Bill Donohue comments on the urgent need to give priority status to persecuted Christian refugees:

In November 2015, President Barack Obama told a G20 press conference that proposals to give priority status to Christian refugees from Syria were “shameful.” He said, “We do not have a religious test for our compassion.” Now he is criticizing President Donald Trump for making good on this initiative.

What is really shameful is Obama’s hypocrisy, and that of his supporters. According to the logic of Trump’s critics, Obama employed a religious test to keep Syrian Christian refugees out of the United States, something that Trump is now seeking to rectify. Moreover, those refugees were created, in large part, by Obama’s failed Middle East policy.

Obama’s policy of giving priority status to Muslims was so blatant that it caught the attention of U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Daniel Manion.

In November, he voiced concern over the almost complete absence of Christians among the Syrian refugees. He noted that “of the nearly 11,000 refugees admitted by mid-September, only 56 were Christian.”

He further observed that “Perhaps 10 percent of the population of Syria is Christian, and yet less than one-half of one percent of Syrian refugees admitted to the United States this year are Christian.”

It is not persuasive to say that Obama did not explicitly employ a religious test against Christians. His defenders cannot have it both ways. If Obama didn’t have a religious test, then neither does Trump—there is no “Muslim ban.”

Trump’s executive order was written to stop refugees from Syria and six other Muslim-run nations—it did not single out Muslims. And if it were a “Muslim ban,” then all nations that are predominantly Muslim would have been named, but they were not.

Should Christian refugees be given priority status? Absolutely. There is one overriding reason: they are the most persecuted people on earth.

It is not compassionate to treat every religion equally when the distribution of the victims of religious persecution, and the reasons for it, are so egregiously unequal. Millions of Christians were murdered under Hitler, but they were not targeted for genocide the way 6 million Jews were. That makes a difference.

An Italian research institute, the Center for the Study of Global Christianity, recently released a report on Christian persecution worldwide finding that 90,000 Christians were killed in 2016. It concluded that this means one Christian is killed every six minutes.

Open Doors, the world’s largest outreach organization to persecuted Christians, found that aside from North Korea, it was in Muslim-run nations where Christians were most likely to be victimized. The Islamic Republic of Pakistan [note the name] killed more Christians because of their faith in 2016 than any other country.

The U.S. State Department’s Commission on International Religious Freedom recorded in its 2016 annual report that “More people are on death row or serving life sentences for blasphemy in Pakistan than in any other country in the world.” It detailed the violence of Muslim-run nations against Christians.

Political scientist Abraham Miller notes that the State Department still uses an antiquated calculation when assessing the victims of persecution: it limits its study to state oppression, wholly ignoring terrorist entities such as ISIS. This means, he says, that “their brutal persecution of Christians does not give Christians special consideration as refugees.”

Miller also points out that U.N. refugee camps are dominated by Muslims, many of whom brutalize Christians. “In the refugee camp in Jordan,” he says, “there are no Christians. In the camps Christians are murdered, raped, and even kidnapped and sold into slavery.”

Pew Research Center cites a survey from October where it found that the majority of Americans believe the U.S. does not have a responsibility to accept refugees from Syria. Of course, decisions on such an important humanitarian subject cannot be guided by polls alone—moral issues demand presidential leadership.

No matter, the survey results should temper those who are now claiming that President Trump has opened Pandora’s box; he is doing what the people want. Moreover, that box was opened by Obama when he gave preferential treatment to Muslim refugees, victims who were themselves victimized by his disastrous foreign policy decisions.

Trump’s corrective is in direct response to these realities.

For two decades, the Catholic League has been reporting on the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP). It is a thoroughly corrupt outfit imbued with a pathological hatred of the Catholic Church. To top things off, it ill serves the people it claims to help.

Two recent developments indicate that this professional victims’ lobby is crashing: a) its executive director, David Clohessy, has resigned, and b) it has been sued by a former employee who blew the whistle on its unseemly practices.

