Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on an article by the Associated Press on the Catholic Church’s participation in the Payroll Protection Program:

Nancy Pelosi’s husband, who has a net worth of $120 million, co-owns a company that received a Payroll Protection Program (PPP) loan; he and his wife are worth $202 million. The Los Angeles Lakers, which are worth $4.4 billion, received PPP funding as well; they gave back the $4.6 million loan after being publicly embarrassed. Lucrative Hollywood law firms also raked in PPP funds.

None of this is of any interest to the Associated Press (AP). On February 4, it continued its obsession with the Catholic Church by running a lengthy piece on this subject (it ran another barn burner in July on the same subject).

What exactly did AP find that upset it so much? It learned that 112 Catholic dioceses collected $1.5 billion in PPP loans; it estimates that if all the dioceses shared their financial statements the figure would be about double that amount. It contends that given the resources of the Catholic Church in the United States, this money was too generous.

Of course, the case could be made that the money was not generous enough.

Due to restrictions on church attendance occasioned by the coronavirus pandemic, donations to parishes have taken a serious hit. Catholic schools have been especially hit hard—over a hundred have closed—as many parents have found it difficult to pay tuition expenses. Moreover, many of those who work for the dioceses have had to be laid off, and wage cuts had to be made for others. AP makes brief mention of these hardships but still insists that the Church received too much money.

AP claims that the Catholic Church is sitting on $10 billion in total assets. How does it come up with such a figure? It estimates real estate properties owned by the Church, as well as funds held by charitable foundations. It also includes “funding that dioceses had opted to designate for special purposes instead of general expenses; excess cash that parishes and their affiliates deposit with their diocese’s savings and loan; and lines of credit dioceses typically have with outside banks.”

It is striking to note that AP did not do the same computation for other religions. The reason we don’t know ballpark estimates of the total holdings of Protestant churches, synagogues, mosques, temples and other religious institutions is because the AP has no interest in conducting such a probe. It is singularly focused on the Catholic Church.

Did the Church need the PPP funds? Not according to AP. How does it know? It quotes Fr. James Connell, a retired administrator who worked in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee. “Was it want or need?” Connell said. “Need must be present, not simply want.” If that isn’t lame enough, consider who Connell is.

He is a long-time Church dissident who co-founded Catholic Whistleblowers in 2013, a tiny group of malcontents that sought to out priests who abused minors. Perversely, Connell was charged several years earlier with covering up for the worst American molester in the history of the Catholic Church, Fr. Lawrence Murphy. Yet AP considers him to be a trusted source.

AP never bothers to tell its readers that the Catholic Church is the nation’s largest non-government supplier of social services. The Church serves millions of people in need, many of whom are not Catholic. It operates schools, hospitals, foster care agencies, homeless shelters, orphanages and the like, never turning away anyone for lack of funds. An honest article on the Church’s PPP loans would dig deep into this story.

Last July, AP ran its first story on this issue. Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Archbishop of New York, made an interesting observation at that time that is relevant to AP’s latest story. “Nationally,” he wrote, “the Small Business Administration [SBA] approved over 88,000 loans to religious organizations, supporting more than 1 million jobs. Why then focus solely on the Catholic Church, unless the reporters had some animus towards the Church (which we suspect they do)?”

It is not as though AP could not find data on other religions. The Detroit Free Press published a story on July 10, 2020—the same day the initial AP story ran—that was rich with evidence.

“Michigan Churches, Synagogues, Mosques Get Millions in Federal PPP Loans” detailed exactly how much various religious organizations received. Unlike AP’s story, it never tried to tar the Catholic Church. This begs the question: If this local paper had access to data on other religions, why did AP choose not to report it?

Under the Trump administration, houses of worship hit hard with Covid-19 were treated by the SBA the same way secular institutions were. It is this policy of non-discrimination that bothers AP the most. Lest we forget, the SBA’s PPP was included in the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act. It was unanimously passed in the Senate and was approved via a voice vote, without opposition, in the House.

AP is no longer the respected national wire service it once was. No wonder the majority of the American people no longer trust the media.

Contact Sally Stapleton, global religious editor: sstapleton@ap.org

Catholic League president Bill Donohue questions the legitimacy of reparations:

The idea that the descendants of slaves are owed reparations is based on the notion that white people owe black people money today because dead white people mistreated dead black people long ago. On this score alone, this is a racist proposal, the victims of whom are white.

