Bill Donohue

The Lenten message could not be more countercultural. In a society that prizes self-indulgence—we can’t have enough money, drugs and sex—it is difficult to understand, much less appreciate, what Lent stands for: penance, forgiveness and self-denial. The latter, in particular, is seen by our elites as repulsive.

If there is one person who hated self-denial—he said so explicitly—it was the man who helped secularize, and sexually engineer, our society. His name was Hugh Hefner, founder of Playboy.

The magazine, which Hefner founded in 1953, was not the most corrupting aspect of his work. It was his “Playboy Philosophy.” Launched in December 1962, it gave the ensuing sexual revolution an ideological springboard. He offered several installments, reaching millions of men, an audience no cultural Marxist or feminist liberator could ever command.

“The Playboy Philosophy” was adamant in contending that the individual is “the all important element in society.” From a Catholic perspective, this is absurd. It is the family, not the individual, that is “the all important element in society.” But it would have been inconceivable for a man like Hefner to believe this. Indeed, he harbored a particular antipathy for Catholicism.

Similarly, “The Playboy Philosophy” maintained that “the primary goal of society should be individual happiness.” Predictably, happiness was defined as pleasure, not joy. “Happiness and pleasure are mental and physical states of being and society should emphasize the positive aspects of both.” It would be hard to make a more anti-Christian philosophical statement.

Self-discipline, perseverance, and personal responsibility—what I call the “vital virtues”—are what Hefner disparaged. All require a measure of restraint, a property “The Playboy Philosophy” abhorred. In fact, it treated selflessness as a sin. “We oppose the tendency to meaningless selflessness in our present society”; he singled out self-sacrifice and self-denial for condemnation.

Hefner’s obsession with satisfying our individual primordial appetites did not allow him to appreciate selflessness as a virtue, one that is best expressed when we sacrifice for the good of others. Mother Teresa exemplified this virtue.

Mother Teresa is a great Lenten role model, taking her cues from Jesus, who died on the Cross for our salvation. She could not have comforted the sick and dying, caring for outcastes like lepers, without practicing self-denial. Absent self-denial, selflessness is impossible.

And then there is Hefner. As I recount in The War on Virtue: How the Ruling Class is Killing the American Dream, he practiced what he preached.

He was an equal-opportunity predator who had sex with men, women, and dogs. He was accused of raping multiple women. If he got a gal pregnant, he arranged for an abortion. Like many men who are addicted to pornography and live a promiscuous lifestyle, Hefner was unable to get aroused without partaking in new experiences, some of which were sickening, to put it mildly. He provided girlfriends with drugs to endure constant orgies that he watched voyeuristically. Further, he engaged in acts of bestiality and forced others to do the same.

Admittedly, Hefner is an extreme example of what happens when self-denial is trashed. But his effect on the culture, via “The Playboy Philosophy,” has proven to be lasting and destructive.

Penance, forgiveness and self-denial are not only good for those individuals who observe Lent, their exercise is good for society. We need more Lenten observances, not less of them.

Bill Donohue

We hear a lot about phobias these days. Islamophobia, transphobia, fat phobia, but no one seems to notice religiophobia. There is a reason for this: the trio of phobias mentioned are invoked by liberals against conservatives, and they don’t see themselves as harboring a phobia about religion, or about anything else for that matter. Yet the evidence suggests otherwise.

Reuters, the British news service, recently did a story on politics and religion. So did the New York Times. They both honed in on evangelical support for Donald Trump.

Reuters noted that at a rally in Quemado, Texas, “vendors sold shirts, flags and hats promoting the Republican former president while conservative speakers touted conservative Christian values and criticized the border policies of President Biden, a Democrat.”

The New York Times covered the same event, saying it  “featured an unexpected blend of political anger and religious ardor,” complete with “evangelical sermons, music and speeches.”

On the website of Time, an invitation was extended to sociologist Samuel L. Perry to offer an analysis. He noted, quite correctly, that America is becoming more secular, saying that “much of what religious institutions historically provided America’s citizens—education; counseling; support for the needy; marriage options; entertainment; and explanations for how the world works—are increasingly provided by the state and the market.”

