Bill Donohue has asked the New York City branch of the New York State Office of Children and Family Services to investigate Anthony Weiner for sexually exploiting his four-year-old child, Jordan; Huma Abedin, Weiner’s wife, is cited in the complaint.

Dear Sir or Madam:

As president of the nation’s largest Catholic civil rights organization, I am well aware of the plague of child sexual abuse that marks virtually every sector of society, including, regrettably, the Catholic Church. I am writing to express my concerns about the emotional and physical well being of Jordan Weiner, son of Anthony Weiner and Huma Abedin.

The New York City Administration for Children’s Services defines child sexual abuse to include “incest, rape, obscene sexual performance, fondling a child’s genitals, intercourse, sodomy, and any other contact such as exposing a child to sexual activity, or commercial sexual exploitation such as prostitution of a minor or production of pornographic materials involving a minor.”

Enclosed find a front-page story in the August 31 edition of the New York Post on the sexual exploitation of four-year-old Jordan Weiner by his father, Anthony Weiner. On August 29, we learned that Mr. Weiner took crotch shots of himself sporting an erection with his son lying next to him in bed. That was disturbing enough, but now we know that he used his child as a “chick magnet” to allure sexual relationships.

It would appear that Mr. Weiner’s sexual exploitation of his child meets the definition of child sexual abuse as defined by the Administration for Children’s Services. Please investigate this matter.

Sincerely,

William A. Donohue, Ph.D.
President

Bill Donohue comments on Macy’s mistreatment of a Muslim woman:

Samya Moftah went to Macy’s flagship store in Manhattan in the summer of 2015 looking for gifts for her family. Instead, the Muslim woman found herself locked in a basement cell, charged with multiple crimes, threatened, and mocked because of her Muslim faith. A Manhattan court judge has now ruled in her favor as part of a class action lawsuit.

Moftah, who had brought some previously purchased items back to the store to exchange, was pulled aside, accused of shoplifting, and taken down to the basement to what she said “looked like jail cells.” A Macy’s manager told her to sign some documents and pay $100, and she could go home. Having not eaten all day—it was Ramadan—she began to cry. She was then threatened with handcuffs and taunted for stealing during Ramadan and being a Muslim. The manager returned, upping the price for releasing her to $500. When she refused to pay, her credit card was removed from her wallet and charged for the $500.

In March of this year, the charges against Moftah were dismissed. Then in July, Judge Manuel Mendez ruled that Macy’s had violated Moftah’s due process rights. He said there is no language in the business law statutes that allows Macy’s to detain an individual once an internal investigation is complete. The court enjoined Macy’s from “demanding, requesting, collecting, receiving, or accepting any payments” from suspected shoplifters while they are in Macy’s custody. And he rebuked Macy’s for using the shoplifting statutes “as a double-edged sword instead of a shield.”

Moftah might find some consolation in knowing that Muslims are not the only people of faith Macy’s mistreats. In a case we continue to address, Javier Chavez awaits action from the N.Y. State Division of Human Rights after Macy’s fired him for his Catholic beliefs (click here).

Contact Macy’s VP for Corporate Communications and External Affairs Jim Sluzewski: jim.sluzewski@macys.com

Bill Donohue explains why Mother Teresa deserves sainthood:

On September 4, Blessed Mother Teresa will forever be known as Saint Mother Teresa. I know of no one in my lifetime, save for Saint John Paul II, who could rival her qualifications for canonization.

If ever there were an altruist, it was Mother Teresa. She selflessly gave of herself for decades, helping the sick and dying, picking them up off the street, securing medicinal care, and comforting them in their closing days. And she never asked for anything in return.

Those she ministered to were the most destitute of the destitute: children who survived abortions, the malnourished, lepers, AIDS patients, the physically and mentally handicapped, elderly cripples—she never turned anyone away. Indeed, she implored those who would abandon the dispossessed—this included hospitals—to “give them to me.”

Given all of this, she still had her detractors. That is why I wrote, Unmasking Mother Teresa’s Critics (Sophia Institute Press).

