Bill Donohue comments on remarks made last night by Fox News host Bill O’Reilly on the Pew Research Center survey of religion:

Here is what O’Reilly said last night: “The main reason Christianity is on the decline is poor leadership and corruption within the Catholic Church. The priest scandal devastated the Catholic landscape in America.”

O’Reilly is not a scholar, and has written nothing on this subject, so he may be forgiven for his misunderstandings. But one does not have to be a social scientist to know that Catholicism is not dispositive of Christianity: In fact, Protestants outnumber Catholics by more than 2-1.

More important, the decline in the mainline Protestant denominations has been going on for a half-century. They are the ones who have been devastated, not the Catholic Church. So blaming the priest scandal for the precipitous drop in the Protestant community is simply absurd. Also, as I pointed out yesterday, the Pew survey showed that Catholicism has the highest retention rate of any religion: 90 percent of those who identify as Catholics today were raised Catholic. Looks like “poor leadership and corruption” didn’t act as a catalyst to bolt.

There are many reasons why Americans are less inclined to be religiously affiliated these days, but not among them are the sources cited by O’Reilly. It is more complex than he realizes.

Bill Donohue comments on the findings of the Pew Research Center’s survey of religion that was released today:

The bad news is already dominating media reports: more Americans are religiously unaffiliated than ever before. The ranks of Protestants and Catholics are declining, and the percentage of atheists and agnostics are increasing. This is true across age groups, though it is most pronounced among young people. But not all the data are discouraging.

While it is true that the Christian share of the U.S. population is declining, some quick arithmetic shows that more than 92 percent of Americans who identify with a religion are Christian (76.5 percent are religiously affiliated and 70.6 percent of them are Christian). To that extent, we are still a Christian nation.

Also, those raised without a religious affiliation have a low retention rate. Indeed, nearly half of them, 47 percent, are not content to stay unaffiliated; they join a religion at some point. In other words, while those with no affiliation are growing, the increase is attributable to those who were raised in a religious household and have decided to leave. Some of those who exit come back when they get married and have children, though apparently not as many as in previous decades.

Only 21 percent of those who are currently unaffiliated were raised that way, so they depend largely on alienated Christians to bolster their numbers. At the other extreme are Catholics: 90 percent of those who identify as Catholic today were raised Catholic. But among those who have no religious affiliation, 28 percent are former Catholics. This suggests that while Catholicism does a better job holding its own (as compared to other religions), the ranks of the disaffected are a serious issue.

Most of those with no religious affiliation are neither atheist or agnostic: the majority of them identify as “nothing in particular” (some of whom are believers). They might best be called the “Whatever” generation. Look for many of the “Whatevers” to eventually get anchored, though a large number of them are lost souls.

Bill Donohue comments on George Will’s attack on Mike Huckabee:

George Will’s atheism got the best of him—not for the first time—when he recently unloaded on presidential hopeful Gov. Mike Huckabee. Among the several things that bother Will about Huckabee is his remark, “We are moving rapidly toward the criminalization of Christianity.”

One does not have to be a Southern Baptist minister to understand that Huckabee’s fears are not unfounded. Here is what the late Cardinal Francis George said a few years ago: “I expect to die in bed, my successor will die in prison and his successor will die a martyr in the public square.”

We document anti-Catholicism, and the evidence supports the concerns of both men. Here’s a quick look at the situation; it has worsened dramatically in recent years.

At the federal level, the Obama administration is trying to force Catholic non-profits to pay for abortion-inducing drugs. It barred some priests from saying Mass during the partial-government shutdown. It refuses to grant the same religious exemptions in matters of employment and social services that every previous administration has respected. It abuses its regulatory powers to police personnel decisions at Catholic institutions. It punishes the most elementary “Christian” speech on military installations, particularly on U.S. Air Force bases.

At the state and local level, lawmakers in San Francisco and Sacramento are seeking to force the Archdiocese of San Francisco to change Church teachings on sexuality. In California, Catholic colleges must pay for “elective abortion” in their health plans. Two lawmakers in Connecticut sought to take over the administrative affairs of the Church. There was an attempt to wrest control from the bishops in Minnesota. There have been many campaigns forcing Catholic adoption agencies to approve gay parents, effectively shutting them down when they object. Caterers, photographers, and others who have a religious objection to gay marriage are being sued, and some are forced to close because of threats.

Will has it wrong. Huckabee is not an alarmist.

