Bill Donohue

July 10, 2025

Black Lives Matter Day is July 13. BLM was founded in 2013 after the death of Trayvon Martin but did not become a national force until 2020. Today it is nothing but a shell of an organization. It not only ripped off corporate donors, its legacy is one of blood.

In July 2020, Patrisse Cullors became BLM’s executive director. Less than a year later she resigned after it was reported that she “used her position as the charity’s leader to funnel business to an art company led by the father of her only child.” Before she left in May 2021, she announced that BLM had raised over $90 million. CharityWatch subsequently said BLM is “a giant ghost ship full of treasure drifting in the night with no captain, no discernible crew, and no clear direction.”

It was such a mess that ten states had to close its chapters once it was revealed that BLM was not in compliance with state registration laws. In September 2022, one of its board members, Shalomyah Bowers, and his consulting firm, was accused of stealing more than $10 million in donations from the BLM Global Foundation, using it as its own “piggy bank.”

Bad as this is, nothing is worse than the violence that BLM protesters  engaged in, and the way it exploited black-police encounters. It planted the seed in the minds of millions of Americans that the cops are the enemy of black people, thus aggravating racial relations.

The late David Horowitz closely tracked the damage that BLM had done. “All the outrage against police racism, and all the mayhem fueled by that outrage, was based on no evidence whatsoever. It was based on a lie.” He concluded that the lie “inspired over 600 attacks on 220 American cities.”

To read our report on BLM’s lies and their consequences, click here.

Bill Donohue

July 8, 2025

Catholic dissidents are a motley crew. They include ex-Catholics, Catholics in name only, and some who attend Mass. They are lay men and women, nuns and priests; more than a few are ex-nuns and ex-priests. What they have in common is anger: they are very angry at the Catholic Church. What do they want? They want to gut its moral theology and Protestantize it.

Practicing Catholics do not fund Catholic dissident organizations, so where do they get their cash? From elite foundations bent on undermining Catholicism. There are many of them, but the number-one contributor to these “organizations” (they are more like letterheads with an email address and a website) is the Arcus Foundation.

Arcus funds We Are Church, DignityUSA, New Ways Ministry, Catholics for Choice and the Women’s Alliance for Theology, Ethics and Ritual. All reject the Church’s teachings on marriage, the family, sexuality and ordination, yet claim to be Catholic.

Jon Stryker created the Arcus Foundation in 2000 to focus on queer causes and the preservation of the great apes. We are not sure how well he has done on the latter goal, but we are certain that he has succeeded in funding anti-Catholicism. A homosexual billionaire, in 2023 he gave a total of more than $42 million in grants and operating expenses to various organizations, some of which are dissident Catholic groups.

We Are Church is an umbrella group of ex-Catholics and Catholic malcontents. It is a member of the Global Network of Rainbow Catholics, a pro-homosexual outfit. Its leaders have tried very hard to mobilize everyday Catholics to join their efforts to radically change the Church from top to bottom. They have failed repeatedly, but they still try to tear it apart.

New Ways Ministry was founded in 1977 by Father Robert Nugent and Sister Jeannine Gramick. Their goal is to normalize homosexuality and to get the Church to change its teachings on sodomy. For decades this outfit has been roundly condemned by cardinals and bishops in Rome and the U.S., but in 2021 Pope Francis spoke positively of Gramick. Indeed, he warmly embraced her.

DignityUSA is another pro-homosexual entity. At one time its New York chaplain was Father Paul Shanley, the Boston child rapist who was thrown out of the priesthood after many clerics covered up for him.

Catholics for Choice is a pro-abortion and anti-Catholic letterhead. Frances Kissling, an ex-nun, succeeded in putting it on the map decades ago. The media love them, and no elite donor has been a steadier supporter of its policies more than the Ford Foundation. The Ford Foundation is so ideologically corrupt that Henry Ford II quit in protest in the 1970s.

Women’s Alliance for Theology, Ethics and Ritual (WATER) wants a  woman to be pope, provided it is a woman who rejects the teachings of the Church on sexuality; it will settle for women priests right now.

