Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on the conversation between the pope and the president:

After Pope Francis and President Biden met today, President Biden said that the pope called him a “good Catholic” and that he should “keep receiving communion.” The Vatican has not confirmed the veracity of Biden’s account.

Like everyone else, we at the Catholic League have no way of knowing whether Biden’s remarks are accurate. But from what we know about the Vatican’s handling of the meeting, and Biden’s long record of lying about many important matters, we are maintaining a healthy skepticism about the president’s rendition.

It is certainly in Biden’s interest to have everyone think that the pope encouraged him to keep receiving communion. This issue matters  because it has troubled many American bishops; they will meet in a few weeks to discuss it. Biden’s lust for abortion rights, for instance, is cause for grave concern.

One reason why we are skeptical of Biden’s account is that it seems to be at odds with the Vatican’s decision to deny media press coverage of the meeting. The White House was banking on a photo-op, knowing that the optics would serve the president’s interests. But they were stiffed the day before the meeting.

If it is reasonable to conclude that the Vatican did not want the appearance of being played by the White House—sending the message that this pro-abortion Catholic president is a model Catholic—then it appears contradictory to laud his Catholic credentials. More important, why would the pope inject himself into the controversy between U.S. bishops and the president, knowing that by doing so he would undercut the USCCB (United States Conference of Catholic Bishops)?

Then there is the issue of lying. That Biden is a pathological liar cannot be denied. Here are a few instances.

The first example looks like small potatoes, but when coupled with the other examples, it takes on significance.

In 1974, when Biden was a freshman senator from Delaware, he bragged how he hit a ball 358 feet at his second congressional baseball game on July 2nd. In fact, he went 0-for-2.

The year 1987 was not a good one for the presidential hopeful. David Greenberg, writing in Slate, a left-wing media outlet, recalled how Biden plagiarized a speech given by British Labor Party leader Neil Kinnock.

“Biden lifted Kinnock’s precise turns of phrase and his sequences of ideas—a degree of plagiarism that would disqualify any student for failure, if not expulsion from school. But the even greater sin was to borrow biographical facts from Kinnock that, although true about Kinnock, didn’t apply to Biden. Unlike Kinnock, Biden wasn’t the first person in his family history to attend college, as he asserted; nor were his ancestors coal miners, as he claimed when he used Kinnock’s words.”

This was just the beginning of Biden’s lies. It was then revealed that he plagiarized from speeches given by Robert Kennedy, John F. Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey. The next day he admitted to telling more lies. He confessed to receiving an “F” in a law school course because he plagiarized five pages from a published article.

According to the Washington Post, Biden also told several lies about his academic credentials. He said he graduated with “three degrees” from the University of Delaware. Wrong. He graduated with one degree. He said he won a coveted political science award at the university. He lied. He said he graduated at the top of his class at Syracuse Law School. He did not. He was 76th in a class of 85. He said he had a “full scholarship” at Syracuse. Another lie. He had a half scholarship.

Shaun King is an African American writer who has tracked Biden’s civil rights record. Here is what he wrote last year about this issue.

“On two very important occasions, Joe Biden actually told the entire truth about his involvement in the Civil Rights Movement. Nearly everything else has been a lie. I’ve counted at least 31 different lies he has told about being an activist, organizer, sit-in demonstrator, boycott leader, voter registration volunteer, Black church trainee and more in the Civil Rights Movement, but every time I dig, I actually find more interviews, more lies, more fabrications, more tales he told to voters, reporters, historians, and more (his emphasis).”

When an anti-Semite attacked the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018, leaving 12 dead, Biden claimed he later visited the synagogue, saying he spoke to the people there. He lied. He was never there, as officials at the synagogue recounted.

In his first 100 days in office, the Washington Post listed 78 false or misleading statements he made.

Recently, several high ranking military officials said that Biden’s rendition of the advice they gave him on withdrawing from Afghanistan was patently untrue.

It is for these reasons that we are skeptical of Biden’s account of what the pope said to him at their meeting.

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on tomorrow’s meeting between the pope and the president:

Yesterday, I issued a statement saying the White House is out to milk the meeting between Pope Francis and President Biden. They need to. Biden is in trouble with the bishops at home—he adamantly rejects core Catholic moral teachings—and his administration was banking on posting pictures of the two men grinning and shaking hands. But now the Vatican has thrown a monkey wrench into this opportunistic gambit. The media have been mostly barred from covering the meeting.