Bill Donohue comments on an editorial in today’s New York Times condemning Pamela Geller for her anti-Muhammad cartoon contest:

It is not enough to be critical of Geller—she is wrong to deliberately insult Muslims—it is important to be consistent. The New York Times is anything but. It condemns her for being anti-Muslim but defends Charlie Hebdo because it offends everyone equally. This is as nonsensical as it is inconsistent.

On April 29, Luz, the Charlie Hebdo cartoonist, pledged not to draw any more anti-Muslim cartoons. Yet that same day the magazine put one of his anti-Catholic cartoons on the cover: it took the occasion of a recent failed attempt by radical Muslims to bomb a Catholic church as grist to ridicule Catholics. Also, the publication recently fired an anti-Semite; no anti-Catholic has ever lost his job.

To show how sensitive the Times is to Muslims, in 2006 it ran a long article on the Danish cartoons. Out of respect—or was it fear?—it never printed any of them. Yet in the same piece it reproduced the obscene portrait of Our Blessed Mother that was shown at the Brooklyn Museum of Art in 1999; it was adorned with elephant dung and pornographic pictures.

The Times went bonkers when I had the gall to exercise my free speech rights by objecting to a Smithsonian exhibition that featured a vile video: it depicted ants crawling all over Jesus on the Cross. Similarly, the paper has long defended “Piss Christ” as art. Never has it objected to anti-Catholic portrayals the way it lashes out at anti-Muslim fare. In fact, the paper is also less sensitive to Jews than it is Muslims: it never went as ballistic against the neo-Nazis who were slated to march in Skokie, Illinois in 1978 as it is now with Geller’s stunt.

The biggest anti-Catholic bigots in the nation are Bill Maher and Dan Savage, and the Times loves them both. In fact, Maher is its poster boy: it regularly prints a full-page picture of him promoting the paper. So much for its principled protestations against bigotry.

Contact Margaret Sullivan, the public editor: public@nytimes.com

To read Bill Donohue’s latest Newsmax article about the New York Times’ notorious record of undervaluing women, click here.

Bill Donohue comments on today’s New York Times op-ed page article by Frank Bruni:

Bruni applauds Pope Francis for remarks he made a week ago on women where he called for equal pay for equal work. But the cheers didn’t last long. “He left out the part about women in the Roman Catholic Church not even getting a shot at equal work,” the columnist writes.

Bruni works for a newspaper that paid its first woman executive editor, Jill Abramson, considerably less than the male editor who preceded her, Bill Keller; she was also compensated less than Keller in pay and pension benefits when she succeeded him as managing editor. She was fired last year and replaced by a man.

It is Bruni, not the pope, who is omitting things. Immediately after that part of the pope’s address where he cited pay equality, he spoke about the need to recognize “women’s motherhood and men’s fatherhood,” a direct refutation of Bruni’s favorite subject, gay marriage. Indeed, earlier in his speech, the pope said that “Jesus teaches us that the masterpiece of society is the family: a man and a woman who love each other! This is the masterpiece!” The masterpiece has no role for two guys.

Bruni calls on U.S. bishops to sponsor abortion. He chides the bishops for objecting to Obamacare’s mandate that Catholic entities “include contraception in workers’ health insurance.” He left out the fact that these same institutions would also have to pay for abortion-inducing drugs.

Finally, Bruni thinks it would be wise for the Church to “follow some other Christian denominations and ordain women.” There’s another glaring omission: the mainline Protestant denominations—which take their teachings from the New York Times—are in free fall. Meanwhile, the numbers in the Catholic Church keep going up. So why would we want to copy failure?

Contact Bruni: bruni@nytimes.com

Bill Donohue comments on the anti-Islam cartoon event in Garland, Texas that left two gunmen dead and one security guard wounded:

According to some media outlets, minutes before Elton Simpson started shooting, he tweeted, “If there is no check on the freedom of your speech, then let your hearts be open to the freedom of our actions.” He was shot dead quickly thereafter, never realizing that his plainly irresponsible position—no limits on speech means no limits on conduct—was the proximate cause of his death. Absolutism also explains his attraction to Islamism.

There is no role for absolutism in a free society. Yet there are those who, like many members of the PEN American Center, embrace it, at least when it comes to speech. Tonight they will honor Charlie Hebdo in New York City, the French magazine that was tied to the Paris murders. Officials from the publication will receive an award for “freedom of expression courage.” But other PEN members are objecting, saying that freedom of expression has limits: by depicting Muslims as savages, Charlie Hebdo is promoting bigotry.