Then Perry veers left. He tells us that as a nation we have become “an increasingly cosmopolitan, multiracial democracy where liberal values of tolerance are celebrated.” He maintains that young people are tuning out the voice of religious conservatives, and this is what is making them more secular.

A more persuasive case can be made that our culture has become so phobic about religion that of course young people are turned off. Whether it be in the mainstream media, social media, the schools, or the entertainment industry, Christianity has been marginalized, if not demonized. The drumbeat is steady, and it is effective.

But the biggest mistake is thinking that “liberal values of tolerance are celebrated.” By whom? Not by liberals.

In 2020, a Cato study found that 77 percent of conservatives, 64 percent of moderates, and 52 percent of liberals said they were afraid to say what they think. On the subject of religion, 33 percent of Democrats felt free to express their viewpoint in most situations on a daily basis, but the figure for Republicans was just 14 percent; it was 32 percent for liberals and 18 percent for conservatives.

In 2021, a Lifeway Research survey found that “nearly 60% agreed that Christians increasingly are confronted by intolerance in America today.” Those who regularly attend religious services were even more likely to say this is true. As expected, young people and those who are religiously unaffiliated were the least likely to agree.

In 2022, a McLaughlin survey commissioned by the Catholic League found that 62 percent of Catholics agreed that “it is getting harder to practice your faith publicly in America.”

It is people of faith, especially conservatives, who are being bullied. And it is secular liberals who are doing the bullying.

It is commonplace for liberals to see themselves as the tolerant ones. Yet  it is not conservatives who are punishing the speech of those who “misgender” someone. It is liberals who are promoting thought control.

Not to be misunderstood, there are, in fact, intolerant conservative Christians. But to portray them as the problem, while ignoring the antics of liberals who are phobic about religion, is simply unfair and inaccurate.

Bill Donohue

Millions of illegal aliens have stormed our borders, absorbing hundreds of millions of dollars in public funds, putting innocent children at risk, and some have become increasingly violent. It is no wonder that the recent Harvard CAPS-Harris poll found immigration to be the number-one issue facing the country. President Biden says they are wrong: climate change is our most pressing concern.

Respondents were asked to choose between 30 different issues, and more than a third, 35 percent, chose immigration; it outpaced “price increases/inflation,” which came in second. In tenth place was “environment/climate change”: 13 percent of those asked chose this issue.

Yesterday, Biden said, “There is only one existential threat we face in this world, and that’s the environment. I mean, it literally is the existential threat.” On January 31, 2023, he said that climate change “is the single-most existential threat to humanity we’ve ever faced, including  nuclear weapons.”

Between those two dates, Biden said that climate change was an “existential threat” 47 times. To read his 49 comments, click here.

After Biden’s press conference yesterday, no one believes Biden is in charge. But he is being fed material by his staff that shows how dramatically out-of-touch this administration is with the American people. Their priorities are not the public’s priorities.

How this will shake out is anyone’s guess. But if there is an “existential threat” to the nation, it’s easy to find: just Google 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Bill Donohue

When Joe Biden was running for president in 2020, he pledged that no one—no matter how heinous the crime—should ever be executed. Instead, the guilty should “serve life sentences without probation or parole.”

Merrick Garland was Attorney General for just a few months before he declared a moratorium on the death penalty. He and the president announced that they would seek to abolish capital punishment once and for all.

On January 12, 2024, Biden and Garland changed their mind. They finally found an execution they like. It is not hard to figure out why they pivoted. It has everything to do with race.

In the last three years that Biden has been president, there have been nearly 2,000 mass shootings. But never once did Garland authorize the death penalty. So the question is, why did Biden and Garland make an exception for Payton Gendron?

The reason they want Gendron dead is because they see in him something that transcends his persona—he is seen as fodder for virtue signaling. Quite simply, they are discriminating against him because he is a white man who killed blacks, and they want to show blacks that they won’t stand for it.

Black people kill black people with stunning frequency, yet such stories are given short shrift by the media, and politicians fail to say a word about it. But when a white person, such as Gendron, kills black people, he’s a suitable candidate for execution. If black lives really mattered as much as white lives, then the race of the killer wouldn’t matter. But it does.

Gendron is a self-confessed white racist who killed 10 black persons at a Buffalo supermarket in 2022 when he was 18. New York State does not allow the death penalty but the Department of Justice can override this in hate crime cases. They did so in this case.

