Bill Donohue comments on the resignation of Kansas City-St. Joseph Bishop Robert Finn:

In 2012, Bishop Finn was found guilty of a misdemeanor for failing to report Fr. Shawn Ratigan to the authorities once he learned of sexually explicit images of minors on his computer. The Catholic League defended him against his critics, some of whom were vicious, and it is worth repeating why.

• In 2010, a computer technician found disturbing crotch-shot photos of girls fully clothed on Ratigan’s computer; there was one naked photo of a non-sexual nature.
• Even though there was no complainant, a police officer and an attorney were contacted by diocesan officials. They both agreed that the single naked photo did not constitute pornography.
• After Ratigan attempted suicide, he was evaluated by a psychiatrist—at the request of Finn. Ratigan was diagnosed as depressed, but was not a pedophile.
• Finn put restrictions on Ratigan, which he broke. The diocese then contacted the authorities, though it had no legal mandate to do so.
• Finn ordered an independent investigation, even though there was no complainant.
• When it was found that Ratigan was again using a computer, an examination revealed hundreds of offensive photos.
• The Vicar General, Msgr. Robert Murphy, then called the cops (Finn was out of town).
• A week later Ratigan was arrested.

Though no child was ever touched or abused by Ratigan, it is clear that he never belonged in the priesthood. But Bishop Finn did not take a cavalier attitude toward his misconduct. If he had, Ratigan’s problem would have been ignored altogether, counting on the fact that no one ever called his office saying Ratigan had abused his child.

Our prayers are with Bishop Finn, and we thank him for cleaning up the mess he inherited. It will make his successor’s job that much easier.

Bill Donohue comments on the results of the latest annual survey of clergy sexual abuse conducted by Georgetown University’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate:

Never before has there been better news about clergy sexual abuse, and never have the media been more quiet about it.

• Between July 1, 2013 and June 30, 2014, there were 294 credible accusations of sexual abuse of a minor by a priest or deacon.
• The time period extended back to the 1920s.
• Exactly two were made in 2014. The 2014 figure means that .68 percent of the accusations were deemed credible.
• As usual, the vast majority of the accusations were found to be unsubstantiated or proven false.
• As usual, most of the alleged offenders—74 percent—were deceased, already removed from ministry, already laicized, or missing.
• As usual, most of the alleged victims—75 percent—were male.
• As usual, most—71 percent—were postpubescent; only 20 percent were prepubescent (there was no identifiable age for 9 percent).
• As usual, three-quarters of the alleged sexual abuse took place between 1960 and 1984; as usual, the most common time period was 1975-1979.

In other words, most of the priests who were credibly accused were homosexual. This has always been the case. And most of the alleged abuse took place at the height of the sexual revolution. Small wonder.

The media, of course, don’t want to report on this. For example, Yahoo News picked up a story from a French source but never reported the numbers I mentioned. Indeed, they lied: they attributed the problem to pedophilia. In fact, it is indisputably, and overwhelmingly, a problem attributable to gay priests.

The Catholic Church has long since had a serious problem with this issue, yet bigoted comedians and biased reporters continue to rip away, lying about the facts.

Bill Donohue comments on the controversy over a proposed faculty handbook in the Archdiocese of San Francisco:

Over the weekend, I spoke to San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone. He is very much in command of the situation, and appreciates the support of the Catholic League and many other lay Catholics. Given his leadership, it is not necessary for us to play a more active role, at least not for now. But he knows that we are always willing to do what we do best—play an ancillary role in defense of the clergy.

Please keep Archbishop Cordileone in your prayers. He is a true prince of the Church.

Long-time member of the Catholic League’s board of directors, Kenneth Whitehead, died of cancer on April 16. He was a prolific author, activist, diplomat, government administrator, and linguist; he also translated many books from French and German to English.

Ken authored, or co-authored, 27 books, ranging in subject from the Second Vatican Council to Catholic higher education. His work on the Catholic Catechism, written with Msgr. Michael Wrenn, was a cogent response to the volume’s critics. Whether discussing religious liberty or public policy, he never lacked for insight or courage. He also served as a diplomat in Rome, Lebanon, and Libya, and later as Assistant Secretary of Education in the Reagan administration.