Bill Donohue compared the allegations in the lawsuit against SNAP to years of Catholic League research on it: the results are devastating. To read his analysis, SNAP Implodes, click here.

Bill Donohue comments on tomorrow’s March for Life:

This year’s March for Life will take place at a time of unprecedented optimism. President Donald Trump’s leadership has emboldened the Congress and state lawmakers to fight for the rights of the unborn with greater resolve than ever before. The death industry has taken note and is none too happy.

The death industry, led by Planned Parenthood and NARAL, was a major presence at last week’s Women’s March on Washington. Their idea of women’s rights is fixated on abortion and lesbians (as well as those unsure what sex they are). Thus, they have little in common with most women.

President Trump will appoint a Supreme Court justice next week, one who is sure to understand that the most pressing civil rights of our time is the right to life. He has already signed an executive order reinstating the “Mexico City Policy”; it bans federal funding to international groups that perform abortions.

Two days ago, the House passed a bill introduced by Rep. Chris Smith ensuring that the Hyde Amendment, which bans federal abortion funding, will be made permanent, thus vitiating the need for annual reapproval; the bill now goes to the Senate for a vote. On January 12, Rep. Steve King introduced a House bill that would ban an abortion after the baby’s heartbeat is detected.

In the states, lawmakers are geared up like never before. Last year, Louisiana passed seven new laws restricting abortion. Texas introduced 17 new civil rights laws protecting children in the womb, and 2017 will see at least some of them enacted.

Kentucky just passed two pro-life laws, one of which bans abortions after 20 weeks. Just this month, lawmakers in Florida, New Mexico and Tennessee introduced bills that would also ban abortions after 20 weeks; New Jersey filed a similar bill last month. Moreover, Missouri legislators refiled 14 pro-life bills this month. And Iowa is considering a bill to defund Planned Parenthood.

The death industry is scared. Pictures of babies in their mother’s womb are becoming clearer all the time, convincing more Americans that abortion is the intentional taking of innocent human life. The clock is ticking, and the time is getting late to continue the delusion that abortion does not kill.

Bill Donohue comments on the resignation of David Clohessy, executive director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP):

Just days after SNAP was sued by a former employee for accepting kickbacks from Church-suing attorneys, its leader, David Clohessy, quit.

He said he “voluntarily resigned” last month, but that is an incomplete, if not dishonest, account. Had it not been for a string of lawsuits and bad publicity, he would have stayed for years. He will now be remembered for running when the going got tough, leaving behind a shell of an organization that is broken both morally and financially.

Clohessy is a man who spent a good part of his adult life attacking the Catholic Church and lying about it. He worked with unseemly lawyers, manipulated the media, lied to reporters, and exploited the very people he claimed to help.

The latest lawsuit against Clohessy underscores what I have written about for years: SNAP is riddled with corruption. I will have much more to say about the latest lawsuit in coming days, showing how the accusations made by Gretchen Rachel Hammond are consistent with what I have said. It’s all coming together. SNAP is on its last legs.

Contact SNAP president Barbara Blaine: bblaine@SNAPnetwork.org

Bill Donohue comments on the Sundance Film Festival’s latest attack on the Catholic Church:

Hollywood’s farm team, as represented by the Sundance Film Festival—the largest source of independent movie hopefuls—continues to mimic the all stars in Tinseltown by sticking it to Catholics. This year there are two nun-bashing movies to pick from.

“Novitiate” is a religious drama about nuns during the early-mid 1960s, when the Second Vatican Council was in session. The movie plays off the tensions between the more traditional Church and a new wave of reforms ushered forth by Vatican II. The Mother Superior at the Tennessee convent is described by one Variety critic as “brittle” and “sadistic”; another reviewer for the publication calls her “merciless.”

