to heaven right now.”

“And then of course, it’s funny, because, you know, it’s just like politics. The hierarchy at the Vatican was like, ‘What the f**k did this guy just…?’ You could almost see them preparing the poison. You know, it’s like, luckily we’ve got a spare pope. This guy, ixnay on the… You know, one of the key things in this religion and most religions is, ‘Oh, monopoly, only through us.’ Even hippie Jesus said that. ‘Only through me.’ So this guy’s saying everybody gets into heaven. So then they had to walk it back…and the Vatican said – I don’t, do you have it?”
Rudnick:  “I have it. The Vatican spokesman quickly intervened Father Thomas Rosica said quote, ‘People who truly know the Catholic Church cannot be saved if they refuse to enter or remain in her.'”
Maher: “Remain in her?” [sexual innuendo]
Rudnick: “Yeah, presumably without using a condom. You wonder if they ever vet any of their statements.”
Maher: “It made me think that, you know, I remember when I was making ‘Religulous,’ and we talked to a lot of priests. And we found out that a lot of priests really aren’t believers. They do it because, no, some of them do it for the sex. That’s true, but some of them, I mean, no, there’s a lot of good ones, and they do it because it’s a way to help people and they know they can’t tell the masses that it’s all a crock. But they themselves don’t believe it. I think Pope Frank – what’s his real name?…his Argentinian name…it sounds like a very expensive pair of shoes. He’s a sophisticated guy from that era, and I think he’s, I’m telling you, I think the Pope’s an atheist.”

May 10, 2013, “Real Time with Bill Maher” [HBO], on priests: The following exchange occurred between host Bill Maher and actor Zachary Quinto:

Maher: “They have to get right with the idea that more people who are rapists and violent go into the military. I mean, that’s sort of understandable. It’s a violent organization. Their job is violence…”
Quinto: “Maybe they should have a roundtable with the Catholic Church and try to come to some understanding of how to navigate this.”
Maher: “Well, you know, it’s funny you say that, but I think the reason why more rapists go into the military is the same reason why predators go into the Catholic Church: it’s a place they know they can get away with it.”
Quinto: “And that hierarchical structure prevents them from really being accountable to anybody.”
Maher: “Right, and they’re protected.”

May 3, 2013, “Real Time with Bill Maher” [HBO], on Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI: During the opening monologue, host Bill Maher referred to the pontifical summer residence at Castel Gandolfo as “Club Ped,” implying that Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI is a pedophile.

April 2, 2013, “Jimmy Kimmel Live” [ABC], on teachings of the Catholic Church: Maher was a guest on the show and he called the Bible “a bunch of Bronze Age malarkey.” He stated that Catholic tradition “was not from Jesus or the Bible,” claiming that “most of this stuff” was “made up hundreds of years later by clowns in the Church.” When Kimmel asked Maher whether the Trinity was in the Bible, Maher responded: “No! Neither is Confession. They just pulled this out of their ass in the 12th century.” Referring to Limbo, Maher said “they just shamelessly invent it as they go along.”

March 22, 2013, “Real Time with Bill Maher” [HBO], on Pope Francis: After labeling the pope a “virgin bachelor,” Maher opined, “What other business could you be in where your company gets caught running a child sex ring since forever and you still keep your customers?”

March 15, 2013, “Real Time with Bill Maher” [HBO], on Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI: After displaying pictures of notable persons holding signs mocking themselves, Maher showed a picture of the pope emeritus holding a sign saying, “Not actually sick…I just hated that f***ing job.”

February 15, 2013, “Real Time with Bill Maher” [HBO], on the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI: “Now…as you all know, this week, Pope Benedict told Vatican Radio—you know, Vatican Radio, playing the hits from the 8th century, 9th century and today—Benedict told them he was going to resign because the Church needs a fresh, young face, somewhere other than a priest’s lap.”

“It’s okay to let go. No one can fault you for losing faith in an organization that won’t even allow women as priests, because, the reasoning goes, Jesus didn’t have any female apostles. Yeah, you remember the Last Supper: a total sausage party.”

“The fact is that any enterprise that excludes women almost always descends into sexual deviancy. At least at my bathhouse.”

“Show me any culture that’s traditionally hostile to women, and I will show you a culture that is screwed up. Like the Taliban. Like our military with its enormous rape problem. And like the Catholic Church.”