Biden wants Gendron executed because he wants the public to know that he won’t tolerate white supremacy. That’s what he told a black congregation in South Carolina on January 8. He called white supremacy a “poison” that is infecting America. Just last spring he told a black audience at Howard University that “the most dangerous terrorist threat” to America is white supremacy.

One likely reason why Biden is pursing the death penalty in this case is because he wants to shore up his base with black voters. It is slipping badly, especially among young blacks. His approval rating with blacks under the age of 50 is 32 percent.

When Garland addressed the death penalty for Gendron, he said, “The Justice Department fully recognizes the threat that white supremacist violence poses to the safety of the American people and American democracy.” This is a ruse.

Crime data show that in almost 90 percent of the cases where a black person has been murdered, the killer was black. Whites are responsible for 8 percent of blacks who are murdered; the figure is double (16 percent) for whites killed by blacks. In other words, the greatest domestic threat to black people today stems from black people, not white supremacists.

Further proof that Biden and Garland have a racial motive in treating Gendron differently can be seen in their treatment of the El Paso mass killer. In 2019, Patrick Wood Crusius killed 23 people in a Wal-Mart racist rampage. It has been described as the deadliest attack on Hispanics in American history.

Crusius received 90 consecutive life sentences. Why didn’t Garland pursue the death penalty? Don’t 23 dead Latinos count as much as 10 dead African Americans?

If Gendron had been the leader of some white supremacist group, but was otherwise regarded as fairly normal, he would fit the profile of someone who might be a candidate for unusually harsh treatment. But such is not the case.

Like so many mass shooters, Gendron was a classic loner. He was not in charge of any group, white supremacist or otherwise; nor did he belong to a white racist organization. His father was an alcoholic and a long-time drug addict; his chronic substance abuse resulted in the demise of two marriages.

Gendron was such a freak that he wore a hazmat suit to class. After he threatened a shooting at his high school, he was sent for a mental health evaluation.

He was fascinated by violence, even to the point of bragging how he killed a feral cat. First he stabbed it, then he smashed its head on concrete. He finished it by cutting off the cat’s head with a hatchet.

This is a sick man. Normal people do not act this way.

Make no mistake, his horrific crimes demand that he be put away for life.

But given what we know about his disturbed upbringing and his mental state, why are such factors being discounted? If he were just another screwed up young man, with no racist background, everyone knows that Biden and Garland would not be seeking the death penalty.

Looking at the world through a racist lens—which is what Biden and Garland are doing—inevitably results in disparate treatment. It’s obvious that they are exploiting the Gendron case for political purposes.

Bill Donohue

The grossest example of the unequal application of the law today rests with the Biden administration’s handling of offenses committed by pro-life protesters and abortion-rights protesters. The former have been aggressively pursued while the latter have mostly been ignored. Worse, pro-life demonstrators are overwhelmingly peaceful; pro-abortion protesters are more likely to be violent.

At issue is the invocation of the FACE Act (Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances), legislation passed in 1994 that prohibits “violent, threatening, damaging, and obstructive conduct intended to injure, intimidate, or interfere with the right to seek, obtain, or provide reproductive health services.”

It is the application of the law that is the most contentious. The most recent example occurred January 30 when a federal court found six pro-life protesters guilty of violating the FACE Act. They were charged with blocking entrance to an abortion clinic in Mt. Juliet, Tennessee in 2021. They will be sentenced July 2.

No one doubts that the protesters obstructed entrance to the clinic. Similarly, no one doubts that they did so peacefully. They were praying and singing hymns—they were not brandishing firearms. Yet their offenses were treated as a felony. Consequently, they face up to more than 10 years in prison, three years of supervised release, and fines up to $260,000.

What makes this so outrageous is that a year and a half after they were prosecuted locally, Biden’s Department of Justice (DOJ) jumped in and threw the book at them: what was initially a misdemeanor crime was now treated as a FACE Act felony conspiracy.

What broke? What motivated the Biden DOJ to get involved? The answer was provided in December 2022 by Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta. It was the overturning of Roe v. Wade six months earlier, she said, that triggered the heavy-handed response.