There are two principal characteristics that mark every one of Mother Teresa’s biggest critics: their militant atheism and their support for socialism, or left-wing politics.

It is entirely possible to be an atheist and be a fan of Mother Teresa, and I name them. It is also possible to be a socialist and admire her work; I name them, too. But when these two attributes are combined, those who harbor them are more likely to be her enemy. This is certainly true of the most extremist in their ranks.

Militant atheists, by definition, are predisposed not to embrace religious figures, especially Catholic titans. What is perhaps not as self-evident is why radical socialists might find Mother Teresa distasteful.

Radical socialists believe that it is the job of the state, and the state alone, to tend to the poor. As such, any private, voluntary effort to help the needy is viewed as a deterrent to the role of the state. When the source of assistance is faith-based, that is even more alarming.

Militant atheists and radical socialists, beginning with Christopher Hitchens, have always hated Mother Teresa because she is an altruist. In their minds, there is no such thing as altruism. Why? Because historically altruists have been religiously inspired champions of the poor and the neglected. Think of it: Who is the secular analogue to Mother Teresa?

Samuel and Pearl Oliner are non-observant Jewish sociologists who wrote The Altruistic Personality. They wanted to know who were the most likely to risk their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust, and what they found were characteristics more closely aligned with people of faith than atheists. These altruists were not the kinds of people that would endear themselves to the likes of Hitchens.

In other words, Mother Teresa represented a threat. She was a threat to the worldview that holds that religion is inimical to freedom, and faith-based programs for the poor are an obstacle to statist prescriptions. Indeed, she represented a target that was so rich, so big, it was irresistible.

In my book, I take on every major criticism made against her. And unlike Hitchens, who wrote a book that had not one citation—no footnotes, no endnotes—my volume has more footnotes than pages. I am not a fan of unsupported opinions, especially when the subject is the debunking of someone the stature of Mother Teresa. Put up or shut up.

The critics of Mother Teresa, and there are many more than Hitchens, have an agenda: to take her down. They failed. I, too, have an agenda: to defend her. After writing my book, I can honestly say that I love her now more than ever. She made my job easy—there is so much to love.

Bill Donohue comments on a prominently posted news story found on Yahoo on August 27:

On Saturday morning, I found a news story on the homepage of Yahoo that was puzzling. Titled, “Trump Goes to War with the Pope,” it featured a picture of Donald Trump at a podium. The first sentence read, “The pontiff suggests that Trump is not a Christian.” That sounded very familiar.

Didn’t the pope make the same comment last winter? I remember doing a lot of media on this issue, finding it necessary to correct the record: both the pope and Trump were misrepresented. So did the two titans really clash this time? Apparently so.

In fact, they never did. The Politico piece that was posted on August 27 on the front page of Yahoo was marked August 25, but when I clicked on the entire story, I found it was the Politico article from February 18.

Why did Yahoo mislead its readers? How could a mistake of this gravity be made? After all, many people only read the headlines, and in this case they were given the wrong message. If it wasn’t a mistake, then there is something seriously wrong going on. Either way, Yahoo owes us an explanation.

Contact Daniel Klaidman, deputy editor, Yahoo News: dklaidman@yahoo-inc.com

Bill Donohue comments on a New York Times story that was published in its August 27 edition:

Dr. Aroup Chatterjee is not your ordinary Indian physician: he is a left-wing propaganda specialist who hates Mother Teresa. He, along with the late Christopher Hitchens, were the first to attack Mother Teresa in the 1990s with their documentary, “Hell’s Angel.”

The title of the article is revealing: “A Critic’s Lonely Quest: Revealing the Whole Truth About Mother Teresa.” Why, if Chatterjee is telling the truth about Mother Teresa, is he a lonely critic? Why doesn’t he have a big following in Kolkata (formerly Calcutta)? )? Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that so many Kolkatans have had first-hand experience dealing with the nuns and regard his criticisms as laughable.

