Bill Donohue comments on an Associated Press (AP) story from yesterday:

Over a month ago, it was reported that a lesbian school teacher who works at an independent Catholic school in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia was not reinstated after it was publicly disclosed that she claimed to be married. This is the business of the Catholic Church, yet some in the media think it’s their business. Among the guilty is AP.

AP reporter MaryClaire Dale misrepresented what Pope Francis said about gays, and then accused Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput of “wading into the issue.” This is the fourth AP story on this non-story.

“Pope Francis refined his vision for the church last week when he said long-spurned divorced and remarried Catholics should be welcomed with ‘open doors,'” Dale wrote. “And he has famously parsed centuries of thought on homosexuality into a five-word quip, ‘Who am I to judge?'”

There are three serious misrepresentations in those two sentences. Pope Francis told divorced and remarried Catholics last week that they have not been excommunicated, and are in fact welcome in the Church. He also said that none of this is to imply that they are welcome at the Communion rail. They are not. This is standard Church teaching. Thus, there was nothing for the pope to “refine.”

“Who am I to judge” was not what the pope said. Those words were at the end of a sentence, one that had two qualifiers: “If someone is gay and is searching for the Lord and has good will, then who am I to judge?” More important, he was not discussing homosexuality—he was discussing gays. On July 13, Dale correctly noted that the pope was speaking about gays, not sodomy. So why did she get it wrong now?

Also, AP is the one “wading into the issue,” not the man whose job it is to discuss schools in his archdiocese. Don’t they see the irony here? The whole story reeks of bias. 

Contact Tom Kent, the AP standards editor; he also teaches at Columbia: tjk17@columbia.edu

Bill Donohue has written a booklet, The Noble Legacy of Father Serra, which discusses the accomplishments of Father Junípero Serra. He is the 18th century Spanish priest whose yeoman work with Native Americans will be celebrated on September 23 in Washington, D.C. That is when Pope Francis will canonize him on the campus of Catholic University of America.

Donohue does not dispute the fact that the Indians were often treated unjustly, but he insists that it was the Spanish authorities, not the priests, who were guilty of mistreatment. Indeed, he provides plenty of evidence showing that Father Serra proudly championed the rights of Indians.

The booklet is written in a Q&A style, making it easy for the reader to find specific information about the priest’s noble legacy. Over 10,000 copies of the booklet have already been made available throughout the nation. We are now making it available online so that everyone can read it. To access it, click here.

Bill Donohue comments on the Obama administration’s proposed reforms governing faith-based social service programs:

It has been evident from the beginning that President Barack Obama was never serious about strengthening the faith-based initiatives established by President George W. Bush. The latest reforms prove it.

The White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships has released reform proposals that were initiated by its Advisory Council. The reforms are designed to enhance government oversight of religious social service agencies; they seek to limit religious expression, not facilitate its reach.

Historically, when social scientists and constitutional scholars spoke about religious liberty, they meant protections afforded the free exercise of religion. But in this report, religious liberty means the right of individuals to refuse religious exercises, a guarantee to be insured by the federal government. Thus has the term been stood on its head.

Similarly, the report calls for more government “monitoring” of faith-based programs. To be sure, it nominally counsels against “pervasive monitoring,” but the weight of the document emphasizes the need to “monitor” these religious bodies. No wonder secularists like the reforms.

Religious agencies are also asked to report “explicitly religious activities that are privately funded,” [my italic] and a majority of the Council even voted to force churches to form separate corporations detailing their receipt of federal funds. The latter scheme would be prohibitively expensive for small churches, and its proponents know it.

On p. 120, the report brags that the Council was staffed by both critics and supporters of “charitable choice.” Yet when Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius proposed the HHS mandate, she never spoke to a single bishop and never subjected the religious liberty issues involved to legal analysis. This is a game. The faith-based programs should be defunded and reconstituted by a president who is serious about religious matters.

Bill Donohue comments on the Philadelphia Inquirer’s obsession with Margie Winters, a lesbian Catholic school teacher who said she was married and was released from her job as director of religious education:

Mike Newall’s column today on this subject is a rehash of his July 15 piece lamenting Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput’s insistence that Catholic teachings must be upheld. Chaput’s response was very much of the dog-bites-man type of story that normal people react to with ennui, but for some reason it excites the folks at the Philadelphia Inquirer. This is the 11th story to appear on this contrived issue, totaling 8,271 words; seven of the stories appeared on p. B1 and two made it to p. A1.