Why should those who did not suffer the indignity of slavery be awarded financial compensation? And why should those who had nothing to do with it be forced to pony up? But if this crazed idea is to be taken seriously, then white Christians are also deserving of reparations. Who should pay? Muslims.

Economist Thomas Sowell recalls that it was Adam Smith, author of “The Wealth of Nations,” who observed in 1776 that Western Europe was the only place in the world where slavery did not exist. Sowell further notes that nowhere in the world was slavery a controversial issue prior to the 18th century. It wasn’t controversial in Africa or Asia or the Middle East—they were accustomed to slavery. No, it was in Western Europe and the newly created United States where objections were first registered.

It seems odd, then, that the nations which ended slavery are the ones being tapped for reparations. Yet that is exactly what the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, wants. She recently said that those nations that “engaged in or profited from enslavement, the transatlantic trade in enslaved Africans, and colonialism—as well as those who continue to profit from this legacy,” should pay reparations.

Bachelet, like so many other elites around the world, never addresses the need for reparations to white Christians. They need to do so.

Charles Sumner was an 18th century American politician, and one of America’s most famous abolitionists. He not only condemned black slavery, he condemned white slavery. Indeed, he wrote a book about it, “White Slavery in the Barbary States,” published in 1853.

Sumner detailed how Muslim pirates from North Africa, called corsairs, “became the scourge of Christendom, while their much-dreaded system of slavery assumed a front of new terrors. Their ravages were not confined to the Mediterranean.” In fact, they extended to “the chalky cliffs of England, and even from the distant western coasts of Ireland,” forcing the inhabitants into “cruel captivity.”

The most authoritative work on this subject can be found in Robert Davis’ book, “Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast, and Italy, 1500-1800.” The Ohio State University professor of history estimates that “between 1530 and 1780 there was almost certainly 1 million and quite possibly as many as 1.25 million white, European Christians enslaved by the Muslims of the Barbary Coast.”

How did the Muslim slavemasters manage to capture these white Christians? The Barbary pirates trolled the Mediterranean looking for ships to raid, taking their cargo and enslaving those on board. They also showed up at coastal towns of Italy, Spain, France, England, Ireland, and the Netherlands.

“While the Barbary corsairs looted the cargo of ships they captured,” writes Davis, “their primary goal was to capture non-Muslim people for sale as slaves or for ransom.” Meaning that the pirates were out to enslave white Christians. It should be noted that they treated their slaves just as harshly as white slavemasters in America treated their slaves. “As far as daily living conditions,” he says, “the Mediterranean slaves certainly didn’t have it any better.”

According to political scientist Abraham H. Miller, “For over two hundred years, during the mid-1600s to the 1830s, Barbary Muslims trafficked in white European Christians. The Ottoman Muslims trafficked in White Christian slavery started even earlier, in the 15th century. All in all, Muslims enslaved more than two million white European Christians.”

Similarly, Sowell contends that the number of whites who were enslaved in North Africa by the Barbary pirates “exceeded the number of Africans enslaved in the United States and in the American colonies put together.” In fact, he adds, “white slaves were being brought and sold in the Ottoman Empire decades after blacks were freed in the United States.”

This raises an interesting question: Are white Christians today owed reparations?

Sowell knows the answer. “Nobody is going to North Africa for reparations, because nobody is going to be fool enough to give it to them.” “So,” Miller asks, “should white European Christians condemn all Muslims for their role in the enslavement of white European Christians? Should the Europeans of the Southern Mediterranean demand reparations from Muslims for the enslavement of their ancestors?”

I would go further: Should present-day Muslims living in America be forced to pay reparations to white Christians living here today? According to the logic of those who work in the reparations industry—you don’t have to be personally guilty or personally victimized to qualify—the answer is clearly yes (though we would not support it).

Perhaps the U.N.’s chief Human Rights official can offer some advice. But to do so she would first have to admit that her selective interest in this subject makes her unsuitable to continue. She should resign.

Contact her at: mbachelet@ohchr.org

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on the latest attacks by the United Nations’ Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights on the Church:

It is no secret that the globalists at the U.N. hate the Catholic Church. Since 1994, the Catholic League has lodged multiple complaints against these Catholic-bashers. This June, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has been rather active, targeting the Church twice.