February 11, 2013, “Conan” [TBS], smearing priests: Maher was a guest on the show. “We found early this year or last year in the Republican primaries when the Republicans made contraception an issue, 98% of Catholics use birth control and the only ones who don’t are the priests. They would if altar boys could get pregnant.”

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The biggest Catholic story of 2013 was seeing Pope Benedict XVI pass the baton to Pope Francis. Our new pontiff wasted no time becoming a media superstar, and by the year’s end, he was on the cover of Time magazine, featured as the “Person of the Year.”

The Holy Father’s humility, and outreach to every segment of the population, touched people the world over. We moved quickly at the Catholic League to give him the kind of applause he deserved: we published a tribute to him on the op-ed page of the New York Times, just a month after his election.

Throughout the course of the year, we chronicled the pope’s statements, and the reactions to them. While there was much to cheer about, there were more than a few commentators who sought to manipulate public opinion by offering their own politicized interpretations of what Francis said. In some quarters, the hyperventilation reached absurd levels: many pundits would have had us believe that he was going to turn the Church inside out.

In 2013, I decided to disclose how the IRS came after the Catholic League in 2008. No sooner had Senator Barack Obama become president when the IRS contacted me: we were being subjected to an investigation to see whether we had violated its strictures on political engagement. When it was all over, we were essentially told to be more careful; no penalties were levied.

For prudential reasons, I chose not to publicize the IRS probe until 2013. But when news reports emerged in the spring about the way the IRS was selectively targeting conservative organizations for scrutiny, I decided to tell our story. All I had done to trigger the investigation was to issue news releases that were critical of candidate Obama, most of which had to do with his defense of selective infanticide and abortion-on-demand.

The defense of human life is the first civil right, and it is not one that I will ever shy away from. I also exposed the connection between Catholics United, a George Soros-funded phony Catholic group, and the IRS: it was they who were behind the probe. At the request of an outside lawyer, the IRS was contacted in 2013 asking for backup information regarding this episode, but it did not yield new information.

When government, especially the federal government, threatens civil liberties, it demands a strong pushback. The Health and Human Services (HHS) mandate, issued as an edict by Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, continued to enjoin the Catholic League, and others, in protesting its requirement that Catholic non-profits, as well as businesses owned by objecting parties, pay for abortion-inducing drugs, sterilization, and contraception in its insurance policies. The issue had not been decided by year’s end.

Every time the Obama administration offered what it said was an accommodation, or compromise, we learned that it was mostly window dressing. Having a third party pay for what Catholic non-profits were still required to authorize was not sufficient; all we wanted was the status quo ante.

Having to pay for services deemed immoral was bad enough, but what was most objectionable about the HHS mandate was an abuse of power: the government decided to redefine what a Catholic organization was. For centuries, Catholic-run facilities proudly hired and served people of all faiths, never discriminating on the basis of religion. Now they were being punished for doing so.

To wit: the mandate said that any religious entity that hires and serves mostly people of other religions is disqualified from the traditional religious exemption. The ruling is perverse. That is why we started a petition on our website; we sent tens of thousands of signatures to Secretary Sebelius, gathered over a period of just six weeks, asking her to rescind the mandate.

Violations of religious liberty in the armed forces occurred with regularity in 2013; our men and women in uniform were constantly being barred from exercising their constitutional rights. Accordingly, we supported the Military Religious Freedom Protection Act, a bill sponsored by Rep. Tim Huelskamp that would rectify this problem.

In the fall, we won an impressive victory for an Army soldier in Oklahoma: she had been told that she could not go to Mass on Sunday because she could not find another Catholic to go with her (they have a buddy system on the base at Fort Sill). We recommended that Army officials allow someone to escort her to Mass, and they acceded to our request.

When the federal government was partially shut down, the Obama administration retaliated by denying some Catholic priests from servicing Catholics in the armed forces. Priests who were contracted by the government to say Mass, for instance, were told that there weren’t sufficient funds to pay them. So many volunteered. Diabolically, they were denied.

Friends of the administration, such as the ACLU, also sought to squash the religious liberty rights of Catholics. It sued the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) for its pro-life policy. To be specific, in 2010, a Catholic hospital in Michigan tended to a non-Catholic woman who was pregnant, and who was having complications, but did not inform her of her option to abort her baby. So the ACLU decided to sue the USCCB, holding it responsible for the hospital’s directives. In essence, the bishops were sued for their pro-life convictions.

