This is the article that appeared in the June 2024 edition of Catalyst, our monthly journal. The date that prints out reflects the day that it was uploaded to our website. For a more accurate date of when the article was first published, check out the news release, here.

Harrison Butker, the phenomenal kicker for the Kansas City Chiefs, gave a commencement address at Benedictine College in Kansas on May 11 that espoused traditional Catholic values. The practicing Catholic was criticized by the NFL, slammed on social media and was the subject of a change.org petition.

The attack had three targets: Butker, Benedictine College and Catholicism. Make no mistake, the war on Butker was driven by anti-Catholicism.

Butker was condemned for his remarks about women, abortion, President Biden, Gay Pride Month, gender ideology, and the emasculation of men. Those who signed the petition didn’t want to debate him—they wanted him fired. “We call upon the Kansas City Chiefs management to dismiss Harrison Butker immediately for his inappropriate conduct.”

Bill Donohue responded by saying, “Spoken like true fascists. Moreover, they are plain dumb: they don’t know the difference between speech and conduct.”

Most of the vitriol aimed at Butker was about his comments praising moms who elect to work at home taking care of their children. He noted how blessed he is to have a wife who embraces “one of the most important titles of all: homemaker.”

Butker actually spoke for most moms.

In a Gallup poll released in 2019, 50 percent of women with children under age 18 said they would prefer to stay at home; 45 percent disagreed.
Butker spoke the truth about abortion, IVF, surrogacy and euthanasia, referring to them as stemming from “the pervasiveness of disorder.” But to those who like abortion, this was grounds to fire him.

Butker referenced Biden when he took him to task for making the sign of the cross during a pro-abortion rally. He was also right to call attention to the “deadly sins” associated with Pride month. His reference to “dangerous gender ideologies” was understated—we are dealing with a child abuse crisis.

Bigotry was the driving force behind these attacks. It was Butker’s unabashed defense of Catholic moral theology that set his critics off.

The Associated Press let the cat out of the bag. It unleashed a string of red flags about Benedictine College being “part of a constellation of conservative Catholic colleges that tout their adherence to church teachings and practice—part of a larger conservative movement in parts of the U.S. Catholic Church.”

This comes on the heels of an AP story sounding the alarms about the growth of orthodox Catholicism.

We were happy to come to Butker’s defense. We did so with greater effect than any other Catholic organization in the nation. We had a list of email subscribers contact Stephen D. Minnis, president of Benedictine College, to show their support for him and for Butker.

Bill Donohue

The vulgar parody of the Last Supper at the opening ceremony of the 2024 Olympics in Paris was not simply the product of one very sick anti-Christian bigot. There is good reason to believe that senior French officials gave their blessings to this attack on Christianity. That is why we are asking the International Olympic Committee to launch an investigation.

Much of the attention so far has been on the antics of the man who created the offensive skit, Thomas Jolly. According to the New York Times, growing up his parents “nurtured his passions for dolls and classical dance.” They did a good job—he is a homosexual. Whether his parents nurtured his animus against Christianity, or whether it is an expression of his guilt, is unknown, but his Olympic stunt was not the solo exercise the media would have us believe.

Days before the opening ceremony, the Associated Press reported that Jolly was being “extremely tight-lipped about what would eventually transpire at the ceremony.” But everyone knew he was up to something. “‘I’ll be fired if I tell you anything,’ Jolly says with a ‘cheeky laugh.’” Now why in the world would Jolly say that? Was he planning to mock Muslims? Not on his life.

A French politician, Marion Maréchal, condemned what Jolly did, saying that he does not speak for France but was the product of a “left-wing minority.” Not so fast. There is reason to believe France’s leaders were complicit.

President Emmanuel Macron was not kept in the dark. He learned that Jolly was planning a “great story of emancipation and freedom.” More important, it was reported by the New York Times that Macron had “a keen interest in the show” and met with Jolly “regularly.” It is hard to believe they didn’t discuss the show’s content.

Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo also had strong interest in the show; she, too, met with Jolly regularly. According to the Times, she said his production would be “playful, with a message of the city’s ‘openness to the world and the pleasure of diversity.’” Now why in the world would she say that? What kind of “playful” skit would someone like Jolly craft that would celebrate the “pleasure of diversity”?

Tony Estanguet is President of Paris 2024; he is currently being investigated for financial improprieties. He is the one who appointed Jolly to be Artistic Director of the Olympic ceremonies. In his statement in 2022 heralding his choice, he bragged how Jolly’s “extraordinary shows are proof that he knows how to break norms and take them to the next level.” Now why in the world would he say that? Does he think Jolly was going to break Islamic norms?

The apologies that have been offered for this obscene act are totally insincere. Indeed, they are liars.

