We have asked the Department of Justice to launch an investigation of Netflix. At issue is the possible violation of federal law governing the production of child pornography. The French movie Cuties is the object of our concern.

The film is soft-core child porn masquerading as a coming-of-age story. According to Bernadette Brady-Egan, the Catholic League’s vp who reviewed the movie, there is “no redeemable reason to watch it.” She added that “at no point could I laugh at this film. I wanted to cry a number of times for these girls.”

Netflix bills Cuties as a sex-comedy movie, but in reality it is more tragic than anything else. The content is outrageously graphic. According to the Internet Movie Database (IMDb), which prepared a guide for parents, Cuties is intended for mature audiences. That is why it branded the “sex and nudity” elements “severe.”

Cuties seeks to normalize the eroticization of girls. It obviously appeals to some very disturbed men. Moreover, it sends a message to teenage males that it is okay to prey on subteens.

Those “open-minded” reviewers who like Cuties are either plain stupid or malicious. They complain about the sexual harassment of women and the like. They claim to be horrified by pedophilia. Yet they feed the appetites of these very sick men.

Sen. Ted Cruz was right to call for a probe of Netflix by the Department of Justice. We are only too happy to support him.

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on a new congressional association:

A congressional club for atheists? Yes, one was founded this week, but it did not get off to a roaring start: Of the 535 members of Congress, we can count on one hand how many members there are: four. There are probably more left-handed vegans on Capitol Hill than that.

So who are the members of the Congressional Freethought Caucus? Not surprisingly, they are all Democrats (this is the Party that threw God out of the 2012 Platform): Jared Huffman and Jerry McNerney of California, Jamie Raskin of Maryland, and Dan Kildee of Michigan. Huffman and Raskin are humanists who don’t believe in God. McNerney and Kildee tell their constituents that they are Catholic; they need to update their resume.

Given that there are only four members of the Atheist Club, it is appropriate that they have four goals:

• Promoting public policy based on reason, science and moral values
• Protecting the secular character of U.S. government and the separation of church and state
• Opposing discrimination against atheists, agnostics, humanists, seekers, religious and nonreligious persons
• And providing a forum for members of Congress to discuss their “moral frameworks, ethical values, and personal religious journeys”

These claims are bogus.

Science tells us that life begins at conception. All the properties that make us human are present at fertilization—not months, or even days, later. It is striking to note that all four members of the Atheist Club ascribe to an unscientific interpretation of the beginning of life.

For example, they have a 100% record from both Planned Parenthood and NARAL. They also have a 0% rating from the National Right to Life. They not only like abortion rights, they have voted against a congressional resolution to ban abortion after 20 weeks. Their beliefs, then, do not accord with reason or science: they are more akin to superstition.

They say they want to protect the secular character of the federal government and separation of church and state. This claim is also bogus.

The Declaration of Independence makes four references to God, holding that our inalienable rights come from our Creator, not politicians. The First Amendment protects religious liberty—something they fail to mention—and its reference to prohibiting “an establishment of religion” does not support their position: it was crafted precisely to guarantee religious liberty, not separation of church and state (which is nowhere mentioned in the Constitution).

Their third claim, opposing discrimination on the basis of beliefs, is likewise bogus: none of the four has a record of opposing discrimination against practicing Christians. More important, it is not atheists who are stigmatized in our society today, it is the faithful. From college campuses to media pundits and comedians, atheists are almost never the target of insults. No, the bigots save their heat for Christians.

As for having a place to talk about morality, ethics, and religious journeys, that’s what bars are for.

Much of the media hype about the Atheist Club has to do with the increase in the so-called “nones,” those persons who say they have no religious affiliation. The discussion typically assumes that this segment of the population is monolithic. This is another bogus claim.

In 2012, Gallup chief Frank Newport wrote that 80% of Americans were Christian, and that 95% of “all Americans who have a religion are Christian.” (His italics.) That number has decreased slightly since then, but not by much. He also found that more than 90% believe in God.

To be sure, the “nones,” or the “unaffiliated,” are growing: a 2015 survey by the Pew Research Center put the number at 16.1%. But only 1.6% of all Americans identify as atheist; 2.4% are agnostic; and 12.1% report “nothing in particular.”

