Bill Donohue

On January 16, President Donald Trump forever declared this day to be Religious Freedom Day, honoring the central place that religion has played in anchoring our freedoms. He specifically cited the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, which was codified on January 16, 1786; it is the foundation of the First Amendment.

Only someone who holds an animus against religion would find fault with Trump’s statement. Enter the militant atheists from the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF). They detest it, declaring it to be a “Christian nationalist manifesto.”

As I have said many times, “Christian nationalism” is a bogeyman, a term invented by those who seek to curb the influence of Christianity in American life. But FFRF is nonetheless right to target Christianity: the United States was founded exclusively by Christians, resting their convictions on Judeo-Christian tenets. It was not founded—this has to be said—by those who belong to Eastern religions or by pagans, and it certainly wasn’t founded by atheists. Lucky for them, they are the beneficiaries of our Judeo-Christian heritage.

FFRF is angry at Trump because he “repeatedly invokes ‘God-given rights.’” If anything, Trump could be criticized for downplaying this verity. Has FFRF read the Virginia Statue for Religious Liberty? It should not do so standing up.

It begins by acknowledging that “Almighty God hath created the mind free.” It pays homage to the “Holy author of our religion, who being Lord both of body and mind,” further recognizing “his Almighty power.” That makes what Trump said tame.

FFRF hates to admit that the Founders were right to maintain that our rights do not come from government—which can take them away—but from God. They are therefore inalienable, not subject to whim.

The Virginia law emphasizes conscience rights above all. None of us “shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief….” (My emphasis).

This speaks to the “free exercise of religion” provision in the First Amendment. FFRF likes to emphasize the first part, not the latter, which I italicized. It never mentions the “free exercise of religion,” preferring to talk about the “Establishment Clause” (which is not a clause). It cites this provision to advance its cause of protecting “the constitutional wall separating church and state.”

But there is no wall. Jefferson wrote the Virginia law, and he never said anything about this mythical wall. He mentioned this phrase years later in 1801 in a letter he wrote to Baptists in Danbury, Connecticut stating his support for federalism. He wanted no federal laws governing religion, but he said nothing about state-sponsored churches, which existed until 1833. Moreover, he used the phrase “separation of church and state” to guarantee religious liberty, not to curtail it.

Madison secured adoption of the Virginia statute on religious liberty, and he wrote the First Amendment. When asked what he meant by the establishment provision, he said there could be no state church (as they had in England), and the government could not show favoritism of one religion over another. That was it. He most emphatically rejected the idea that there should be a separation of church and society, which is what FFRF wants.

The “wall of separation between church and state” appears nowhere in the U.S. Constitution or the Bill of Rights. It found its way into constitutional law in 1947 when Justice Hugo Black broached it in the Everson v. Board of Education decision. Black wanted to make sure no public funds directly went to Catholic schools. This made sense given he was a former member of the Ku Klux Klan. He joined the Klan not to condemn blacks or Jews, but Catholics.

We are proud of Trump’s promotion of religious liberty. Without it, we would not enjoy the freedoms we take for granted, FFRF protestations to the contrary.

Bill Donohue highly recommends this article by Fr. Wilson D. Miscamble. He is delighted that we are disseminating his piece to our subscribers. To read the article, which originally appeared on First Things, click here.

Kyle Nazareth

As America nears its 250th anniversary, fierce disputes over religion in public life increasingly stem from a widely accepted myth: that the First Amendment erected a rigid “wall of separation,” forcing government to shun any cooperation, accommodation, or recognition of religion. This narrative, pushed by judges, advocacy groups, and cultural lore, treats religion like radioactive waste to be quarantined from civic spaces.

Consider Americans United for Separation of Church and State (AU), the nation’s leading advocate for strict church-state separation and a group with anti-Catholic roots. It goes beyond opposing an official state church, demanding a “naked public square” where religion is limited to private beliefs. When faith enters the public realm via equal access to government programs for religious schools, accommodations for believers, or government officials using religious language, AU and its allies raise alarms. They insist this “wall” reflects the Constitution’s original meaning: essentially, freedom from religion. But that’s a modern secularist invention—a constitutional canard grafted onto the First Amendment—not what the Founders intended in 1791.