Other dissident groups that are funded by the establishment include the National Coalition of American Nuns—it is openly pro-abortion—the Women’s Ordination Conference and NETWORK; the latter was run for many years by Sister Simone—Nuns-on-the-Bus—Campbell (the Democratic operative thinks abortion should be legal).

Arcus and the Ford Foundation are not alone in keeping these rogue groups alive. As expected, George Soros’ Open Society Foundations are donors to these anti-Catholic causes, as are the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation (Warren is a big abortion fan), the William & Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Huber Foundation.

We know of no organized effort to effectively assault the beliefs and practices of Jews, Muslims or Protestants. Just Catholics.

So while conservatives are rightly happy that there are some needed cultural shifts going on, they would be foolish to think that the enemies of Christianity, especially Catholicism, will go quietly into the night. Termites have a way of hanging around.

Michael P. McDonald

July 7, 2025

Otto von Bismarck once commented that “Laws are like sausages. It is best not to see them being made.” This maxim is even more applicable for large-scale bills that have come to dominate the political landscape of Washington in recent years. After all, in all of these bills, there will be things you love, there will be things you can live with, and there will be things you hate. It all really comes down to what you choose to emphasize.

With President Trump’s signature spending bill, the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” becoming law, the talking heads have already begun spewing their narrative about this legislation. While we will leave it to the chattering class to cheer and jeer at this bill that Trump has rightfully touted as critical in unleashing America’s potential, there is a major component of the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” that is of keen interest to the Catholic League: namely, this legislation is the single greatest victory for school choice on the national level.

The bill provides a full tax credit for Americans who donate to third-party scholarship granting organizations. These generous people will be eligible to take off $1,700 from their taxes each year. In turn, these donations will be used as scholarships that families can put towards paying for tuition or other educational expenses.

For the first time in American history, the federal government is providing a real alternative to families plagued by failing public schools that refuse to teach reading, writing, and arithmetic so that they can indoctrinate young minds turning them into woke activists.

Of course, as with every other aspect of these massive spending packages, the school choice provision was subjected to the usual procedural measures and horse trading that impacted its final shape. While the Senate Parliamentarian watered-down the more robust version that allowed for more funding for this critical measure, a bigger concern was the inclusion of an opt-out clause allowing blue states, who need alternatives the most, the option of not participating in the scholarship programs.

While this will lessen the impact of this program, it is a step in the right direction and illustrates that there is always more to do on the critical issue of school choice. For our part, the Catholic League will continue to lead in this critical fight.

As our longtime members will know, when Fr. Virgil C. Blum founded the Catholic League in 1973, school choice was a primary concern of his. After all, a high quality Catholic education is critical to the formation of the next generation of Catholics. It will lead to more people deeply committed to the Church who will spend the rest of their lives ensuring our faith is vigorously represented in the public square.

And the “One Big Beautiful Bill” will bolster Catholic schools across America. This will help struggling families access high quality Catholic education, help in forming faithful Catholics for generations to come, and ensure Catholics have a strong presence in the public square. For all of these reasons, we are bullish about this key provision in Trump’s signature bill.

It truly is one big beautiful win for school choice.

Bill Donohue

July 3, 2025

Fourth of July festivities are loved by most Americans, and this year is no different. There are exceptions, of course, the most noticeable being celebrities, many of whom are more at home condemning America than celebrating it. Too many of them have a hard time flexing their patriotic muscles.

The Hollywood elite are often seen supporting radical anti-American conferences and demonstrations. Today, they are quick to say they don’t hate America, just its president. The distinction is valid, but it still raises serious questions about the extent of their patriotism. For example, those who despised Biden were rarely, if ever, seen cheering, or participating in, events where the American flag was burned. The same is not true of the anti-Trump crowd.

When hatred of the president becomes so extreme that its proponents suggest, or flatly support, violence, they are a threat to our country.

Broadway star Patti LuPone is so angry at Trump that she recently said she wanted to blow up the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Who can forget Kathy Griffin holding a bloody, decapitated Trump head? Marilyn Manson did something similar when he released a video that showed a Trump-like figure decapitated. Mickey Rourke said he would “love 30 seconds in a room” with Trump, and also expressed an interest in smashing him with a baseball bat.