One of the biggest issues we dealt with in 2013 was a bill sponsored by a California lawmaker that would lift the statute of limitations for one year on cases of the sexual abuse of minors, but would not apply to public institutions. Few on either side denied the obvious: the legislation was designed to “get the Catholic Church.” It was not drafted to stop sexual abuse, for if it were, it would have focused on the public schools.

We started pressing this issue in June, and in October, we won. Had it not been for Governor Jerry Brown’s veto—he proved to be courageous in the face of zealots—the Catholic Church in California would have been subjected to endless lawsuits, offering no justice to real victims. Besides, a bill that addressed this had already been passed in 2008, making moot the need for a new one. This was all about politics—the politics of bigotry.

The bishops held tough, especially its leader in this effort, Los Angeles Archbishop José Gomez. We pulled out all the stops: I wrote a six-page letter to all the legislators and the governor. We also contacted over 1,000 parishes in California, and every one of our members in the state. We spoke to the media, and got our members nationwide to join the effort.

Any bill on the sexual abuse of minors that gave the public schools a pass could not be taken seriously. We detailed exactly what was going on in the schools, making it impossible for the bill’s supporters to claim ignorance. In his statement explaining his veto, Governor Brown cited the tragedy of abuse that had plagued Miramonte Elementary School in Los Angeles; I had written extensively on it in my letter to him and to the lawmakers.

We came to the defense of many priests and bishops who were being unfairly targeted, especially in Philadelphia, Newark, and St. Paul-Minneapolis. Msgr. William Lynn, who had been unjustly imprisoned for 18 months on charges that he sanctioned the sexual abuse of a minor by a priest, had his conviction overturned at the end of the year. Archbishop John Myers of Newark, and Archbishop John Nienstedt of St. Paul and Minneapolis, were both the targets of activists bent on scoring points.

We had a very busy year on the nation’s campuses. A faculty member at Florida Atlantic University asked students to write the name “Jesus” on a piece of paper, fold it up and stomp on it. When a student refused and protested to the professor’s supervisor, he was suspended from class. I asked the professor why he didn’t use “Obama” in place of “Jesus,” but he did not reply. However, he was forced to apologize, and was placed on administrative leave for the rest of the semester.

A female student at Carnegie Mellon University was forced to apologize for her obscene and bigoted stunt. She decided it would be fun to dress as the pope at the annual school parade, going naked from the waist down. To top things off, she shaved her pubic hair in the shape of a cross. Pittsburgh Bishop David Zubik was not too happy, and we expressed our outrage as well. Moreover, the president of the university didn’t take kindly to her behavior. The student was hit with a misdemeanor by campus police.

A bid to censor the chaplain at the Newman Center at George Washington University failed, but not without a protest. Two gay students sought his ouster because he believes in the teachings of the Catholic Church. To be exact, the priest refused to give his blessings to their homosexual relationship. The attempt to muzzle his free speech, and to punish him for his exercise of religious liberty, did not succeed. The leadership of Washington Archbishop Donald Cardinal Wuerl, and our protest, proved determinative.

When a professor from the University of South Florida abused his academic freedom by insulting Catholics at an off-campus event, we jumped on the issue. In a totally gratuitous, and downright obscene statement, the professor equated priests with feces. We moved with dispatch to contact academic and administrative officials at the university, as well as members of the Florida Board of Governors. We also gave it media publicity. The professor apologized and was reprimanded by his superiors.

To show that we don’t overreact, we did not call for sanctions against the president of Ohio State University after it was disclosed that he made untoward comments about Catholics when discussing the University of Notre Dame with his athletic council. The remarks were made in jest. I appeared on “Good Morning America” to explain why not every comment of an arguably anti-Catholic nature is going to set off the alarms at the Catholic League. Political correctness is just as offensive when committed by those who normally object to its prevalence.

Colm Toibin’s book, The Testament of Mary, became the subject of a Broadway play, opening at the Walter Kerr Theatre. It was not anti-Catholic, so we did not protest it, but we did draw attention to its decidedly biased theme. The Virgin Mary in Toibin’s imagination was not the pious, obsequious mother of God. No, she was an independent-minded woman who said the crucifixion was “not worth it.” But the public was not amused. The play was scheduled to run 12 weeks; it closed after two.