The Constitution’s text mentions no “wall of separation.” The First Amendment states simply: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” The phrase “wall of separation” originates in Thomas Jefferson’s 1801 letter to the Danbury Baptists, penned fourteen years after ratification. Jefferson wasn’t even present for the drafting; he was in Paris. His letter is an interesting bit of history, but not an authoritative constitutional hermeneutic. Courts largely ignored it for decades. Even Chief Justice William Rehnquist deemed Jefferson a “less than ideal source” for the clause’s original meaning.

Catholics have particular cause for wariness of Jefferson; he scorned biblical miracles as a “dunghill” and called priests “enemies of liberty.” More crucially, the First Amendment’s meaning shouldn’t hinge on a belated metaphor from someone absent from its drafting and ratification.

To understand the Establishment Clause properly, examine its text and Founding-era context. At the time, nine states had established or state-supported churches; Massachusetts retained its established church until 1833. The clause served mainly as a federalism safeguard: It barred Congress from creating a national church or interfering with state religious establishments. Religion remained in the domain of the states, permitting public acknowledgment and collaboration; a far cry from today’s supposed blanket prohibitions.

James Madison, who actually drafted the First Amendment, viewed it this way. Scholars from diverse perspectives—Robert P. George, Akhil Reed Amar, Steven D. Smith, Kurt T. Lash, Carl H. Esbeck, Daniel L. Dreisbach—and Supreme Court justices like Clarence Thomas and Potter Stewart concur: It was a federalism provision, not a mandate to purge religion from public life.

Aggressive “no-contact” separationism arose later, driven by anti-Catholic sentiments. As law professor Philip Hamburger explains in Separation of Church and State, post-Civil War theological liberals and American nativists saw Catholic immigration and hierarchy as dangers to American individualism. They repurposed “separation” as a weapon against “popery,” fighting funds for Catholic schools and churches’ public influence. This prejudice, later echoed by groups like the Ku Klux Klan in the name of American “liberty” and “rights,” elevated Jefferson’s phrase into a patriotic sword and shield.

By the 20th century, this ideology had infiltrated the law. In 1947’s Everson v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court applied the Establishment Clause to state and local governments for one of the first times, embedding Jefferson’s “wall of separation” in legal precedent. Justice Hugo Black—a former Klansman—proclaimed it “high and impregnable,” forbidding direct government support for religion. Justice Wiley Rutledge’s private notes and correspondence, written after the justices met to discuss the case, exposed the true agenda: keeping Catholic influence out of public schools. Everson entrenched separationism, fueling decades of rulings that disadvantaged Catholic and other religious institutions.

AU, founded that year as “Protestants and Other Americans United” in response to Everson, claimed the Court hadn’t discriminated enough against Catholics. It pushed an even more extreme “no-aid” policy: no generally available government benefits for religious groups, even basics like police or fire protection.

This “wall of separation” dogma isn’t a timeless constitutional truth; it’s a modern secularist fabrication, forged in anti-Catholic bias. It inverts the First Amendment, pitting the Establishment Clause against the Free Exercise Clause. As Professor Mary Ann Glendon notes, these clauses “were meant to work together in support of a single value: religious freedom. The framers of the Constitution considered religion to be a great public good to be carefully protected.” By reclaiming the First Amendment’s original federalist meaning, we can return to what Professor Richard Garnett calls “freedom for religion”: a public square where faith is valued, accommodated, and even supported.

Bill Donohue

Scenario:

The Jones family lives in apartment 3A in an inner-city neighborhood, populated by non-whites. On a Friday night, they hear a child in 3B screaming his head off, begging the attacker not to hit him again. But the yelling and crying escalate. Mrs. Jones calls the city’s child services unit, alerting them to this dire situation. She does not leave her name for fear of reprisal.

