To read the Catholic League’s ad on Christian genocide in the Middle East from today’s New York Times op-ed page, click here.  

Bill Donohue issued the following remarks today:

The Catholic League, which has marched in New York City’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade for 20 years, will not do so in 2015.

Prior to the announcement that a gay group would march under its own banner in the 2015 parade, I was consulted by parade organizers about their plans. I told them that I could only support this decision if there were a formal revision in the parade’s rules governing marching units, and that is exactly what I said in my first public statement. To be specific, I asked them to pledge that a pro-life Catholic group would also be permitted. I was told that a formal change in the rules had been approved and that a pro-life group would march. Now I am being told that the list of marching units is set and that no pro-life group will march in next year’s parade. Accordingly, I have decided to withdraw our participation.

Why should this matter? For the past two decades I have been the parade’s most vocal defender of its rules. Repeatedly, I have said that gays have no more been banned from marching than pro-life Catholics have: members of both groups can march with other units; they simply can’t march under their own banner. Why? Because the parade is not about gays or abortion, or anything other than St. Patrick.

Attempts will now be made to pit me against Timothy Cardinal Dolan, the Grand Marshal of the 2015 parade. The suggestion that I am at odds with the New York Archbishop is not only false, it is despicable. Cardinal Dolan has no more rabid supporter than Bill Donohue, and nothing that has transpired recently changes anything.

My reasons for withdrawing from the parade have nothing to do with Cardinal Dolan or with gays. It has to do with being betrayed by the parade committee. They not only told me one thing, and did another, they decided to include a gay group that is neither Catholic nor Irish while stiffing pro-life Catholics. This is as stunning as it is indefensible. To find out how this sad chapter unfolded, click here.

Next week marks the 20th anniversary of Father Gordon MacRae’s unjust prison sentence. What happened to him is unbelievable. My account of his ordeal was posted today on his website, www.thesestonewalls.com. To read it, click here.

Bill Donohue comments on a press conference held today on the steps of the New York Public Library:

We had two staff members at the press conference, and what they reported is quite interesting. Three gay groups announced that they have applied to march in New York’s 2015 St. Patrick’s Day Parade: Irish Queers, Lavender and Green Alliance, and St. Pat’s for All. They are furious with parade officials for not including them, and they are particularly angry at NBC (the network that televises the parade) for securing the right of an NBC gay group, OUT@NBC, to march, but not them.

Here is how these three gay groups characterized the NBC gambit: “Gay corporate staff can march (under a banner that doesn’t say the word ‘gay’), NBC saves face, and the parade keeps NBC’s sponsorship—without doing a thing to end the exclusion of LGBT groups.”

Emmaia Gelman of Irish Queers said there will “absolutely” be a protest at the 2015 march if these groups are denied the right to march. More important, Ann Northrop spoke at the press conference. She is most known for helping to organize the 1989 Nazi-like storming of a Sunday Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral; this is when Act-Up disrupted the Mass by chaining themselves to the pews and spitting the Eucharist on the floor. Now Northrop is back looking to crash the St. Patrick’s Day Parade.

John Lahey, the vice chairman of the parade committee, stunned us last week when he said that other gay groups may march in the 2015 parade. Now he has told the Irish Times that they are under pressure to “shorten” the parade. Who issued this edict? And does this mean that a contingent from the pro-life community will not be marching? We gave our support contingent on a formal rule change that would also allow pro-life Catholics to march under their own banner. Stay tuned.

Bill Donohue published an article in the September issue of the Catholic League’s monthly journal, Catalyst, about the attack on Mid-Western bishops. Click here to read the article.

Bill Donohue speaks to some issues regarding New York City’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade that need to be addressed:

Yesterday, William O’Reilly, the parade’s spokesman, said that only one gay group, affiliated with NBC, would march in the 2015 St. Patrick’s Day Parade; we were told the same thing earlier. But just a few hours later he was undercut by John Lahey, the vice chairman of the parade: he said other gay groups could still apply to march in next year’s parade.

Even more problematic is what O’Reilly said when asked if a pro-abortion group could march. He replied, “Anyone can apply.” Why not simply say that this is a Catholic event, and as such any group that is flagrantly promoting what the Church says is an “intrinsic evil,” namely  abortion, shouldn’t bother to apply. Why hedge? NARAL Pro-Choice New York, the anti-Catholic advocate of partial-birth abortion, is already expressing its unhappiness with the absence of pro-abortion groups from the parade.

Now Irish LGBT groups also want to march. This started a long time ago when ILGO (Irish Lesbian and Gay Organization) first lobbied to be included in the parade. In the 1990s, Anne Maguire, one of the founders of ILGO, admitted that its members had no real interest in honoring St. Patrick. After failing in her bid in the courts to push her way into the parade, she said that “most [ILGO] people, particularly those of us who are most actively involved, had no inclination to be associated with, never mind march in, the parade. [The protest], very simply, is where our ‘coming out’ took place.”

The goal of these activists, supported by the corporate elite, is to neuter the religious element of the parade. This is an Irish-Catholic parade, and if what comes after the hyphen is cut, so will the parade’s support, beginning with the Catholic League.

Bill Donohue comments on the decision by the organizers of New York City’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade to allow an NBC gay group to march in the 2015 parade:

Never in the history of New York’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade have homosexuals been barred from marching, anymore than pro-life Catholics have, but in both cases they were not permitted to have their own unit. I have been assured that the rules have been formally changed to allow both of these groups, as well as others, to march under their own banner. That being the case, there should be no controversy. One would hope that all the new entries will conduct themselves in a manner that honors St. Patrick, lest another round of controversy emerges.

Bill Donohue corrects the record:

An editorial in today’s New York Times cites the Vatican’s disciplinary action against its former ambassador to the Dominican Republic, the now-defrocked Archbishop Jozef Wesolowski. It invokes Pope Francis’ promise that “in the pedophilia scandal ‘there are no privileges.'”

The Times erred again by repeating the myth of a pedophilia scandal: 100 percent of the victimizers were male; 81 percent of the victims were male; and 78 percent were postpubescent. That would make it a homosexual scandal. Indeed, less than 5 percent of these cases involve pedophilia.

The boys the archbishop abused were teenagers, meaning that homosexuality, not pedophilia, was in play. The distinction is important.