In the March 7 edition of Newsweek, there is an article in the “Periscope” section by Christopher Dickey on the health of Pope John Paul II titled, “He Has Willpower—But No ‘Living Will.’”  In it, Dickey (who did the piece with Robert Blair Kaiser) writes, “Even as the aged pope’s body shuts down in the late stages of Parkinson’s disease, his will to live—and to impose his will on the Roman Catholic faithful—remains as stubborn as ever.”  He later writes that if the pope were to slip into a coma, “Could anyone—would anyone—pull the plug?”

Catholic League president William Donohue offered the following remarks today on this article:

“When presidents like Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Delano Roosevelt continue in office despite poor health, they are regarded as courageous, even heroic.  But not Pope John Paul II—he has a duty to die.  That’s because the pope, unlike the presidents, stubbornly imposes his will on the people.  What is really astonishing—and maybe Dickey could address this—is the extent to which this dictatorial pope is loved the world over.

“Dickey lets us down when he asks whether someone could pull the plug on the pope.  We thought he was smarter than that.  It should be obvious—even to someone like Dickey—that any man who can impose his will on 1.1 billion people surely can impose his will on his own doctors.  The very idea that this despotic pope has left anything to chance is beyond comprehension.  That Dickey can’t connect his own dots does not speak well for his intellect, which is why it’s time for Newsweek to pull the plug on his column.”

During the February 22 episode of the NBC-TV sitcom, “Committed,” two non-Catholics are mistakenly given Holy Communion at a Catholic funeral Mass.  Nate, who is Jewish, and Bowie, a Protestant, don’t know what to do with the Eucharist, so they make several failed attempts to get rid of it.  For example, they try slipping it into the pocket of a priest, dropping it on a tray of cheese and crackers, etc.

At one point, the priest, who is portrayed as not knowing the difference between the Host and a cracker, goes to grab the “cracker” from a tray of appetizers; he initially balks when he discovers that it is the last one.  Then he changes his mind, saying, “Oh, what the hell.”  By far the most offensive scene occurs when Nate and Bowieaccidentally flush what they think is the Host down the toilet.

Catholic League president William Donohue commented on this today:

“It’s been quite a while since we’ve been deluged with as many complaints as this episode of ‘Committed’ fielded.  To say that Catholics are angry about this show would be an understatement—the outrage is visceral and intense.  The complaints have come from bishops, college chaplains, pastors and the laity, and they have come from all over the country.  With good reason: NBC has made a direct frontal assault on Roman Catholicism, choosing to mock, trivialize and ridicule the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ.

“What happened was deliberate.  According to a January 2 story in the Cincinnati Enquirer, the writers for the series, Eileen Heisler and DeAnn Heline, have been encouraged by NBC executives ‘to push the limits of comedy.’  For obvious reasons, the writers of ‘Roseanne,’ ‘Murphy Brown’ and ‘Ellen’ chose not to push the buttons of homosexuals (or some other protected group), so they decided to play it safe and stay in good standing with their bosses by bashing Catholics.

 “More than an apology is needed.  This episode should be retired for good, and that is what we will demand.”

Catholic League president William Donohue commented today on the Oscar nominees:

“This year’s Oscar nominees tell us a great deal about the Hollywood mindset.  As in previous years, the theme of good and evil permeates many of the films.  With a Hollywood twist, of course.  To wit: a positive spin is put on pedophilia, homosexuality, suicide, abortion and communism; a negative spin is put on religion, especially Catholicism.

“It would be unfair to say that Hollywood likes all perverts, as evidenced by the way a molesting Catholic priest is portrayed in ‘Twist of Faith.’  But it does like perverts like J.M. Barrie and Alfred Kinsey, which is why it covered up their habits in ‘Finding Neverland’ and ‘Kinsey.’  In real life, Barrie, the author of ‘Peter Pan,’ was a pedophile who got his kicks out of taking pictures of naked boys.  In real life, Kinsey was a sado-masochistic, child-abusing homosexual.  But none of this is revealed in the films based on these sickos.