New York State Gov. Kathy Hochul says Mrs. Jones is the problem, not the abused child. Indeed, she believes Jones is fomenting racism. That is why she recently signed a law making anonymous tips to the Administration for Children’s Services illegal. She says what Mrs. Jones did helps drive “inexcusable racial disparities that disproportionately impact Black and Brown families by leading to unnecessary interactions with child welfare services.”

It does not matter to Hochul that black children are more than three times as likely to die of abuse and neglect than white children. Nor does it matter to her that the data show that anonymous tips are very reliable and lead to more children being saved. Even more bizarre, it does not matter to her that those who leave anonymous tips about minority children being endangered are typically of the same racial and ethnic group. To be blunt, Whitey does not live in 3B.

Hochul’s mindset is the problem, and it is one that is shared by left-wing theorists and activists across the country. They believe that racial disparities are a function of discrimination, though they make an exception when it comes to sports: there is no problem with having an all-black basketball team. But when it comes to academic achievement, if blacks do poorly vis-a-vis whites and Asians, instead of helping them do better, they attack the test. They do so because they sincerely don’t believe blacks can do better.

Oregon led all states in developing “equity education.” Because academic achievement standards, namely testing, revealed racial disparities, the state declared war on testing. A few years ago, it suspended the graduation requirement for math, reading, and writing until the 2027-2028 academic year. It did so in the name of “equity.”

“Equity,” however, means fairness, and it is manifestly unfair to blacks that their white liberal teachers and administrators have totally given up on them, choosing to kill the test rather than helping them pass it. Black parents, we have seen from other studies, resolutely believe in testing, otherwise, they say, how do they know if their child is succeeding or not.

New York City has embraced “equity education.” Educators did away with Regents exams as a condition of receiving a diploma, choosing instead to evaluate students on such attributes as “cultural competence,” whatever that means. They have made it almost impossible for students to fail.

Students who are chronically absent obviously do not do well in school, but that doesn’t bother white liberals such as former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio. What bothered him was teachers keeping tabs on attendance; blacks were more likely to be absent than whites.

De Blasio “solved” this problem by eliminating “seat time” as a requirement to pass. His black successor, Mayor Eric Adams, made attendance optional, proving that black liberals have also given up on black students. The result: four in ten low-income and minority students are chronically absent. Many can’t read, write or do arithmetic.

Those who run Catholic schools and charter schools place demands on their students, regardless of race or class. They succeed because they treat blacks as equals. Something novel.

When I taught in a Catholic elementary school in Spanish Harlem, a public school teacher who occasionally taught remedial subjects to struggling students took issue with me for rejecting a homework assignment from one of my students because the paper she turned in was ripped from a coiled-ring loose-leaf binder. The jagged edges, I said, were unacceptable.

The teacher told me that we can’t expect anything different from these students because they come from a bad neighborhood. I know about the neighborhood, I replied—I spend more time in it than you do, I said. Then I asked her if she would accept such a sloppy homework assignment from a white student in a middle-class neighborhood. She just stared at me.

This teacher, and legions like her, would bristle at the mere suggestion that they are racists. But their refusal to hold blacks to the same standards as everyone else, demanding proficiency, is demonstrably racist in effect, if not intent.

The same is true of Hochul. Her major concern is the appearance of racial disparities, not the underlying reasons for them. In this case, it means more black kids will be beaten and abused now that anonymous tips are rejected.

Low expectations breed low demands, which yields low performance. When they are selectively employed on the basis of race, it smacks of racism. If only Hochul and her ilk treated blacks as equals, and not as inferior, we would have a shot at achieving real racial equality.

Bill Donohue

Turning Point USA, founded by Charlie Kirk, has been denied a chapter status at St. John’s University. The student government at the Queens, New York campus did not give any reason, requesting that they reapply. But they have already been denied twice, and without cause. This story was first reported by Sam Korkus of the University of Dallas, writing for The College Fix.

There is reason to believe that a political bias may be in play. Allegedly, some student government members startled “giggling” when the request was made by Turning Point club founder Massimo Guerriero. What was particularly disturbing was the nature of exchange. Instead of focusing on whether the club was a good fit at St. John’s, attention turned to how it would respond to a potential backlash on campus.