A 2014 Pew survey found that one in three of the unaffiliated (34%) say that religion is either “very important,” or “somewhat important,” to them. Astonishingly, 61% say they believe in God; only 33% do not. Belief in heaven is held by 37% of the “nones,” but it drops to 27% when asked about belief in hell. One in five (21%) believe that the Bible is the word of God.

The data do not feed the narrative that the “nones” are mostly atheists, or that they have given up on God. Which means the Gang of Four who comprise the Atheist Club are less representative of America than either they, or the media, believe.

Recruiting new members will not be easy. How many people want to join a club where everyone sits around discussing why they believe in nothing? Can’t imagine it taking too long.

William A. Donohue

Where does all the hatred come from? Beginning in the spring, we have seen violent thugs take to the streets from Lancaster to Los Angeles. They have killed cops, murdered innocent bystanders, burned buildings and looted stores. Some of the violence has been coordinated; some of it has not been.

There are several contributing factors that account for the carnage, but there is only one reason why it continues, month after month: It continues because there is little or no pushback. Our elites in government, particularly governors and mayors, have allowed the mayhem to continue, and in some cases have actually promoted it.

I live on Long Island and work in New York City. Never has New York crashed so quickly, and so catastrophically, as it has in 2020. The homeless and the criminals are everywhere, relieving themselves in public and assaulting innocent persons. When I get to work at 7:15 a.m., a man who works for the building where our offices are is hosing down the sidewalk. That’s to keep the crazies from sleeping there. Or worse.

The criminals know it. There are also more criminals on the street—the mayor released as many as he could from prison. Moreover, bail reform (there is no bail for most crimes) has meant “catch and release,” the result being that the thugs are back on the street before the cops have completed the paper work.

It took Rudy Giuliani to turn New York around in the 1990s after the disastrous years of Mayor David Dinkins. Now there is no Giuliani on deck. Mayor Bill de Blasio is term-limited and cannot succeed himself; his time is up at the end of 2021. Waiting to take his place are more losers like him, at least at this juncture.

On the west coast, Portland looks like it was destroyed by the Taliban, but that honor goes to Antifa and Black Lives Matter, our own home-grown terrorists. In Los Angeles, after two young police officers were shot, simply because they were cops (they were sitting in their patrol car), rioters blocked ambulances from the hospital screaming, “We Hope They Die.”

So where does all the hatred come from? It comes from many places, but none is more prominent than education, especially higher education.

The lead story in this issue of Catalyst is about a hate-filled anti-Catholic professor who teaches at Texas A&M University. The middle part of this issue, pp. 8-9, is a story about a hate-filled anti-American curriculum, sponsored by the New York Times; it is working its way into our schools.

It is a lot easier to teach hatred than it is to teach love. Love is caught—it is not taught—meaning it is a residual, a byproduct of human interactions that touch us in a special way. To be sure, we can learn to love, but the learning is a function of experience, not tutoring. Hatred is different. Unlike love, it can be learned in the classroom.

The Texas A&M professor teaches his students to hate Catholics. But he does not stop there: he teaches them to hate Catholicism. His goal is to punish Catholics and proscribe Catholicism.

The “1619 Project,” initiated by the New York Times, does not aim to challenge students to think about racial injustice. No, it aims to indoctrinate them into thinking the worst about their country. To do this it distorts history, skewing the facts to feed its hate-filled propaganda.

Those who have taken to the streets, many of them members of the white pampered class, are seething with rage. They have been taught to hate America. They excel. It is a pity they know nothing of the true story of American greatness.

Those who won the American Revolution could have grabbed more power for themselves and established a comfortable dictatorship. That’s what those who have emerged victorious have always done in history. Instead, the Founders crafted a constitution that limited their own powers. But this verity is no longer taught to students.

Why go after Catholics? Those who hate America have no other choice. If the goal is to crush the Republic, then those responsible for our Judeo-Christian heritage must be singled out. That means Jews and Christians. But Jews are too few, and Catholics are an easy target.