Smearing the clergy is nothing new, especially when it comes to those in the creative arts, but Alex Gibney took it to new heights in his documentary, “Mea Maxima Culpa.” It debuted on HBO, and it not only portrayed Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) as a miscreant, it labeled him a “criminal” for his role in supposedly failing to discipline molesting priests. Laurie Goodstein, a reporter for the New York Times, showed her bias by signing on as a producer of this flick.

The movie says Cardinal Ratzinger covered up the deeds of Father Lawrence Murphy, a Milwaukee priest who molested deaf boys in the 1950s. But no one contacted the authorities about Murphy until the mid-1970s (following a probe, the case was dropped), and it wasn’t until 1996 that the Vatican was contacted. Instead of dropping an investigation—the statute of limitations had long expired—a trial was ordered. Ratzinger wasn’t even at the trial, and indeed it wasn’t until 2001 that he was asked to police these kinds of cases. When he was in command, he moved quickly and fairly to adjudicate these matters. In short, he was libeled.

Another politicized documentary, “How to Survive a Plague,” attempted to portray AIDS patients as victims of the Catholic Church. Based on a book by David France, the movie refused to hold those who chose to live a life of sexual recklessness accountable for their behavior. Predictably, it showed the Nazi-like behavior of ACT-UP—gay militants disrupting Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, spitting the Eucharist on the floor—in a sympathetic way. Michael Moore, a left-wing activist and producer, promoted ACT-UP’s fascistic tactics as a legitimate response to oppression.

“Philomena” captured the attention of movie critics everywhere, touting it as the courageous story of a poor woman who had her baby stolen from her by nuns in Ireland in the 1950s; the cruel sisters then allegedly sold her son for a profit. In fact, the woman was pregnant out-of-wedlock, had no husband, was abandoned by her family, and was taken in by nuns to care for her and her baby. No one stole her child—Philomena put her son up for adoption when she was 22—and the nuns did not charge the American adoptive parents a dime. Moreover, scurrilous events were made up out of whole cloth, and attributed to nuns who could not possibly have been guilty; they were dead.

Critics of the Catholic Church embraced “Philomena” the way they did “The Magdalene Sisters,” another tale of woe that was based more on fiction than fact. I wrote a booklet, Myths of the Magdalene Laundries, that was largely based on the McAleese Report, a study by the Irish government. In it, I examined the origins of the many myths that have surfaced about the laundries. Virtually all the horror stories that have been told—nuns cruelly torturing and sexually abusing “fallen women”—are lies. The booklet was widely distributed, and was not challenged by anyone.

Many late-night television hosts took unfair shots at the Catholic Church, continuing to feed the lie that most priests are abusers. We know that most of the abuse that took place—its heyday was the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s—was done by homosexuals, not pedophiles. Yet to simply cite this fact (the data are taken from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice reports on this subject) is to run the risk of being labeled a homophobe. Let me say it again: No, most homosexual priests are not molesters, but most of the molesters have been gay. The data are not debatable.

None of this matters to those who hate the Church, and no one in the entertainment industry hates Catholicism more than Bill Maher. The man is literally off-the-charts in his bigotry. Practically every week on his HBO show he made obscene cracks about the pope, bishops and priests.

Toward the end of the year, I enlisted the help of the bishops to press Time Warner, HBO’s parent company, to speak to Maher and get him to stop his anti-Catholic crusade. If anyone doubts there is anti-Catholicism in the U.S. today, let him name just one entertainer who comes even close to Maher in viciously smearing some other segment of society. It can’t be done.

On a more optimistic note, the proverbial “War on Christmas” showed signs of abating. It seems to have peaked in the middle-late part of the first decade of this century, and though it is hardly over, there are signs that Christians are more attentive to fighting these battles in their own communities. At the national level, militant atheist organizations were still trashing Christmas, though some of their tactics made many secularists wince.

We proudly displayed our life-size nativity scene in Central Park, as we do every year. But in 2013, we did something different: we posted an enormous billboard in Times Square that read, “Send Modern-Day Scrooges a Message. Celebrate the Prince of Peace. Merry Christmas. Happy New Year.”

To win the culture war is important to us, but to do it without a sense of humor is not the Catholic League way.

