Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments as follows:

For the past several years, New York State Assemblywoman Margaret Markey has sought legislation targeting the sexual abuse of minors. Yet never once has she introduced a bill that would apply to public institutions—just private ones. Now she is back again asking her colleagues to pass a bill that would suspend the civil statute of limitations for a one-year period; it would allow alleged victims who claim they were molested in a private institution to sue, regardless of when it supposedly happened.

But what if a kid was sodomized by a public school teacher in Albany just before Thanksgiving? New York State law says it is already too late for him to sue. Markey agrees with this condition—the kid is out of luck. She could have attempted to correct this situation, but she has chosen not to. In other words, child rape in public schools is not something she will ever confront. However, if a student was allegedly groped by a Catholic teacher in the 1950s, Markey wants it to be legal to sue the teacher, the school, and the diocese in which it is located.

In the month of February alone, six public school employees have been arrested for sexually abusing a minor. And this is just in New York City! Common decency, as well as common sense, dictates that new laws designed to curb this problem should begin by targeting the public schools. Instead, Markey wants to give them a pass.

There is a bill that does not discriminate between private and public institutions. Assemblyman Michael Cusick and State Senator Andrew Lanza do not care where a child may have been molested, and that is why their bill covers students in all schools. Assemblywoman Markey thinks that equal coverage is wrong; she believes in selective justice, which is the highest expression of injustice.

Contact Markey: MarkeyM@assembly.state.ny.us

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments as follows:

Some of the critics of Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich have gone beyond Catholic bashing.

Garry Wills is so excited he sees Santorum as a modern-day Torquemada, a man who “equates contraception with the guillotine.” That this lunacy appeared on the blog site of the New York Review of Books speaks volumes. On examiner.com, Michael Hughes compares Santorum to the Taliban, arguing he wants “a Christian form of Sharia law.” Mark Morford at sfgate.com says Santorum reminds him of a molester, someone who is trying to save “the dying Catholic church.”

Larry Doyle at Huffington Post went beyond the candidate to slam all Catholics for participating “in a barbaric ritual…a ‘mass’ in which a black-robed cleric casts a spell over some bread and wine…[resulting] in a cannibalistic reverie.” Sexpert Dan Savage said that when Newt Gingrich was married to his second wife, he was “still f***ing the consecrated host out of his ‘devout Catholic’ mistress.”

The Catholicism of these candidates only explains some of the hatred. John Cassidy in The New Yorker says that Santorum “with his seven kids” (which he notes first and foremost) is radically different from the magazine’s readership. He is right: those for whom abortion is the most precious right can’t figure Santorum out. Neither can Ivan Strenski at religiondispatches.com. While he says photos of Santorum and his daughter who suffers from Trisomy 18 “touched his heart,” he also wonders, “Why would one choose, in effect, to take the risk of bringing a doomed child into the world?”

These people may be threatened by Catholicism, but what gives them the chills are babies. And they really flip over couples like the Santorums and the Palins who don’t abort their disabled children.

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on a new video by President Barack Obama that was cut to launch his “African Americans for Obama” campaign:

It is hardly newsworthy for President Obama to beckon African Americans to support his presidential campaign, but his clarion call to black churches to get on board represents a break with presidential politics: it is a deliberate challenge to the IRS stricture governing the role of religion in politics.

In the video [click here], President Obama explicitly calls on African Americans to go “to your faith community” to get the word out about his campaign. He even goes so far as to say that “congregation captains” should be organized to accomplish this goal.

This is good news. It means that the IRS harness on the clergy is officially off. Priests can now appoint “congregation captains” who will inform the faithful about attempts by the Obama administration to deny Catholics their First Amendment rights. By formally appealing to their parishioners to mobilize against the ObamaCare legislation, priests will be faithfully implementing the president’s new initiative.

Bishops, of course, will be able to seize on this ground-breaking proposal by asking priests, nuns, brothers, school teachers—lay leaders of every cause—to get the word out about the draconian Health and Human Services edict.

In other words, by undoing the IRS muzzle on black ministers, Obama has also made it possible for bishops and priests to organize against his war on Catholics with impunity. The timing is auspicious.

Rep. Michael Grimm requested that the Empire State Building shine red in honor of the elevation of New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan to Cardinal. Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on the decision to deny the request:

The problem with Cardinal Dolan is that he is not a mass murderer. If he were, he may have been honored the way Mao Zedong was in 2009. Even though Mao murdered 77 million innocent Chinese men, women and children, Anthony Malkin, the owner of the Empire State Building, made sure that on the 60th anniversary of the Communist Revolution, the tower would shine red and yellow.