The Vatican has said that there will be no live coverage of Biden greeting the pope. Nor will the media be allowed to cover the two men sitting  down as they begin their conversation. In other words, the optics that the White House was counting on are dead in the water.

Usually, the media film an exchange of gifts between the pope and a head of state in the pope’s library; a recording of what they say is also provided. Not this time. Only select professionals, chosen by the Vatican,  will be permitted.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki knows what this means and is not a happy camper. She chided the Vatican, saying, “We believe in the value of a free press.”

If the White House valued a free press, why does the president rarely hold a press conference? Why does he habitually duck the press when boarding a helicopter? Why does the vice president run from the press? Why, when they were running for office, did they refuse to do any of the Sunday talk shows? Why did Biden hide in his basement?

Kudos to the Vatican. They know when they are being used.

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on a CNN story on the Catholic Church:

Halloween is a time when children dress up as monsters and witches. It’s also a time when some adults get dressed up, but, unlike the children, they actually think they’ve adopted a new identity. To wit: CNN did a story this week on German Catholic women who dress up as a priest and sincerely believe they’ve become members of the clergy.

As always, the wannabe priests are senior citizens. CNN described them as “mostly gray-haired women.” At a rally, they were “singing along—at full pelt.” The protesting malcontents held signs, “Women, what are you waiting for?”

They are a motley crew. “Almost everyone is wearing a rainbow mask. One woman dressed as a clown sends a stream of giant bubbles into the air.” This isn’t a playground for pre-school kids—it’s a demonstration conducted by adult women.

No matter, CNN takes them seriously. It says they want to “modernize” the German Catholic Church. Indeed, it says these “feminists [are] trying to save the Catholic Church.” Save it or kill it?

CNN is badly informed. The data convincingly show that the more “modern” a religious body is, the more likely it is to wither and die. It is not the orthodox religious dioceses and orders of priests and nuns that are dying—it’s the more “relevant” among them. Indeed, the German Catholic Church is in trouble precisely because it is the most “modern” Catholic entity in Europe, if not the world. Ditto for its Protestant brothers.

A majority of Germans are either Catholic (22.6 million) or Protestant (20.7 million). While only 10 percent of Catholics attend church on Sunday, the figure for Protestants is barely 3 percent. In 2019, 272,000 Catholics left the Church; the number of Protestants who fled was proportionately greater, 270,000. Similarly, a Pew survey on this issue, published in 2019, found that “Germany’s share of Protestants has decreased at a faster rate than Catholics.”

The same pattern is found in the U.S. In fact, the divide between the orthodox and the heterodox is evident across religions. It is the mainline Protestant denominations that have witnessed the greatest decline, not the evangelical and fundamentalist communities. Orthodox Jews are growing; this is not true of Conservative and Reform Jews. In short, the more a major religion succumbs to the dominant culture, the more irrelevant it becomes to its flock.

It’s not hard to figure out. Why would a young Catholic girl, for instance, consider joining an order of nuns that is largely indistinguishable in dress, living arrangements and work from her friends who are married with a family? In other words, the more trendy a religion is, the less special it becomes.

CNN wrote this piece for one reason: it wants women priests. To that end, it wants to convince the public that the time has come for the Church to change. It could have done a story on the Mormons, the Orthodox churches, Orthodox Judaism, the Missouri Synod of the Lutheran Church, Islam, and the Southern Baptist Convention—they all have an all-male clergy—but the big fish to fry is the Catholic Church.

This kind of media manipulation is not lost on most Americans. It explains why so many of them hold the profession of journalism in such low regard. They never seem to learn.

Contact Meredith Artley, Senior VP and Editor-in-Chief, CNN Digital Worldwide: meredith.artley@turner.com

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on the meeting this Friday between the president and the pope:

President Biden is scheduled to meet with Pope Francis in Rome on October 29. For the pope, it will be routine: he meets with heads of state all the time, and he has no compelling reason to meet with Biden. The reverse is not true: Biden is in trouble with U.S. bishops and needs to milk this event for all it’s worth.

When Biden, who identifies as a Catholic, was elected, his stark departures from serious Catholic moral teachings gave many of the bishops pause.