In fact, as even the article says, he has no following whatsoever. He admits that he is a “complete nincompoop” for thinking that his fellow Kolkatans would “absolutely fall over me with garlands and roses” for his efforts “to expose this lady.” Instead, “he said he began to feel Kolkatans turning against him.” He’s more than a nincompoop—he’s a fraud.

Any documentary worth its salt is expected to include interviews with those who worked with the person featured in the film. But Chatterjee and Hitchens were never interested in the truth, which explains why no one from the Missionaries of Charity was interviewed for “Hell’s Angel,” and neither was anyone whom they helped.

Chatterjee accuses Mother Teresa of unhygienic practices. As I pointed out in my new book, Unmasking Mother Teresa’s Critics, over their decades of service, the mortality rate of those in the care of the nuns dropped precipitously; we would not expect such results if the care were substandard. Moreover, independent assessments of the quality of service, provided by Dr. Robin Fox, praised the sisters for their cleanliness.

To show how irrational Chatterjee is, consider that on the one hand he condemns Mother Teresa for giving Kolkata a bad name—it is known for its destitution—and on the other hand he says that when he worked there in the early 1980s, “I never even saw any nuns in those slums that I worked in.”

Mother Teresa did not import the poor from her home country of Albania: she found the sick and dying in the streets of Kolkata. Blaming her for the city’s lousy poverty conditions is like blaming Chicago cops for the city’s lousy crime record. And if the nuns are such a problem, then why isn’t Chatterjee delighted about not finding any when he worked there?

Like so many of Mother Teresa’s critics (there aren’t that many of them, but they get a lot of ink), Chatterjee sees the work of the Missionaries of Charity as “an imperialist venture of the Catholic Church.” So when altruistic nuns come from around the world to Kolkata—a city whose socialist policies have created untold suffering—to serve the dispossessed, it is an “imperialist venture of the Catholic Church.”

The only sensible conclusion one can come to after hearing Chatterjee’s lament is that the world would benefit greatly from more “imperialist ventures of the Catholic Church.”

Bill Donohue comments on how Macy’s caused a New York City police officer to be fired by falsely accusing her of shoplifting:

Jenny Mendez was an NYPD officer for less than a year when she and her mother headed to Macy’s to take advantage of post-Thanksgiving Day sales on “Black Friday” in 2012. Suddenly she found herself wrongfully arrested for shoplifting—and out of a job, because she was still in her probationary period with the NYPD.

“It was one wrong on top of another that happened to Jenny Mendez,” said her attorney. “First she was wrongly accused and then she lost the job she loved.”

The following September, she was acquitted of the charges. During the two day bench trial, the arresting store detective testified that she had been told by her boss to lie. She said she checked “yes” in a section of the report asking if Mendez admitted the theft because it was “something our boss told us” to do.

“Your boss is telling you to lie on this report?” Mendez’s attorney asked. “I guess so, yes,” the Macy’s store detective replied.

“Tell your boss that’s a bad practice,” said the judge.

As we have been documenting, “bad practices” seem to be a staple at Macy’s, in its treatment of both employees and customers. Among the most egregious, of course, was the one that first got our attention: firing a Catholic employee, not for any defiance of Macy’s transgender bathroom polices, which he agreed to abide by; but simply because of his thoughts on the subject (click here).

Contact Macy’s VP for Corporate Communications and External Affairs Jim Sluzewski: jim.sluzewski@macys.com

Bill Donohue comments on the results of a new Pew Research Center survey on religion:

Once again, Pew Research Center has done a fine job surveying the public on religious beliefs and practices. And once again, some in the media are distorting its findings.

Rachel Dicker of usnews.com, and Paul Bedard of the Washington Examiner, would have readers believe that America is fast becoming a nation of atheists. They are not only wrong, they are deceitful.

Dicker’s column is headlined, “More Americans Are Turning Their Backs on Religion, and Here’s Why.” The headline for Bedard’s piece reads, “Pew: Americans Giving Up on God, Miracles.”

Here are some data from the report that neither reporter discloses: 51% of Americans now attend church regularly, and 49% rarely do. Of the majority who attend religious services regularly (the 51% figure is actually higher than what is typically found), 23% say they have always been regular attendees, but 27% say they are attending more now than in the past. (My emphasis.) Of the 49% who rarely attend, most say this is nothing new: 27% have always attended rarely and 22% say they are attending less often now than in the past.