Larry Wilmore said, “I don’t want to give him [Trump] any more oxygen. That’s not a euphemism, by the way. I mean it literally.” Rosie O’Donnell, who has fled the country, opined that it would be great to have a game called, “Push Trump Off a Cliff Again.” Madonna hated Trump so much she told a huge anti-Trump crowd that she had “thought an awful lot about blowing up the White House.”

If the celebrities are not preaching violence, they are sounding the alarm over Trump tearing the country apart.

During the presidential campaign last year, Robert De Niro told the press that Trump “wants to destroy” the world. Stephen King warned how fragile democracy is, saying, “LOVELY TO LOOK AT. DELIGHTFUL TO HOLD, BUT ONCE YOU BREAK IT, THEN IT’S SOLD.”

Mia Farrow, another victim of Trump Derangement Syndrome, recently proclaimed, “If we have 6 months of democracy left i’ll [sic] be surprised. I’m guessing 3-4 months.”

I marked my calendar the day she said that. It was March 4. Well, four months have gone by and we are on the eve of July 4th. If she thinks democracy has crashed, she needs to follow Rosie’s lead and get out of town.

Happy Fourth of July to all those patriotic Americans who love our country, and who are not at war with our president.

We originally ran this story on May 14, 2025. The Catholic League has been out in front on this issue, and we were the first organization in the nation to defend Pope Leo XIV. In light of the New York Times running a similar article today, we are releasing it again. While the Times is mostly fair, we wanted to ensure that Bill Donohue’s extensive work on this topic was readily available to counter any misconceptions that some people might draw from the Times.

Bill Donohue

Few things excite the media more than a juicy sex story about Catholic priests, no matter how half-baked the story is. The latest iteration of this phenomenon came on the day Cardinal Robert Prevost became Pope Leo XIV. Wasting no time claiming he is guilty of covering up priestly sexual abuse was SNAP (Survivors Network for those Abused by Priests).

On May 8, it slammed the new pope for the way he addressed accusations of priestly sexual abuse in the United States and Peru. Indeed, six weeks before he was elected, this totally discredited association of anti-Catholic activists filed a complaint with the Vatican saying that Cardinal Prevost “harmed the vulnerable.” The facts prove otherwise.

In 2000, when Father Prevost was the provincial supervisor in Chicago for the Augustinians, he allowed a suspended homosexual priest who had been accused of sexually abusing minors to reside at a rectory not far from a Catholic school. Father James Ray lived there with other priests and restrictions were placed on him.

Two years later, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops issued the Dallas reforms, new guidelines dealing with clergy sexual abuse. It was then that Ray was removed from the Augustinian residence, as well as from public ministry. He was tossed from the priesthood in 2012.

Now it is legitimate to question the decision to place Ray near a school, but to jump to the conclusion that this was an egregious dereliction of duty is absurd. Had Ray been put up in a hotel in a deserted part of town, Prevost’s critics would say he was left unsupervised.

The more intricate case is the one dealing with three sisters from Peru. SNAP says, “When Prevost was Bishop of Chiclayo, three victims reported to civil authorities in 2022 after there was no movement on their canonical case filed through the diocese.” They claim he “failed to open an investigation, sent inadequate information to Rome, and that the diocese allowed the priest to continue saying mass.”

None of this is true. Here’s what happened.

In April 2022, three sisters made accusations about two priests to church authorities about sexual abuse (inappropriate touching) dating back to 2007 when they were minors. The bishop of Chiclayo was Msgr. Robert Prevost.

Contrary to what SNAP reports, the priest was removed from the parish where he worked and prohibited from exercising his ministerial duties.

Also contrary to what SNAP reports, Prevost met with the women in April 2022 and encouraged them to take their case to civil authorities. Meanwhile he opened a canonical probe. He also offered them psychological help.

In July 2022, Prevost contacted the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith after the investigation was completed. A Vatican probe found that the allegations lacked sufficient evidence to warrant further action. Moreover, the statute of limitations had long expired. In addition, the civil investigation was also dismissed for lack of evidence and because the statute of limitations had expired.

The women weren’t satisfied and registered another complaint. The diocese responded by sending further documentation to the Vatican. (In April 2023, Msgr. Prevost was named Prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops in Rome.)

In November 2023, Ana Maria Quispe, the oldest of the sisters, contended that both the civil and ecclesiastical courts were wrong. She started a social media campaign to keep her account alive.