Paris 2024 spokesperson, Anne Descamps, said, “Clearly there was never an intention to show disrespect to any religious group.” It’s true they never intended to disrespect the Amish. The opening ceremony, she said, “tried to celebrate community tolerance.” Another lie.

Jolly knew exactly what he was doing—his overriding goal was to trash Christianity. Mission accomplished. Now he wants us to believe that “My wish isn’t to be subversive, not to mock or to shock. Most of all, I wanted to send a message of love, a message of inclusion and not at all to divide.” No real man speaks this way. Why not have the guts to tell the truth?

I am writing to International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach about this incident. He needs to investigate the extent to which French officials were complicit in this assault on Christian sensibilities.

Last November, Bach welcomed the adoption by the 78^th Session of the United Nations General Assembly of a resolution about the observance of the Olympic Games. In his address to the General Assembly, he said that sport “can only unite the entire world in peaceful competition if we are not torn apart by political, religious, cultural or other interests and differences. Therefore, we must be politically neutral and stand against any kind of discrimination.”

It is beyond debate that Jolly’s opening stunt mocking the Last Supper was done to tear apart the religious and cultural interests of Christians, thus violating the precepts Bach outlined. Those who are responsible for this travesty need to be exposed and dealt with accordingly.

Contact: media@paris2024.org

This letter was sent today to the president of the International Olympic Committee. We will announce our next step addressing this issue tomorrow. Please email your concerns to: media@paris2024.org

                                                                                         July 29, 2024

Mr. Thomas Bach
President
International Olympic Committee
Maison Olympique
1007 Lausanne
Switzerland

Dear Mr. Bach:

As president of the largest Catholic civil rights organization in the United States, I am imploring you to conduct an investigation into the obscene antics that marked the opening ceremony at the Paris Olympics. There is reason to believe senior members of the French government knew what Thomas Jolly was planning to do and did nothing to stop it. They may even have given their blessings to this stunt.

French president Emmanuel Macron was not kept in the dark. He learned that Jolly was planning a “great story of emancipation and freedom.” More important, it was reported by the New York Times that Macron had “a keen interest in the show” and met with Jolly “regularly.” It is hard to believe they didn’t discuss the show’s content.

Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo also had strong interest in the show; she, too, met with Jolly regularly. According to the Times, she said his production would be “playful, with a message of the city’s ‘openness to the world and the pleasure of diversity.’” It is hardly a big leap to conclude that Jolly disclosed to her his “playful” skit, one that would celebrate the “pleasure of diversity.”

Tony Estanguet, the President of Paris 2024, appointed Jolly to be Artistic Director of the Olympic ceremonies. In his statement in 2022 heralding his choice, he bragged how Jolly’s “extraordinary shows are proof that he knows how to break norms and take them to the next level.”

How revealing. Are we to believe that what Estanguet had in mind was a mockery of Islam?

The Associated Press reported the week before the opening ceremony that Jolly remained “extremely tight-lipped about what would eventually transpire at the ceremony.” He admitted, “I’d be fired if I tell you anything.” Perhaps. Had he disclosed what his show was about, he may have gotten fired because of the worldwide pushback from Christians. He certainly would not have lost favor with the French elite. Not one of the three that I mentioned has condemned Jolly’s bigotry.

You are in a position to get to the bottom of this. Jolly did not pull this off by himself. Those in positions of power need to be questioned about what they knew, when they knew it, and why they didn’t act to stop this vulgar assault on Christian sensibilities.

Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

William A. Donohue, Ph.D.

President

Bill Donohue

One of the nation’s leading hate groups, Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF), has filed a formal complaint with the IRS arguing that the Catholic League has “engaged in unlawful political campaigning.” It cites a recent post where I said, “Kamala Harris is not religion-friendly.” It provides not a single instance whereby we violated any IRS stricture—it simply repeats my criticisms of Harris. That is not only my First Amendment right, it does not run afoul of IRS rules.

For more than 30 years, there have been many attempts made to hound me from public life. Some have gotten to the point where I have had to contact law enforcement, at the federal and local level, and bodyguards. This latest effort—the militant atheists would like to take away the Catholic League’s tax-exempt status—will fail, just like the rest of them.

My foes should have learned by now that no one can shut Bill Donohue up. We will continue to publicly hammer anti-Catholic bigots. We will be deterred by no one. Bet on it.

Contact Annie Laurie Gaylor, FFRF co-president: algaylor@ffrf.org

Bill Donohue

Thomas Jolly, the homosexual activist who insulted Christians with his opening ceremony antics, is ready to roll out the closing ceremony. It is scheduled to begin August 11 at 3:00 p.m. ET.

There will be the traditional athletes’ parade and medal ceremony. It will be held indoors at France’s national stadium, involving hundreds of singers, performers, acrobats, dancers and circus artists. Jolly says it is his “ambition” to “celebrate in suspended time, with conscience, and with the idea that together we can make a difference.”