Gupta freely acknowledged that this decision was a “devastating blow to women throughout the country,” one that increased “the urgency” of the DOJ’s response, including “enforcement of the FACE Act.”

If there were any doubts about the politics of this decision—nailing pro-life protesters while allowing pro-abortion protesters to skate—it was put to bed a month before Gupta cited the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe. That was when FBI Director Christopher Wray testified before the Senate Homeland Security Committee.

Wray admitted that “we have quite a number of investigations—as we speak—into attacks or threats against pregnancy resource centers, faith-based organizations and other pro-life organizations.” He also said that since the Dobbs decision, “probably in the neighborhood of 70% of our abortion-related violence cases” are against pro-life organizations.

Why is it, then, that in 2024 the FBI lists more than two dozen examples of violent cases associated with abortion protesters and all but one is an offense committed by a pro-life demonstrator?

Wray knows that 70% of FACE Act offenses were not committed by pro-lifers; they were responsible for a fraction of the overall offenses. The figures speak for themselves. In 2022, the DOJ did not charge a single abortion-rights activist, but it charged 26 pro-life protesters with a FACE Act violation.

What was most despicable was the hands-off treatment afforded Jane’s Revenge. They are the most militant group of pro-abortion extremists.

As the Catholic League pointed out in January 2023, Jane’s Revenge  frequently employs “incendiary bombs, vandalism, and other forms of property damage” to crush pro-lifers. We listed many examples.

In March 2023, Sen. Mike Lee addressed Merrick Garland, the head of the DOJ. Lee said the DOJ had announced charges against 34 individuals for blocking access to or vandalizing abortion clinics, yet in the over 81 reported attacks on pregnancy centers only two persons had been charged. The attorney general responded by saying that pro-life activists commit their offenses “during the daylight” when it is easy to see who they are, but pro-abortion activists are “doing this at night, in the dark.”

The Homeland Security Committee in the House, led by Rep. Chip Roy, took Wray to task in October, raising several key issues. The same body drilled him again in December, honing in on the Mark Houck case.

In an early morning raid in September 2022,  the FBI stormed his house  in response to violating the FACE Act a year earlier. The pro-life Catholic was later acquitted but the FBI, as Roy pointed out, still refuses to apologize to him. Many observers believe the FBI was sending a message to pro-life activists. Beware.

There is a pattern here that transcends abortion protesters. The riots of 2020 and 2021 that were conducted by Black Lives Matter and Antifa led to the deaths of more than two dozen persons, and literally billions of dollars in property damage. Why are these violent maniacs free to walk our streets while non-violent pro-life demonstrators are treated like violent thugs?

We implore the House and Senate Homeland Security Committees not to let up on this issue, and that is why we are contacting all the members today.

Contact Sabrina Hancock, chief of staff to Rep. Chip Roy: sabrina.hancock@mail.house.gov

Bill Donohue

Whether one agrees with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s decision to bus illegal aliens to sanctuary cities around the country or not, it is indisputable that he is responsible for making immigration the Number One issue in the nation. His gambit was sociologically brilliant. He turned what was perceived by most Americans to be a regional issue into a national one.

What Abbott did was right out of the playbook of the Left’s favorite radical, Saul Alinsky. In his 1971 book, Rules for Radicals, Alinsky listed 13 tactics for activists. Abbott mastered two of them.

The fourth rule is “Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules. You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity.” By busing migrants to sanctuary cities—making the “compassionate” ones experience what it is like for Texans to put up with the illegals—Abbott called their bluff. Now they are up in arms.

The eighth rule is “Keep the pressure on, with different tactics and actions, and utilize all events of the period for your purpose.” Abbott has not only been relentless in shipping migrants to liberal cities, he has quickened the pace. He has also spread his goodwill around, from east to west, showing his penchant for diversity and inclusion.

We prepared a report on exactly how Abbott rolled out “Operation Lone Star.” It was in April 2022 that he began transporting the migrants. He has now bussed over 100,000 to sanctuary cities. There will be more. In December, illegal aliens came in record numbers—over 300,000 crashed our southern border.

We know that Abbott’s policy is working by examining the polling data.
We looked at surveys conducted by the Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll examining the top three most pressing issues facing the nation, beginning with the start of “Operation Lone Star.” Here is what we found.

