Several states have pledged to open a grand jury investigation of Catholic dioceses.
Catholic League president Bill Donohue has written to all 50 state attorneys general, sending a copy to every state legislator in the nation. To read it, click here.
Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio:
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio violated the United States Constitution yesterday when he held political rallies in four Brooklyn churches. According to the New York Post, he went to the churches “to stump for Zellnor Myrie, who’s running against state Sen. Jesse Hamilton” from Crown Heights. In doing so, de Blasio blatantly crossed church and state lines.
Some will say that it is okay for the mayor to do so because the churches he attended were populated by African Americans. But the Constitution does not make exceptions for people of any ethnicity or race: it applies equally to everyone.
If a pro-life Republican campaigned in a Catholic church—even if it was in a predominately black Catholic church—the alarms would be sounded by every media outlet in the New York area. Cutting de Blasio slack for disrespecting the First Amendment cannot be justified.
Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on a new Rasmussen poll:
Almost three in four Americans, 73%, think the Catholic Church has a serious problem with sexual predators among its clergy; most Catholics feel the same way. That is the central finding of a new Rasmussen survey. Also, only 15% think the media are overhyping the problem, and 12% are not sure. The perception is as predictable as it is erroneous.
Why wouldn’t the public think the Church has a problem with predator priests? That’s exactly the perception given by many news outlets today.
Regrettably, most Americans get their news either from brief social media accounts or radio and TV sound bites: what they get are abbreviated stories with sensationalistic headlines. The same is true of newspapers, most of which lack the resources to do in-depth reporting. Add to this clear instances of media bias against the Church, and the picture is complete—molesting priests are on the prowl in 2018.
This false perception grew out of the twin summer scandals of 2018: (a) revelations about Theodore McCarrick’s predatory behavior (he was forced to resign as a cardinal), and (b) the Pennsylvania grand jury report on alleged sexual abuse by priests.
Though many news accounts made a passing reference to the dated nature of these cases—most of McCarrick’s offenses took place in the 1980s and most of the Pennsylvania allegations occurred decades ago—the impression that Americans were left with is that nothing much has changed since the abuse scandal became a big story in 2002.
In fact, much has changed. The Dallas norms of 2002 established by the bishops have worked: in the past two years for which we have data, .005% of the clergy have had a credible accusation made against them. Also, thanks to Pope Benedict XVI’s 2005 edict on screening out men with “deep-seated homosexual tendencies” from studying for the priesthood, huge strides have been made in busting the network of gay cells in the seminaries. This matters because 8 in 10 of the molesting priests have been homosexuals.
What the public is not told is that Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro has admitted that only two of the 301 accused men mentioned in the grand jury report (not all of whom were priests) could be prosecuted under the statute of limitations today. Two. That’s because almost all of the alleged cases occurred in the last century. Yet the public thinks the problem is on-going.
It’s not just the media that are responsible for floating a false narrative of the Catholic Church, it’s their left-wing friends in Hollywood and the academy. Their goal is to intimidate the clergy from speaking out about moral issues, thus allowing their libertine views on sexuality to triumph.
Joining the agenda-driven enemies of the Church are an astonishing number of conservatives. Angered by the twin scandals, many Catholic conservatives are sounding the alarms, acting as if nothing has changed. There is an odor of self-righteous moralizing present in their quarters, and a liberal dose of lay clericalism to boot: They are going to rescue the Church from degradation.
To be sure, there are some things that must be done. We need to know who knew what and when about McCarrick, and we need assurances that the seminaries are free of the homosexual network today. What we don’t need are endless panels and grand jury investigations about what happened decades ago, all of which feed the false public perception that no progress has been made.
New York State Attorney General Barbara Underwood announced today that she will launch a statewide investigation of Catholic dioceses into allegations of the sexual abuse of minors.
To read Catholic League president Bill Donohue’s open letter to her, click here.
Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on how CBS is dealing with its CEO, Les Moonves:
Demands for the mass resignation of bishops are commonplace, but over at CBS the big question is how much money should they pay their alleged predator-in-chief, Les Moonves, on his way out the door.
Moonves has been accused of sexually assaulting and/or sexually harassing six women. There is no zero tolerance policy at CBS, so instead of stepping down (as would a Catholic priest) while an investigation is conducted, Moonves has been allowed to stay on the job. Why wouldn’t he? After all, he earns over $66 million a year. Now it looks like he is about to cash out.
Even if the probe finds him guilty, Moonves will walk away with around $100 million in compensation (the Los Angeles Times puts the figure at exceeding $200 million). That’s what happens in corporate America: they don’t contact the cops about sexual crimes (as does the Catholic Church), they do internal probes, and then they lavish him with cash.
CBS is in its final stage of negotiations with Moonves, and his exit package will soon be known. Will anyone in the media report on how CBS deals with sexual misconduct claims against its top employees, comparing them to the way the Catholic Church handles them?
Over the summer, there were scores of editorials excoriating the Catholic Church for the sexual misconduct of some priests, but only one newspaper in the nation, the Daily News, criticized CBS in an editorial for its handling of Moonves. This is of a piece with journalists who interviewed Moonves last month and were told ahead of time that they could only ask about second-quarter earnings. They were all obedient.