In other words, what Dicker and Bedard say is not only wrong, the evidence supports the opposite conclusion: Americans who are regular churchgoers report that they are more likely to go today than they were in the past. Moreover, the contra is also true: a minority of those who rarely attend say they are going less often today.

Dicker quotes one respondent as saying, “I think that more harm has been done in the name of religion than any other area.” What the reader doesn’t know is that this respondent is a freak: Exactly 1% of those who claim no affiliation (the “Nones”) say “religion causes conflict.” So why did Dicker highlight this response? Because it fit with her narrative.

Bedard tells the reader that Americans have given up on God and miracles. Yet Pew concluded that “about three-in-ten current religious ‘nones’ (29%) indicate they have searched for a new congregation at some point in their lives.” (Italic in the original.) Furthermore, not only is there no evidence that Americans are less likely to believe in miracles, there is no mention of the word “miracles” in the entire report. Bedard simply made up this “fact.”

By the way, the purpose of the Pew survey had nothing to do with what these reporters discussed. Its central finding is that “About half of U.S. adults have looked for a new religious congregation at some point in their lives, most commonly because they have moved.” That is why the report is titled, “Choosing a New Church or House of Worship.”

Neither Dicker nor Bedard even bothered to mention this, and that’s because they were determined to search for any finding that might fit their negative portrait of religion in America. There was a time when reporters would be fired for seriously misrepresenting the news, but too often today it is tolerated, which explains its frequency.

Bill Donohue comments on a ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Carol E. Jackson that dropped the hammer on the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP):

As I previously demonstrated, SNAP executive director David Clohessy is a professed liar who runs a phony “victims group” whose real goal is to attack the Catholic Church. But he is protected by the media because, for the most part, those who work in journalism are not exactly Catholic-friendly, and some are seriously anti-Catholic.

Now Clohessy is back in the news, this time for being slapped down by a federal judge. And as we shall see, he is now smearing St. Louis Archbishop Robert Carlson.

SNAP has publicly accused Father Joseph Jiang of sexually molesting minors. It says it knows who the victims are. But it provides no evidence whatsoever, and refuses to disclose—under court order—who they are. This partly explains why U.S. District Court Judge Carol E. Jackson accused SNAP of defaming Father Jiang.

In a just world, Judge Jackson would not have had to issue her ruling. That’s because in 2013 charges that the priest had an inappropriate contact with a high school student were dismissed. The court found that there was no evidence that he was ever alone with the student.

In 2015, in another case, not only were criminal charges against Father Jiang dismissed, he agreed to an independent polygraph investigation; he easily passed the lie test.

After being trashed in the media, Father Jiang filed a defamation suit last year against the boy’s parents, the police, Clohessy, and his colleague, Barbara Davis. On June 27, Judge Jackson ordered SNAP to turn over the details of those who claimed they were victimized by the Chinese priest. It failed to do so. This is why she accused SNAP of “deliberate and willful refusal to comply.”

Judge Jackson was explicit in her statement to SNAP: She wanted the emails, text messages, and contact information of those who claimed that Father Jiang molested a boy in a Catholic school bathroom. The charges were dropped, but that didn’t matter to SNAP, which is why it persisted in its crusade to ruin him. When Judge Jackson called SNAP’s bluff—put up or shut up—Clohessy ran for cover, dishonestly claiming that SNAP was exempt from her order on the basis of its alleged “rape crisis center privilege.”

SNAP’s ploy didn’t work. Judge Jackson blasted Clohessy for his “repeated assertions of nonexistent privileges.” Not only is the judge right about this phony exemption, this is not the first time the SNAP director has pulled this stunt.