Los Angeles Archbishop José Gomez, president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), expressed concerns about the signals that the president would be sending to Catholics. To be specific, if Biden were adamant in his public rejection of Catholic moral teachings, and is perceived to be in good standing with the Church, how would this play with Catholics in the pews?

The White House knows that the president will be on the minds of the bishops when the USCCB meets in a few weeks in Baltimore. It is in their interest, then, to put a happy face on the meeting with the pope. The optics are critical: pictures of the two men smiling and shaking hands will be posted everywhere.

To what end? It’s a defensive strategy. This will enable the Biden team to argue that although some of his policies depart from, or undercut, Church teachings, they are of no real consequence.

Biden is not only pro-abortion, he has become increasingly more rabid in his support for abortion rights the older he gets. For most of his career in politics, which spans a half century, he at least put the brakes on his support for publicly funded abortions. No more—the brakes are shot.

Biden not only supports gay marriage, he officiated at one. As president, he has shown his contempt for the Church’s teaching on gender ideology, even going so far this week as to promote to admiral a man who falsely claims to be a woman. Worse, the president refuses to label sex transition surgery on minors as child abuse.

When it comes to religious liberty, Biden has taken several steps to undermine it, the most egregious example being his support for the Equality Act. If it were to become law, the federal government could arguably order Catholic hospitals to perform abortions.

So what are Biden and Pope Francis expected to discuss when they meet? Covid, climate change and poverty. It doesn’t get much safer than that. These are three subjects that are easier to oppose than resolve. In short, the White House has seen to it that the issues which divide the pope and the president—marriage, the family, sexuality, religious liberty—will  not be on the agenda.

The White House hopes that the staged image of Biden and Pope Francis together will weaken, if not neuter, criticisms by the bishops of the president. They certainly don’t expect the president to fall in line with the teachings of his religion. That would cost him the goodwill of his secular base of supporters, and that is priority number one.

Contact White House press secretary Jen Psaki: jennifer.r.psaki@who.eop.gov

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on the controversy over comedian Dave Chappelle:

“Gender is a fact. Every human being in this room, every human being on earth, had to pass through the legs of a woman to be on earth. That is a fact.” Chappelle is twice wrong, but that should not distract us from what he meant.

[What he is describing is not gender, which refers to socially learned roles appropriate for males and females, but sex. Ergo, it would be more accurate to say, “sex is a fact.” Also, some babies are born of a Cesarean section.]

Leaving aside linguistic technicalities, what Chappelle said is not only inoffensive, it is pedestrian. But in today’s world, where certain protected classes of people demand that the rest of us walk on eggshells—making sure we don’t offend their hyperinflated sensibilities—what he said has been roundly condemned as hate speech by LGBTQ purists and their ilk.

In other words, Chappelle is right to stick to his guns and not bow to their twisted understanding of sex. Sex is determined by nature, and nature’s God, and not by some ideological guru who insists that nature does not exist. News flash: The entire world is not a social construction.

GLAAD, the homosexual organization, is very upset with Chappelle. It declared that his “brand has become synonymous with ridiculing trans people and other marginalized communities.” The Human Rights Campaign, another homosexual outfit, told Chappelle that “Trans women are women. Trans men are men. Non-binary people are non-binary.”

Netflix transgender staff members were so angered by what Chappelle said that they staged a walk out. They also drew up a list of demands they want the top brass to honor. Essentially, they want an end to any jokes that might offend them, which means they don’t ever want to be the butt of jokes again, not by Chappelle, not by anyone.

Netflix executive producer Jaclyn Moore quit her job after Chappelle’s special, “The Closer,” aired. “I won’t work for @netflix again as long as they keep promoting and profiting from dangerous transphobic content.” Comedian Jaye McBride accused Chappelle of “punching down” with his “mean” remarks. Alyssa Milano said, “it is really important to hold people accountable,” and by that she meant that Chappelle’s “hate speech” special should be discontinued.

None of these organizations and individuals should be taken seriously.

They’re all phonies. Their interest in objecting to bigotry never seems to include Catholics.

GLAAD has been bashing the Catholic Church for years. When Pope Francis came to the U.S. in 2015, it issued a “papal guidebook” advising the media on how to treat him and what words they should adopt, all of which were contentious. Whenever a parish or diocese seeks to operationalize Catholic teachings that it disapproves of, it slams the Church as bigoted. It has sought to cancel me on TV, and has given awards to patently anti-Catholic plays.