In other words, the possibility that some might try to cancel Turning Point was given veto power by the student government. They chose the wrong students to defend.

St. John’s hosts a LGBTQ+ Center, one that is expressly committed to norms and values that are counter to Catholic teachings. Was anyone worried about a potential backlash when it was instituted? The Vincentian school also features a “Lavender Graduation,” which not only sanctions segregation on campus, it gives succor to students who reject Catholic moral teachings.

Pope Francis called gender ideology “demonic,” and now it is being celebrated at St. John’s.

Charlie Kirk was an advocate for civil discourse on campus. That was his trademark. Why any school, especially a Catholic one, would find fault with that boggles the mind. St. John’s idea of inclusion clearly extends to the LGBTQ cause, but not the cause of free speech.

The alumni at St. John’s are known for their commitment to traditional moral values, but in recent years the school seems to have lost its moorings. They need to speak up, preferably with their wallets.

Contact Student Government board president: ava.wilson22@my.stjohns.edu

Bill Donohue highly recommends this article by Paul Kengor, a member of the Catholic League’s Board of Advisors. To read this article, which originally appeared on The American Spectator, click here.

Bill Donohue

Tomorrow is the March for Life, so we turn our attention to abortion.

ABC News ran a story on January 21 about a woman candidate running for a House seat in South Carolina. The former navy officer, Nancy Lacore, has been endorsed by EMILYs list. The news story described it as “a liberal group that works to elect women to higher office.” It is not. This is factually wrong.

On the front page of the website of EMILYs List, it says, “We’ve been recruiting, training, and supporting Democratic pro-choice women up and down the ballot for 40 years and counting.” It says the same thing on the “About” us page.

No woman running for office who is Republican and pro-choice gets a dime, never mind any women (of either party) who defends the right of the unborn.

We checked to see if ABC was an anomaly in misreporting the mission of EMILYs List, and found it was not. We checked the last ten stories on this organization that appeared in major media outlets. To read our report, click here.

Here is a summary of what we found.

New York Times: in 3 of them, EMILYs List was incorrectly described
Washington Post: in 2 of them it was incorrectly described
Associated Press: in 4 of them it was incorrectly described
ABC: in 4 of them it was incorrectly described
CBS: in 5 of them it was incorrectly described
NBC: in 2 of them it was incorrectly described

There should not be any errors. EMILYs List makes it plain that it is not a pro-women’s group: it is only interested in advancing the cause of women who are Democrats and who are pro-abortion. But when it comes to identifying pro-life groups, the media never seem to err: they make sure the reader does not see them as being “pro-women.”

None of this is a mistake. Not to be misunderstood, there is no conspiracy at work. No, it is much simpler, yet more nefarious, than that. It reflects the ideological makeup of major media outlets. Conspiracies can be busted. This is much harder to root out.

Bill Donohue

A Catholic League staffer was recently having dinner with friends at a New York steakhouse when she witnessed a table of several mature women talking loudly, some of whom were throwing around the “f-word” with abandon.

It used to be that such language would be heard in pubs, but not in pricey restaurants, much less by women in their senior years. But times have changed. The dumbing down of language, just like the dumbing down of virtually every other standard of decency, has become the norm. President Trump, and Biden before him, have certainly made their contributions to this end.

We can blame the entertainment industry and the media for normalizing obscenities. Movies have long featured expletives, but now TV shows and the mainstream media are following suit.

Last Friday I was reading a news story in the New York Times on the anti-ICE protest in Minneapolis. It quoted the Minneapolis mayor, Jacob Frey, saying the government’s position was “bull – – -,” I have been reading this newspaper for decades, and I honestly don’t recall reading this word spelled out in a news article before. Then I read the next sentence. It quoted Frey telling ICE to “get the f—out” of Minneapolis”; the obscene word was printed in full.

Last night, I heard Fox News host Greg Gutfeld complaining how insincere the anti-ICE protesters are about the welfare of illegal aliens. He said, “they don’t give two s—s about these people.” He was not censored. The show airs at a time when children watch TV.