Starting on June 4, so-called experts from OHCHR put out a statement condemning the Church for the mistreatment of indigenous children at residential schools in Canada. But this is not exclusively a Catholic problem. It is most especially a Canadian problem, and these tragedies are not unique to Catholic run residential schools. Virtually every faith and institution in Canada is culpable. Yet, true to globalist Catholic-bashing form OHCHR chooses to single out the Church.

Hot on the heels of this attack, on June 21, some of these same savants wasted no time to express further animosity toward the Church. In this instance, they called on the Holy See to act against sexual abuse and provide reparations.

While it is bad enough to paint sexual abuse as a problem that the Church has failed to address, what makes OHCHR attack even more egregious is that one of the largest offenders of sexual abuse in the world is the U.N.

In December of 2019, a report was issued condemning U.N. employees for the rape of impoverished women in Haiti and fathering hundreds of children. Since then it appears the U.N. has done little to combat these atrocities.

In February of this year, a study by the University of Nairobi found that “sexual exploitation and abuse…continues to undermine U.N. operations” in Africa. The study notes that while the U.N. has a zero tolerance policy for these kinds of offenses they hesitate to implement them for fear that countries will withdraw their peacekeeping forces if their soldiers are investigated for sex crimes.

Far from having a perfect record, in fact they have one of the worst records on sexual abuse, the U.N. tries with a fraudulent air of moral superiority to cast aspersions on the Church while ignoring their own horrendous record. Their hypocrisy is galling.

Further, only Israel and Burma (Myanmar) have been targeted more than the Vatican by OHCHR this month, and no other faith has been singled out.

Without a doubt, OHCHR loves picking on the Church. Maybe if the U.N. spent less time bashing Catholics and more time getting their own house in order, the world might be a better place.

Contact OHCHR: InfoDesk@ohchr.org

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on the latest attack on U.S. bishops:

President Biden says he is a “devout Catholic,” yet he continues to oppose many of the most serious Catholic teachings that bear on public policy. This is of great concern to the bishops, and a large contingent of them are considering whether Biden is deserving of Holy Communion. They will take this issue up next week in a virtual meeting of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB).

Enter Faithful America. It is sponsoring a petition aimed at pressuring the bishops to “cancel your planned anti-Biden vote.” They claim to have over 20,000 signatures.

Who is Faithful America? It is not an organization like the Catholic League. No one goes to the office because there isn’t any—it has a P.O. Box listed on its website. There is no one to call because it has no phone number. It says it is an “online community.” But it is not a community—it is simply a website that functions as a front group for Catholic haters.

Who funds it? George Soros, the atheist billionaire who hates Catholics.

Why is Faithful America launching this attack on the USCCB? Because it wants to protect President Biden. They like his pro-abortion and anti-religious liberty record.

There is nothing “anti-Biden” about the USCCB. To be sure, the bishops are rightly concerned about the message that he is sending: The president of the United States can be a Catholic in good standing and still reject core Church teachings on the rights of the unborn, marriage, the family, sexuality, and religious liberty. Indeed, he can seek to force Catholic doctors to perform sex transition surgery and close down Catholic hospitals that refuse to perform abortions.

The USCCB will not be intimidated by phony “organizations” that have no anchor in the Catholic community.

Contact Nathan Empsall, the Episcopalian priest who heads up this dummy effort: nathan@faithfulamerica.org

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on what’s going on at the National Catholic Reporter:

There is nothing new about the National Catholic Reporter working to undermine Catholic teachings, but their latest attack on the bishops is in a class of its own. Consider its June 3rd editorial.

The backdrop to the Reporter’s angst is the June 16 virtual meeting of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). The bishops are scheduled to discuss, among other items, what to do about Catholic politicians who persist in flouting Church teachings on salient issues such as abortion. Our “devout Catholic” president, of course, has never found an abortion he could not justify. Indeed, now he wants us to pay for them.

The Catholic League is officially agnostic on what the bishops should do. Unlike the Reporter, we know our place and are not about to preach to them. But that doesn’t mean we are blind to what Biden is doing. In fact, we will detail his departures from Catholic teachings next week.

The Reporter tries hard to be cute by encouraging the bishops to deny Biden Communion. “Just do it,” they say. Why? So that way “if there happens to be a Catholic remaining who is not convinced that the bishops’ conference, as it stands today, has become completely irrelevant and ineffectual, they will be crystal clear about that reality after the conference leaders move forward with this patently bad idea.”