This just goes to prove, one more time, that Hollywood is utterly incapable of making a movie about traditional Catholics that is not wholly stereotypical. Now that Sony—a studio with a history of anti-Catholic films—has acquired the rights, look for us to say much more when this flick hits the big screen.

“The Little Hours” makes “Novitiate” look tame. It is trash, pure trash.

This film is set in medieval Italy, though none of the characters evinces an accent. Viewers are introduced to three young nuns, their Mother Superior, a priest, and a servant. Obviously, all are depraved, in one way or another.

The Los Angeles Times describes the movie as “a hotbed of horny activity,” featuring “a wicked trio of mean-girl nuns who drop more expletives than Hail Marys, get drunk on sacramental wine and think nothing of assaulting the hunky new handyman.”

Variety calls Sister Alessandra “a spoiled brat,” a victim of her rich dad who can’t afford to pay her dowry. Having found no suitor, she takes refuge in a convent, using her father’s influence to get accepted. Sister Fernanda is “the party girl,” a foul-mouthed queen always ready for a fight. One reviewer summed her up this way: “She’s a brooding, cunning, unrepentant savage of a Sister, quick to burst into tirades of profanity and violence.” Sister Genevra is the resident busybody, constantly sticking her nose in where it does not belong.

Father Tommasso is an alcoholic simpleton who is exploited by the nuns—they overhear each other’s sins while waiting to go to confession, and then recycle them when it’s their turn. Oh, yes, the good father has sex with the Mother Superior (played by an aging Molly Shannon). As expected, Mr. Handyman, who plays a deaf-mute, is seduced by the oversexed nuns.

This is so trite. We’ve been there before, but some can’t stop drinking from this well. Take Shannon. In a recent interview about the film, she bemoaned her years in Catholic school, recalling how she was programmed to think “how sex was so bad.” She now considers herself enlightened, though from the sound of things it is apparent that she is still working through her adolescent rage. Time to grow up, Molly.

Perhaps Sundance will host a film about all those sexually free souls who threw restraint to the wind. Many, however, are dead, and those who plundered on are not exactly beaming with joy. Not the kind of film that is likely to attract Sony. It prefers to deal with sadistic sisters. 

Contact Jared Hendler, director of marketing and communications:
Jared_Hendler@sundance.org

Bill Donohue comments on an editorial in today’s Washington Post:

“On the most explosive and morally subversive challenge facing the Roman Catholic Church—clerical sexual abuse of children, and the bishops who tolerate it—Pope Francis has said the right things but done too little.”

This remarkable comment is the first sentence in an editorial in today’s Washington Post. The newspaper is living in a time warp. It cited not a single piece of new evidence, resting solely on a book by an Italian journalist that covers cases extending back over a half century ago. To make matters worse, Crux editor John Allen Jr. noted the author’s “sloppiness with facts,” about which the Washington Post is either unaware of or simply doesn’t care to mention.

NEWSFLASH: THE SCANDAL ENDED OVER 30 YEARS AGO

What’s the source of my comment? The Georgetown University’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate and the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Independently, they represent the most authoritative accounts of priestly sexual abuse.

The timeline of the abuse scandal is 1965-1985; it was during that period that the lion’s share of the problem occurred. Not to acknowledge this is to feed a vicious stereotype, one that suggests this issue is an on-going problem in the Church.

In fact, no institution has a better record on this issue today than the Catholic Church. The most recent data, collected between July 1, 2014 and June 30, 2015, shows there were seven substantiated allegations against clergy for the sexual abuse of minors made by current minors. Given that the data covered priests (35,987) and deacons (16,251), this means that .01 percent of the 52,238 members of the clergy had a substantiated allegation made against him.

Will the Washington Post admit that 99.99 percent of the clergy had no such accusation made against him? Not on your life.