In 2012, Clohessy was deposed by a Missouri court, wherein it was shown that he (a) lied to the media about his work (b) falsely advertised SNAP as a rape crisis center (c) exploited his clients by providing unauthorized “counseling” services (d) ripped off those who are truly in need of help by failing to contribute even a dime for licensed counselors and (e) pursued priests on the basis of legal criteria he admits he cannot explain. It bears mentioning that neither Clohessy nor anyone on his staff is a licensed counselor, yet they provide their “services” at places such as Starbucks.

In her court order, Judge Jackson charged SNAP defendants with conspiracy: they conspired “to obtain plaintiff’s conviction on sexual abuse charges.” She also stated why: it was due to “discriminatory animus against plaintiff based on his religion, religious vocation, race, and national origin.”

Yes, Clohessy and his staff conspired against Jiang because he was a Catholic priest—in their minds all accused priests are guilty—and because he was an easy Asian target. But now they know that Father Jiang is no pushover: SNAP must now pay for the priest’s legal fees, and other charges.

One of the reasons why Father Jiang is not a pansy is because of his no-nonsense boss. Archbishop Carlson is a courageous leader of the Catholic Church, one who has the moxie to take on the likes of SNAP. This is why Clohessy hates him.

Clohessy’s hatred of Archbishop Carlson is what drove him to smear this prince of the Church. In a statement released August 23, Clohessy said, “Archbishop Carlson refuses to reveal where Fr. Jiang is living, why he had a bedroom in Carlson’s home and why Fr. Jiang followed Carlson from city to city (a highly unusual arrangement in the Catholic Church).”

How cute. Why doesn’t Clohessy have the guts to say what he is implying? Furthermore, does he think the archbishop is under some obligation to inform him where Father Jiang lives? Does he know that bishops typically have spare rooms in their residences? Similarly, does he know how common it is for bishops to be accompanied—city to city—by priests? Perhaps if Clohessy were a practicing Catholic he would know the answers.

SNAP is not some innocent, well-intentioned, organization out to help the victims of abuse. It is not innocent: it is guilty of lying to the media about its cause. It is not well intentioned: its goal is to malign the Catholic Church. It is not an organization: Clohessy does not have an office that he reports to daily, and he commands no staff. It does not seek to help victims: it rips them off by offering unlicensed counseling. And in the case of Clohessy, when he learned that his brother was a molester, he never called the cops to report on Father Kevin.

Nothing would make me happier than to see SNAP go bankrupt, but regrettably it has enough unethical, anti-Catholic lawyers to bail it out. Although who knows—maybe they are tired of rescuing it?

True victims of abuse deserve justice, not the kind of injustice rendered by SNAP. Kudos to Judge Jackson for doing her job, and to Father Jiang and Archbishop Carlson for standing up to these bullies.

Bill Donohue comments on Macy’s repeated payouts, totaling more than $1 million, for illegal racial profiling in its New York stores:

Back in 2005, Macy’s paid New York State $600,000 to settle a complaint that its New York stores engaged in racial profiling. The settlement followed an investigation in which the New York Attorney General’s office found that most people detained on suspicion of shoplifting at a sampling of Macy’s stores around the state were African- American and Latino. The numbers were disproportionate to the percentages of black and Latino shoppers at these stores.

One would have thought Macy’s had learned its lesson. But in 2014, it was nailed again, this time on complaints from 18 customers at its Herald Square store in Manhattan. The complainants, who were from African-American, Latino or other minority communities, were all detained on suspicion of shoplifting. They claimed they were innocent and alleged that they were not allowed phone calls, were denied interpreters and were forced to sign trespass notices they did not understand. When the state Attorney General again got involved, Macy’s agreed to yet another payout, this one for $650,000.

So let’s see if we’ve got this straight: When it comes to its public restroom policies, Macy’s believes that treating everyone equally means letting men use the women’s bathrooms—and firing an employee simply for believing differently (click here). But when it comes to shoplifting prevention, Macy’s has a history of unequal treatment, specifically targeting people based on their ethnicity or skin color.

Contact Macy’s VP for Corporate Communications and External Affairs Jim Sluzewski: jim.sluzewski@macys.com

To read Bill Donohue’s piece on gay rights and religious liberty, posted on CNSnews.com, click here.