The decision to deny Rep. Grimm’s request did not surprise us. I petitioned to have the tower of the Empire State Building shine blue and white on August 26, 2010 in honor of Mother Teresa’s centennial. I was denied. Worse, I was lied to. With Malkin’s blessing, a brand new policy barring recognition of religious individuals was developed after I was denied, and it was then invoked as cause for denial; the policy in place when I submitted my proposal had no such stricture.

To protest this insult, we staged a rally outside the Empire State Building on the 100th birthday of Mother Teresa. Representatives from several religions, both eastern and western, spoke before an estimated crowd of 3,500.

To show how utterly clueless Malkin and his crew are, the Empire State Building will honor St. Patrick for three days next month, March 16-18. Who do they think St. Patrick was? A closet secularist?

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments as follows:

In last night’s GOP debate, Newt Gingrich charged that in the last presidential campaign the elite media never asked “why Barack Obama voted in favor of legalizing infanticide.” Gingrich wasn’t off by much—Obama was rarely asked about it, and never was he pressed on this issue. Even now, the media cover-up that Gingrich alleges is patently true.

From a Lexis-Nexis search linking “Obama” and “infanticide,” scouring all U.S. Newspapers today, we learn that only four papers, and one wire service, reported on Gingrich’s remark. As I will explain, actually there were five newspapers that made mention of this.

The Chicago Tribune, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and the Washington Times all gave accurate accounts. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution was factually wrong when it said that “Gingrich was referring to Obama’s opposition to…partial-birth abortions.” No, Gingrich was referring to Obama’s opposition in the Illinois state senate to bills in 2001, 2002 and 2003 that would have mandated that a child born alive as a result of a botched abortion be given medical care.

AP mentions what Gingrich said but does so by citing Obama’s support for “infanticide.” Why the quote marks? Intentionally letting an infant die who is completely born is nothing less than infanticide.

The top prize for deceit goes to the New York Times. In the paper’s early edition, the story by Jeff Zeleny and Jim Rutenberg offers the Gingrich quote but then adds a curious parenthetical: “(It was a reference to Mr. Obama’s opposition to bills in Illinois that would have provided legal protection to aborted fetuses showing signs of life; Mr. Obama said he had seen the measures as attacks on women’s reproductive rights.)” This attempt to bail out Obama, as bad as it is, was stricken altogether from later editions—there is no mention of the infanticide issue—and does not appear in a Lexis-Nexis search. By the way, in 2008 Rutenberg wrote that accusations surfaced “accusing Mr. Obama of supporting ‘infanticide’ (he does not).” The bias can’t be more blatant.

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments as follows:

Here’s a scenario worth contemplating: let’s assume that the federal government tries to censor the New York Times, and that critics of the newspaper take it to task for complaining that their “free speech” rights have been violated. Would not the Times be justly angered at the suggestion that their First Amendment right to free speech was being discussed as if it were their so-called free speech rights? Well, here’s how it handles the religious liberty rights of Catholics, now under fire from President Obama.

• Reporter Laurie Goodstein writes a story on “Bishops Open ‘Religious Liberty’ Drive” (11-15-11)
• An editorial slams Mitt Romney for “promising to defend the Roman Catholic Church’s ‘religious liberty’” (2-2-12)
• An editorial discusses the “phony crisis over ‘religious liberty’” (2-11-12)

Bloggers and other newspapers are also picking up on the “religious liberty” rights of Catholics (Pam’s House Blend, 2-10-12; Ira Chernus, religiondispatches.org, 2-21-12; an editorial in Vermont’s Brattleboro Reformer, 2-21-12).

The New York Times’ game of dumbing down the religious liberty rights of Catholics even extends to mocking the title of pro-life leaders. On Feb. 16, Richard Doerflinger, the associate director of the Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities of the bishops’ conference, was referred to in a news story as the “associate director of ‘pro-life activities.’”

It would be wrong to conclude that the Times always speaks derisively about religious liberty. In an editorial on Nov. 22, 2010, it pointedly said, “Mr. Obama respects religious liberty.” And on Sept. 19, 2011, it said, “Mayor Michael Bloomberg rightly stood up for religious liberty.” The issue? Bloomberg’s support for building a mosque at Ground Zero.

The Catholic League’s 2011 Annual Report on Anti-Catholicism is now available. It covers all the major issues that the Catholic League dealt with in 2011, along with many others that came to our attention.

The report covers the following areas: activist organizations; the arts; business/workplace; education; government; and the media.