“Hollywood’s preference for euthanasia gets a good ride in ‘Million Dollar Baby’ and ‘The Sea Inside,’ and its fondness for abortion and communism is seen in ‘Vera Drake’ and ‘The Motorcycle Diaries.’  Indeed, the only holy figures that Hollywood seems to like this year are the abortionist in ‘Vera Drake’ and Che Guevara, the communist thug, in ‘The Motorcycle Diaries.’

“And what would we do without Sister Rose Thering?  It’s not good enough to brand Mel Gibson—and millions of Americans—bigots.  No, what needs to happen is to give high profile to some little movie like ‘Sister Rose’s Passion’ so that Mel, and the Catholic Church, take a few more lumps.

“So these are Hollywood’s moral values: sexual license, suicide, Marxism and anti-Catholicism.  And they wonder why they’re hated.”

The sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church was the subject of a new report released today by the bishops.  The findings of the second annual audit of the dioceses and eparchies show how they are complying with the norms adopted by the bishops in 2002.

Here’s what Catholic League president William Donohue said about it:

“The report is loaded with statistics that many will find useful, the most revealing of which are: the majority of the allegations of abuse made in 2004 involved incidents that occurred between 1965 and 1974; 71 percent of the alleged offenders were deceased, already removed from ministry or had been previously laicized when the allegations were made; only 2 percent of the allegations involved incidents in 2004; and 78 percent of the alleged victims were male.

“In other words, the homosexual crisis in the Catholic Church is largely behind us.  While those who wrote the report would no doubt wince at this conclusion in public (for purely political reasons), the fact remains that molesting priests and their enabling bishops were a more commonplace phenomena during the sexual revolution than at any time since.  For example, seminarians are no longer assigned books like Father Anthony Kosnik’s Human Sexuality, a volume so obscene that it excused every type of sexual perversion; the book was commissioned by the Catholic Theological Society of America.  Unfortunately, there is no reason to believe that this same organization wouldn’t do so again today, provided, of course, the book was updated to include the latest perversions.  Thus, the seeds of the scandal are extant.

“The victims’ group SNAP says that all the reports and training sessions in the world are not going to change things.  They’re partly right.  It is undeniably true that those dioceses that properly handled cases of sexual abuse in the past did so without the benefit of bureaucratic wisdom; the bishops in charge had the common sense and courage to know what to do.  But it is also true that much progress has been made, and this is something that everyone needs to acknowledge.”

Catholic League president William Donohue commented today on the new Warner Brothers film, “Constantine,” which opens tomorrow:

“Those who like Marilyn Manson and professional wrestling should be drawn to ‘Constantine.’  The movie is not only spiritual junk food for religious illiterates, it’s another example of the way Hollywood rips off Catholicism.

“The plot centers on a chain-smoking, bummed out, demon-hunting detective who’s been to hell and back.  Constantine’s pursuit of demons is not, however, altruistically driven: because he once tried to kill himself, he thinks he’s doomed to go to hell unless he can earn enough chips to get into heaven.  Lucky for him, he becomes adept at performing exorcisms.  Along the way he meets a policewoman who’s determined to prove that her deceased Catholic sister didn’t commit suicide, and thus can be given a Christian burial.  And, of course, he meets a priest, who just happens to be an Irish drunk.

“We hate to spoil the party, but the Catholic Church does not teach that everyone who commits suicide is destined to go to hell.  Nor does it teach that those who do so must be denied a Christian burial. (It did at one time, on the grounds that suicide violated the Fifth Commandment.)

“So what does this tell us about Hollywood?  First, the fact that the producers of this trash literally tried to induce evangelical Protestants to market this movie for them tells us volumes about the way these guys view Christians.  Also telling is the answer that Francis Lawrence, the director, gave to the question of his own faith: ‘I’m a skeptic, myself.  For all I know, you die and rot in a box and that’s it.’  Either that or you rot someplace else.