The Washington Post also engages in fake news: there is no crisis now—nor was there ever one—involving the sexual abuse of children. That is a lie and a cover-up. The John Jay studies reveal that less than 5 percent of the victims were prepubescent. In fact, 78 percent of the males who were abused were postpubescent, and since all the victimizers were male, that means that homosexuality—not pedophilia—is at the root of the scandal.

The Washington Post needs to do its homework and stop advancing invidious stereotypes. Living in a time warp is bad enough, but when it affects innocent persons, it is pernicious.

Contact Fred Hiatt, editorial page editor: fred.hiatt@washpost.com

Bill Donohue comments on the Women’s March on Washington:

The Women’s March on Washington is a misnomer: it will include many others who claim to be neither a man nor a woman, yet were born either male or female. It is also a misnomer to say, as the organizers claim, that the march is about uniting “our vibrant and diverse communities”: the event seeks to divide, not unite.

Some critics are calling this an anti-Trump rally. They, too, are mistaken. It is a protest against the American people who voted for Donald Trump. In short, it is a protest against democracy.

As with all activist events, this one is guided by “isms.” The two principal ideological strains are libertinism and anti-Catholicism: the protesters want a sexual free-for-all (minus the lethal diseases), and they want to attack Catholicism for not affirming it.

With regard to religion, the march’s organizers say the event is being held to support “diverse religious faiths particularly Muslim.” Happy to know that Muslims are given priority over the Zoroastrians, though it is not certain whether any will march with the “LGBTQIA” contingency (“Q” stands for “Queer”; not sure who the “I” and “A” folks are).

Among the many sponsors of the march are the following organizations; a sample of their contributions to anti-Catholicism is included:

Amnesty International: In 2015, it sponsored an anti-Catholic video, laced with obscenities, attacking the Catholic Church in Ireland for its opposition to abortion.

Center for Reproductive Rights: In 2011, when the bishops opposed a bill promoting abortion, it fell back on an old anti-Catholic trope, accusing them of “enforcing religious dogma” on the American people.

Feminist Majority Foundation: In 2005, it opposed elevating Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court because that would mean too many Catholics on the bench.

Human Rights Campaign: It has consistently labeled every conflict between religious liberty and gay rights as an attack by the bishops on gays, not as an exercise of the First Amendment.

Human Rights Watch: It labels as “obstructionist” the right of the Holy See to oppose abortion laws, and has attacked Filipino bishops for merely stating the Church’s position on contraception and abortion.

MoveOn.org: Heavily funded by George Soros and his Open Society Foundations, it has supported virtually every phony, anti-Catholic “Catholic” group, such as Catholics for Choice and Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good.

NARAL: Founded with the express purpose of lying about, and smearing, the Catholic Church, it continues to assault Catholicism whenever the abortion issue is in the news.

National Organization for Women: It frequently accuses the bishops of a “War on Women” for simply voicing their objections to abortion.

PEN: Ostensibly a “free speech” organization, it has condemned the free speech rights of Catholics (e.g. the Catholic League) for opposing anti-Catholic bigotry, trying to silence them.

Planned Parenthood: Founded by an extreme anti-Catholic, Margaret Sanger, it has been fomenting anti-Catholicism for 100 years.

In addition to these 10 anti-Catholic sponsors, the Women’s March on Washington is drawing the support of activists who have nothing to do with women’s rights (e.g., Americans United for Separation of Church and State), but who are nonetheless long-time Catholic bashers (which explains their enthusiasm).

Finally, Hollywood will be well represented, as is only fitting: the event celebrates reckless sex, and is heavily populated by Catholic haters. Samantha Bee is just one of hundreds who will be there.

She earned her stripes most recently on her January 18, 2017 show when she made a crack about “brave strong women” and “dildos.” The segment featured a photo of a priest with a homosexual standing next to him. How do I know the guy is gay? If you saw the picture, you wouldn’t have to ask.