As a board member of the Catholic League for over two decades, Ken authored 25 articles and book reviews for us; some were published in our monthly journal, Catalyst, and others were posted online. His scope was large: he provided a masterful review of the many books written by scholars who defended Pope Pius XII, and was just at home writing about ObamaCare. When asked to represent the Catholic League at Washington functions, he never turned us down.

Ken was a convert to the Catholic Church, and a brave and brilliant defender of the faith. He was also extremely kind and self-giving. To say he will be missed is an understatement. He is survived by his wife of 56 years, Margaret, and their four sons.

Bill Donohue comments on the latest attacks on San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone:

A motley group of malcontents, dissidents, and outsiders are waging war on Archbishop Cordileone. Their latest salvo was an ad in yesterday’s San Francisco Chronicle asking the pope to remove the archbishop. They opened fire on him precisely because they were blown off by Vatican officials in their feeble attempt to censure the archbishop.

Those who think that Archbishop Cordileone’s supporters are going to take this lying down are sadly mistaken. Watch what happens next week.

Bill Donohue replies to IBM’s assault on religious liberty:

Corporate behemoth IBM wants to join the culture war. Welcome, though it may regret doing so.

No one knew how anti-Christian IBM had become until it unleashed its fury against a religious-liberty bill in Louisiana. Its governor, Bobby Jindal, is a practicing Catholic, and he plans to sign a law that protects religious liberty from its enemies. Those enemies now include IBM.

IBM is charging that the religious-liberty bill will create a “hostile environment for our current and prospective employees,” saying the legislation is “antithetical to our company’s values.” It offers not a shred of evidence to substantiate this absurd accusation, and that’s because there is none. Proof: The Louisiana law is based on a similar federal law, as well as other state laws on this issue, and if religious-liberty legislation triggered a “hostile environment,” then IBM would be able to document it by now. It can’t. As for its “company values,” evidently not among them is respect for the First Amendment guarantee of religious liberty.

If IBM wants to relocate from Louisiana, it should consider Cuba. But it needs to move fast: Cuba is showing signs of renewed respect for religious liberty, and if conditions improve, the capitalist elites may find themselves sitting to the left of the communists.

Bill Donohue comments on several campaigns against Catholic schools:

We never hear of attempts by outsiders to dictate to Jews how to run their yeshivas. The same is true of the increasing number of Islamic schools: no one tells Muslims what their employment policies should be. The same is not true of Catholic schools.

• In San Francisco, outsiders have spent an enormous amount of money seeking to pressure the Archdiocese to change its prospective handbook for faculty.
• Outsiders, driven by the media, put Iowa Governor Terry Branstad on the firing line: they forced him to comment on Dowling Catholic High School’s decision not to hire an openly gay teacher; the Catholic executive exercised good sense and is not getting involved in the internal matters of this school.
• A Sommerville, New Jersey Catholic teacher was reinstated after outsiders pressured the school to sanction her for making allegedly anti-gay remarks.
• A stink was made by outsiders when they learned that a teacher at a Catholic high school in Omaha, Nebraska did not have his contract renewed; administrators found that he claimed to be engaged to his boyfriend.
• The Obama administration’s Equal Employment Opportunity Commission issued a complaint earlier this year against a Georgia Catholic academy because it fired a gay teacher who planned to marry his boyfriend.

It is one thing for Catholic alumni, faculty, and students to register misgivings about school employment policies, quite another when the government, non-profits, local activists, celebrities, the media, and corporations stick their noses in where they don’t belong.

Moreover, teachers are not being fired, or hired, because they happen to be gay: they are being rejected because they are flaunting their gay lifestyle. That’s not a small difference.

Bill Donohue comments on remarks made by Pope Francis and Debbie Wasserman Schultz:

Killing a 7-pound baby is not only okay, it is an expression of “personal liberty.” That is what the head of the Democratic National Committee, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, told Wolf Blitzer. The CNN host asked if “it’s okay, from your perspective, to kill a 7-pound baby in uterus?” The question arose because Republican Senator Rand Paul is asking the media to press Schultz on this issue. She responded to Blitzer saying, “We have very different definitions of personal liberty.”