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on the latest media bias against Cardinal George Pell:

Cardinal George Pell is the highest ranking member of the Catholic clergy ever to be charged with sexual abuse. To date, this matter has not been adjudicated in the courts, and indeed no specific charges have been rendered against him. Yet the media in Australia, Europe, and North America have led the public to believe that he is a guilty man. The latest round of biased journalism occurred today.

There are several news stories in Australia and England on the death of Damian Dignan, one of Cardinal Pell’s accusers. All of the stories feed the image of Pell as a guilty man.

Dignan, who died of cancer, alleged that in the 1970s Cardinal Pell inappropriately touched him while throwing him off his shoulders in a swimming pool. It took him until March 2016—nearly 40 years after the alleged offense—to report it, thus raising questions about its veracity. Dignan also had a record of violence and drunk driving.

The following news stories made no reference to the date of the alleged offense, the date it was reported, or the nature of the offense:

The Australian
Guardian (U.K.)
Gulf News (Australia)
Herald Sun (Australia)
Hobart Mercury (Australia)

The following mentioned the pool incident but not when it allegedly occurred:

The Courier (Australia)
Daily Mail (U.K.)
Express Digest (U.K.)
9 News (Australia)

The following news stories mentioned the date of the accusation but said nothing about when it allegedly occurred or the nature of the offense:

The Age (Australia)
BBC (U.K.)

There was not one accurate news story. This is not a mistake—it is a pattern (see the Catholic League website for previous examples).

Worse than not reporting all the facts are those stories which mention the date of the accusation in 2016, but not when the alleged offense occurred, making it seem that it was of recent vintage.

It is striking that a former chief Victorian magistrate and crown prosecutor, Nicholas Papas, told the Guardian that Dignan’s death would negatively impact on the upcoming court case. Really? In other words, in order to convict Cardinal Pell, they needed the testimony of a person who alleges that horsing around with Pell in a pool back in the 1970s amounted to sexual abuse?

No wonder skeptics have turned cynical. Cardinal Pell has been unfairly treated from the beginning, both by the media and the courts, and this chapter only adds to the litany of injustices.

Those who are now belaboring the treatment of public notables in the U.S. who have been assumed guilty—without hard evidence—would do well to examine what has happened to many priests, beginning with Cardinal George Pell.

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on the need for more masculine priests:

The assault on masculinity has been going on inside and outside of the Catholic Church for decades, but it is now at a fever pitch. To cite one recent example, in his February 21 article, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof blamed masculinity for the sexual abuse scandals in the Catholic and Southern Baptist Churches. The Southern Baptist Convention was recently investigated by reporters.

Kristof quotes Serene Jones, president of the Union Theological Society: “They [the two Churches] both have very masculine understandings of God, and have a structure where men are considered the closest representatives of God.”

This remarkable comment deserves a serious rejoinder. But first a word on why the Southern Baptists were targeted and why Kristof interviewed Jones.

Why did the Houston Chronicle and the San Antonio Express-News investigate the Southern Baptist Convention? There are several other Baptist denominations, so why the Southern Baptists? Alternatively, why didn’t they choose to probe the Episcopalians, Lutherans, Methodists, or Presbyterians?

Let me take a wild guess. It’s for the same reason the media, until now, have focused exclusively on the Catholic Church: both Churches are known for their orthodox Christian teachings on sexuality. If they can be discredited, their moral voice will be compromised. One would have to be ideologically blind not to see what’s going on.

Why did Kristof tee it up for the president of the Union Theological Seminary? Because he knew she would feed his narrative. This New York-based institution has long been home to “progressive” thinkers, including dissident Catholic theologians (it has even employed those who have been banned from teaching at Catholic colleges due to their wholesale rejection of Catholicism).

More substantively, Kristof’s thesis—masculinity is related to sexual abuse—is so spurious that even he admits to its flaw.

For starters, he summarizes his argument by citing the Catholic Church’s male clergy and the “submissive” role occupied by females, but then a light goes off in his head. If this is the case, he wonders, then why haven’t most of the victims in the Catholic Church been women and girls?

Here is how he puts it. “It’s complicated, of course, for many of the Catholic victims were boys….” Actually, there is nothing complicated about it—he is simply wrong. Masculine priests, those who are naturally attracted to females, account for very little of the sexual abuse.

