Catholic League president Bill Donohue commented on today’s edition of the ABC-TV show, “The View”:

“As we have recounted several times before, there is an anti-Catholic animus evident among the panelists on ‘The View,’ with Rosie O’Donnell and Joy Behar being the worst offenders. Today they were at it again, trotting out the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church one more time. The occasion for their outburst was an exchange they had with their guest, Amy Berg, the director of ‘Deliver Us From Evil,’ a recent documentary on the scandal that was a box-office bomb.

“When Behar said that the molesting priests were pedophiles, not gays, she was either lying or mistaken. This is not a matter of opinion—it is simply wrong to pretend that pedophilia is the problem. As any honest person who has seen the data knows, the majority of the victims were postpubescent, not little kids. And since 81 percent of the victims were male, and 100 percent of the victimizers were male, the problem is one of homosexuality, not pedophilia.

“Another lie or mistake was made when O’Donnell said, and Berg concurred, that ‘The current pope was the person who was supposed to investigate these charges of sex abuse in the Church in the last 20 years.’ As a matter of fact, when Pope Benedict XVI was Cardinal Ratzinger, he was not appointed to deal with this problem until 2002—after the scandal hit the newspapers.

“Barbara Walters stands behind all this bigotry—it’s her show.”

Contact the executive producer of “The View,” Bill Geddie, at bill.geddie@abc.com.

Yesterday, Bob Casey, Jr., the Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania, told a panel of reporters and editors of the Associated Press that if elected he would focus more on health care and jobs than abortion. With regard to abortion, he said he wants “to see more of an emphasis on what brings people together rather than what tears people apart.” He also said that being pro-life means, “I support initiatives which would reduce the number of abortions.”

Catholic League president Bill Donohue commented as follows:

“Every politician whose voting record supports abortion-on-demand says that he is opposed to abortion. For example, President Bill Clinton said that his approach to reducing abortions was to make them safe, legal and rare, yet he vetoed every bill that would have barred partial-birth abortions. This made him dramatically different from the governor of Pennsylvania, Bob Casey, Sr., whose opposition to abortion included legal restrictions. Now we have learned that Bob Casey, Jr. has far more in common with Bill Clinton than he does with his father on this issue.

“If someone said he was opposed to racial discrimination, but would not commit to using the law as a means to affecting its reduction, we’d call him a fraud. It would not matter, for instance, if he said that he wants ‘to see more of an emphasis on what brings people together rather than what tears people apart.’ We’d want to know why he prefers to dialogue about racism while doing nothing substantively about it. Similarly, if someone said that his opposition to racism would lead him to support ‘initiatives’ to reduce it, but said nothing about support for legislation to that end, we’d call him a fraud. That’s why Casey is a fraud: his reluctance to use the law as a means to reduce abortions speaks volumes.

“Dealing with the root causes of social problems is important, but it can never be a rational excuse for doing nothing else. We have to stop the bleeding first, and this is especially true when it comes to something as bloody as abortion.”

The New Jersey Supreme Court said today that gay couples have a constitutional right to the same benefits as married men and women, but it stopped short of saying gays had the right to marry. Catholic League president Bill Donohue commented as follows:

“This is a plus for those of us who have been pressing for a constitutional amendment that would limit marriage to a union between a man and a woman. Indeed, this is a wakeup call to the vast majority of Americans who are opposed to gay marriage but are reluctant to access the constitutional amendment process as the right remedy. Their reluctance is prudent: it is a grave decision to amend the constitution. But when faced with the prospect of arrogant judges who continue to appropriate powers to themselves that are nowhere authorized in law, many will now reconsider their reservations.

“By a wide margin, the American people have defeated state resolutions that would allow for gay marriage (it lost in all 11 states that had this issue on the ballot in 2004). Survey data disclose the same results: a Daily News poll of New York City residents in 2004 reported that by a margin of 47-40 percent, they did not want gay marriage. And if New Yorkers can’t accept the idea of Frank and Freddie tying the knot, it’s not likely to play well in Peoria.

“Judge Deborah T. Poritz offered a dissenting opinion saying that not only should gay unions have the same benefits as married couples, they should be awarded the title of marriage. Whatever one might say about her reasoning, she at least has more integrity than some of her colleagues: those who voted in the majority claimed the right to substantively alter the traditional understanding of marriage, graciously allowing the public to call it anything they want. How thoughtful.

“Quite frankly, if we’re going to have despotic judges, we might as well demand honest ones.”

On Thursday, October 19, CBS aired an episode of the drama CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, titled “Double-Cross.”  The episode revolves around a woman found strangled by rosary beads and crucified in a church, and the priest suspected of her murder.

