Catholic League president Bill Donohue accuses the Philadelphia Inquirer of bias:

The sexual abuse of minors is unfortunately a social problem, especially in homes where live-in boyfriends and step-fathers reside. It is also a serious problem in the public schools. Nowhere is it less of a problem today than in the Catholic Church. To wit: in the last five years we have data for, the number of credible accusations made against over 40,000 priests averaged 8.6; the figure for 2009 was six. Can any institution sport a record that is proportionately more impressive?

This is important because a February 17 editorial in the Philadelphia Inquirer on the subject of the sexual abuse of minors never mentions any of this. Instead, it singles out the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. Here’s the backdrop. After failing to nail a single priest in a 2005 grand jury investigation—which never focused on any other institution but the Catholic Church—a second was convened. It came up way short of what those who lobbied for it wanted. Then the Inquirer editorial appears, calling on the Archdiocese to make public its files on accused priests; it also calls on lawmakers to make it easier for past alleged victims to sue.

The editorial’s dishonesty is remarkable. It does not call for any other institution to make public its files on accused employees; nor does it call for lawmakers to make it easier for alleged victims of public school teachers to sue. In a despicable act of bias, it singles out the Archdiocese and gives every other institution a pass. An op-ed I submitted on this subject to the newspaper was rejected, and that is why we sent it to the more than 200 pastors in the Philadelphia Archdiocese [click here to read it].

There needs to be a Catholic revolt. The selective pursuit of priests, and the wholesale denial of their due process rights—that’s what calls for a selective suspension of the statute of limitations are—needs a vigorous and responsible response. All we want is a level playing field.

Contact the editor, Stan Wischnowski: swischnowski@phillynews.com

A billboard in New York City that showed a picture of a young black girl with the message, “The most dangerous place for an African American is in the womb,” has been taken down by the billboard company.

The organization responsible for the billboard, Life Always, which is run by an African American, sought to draw attention during Black History Month to the genocidal impact abortion is having in the black community. In New York City, 60 percent of black babies are killed in the womb; nationwide, more than a third of black babies are aborted.

Catholic League president Bill Donohue spoke to this issue today:

What happened in New York City was an exercise in urban fascism: calls for censoring the free speech of a private company were issued by agents of the state (e.g., New York City Public Advocate Bill de Blasio called for the billboard to be removed); waiters and waitresses who work in a restaurant in the building where the billboard was posted were harassed;  and concerns that violence might ensue—as admitted by an official for the ad company—forced the decision to take down the billboard.

Just a few months ago, the Catholic League protested a vile video that was part of an art exhibition at the Smithsonian that showed large ants running all over Jesus on the Cross. Because the Smithsonian receives 70 percent of its funding from the public, and Christians comprise 80 percent of the population, we asked Congress to reconsider the propriety of underwriting this institution. We never called for censoring the video, we never sponsored harassment of Smithsonian employees (there was none anyway), and we never threatened violence. Yet we were the subject of endless condemnation by the liberal-left.

Now, when real calls for censorship take place, along with real acts of harassment, and real concerns over violence, no one is castigated by our critics. I think we know who the real fascists are.

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on the decision of the Obama administration not to defend the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act:

President Obama does not want to defend marriage anymore. He never really did, and here’s the proof: 15 years ago this month, while running for the Illinois state Senate, Barack Obama said, “I favor legalizing same-sex marriage, and would fight efforts to prohibit such marriages.”

But when Obama decided to run for the U.S. Senate in 2004, he knew that his support for homosexuals crashing the institution of marriage was too extreme, so he decided to endorse civil unions. He said at the time, “I think that marriage, in the minds of a lot of voters, has a religious connotation.”

In 2008, when Obama was a presidential candidate, he invoked God-talk again to justify his newly crafted defense of marriage: “I believe that marriage is the union between a man and a woman. Now, for me as a Christian…it is also a sacred union. God’s in the mix.” But he knew this wasn’t true when he said it, and here’s the proof: at the same time Obama was rhetorically espousing a pro-marriage position, he was working to undermine marriage by opposing Proposition 8 in California. That was the 2008 measure that reserved marriage as a union between the only two people who can naturally form a family, namely, a man and a woman.

Now Obama is officially on record as president opposing the defense of marriage. Thus does he pit himself against the 1996 law that was signed by President Bill Clinton, and opposed by only 15 percent in the House and 14 percent in the Senate. He also stands in opposition to the over 30 state initiatives affirming marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

Now that Obama is totally out of the closet, it will spur a genuine effort to adopt a constitutional amendment affirming the integrity of marriage.

The ACLU of Southern California and the Los Angeles chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations is suing the FBI for violating the rights of Muslims by sending an informant to spy on them in a California mosque. The FBI was investigating possible terrorist threats, but the lawsuit claims it was guilty of “indiscriminate surveillance.”

Catholic League president Bill Donohue spoke to this issue today:

The ACLU is motivated by politics, not principle. That’s easy to prove. In the late 1970s, after Rep. Henry Hyde authored a bill to restrict federal financing of abortions, the ACLU dispatched an agent to spy on him. The agent followed him into a Catholic Church on Sundays and took notes of what was happening. “Pregnant women and children” bore “gifts for life,” the agent said. The parishioners even went to Holy Communion, as did Hyde, and were caught praying! [For evidence, see my book, The Politics of the American Civil Liberties Union, Transaction Press, 1985.]

All of this was done to show that it was Hyde’s Catholicism that accounted for his pro-life stand. Hyde’s response was right on the money: “I suppose the Nazis did that—observed Jews going to the synagogues in Hitler’s Germany—but I had hoped that we would have gotten past that kind of fascist tactic.”

So it is a little too late for the ACLU to feign outrage over FBI agents spying on Muslims in a mosque: it cares not a whit about religious rights, unless they serve a political purpose. That’s why the ACLU is so fond of defending the religious rights of prisoners, but is noticeably silent when it comes to the due process rights of Catholic priests accused of crimes that allegedly happened decades ago.

The FBI has a job to do in tracking down suspected terrorists, and if that warrants surveillance in a house of worship—including a Catholic church—so be it.