Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on media reaction to an interesting case of religion and sex abuse:

One week ago today, AP ran a story about a German female bishop, Maria Jepsen, who was forced to resign amidst accusations she was involved in a cover-up of a Protestant priest who reportedly abused as many as 20 children in the 1980s. She initially said that she became aware of these cases in March of this year, but then it was disclosed by the German magazine Der Spiegel that she knew of them in 1999.

Maria Jepsen is not just any Lutheran cleric: in 1992, she became the world’s first female Protestant bishop. The real story here, however, is not Jepsen—it is the media blackout of this story.

I told our staff last week that we will track this story to see how many newspapers pick up the AP article. Now we know the grand total: nine. By the way, the longest of these articles was 211 words. The New York Times, which is obsessed with priestly sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, said nothing about it.

Why the blackout? First, the media have no interest in discrediting mainline Protestant clerics, most of whom share elite secular opinion on matters sexual: the mainline religions are champions of abortion rights and are not known to fight gay marriage. Second, the cultural elites like to blame men for sexual abuse; women, we are told, would never act the way male clerics do.

It is definitely true that sexual abusers are mostly male, but there is no evidence that when it comes to handling such issues, women in positions of authority do a better job than men. Mothers of abused youngsters, along with nuns, female teachers, social workers, counselors, lawyers and law enforcement agents have acted just as badly as men. But don’t tell that to Maureen Dowd—it would ruin her day.

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on Day 51 of the protest campaign on behalf of Mother Teresa:

Today I am writing to every parish in the Putnam County, New York informing them of our protest demonstration at 6 p.m. on August 26 outside the Empire State Building on 34th Street and 5th Avenue.

The rally is being held to protest the decision by Anthony Malkin, the owner of the storied building, to deny a tribute to Mother Teresa: our request to have the towers shine blue and white, the colors of her congregation, on August 26th, the 100th anniversary of her birthday, was originally denied without explanation, and was later denied on appeal by invoking a “policy” that prohibits honoring religious individuals or institutions. If this were in fact true, then (a) they would have said so from the beginning (instead they told me the application looked fine), and (b) they would not have honored Cardinal O’Connor when he died; Pope John Paul II when he died; the Salvation Army; and Rev. Martin Luther King.

Yet the same persons who chose to stiff Mother Teresa decided to honor the Chinese Communist revolution last year, even though 77 million innocent men, women and children were murdered under Mao Zedong. By contrast, the U.S. Postal Service is honoring Mother Teresa with a commemorative stamp.

Everyone is being asked to pass the word about our demonstration and to join us on August 26. They are also being asked to write to Anthony Malkin. His address is Malkin Properties, One Grand Central Place 60, E. 42nd St., NY, NY 10165.

Contact Daniel Hernandez: daniel.hernandez@edelman.com

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments as follows:

Yesterday, a Boston Globe editorial unfavorably compared the Vatican to the American bishops, saying that “Until the church adopts a zero-tolerance policy, justice cannot be served….” On July 9 and July 17, the New York Times, which owns the Globe, ran editorials voicing the same criticism. The Times editorial of July 17 correctly notes that such a policy means “requiring secular authorities to be alerted from the beginning.” Interestingly, neither newspaper has such a policy of its own.

Section IV of the New York Times Business Ethics Policy (which also governs the Globe), says, “Any employee who becomes aware of any conduct that he or she believes to be prohibited by this Policy or a violation of the law,” is expected to “promptly report the facts” to “any supervisor or the legal department.” (My italics.) It says nothing about contacting the authorities. Moreover, their policy says that if an employee has been found guilty, “appropriate and corrective action up to and including termination” will take place. Even then it says nothing about contacting the authorities!

Yesterday, we contacted three persons on four different occasions who work in the Boston Globe’s Human Resources Department about this issue. No one responded.

This settles the issue. The New York Times and the Boston Globe find it unwise to adopt the same policy regarding employee misconduct—including instances where the law is broken—that it condemns the Catholic Church for not adopting worldwide. So if a priest is alleged to have groped a parishioner, the cops must be called. But even after an internal probe reveals that an employee at the Times or Globe is guilty of the same offense, the cops should not be summoned. The hypocrisy is vile.

Contact the editorial page editors, Andrew Rosenthal at the Times and Peter Canellos at the Globe: andyr@nytimes.com and canellos@globe.com

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on Day 50 of the protest campaign on behalf of Mother Teresa:

Today I am writing to every parish in the Dutchess County, New York informing them of our protest demonstration at 6 p.m. on August 26 outside the Empire State Building on 34th Street and 5th Avenue.