Human Rights Campaign has a “Catholic initiative” that, among other things, monitors Catholic schools that do not accept its idea of marriage. For example, when a Catholic teacher “marries” someone of the same sex, in clear violation of a contract he or she voluntarily signed, and is then terminated for doing so, it registers its outrage.

Moore likes to tweet about “pedo priests,” thus smearing all priests because of the behavior of a few miscreants. McBride has made many similar comments. Milano has denounced her Catholic upbringing, explaining that her two abortions were “something that I needed.”

Netflix is also duplicitous. Its co-chief executive, Ted Sarandos, says the company is standing by its big investment in Chappelle—he is their long-time prize comedian—arguing that “The Closer” did not cross the line by inciting “hate or violence.” He is right about that, but there is more to this account.

In 2017, Netflix aired “F is for Family.” Episode One featured a husband who had just reconciled with his wife, thanks to Father Pat. He is shown pulling a crucifix out of his pocket, asking the Lord for strength while chanting, “vagina, vagina, vagina.” Episode Six showed their son masturbating while staring at a candle with an image of Our Blessed Mother. Episode Nine depicted the priest—who of course is a homosexual—fondling Jesus’ body on a crucifix, saying, “Oh, you’ve got a swimmer’s body.”

Now this may not be hate speech as determined by Sarandos, but many practicing Catholics would beg to differ.

Just last year Netflix aired “Cuties,” a soft-core child porn film. Critics hammered it for normalizing pedophilia. For instance, it showed a pre-teen girl taking pictures of her private parts before publishing them online.

This is not hate speech, but it is certainly irresponsible and exploitative, inviting sick men to practice their trade.

So what’s the answer? We need to lighten up, while also treating every segment of the population the same. Most of us know the difference between cracking a joke that stings and one that is patently offensive. No, not everything goes, but whatever the standard is must be uniformly applied.

Kudos to Chappelle for standing up to the sexually confused, especially the bullies among them.

Contact Sarandos: teds@netflix.com

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on a Biden nominee who is a threat to public safety:

If credentials were sufficient grounds for holding a position in the Biden administration, Atul Gawande would merit a unanimous vote. He is a Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School, a graduate of Harvard  Medical School, a Rhodes Scholar, a distinguished author, and the former CEO of a healthcare organization. This is surely why President Biden has nominated him to be assistant administrator of the Bureau for Global Health at the U.S. Agency for International Development.

There are very good reasons, however, why Senator Marco Rubio sounded the alarm on Gawande. He is a defender of infanticide, a reflection, no doubt, of his crass utilitarian philosophy. In short, credentials, no matter how stellar, tell us nothing about the ethics of the person.

Rubio, who sits on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, centers his objection to Gawande on a 1998 essay he wrote for Slate, the left-wing media outlet. It was a full-throated defense of partial-birth abortion.

Gawande casually describes what partial-birth abortion entails. “The fetus is delivered feet first. To get the large head out, the doctor cuts open a hole at the base of the fetus’s skull and inserts tubing to suck out the brain, which collapses the skull. Often, but not always, the fetus is injected lethally beforehand.”

Gawande knows how normal people react to this monstrous procedure, and he has a ready answer for them. “If partial-birth abortion is too gruesome to allow, however, it is hard to see how other late abortions, especially D and Es [dilatation and evacuation], are any different.”

He’s right about that.

“About 80 percent of late-term abortions are done by D and E,” Gawande says. “A couple of days ahead, small, absorbent rods are put in the pregnant woman’s cervical opening to expand it gradually. Then, for the actual procedure, she—and the fetus—are given heavy sedation or general anesthesia. The doctor breaks her bag of water and drains out the fluid. The opening won’t let the fetus out whole. So the doctor uses metal tongs, physically crushes the head, and dismembers the fetus. The pieces are pulled out and counted to confirm that nothing was missed.” Not even a toe.

Gawande speaks with clinical detachment about the most Nazi-like practices.

“What makes abortion disturbing is that the fetus is big now—like a fully formed child. Two of my obstetrician friends, both strongly pro-choice, told me that, even when it is a mother’s life at stake and abortion is absolutely necessary, doing the D and E feels ‘horrible.’ We imagine, as we look in the fetus’s eyes, that there is someone in there.”

