Frances Kissling is retiring today as president of Catholics for a Free Choice. Catholic League president Bill Donohue offered a parting shot:

“Ex-Catholics for Abortion would be a more accurate name for Kissling’s anti-Catholic front group, but we won’t quibble now that she is quitting. For a quarter century, Kissling has misrepresented herself to the public, pretending to be the head of a bona-fide Catholic organization. Twice condemned as a fraud by the Catholic bishops’ conference, Kissling would have had to have found another job long ago had it not been for her friends in the establishment. The Ford Foundation, the Warren Buffett Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, the Packard Foundation, the Playboy Foundation—these are just some of Kissling’s donors. Without them, she would have folded long ago as she has no members.

“I hope she takes her tapestries of Tibetan Buddhist deities with her when she exits her office, as well as any New Age paraphernalia she may have acquired over the years. It would also be a good idea to take her poster of Che Guevara with her. How fitting that a woman who spent most of her adult life promoting the killing of innocents in the womb would idolize a terrorist who killed innocent Latinos who made it to birth. In any event, I can’t wait to meet her successor, Jon O’Brien, on TV. I promise him a memorable encounter.

“One final thought. Kissling recently said the Catholic Church ‘abuses…anyone who thinks.’ It’s reassuring to know she can’t claim victim status.”

Commenting on today’s edition of the ABC show “The View” is Catholic League president Bill Donohue:

“They can’t give it up. It started with a discussion about James Cameron’s latest Titanic tale—the one about Jesus’ tomb—and it quickly degenerated into another round of mockery. About Catholicism, that is.

“Rosie O’Donnell began by demonstrating her command of the Bible by saying, ‘Weren’t, weren’t, wasn’t the Bible written 200 years after the death of Jesus?’ No, it wasn’t, wasn’t, wasn’t. Someone needs to clue her in—she’s only off by over a hundred years. But that someone is surely not co-host Joy Behar. Today she confessed that ‘I am not really a scholar. I don’t know anything.’ She got that right.

“To appreciate O’Donnell ridiculing the Eucharist, you’d have to see it. But that might make you sick. So just read what she said: ‘The biggest thing when you are raised a Catholic when I was a kid was that you are not allowed to touch the Host with your hand.’ After Behar chimed in with ‘Or chew the Host,’ O’Donnell exclaimed, ‘Or your teeth. So you would put it, would get stuck to the roof of your mouth and you would spend the rest of church going [she mimics her tongue hitting the top of her mouth].’ O’Donnell later says something about letting Jesus rest in peace because ‘You can’t get a Q-tip and swab the inside of his cheek.’

“After taking some liberties with Catholicism, Behar lets the audience know that when it comes to anti-Semitism, she will have none of it. She admitted that she would not vote for Mitt Romney and that’s because he announced his bid for the presidency in front of the Ford building. Ford, she said, was ‘a big, big, Hitler supporter.’ This is a claim that not even those who charge Ford with being an anti-Semite make. Leaving Ford aside, it’s nice to know that these ex-Catholic ladies have little tolerance for anti-Semitism. Now if only they thought of Catholics as if they were Jews.”

 Contact Co-producer Bill Geddie; bill.geddie@abc.com

On March 1, the University of Minnesota’s Department of Theatre, Arts and Dance will host the Dario Fo play, “The Pope and the Witch”; it will be performed through March 9. Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on the latest round of controversy surrounding the play:

“Imagine an anti-Semitic play, written by a Hitlerian, being performed at the University of Minnesota. Imagine, too, that Jews complain and the president of the university justifies the play on free speech grounds. Imagine, as well, that the play is defended by non-Jewish professors in charge of the production. Now really let your imagination run: bowing to pressure from Jews, a panel discussion on the play is scheduled, but no one from the Jewish community is invited to participate. Well, exactly this has happened, except that it’s not Jews who are being assaulted by the University of Minnesota—it’s Catholics.

“When I challenged President Robert Bruininks on the propriety of having this bigoted play performed on his campus last fall, he offered a lame explanation why the show must go on. Following his collapse of leadership is Robert Rosen, the university’s theater director, and Steven Rosenstone, dean of the school’s College of Liberal Arts. According to a report in The Catholic Spirit, the local archdiocesan newspaper, ‘Rosen, who is not Catholic, said he is not surprised by the strong reaction; however, he does not see the play as an attack on the Catholic faith.’ Perhaps he thinks it’s an attack on Islam, save for the fact that Muslims don’t have a pope. Rosenstone confirmed that no Catholics have been invited to join the forum and that’s because ‘nobody was selected for the panel on the basis of faith or religion.’ That’s interesting—the play was purposely selected to bash Catholicism and now Catholics are purposely being denied the right to be on the very panel they pushed for.