Today, in the New York Times, there is an op-ed by John McWhorter, a linguist who teaches at Columbia University. He is celebrating the increased use in public of the “f-word.” He says, “I actually think it’s a positive development.” He opined, “The normalization of the word…is a sign of maturity in American English.” Ironically, he chose not to spell it, instead referring to it as the “F-word.” He concluded saying he was “happy” that we are “getting to the point where we can all speak the way we think and live.”

What about the “n-word”? Would McWhorter, who is black (I happen to admire his work on race), celebrate its invocation on TV and in newspapers? If not, why not? Why wouldn’t it be a sign of maturity?

A number of years ago on CNN I was objecting to the display of some obscene artistic display when the host smugly chided me for not respecting free speech, the way the cable channel does. I immediately challenged him, saying they would not allow me to say the “n-word” on TV, only I actually said the word.” I smiled, but he didn’t, when they – rightfully – censored me. “See,” I said.

We decided to find out how some of the big media have been handling this issue. We looked at AP (Associated Press), the New York Times and the Washington Post. We found that in more recent times, all three are more likely to spell out the “f-word” than the “n-word.” Nice to know what offends, and does not offend, liberal elites.

Why should this matter? Every survey in this century on the subject of civility and the moral order shows that Americans – across all demographics – are genuinely concerned about what has been happening. Things are going south. When people treat linguistic offenses like pedestrian commentary, they are letting their guard down. By itself such a phenomenon will not change our cultural landscape, when it is coupled with other attempts to normalize deviancy, it certainly does.

In the 1990s, Daniel Patrick Moynihan warned that “we have been redefining deviancy so as to exempt much conduct previously stigmatized, and also quietly raising the ‘normal’ level in categories where behavior is not abnormal by any earlier standard.” Agreeing with him in his American Educator article, “Defining Deviancy Down,” was John Cole. As an example of what Moynihan noted, he said were increased incidents of “profane and abusive language” targeted at teachers by their students.

Normalizing obscenities is not worth celebrating. It only increases the coarseness that has engulfed our society.

Bill Donohue

It is legal for ICE agents to make arrests in houses of worship, but none of them do. It is illegal for anti-ICE agitators to disrupt church services, but some do. Those who would scream bloody murder if ICE agents entered a church, but are silent when protesters entered Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota are not only hypocrites, they are aiding and abetting the church-busters.

The three dozen protesters who invaded Cities Church on January 18 violated a 1994 federal law, the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (FACE).

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison is only partly right when he says the FACE Act “is designed to protect the rights of people seeking reproductive rights.” What he left out is that the law also protects the right of people to worship. Yet he confesses that it is “beyond me” that some are “stretching” the FACE Act “to apply to people who protested in a church.”

It is beyond comprehension that the chief law enforcement officer in Minnesota has not been fired for gross incompetence.

The FACE Act “prohibits the use or threat of force and physical obstruction that injures, intimidates, or interferes with a person seeking to obtain or provide reproductive health services or to exercise the First Amendment right of religious freedom at a place of religious worship.” (My italics.)

This explains why Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant attorney general in charge of the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice (DOJ), cited the FACE Act as her reason for sending prosecutors from the DOJ to Minnesota.

Those aiding and abetting the church-busters include Don Lemon, the failed CNN commentator who was fired for his lousy ratings. He has now anointed himself a “journalist,” and in that capacity he managed to show up at the Cities Church to observe the invasion. He justified the protest in the church on First Amendment grounds, even though it is not protected speech. The “free exercise of religion” is protected by the First Amendment, not church invasions. But he wouldn’t know any better.

Lemon inserted a racial element into this discussion when he attacked those who objected to what happened. “I think they’re entitled, and that entitlement comes from white supremacy.” Lemon has previously argued that white men “are the biggest terror threat in this country.” To be fair, he does not believe Whitey is always bad: the man he claims to be married to is a white dude, and they live in a Long Island town that is almost 100 percent white.