How he will suspend time remains a mystery. But at least it is being done with a conscience, which is better than the alternative.

Jolly has already made a difference. He has joined the ranks of anti-Christian bigots. Will he give us Round 2 of his obscene portrayal of Christianity, or will the guy who grew up playing with dolls tap the brakes and be a good boy? If he does, it will show that our protest was not in vain.

Our protest was aimed at many parties to the Olympics. We contacted Thomas Bach, President of the International Olympic Committee; the fifteen major sponsors of the Olympics; leading Republicans and Democrats; and the U.S. Olympic Committee. We not only protested what happened in the opening ceremony, we asked that they make sure that the closing ceremony is not a repeat.

The Catholic League was the only Catholic organization to register a formal protest. Moreover, by supplying contact information, we were the only one to give Catholics a voice in registering their objections. And unlike others, who did next to nothing, we didn’t try to hustle our supporters by asking for a donation.

We are happy that so many contacted Bach in July about what Jolly did. You can contact him again about the closing ceremony.

 Contact: media@paris2024.org

Bill Donohue

The Ford Foundation, located in New York City, is funding left-wing groups that are protesting attempts to clean up a non-white neighborhood in Queens that has been overrun by violent thugs, drug dealers, prostitutes and sex traffickers.

Which raises the question: Are those who run the Ford Foundation racists? They certainly appear to be. Without doubt, they have taken the side of those who are determined to punish hard-working minority men and women; they are also endangering children. Why would the members of the ruling class want to do that?

The community being ransacked is Jackson Heights, especially along Roosevelt Avenue, the main road.

A local writer put it this way. “For years, sex trafficking and solicitation, illegal vending, sanitation and other issues on Roosevelt—a road known for its cultural significance and diversity as well as its problems—has been top of mind for locals and selected officials.” Crime is exploding.

Hiram Monserrate, a former New York City Councilman, sums it up nicely. “There are more brothels than there are bodegas in this community. We have an active 24-hour brothel across the street from two elementary schools. Our kids are seeing this.”

An Hispanic woman, whose grandson and her teenaged kids go to school in the neighborhood, recently complained to the media that they have to walk by prostitutes soliciting outside of stores. “You literally have to shield their eyes because the open urination is just impossible. And to explain to my little grandson why there’s women here shaking and, you know, doing all that stuff.”

In response, New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced “Operation Restore Roosevelt.” It is focused on quality-of-life concerns. The NYPD interim commissioner said the police “will be working to reduce retail theft and the sale of stolen goods. Additionally, removing illegal, unlicensed vendors and illegal vehicles in the surrounding area, which is important to all of you, and also eliminating prostitution.”

Over 90 percent of the people who live in Jackson Heights are non-white; it is disproportionately Hispanic. They are happy to note that finally there is an attempt to bring normalcy to their neighborhood. It was their protests that ignited officials to act. But now they are being opposed by counterdemonstrators who object to cleaning up the area!

The two major groups who want to continue trashing Jackson Heights are Gays and Lesbians Living in a Transgender Society (GLITS) and Make the Road New York. Both are funded by the Ford Foundation.

The founder and director of GLITS is Ceyenne Doroshow. “For decades,” he says, “sex workers have been surviving, demanding respect and good healthcare, and still yet we are still being criminalized. We urge investment in our communities, not more criminalization in our communities.”

In other words, the minorities who live there be damned—he wants prostitution to reign supreme, free from law enforcement. It’s all about what these sexually deranged activists want.

Doroshow is also an anti-Catholic bigot. Earlier this year, he arranged for his sick followers to show up at St. Patrick’s Cathedral during a funeral service to honor one of their ilk, Cecilia Gentili. Gentili was a man who falsely claimed to be a woman. He was an illegal alien, a drug addict, a prostitute, a trans activist and an atheist.

At the service, many of Doroshow’s fans dressed as hookers, danced in the aisles, and sang “Ave Cecilia” when “Ave Maria” was sung. They shouted, “St. Cecilia, Mother of All Whores.”

Maxima Rodas is an activist who works for Make the Road Again. She objects to Mayor Adams’ policies aimed at driving out the derelicts and criminals. “This so-called quality of life operation targets sex workers, street vendors and migrant communities who live in this neighborhood. This is a racist and anti-immigrant attack from our communities.”

Mayor Adams has said that “Roosevelt Avenue is one of the most diverse avenues in our city.” Ironically, the Ford Foundation—which is funding this bedlam—brags that “Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) are core to our mission and to who we are as a foundation.” Perversely, their idea of diversity includes destroying the diversity that Adams noted.

The Ford Foundation has long been corrupt. It advertises on its website that Henry Ford II assumed the foundation’s leadership after his father and grandfather passed away. What it doesn’t say is that he quit in 1976 because it had been turned into a radical anti-capitalist, left-wing beast.