“This is what the University of Minnesota stands for: free speech for Catholic bashers and no speech for Catholics. Accordingly, I will notify all members of the Minnesota legislature about this development: this is state-sponsored hate speech, partially funded by the target of hate, namely Catholics.” Contact Steven Rosenstone; rosen060@umn.edu

“Titanic” director James Cameron and TV-director Simcha Jacobovici are claiming they have evidence of a Jerusalem tomb that allegedly houses the remains of Jesus and his family. Commenting on this is Catholic League president Bill Donohue:

“Not a Lenten season goes by without some author or TV program seeking to cast doubt on the divinity of Jesus and/or the Resurrection. Last April, NBC’s ‘Dateline’ featured the wholly discredited and downright laughable claims of Michael Baigent, and two years ago ABC treated us to a special that questioned every aspect of the Resurrection. Now we have the Cameron-Jacobovici thesis.

“Israeli archeologist Amos Kloner was in charge of the 1980 investigation of the tomb that Cameron-Jacobovici have seized on 27 years later to make their allegations. ‘The claim that the burial site has been found is not based on any proof, and is only an attempt to sell,’ Kloner says. He adds,  ‘I refute all claims and efforts to waken a renewed interest in the findings. With all due respect, they are not archeologists.’ Indeed, Kloner has branded their claims ‘impossible’ and ‘nonsense.’ Moreover, he says there is ‘no likelihood’ that Jesus and his relatives had a family tomb. ‘It makes a great story for a TV film,’ he concludes.

“Joe Zias, who spent a quarter-century as an archeologist at the Rockefeller University in Jerusalem, said that ‘Simcha has no credibility whatsoever.’ Zias isn’t shooting from the hip: Jacobovici’s credibility explodes when one considers that he still believes the 2002 tale about an ossuary with the inscription, ‘James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus.’ On June 18, 2003, the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) condemned this claim as a modern forgery—this was the unanimous decision of a 15-member IAA committee. Agreeing with this decision were Harvard’s Frank Cross and Tel Aviv University professor Edward Greenstein.

“The Discovery Channel aired the 2002 hoax and now it’s back with the Titanic fraud. It’s time the Discovery Channel discovered ethics and stopped with the sensationalism.”

Catholic League president Bill Donohue commented today on the retirement party for Frances Kissling, head of Catholics for a Free Choice (CFFC), scheduled for March 2, two days after she resigns:

“In 1993, and again in 2000, U.S. Catholic bishops, represented by the bishops’ conference, denounced CFFC as a fraud. And well they should have. Funded almost exclusively by fat-cat bigots like those at the Ford Foundation (they gave CFFC $2 million in 2005, which was more than it gave to all but five of 141 organizations it allotted grants to in its ‘Human Rights’ program that year), Kissling has deceitfully represented herself as running a Catholic group. It would be more accurate to say that she has been running the most notoriously anti-Catholic front group in the nation. She once told Mother Jones, ‘I spent twenty years looking for a government that I could overthrow without being thrown in jail.’

“Guess who is going to honor Kissling at her going-away party? Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro. She is not just any Catholic Democrat—she is the one who led 55 Catholic House Democrats a year ago in their ‘Statement of Principles.’ That document was a failed attempt to reconcile the pro-abortion position of Catholic congressmen with the teachings of the Catholic Church. It was so poorly done that Cardinal William Keeler, Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio issued a statement of their own reminding these Catholics that ‘Catholic teaching calls all Catholics to work actively to restrain, restrict and bring to an end the destruction of unborn human life.’

“DeLauro is past executive director of the radically pro-abortion EMILY’S LIST, the richest PAC in the nation. Now she has really crossed the line: to honor the biggest anti-Catholic bigot in the nation is a direct slap in the face at Catholicism.

“There are good Catholic Democrats out there. It’s time they took corrective action. If they don’t, Catholics will be forgiven if they conclude that the Democratic party has an animus against their religion.”

Catholic League president Bill Donohue commented today on the nomination of “Deliver Us From Evil” for best documentary at this year’s Oscars:

“Had writer-director Amy Berg confined herself to recording the evil machinations of former priest and pedophile Oliver O’Grady, she would have distanced herself from all criticism. Alas, she hasn’t been able to do so. That’s because her real target was never O’Grady—it’s been the Catholic Church all along.

“On October 4, when news of Congressman Mark Foley’s sexual follies were made public last fall, Berg took the occasion to mock the Catholic Church: writing on the ‘Huffington Post,’ she ridiculed the idea that priestly sexual abuse was ‘old news,’ never once explaining why all the data show that the scandal was overwhelmingly a phenomenon of the 60s, 70s and early 80s. On October 27, she concurred with Rosie O’Donnell on ‘The View’ that Pope Benedict XVI was responsible for overseeing the investigation of sexual abuse charges in the Catholic Church over ‘the last 20 years’; he allegedly did this while serving under Pope John Paul II. As a matter of fact, Cardinal Ratzinger (now the pope) was not appointed to deal with this problem until 2002—after the scandal hit the newspapers.