Newall, following Winters, tries to play his “pope card.” It’s a familiar gimmick: press a Catholic leader to get in line with the pope by attributing to the Holy Father views he never expressed. In this case, readers are told that Archbishop Chaput is not building “conversations of inclusion” with Church dissidents.

What a sap. To begin with, why is it that people such as Newall and Winters never want to build “conversations of inclusion” with Catholics who want the death penalty? Shouldn’t those who want to fry serial murderers be given a place at the table? Or is it just those who like gay marriage?

More important, the Inquirer consistently misrepresents the pope’s words on gay issues. For example, his famous quip, “Who am I to judge?”, was never about homosexuality—as the newspaper has written—it was about the pope’s reaction to a gay celibate priest. Moreover, he offered two conditions for his non-judgmental stance: the person had to be “searching for the Lord” and be of “good will.”

As for gay marriage, Pope Francis has said that it is the work of “the Father of Lies,” meaning the Devil. Dialogue with the Devil, anyone?

We are sending this to all the parishes in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia.

Contact Newall: mnewall@phillynews.com

Bill Donohue pulls the wool off of Faithful America:

An independent Catholic school in the Philadelphia area decided that it could no longer employ its director of religious education because she refuses to abide by the teachings of the Church. Seems like a simple case. Yet a protest has been lodged against the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, even though it does not run this school. Even more bizarre, the critics are led by a loose group of anti-Catholics who are funded by an atheist billionaire. The media, led by the Philadelphia Inquirer, is giving legitimacy to this contrived protest.

Catholic schools, Orthodox Jewish schools, and Muslim schools do not recognize “marriages” between two men or two women, and therefore they do not welcome employees who claim to be married to a person of the same sex. Even editors at the Inquirer should be able to grasp this.

Faithful America says many people want the rogue teacher reinstated. But there is no real organization called Faithful America. Organizations list their address, phone number, fax number, and email address. Faithful America lists none; it is an “online community.” To be specific, no one goes to work each day at Faithful America because there is no place to go!

George Soros, the atheist billionaire, funds Faithful America; he also funds Faith in Public Life, which is associated with this “online community.” These are essentially front groups that pose as religious entities. Faithful America, for instance, has attacked several Catholic bishops and is pro-abortion.

Let’s go over this once more. An employee who violates the tenets of the organization she voluntarily joined is canned, and an organization that is not really an organization, but is greased by the enemy of the employee’s organization, lodges a protest against an organization that does not run the employee’s organization.

We are sending this to all the parishes in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia.

Contact Inquirer reporter Chris Brennan: brennac@phillynews.com

Bill Donohue comments on the Milwaukee Art Museum’s anti-Catholic exhibition and its reliance on public funding:

Anti-Catholic art is always objectionable, but it is doubly so when it is publicly funded. Such is the case with the Milwaukee Art Museum: it is now showcasing a portrait of Pope Benedict XVI made up of condoms; it was supposed to be displayed in November, but they moved the date to July 30. I have already addressed this hate speech, disguised as art, for what it is, and the lame defenses that officials associated with the museum have offered (click here). Now it’s time to examine the museum’s funding.

At the federal level, the National Endowment for the Arts gave this museum an $80,000 grant during the period of August 2008 to April 2010. In addition, it received $212,500 in federal aid from other sources. Statewide, it receives monies from the Wisconsin Arts Board; it was given $17,500 in fiscal year 2015. At the local level, it receives funding from the Milwaukee Arts Board for some exhibitions.

The arts community typically defends itself by saying that not every controversial exhibition receives public funding. But money, being fungible, means the taxpayers are on the hook for contributing to institutes that sanction hate speech. Catholics in Wisconsin, and in Milwaukee, should not be forced to have their hard-earned dollars underwrite a museum that denigrates their religion. If Catholics are forbidden from erecting a nativity scene on public property, the state should be forbidden from funding speech that trashes Catholicism.

We are contacting public officials in the executive and legislative branches of both the state of Wisconsin and the city of Milwaukee. Because officials from the Milwaukee Arts Museum refuse to act responsibly, the time has come to deny public funding to this establishment.

Perhaps Governor Scott Walker can prod the state legislature to act.

Contact Governor Walker’s office: govgeneral@wisconsin.gov