KATHY GRIFFIN INDICTS GAYS

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on last night’s Bravo special, “Kathy Griffin: 50 & Not Pregnant”:

The evidence that homosexual priests account for the vast majority of sexual abuse cases in the Catholic Church is uncontested—80 percent of the minors victimized have been male and most have been postpubescent—so when comedians take shots at abusing priests, we all know who they are really talking about. That includes Kathy Griffin, who last night called priests “kid f******.” For this she was wildly cheered by her huge homosexual audience.

No one knows for sure what percent of priests are homosexuals, though it is safe to say it is higher than found in the general population; it is also safe to say that less than half of those in ministry today are homosexual. Therefore, to paint all priests as homosexual molesters is unfair: most priests are heterosexual and have never been involved in sexual abuse. It is even unfair to homosexual priests: while they have definitely caused most of the damage, there is no evidence that most homosexual priests are molesters.

It is not certain why homosexuals would cheer Griffin’s attack on priests who share their orientation, unless, of course, they are living in denial. Click here for a reality check the Catholic League is providing to homosexuals: it details the prevalence of sexual abuse among them.

One more thing. Since it is very difficult for homosexuals to enter the priesthood these days, the rate of sexual abuse is nearly non-existent. Which means Griffin is running out of copy.

Contact Bravo’s head honcho, Andy Cohen: andysblog@nbcuni.com



SHOWTIME TO AIR “THE BORGIAS”

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on the upcoming series, “The Borgias,” to air on Showtime:
 
On April 3, Showtime, the pay-per-view sister station of CBS, will commence a nine-part series on “The Borgias”; Bravo will pick it up shortly after it premiers. Rodrigo Borgia, who became Pope Alexander VI, was an extortionist who led a life of debauchery, fathering four illegitimate children. That he was a disgrace to the papacy is not in question; rather, the question is why Showtime decided it was worth spending $45 million to produce it.
 
The series was written by Irish-born atheist Neil Jordan. His previous work includes directing “The Butcher Boy,” which featured Sinead O’Connor playing a foul-mouthed Virgin Mary. The producer, James Flynn, has admitted that the series takes “poetic license” with the historical account, thus assuring us of a sensationalized presentation of an already sensational story. 
 
Given the “poetic license,” it makes us wonder whether Alexander VI will be portrayed as friendly to the Jews, as he was in real life. Moreover, will there be any mention of Pope Pius II taking him to task? In a scathing letter he wrote when Borgia was a cardinal, the pope admonished him to change his ways and start living a “well ordered life.” But his effort was in vain: Borgia continued with his life of profligacy.
 
It is worth recalling that the first pope, St. Peter, denied Christ three times. So Catholics don’t expect perfection from its clergy. This, however, is beside the point: the most immediate issue is why Showtime decided to gift Catholics with this series during the Lenten season.
 
It might be worth asking Showtime whether it plans to run a series on Muhammad during Ramadan that features his marriage to a 9-year-old girl, Aisha. Muhammad at the time was in his fifties.
 
Contact Showtime CEO, Matthew Blank: Matthew.blank@showtime.net
 


DESCENT TO THE GUTTER

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on the way some are discussing priestly sexual abuse:
Sexual abuse of minors is unfortunately a social problem that touches virtually every segment of the population where adults and minors interact on a regular basis. Nowhere is this less a problem today than in the Catholic Church: the norms it has adopted have led to a massive reduction in priestly sexual abuse since its peak in the early 1980s. But recent reports about old cases continue to surface, the latest being stories out of the Philadelphia archdiocese.
When journalists and commentators discuss sexual abuse, they rarely offer a graphic description of the sex act; they properly assume that readers get the gist of what occurred when they say someone was raped. [Note: the vast majority of priestly abuse cases did not involve rape.] But when it comes to priests, a different standard is evident: the most detailed descriptions are offered.
Without getting into the gutter with those whose prurient interests make ordinary voyeurs appear normal, it will not be repeated here exactly what was said.
Among the most offensive chroniclers is psychologist Mary Gail Frawley O’Dea: her anger, which is so over the top as to require professional treatment, wrote a piece in the National Catholic Reporter that is impossible to top. Last month, the Philadelphia Daily News went tabloid with its “made for Hustler” contribution. Maureen Dowd’s affection for lurid accounts was on display yesterday in the New York Times, and it so impressed the increasingly unhinged Christopher Matthews that he read a selection from it last night on the air.
We know what’s going on: get Catholics so riled up that they will demand the Church adopt the liberal agenda on sexuality. They just don’t get it: it was the detour from orthodoxy that allowed the abuse scandal to take hold in the first place.