Commenting on the show is Catholic League president Bill Donohue:

“CSI has offered viewers a big helping of messed-up Catholics in ‘Double-Cross.’  Suspected priest, Father Frank, may not have murdered the dead woman, but he did have sex with her.  In addition, he was transferred from another church after the suicide of a female parishioner.  He also resists helping the police with their investigation.  A spacey-looking nun named Sister Bridget is so intensely protective of Father Frank that, fearing he did commit the murder, she lies and accuses herself.  When confronted with the fact that she lacks the physical strength to carry out the grisly killing, she claims ‘it was a miracle.’  Another nun, bitter and old, gripes about Father Frank helping the homeless.  She even mocks the prayers of the less fortunate, muttering, ‘Dear Jesus, please keep me from blowing the laundry money on the nickel slots at the gas and go.’  Not only is she nasty, she’s overzealous in declaring divine intervention: seeing blood on the hand of a statue of Jesus, she proclaims, ‘right here on the eve of the apocalypse, a miracle.’

“Viewers are presented with only one seemingly-normal Catholic.  The lead investigator, Gil Grissom, is a level-headed man.  However, as he explains, he doesn’t take his faith very seriously: ‘I suppose I practice a kind of secular Catholicism that involves ritualizing certain aspects of everyday life and imbuing them with a spiritual intensity they might not otherwise possess, but I don’t want to put too fine a point on it.’  He is able, however, to put a fine point on the emotions of practicing Catholics.  According to Grissom, ‘they’re full of guilt.’

“So here we have it: As portrayed by CSI, those who have devoted their lives to the Church are a sorry lot.  It’s nice to know what they think of faithful Catholic servants.”

Catholic League president Bill Donohue commented today on NBC’s decision to cut the “Mock Crucifixion” segment from its November 22^nd airing of Madonna’s “Confessions” concert:

“NBC did the right thing, but the fact that it did not say why the offensive part of Madonna’s concert was cut shows cowardice. What NBC should have done is to admit that since it refused to air the Danish cartoons that Muslims objected to earlier in the year, it felt obliged not to treat Christians in a discriminatory manner. On September 20, I wrote to NBC chief Bob Wright making this point.

“Pressure politics were at work, too. On September 29, a letter was sent to Bob Wright by Brent Bozell, president of the Parents Television Council, and me, warning him that we would boycott one of the sponsors of the Madonna concert if the ‘Mock Crucifixion’ part were not excised; we would decide via a conference call the next day which sponsor would receive our Christmas present. In addition to the Catholic League and the Parents Television Council, the following groups said they would join the boycott: American Family Association, Morley Institute, Christian Film and Television Commission, Jews Against Anti-Christian Defamation, Traditional Values Coalition and Women Influencing the Nation.

“Congratulations to all these groups, and most especially to Don Wildmon’s American Family Association for being out in front on this issue.”

The race for Attorney General in Kansas is being fought between the incumbent, Republican Phill Kline, and his challenger, Democrat Paul Morrison. One of the issues that divides the candidates is whether the government has a right to seek patient records from abortion clinics.

Catholic League president Bill Donohue weighed in on this issue today:

“Ever since the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church became front-page news in 2002, mandatory reporting laws have been broached by many state lawmakers: such laws require all professionals who have knowledge of sexual relations between an adult and a minor to report such cases to the authorities. And at every turn, the opposition has come from Planned Parenthood. Why? Because it is well known that its providers learn of cases of child rape on a regular basis, and it would hurt their lucrative business if they had to first report such instances to the police. In other words, it is not the Catholic Church that is standing in the way of legal reform—it is Planned Parenthood.

“During his tenure as Johnson County District Attorney, Paul Morrison found it quite useful to have the information provided by a paternity test to prosecute men who had taken sexual liberties with young women. But now that he is in bed with his friends at Planned Parenthood, he wants to stonewall efforts that would provide medical evidence taken from abortion clinics. He’s not dumb: He knows that all such roads ultimately lead the cops to knock on Planned Parenthood’s door.

“On February 26, 2005, Morrison told the Kansas City Star that ‘if there are kids that are getting abortions at the tender ages of 10, 11, 12, 13 years old and they’re not being reported to law enforcement that’s a big problem.’ Sure is. A 2002 study by Life Dynamics found that among pregnant girls aged 15 or younger, 60 to 80 percent were impregnated by adult men. They further concluded that Planned Parenthood was providing cover for these men. And these are the ones Morrison, a professed Roman Catholic, wants to protect!”

On November 7, voters in Missouri will be asked to amend their state constitution to protect all forms of stem cell research that are legal under federal law. What has triggered a big debate is whether human cloning would be allowed or prohibited under this measure.

Catholic League president Bill Donohue addressed this issue today:

“When whites were given a literacy test as a requisite for voting in parts of the South 50 years ago, they were asked such questions as, ‘Who was the first president of the U.S.?’ By contrast, blacks were asked to cite verbatim the Preamble to the Constitution. Now we have the same kind of vile trickery being played in the 21^st century, only this time the victims are the voters in Missouri: stealth and wealth have corrupted the democratic process.

“The 100-word initiative is not merely a summary of a 2,000 word statement—it collapses the truth along with the verbiage. The initiative says that ‘No person may clone or attempt to clone a human being.’ But when the fine print is read, it actually allows for therapeutic cloning.