“It looks like Hollywood could use an exorcism of its own.  Maybe they can find a sober Irish priest willing to do it.”

Both the outgoing chairman of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), Terry McAuliffe, and his successor, Howard Dean, recently addressed the relationship between the DNC and the Catholic Church.

Catholic League president William Donohue took note:

“At last Thursday’s send-off gala for Terry McAuliffe, the departing head of the DNC took a parting shot at the Catholic Church: ‘I was very dismayed at the Catholic Church in last year’s election.  The way they went into their pulpits and told people it was a sin to vote for John Kerry was nothing short of just outrageous.’  What is really outrageous is for this sore loser to cruelly caricature what the bishops said.

“Moreover, it was partly because of McAuliffe’s antics that I filed an IRS complaint against Miami’s New Birth Baptist Church last summer.  On August 29, Baptist Bishop Victor T. Curry, Rev. Al Sharpton and Terry McAuliffe turned a religious service into a Bush-bashing exercise.  Here’s what McAuliffe told the congregation: ‘Get out to vote and we’ll send Bush back to Texas.’

“On Saturday, Howard Dean said, ‘We have to remind Catholic Americans that the social mission of the Democratic Party is almost exactly the social mission of the Catholic Church.’  A case can be made for that position, but it must also be said that the DNC’s positions on abortion, stem-cell research, gay marriage and school vouchers are the mirror opposite of the Church’s teachings.  So how does Dean expect to deal with these issues?  He recently tried to calm the fears of the abortion-rights extremists in his party by saying there was no need for them to change their position, but ‘we can change our vocabulary.’

“If the DNC is going to bring Catholics back into the fold, it will take a change in policies, not vocabulary.  And it will have to be done without lecturing the bishops on what constitutes their episcopal authority.”

Yesterday, two Catholic legislators from Massachusetts sought to justify their support for same-sex marriage by citing their religious convictions.  Representative Marie P. St. Fleur said that her conclusion was “coming from a place of faith,” and Senator Marian Walsh confessed that it is her “faith” that gave her the “clarity” she needed to make this decision.

Catholic League president William Donohue was unimpressed:

“These two Massachusetts lawmakers are free to come to any conclusion they want on the issue of gay marriage, but they look rather foolish seeking support for their position by citing their fidelity to Catholicism: there is nothing in Catholic teaching that lends credence to their belief.  It would have been more honest to simply say they reject the teachings of the Catholic Church.

“Representative St. Fleur says that her faith taught her not to ‘ostracize people because they [are] different from me.’  Senator Walsh is even more profound, opining that ‘God didn’t make any mistakes’ in his creations.  But sentimentality is a poor substitute for reason, and it is especially embarrassing when elected officials partake in such nonsense.

“Both of these politicians were honored yesterday by the Religious Coalition for the Freedom to Marry, a motley liberal crew of mainline Protestants and Jews who reject biblical teachings on marriage, the family and sexuality.  It is with this group that St. Fleur and Walsh are most at home, not with the Catholic Church.  After all, it is they who have voluntarily decided to ostracize themselves from the Church.

 “Catholics outside of Massachusetts may wonder what kind of potion Catholic lawmakers have been imbibing there.  To put it another way, when Ted Kennedy and John Kerry are made to look orthodox, there is something mighty suspicious going on.”

In 2002, the Bronx Household of Faith, an inner-city Christian church, won a ruling in federal district court maintaining that it has a right to hold religious services on Sundays in a New York City public school.  But now the Bloomberg administration is going to challenge this ruling in court, citing separation of church and state concerns.

Catholic League president William Donohue today accused Mayor Michael Bloomberg of supporting religious discrimination:

“All over the United States, public schools are utilized after school hours by every conceivable community group.  Moreover, the courts have repeatedly said that religious groups cannot be discriminated against in having access to public facilities.  But Mayor Bloomberg disagrees: he wants to deny religious groups the same rights afforded secular groups.  In the name of diversity, he wants to destroy the diversity that the Bronx Household of Faith brings to New York.

