JOB OPENING: Accounting Assistant

Job description:
The Accounting Assistant is directly accountable to the Comptroller. We are located in mid-town Manhattan.

Duties and Responsibilities:

Prepare and make bank deposits
Process credit card donations
Provide reports of deposits using Excel
Work with auditors as requested
Assist with other duties assigned by the Comptroller
Scan and stamp checks
Scan and make copies of documents

Skills

Experience with Microsoft Word and Excel
Positive attitude toward staff and donors
Exceptional organization, time management and prioritization skills
Must keep a high level of confidentiality and professionalism
May be required to lift up to twenty pounds

Email resumes to pr@catholicleague.org
No phone calls please.

Bill Donohue comments on a scheduled exhibition at the Milwaukee Art Museum:

In November, the Milwaukee Art Museum plans to deliberately insult Catholics by featuring a portrait of Pope Benedict XVI made up of condoms. It not only defends this hate speech, it expects Catholics to pay for it: the museum receives public funding.

I have written a letter to the two men whose subordinates are justifying this public demonstration of bigotry. To read it click here.

Contact the museum’s PR department: communications@mam.org

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on an important event at the United Nations today:

Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day at the U.N., an annual event that mobilizes public awareness of the Nazi-led genocide of the Jewish people. This year the Permanent Observer Mission of the U.N., along with the Pave the Way Foundation, are sponsoring an event titled, “Remembering the Holocaust: The Documented Efforts of the Catholic Church to Save Lives.”

Gary Krupp leads Pave the Way Foundation. He is the only Jewish man to be knighted; the honor was bestowed by Pope John Paul II. Pope Benedict XVI raised him in rank to the Order of St. Gregory. His work detailing the extraordinary lengths that Pope Pius XII went to in rescuing Jews during the Holocaust is outstanding. He will be speaking today at the event.

Also speaking at the U.N. event will be Professor Ronald J. Rychlak, a noted expert on the Holocaust and a member of the Catholic League’s Board of Advisors. He will speak on “Soviet Disinformation and the Campaign against Pope Pius XII.”

He will address the role the KGB played in smearing the Catholic Church: The Soviet authorities were integrally behind efforts to blame the Church for the Holocaust. Indeed, the KGB was responsible for producing “The Deputy,” the German play that did more to poison the public mind against the Church than any other event. Rychlak has also written voluminously on how Pope Pius XII worked to help Jews by opposing Hitler.

Among the other scholars who will be speaking today is Mark Riebling, author of Church of Spies: The Pope’s Secret War Against Hitler. He wrote about the role of Pope Pius XII in planning an assassination of Hitler.

You can watch this event live at http://webtv.un.org. It runs from 3 to 6 p.m.

Bill Donohue comments on Minnesota Public Radio’s (MPR) latest attempt to discredit St. Paul and Minneapolis Archbishop John Nienstedt:

Those waging war on Archbishop Nienstedt are losing ground, and they know it. In a contrived attempt to keep the flame alive, MPR is now charging that “New Documents Show Falsehoods in Nienstedt Testimony.” But as with previous efforts, this one comes up lame.

The story involves Rev. Kenneth LaVan. Here is the relevant timeline.

• Some thirty years ago, two teenage girls made accusations against LaVan. About the same time, he was also charged with “boundary violations” with adult females.
• In 1998 he retired.
• In 2008 Archbishop Nienstedt is installed.
• In 2013, after accusations that not enough was being done about accused priests, an outside firm is hired to investigate this issue. In December, Nienstedt is apprised of LaVan’s history and he formally and permanently removes him from ministry.

MPR is saying that Nienstedt should have known about this priest when he allegedly approved a limited assignment for him earlier last year. But inconveniently for MPR, the documents it references never mention child sexual abuse. What Nienstedt approved was a monitoring plan based on the priest’s inappropriate conduct with adult women. Moreover, when MPR finds it necessary to cite the fact that Nienstedt “spent time socially with LaVan,” and that he even wrote a letter to him thanking him for a gift, it shows how utterly desperate it is.

In other words, MPR has no smoking gun. But it does have a bad case of blowing gas.

Contact Morris Goodwin, Senior MPR VP: mgoodwin@americanpublicmedia.org

Bill Donohue comments on a full-page ad in today’s New York Times placed by the Freedom From Religion Foundation:

Most atheists are not bigots, but many atheists who are activists most definitely are. Among them are the anti-Catholics who work at the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF). In today’s New York Times FFRF takes out its vengeance on Catholics by trotting out the old canard that Catholics are not independent thinkers (unless they disagree with the teachings of the Church). The occasion for the outburst is the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in the Hobby Lobby case affirming religious liberty. Here is a sample of its invective:

“DOGMA SHOULD NOT TRUMP OUR CIVIL LIBERTIES. ALL-MALE ALL-ROMAN CATHOLIC MAJORITY ON SUPREME COURT PUTS RELIGIOUS WRONGS OVER WOMEN’S RIGHTS.”