Imagine that. A big unborn child, who miraculously resembles a “fully formed child,” inspires those who look into his eyes that there really is someone there!

Hooman Noorchashm is an M.D. who also holds a Ph.D. He worked with Gawande at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH), a Harvard-affiliated entity, in Boston. On December 11, 2018, he wrote a letter to Gawande commenting on his appointment as the new CEO of Haven Healthcare.

Noorchashm raked Gawande over the coals for going mute on a serious scandal that took place at the hospital when they worked there. A surgical tool was used during hysterectomies that spread a dangerous cancer in some of the hospital’s patients.

The device is called a morcellator. It is used to cut up and remove tissue to treat fibroids. While these growths are usually benign, they sometimes cannot be detected before surgery. As described by the Wall Street Journal, which covered the scandal, “Morcellation can send pieces of malignant tissue into other parts of the abdomen, significantly reducing a woman’s chance of long-term survival, the FDA said.” One of the women treated at BWH died after a hysterectomy with morcellation in 2012. She was 52.

When Noorchashm spoke to Gawande about this issue, he was struck by his cowardly silence. What makes this so disturbing is that Gawande has a reputation as the guardian of public safety. Moreover, he was fully aware of a critical analysis of what was going on at BWH.

Noorchashm said in his letter to him that “you failed to rise up, at all, to defend a surgical and ethical critique and position [of this dangerous operation] you knew was absolutely correct—I know your silence was for the sake of internal politics, or perhaps it was because of the ethically imbalanced utilitarian philosophy your writings seem to promote.”

Noorshashm didn’t mince words. “Maybe you believe that the majority benefit and cost/revenue advantages somehow justified the minority subset of women whose cancers were being spread and upstaged by GYNs using their ‘meat-grinders’ through small holes.”

He called Gawande’s selection as CEO of Haven Healthcare “monumentally frightening.”

Surely the Biden administration can find someone who has a more humane record than Gawande. It does not exaggerate to say that he is a direct threat to public safety.

Tell Sen. Rubio you support his efforts. Contact his legislative director, Lauren Reamy: lauren_reamy@rubio.senate.gov

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on the origins of the “religious right”:

Randall Balmer is a Dartmouth professor who maintains that the origins of the conservative evangelical-Catholic alliance, or what he prefers to call “the religious right,” are rooted in racism. A liberal evangelical himself, he has written about this story many times, and recounts it again in his new book, Bad Faith: Race and the Rise of the Religious Right. But is he right?

Balmer is certainly right to say that abortion was not the real reason why conservative evangelicals and Catholics initially came together. When Roe v. Wade legalized abortion in 1973, Catholics stood alone in opposing it. Unfortunately, this was at a time when Protestants, and Jews as well, reflexively took the opposite side on many moral issues that Catholics took.

It wasn’t until the late 1970s that evangelicals pivoted and joined the fight for the unborn. Ever since, the two sides have worked together, owing much to the work of Chuck Colson and Father Richard John Neuhaus; both deceased, they cemented the evangelical-Catholic alliance.

Balmer recalls a meeting in November 1990 in Washington marking the ten-year anniversary of Ronald Reagan’s election. He said he was surprised to be invited to this closed-door meeting given that it was populated by many influential conservative leaders. Also in attendance was Paul Weyrich, who co-founded the Heritage Foundation.

Weyrich observed that it was not abortion that initially drew the two religious strands together: the political movement began with a controversy involving Bob Jones University’s racist strictures, including a ban on interracial dating.

To make his case, Balmer says that a federal court decision in 1971 affirming the right of the IRS to deny a tax-exempt status to racially discriminatory private schools was seized upon by Weyrich to forge a union between evangelicals and Catholics. He therefore argues that the alliance was anchored in racism.

To be sure, it was the racist policies of Bob Jones (which was also known for its anti-Catholicism) that galvanized the IRS. But it is a leap to conclude that it was racism that prompted Weyrich and his evangelical friends to join forces. A stronger case can be made that it was federal encroachment on religious schools that drove the movement, even if we allow that some evangelicals were racists.