“To support religious discrimination in an election year is a very dicey proposition for Mayor Bloomberg.  Already in trouble with many New Yorkers for his personal support of gay marriage, Bloomberg now risks alienating the ranks of the faithful even further.  Traditional Catholics and Orthodox Jews, as well as Protestants, know what is at stake—religious liberty for all religions.  That is why this issue transcends the interests of the Bronx Household of Faith.

“It is not likely that Mayor Bloomberg will succeed in the courts.  But one thing is for sure—he has just ignited a firestorm that will surely burn him in the court of public opinion.”

New York State Supreme Court Justice Doris Ling-Cohan said today that the State Constitution does not forbid same-sex marriage.  She has further ruled that marriage licenses must be given to same-sex partners who apply for them.

Catholic League president William Donohue disagrees:

“One year ago this month, I was in the Roosevelt Room in the White House listening to President Bush speak about many public policy issues.  When the subject of same-sex marriage came up, he said he would support a constitutional amendment affirming the traditional understanding of marriage if it was necessary.  After he spoke, several of the 13 Catholics present, including me, told his staff that the time had come—it was necessary now.  A week later, President Bush endorsed the need for a constitutional amendment.

“What Judge Ling-Cohan did today will help enormously in the effort to secure a constitutional amendment limiting marriage to one man and one woman.  The public is overwhelmingly against the bizarre idea of two men marrying: initiatives to legalize gay marriage lost in all 11 states that had this measure on the ballot in November.  But what the public is reluctant to do is support a constitutional amendment as the right remedy.  Their reluctance wanes, however, when they read about judges like Ling-Cohan.  And that is why her decision will boomerang.

“Some are already declaring Judge Ling-Cohan’s decision ‘historic.’  It most certainly is.  Not one New York State judge in history who has read the New York State Constitution has ever been able to find a passage in it that okays gay marriage.  Until today.  This would seem to suggest that either all the judges who preceded Ling-Cohan on the bench, as well as her colleagues today, are hopelessly incompetent, or she is another out-of-control judge who is reading into the law what her politics dictate.

“One thing is for sure: Her contribution to judicial imperialism will be duly noted by future historians.”

Bowing to pressure from SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests), Catholic activists, lawyers, psychologists and feminists, the Ford Motor Company has withdrawn a Super Bowl ad for a new Lincoln truck, the Mark LT.  The ad shows a clergyman (dressed to look like either a Catholic or an Episcopalian priest) who finds the keys to the truck in the collection plate; a little girl put them there as a prank.  The happy cleric, who thinks the truck is his, is dismayed when the girl and her father show up to claim the keys.  The ad ends by showing the cleric approaching a church marquee; he then puts the letters L and T on the opposite sides of the word US, thus spelling LUST.

Catholic League president William Donohue criticized the protesters today:

“When asked yesterday by the Chicago Tribune what I thought of the ad (it could be seen on the Internet), I had a one-word response—asinine.  When asked what I had to say about the protesters, I said it was ‘absurd’ to charge that the ad ‘trivializes and exploits the sex scandal.’  Indeed, it is worse than absurd—it reveals a deep-seated bias against Catholic priests that is very disturbing.

“Lincoln had the ad consumer tested and found there were no problems.  That’s because the men and women who vetted the ad were not looking at it through tainted lenses.  Unfortunately, the protesters are so consumed by the sex abuse scandal in the Catholic Church that they can no longer see straight.  Indeed, their obsession has now reached pathological proportions.

“To assign predator status to a priest in an ad like this suggests that the complainants think of priests as child molesters.  Moreover, when SNAP issues a press release charging that the ad trivializes the ‘child molestation crisis,’ it is twice wrong: a) the ad doesn’t come close to implying priestly sexual molestation and, b) more than 80 percent of the real-life victims in the sex scandal have been postpubescent males (not little girls).

“SNAP has done some fine work, but its credibility is undermined when it chooses to see the world exclusively through the lens of victims.”