April 2022

1. Price/Inflation: 33 percent
2. Economy and Jobs: 28 percent
3. Immigration: 22 percent

Approximately 200 migrants had been relocated by that time.

October 2022

1. Price/Inflation: 37 percent
2. Economy and Jobs: 29 percent
3. Immigration: 23 percent

Over 12,700 migrants had been relocated by that time.

April 2023

1. Price/Inflation: 34 percent
2. Economy and Jobs: 25 percent
3. Immigration: 24 percent

Over 19,040 migrants had been relocated by May 2023 (Texas did not provide data for April 2023).

October 2023

1. Price/Inflation: 32 percent
2. Immigration: 27 percent
3. Economy and Jobs: 24 percent

Over 58,900 migrants had been relocated by that time.

January 2024

1. Immigration: 35 percent
2. Price/Inflation: 32 percent
3. Economy and Jobs: 25 percent

Over 102,100 migrants had been relocated by that time.

The AP-NORC polls found similar outcomes.

2022

1. Economy, general: 31 percent
2. Inflation: 30 percent
3. Immigration: 27 percent

2023

1. Immigration: 35 percent
2. Inflation: 30 percent
3. Economy, general: 24 percent

The evidence is clear: There is a direct line between the expansion of Abbott’s busing and the nation’s intolerance for illegal aliens. Had he not done so, this would still be regarded as a regional issue, and those who live along the border would be its only victims.

Some say it is cruel to bus migrants to cities around the country. We think it is cruel to make Texans pay for the policy prescriptions of those who never suffer the consequences of their own ideas.

Our one complaint with Abbott is that he didn’t exclusively choose to bus the illegals to the wealthiest and most liberal neighborhoods in the country. Only when those who live in places like Beverly Hills and East Hampton feel the pinch of their politics will matters change.

Contact: Gardner Pate, Abbott’s chief of staff: gardner.pate@gov.texas.gov 

Bill Donohue

President Biden’s pick of John Podesta to replace John Kerry as his top climate envoy is revealing on several fronts. All three Catholics worship at the altar of climate control more than they do the altar of the Magisterium, or the teaching body of the Catholic Church. In the case of Podesta, not only is his fidelity misplaced, he has actively sought to subvert the Catholic Church.

To be specific, we learned in 2016 that Wikileaks documents from 2012 showed how Podesta created Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, a bogus lay Catholic entity. He did so with the express purpose of mobilizing Catholics to challenge the Catholic hierarchy, forcing changes that advance the left-wing agenda.

Catholics in Alliance was funded by George Soros. We fought this shell group from the get-go, exposing them as a fraud. When Wikileaks documents confirmed our allegations, Podesta claimed he could not be anti-Catholic because he is a Catholic.

Here is what I said on October 17, 2016, in reply. “Bigotry is determined by what is said and done and does not turn on biographical data. For example, putting a swastika on a synagogue is no less anti-Semitic if done by a Jew. Similarly, making anti-Catholic statements, or engaging in anti-Catholic conduct, is no less anti-Catholic if done by a Catholic.”

If a non-Catholic president chose Podesta for a senior post in his administration, we would brand it as anti-Catholic. When a president who identifies as a Catholic does it, it is aiding and abetting sabotage within the Catholic Church.

Podesta is not only duplicitous about his Catholic status, he is just as duplicitous about his commitment to the environment.

Last November, Podesta went with John Kerry, the climate chief at the time, to the U.N.’s COP28 summit. They had a good time hammering fossil fuels. More important, they got there by taking a private jet. Sen. Joni Ernst took note. “Once again, the Biden administration exposes the hypocrisy of their own radical green fantasy.”

Podesta loves jetting around in private planes. In fact, he averages 11,000 miles per year in private jet travel. He also owns nine luxury cars. In other words, his lifestyle is responsible for emitting so many pollutants into the air that he has to be in the top 1 percent of the nation’s polluters. And when he gets to his destination, he bashes polluters.

John Podesta is a quintessential phony. That is why he was chosen to be the Climate Czar by our “devout Catholic” president. The Czar of Duplicity is a perfect fit.