For example, had the proximate concern of the IRS been a ban on same-sex marriage, and had evangelicals and Catholics forged an alliance in opposition to IRS attempts to deny Bob Jones its tax-exempt status,  Balmer might logically conclude that it was a dispute over marriage that forged the alliance. But as in the case with racially discriminatory policies, it can persuasively be argued that it was federal overreach that primarily galvanized these two religious communities.

Balmer is correct to say that Weyrich had long been looking for an issue that would inspire a coalition, but he is unfair when he concludes that Weyrich and Jerry Falwell “sought to shift the grounds of the debate [away from racial segregation], framing their opposition in terms of religious freedom rather than in defense of racial segregation.”

Weyrich and Falwell worked together not because they were segregationists, but because they wanted to mobilize the “moral majority.” That term was coined by Weyrich, and it became a movement, ably led by Falwell. Their interest was cultural decay, not racial issues.  Weyrich was always looking for a more macro subject, one that transcended the contentious moral issues of the day. Indeed, even Balmer acknowledges this verity.

Balmer quotes conservative activist Grover Norquist as saying, correctly, that the religious right did not start with prayer in the school or abortion. “It started in ’77 or ’78 with the Carter administration’s attack on Christian schools and radio stations. That’s where all the organization flowed out of. It was complete self-defense.” He is correct again: it wasn’t racism that propelled the alliance; rather, it was the federal attack on the autonomy of Christian schools.

Similarly, Balmer quotes Weyrich’s astute observation noting that when  “the Internal Revenue Service tried to deny tax exemption to private schools, [that] more than any single act brought the fundamentalists and evangelicals into the political process.” Again, there is no mention of the race issue. It was never the predominant reason for mobilization.

Here’s more proof of Weyrich’s primary concern (again acknowledged by Balmer). “What caused the movement to surface was the federal government’s moves against Christian schools. This absolutely shattered the Christian community’s notions that Christians could isolate themselves inside their own institutions and teach what they pleased.”

Balmer also quotes what then presidential-candidate Ronald Reagan had to say about this matter. He told a big crowd of evangelicals in August 1980 that he stood with them in their fight against the “unconstitutional regulatory agenda” of the IRS “against independent schools.” Weyrich was at the event. “We gave him a ten-minute standing ovation. The whole movement was snowballing by then.” Their applause had nothing to do with celebrations of racism.

It should also be said that conservatives such as Barry Goldwater and William F. Buckley, Jr. were opposed to the 1964 Civil Rights Act (Buckley later softened his stand), not because they were racists, but because of what they saw as an unconstitutional power grab by the federal government and a disrespect for states’ rights.

In the last book that Weyrich wrote (co-authored with William S. Lind), The Next Conservatism, he said, “Instead of the ‘multiculturalism’ demanded by cultural Marxists, the Democratic Party should once again become the party of racial integration, which means acculturating blacks and immigrants into standard middle-class American values. That is the only way blacks and immigrants can hope to become members of the middle class economically.”

That is the voice of reason, not racism.

Why does any of this matter? It matters because it is unjust to maintain that the religious right was born of racism. No, it was born of a genuine concern for the autonomy of Christian schools, and an animus against federal encroachment on them. It later branched out, and to this day conservative Catholics and evangelicals work cooperatively together.

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on another victim of the cancel culture:

On October 18, New York City officials voted unanimously to remove a 7-foot-tall statue of Thomas Jefferson from the chambers of the New York City Council in City Hall. Perversely, the person most responsible for declaring Jefferson a racist is himself a racist, New York State Assemblyman Charles Barron. What should they do with the Jefferson statue? “I think it should be put in storage or destroyed or whatever,” he said.

Barron started his activist career as a member of the Black Panthers, a racist organization. The ADL, which tracks anti-Semitism, says he “has associated with anti-Semitic hate groups and promoted extreme anti-Israel positions intended to demonize the Jewish state since his election [to the City Council] in 2001.”

The ADL does not exaggerate. Barron said in 2009, “Gaza is a virtual death camp, the same kind of conditions the Nazis imposed on the Jews.” He also defended Louis Farrakhan, the vicious anti-Semite, claiming he is not a racist.

Barron’s loathing of white people once provoked him to do more than just get in their face. “You know some days I get so frustrated I just want to go up to the closest white person and say, ‘You can’t understand this, it’s a black thing,’ and then slap him, just for my mental health.”