The rally is being held to protest the decision by Anthony Malkin, the owner of the storied building, to deny a tribute to Mother Teresa: our request to have the towers shine blue and white, the colors of her congregation, on August 26th, the 100th anniversary of her birthday, was originally denied without explanation, and was later denied on appeal by invoking a “policy” that prohibits honoring religious individuals or institutions. If this were in fact true, then (a) they would have said so from the beginning (instead they told me the application looked fine), and (b) they would not have honored Cardinal O’Connor when he died; Pope John Paul II when he died; the Salvation Army; and Rev. Martin Luther King.

Yet the same persons who chose to stiff Mother Teresa decided to honor the Chinese Communist revolution last year, even though 77 million innocent men, women and children were murdered under Mao Zedong. By contrast, the U.S. Postal Service is honoring Mother Teresa with a commemorative stamp.

Everyone is being asked to pass the word about our demonstration and to join us on August 26. They are also being asked to write to Anthony Malkin. His address is Malkin Properties, One Grand Central Place 60, E. 42nd St., NY, NY 10165.

Contact Daniel Hernandez: daniel.hernandez@edelman.com

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on Day 49 of the protest campaign on behalf of Mother Teresa:

Today I am writing to every parish in the Diocese of Albany informing them of our protest demonstration at 6 p.m. on August 26 outside the Empire State Building on 34th Street and 5th Avenue.

The rally is being held to protest the decision by Anthony Malkin, the owner of the storied building, to deny a tribute to Mother Teresa: our request to have the towers shine blue and white, the colors of her congregation, on August 26th, the 100th anniversary of her birthday, was originally denied without explanation, and was later denied on appeal by invoking a “policy” that prohibits honoring religious individuals or institutions. If this were in fact true, then (a) they would have said so from the beginning (instead they told me the application looked fine), and (b) they would not have honored Cardinal O’Connor when he died; Pope John Paul II when he died; the Salvation Army; and Rev. Martin Luther King.

Yet the same persons who chose to stiff Mother Teresa decided to honor the Chinese Communist revolution last year, even though 77 million innocent men, women and children were murdered under Mao Zedong. By contrast, the U.S. Postal Service is honoring Mother Teresa with a commemorative stamp.

Everyone is being asked to pass the word about our demonstration and to join us on August 26. They are also being asked to write to Anthony Malkin. His address is Malkin Properties, One Grand Central Place 60, E. 42nd St., NY, NY 10165.

Contact Daniel Hernandez: daniel.hernandez@edelman.com

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on a piece by Tim Padgett that appeared yesterday on the website of Time:

The Catholic Church decides to maintain its policy against women priests. Those who are Catholic and don’t like it, can always join any one of the mainline Protestant denominations that allow for women clergy: given that their numbers are fast going south (while Catholicism continues to grow), they would be glad to get new recruits to help stop the bleeding. Those who are not Catholic should mind their own business.

Tim Padgett says he is Catholic, so that gets him in the door. But one wonders why. Why would he belong to a voluntary organization that has a “malicious” and “misogynous declaration” that is evidence of its “increasingly spiteful rhetoric of bigotry”? Why would he want to stay when it is “represented by a bunch of homophobes wearing miters”? Is he a phony or a masochist? Either way, he is surely not being intellectually honest with himself.

We are accustomed to this kind of rant on blog sites. Unfortunately, we are now becoming accustomed to it at Time: the hit job it recently did on Pope Benedict XVI—it was the cover story—showed how violently it has turned on the Catholic Church.

If I wanted to nudge an organization I belong to, enticing it to make reforms, I would use diplomacy. Instead, today’s Catholic dissidents resort to bombast and vitriol, using a sledgehammer to get their point across. And they wonder why no one is listening.

Contact the managing editor, Richard Stengel: richard_stengel@timemagazine.com

At an NAACP banquet last March, an African-American official for the U.S. Department of Agriculture told the audience how she once did not do all she could to help a white farmer get the aid he requested. The official, Shirley Sherrod, who was working at a land assistance organization in Georgia at the time, said the man was condescending. Nonetheless, her effort, tame as it may have been, succeeded: the man’s wife today says Sherrod “kept us out of bankruptcy,” and that she considers her to be a “friend for life.”

A video of Sherrod’s admission subsequently surfaced on YouTube and now she has been fired. U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack forced her to resign citing the “zero tolerance for discrimination at USDA.”

Catholic League president Bill Donohue commented as follows:

Shirley Sherrod was fired because of the stupidity and downright injustice of “zero tolerance” policies. Such policies never allow room for mitigating circumstances, nuance and shades of grey; all they do is provide reason for the self-righteous to beat their breasts. Moreover, her infraction took place 24 years ago, and there is no evidence that Sherrod is a threat to white people today. Whether the accused is Sherrod, or a Catholic priest, “zero tolerance” policies make zero sense.