The Reporter does not speak to the bishops—it speaks down to them. The journalists love to lecture the theologians, as in telling the bishops that “excessive attention to the worthiness of those receiving Communion is contrary to a proper, traditional theology of the sacraments.” Their arrogance is appalling.

According to the Reporter, it is not just the bishops who are wrong—the Catholic Catechism is also wrong.

Here is what the Catechism says about abortion. “Human life must be respected and protected absolutely from the moment of conception.” It also says, “Formal cooperation in an abortion constitutes a grave offense.”

Regarding the paramount role of Communion, it lays out very clearly why it is the premier sacrament. It says, “the Eucharist occupies a unique place as the ‘Sacrament of sacraments’: ‘all other sacraments are ordered to it as to their end.'” It also says, “Anyone who desires to receive Christ in Eucharistic communion must be in a state of grace.”

If we had a racist Catholic president, the Reporter would be calling on the USCCB to excommunicate him. But when it comes to abortion, they swing the other way. The Church regards both abortion and racism to be “intrinsically evil.” It is the Reporter that is inconsistent, not the bishops.

The Reporter is not content to disagree with the bishops; no, it chooses to insult them. They accuse the bishops of creating a “MAGA church,” one that sees “Donald Trump instead of Jesus as its savior.” To top things off, they accuse them of being “lazy, out of touch” and “in the pockets of wealthy donors pushing a political agenda.”

Make no mistake about it—this is character assassination. The fact that it emanates from an alleged Catholic source makes it all the more despicable.

Contact the Reporter’s executive editor, Heidi Schlumpf: hschlumpf@ncronline.org

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s (NCAA) turn to politics:

Collegiate sports and professional sports have traditionally been apolitical. They have also been at least tacitly supportive of traditional moral values. No longer. They have now laid anchor with the politics of the left, and that, in turn, has led them to adopt an aggressively secular worldview, one that is increasingly anti-Christian. Consider the NCAA.

On April 12, the NCAA Board of Governors stated that it “firmly and unequivocally supports the opportunity for transgender student-athletes to compete in college sports. This commitment is grounded in our values of inclusion and fair competition.” It also said that it will not hold championship events in locations that do not agree with its position.

Truth to tell, the NCAA does not believe in inclusion and fair competition: It believes in exclusion and unfair competition.

Its policy of restricting championship events to locales that conform to its transgender politics manifestly excludes parts of the country that maintain a Christian view of sex and sexuality. Moreover, there is nothing fair about allowing males to compete against females in athletics.

There is something else going on here that needs to be addressed. Why is the NCAA promoting sex reassignment therapy when it is well known how dangerous it is to the psychological and physical wellbeing of those who undergo it? To this point, are NCAA officials aware that hormone therapy causes physical changes that are irreversible?

Sweden has a comparatively long history of accommodating transgender persons. It does not have an admirable record. In fact, what we know should give us pause. For example, the suicide rate for those who undergo sex reassignment therapy is astonishingly high, and the range and scale of psychiatric disorders are also disturbing. None of this has anything to do with stigma—Sweden enthusiastically embraces the transgender community.

In this country, the American Heart Association has concluded that those who undergo sex reassignment therapy have higher rates of strokes, heart attacks and blood clots. Another study found that females who transition to males have a greater risk of developing Type 2 Diabetes.

In 2018, the Annals of Internal Medicine published the results of a major study conducted by distinguished universities and research institutes on this subject. Those men who switched to female experienced rates of stroke that were “80 to 90 percent higher” than biological women.

Last month, the Mayo Clinic reported on several risk factors for males who transition to female. They include blood clots, high blood pressure, infertility, Type 2 Diabetes, cardiovascular disease, stroke and breast cancer.

It is a sure bet that the NCAA will distance itself from reports of serious health issues that arise from transgender athletes. They will claim they have nothing to do with them.

In March 2021, the British Journal of Sports Medicine found that male athletes who transition to female maintain their body mass and strength for up to three years, putting natural-born women at a major disadvantage. In other words, once the change takes place, biological women will be hamstrung for years.

Even if there weren’t any serious side effects to sex transitioning, there is still the anti-Christian bias that is evident in the NCAA’s policy.