Both factions of PEN are phonies. In October 1998, I led 2,000 demonstrators in the street outside the theater that featured “Corpus Christi,” a play that depicted Christ having sex with the apostles. “From the beginning,” I wrote in the November 1998 issue of Catalyst (our monthly journal), “the league has argued that the play should not be censored by the government but that the producers of the play should have cancelled it in the name of common decency.” On that same rainy night there were 300 counter-demonstrators: they came to protest our constitutional right to freedom of speech. Among them was a contingent from the PEN American Center.

The other phonies are the ones who don’t want to honor Charlie Hebdo. They have no problem offending Christians, but when it comes to bashing Muslims, they are horrified. The entire organization is corrupt.

Here’s my take: It is wrong to honor Charlie Hebdo, and it is equally wrong to intentionally bash people of faith.

Contact Suzanne Nossel, Executive Director: snossel@pen.org

Bill Donohue comments on recent remarks made by Newsweek:

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments on same-sex marriage. For some reason, Newsweek thought that this would entice the pope to change on this subject.

For example, here is what Newsweek tweeted yesterday: “Pope Francis still is against gay marriage even as the U.S. Supreme Court hears arguments.” It showed a picture of the pope looking undecided.

On April 29, Taylor Wofford of Newsweek commented: “One day after the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Obergefell v. Hodges—the outcome of which may dictate the future of same-sex marriage in the United States—Pope Francis on Wednesday publicly affirmed his stance on so-called traditional marriage between men and women.”

Of course, the pope doesn’t have a “stance” on marriage, or on any other doctrine of the Catholic Church: he is the Vicar of Christ who defends and promotes the teachings of the Magisterium that have evolved over two millennia. Moreover, there is nothing “so-called” about traditional marriage—the union of a man and a woman in the institution of marriage has long been a staple in Western civilization.

It is astonishing that anyone would think that the Vatican might actually take its cues from Supreme Court on the subject of marriage, or on any other issue for that matter.

In 2013, the pope said, “Two Christians who marry have recognized the call of the Lord in their own love story, the vocation to form one flesh and one life from two, male and female.” Last year, the pope described same-sex marriage as “a maneuver by the devil.” There is nothing “so-called” about those pronouncements—they are quite definitive.

Contact Jim Impoco, editor-in-chief: j.impoco@newsweek.com

Bill Donohue comments on this week’s oral arguments on marriage:

The oral arguments proved why the gay marriage issue is before the Supreme Court: radical individualism and radical egalitarianism are the driving ideologies.

In the second set of oral arguments, the word “dad” was never mentioned, and the word “father” was cited only once. “Mom” was mentioned once, and “mother” was never cited. There was zero discussion of religion. The words “right” and “rights,” however, were cited 24 times, but the words “responsibility” and “responsibilities” were never mentioned. Neither were the words “kin” and “kinship.”

In the first set of oral arguments, there was also no mention of “kin” or “kinship.” The words “right” and “rights” were cited 91 times, but the words “responsibility” and “responsibilities” were mentioned only thrice.

It is not easy to discuss marriage and the family without mentioning kinship, or the responsibilities of mothers and fathers, but they managed to do so. With the exception of John Bursch, who argued the case for traditional marriage, words such as “biological father and mother” were avoided. “Rights,” of course, rolled off everyone’s lips.

In the first oral arguments, Justices Samuel Alito and Antonin Scalia raised the issue of religious liberty in relation to gay marriage. The answers were not reassuring. They were told that the states could provide protections, but Scalia kept reminding them that state laws won’t matter if gay marriage is recognized as a constitutional right. He was questioning whether ministers would be required to perform gay marriages.

Alito asked if a religious school would be forced to provide married housing to a gay couple. After Solicitor General Donald Verrilli dodged it, Alito asked if the school could lose its tax-exempt status. Verrilli said he didn’t know but conceded, “it is going to be an issue.”

The radical agenda will not stop with gay marriage: The goal is to crush the churches. This is totalitarianism with a soft face.

Bill Donohue comments on Joy Behar:

Yesterday, on the CBS show, “The Insider,” there was a discussion about the man/woman Bruce Jenner.

Here is what Behar said: “I’m not going to do a stand-up about transgenders. It’s too sensitive a topic.”

Today, on the ABC show, “The View,” a guest host mentioned that she was raised in a conservative Catholic household and that later in life she went on a drinking binge.

Here is what Behar said: “It could have been worse—you could have turned out a nun.”

 This is the mind of Joy Behar.

Contact Lauri Hogan, PR Director, at “The View”: lauri.l.hogan@abc.com