Catholics have a right to be angry with Church officials, but they also have a right to be cynical about the way the media treat their own in-house sexual misdeeds. In the eyes of many reporters and commentators, not all perverts are equal.
Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on the reaction to Supreme Court Justice nominee Brett Kavanaugh:
Most critics of Supreme Court Justice nominee Brett Kavanaugh are not anti-Catholic, but some are. We know this because both political parties have had their fair share of anti-Catholics—at every level of government—and they are not shy about flaunting their bigotry. In the case of Kavanaugh, it is the Democrats who bear watching.
Some of Kavanaugh’s critics are trying to get out in front of this issue by attacking those who protest anti-Catholicism, making them sound like some kind of well-greased cabal. Sarah Posner, writing on the website of the Nation magazine, makes the most lengthy effort to date.
Her article, “The ‘Anti-Catholic’ Playbook,” begins by asking, “Does Brett Kavanaugh think abortion should be illegal? A secret network of right-wing activists has spent millions attacking such questions as anti-religious bigotry.”
Posner further describes this campaign as a “tight-knit network” that will intimidate probing senators: instead of doing their job, they will “instead pull their punches, fearing ferocious, well-funded attacks that deliberately misrepresent such scrutiny as signs of anti-religious bias.” Of particular concern to her are issues such as abortion, LGBT rights, and church-state separation.
Posner mentions several organizations that allegedly make up this “secret” and “well-funded” network, beginning with the Catholic League.
I happen to know most of the people Posner mentions, but the fact of the matter is I have not spent one minute discussing Kavanaugh with any of them. We prize our autonomy at the Catholic League, and while I have worked cooperatively with many of those mentioned in the article, I have not done so in recent years.
In other words, this “secret” network was so closely guarded that it was kept secret from me. Moreover, the Catholic League has not received a dime from any of the sources cited by Posner.
Posner is a conspiracy monger. When Cardinal Timothy Dolan agreed to give the closing benediction at the 2012 Republican National Convention, she said his acceptance “solidifies a partisan partnership between the GOP and the Bishops.” She failed to mention—it would bust her conspiracy—that Dolan said he would be happy to close the Democratic National Convention as well.
Posner is also wrong to say that organizations such as the Catholic League consider those who might question Kavanaugh about the legality of abortion are guilty of “anti-religious bigotry.” Nonsense. Just as some who are critical of Israel are anti-Semites, and some who champion abortion rights are anti-Catholic, it is unfair to say that all those who take such positions are bigots. In other words, this is another one of Posner’s straw men.
If anti-Catholicism emerges at the Kavanaugh hearings, we will address it, but hopefully that will not happen.
Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on the reaction of the Catholic Church’s foes to news reports of priestly sexual abuse:
Scandal brings out the worst in some friends, as well as many foes. Some of those organizations associated with the “pro-Church” side are using news reports of clergy sexual abuse as a pretext to raise money (as if they are going to do something constructive with the cash), while a lot of the Church’s foes are going for the jugular. Both are exploitative, though only the latter are motivated by hate.
The letters-to-the editor page in many newspapers, as well as the op-ed page, are rife with anger visited on the Catholic Church by professed ex-Catholics and atheists. For example, Timothy Egan, a self-confessed “somewhat lapsed” Catholic, argues that the Church’s teachings on sexuality “have no connection to the words of Jesus.”
This is the kind of sophomoric comment we might expect from a high school dropout, not an op-ed columnist for the New York Times. Perhaps the Jesuit-educated Egan missed last Sunday’s Gospel: Jesus condemned “unchastity,” “adultery,” and “licentiousness,” among other sins.
Garry Wills, another angry ex-Catholic, also fantasizes that Jesus did not advocate sexual reticence. In the pages of the New York Review of Books, the former seminarian accused the Church of promoting “sexual sillinesses” by counseling against such things as “gender choice” and “abortion.” Wills thinks it is not silly for a cross-dressing man to conclude that he is a woman, or for a pregnant woman to conclude that she is not carrying a human being.
“Are You an Atheist? How to Leave the Catholic Church.” That is the title of a piece by Andrew Hall on patheos.com. “Common Heathens” is a podcast that is reveling in news stories of old cases of clergy abuse, as is the “Naked Diner Podcast”; both are available on patheos.
Freedom From Religion Foundation, an extremist atheist entity, is begging the public for money so it can get Catholics to quit the Church. American Atheists and the Center for Inquiry have sent out “Action Alerts” targeting the Catholic Church. And Americans United for Separation of Church and State, founded as an expressly anti-Catholic organization, is beating the drums for more investigations of the Church.
This is what we have come to expect. Not one of these persons or media outlets has said a word about current cases of the sexual molestation of minors taking place in venues outside the Catholic Church. It is not the victims of sexual abuse who energize them; it is who the alleged victimizers are.
So why would they specifically go after the Catholic Church and give everyone else a pass? Egan and Wills provide the answer: What animates them is a deep-seated hostility to the teachings of the Church on matters sexual. Their goal is to deny the Biblical source of those teachings—even though the strictures are grounded in Scripture—so that Catholics will push for more relaxed rulings.
Ironically, it is libertinism—the exact opposite of the Church’s teachings—that created the scandal in the first place. But the truth does not matter to ideologues—winning does.