Though Barron argues that Jefferson oppressed people, he himself has  embraced some of the most notorious oppressors on earth. At a ceremony honoring Libyan President Muammar Qaddafi, a known terrorist, he called him his “hero” and an “African freedom fighter.” Similarly, he supported Robert Mugabe, the Zimbabwean president who was accused of atrocities in his home country.

Barron has also worked against his own people by opposing charter public schools for blacks. His opposition to raising academic standards at the City University of New York also belied a conviction that blacks could not compete with whites. Worse, in 2011, when 12 failing public schools were slated to close, he showed up at a hearing not to protest the schools, but the decision to shut them down.

As to be expected, Barron refuses to salute the American flag and is opposed to the Pledge of Allegiance.

If Barron knew anything about history, he would know that when Jefferson owned slaves, slavery was commonplace all over the world. While slavery was made illegal in the U.S. in 1865, it was not made illegal in Africa until 1981, and it still exists there in some countries.

No one put in motion the end to slavery in the United States more than Jefferson. He wrote the Declaration of Independence, detailing the principles by which the cause for civil rights could proceed.

When the Declaration and the Constitution were written, there would have been no union had there not been a compromise with the slave states. Most students today do not know that it was written into the Constitution that the international slave trade would end on January 1, 1808. The president who made good on that pledge was Thomas Jefferson.

Indeed, two years earlier, in his annual address to Congress, our third president called for the “criminalization of international slave trade” on the first possible date. The following year he signed into law the provision that no new slaves were permitted to be imported into the U.S.

It is said that Jefferson fathered slave children with Sally Hemings. The fact is there is no existing DNA of Jefferson available. The DNA that was used in tests to settle this controversy came from descendants of Field Jefferson, his uncle. Any one of two dozen Jeffersons could have been the father of Hemings’ 5th child.

Perhaps the most insulting aspect of this assault on Jefferson is the fact that had it not been for him, Martin Luther King would have gotten nowhere. King called the Declaration a “promissory note,” one that black folks could use to leverage their rights. No, all men in the late 18th century were not treated as equals, but thanks to Jefferson, they knew they were “created” equal, and could therefore pursue their rights.

Nowhere in the world at that time had any country had anything like the Declaration, which is why slavery was considered unobjectionable. Not to acknowledge this is pure ignorance.

In his “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” King quotes Jefferson’s phrase,   “all men are created equal.” That was his inspiration. He called on blacks to continue “standing up for what is best in the American dream and for the most sacred values in our Judaeo-Christian heritage, thereby bringing our nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug by the founding fathers in their formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.”

King succeeded because he had a mature understanding of history. He also knew how to mobilize his people to achieve freedom, leaning on the principles of liberty encoded in the Declaration.

Jefferson had his failings. But without his contribution, the progress that has been made in realizing freedom for everyone would not have been made. That is his true legacy. Shame on those too myopic, and too saddled with their own bigoted lens, not to see it.

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on President Biden’s nomination of Joe Donnelly for a senior ambassador post:

Several Catholic news outlets, including Catholic News Service, have reported that Joseph Donnelly, President Biden’s nominee to be the new U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See, is a “pro-life” Democrat. They are wrong. Worse, Donnelly is not only at odds with the Catholic Church on abortion, he is pro-gay marriage, against religious liberty, and against school choice.

When Donnelly served as a congressman from Indiana (2007-2013), he was pro-life, but when he became a U.S. Senator (2013-2019), he pivoted and joined the pro-abortion camp. Here’s the evidence.

While serving in the 111th Congress, 2009-2010, Donnelly agreed with the positions of National Right to Life 83% of the time. When he became a senator, his numbers dropped to 20% (2013-2014), 25% (2015-2016), and 28% (2017-2018).

NARAL, the pro-abortion giant, gave him a 0% score in 2016, but he jumped to 84% in 2017 and 80% in 2018.

Donnelly also voted for the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, in 2010, even though the bill required Catholic non-profits, such as the Little Sisters of the Poor, to pay for abortion-inducing drugs in their healthcare plans.

According to Bill McGurn of the Wall Street Journal, he was not initially in favor of the bill, but a phone call from the former president of Notre Dame University, Father Theodore Hesburgh—done at the behest of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi—convinced him to change his mind. It worked. Thereafter, Donnelly never voted to repeal Obamacare.