“Religion writer Charlotte Allen wrote of ‘Deliver Us From Evil’ that Berg ‘would have had a riveting film’ had she stuck to O’Grady and those who were party to his actions. ‘Instead,’ Allen said, she turned it into ‘a generalized anti-Catholic screed’ by allowing ‘mostly disaffected Catholic priests and victims’ lawyers’ to make free-wheeling charges against Catholicism.

“The reason Berg couldn’t stick to her immediate subject is because she was imbued with an agenda from the get-go.”

Yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to review an appeals court decision that allows New York City public schools to display a menorah during Hanukkah, and a star and crescent during Ramadan, while banning a crèche at Christmastime; the Catholic League arranged for a plaintiff in this case, Andrea Skoros, and the Thomas More Law Center handled the litigation. League president Bill Donohue explained today why he is not giving up:

“It is important to note that in the circuit court decision affirming the right of New York City public schools not to display a nativity scene, it did not bar the City from doing so: ‘We do not here decide whether the City could, consistent with the Constitution, include a crèche in its school holiday displays.’ Furthermore, the appeals court for the Second Circuit rejected the absurd claim by the City’s Department of Education that the menorah is not a religious symbol. Therefore, there is absolutely nothing in this ruling that legally stops the City of New York from allowing principals and teachers to treat Christianity with the same degree of respect it affords Judaism and Islam. And that means that a nativity scene, not a Christmas tree, deserves to be displayed alongside the menorah and star and crescent.

“In August, I will contact Joel I. Klein, Chancellor of the Department of Education for the City of New York, requesting that he issue a public statement recommending the display of crèches in the schools. After all, if the Catholic League is permitted by the New York City Parks Department to put a life-sized crèche in Central Park, and Orthodox Jews are allowed to put the world’s largest menorah there, it is patently unfair to allow a miniature version of the menorah in the schools—some of which are directly across the street from the park—while censoring a miniature version of the nativity scene.

“In short, this is not about legalities—it’s about morality.”

Catholic League president Bill Donohue responded to MSNBC talk-show host Keith Olbermann’s comment last night that Donohue made a bigoted statement when he once said, “Hollywood is controlled by secular Jews who hate Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular.” Here is Donohue’s rejoinder:

“Bill O’Reilly was right when he referred to Keith Olbermann as a ‘notorious smear merchant.’ Here’s why.

“On July 31, 2006, Olbermann interviewed Tom O’Neil, a Hollywood observer, and in the course of discussing Mel Gibson’s drunken anti-Semitic rant, O’Neil wondered aloud whether Mel could come back from this incident: ‘I don’t see how Mel rallies from this, especially in Jewish Hollywood.’ A few seconds later, Olbermann said, ‘And let’s clarify so nobody puts you on that list of folks who said things. When you said Jewish Hollywood, you meant the Jewish community in Hollywood, not Jewish Hollywood.’ O’Neil answered affirmatively.

“So let’s clarify for Olbermann’s sake. When I referred to Hollywood being run by secular Jews, how is this any different from what O’Neil said? Moreover, consider that the Forward, one of the nation’s most prestigious Jewish newspapers, editorialized in 2004 that it is merely a ‘sociological observation’ to say ‘Jews run Hollywood.’ Is the Jewish Forward anti-Semitic, Mr. Smear Merchant?

“On the same day as O’Neil’s innocent remark, the Los Angeles Timesnoted that ‘many of the town’s senior executives are Jewish and Hollywood has a long history of supporting Israel and Jewish causes.’ The next day, the same newspaper opined, ‘Hollywood was largely founded by, and the studios are still chiefly run by, Jewish executives.’ A week later, Washington Post reporter Ruth Marcus said, ‘By Hollywood I mean the entertainment industry, which…is in fact dominated by Jews.’

“To get evidence of the kind of movies Hollywood makes about Christianity, and Catholicism in particular, see our website, Mr. Smear Merchant.”

Catholic League president Bill Donohue commented today on news that Melissa McEwan has quit the campaign staff of John Edwards:

“One of Yogi Berra’s most famous quips is, ‘It ain’t over till it’s over.’ I have news for John Edwards—it’s over.”

Catholic League president Bill Donohue called on John Edwards to fire Melissa McEwan today:

“It is not enough that one foul-mouthed anti-Christian bigot, Amanda Marcotte, has quit. Melissa McEwan must go as well. Either Edwards shows her the door or she bolts on her own. There is no third choice—the Catholic League will see to it that this issue won’t go away.

“The Edwards campaign is in total disarray and the meltdown will continue unless McEwan is removed from his staff. The fact that Marcotte had to quit suggests that Edwards doesn’t have the guts to do what is morally right. He has one more chance—fire McEwan now.”