It all begins in the academy, in the colleges and universities. How many professors hate America? I would estimate that the Left commands around 20 percent of the faculty; 10 percent are moderates or conservatives; 70 percent are liberals. So why does the Left prevail? Because the Left is ruthless and liberals are intimidated by them. Also, the ranks of the administrators are at least as left-wing as the faculty.

There you have it. Mind-control savants in education are poisoning young minds, and spineless mayors and governors are failing to stop them from rioting. The corporate world—from Nike to the NFL and from Big Tech to Wall Street—has also played a shameful role. Ditto for the media.

Can conditions turn around? Certainly. But for that to happen, our elites need to exercise clear thinking, unaffected by political correctness. And fortitude. They can’t get enough of it.

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’s 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.

Last night’s edition of “Chelsea Lately” on E! was particularly vicious.

The pretext to the vulgar comments made by Chelsea Handler, and guests Dan Levy and Josh Wolf, was the news that Pope Francis was once a bouncer, and rumors that he sneaks out at night to feed the poor.

Handler: “It’s a very popey thing to do, to help the homeless; I mean that’s kinda what he should be sneaking out and doing. It’s not like he can go to a glory hole [a hole in the stall in the men’s room in public places used by homosexuals for anonymous oral sex], I mean he could. I’m not making fun of Catholics. I’m thinking that he’s so liberal – he’s right around the corner from taking confession through a glory hole. That’s how advanced he is.”

Levy: “Catholics can’t win, because the only thing more embarrassing than being a child molester is being a bouncer at a [the familiar homosexual voice inflection is used] club.”

Wolf: “I was a doorman for a while which means—and all doormen are the same—which means at some point in time before he was pope this dude got a BJ [oral sex] in a bathroom from a girl wearing a tiara.”

Bill Donohue comments as follows:

It’s interesting that Handler felt compelled to say that her obscene remarks about the pope were not done to make “fun of Catholics.” Does she think Pope Francis is Jewish? Levy is also wrong to suggest that priestly sexual misconduct was done by pedophiles—almost all the guilty were homosexuals. But if the name of the game is to trash the pope, who cares about facts?

Contact PR man John Rizzotti at E!: John.Rizzotti@nbcuni.com

In the wake of the Pennsylvania grand jury’s exclusive focus on sexual abuse by Catholic clergy, people are coming out of the woodwork with outlandish tales of long-ago horrific abuses at Catholic institutions, and Internet sites such as BuzzFeed are enthusiastically blaring every wild-eyed accusation.

The Catholic Church has never had a monopoly on the mistreatment of some young people, yet that is what is being promoted today. Why? To feed an anti-Catholic moral panic.

“A moral panic,” as sociologist Ashley Crossman explains, “is a widespread fear, most often an irrational one, that someone or something is a threat to the values, safety, and interests of a community or society at large. Typically, a moral panic is perpetuated by news media, fueled by politicians, and often results in the passage of new laws or policies that target the source of the panic.”

Can there be a better explanation for what is going on right now with regard to the Catholic Church?

The media, by focusing exclusively on abuse of minors in Catholic institutions—and stubbornly refusing to credit the Church for reforms that have made Catholic settings today among the safest places for children—perpetuate an irrational fear that the Catholic Church poses a unique threat to the safety of children.

Politicians fuel this irrational fear with investigations and grand jury probes that exclusively target the Church—ignoring widespread abuse in other faith communities, in youth sports and recreational programs, and especially in the public schools.

Then media and politicians team up to try to pass new laws—primarily to suspend the statute of limitations— that, again, exclusively target the Catholic Church, giving the public schools a pass.

And then of course the anti-Catholic bigots gleefully pile on, like the Freedom From Religion Foundation calling for Catholics to leave the Church. Of course this has nothing to do with their professed purpose of promoting separation of church and state. But it has everything to do with their real purpose: promoting hostility to religion, especially Catholicism.

This is a textbook case of moral panic—one that even too many Catholics are allowing themselves to get caught up in.