Later in the day, Fox News host Megyn Kelly asked Schultz to define when life begins. She dodged the question several times.

Pope Francis knows when life begins, and he most definitely does not believe it is morally licit to kill a 7-pound baby, inside or outside the mother’s womb. All life begins at conception: this not a religious belief—it is Biology 101.

In his remarks yesterday to the General Audience in St. Peter’s Square, the pope stressed the “difference and complementarity” of men and women. The sexual differences are ordered to procreation, he said. The Holy Father also rejected the “so-called theory of gender,” the post-modern denial of fundamental differences between men and women. 

By denying the biological origins of life, and dismissing nature-based differences between the sexes, the Democratic Party, as represented by its spokesperson, is marginalizing itself from biology, common sense, and the American public.

The pope, of course, parts ways with Republicans on many issues as well, but on these critical moral issues, the chasm is between the head of the Catholic Church and the head of the Democratic National Committee.

Bill Donohue comments on an article by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach posted yesterday online at observer.com attacking Pope Pius XII:

Rabbi Boteach’s piece trotted out the discredited thesis that Pope Pius XII was “silent” during the Holocaust. In actual fact, the pope did more to save Jews from the Nazis than any other religious leader in the world. This explains why Jewish notables at the time praised him so effusively.

On Christmas Day, 1941, the New York Times singled the pope out in an editorial, saying he was “a lonely voice in the silence and darkness enveloping Europe this Christmas.”[My italic.] The next year it said, “This Christmas more than ever he [the pope] is a lonely voice crying out of the silence of a continent.” [My italic.] So much for the rap that the pope was “silent.”

To be sure, the pope chose his words carefully. So did Jewish leaders in the United States: they did not want to inflame Hitler even further. Were they Hitler’s rabbis?

One of the world’s experts on the Holocaust, who wrote monumental volumes on the subject, Sir Martin Gilbert, died in February. He said that the test case for Pius XII “was when the Gestapo came to Rome in 1943 to round up the Jews.” What happened? “And the Catholic Church,” he said, “on his [the pope’s] direct authority, immediately dispersed as many Jews as they could.” Which is why Gilbert thanked the pope for his yeoman efforts in Never Again: A History of the Holocaust.

Rabbi Shmuley’s ideologically driven screed is not supported by the kind of careful scholarship of Sir Martin Gilbert. If anything, Pope Pius XII deserves to be hailed as a “Righteous Gentile,” as Gilbert and other Jewish scholars have recommended.

Bill Donohue comments on the remarks made yesterday by Pope Francis:

There are two good reasons why Pope Francis chose to address the genocide of the Armenian people. First, Armenia was the world’s first Christian country. Second, this year marks the centennial of the 20th century’s first genocide. It should also be noted that it was Muslims who were responsible for these atrocities, and they are at it again today.

The Turkish government says the pope is guilty of promoting “unfounded claims.” It is wrong: nothing the Holy Father said is historically inaccurate, though in fairness, there have been “unfounded claims.”

It is true that some observers have lumped together those Armenians who died as the result of disease, famine, and war with those who were singled out for extinction. It is also true that there is evidence supporting the claim that some Turkish officials took steps to protect the lives of Armenians during the deportations. But they also failed in serious ways.

One of the most astute historians to cover these events is William B. Rubinstein. After conceding that some accounts have been unfair to the Turks, he writes, “Most of the evidence suggests…that the Turkish authorities actively masterminded the mass killing of the Armenians as a deliberate policy.” On the other hand, the popular claim that 1.5 million Armenians were systematically killed appears to be an exaggeration. Rubinstein puts the figure at about 1 million. But this hardly exculpates Turkish officials. “This was certainly the greatest massacre of civilians in what can be described as the Western world in modern times until that point,” he writes, “and one of the greatest slaughters in recorded history, as well as the first of the demonic slaughters of the twentieth century.”

On the eve of the Holocaust, Hitler told his military, “Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?” This is why it was important for Pope Francis to cite this event. Moreover, Muslim madmen are carrying out another genocide of Christians today. Some things never change.