There are special sections as well: our exposé of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP); our response to a Rolling Stone article and a Philadelphia Inquirer editorial on the Archdiocese of Philadelphia; a reprint of our ads in defense of the Catholic Church that appeared in the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune; a lengthy analysis of the John Jay Report on Sexual Abuse; a detailed account of the attacks on Bishop Robert Finn by SNAP and the Kansas City Star; and a section on the War on Christmas.

Copies are available for $10 to the general public [click here]. Complementary copies were sent to those in government, education, religious organizations, the media, etc. It is the most authoritative summary of anti-Catholic incidents in 2011.

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments as follows:

On February 15, Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius said Catholic insurance carriers will not be given an exemption from the mandate requiring insurance companies to provide for contraceptive, abortifacient and sterilization services. She explained, “Religious insurance companies don’t really design the plans they sell based on their own religious tenets.” This is an outrageous smear.

Last month, Our Sunday Visitor ran a splendid article on this subject titled, “Investing with a Clear Conscience.” It listed the following companies as following Catholic investment principles: Ave Maria Mutual Funds; Christian Brothers Investment Services; Epiphany Funds; First Affirmative Financial Network; Investing for Catholics; LKCM Aquinas Funds; Prosperitas Wealth Management; and Trinity Fiduciary Partners.

The article also listed the six investment principles as laid out in the bishops’ 1991 statement on socially responsible investing (it was revised in 2003): Protecting Human Life; Promoting Human Dignity; Reducing Arms Production; Pursuing Economic Justice; Protecting the Environment; and Encouraging Corporate Responsibility.

Sebelius, of course, is a champion of partial-birth abortion, so she obviously fails the bishops’ test. That is her business. But she has no business misinforming the public about the honorable role played by many Catholic insurance companies.

The Catholic League uses Christian Brothers as its insurance carrier, and we will fight attempts by the Obama administration to undermine its integrity.

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments as follows:

Rep. Elijah Cummings, the senior Democrat on the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, expressed dissatisfaction today with the composition of the panel which was selected to testify on the religious liberty issues involved in the Obama healthcare mandate. He complained that Catholic groups like Catholics United were not asked to speak.

Similarly, the White House Blog lists Catholics United as a Catholic group that supports the mandate.

But Catholics United is nothing but a George Soros-funded anti-Catholic front group. As we have previously reported, Soros’ Open Society Institute has poured a ton of money into Catholics United.

In 2008, Archbishop Charles Chaput spoke for many bishops when he said that Catholics United was doing a “disservice to the Church.” In 2010 and 2011, it worked against the bishops by supporting abortion coverage in the Obama healthcare bill. It also supported efforts to censor the free speech rights of the Susan B. Anthony List in 2010 which had posted a pro-life billboard in Ohio. That same year it sided with anti-Catholics who applauded a vile video depicting large ants crawling all over Jesus on the Cross that was shown at the Smithsonian, a publicly funded museum.

Rep. Cummings and the Obama administration, along with many in the elite media (the New York Times being the worst offender), are intentionally deceiving the American people by casting Catholics United as a legitimate Catholic organization. It is neither Catholic nor an organization. Rather it is nothing more than an anti-Catholic letterhead funded by George Soros, a left-wing billionaire atheist who has long worked to subvert the Catholic Church.

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments as follows:

Following her testimony yesterday before the Senate Finance Committee, Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Kathleen Sebelius was asked whether she spoke to the bishops about the controversial mandate she is pushing. She admitted she did not. Then she said, “I know that the president has spoken to the bishops on several occasions.”

Sebelius is wrong. Bishop William Lori, who heads the bishops’ Ad Hoc Committee for Religious Liberty, said this week that administration officials should have sat down with the bishops. “That certainly did not happen,” he said. Archbishop Timothy Dolan, who heads the bishops’ conference, met once with the president, and that was three months ago; the two phone calls he has had since were to inform him that the bishops’ religious liberty concerns would not be honored.

Under questioning from Sen. Orrin Hatch, Sebelius further admitted that HHS never subjected the religious liberty issues to a legal analysis, as requested by 27 senators. She also admitted that she never asked the Justice Department to consider this issue.

It gets worse. Today’s New York Times reports today that the administration announced the Obama mandate “before it had figured out how to address one conspicuous point: Like most large employers, many religiously affiliated organizations choose to insure themselves rather than hire an outside company to assume the risk.” As the Times points out, this is not a slight issue: 60 percent of all workers with health insurance are covered by a self-funded plan, and the figure jumps to 82 percent for large companies. And no one bothered to address this?

So they refused to consult with the bishops; they refused to weigh the First Amendment religious liberty concerns; and they refused to study how the mandate might impact self-insured companies. In other words, with characteristic arrogance, they just “winged it.” Wait until the Supreme Court hears all of this.