“What therapeutic cloning does is to create a human embryo for the purpose of extracting stem cells, and in doing so it kills the embryo. However, in Missouri the conversation has not been about therapeutic cloning—it has been about ‘somatic cell nuclear transfer’ (that’s the Orwellian euphemism preferred by the Stowers Institute, the financial source of almost all the $29 million spent on this stealth campaign). As bioethicist Wesley J. Smith has written, ‘biologically, the act of human cloning is asexual reproduction performed via somatic cell nuclear transfer, or SCNT. This act of cloning culminates in the creation of a new human embryo.’

“Researcher William L. Saunders has said that SCNT, or what he calls ‘experimental cloning,’ violates the Nuremberg Code. He is correct: Article 5 bars experiments ‘where there is an a priorireason to believe that death or disabling injury will occur….’ Because SCNT deliberately creates life for the purpose of destroying and harvesting it, it violates the Nuremberg Code. Hopefully, Missourians will not be fooled.”

Catholic League president Bill Donohue issued the following remarks today about an incident involving a DePaul University professor:

“Catholics have every right to expect that Catholic colleges and universities are free from bigotry of any kind. Unfortunately, a recent ugly incident by DePaul professor Norman G. Finkelstein has betrayed that trust. To be specific, an online column he wrote at indybay.org suggesting that Alan Dershowitz be assassinated, coupled with an obscene depiction of the Harvard professor, is cause for alarm.

“Finkelstein has every right to quarrel with Dershowitz’s proud defense of Israel’s right to exist, but when he compares him to a Nazi (this despicable charge is made twice), then elementary standards of civility have been shattered. Similarly, calling Dershowitz a ‘moral pervert’ who ‘missed the climactic scene of his little peep show’ is the language used by street propagandists, not academicians. Make no mistake about it, Finkelstein wrote this to illustrate the vicious cartoon he commissioned: Dershowitz is depicted masturbating in glee over dead Lebanese civilians. It doesn’t get much lower than this.

“There are plenty of arenas in and around Chicago where those who want to rant can go to express themselves, but a university is not such a venue: the university exists so that the truth may be pursued. That is what a liberal arts education is expected to provide, and it is nothing but a travesty when the rights afforded faculty members are abused in the way Finkelstein has done. This is doubly true when it happens on a Catholic campus.

“The time has come for responsible Catholic leaders to hold up a stop sign to this kind of ad hominem assault. Robust free speech should be welcomed on campus, but if it is to have pedagogical value, it must respect logic and standards of evidence. Character assassination of the kind Finkelstein engages in does not meet that test. He has abused his rights as a faculty member and he has defamed Catholic education.”

Catholic League president Bill Donohue commented today on news that former congressman Mark Foley was abused by a clergyman:

“We already knew that Mark Foley claims he’s an alcoholic who suffers from mental illness, and yesterday his lawyer told us what everyone in Washington already knew—Foley is gay. What apparently no one knew was that Foley was allegedly abused by a clergyman when he was a teenager in high school. Since Foley is a Catholic, the suggestion is that a priest abused him.

“Foley’s lawyer says his client never molested anyone, which begs the question: why play the Catholic card? Together with his other maladies, Foley is obviously seeking to exculpate his behavior, despite protestations to the contrary by his attorney. Foley knows that the public is prepared to believe the worst about priests in today’s environment—they can count on Jay Leno to bash priests one more time—even though only .02 percent of the 42,000 priests in the U.S. had a credible accusation of sexual abuse made against him in 2005. But he will stop at nothing to mitigate his actions.

“As for the alleged abuse, it’s time to ask some tough questions. First, there is a huge difference between being groped and being raped, so which was it Mr. Foley? Second, why didn’t you just smack the clergyman in the face? After all, most 15-year-old teenage boys wouldn’t allow themselves to be molested. So why did you?”

On October 1, the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) aired a documentary, “Sex Crimes and the Vatican,” that accused Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) of covering up priestly sexual abuse for 20 years. The show, which aired on the BBC’s flagship, Panorama, says that Cardinal Ratzinger had been in charge of enforcing a 1962 Vatican document that was allegedly written to cover up these crimes.

Catholic League president Bill Donohue commented as follows:

“It is a tribute to American journalism that the lies told by the BBC have not been widely disseminated in the United States. The 1962 document that the BBC refers to had absolutely nothing to do with covering up priestly sexual abuse. Quite the contrary: it dealt specifically with solicitations that a priest might make in the confessional. In fact, it prescribed penalties for any priest who, ‘whether by words or signs or nods of the head’ (my emphasis) might convey a sexual advance.

“This was an ecclesiastical response to a possible offense that, given the priest-penitent privilege, lay outside the purview of civil authorities. Furthermore, if a priest were found guilty, he could be thrown out of the priesthood. To top if off, if the penitent were to tell someone about sexual solicitation by a priest in the confessional (perhaps another priest), he or she had 30 days to report the incident to the bishop or face excommunication. In other words, the Vatican document actually prescribed punishment for the penitent if he or she didn’t turn in the guilty priest. The 1962 document was superseded by the 1983 Code of Canon Law and the norms established in 2001 for dealing with serious crimes involving the sacraments. As for the sexual abuse scandal, it was not until 2002, after the scandal had exploded in the media, that Pope John Paul II appointed Cardinal Ratzinger to investigate these matters.

“In short, the BBC’s hit job on the pope demands a quick and sincere apology.”