Almost three in four Americans, 73%, think the Catholic Church has a serious problem with sexual predators among its clergy; most Catholics feel the same way. That is the central finding of a new Rasmussen survey. Also, only 15% think the media are overhyping the problem, and 12% are not sure. The perception is as predictable as it is erroneous.

Why wouldn’t the public think the Church has a problem with predator priests? That’s exactly the perception given by many news outlets today.

Regrettably, most Americans get their news either from brief social media accounts or radio and TV sound bites: what they get are abbreviated stories with sensationalistic headlines. The same is true of newspapers, most of which lack the resources to do in-depth reporting. Add to this clear instances of media bias against the Church, and the picture is complete—molesting priests are on the prowl in 2018.

This false perception grew out of the twin summer scandals of 2018: (a) revelations about Theodore McCarrick’s predatory behavior (he was forced to resign as a cardinal), and (b) the Pennsylvania grand jury report on alleged sexual abuse by priests.

Though many news accounts made a passing reference to the dated nature of these cases—most of McCarrick’s offenses took place in the 1980s and most of the Pennsylvania allegations occurred decades ago—the impression that Americans were left with is that nothing much has changed since the abuse scandal became a big story in 2002.

In fact, much has changed. The Dallas norms of 2002 established by the bishops have worked: in the past two years for which we have data, .005% of the clergy have had a credible accusation made against them. Also, thanks to Pope Benedict XVI’s 2005 edict on screening out men with “deep-seated homosexual tendencies” from studying for the priesthood, huge strides have been made in busting the network of gay cells in the seminaries. This matters because 8 in 10 of the molesting priests have been homosexuals.

What the public is not told is that Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro has admitted that only two of the 301 accused men mentioned in the grand jury report (not all of whom were priests) could be prosecuted under the statute of limitations today. Two. That’s because almost all of the alleged cases occurred in the last century. Yet the public thinks the problem is on-going.

It’s not just the media that are responsible for floating a false narrative of the Catholic Church, it’s their left-wing friends in Hollywood and the academy. Their goal is to intimidate the clergy from speaking out about moral issues, thus allowing their libertine views on sexuality to triumph.

Joining the agenda-driven enemies of the Church are an astonishing number of conservatives. Angered by the twin scandals, many Catholic conservatives are sounding the alarms, acting as if nothing has changed. There is an odor of self-righteous moralizing present in their quarters, and a liberal dose of lay clericalism to boot: They are going to rescue the Church from degradation.

To be sure, there are some things that must be done. We need to know who knew what and when about McCarrick, and we need assurances that the seminaries are free of the homosexual network today. What we don’t need are endless panels and grand jury investigations about what happened decades ago, all of which feed the false public perception that no progress has been made.

Catholic League president Bill Donohue holds a Ph.D. in sociology from New York University, and has taught and written on the subject of criminology for many years. He offers the following analysis of the Las Vegas killer:

Why did Stephen Paddock murder 58 people, wounding over 800? His rampage was not politically motivated, and he has no history of mental illness. He was a multimillionaire and quite intelligent. Indeed, he worked for Lockheed Martin, the defense contractor, and was an accountant and property manager. But he was socially ill.

To be specific, he was a loner, unable to set anchor in any of his relationships, either with family or friends. That played a huge role in his killing spree, which ended when he killed himself.

Before considering his upbringing and lifestyle, the role that nature may have played cannot be dismissed.

Paddock’s father was a bank robber who was on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list. More important, he was diagnosed as “psychopathic” and “suicidal.”

“It has been established for some time that genes play a significant role in the makeup of those individuals eventually diagnosed with such conditions as Antisocial Personality Disorder,” writes Dr. George Simon, an expert in this area.

There is no doubt that Paddock was acutely antisocial, and there is much evidence linking that trait to pathological behaviors.

Dr. Samuel E. Samenow is a clinical psychologist and author of Inside the Criminal Mind. He co-authored, with Dr. Samuel Yochelson, the highly influential book, The Criminal Personality. His understanding of mass shooters as loners has much to recommend.

Who are these people? “They are secretive individuals who do not want others to know them. They may be highly intelligent, achieve high grades in school, and even obtain responsible positions.” But their inability to establish bonds is undeniable, and that is critically important to understanding what makes them tick.