VANITY FAIR’S ETHICS

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on Vanity Fair’s ethics:
 
There is a new f-word that offends Vanity Fair and it is not the obscenity: it’s “fags.” Homosexual writer Brett Berk has made public his contrition for using the word in his online review of a recent episode of the TV show, “Glee”; he described two homosexual characters, Kurt and Blaine, as “fags.” One reason Berk felt comfortable using the word is because he likes to call himself a “fun and faggy editor.” 
 
Vanity Fair adopted its new ethics policy after being criticized by GLAAD, a homosexual activist group. It should be noted that it has no policy against printing the obscene f-word, which it has printed on several occasions.
 
The policy is so new that the word “fag” appears in the March 2010 edition of Vanity Fair. Apparently, the magazine is more sensitive to homosexuals than African Americans: in the March 2011 edition, they printed the word “niggers.” 
 
All of this should be of interest to Catholics because Vanity Fair has a history of Catholic bashing. It has proudly published malicious diatribes by anti-Catholics like John Cornwell and Christopher Hitchens, so for it to now claim that it does not want to feed bigotry is a bit of a joke. Maybe someday they will think of Catholics the way they do homosexuals, then all will be right by us.
 


ABUSE PROBE NEEDED NATIONWIDE

Misconduct by government employees is the subject of this news release by Catholic League president Bill Donohue: 
 
On March 13, the New York Times ran a lengthy front-page story [click here], “At State-Run Homes, Abuse and Impunity,” that shows how common it is for state employees servicing the developmentally disabled to abuse residents. Because they are protected by the Civil Service Employees Association, it is almost impossible to fire them. Though it is against the law not to report cases of abuse to the police, “fewer than 5 percent were referred to law enforcement.” Moreover, “In 25 percent of the cases involving physical, sexual or psychological abuse, the state employees were transferred to other homes.” In many serious cases, the same employee was moved more than once. 
 
On March 12, the New York Daily News ran a story [click here]  on “rubber room” teachers in New York City. Hundreds of teachers have been removed from the classroom for misconduct—it is almost impossible to fire them because they are protected by the teachers’ unions—and currently there are 83 who have a criminal case pending against them. And as we know from previous stories, moving abusive teachers around from school district to school district is so common in the profession that it is called “passing the trash.”
 
On March 2, the New York Post ran a story [click here] by Michael Goodwin detailing how approximately 500 teachers “have been convicted of criminal offenses, including assault, sex crimes, kidnapping, burglary, prostitution and lewdness.” He adds that “many arbitrators are reluctant to fire teachers for almost any reason.” 
 
In New York, Governor Andrew Cuomo has removed the two top officials in state-run homes, and has ordered a probe of the agencies. 
 
I am writing to every governor asking for an investigation of all public-run agencies and schools. It is obviously not just a New York State problem, and it sure isn’t just a problem in the Catholic Church.
 


JEFFREY ANDERSON’S VENDETTA

The following is the text of our ad that appears today in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:
 
Anyone who thinks Jeffrey Anderson is in it just for the money is nuts. Sure, he’s made a fortune suing the Catholic Church over old cases of alleged priestly abuse, but money alone cannot account for his latest vendetta. Now he’s engaged in a media ad campaign to find anyone who claims he was abused by a priest, regardless of how flimsy the evidence or when the alleged act occurred. It matters not a whit whether the priest is long dead and cannot defend himself. 
 