Bill Donohue comments on a short film, “100 Years,” celebrating the centenary of Planned Parenthood:

Lena Dunham was a great choice to co-produce this Planned Parenthood propaganda film. She is not only a confessed child abuser, she recently regretted not having an abortion. Having Meryl Streep do some of the narrating was also wise. When she was a freshman at Yale, she took an acting class where she was asked to act out a death scene: she chose to perform an abortion on herself.

The founder of Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger, was both a racist and an anti-Catholic. Indeed, she was so extreme in her hatred of African Americans and Catholics that what she said was indistinguishable from the rants of the Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.

Dunham knows Sanger was a racist, but glosses over it nonetheless; she does not even acknowledge her virulent anti-Catholicism.

Here is what Dunham says about her champion, Margaret Sanger:

“Margaret worked for civil rights leaders, immigrant women and black communities, but also aligned herself with eugenicists. Ugh. It doesn’t seem to make sense. But way back in the early 20th century, eugenics was an immensely popular social movement, one with the kind of widespread legitimacy Margaret craved for her own birth control campaign.” Dunham then praises Sanger, noting her “conflicting legacy.”

Dunham’s account is twice flawed. Sanger did not “align herself with eugenicists”—she played a leading role. The goal of Planned Parenthood, she said, was to “weed out” the “undesirables.” By that she meant blacks. Her eugenicist journal, Birth Control Review, boasted that “Many of the colored citizens are fine specimens of humanity.” This is exactly what slavemasters said at the auctions.

Not all blacks were a choice cut. “A good share of them, however, constitute a large percentage of Kalamazoo’s human scrap pile.” This was written in 1932, the year before Hitler took over Germany. In fact, Sanger published several articles by Nazi officials; they were dealing with the “human scrap pile” of Jews on their way to concentration camps.

Dunham is wrong to say that Sanger’s eugenicist vision “doesn’t seem to make sense.” Indeed, from her perspective, it made a great deal of sense. To wit: If the goal is to filter the population, getting rid of “undesirables,” then preventing what she called the “lesser breeds” from reproducing made a whole lot of sense.

Dunham is correct to note that “eugenics was an immensely popular social movement.” Yes, it was very popular in Nazi Germany. What she failed to note is that the Catholic Church was almost alone on the world stage at the time opposing eugenics. On December 31, 1930, Pope Pius XI’s encyclical, Casti Connubii, condemned the eugenics movement.

Sanger was also a classic anti-Catholic. When New York Governor Al Smith ran for president in 1928, Sanger’s journal warned of “tyrannical intolerance and usurpation of power exercised by office-holders born and bred in the Roman Catholic faith.” She even went so far as to say that no Catholic “has any moral right to hold a position of authority for the State.” So much for the Constitution’s prohibition of a religious test for public office.

Margaret Sanger wore her bigotry on her sleeve, but at least it wasn’t dripping with blood. She opposed abortion; it was her successors who took up this cause.

Planned Parenthood was born in bigotry, and later bathed in blood, which explains why its leaders are Hollywood’s heroes.

Bill Donohue comments on new abortion data:

The Guttmacher Institute, a research firm that is squarely in the pro-abortion camp, has released a new study, “Abortion Incidence and Service Availability in the United States, 2014,” that is as interesting in its findings as it is in its interpretation of the data.

Its central finding is striking: The number of abortions has fallen to the lowest level since 1974, the year following Roe v. Wade.

“In 2014,” it concludes, “an estimated 926,200 abortions were performed in the United States, 12% fewer than in 2011; the 2014 abortion rate was 14.6 abortions per 1,000 women aged 15-44, representing a 14% decline over this period.” It also found that “The rates declined in almost all states.” Regionally, the decline was steepest in the West and the South.

The data on the Northeast are particularly interesting. Not only was the decline less impressive than in the West and the South, but it was the only region that had more clinics performing abortions. Moreover, New York and New Jersey were among the five states with the highest abortion rates in the nation.