Significantly, the loner turned murderer possesses a personality that drives people away from him. “These are not likable individuals,” Samenow says. “No one seems to have known them well. They marginalize themselves, rejecting the world well before the world rejects them.”

Now consider what we know about Paddock. His profile matches up eerily well with Samenow’s observation.

Paddock had no relationship with his gangster father, and was estranged from his brothers. Moreover, he had few, if any, friends. Twice divorced, he had no children. Moreover, he was not in a position to make friends with co-workers: the last time he had a full-time job was 30 years ago.

Paddock never laid anchor anywhere. Growing up, his family moved from Iowa to Tucson to Southern California. His next door Florida neighbor, Donald Judy, said, “Paddock was constantly on the move, carrying a suitcase and driving a rental car,” noting that he “looked like he’d be ready to move at a moment’s notice.”

He certainly got around. He once owned 27 residences in four states, and bragged how he was a “world traveler” and a “professional gambler.” There is no evidence that his world traveling, which was done on cruise ships, ever involved someone else.

Paddock’s recreational pursuits were always solo enterprises. He owned single-engine planes and was a licensed fisherman—a popular solitary sport—in Alaska. His gambling was also a solitary experience. For instance, Paddock did not play the crap table, where gamblers interact. No, he only played video games by himself.

His brother Eric is distraught at his inability to understand Stephen. No matter, his observations about him shed much light on who he was.

Eric said Stephen got bored with flying planes, so he gave it up. It appears that he was looking for some excitement in his lonely life, which explains his gambling preference. “It has to be the right machine with double points,” Eric says, “and there has to be a contest going on. He won a car one time.”

Similarly, Eric notes that Stephen “was a wealthy guy, playing video poker, who went cruising all the time and lived in a hotel room.” He added that he “was at the hotel for four months one time. It was like a second home.” It would be more accurate to say that Stephen never had a home.

Eric recalls that Stephen excelled at sports but never played or joined organized clubs. “He wasn’t a team kind of guy.”

Stephen was not close to any of his brothers, and in the case of Patrick, the two had not seen each other for 20 years. This explains why Patrick did not initially recognize Stephen when his face was shown on TV.

Stephen’s Florida neighbor, Donald Judy, said that the inside of Paddock’s house “looked like a college freshman lived there.” There was no art on the walls, etc, just a bed, two recliners, and one dining chair.

Diane McKay lived next door to Paddock in Reno. “He was weird. Kept to himself. It was like living next door to nothing.” Indeed, “He was just nothing, quiet.”

The local sheriff from Mesquite, Nevada, where Paddock also lived, labeled him “reclusive.” One of Paddock’s neighbors agreed, noting that he was “a real loner.”

“Real loners” are not only unable to commit themselves to others, they are unable to commit themselves to God. So it came as no surprise that Paddock had no strong religious beliefs. It would have been startling to find out otherwise.

It’s all about the “Three Bs”: beliefs, bonds, and boundaries. As I found out when I compared cloistered nuns to Hollywood celebrities on measures of physical and mental health, as well as happiness (see The Catholic Advantage: How Health, Happiness and Heaven Await the Faithful), it is not the nuns who are unhealthy, or who suffer from loneliness, depression, and suicide.

“People who need people are the luckiest people in the world.” This is one of Barbra Streisand’s most famous refrains. She didn’t quite nail it. There is nothing lucky about needing people—it’s a universal appetite. People who have people are the luckiest people in the world. Paddock was not so lucky.

Most loners are not mass murderers, but most murderers are loners. In the case of Paddock, it appears that his antisocial personality, coupled with an acute case of ennui, or sheer boredom with life, found relief by lighting up the sky. Sometimes the mad search for causation can lead us astray; we should not overlook more mundane reasons why the socially ill decide to act out in a violent way.

Sadly, our society seriously devalues religion, celebrates self-absorption, and disrespects boundaries. This is not a recipe for well-being; rather, it is a prescription for mass producing Paddock-like people. We are literally planting the social soil upon which sick men like him feed.