In one sense, Anderson is doing us a favor: the cat’s out of the bag. His integrity is shot. Any lawyer who would conduct a public relations hunt for one class of people to sue is not interested in justice. Quite frankly, if Anderson were concerned about all victims of abuse, he would not exclusively target alleged Catholic ones. 
 
Imagine for one moment if a lawyer launched an advertising campaign pledging to find every last person who was ever abused by a public school teacher. Or imagine a campaign that sought to locate only those persons who were victimized by an Orthodox rabbi? The mind boggles just thinking about it. Anyone familiar with the data on sexual abuse knows that a) the Catholic Church never had a monopoly on this problem to begin with and b) it has less of a problem today than any other institution, secular or religious (the average number of credible accusations made against over 40,000 priests in the last five years is 8.6).
 
Anderson’s mad quest for new Catholic victims is of a piece with his pathological fixation on the Catholic Church. We’ve been on to his game for many years; his latest gambit should convince everyone of his real motive. It is not justice that drives him and his army of lawyers—it is a debased appetite to get the Catholic Church. 
 
It’s time for a Catholic revolt. While all sexual abuse must be condemned unequivocally, all attempts to shake down one segment of the population must also be condemned. Bigotry has no legitimate role to play in the pursuit of justice.
 


OVERSTATING THE PHILLY PROBLEM

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments as follows: 
 
The public impression that the Archdiocese of Philadelphia has been sheltering priests who have sexually abused minors has led to outrageous comments by agenda-driven lawyers, professional victims’ groups and pundits. It’s time to take a deep breath and look at the facts.
 
Beginning in 2003, 61 cases of priestly misconduct were examined by the archdiocese. Twenty four were dismissed because the accusations could not be substantiated. Of the 37 remaining cases, three priests were suspended immediately following the recent grand jury report; 21 additional priests were suspended this week. Which means a total of 24 priests have been suspended, leaving 13 unaccounted for. Of the 13, eight were found not to have a credible accusation made against them; one has been on leave for some time; two are incapacitated and no longer in ministry; two more belong to religious orders outside the archdiocese. 
 
This means that no credible accusation was made against the majority of the priests (the initial 24 plus the eight newly absolved, or 32 of 61). Moreover, none of the 24 who are currently suspended (the initial three plus the 21 this week) has been found guilty of anything. To top things off, the charges against them include such matters as “boundary issues” and “inappropriate behavior,” terms so elastic as to indict almost anyone. 
 
Just as it is important not to understate the problem, it is important not to overstate it. Neither the archdiocese, nor the media, has been particularly clear about offering a concise, disaggregated tally. The confusion is complicated because the public assumes that not only are all of these priests guilty, but that they are all guilty of a serious offense. 
 
What is being lost in the public discussion are the constitutionally protected due process rights of accused priests. The rush to judgment is especially despicable in a day and age when accused Muslims are more likely to be presumed innocent than accused Catholic priests. And they aren’t being detained because of “boundary issues.”
 


ANGLICAN LEADER WRONG ON MUSLIMS

Catholic League president Bill Donohue addresses remarks published today by Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury:

The Archbishop of Canterbury says that Shahbaz Bhatti, Pakistan’s Minister for Minorities, who was killed for protesting the nation’s blasphemy laws, died “not simply for his Christian faith, but for a vision shared between Pakistani Christians and Muslims.” Indeed, he says that Bhatti’s “courage and steadfastness of purpose was nourished in the political culture of Pakistan,” and that only a “faction in Pakistan” supports injustice. What is needed, he adds, is “a rational debate in Pakistan” about the blasphemy laws.

Bhatti was murdered for the same reason another Pakistani government official was, Salman Taseer: they protested the invocation of the blasphemy law that sentenced Aasiya Bibi to death. Bhatti’s fight for justice had nothing to do with the “political culture of Pakistan”—it was a reflection of his devout Catholicism.

It is precisely the political culture of Islamism that is the problem, not some faction. Here’s the proof: in a major survey published by the Pew Research Center, over 80 percent of Muslims in Pakistan favor stoning people who commit adultery and say the proper punishment for theft is whipping and cutting off of hands. Most important, 76 percent favor the death penalty for Muslims who convert. Moreover, it is ludicrous to say “a rational debate” about the blasphemy laws should take place: Bhatti and Taseer were murdered for discussing it! And now Sherry Rehman, a member of the ruling party in Pakistan, was forced to withdraw her bill to amend the law. One wonders what planet Williams is from.