Contact White House Secretary: Karine.Jean-Pierre@who.eop.gov

Bill Donohue

The reason I wrote The Truth about Clergy Sexual Abuse: Clarifying the Facts and the Causes was to debunk all the distortions and outright lies about this issue. I am proud that not one critic has been able to show where I misstated anything (it contains over 800 endnotes).

Yet there are those who continue to parrot the conventional moonshine on this issue. The latest to do so is Carrie N. Baker, a Smith College professor.

Baker wrote her screed for Ms. magazine, where she is a contributing editor. She states her conclusion right at the start. “The Catholic Church’s clergy sexual abuse scandals, combined with its efforts to control women’s reproductive choices by banning abortion and attacking contraception, expose a troubling pattern of sexual sociopathology.”

She is to be commended for putting her cards on the table. Now we know exactly where she is coming from.

Baker offers as evidence three items: the 2006 documentary Deliver Us From Evil; the movie Spotlight; and the 2018 Pennsylvania grand jury report. Also, she wants us to believe that clergy sexual abuse is ongoing and that a victims’ group, SNAP, is courageously fighting back.

When Deliver Us From Evil debuted, I said that if the writer-director, Amy Berg, had confined herself to the offenses of one predatory priest, Oliver O’Grady, she would have distanced herself from the criticism she rightly received for making sweeping generalizations about priests. That’s called bigotry. As it turned out, her real target was not O’Grady, it was the Catholic Church.

To her credit, Berg subsequently decided to expose the way Hollywood predators manipulated, intimidated and raped aspiring child actors. But her documentary, An Open Secret, was turned down by one Hollywood studio after another. Surprise, surprise. Years later it opened in a few cities.

Spotlight was the story of the Boston Globe’s team that won a Pulitzer Prize for exposing the sexual abuse scandal in the Boston archdiocese. When the newspaper’s series was published in 2002, I said that “The Boston Globe, the Boston Herald, and the New York Times covered the story with professionalism.” I was quoted on the front page of the Times saying, “I am not the church’s water boy. I am not here to defend the indefensible.”

Nine years later I said it was apparent there were two scandals related to this issue. Scandal I was internal—“the church-driven scandal.” Scandal II was external—“the result of indefensible cherry-picking of old cases by rapacious lawyers and vindictive victims’ groups. They were aided and abetted by activists, the media, and Hollywood.”

The movie, Spotlight, which won an Oscar for best picture, was an example of Scandal II. It was not the film that was objectionable, it was the incredibly vicious comments made about the Catholic Church by producers, script writers and actors.

What made their remarks so outrageous was the fact that nine of those associated with the movie had worked for Harvey Weinstein, yet when his sexual misconduct was made public, eight said nothing about his sexual abuse and all nine refused to indict Hollywood the way they did the Catholic Church.

In another example of hypocrisy, after the Boston Globe did a story in 2018 on bishops who allegedly failed to deal adequately with clergy abuse, I spent several weeks exchanging email correspondence with the editor and his staff asking to see the evidence. I was denied. Denied by the same people who condemned the bishops for lacking transparency.

The Pennsylvania grand jury report was a PR stunt pulled by the state’s attorney general (and now governor), Josh Shapiro. Almost all of the accused priests he named were either dead or thrown out of the priesthood. No wonder Shapiro was able to prosecute only two of them. None of the living was allowed to testify in court about his case, but I succeeded in hiring lawyers to defend eleven of the priests who had their reputations ruined. We sued and won, 6-1, in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.

The latest data on clergy sexual abuse, released last year, showed that .013 percent of the clergy had a substantiated allegation made against him by a minor for offenses in the past year. In short, the scandal has been over for about a half century; the timeline was the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s. Most of the abusers (8-in-10) were homosexuals, not pedophiles, and 149 priests were responsible for 26% of the allegations.

Finally, SNAP has long been moribund. It died after its chief was raked over the coals by prosecutors in 2017—David Clohessy was shown to be a fraud. After he was outed as a rogue by a transgender employee, Gretchen Rachel Hammond, he quit. Hammond verified everything I had been saying about SNAP for years.

All that is left of SNAP is a website. It is a shell group comprised of a few people with a phone number and an email address—it has no office address.

Baker failed to lay a glove on the Catholic Church. Quite frankly, she is out of her league on this subject.

Contact her: cbaker@msmagazine.com