Darren Walker is the black homosexual president of the Ford Foundation. He has obviously turned on minorities in favor of greasing LGBTQ racists who want to destroy Jackson Heights. We will be contacting him, as well as all the other officials associated with the organization. The elites really do hate the masses.

Contact: d.walker@fordfoundation.org

Contact her at: mebudde@edow.org

January 22, 2025

Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde
Episcopal Church House
Mount St. Alban
Washington, D.C. 20016

Dear Bishop Budde:

At the January 21 prayer service at Washington National Cathedral that featured President Trump, you mentioned that “people in our country are scared now.” You singled out people who “may not be citizens or have the proper documentation,” as well as LGBTQ persons. These people  “fear for their lives.” You then made a plea to “find compassion.”

Your commitment to compassion is noble, but it is misplaced.

I work in New York City, and I witness daily how many New Yorkers are “scared” and “fear for their lives.” They are afraid of being mugged, beaten, raped and killed, often by people who have crashed our borders, people you refer to as lacking “proper documentation.” They, and in some cases their surviving families, are deserving of compassion. More than that, they are deserving of justice, and that means that illegal alien criminals must be apprehended and deported.

You are right to call attention to violence against LGBTQ persons. They have every right to be “scared” and “fear for their lives.” What you don’t mention is that the people who are most likely to victimize them are people just like them. In other words, it is not heterosexual guys who are beating up on gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender persons—it is people in their own ranks. It is called “intimate partner violence,” and the studies show how prevalent it is among LGBTQ persons.

In 2022, Psycom Pro, a psychiatry resource for clinicians, concluded that “More than half of transgender individuals experience partner violence or gender identity abuse.”

In 2020, seven experts published a study in the American Journal of Public Health on this subject and concluded that “Transgender individuals experience a dramatically higher prevalence of IPV [intimate partner violence] victimization compared with cisgender individuals [those who accept their sex identity], regardless of sex assigned at birth.”

The National Coalition Against Domestic Violence reviewed the literature on this subject and found that “43.8% of lesbian women and 61.1% of bisexual women have experienced rape, physical violence, and/or stalking by an intimate partner at some point in their lifetime, as opposed to 35% of cisgender women.” It also found that transgender individuals experienced the highest rate of intimate partner violence.

The Williams Institute, a think tank at UCLA Law, reviewed a number of studies on this subject. One of them found that “31.1% of transgender people and 20.4% of cisgender people had ever experienced IPV or dating violence.” It also said that three studies concluded that the lifetime intimate partner sexual violence prevalence among transgender people ranged from “25.0% to 47.0%.”

Even in sympathetic pop culture magazines, such as Portland Monthly, it is acknowledged that “statistically speaking, the most common perpetrators of violence against trans women are domestic partners.”

In short, misdirected compassion is not virtuous. You need to make a public statement addressing the fallacies of your remarks.

Sincerely,

William A. Donohue, Ph.D.
President

This is the article that appeared in the January/February 2025 edition of Catalyst, our monthly journal. The date that prints out reflects
the day that it was uploaded to our website. For a more accurate date of when the article was first published, check out the news release, here.

Here is a copy of Bill Donohue’s letter to the cooperative board in Westchester, New York that initially allowed the display of a menorah in the lobby of a building but prohibited the display of a nativity scene. The resolution of this matter is on p. 1.

December 12, 2024

Mr. William J. Archer
Property Manager, 16 N. Chatsworth Ave. Cooperative
Archer Property Management
105 Calvert Street, Ste. 3
Harrison, NY 10528

Dear Mr. Archer:

As president of the nation’s largest Catholic civil rights organization, it is my job to combat discrimination against individual Catholics and defamation against the Catholic Church.

One of our members lives in your Cooperative and he says that his request to display a nativity scene in the lobby of the building has been denied. As long as all religious symbols are prohibited, there is no legal issue. But such is not the case.

The lobby reportedly has a Christmas tree and a menorah. The tree is a secular symbol, so no problem there. But the menorah is clearly a religious symbol—the candles represent a miracle (see Exodus, chapter 25). This is not a matter of opinion: the United States Supreme Court has ruled that it is.

Therefore, to allow a menorah while prohibiting a nativity scene constitutes discrimination. It should also be noted that the Catholic League currently has a life-size nativity scene in Central Park; a huge menorah will soon grace the same area. It’s all constitutional—we get a permit each year from the Parks Department of the City of New York.

Christmas is upon us. This issue needs to be resolved immediately. If I do not hear from you by December 17, I will assume you are satisfied with your decision. I will then take steps to rectify it.

Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

William A. Donohue, Ph.D.
President

cc: Erin Mersino, Esq.
Bartlene Sages

We can be reached by email at: pr@catholicleague.org