The case was then reopened by the Apostolic Administrator in Chiclayo, addressing her complaint. Victims were summoned to meet but Quispe never showed up.

Meanwhile, there was another development happening, one which SNAP is deadly silent on.

In April 2024, after Archbishop José Eguren, a member of an ultra-conservative movement, the Peruvian Sodalitium of Christian Life, was ousted—he was accused of abuse and financial wrongdoing—accusations of a Cardinal Prevost coverup percolated.

To understand why Prevost was being accused, consider the role that Fr. Ricardo Coronado played. In May 2024, Coronado, a canon lawyer, took up the women’s cases. He was associated with this extremist movement and was widely believed to have engaged in corruption, violence and sexual abuse.

In August 2024, the Peruvian Bishops’ Conference issued a public statement saying Coronado could no longer practice canon law. He was accused of having a sexual relationship with a consenting adult.

Off-the-record comments against Coronado continued to surface from Augustinian priests. They maintained that he “despised” Prevost and that he was guilty of “a pattern of sexually inappropriate and aggressive behavior.”

In January 2025, Pope Francis and Cardinal Prevost met with one of the group’s abuse victims. Weeks before he died, the pope dissolved the movement.

Pedro Salinas, a noted Peruvian journalist who knows this issue well, said Prevost played “an extremely important role” in ending it. In fact, he said, “The campaign of disinformation and discrediting Robert Prevost’s career has always come from the source of Robert Prevost, Archbishop Eguren.”

Having written a book on this subject, The Truth about Clergy Sexual Abuse: Clarifying the Facts and the Causes, I can say with confidence that the accusations of a coverup by Cardinal Prevost are false. If anything, Pope Leo XIV acted fairly and with dispatch.

Bill Donohue

July 1, 2025

I asked some young staffers if they ever heard of Jimmy Swaggart. As expected, they had not. He was an old-time anti-Catholic bigot who made it big, and then had a major fall from grace. He died July 1. The Pentecostal televangelist was 90. His cousins were Mickey Gilley and Jerry Lee Lewis, two accomplished entertainers.

On August 21, 2006, we received a fax from a man who wrote, “My mother-in-law—a Pentecostal subscribes to this magazine [he sent a copy of ‘The Evangelist’], and this has to be one of the many reasons she thinks her daughter is lost because her daughter, my wife, is now Catholic. Jimmy Swaggart is spreading anti-Catholic articles to his subscribers of the magazine, ‘The Evangelist.’”

The man was right. Swaggart was an inveterate anti-Catholic bigot (he also lashed out at other Protestants and Jews).

In the 1980s, Swaggart said, “I maintain that the Catholic superstructure and organization is not really a Christian organization. Its claims are false.” He constantly bashed the pope, saying he was “the most evil man alive.” In one of his tracts, “A Letter to My Catholic Friends,” he said of his “friends” that they are “poor pitiful individuals who think they have enriched themselves spiritually by kissing the pope’s ring”; he urged them to leave the Church.

Catholics were idolaters. As proof, he said, they participate in “Mary-worship.” Their belief in Purgatory, he argued, “provided the Catholic Church with a very effective means to rake heaping piles of money into its coffers.” The Church was guilty of “greed,” the quest for “political power,” and promoting the “the cult of Peter.”

Swaggart proved to be such an influential bigot that several TV stations, including Boston and Atlanta, dropped his show in the mid-1980s. However, he was still seen in 550 outlets nationwide.

In the end, what finished him was not his anti-Catholicism. He was photographed visiting a prostitute in New Orleans. After an investigation by the Assemblies of God, he went on TV to beg for forgiveness and apologized to his wife. But his apology proved to be insincere: he was later caught with another hooker.

The genre of anti-Catholicism that Swaggart represented is no longer predominant. His theological animus against the Catholic Church has been eclipsed by militant secularists. They are bent on privatizing, if not destroying, Catholicism. Just as mean-spirited, they are much better educated, and are therefore much more dangerous. In fact, they occupy most of the command posts in America, especially those that specialize in the dissemination of ideas (e.g., education, the media and publishing).

Swaggart is history. May his family come to terms with his legacy.