The District of Columbia deserves special mention. Access to abortion spiked there, and none of the 50 states had a higher abortion rate—D.C. is number one. The victims of abortion were overwhelmingly African American. This raises the question: Why is access to abortion increasing in an area that is largely poor and black? This is not an accident.

“Abortion restrictions were associated with a decrease in the number of abortions and nonspecialized clinics [e.g. Planned Parenthood],” but the study cautions that there is no clear evidence that would allow for a cause and effect conclusion. That is true—fluctuations are evident—but it is also true that the data are suggestive of an association between restrictive abortion laws and a decline in abortion rates.

From a pro-life perspective, the historic decline in the number of abortions is encouraging. But what does it mean to the pro-abortion industry? The perspective of the report’s lead author, Rachel Jones, is telling. For her, a decline in abortion is not, per se, something to celebrate.

“If there are women in these highly restrictive states who want abortions but can’t get them because there aren’t any clinics that they can get to, and that’s why abortion’s going down, that’s not a good thing,” she says.

In other words, it is not the body count that matters, it’s whether states have passed more restrictive laws on abortion access. Jones says it would be a “good story” if the abortion decline were due to fewer women “having unintended pregnancies.”

Jones has gotten herself into another jam. She does not say why a decline in abortions—for any reason—would be good news. After all, if abortion does not result in the certain death of innocents, then what’s so great about having fewer of them?

The study says that some of the decline in unintended pregnancies is due to contraceptives, and it offers some evidence for that position. What it does not mention is the possibility that women are less sexually active these days. In fact, they are.

Last year, a study published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior considered data collected as part of the General Social Survey; it focused on the answers of 26,707 adults to questions regarding sex and relationships. It found that millennials are a whole lot less sexually active than their parents were at the same age. The authors of the study explained this finding by saying that today’s young people are a “very risk-averse generation.”

Yes, fear of sexually transmitted diseases, as the researchers concluded, is real. But it is also true that young people today are much more likely to know that abortion results in sudden death. This is not due to sex ed. The credit goes to technology: Pictures don’t lie, and the pictures of life in the womb offer the most devastating evidence that life begins at conception.

The abortion industry is in trouble. It is losing money, and it is losing the support of youth. Look for brighter days ahead.

Bill Donohue comments on a gay teacher who sued a North Carolina Catholic school claiming discrimination:

Every prospective Catholic school teacher knows, or should know, what the house rules are. This means, at a minimum, that no one is entitled to claim victim status when he purposely violates them and is subsequently terminated for doing so.

Lonnie Billard knew when he “married” his boyfriend, making it public on his Facebook page, that Charlotte Catholic High School, his employer, would object. He sued when he was fired and is now seeking back pay and benefits, punitive damages, and compensatory damages for emotional distress. He is represented by the ACLU, an organization which is at war with the Catholic Church.

The suit is bogus on several counts. The First Amendment protects religious liberty, allowing religious schools to practice the tenets of their faith. The lawsuit does not cite a violation of state law, and that is because no North Carolina law was broken.

The lawsuit relies on Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, but this is without foundation: sexual orientation was not a protected class when the bill was passed, and amendments by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to include sexual orientation are judicially unresolved.

“I know that the Catholic Church opposes same-sex marriage,” says Billard, “but I don’t think my commitment to my husband [sic] has any bearing on my work in the classroom.” [Note: husbands are men and wives are women, so if Billard’s partner is his husband, that would make him his wife, and no one really believes that to be true. The Catholic League does not tolerate fake news.]

The Catholic Church also opposes racism and anti-Semitism. Does it not have the right to fire those who make bigoted remarks against whites, blacks, or Jews? Billard does not decide what the rules are for Catholic schools, and no one forced him to teach at one.

Billard and the ACLU are suing to make a cultural statement. Their bigoted attack on the autonomy of Charlotte Catholic High School shows a contempt for tolerance and diversity. They don’t have a moral, or a legal, leg to stand on.