For instance, states such as Mississippi, Tennessee, Idaho and Arkansas have banned transgender participation in women’s sports, and all of them are overwhelmingly Christian. Is it by accident that none of them are allowed to host an NCAA championship contest? Or is it a direct consequence of the NCAA adopting the anti-Christian animus that colors the politics of the left?

The NCAA commitment to inclusion stops short when it comes to Christian schools. None of the 25 members of the Board of Governors hail from these states, and the two religious-affiliated board members—from Georgetown University and Hamline University—represent schools that are unabashedly “progressive,” not orthodox.

In general, male athletes are faster and stronger than female athletes. That is why everything from pre-school athletics to the Olympics are sex segregated. Similarly, we have the Special Olympics for the disabled. There should also be a forum for transgender athletes, even if it is limited to regional competition.

The NCAA should stay out of politics, stay away from affirming sex transitioning, and stay clear of imposing punitive measures on Christian states and schools.

Contact Gail Dent, associate director of communications: gdent@ncaa.org

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on the way some Catholics are reacting to the Vatican statement on gay unions:

Freedom From Religion Foundation, an anti-Catholic organization, is not happy with the recent Vatican statement against gay unions and gay marriage. Interestingly, it blames left-wing Catholics, saying that it was the “continuing support of the Church by more progressive Catholics that makes possible these pernicious and demeaning pronouncements.”

Looks like the atheists at the Catholic-bashing entity spoke too soon. Today, a day after it posted its remarks, left-wing Catholics at the National Catholic Reporter attacked Pope Francis. The March 19 editorial makes it clear that they have finally had it with the pope, branding him a “hypocrite.”

This has been a long time coming. For several years, these renegade Catholics have hyped every welcoming move by Pope Francis to homosexuals, hoping to push him to recognize gay unions and same-sex marriage. However, the decree issued by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on this subject, done with the approval of the Holy Father, slammed the door shut when it reaffirmed the Church’s teachings on sexuality.

The editors at the Reporter said that the Vatican decree gave them “whiplash.” Why were they stunned? They cited several instances of the pope uttering kind words about homosexuals, suggesting they did not know the difference between condemning a person’s sexual orientation, which is morally wrong, and condemning illicit sexual behavior, which is morally right.

However, it would not be accurate to say that they really don’t know the difference. They do. They begrudgingly admitted that the pope’s outreach “did not change the church’s teaching on human sexuality.” So why the astonishment about the Vatican’s statement rejecting homosexual unions and marriage?

Catholic Church dissidents never like to throw in the towel. They dream of another day when their voice will be heard. The editorial says it “will take many years” for them to get their way. Don’t bet on it.

The fact is the Vatican decree was unequivocal, rendering all future changes impossible. Don’t take the Catholic League’s interpretation, read what the Vatican said. It explicitly said that “the Church does not have, and cannot have, the power to bless unions of persons of the same sex.” There is no wiggle room in that pronouncement.

It’s over. Left-wing Catholics have lost on gay sex—which is their favorite issue—now and forever.

Contact Heidi Schlumpf, executive editor at the Reporter: hschlumpf@ncronline.org

Bill Donohue comments on criminalizing God in the public schools:

Militant atheists have a new goal: they object to students hearing the name of God in the Pledge of Allegiance. No atheist has to say the Pledge, or utter the dreaded words, “under God”—it is optional—but that is not enough: they want to stop others from saying it.

The American Humanist Association is suing a New Jersey school district because state law requires students to say the Pledge. Since 1943, students have been able to opt out of saying it under federal law (the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Jehovah’s Witnesses did not have to say it because its members held that the flag salute constituted idolatry).

Regarding state law, in 2010, the very liberal Ninth Circuit upheld the words “under God” for their “ceremonial and patriotic nature”; the judges said it was not a violation of the First Amendment. Later that year, the U.S. Supreme Court denied an appeal of a unanimous ruling by the First Circuit that also said that the inclusion of “under God” did not violate anyone’s rights. In all cases, no student was required to recite the Pledge.

The American Humanist Association, and its ilk, are not satisfied to opt out of saying the Pledge of Allegiance. They want the government to silence everyone from saying it.

We do not have to worry about the Taliban in the United States—religious fanatics are properly impotent. But we do have to worry about their secular counterpart—atheist fanatics. It is their impotence that we must secure.

 Contact American Humanist Association President Rebecca Hale: rhale@americanhumanist.org