There is another reason why Sherrod was fired: she lost the backing of the elites in her own community. Last week, the NAACP attacked the Tea Party for being racist, so when the video appeared, it had little choice but to throw her overboard in the guise of looking fair. Had the NAACP not succumbed to demagoguery, it would have been able to come to her defense.

The punishment does not fit the crime. Shirley Sherrod was sacrificed on the altar of expedient politics, and for that she can thank the Obama administration, “zero tolerance” policies and the NAACP.

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on Day 48 of the protest campaign on behalf of Mother Teresa:

Today I am writing to every parish in Staten Island informing them of our protest demonstration at 6 p.m. on August 26 outside the Empire State Building on 34th Street and 5th Avenue.

The rally is being held to protest the decision by Anthony Malkin, the owner of the storied building, to deny a tribute to Mother Teresa: our request to have the towers shine blue and white, the colors of her congregation, on August 26th, the 100th anniversary of her birthday, was originally denied without explanation, and was later denied on appeal by invoking a “policy” that prohibits honoring religious individuals or institutions. If this were in fact true, then (a) they would have said so from the beginning (instead they told me the application looked fine), and (b) they would not have honored Cardinal O’Connor when he died; Pope John Paul II when he died; the Salvation Army; and Rev. Martin Luther King.

Yet the same persons who chose to stiff Mother Teresa decided to honor the Chinese Communist revolution last year, even though 77 million innocent men, women and children were murdered under Mao Zedong. By contrast, the U.S. Postal Service is honoring Mother Teresa with a commemorative stamp.

Everyone is being asked to pass the word about our demonstration and to join us on August 26. They are also being asked to write to Anthony Malkin. His address is Malkin Properties, One Grand Central Place 60, E. 42nd St., NY, NY 10165.

Contact Daniel Hernandez: daniel.hernandez@edelman.com

On the July 16 edition of the “Tonight Show,” host Jay Leno said “it was so hot I saw a priest stop at a kids’ lemonade stand—just got lemonade.” Catholic League president Bill Donohue responded this way:

The man is a bigoted addict. This is the eighth time this year Jay Leno has targeted all priests as child molesters. His previous bigoted outbursts occurred on April 5, April 6, April 21, April 28, May 10, May 14 and July 8. Interestingly, last Friday’s shot at priests was the fifth and last in a string of jokes related to the hot weather, and it was the only one the audience shrugged off with “oohs.” There is a reason for this: it was the only joke which was mean-spirited and damning of a collectivity.

Leno is not given to cracking insulting jokes of a sweeping nature about any other racial, ethnic or religious groups. Just priests. It’s time to find out why his vitriol is tolerated by NBC.

In the past, we have contacted the show’s executive producer, Debbie Vickers, but she has done nothing to abate this ongoing assault.

Contact John Eck, president of NBC TV Network: john.eck@nbcuni.com

In yesterday’s New York Times, columnist Frank Rich called Mel Gibson a “bigoted blowhard,” branding his movie “The Passion of the Christ” anti-Semitic; he also attacked several Catholic and Protestant leaders who befriended Gibson, including Catholic League president Bill Donohue. Donohue responds as follows:

If Frank Rich were as sensitive to anti-Catholicism as he is anti-Semitism, there would be no problem. But the fact is he has an ugly record of attacking those who object to anti-Catholicism, but not the bigotry itself. The following examples suffice: the 1995 movie “Priest”; the 1998 play “Corpus Christi”; the 1999 Brooklyn Museum of Art exhibition, “Sensation”; the 1999 movie “Dogma”; the vitriolic reaction to Catholicism that accompanied “The Passion of the Christ”; his own newspaper’s hypocritical and selective crusade against priestly wrongdoing; the ongoing “war on Christmas,” etc. In every instance, his ire was directed at the protesters, not the object of their protest.

Rich is particularly angry at anyone who dares to mention the role played by secular Jews in fomenting anti-Catholicism. I am one Catholic who will not run from this charge. It is painfully obvious, that most of the anti-Catholicism that exists today comes from two major sources: ex-Catholics (and those with one foot out the door) and secular Jews. This doesn’t mean that all of those who fall into these two groups are bigots, but it is to say that the worst offenders tend to belong to one of those two segments of the population. Indeed, the “raised Catholic” types and secular Jews have long replaced the Protestant community as the primary source of anti-Catholicism in the United States. In Europe, it tends to be ex-Christians and Muslims.

If Rich would like to debate me on this issue, I’m sure some media outlet would be glad to arrange it.

Contact Arthur S. Brisbane, the new public editor of the newspaper: public@nytimes.com