Kristof can’t even get this little bit right. The vast majority, 81 percent, of the victims were male. That’s not “many”—it’s most. And they were not boys: 78 percent were postpubescent; adolescents are properly regarded as young men. But to admit this is to admit that homosexual priests are responsible for the lion’s share of the abuse. And no one at the New York Times is going to admit to this verity.

The Catholic Church needs more masculine priests, not fewer. To put it differently, though matters are better today, for many years the Church had too many priests who were either effeminate or sexually immature. We’ve seen where that got us.

The New York Times recently ran two “news” stories besmirching the Catholic Church in Ireland: neither broke any new ground and both misreported the facts.

There was a story by Ed O’Loughlin on discussions in Ireland on what to do about the Magdalene Laundry on Gloucester Street, the last of its genre; these were homes and workplaces for homeless and dispossessed women. “Poor nutrition and hygiene, cold and damp lodging and little or no medical supervision were the norm.”

That is not true. Proof? All one has to do is read the McAleese Report, issued in 2013. It is the most comprehensive collection of data ever obtained on the Magdalene Laundries, complete with statistical analysis. It totally demolishes the myths about the horrid conditions that the nuns subjected the women to, including stories of torture.

Did O’Loughlin even bother to read this government report? He certainly could not have written such dribble if he had read the comments made by Dr. Michael Coughlan, Dr. John Ryan, Dr. Donal Kelly, Dr. Harry Comber, and Dr. Michael Coleman. They unanimously dispute the horror tales.

What unites the O’Loughlin article with the story by Dan Barry is their misreporting of what really happened in the Mother and Baby Home in Tuam, near Galway.

“A few years ago,” Barry writes, “an amateur historian shook Ireland to its core with a ghastly allegation: Hundreds of bodies of young children appeared to have been buried in an abandoned septic tank by Catholic nuns who for decades had managed a home for unwed mothers and their offspring in the County Galway town of Tuam.” (My italics.)

The “amateur historian” is Catherine Corless. Barry says that “she wrote an article in the local journal in 2012 that strongly suggested that the remains of hundreds of children, all born to unwed mothers and all baptized in the Catholic faith, had not been buried in consecrated ground, but in parts of a disused septic system dating to when the home was a 19th-century workhouse.” (My emphasis.) He further notes that the “suspicions were confirmed in March by forensic investigators,” commissioned by the government.

Similarly, O’Loughlin refers to Corless as a “dogged local historian” who made headline news when “she published evidence” that nearly 800 children had died in the Tuam home, and that the remains of “some” were found in the septic tank. (My emphasis again.)

As we have noted several times before, the “mass grave” story, as it is called, is a hoax, a cruel myth promoted by those whose agenda it is to smear the Catholic Church.

Barry notes the bodies “appeared to have been buried” in a septic tank. Appeared? Either they were or they weren’t. Alternatively, he says that in her 2012 article, Corless “strongly suggested” this was true. O’Loughlin ups the ante even further claiming that Corless found “evidence” to support her claims.

In her piece titled “The Home,” which was published in the Journal of the Old Tuam Society, Corless made no mention of any “mass grave.” If anything, she offered evidence that contradicts what she later claimed.

Here is what Corless said: “A few local boys [in 1975] came upon a sort of crypt in the ground, and on peering in they saw several small skulls.” She mentioned there was a “little graveyard.” That is not the makings of a mass grave.

The primary source for her “mass grave” thesis is Barry Sweeney. When he was 10, he and a friend stumbled on a hole with skeletons in it. In 2014, he was asked by the Irish Times to comment on Corless’ claim that there are “800 skeletons down that hole.” He said, “Nothing like that.” How many? “About 20,” he said. He later told the New York Times there were “maybe 15 to 20 small skeletons.”

Corless herself admitted in 2014 that she learned from local residents that the Tuam graveyard outside the Home was dotted with “tiny markers there.” There were “bits of stones left to indicate graves.” Those “tiny markers” suggest this was a cillin graveyard, or a graveyard for children. A “mass grave” is not dotted with “tiny markers” or “bits of stones.”

In a 2014 news story by Douglas Dalby of the New York Times, he says of Corless’ account that she “surmised that the children’s bodies were interred in a septic tank behind the home.” (My italic.) His verb is accurate. To surmise is to guess—it is proof of nothing.