Not until Muslims renounce the sharia—the totalitiarian legal system that justifies oppression—will Christians be safe in Muslim-run nations. We’re not talking about a fringe group of fanatics, we’re talking about a large swath of the Muslim population. See the section on our website, “Christian Persecution,” for recent stories of Muslim barbarism.



RICHARD COHEN SMEARS PRIESTS

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on Richard Cohen’s syndicated Washington Post column that appeared today:
Richard Cohen objects to the upcoming congressional hearings by Rep. Peter King on terrorism, arguing that if it is okay to probe Muslims for terrorism, it should be okay to probe priests for sexual abuse: “The organization BishopAccountability.org reports that ‘perhaps more than 100,000 children’ have been sexually abused since 1950 by Catholic clergymen of one sort or another.” The figure is wildly in error. Moreover, even his source mentions these are accusations.
The “organization” he cites is a website that specializes in publishing accusations against priests—no matter how flimsy—not findings of guilt. The figure of 100,000 they cite is taken from an article written by Andrew Greeley in 1993 that was based purely on conjecture.
Greeley said the data on the general population “suggests that during a ‘career’ of abuse some victimizers may have as many as 200 or even 300 victims.” [My italic.] He then picked a “conservative number of 50 victims” to work with, but this was pure posturing: there is nothing “conservative” about a number based on a guesstimate of the highest number of victims committed by a small minority of the offenders.
The magnanimous Greeley then guesstimated that between 2,000 and 4,000 priests might be guilty of the sexual abuse of minors, settling on a figure of 2,500. Finally, he multiplied 2,500 by 50 to arrive at the celebrated figure of “well in excess of 100,000.”
Over a decade later, the real figures were made available by social scientists from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice: an estimated 4 percent of priests have had accusations made against them since 1950, and the majority, 56 percent, were alleged to have abused one victim. Doing a little math (see the “Executive Summary” of the 2004 report) we find that the total number of alleged victims at the hands of 4,392 priests is roughly between 10,000 and 12,000. That’s a very long way from 100,000. Cohen should offer a retraction.
Contact Richard Cohen: cohenr@washpost.com


THE SCANDAL OF CHURCH CRITICS

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on remarks recently made by Trinity College professor Mark Silk and gay writer Andrew Sullivan:
 
In a post today on Beliefnet, Mark Silk looks at charges made by attorney Jeffrey Anderson against New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan. Silk weighs my defense of Dolan saying I was correct to say that the term “scandal” in the Catholic lexicon has a special meaning: as I indicated last week, it means “a word or action evil in itself, which occasions another spiritual ruin.” No matter, he declares, the term, “in the doctrinal sense, is itself highly problematic.” He concludes by saying, “It’s time for the doctrine to go.”
 
Andrew Sullivan condemns the Catholic Church for its “homophobic doctrine,” and for operating “one of the biggest pedophile conspiracies in the world for decades if not centuries.” He concludes by saying “it seems to me that increased police involvement [in the Catholic Church] is necessary.”
 
Neither man has any ethical standing to make these kinds of remarks, and indeed both smack of hubris. Silk is not a Catholic—he is a Jew. Imagine a Catholic professor telling observant Jews that they need to change one or more of their doctrines. If such a character could be found, I would be the first to tell him to mind his own business.
 
Ten years ago, Sullivan was forced to admit that he had listed himself on the Internet as a HIV-positive gay man looking to have unprotected sex with other HIV-positive men. He also expressed an interest in “bi-scenes, one-on-ones, three-ways, groups, parties, orgies and gang bangs.” His standards, however, did not allow for “fats and fems.” So nice to know this is the same guy who wants cops to police the priests. 
 
It just doesn’t get much sicker than this.
 
Contact Mark Silk: mark.silk@trincoll.edu
Contact Andrew Sullivan: andrew@theatlantic.com