Catholic League president Bill Donohue issued the following statement today on Bill O’Reilly’s remarks about the Vatican that he made last night on his Fox News show:

“Bill O’Reilly cannot blame his ignorance of all things Catholic on his high school because Chaminade, located in Mineola, Long Island, is the flagship Catholic school in the New York metropolitan area. So it must be his intellectual sloppiness. For example, last night he said that ‘the Vatican is calling the proposed fence on the southern border inhuman’; a picture of the pope was shown on the screen.

“O’Reilly is wrong—the Vatican has said no such thing. As a matter of fact, Pope Benedict XVI never once mentioned the fence in his recent annual World Day for Migrants and Refugees message. Neither did Archbishop Agostino Marchetto, secretary of the Pontifical Council for Migrants and Travelers; he spoke at a press conference about this issue yesterday. The person who made the remark at the press conference was Cardinal Renato Martino, temporary president of the migrants council.

“More important, unlike one of O’Reilly’s guests, Pat Buchanan, who disagreed with Martino’s remark without becoming disrespectful, O’Reilly went for the jugular saying, ‘the Vatican needs to wise up or shut up.’ O’Reilly’s outburst signifies his tyrannical approach: those who disagree with his ‘wisdom’ have no right to speak. To top it off, he showed how much wisdom he possesses when he said that the Martino remark was the kind made by ‘a lot of secular progressives.’ It is not everyday that ‘the Vatican’ (as he sees it) is charged with promoting a secularist agenda; his other guest, Sally Vance-Trembath, was wise enough to chastise him for making this absurd comment.

“O’Reilly ended this segment by saying, ‘The Vatican wants all the illegals to come here but it does want them to be Catholic.’ Looks like the time has come for O’Reilly to take some of his own medicine and wise up or shut up.”

Catholic League president Bill Donohue commented today on an anti-Christmas poster that is being flagged by an atheist website:

“Type ‘atheism’ in the Yahoo search engine and the first website to appear is atheism.about.com. On the home page, click on the ‘Image Gallery’ on the left and then click on ‘War on Christmas Propaganda Posters.’ Or simply type ‘Christmas’ in the search engine of the home page of atheism.about.com and then go to ‘Christmas News’; then click on ‘War on Christmas Propaganda.’ Either way, you will find a World War II poster, originally titled ‘Feet First!’, that shows a soldier’s boots with a picture of an armed soldier behind him: the poster has been altered to show the soldier stepping on a crèche with the inscription, ‘CRUSH A CRECHE!: Keep America free from a religious Christmas this year. It’s up to you!’

“The website belongs to Austin Cline, regional director for the Council for Secular Humanism. The Ivy League graduate says that the altered poster is ‘an appropriate image to depict how Christian Nationalists seem to perceive the alleged threats to their treasured religious symbols.’ The term ‘Christian Nationalists’ is a pejorative used by his atheist colleague, Michelle Goldberg, who recently wrote a book on the alleged takeover of America by Christian activists.

“Cline may want to pass this off as satire, but any fair-minded person who looks around his site will understand that his brand of atheism is explicitly anti-Christian. The altered poster is, in fact, a true characterization of the anti-Christian animus at work. Moreover, it offers a glimpse into the mindset of radical secularists who seek to neuter Christmas. The snide remark about their ‘treasured’ religious symbols is revealing, as is the slightly modified inscription that appears below the poster: ‘Crush a Creche & Keep Christmas Free from Christianity.’

“That’s the goal of radical secularists—they want to gut Christmas of its religious meaning. It doesn’t get any clearer than this.”

Green Bay Judge Mark Warpinski refused to recuse himself yesterday from a case involving a lawsuit against the Diocese of Green Bay. The civil case involves sexual molestation committed 18 years ago by a priest who is in prison. A motion was filed by attorney Jeffrey Anderson of St. Paul, Minnesota demanding that Brown County Judge Warpinski step down because a) he is a Catholic and b) he served on the Board of Education of Notre Dame Academy.

Catholic League president Bill Donohue addressed this issue today:

“Imagine the media reaction if a Jewish judge who was active in his local yeshiva were asked to step aside in a trial involving a synagogue. Yet when it comes to a Catholic judge who was active in a local Catholic school being asked to recuse himself from a case involving his diocese, there is no outrage at all. The fact that we have become literally anaesthetized to anti-Catholicism is a damning commentary on American society.

“And look who the players are. No attorney has made more money suing the Catholic Church than Jeff Anderson; three years ago it was estimated by the Associated Press that he’d won $60 million in settlements from Catholic dioceses. He will stop at nothing: he has tried to sue the Vatican; he has attempted to use the notorious RICO statute against the Church; and he has called the seal of confession a ‘loophole.’ He is also one of the most generous benefactors to SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests). And for greasing SNAP, Anderson gets what he wants—SNAP issued a press release on November 4 demanding that Judge Warpinski step down. All because the judge is a Catholic.

“Judge Warpinski should never have been subjected to this kind of personal assault. But in today’s climate, where any Catholic who is associated in any way with a sexual abuse case is considered suspect, justice often proves to be elusive. This is especially true when fat-cat lawyers with an agenda team up with professional victims’ groups.”

Yesterday, five organizations, including Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) and Voice of the Faithful, held a news conference in Denver demanding that the Denver Archdiocese release “all church documents relating to clergy sex abuse.”

Catholic League president Bill Donohue issued these remarks today:

“Those making this absurd demand have blown their credibility and should be dismissed as witch hunters. To begin with, it is absurd for any institution to simply dump confidential personnel files on the lap of strangers. To take but one industry—the media—there is not a single newspaper (beginning with the Denver Post), magazine, television network or radio station that would hand its personnel files over to me. Ergo, what’s good for the media is good for the Catholic Church.

“Second, the letter sent to Archbishop Charles Chaput contains a major lie: it says that had Colorado lawmakers succeeded earlier this year in passing legislation regarding the victims of sexual abuse, some of the truth about priestly sexual abuse would have been revealed. The lie is this: Archbishop Chaput was in favor of such a law provided it included all institutions. The reason he rightly insisted on uniform application was due to the fact that when this issue was originally taken up, public schools were exempted! It is only when the proposed laws were amended to include the public school industry that the teachers unions went ballistic, thus killing the legislation.

“For SNAP and Voice of the Faithful to imply that the Denver Archdiocese is responsible for the failure of Colorado lawmakers to pass this legislation is scurrilous. If they were really interested in protecting all minors, they’d begin by demanding that the Colorado Association of School Boards, the Colorado Association of School Executives and the Colorado Education Association stop their obstructionist tactics.

“Archbishop Chaput has the courage and wisdom to see right through this and will not be bullied by those who harbor an agenda.”