Donnelly’s support for Obamacare pitted him against the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). In 2012, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, president of the USCCB, wrote that the Obama administration “has refused to exempt religious institutions that serve the common good—including Catholic schools, charities and hospitals—from its sweeping new health-care mandate that requires employers to purchase contraception, including abortion-producing drugs, and sterilization coverage for their employees.”

In 2017, when President Trump signed a bill that would deny states the right to use Title X funds to enable abortion providers, Donnelly voted against it.

In August 2015, Donnelly voted against funding Planned Parenthood, but literally four months later he voted to fund it. In 2018, he once again voted to have the taxpayers fund this abortion-clinic behemoth.

On gay marriage, Donnelly went through a similar “evolution.” He was initially opposed to it, which is why the Human Rights Campaign, a prominent gay organization, gave him a score of only 30% when he was  in the House. But when he got to the Senate, this homosexual entity was so delighted with him that they gave him a score of 85%.

In 2013, the USCCB issued a statement opposing the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA). The bill, which was promoted as a way to protect homosexuals from being discriminated against in the workplace, was much more than that. “The bill does not distinguish,” the bishops said, “between sexual inclination and sexual conduct.”  The bishops also criticized the bill for inadequate religious-liberty protections. Donnelly voted for it.

A year later, after the U.S. Supreme Court issued its “Hobby Lobby” ruling—it protected the religious rights of private business owners—the Democrats sought to undo it. Bishop Timothy L. Doherty of the Lafayette Diocese was none too happy with Donnelly. “Two weeks after they pleaded with Congress to maintain our religious freedom, a majority of the Senate—including our own Sen. Joe Donnelly of Indiana—voted to move forward with legislation to take that freedom away.”

In 2015, Donnelly fought against an Indiana bill that would safeguard religious liberty. The bill, which was modeled after the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act, had already been adopted by thirty states. More important, allegations that it would lead to discrimination against homosexuals were unfounded. The evidence showed that these laws did not engender a single act of discrimination against any American.

In Donnelly’s last term in the Senate, he voted against a school choice measure that would have allowed families to use 529 account funds to help pay for private and secondary education, including homeschooling. Thus did he stand fast against the bishops in their support for school choice initiatives that would assist Catholic schools.

Joe Donnelly started out as a Catholic official who was mostly in line with the policy prescriptions of the Catholic Church. But he ended his career in government as a foe of the Church’s moral teachings. Now he wants to represent the U.S. at the Vatican.

There is a reason why Donnelly was co-chair of Catholics for Biden. Like our “devout Catholic” president, he turned rogue.

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on Bill Maher:

As our records show, no comedian has been more vicious in his remarks about Roman Catholicism than Bill Maher. Indeed, his antics got so bad I once told Megyn Kelly that I would like to put on the Everlast and get into the ring with him at Madison Square Garden. Subsequently, he told Larry King that I threatened violence against him!

Having been nothing but critical about Maher for decades, I am moved to say something positive for a change. No, he hasn’t apologized for demonizing priests, but he has shown an independence of mind that is admirable. To be exact, he has not been shy about ripping the censorial ones on the Left.

It’s not just the cancel culture that Maher abhors. He is resolutely opposed to the Left’s obsession with race, especially critical race theory. The insane ideas that the masters of politically correctness espouse—ranging from transgender politics to our open border policy—have been the subject of his disdain. The mess that Biden made in Afghanistan has also incurred his wrath. Significantly, he routinely invokes “common sense” to make his points; this is an attribute the Left totally lacks.

It would be one thing if Maher settled for a few throwaway lines, but that is not what he has done. At least since 2012, he has broken with the politics of the Left, although it wasn’t until this year that he stepped on the gas. Not only are the crazies giving him much fodder to deconstruct, he is not shy about giving it right back to them.

What Maher is doing is not only commendable, it is much needed. He reaches an audience that desperately needs to listen to his growing list of reality checks. Just as important, he is widening his reach. “I was in Nashville about a month ago,” he said recently, “and the audience was about 60-40 liberal to conservative. That never used to happen, never.”

Does this mean the Catholic League is going soft on Bill Maher? No, but it does mean that his willingness to stand fast against some of the more pernicious ideas that have gripped the ruling class is deserving of high marks. Honesty demands that we take note of his courage. Let’s hope others follow suit.