All the Jewish judges on the high court voted in the minority, but only an anti-Semite would conclude that their Jewishness determined their vote. Similarly, only an anti-Catholic would conclude that those who voted in the majority did so because of their Catholicity.

From the middle of the nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth century, Catholics had to deal with the Ku Klux Klan. Now they must deal with more sophisticated bigots. What unites the Klan and FFRF is their maliciousness. Unfortunately, as we have seen this week, anti-Catholic bigotry has erupted in many quarters, all of them urbane.

All men and women of goodwill should condemn the hate speech of FFRF.

Contact the bigots at FFRF: info@ffrf.org

Bill Donohue comments on news stories claiming that a Connecticut high school has censored the Vatican website:

Nonnewaug High School in Woodbury, Connecticut has allegedly implemented a firewall blocking some websites it deems are “politically oriented.” Among those that are blocked is the Vatican’s website. Also blocked are the websites of the National Right to Life, National Rifle Association, Christianity.com, and many others. Websites that are not blocked, apparently because they are not “politically oriented,” include Islam-guide.com, Planned Parenthood, and lgbtqnation.com.

According to a complaining student, Andrew Lampart, a senior, he was told by Jody Ian Goeler, the Superintendent of Schools, that it was necessary to block certain websites in order to “prevent hate-speech from leeching into the school.” Lampart took his complaint to the Board of Education on Monday, and was told that his concerns merit a probe.

I just emailed Superintendent Goeler the following letter:

“It is alleged that you support censoring students at Nonnewaug High School from accessing the Vatican’s website on the grounds that it promotes ‘hate speech.’ Would you please identify examples of ‘hate speech’ found on the Vatican’s website?”

Perhaps others would like to do the same. This is not the last word on this issue. Trust me.

Contact Goeler: jgoeler@ctreg14.org

Bill Donohue sent the following letter today to Mr. Jeff Vaughn, Principal, Bellingham High School in Bellingham, Washington about one of his teachers, Teri Grimes:

As president of the nation’s largest Catholic civil rights organization, it is my responsibility to fight anti-Catholicism in all of its manifestations. An incident happened recently at your school that is among the most vulgar expressions of anti-Catholicism that I have encountered in some time.

Allegedly, Teri Grimes told a “joke” at an awards ceremony that was laced with profanity. That is bad enough, but what caught my eye was her rank anti-Catholic bigotry. “The plane was going down and the teacher says we have to save the children,” Ms. Grimes said. “The attorney says ‘F*** the children’ and the priest says, ‘OOOOH—Do we have time for that?'”

We live in a day and age when comments such as this, if told about other segments of the population, would merit sanctions; an apology would never do. Catholics expect that the same sanctions that would be levied against a teacher who made bigoted remarks against others be applied. To do otherwise would be to counsel discrimination. And that is more than a moral issue—it is a legal matter.

Contact Principal Vaughn: Jeff.Vaughn@bellinghamschools.org

Bill Donohue released the following remarks today:

Yesterday in Geneva, the Catholic Church’s opposition to abortion was branded “psychological torture” by a member of the U.N. Committee Against Torture. It would be instructive to know why this committee contends that those who are against abortion are guilty of promoting “psychological torture,” but not those who like it.

Emily Letts, 25, does not like abortion—she loves it. That’s why she had one. More than that, she had it videoed; to read her Cosmopolitian story, click here.

Letts admits that not too long ago, she “felt fairly depressed most of the time.” Why? “I disliked my body. I felt competitive toward women.” That changed once she became an abortion counselor—now she was in a groove. Then she got pregnant. She confesses that “I hadn’t been using any kind of birth control, which is crazy, I know. I’m a sex educator, and I love talking about birth control.”

When she found she was pregnant, “I knew immediately I was going to have an abortion. I knew I wasn’t ready to take care of a child.” But she wanted to do more than have an abortion—she wanted you to see it. “I could have taken the pill, but I wanted to do the one that women were most afraid of. I wanted to show it wasn’t scary—and that there is such a thing as a positive abortion story. It’s my story.”

Letts said her abortion was “as birth-like as it could be. It will always be a special memory for me. I still have my sonogram, and if my apartment were to catch fire, it would be the first thing I’d grab.” She adds that “every time I watch the video, I love it.”

Members of the U.N. Committee on Torture should ask Letts for a copy of the unedited video, watch it, and then explain why abortion is not torture.

Ask the U.N. Committee Against Torture to watch the video and then issue a statement: cat@ohchr.org