It also doesn’t help the cause of Barry and O’Loughlin—and it is a cause that they have embarked upon—for Barry to write that Corless’ “suspicions were confirmed in March [2017] by forensic investigators.” Wrong. March is when Katherine Zappone, Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, released her Interim Report on this subject. Nowhere in the report does she use the term “mass grave,” or imply anything like it.

Finally, there is the matter of Catherine Corless. She is neither an “amateur historian” nor a “local historian.” She is not a historian—local, regional, or national. She doesn’t even have an undergraduate degree. She is a typist.

What the New York Times has published is pure propaganda, designed to feed the worst impression about the Catholic Church in Ireland.

William A. Donohue

Mohammad Anwar, 66, was recently driving his Uber Eats car in Washington, D.C. when two young black girls, 13 and 15, took out a stun gun and tased him. The carjackers took command and drove away, leaving the immigrant from Pakistan hanging on, wedged between the door and the driver’s seat. After he was flung from the car, the automobile rolled over and crashed into two other cars. CNN called it an “accident.” The cops called it murder. They copped a plea.

This story is bad enough without adding anything to it, but my reason for mentioning it has to do with something less important, though nonetheless disturbing. After the car crashed, one of the girls was upset, but not about what she and her friend just did. She was upset because she thought she lost her phone. There are pictures of her literally walking nonchalantly past the victim’s body looking for her phone.

We are a nation obsessed with our phones. This is especially true of young people. When I was a kid, phones served one purpose: they were vehicles of conversation. Now they are used for entertainment as well. This is a desire that can never be satisfied.

It’s a mania. What else can we call it?

There are news stories of people walking into trains because they are staring at their phone. They have fallen off of cliffs because of this plague. Many more have caused car accidents.

When exiting an elevator, it often happens that some phone maniac walks directly into me. This also happens when I walk across the street in New York City. I’m not a small guy—I’m 6’2″ with broad shoulders. Yet people keep walking into me. Most of the time they’re young women looking down at their phone. Many are also wearing earphones, compounding their distraction. They just have to be entertained.

I even saved some fool’s life a few years ago. He was walking across a busy intersection, looking down at his phone, when a car came right at him. Lucky for him, I have a loud voice and he heard me scream. He stopped on a dime. Think he thanked me? Not a chance. He just kept on walking (with phone in hand, of course).

When I go to Washington, D.C., I take the train. Our office is across the street from Penn Station so it makes sense to take Amtrak instead of flying out of La Guardia. I always get there early so I can get a seat in the “Quiet Car”; no phones or loud talking are allowed. Otherwise I would go mad.

The same is true of the Long Island Rail Road. I take it to and from work every day. However, there is only one “Quiet Car,” and unlike Amtrak, it is always the last car, making it a less attractive alternative. At least once a week, I have to get up and move to another car because of someone speaking loudly. On more than one occasion I have resorted to yelling at them. Others on the train are appreciative.

I like pubs and restaurants. Pubs are short for “public houses,” or places where people congregate to enjoy alcoholic beverages. Ideally, they are places where people go to laugh and partake in conversation. In short, they are forums where sociability excels. Back in the day, that is.

Now it is commonplace to see young men and women sit at the bar, or at a table, and never speak. They are on their phone. It never ceases to amaze me. They make a point of meeting their friends at a specific pub at a specific time, and as soon as they get there they start talking to someone on their phone who isn’t there. And when they meet with that person, he or she gets the same treatment. The game is ongoing.

Seeing family members sitting at a table in a restaurant and not speaking to each other is also commonplace. Father, mother and children are all on their phone, oblivious to one another. What was the point of going out for dinner? Just to eat? The only time they speak is when they need the salt and pepper.

As a sociologist, I find this to be troubling. We are so self-absorbed that we have lost what it means to be a social animal. Social animals interact, they engage, they dialogue—they don’t ignore their family and friends.

As noted, the self-absorption often takes the form of being entertained. Phones feed this desire—it functions as a need for many—making us more and more dependent on technology to fill our emptiness. In extreme cases, this qualifies as an addiction, leaving the individual socially retarded.

Social media and video games only make our insularity worse. The anonymity they afford is a national problem, one that can only be cured by insisting on something novel: We need to start talking to each other. And we need to do it live and without dependence on contraptions of any kind.