It is more serious when a sitting member of Congress justifies church-busting. Arizona Rep. Adelita Grijalva believes that “Churches have always been an open door,” and when asked point blank, “Do you believe it was a step too far for protesters to go into a church,” she replied, “I don’t. I don’t.”

Her colleagues need to censure her before she gets really Nazi-like.

The protest organizer in St. Paul is a far-left black lawyer, Nekima Levy Armstrong. She founded the Racial Justice Network, one of three black organizations supporting the church invasion; the other two are Black Lives Matter (BLM) groups. Her activist resume includes support for cop killers.

It makes sense that BLM—which is a shell of an organization that has ripped off blacks and its donors by the millions—would be involved. Its presence make sense because its goal transcends anything to do with the immediate cause of the unrest in Minnesota. To be exact, by justifying church invasions, it advances its goal of disabling American society.

BLM has condemned “the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure,” explicitly stating that for its agenda to be fulfilled, it is “important to disrupt the Western nuclear family.” To that end, it supports an attack on every tenet of our Judeo-Christian heritage. That is its primary objective. Ergo, by justifying the invasion of Cities Church, it is serving its mission.

What happened in St. Paul will continue unless these cultural Marxists are stopped. At stake is the very foundation of American society.

Bill Donohue

On January 19, the nation will celebrate Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. Unfortunately, his legacy is being dishonored this year by the public policy arm of the Presbyterian Church (USA).

To be exact, the Presbyterian Office of Public Witness, the advocacy group for the mainline Protestant denomination, recently compared the Minnesota woman who ran her car into an ICE agent to King. They said Renee Good was a martyr, just like the black minister.

The comparison is obscene.

In 1958, in King’s first book, Stride Toward Freedom, he described his own “pilgrimage to nonviolence.” He laid out six principles that would guide the nonviolent movement for civil rights. While all are apropos to this discussion, there is one that is strikingly relevant. He said that nonviolence seeks to win “friendship and understanding” of the adversary, not to humiliate him. He counseled love, not hatred.

Renee Good was the complete antithesis of what King stood for, which is why trying to hijack his contributions is patently offensive.

Good was a professional left-wing zealot who rejected every tenet of civil disobedience. She did not seek “friendship and understanding” with ICE agents—she taunted, harassed and stalked them. Moreover, she trained others to do the same, leading convoys to impede law enforcement.

Prior to the shooting, Good followed ICE agents to two locations, deliberately blocking the roadway. She did the same thing at the site of the incident, illegally parking her huge Honda Pilot in the middle of the road. Her female lover, Rebecca, was with her, and both carried whistles, the purpose of which was to alert illegal aliens that ICE agents were in the vicinity, thus obstructing the pursuit of justice.

When one of the ICE agent’s vehicles got stuck in the snow, his colleagues sought to push it free. That is when the anti-ICE agitators moved in: they harassed them, impeding them from doing their job. Rebecca, who exited the car driven by Renee, taunted the agents, “You wanna come at us? I say go get yourself some lunch, big boy. Go ahead.”

When Rebecca tried to get back into the car, Good was asked to get out, but she wouldn’t budge. Rebecca, outside the car, shouted to Good, “drive, baby, drive, drive.” Good hit the gas, hitting an ICE agent, Jonathan Ross. That’s when he shot her. She was killed and he was taken to the hospital for treatment. Rebecca later reflected, “It’s my fault.”

The agent involved had previously been dragged 50 yards by a vehicle operated by “a serial criminal illegal alien.” He could have been killed. No one can blame him for not wanting to endure the same experience again, which explains why he acted so quickly to defend himself. Anyone in his shoes would have done the same. He has since received multiple death threats for defending himself.

What Good did constitutes assault and battery.

According to UCLA law professor Paul Bergman, assault is typically defined as “any intentional act that causes another person to fear an attack or imminent physical harm. This definition recognizes that placing another person in fear of bodily harm is itself an act deserving of punishment, even if the victim of the assault is not physically harmed.” Battery is a “completed” assault.

Ross suffered internal bleeding as a result of being hit by Good. Ergo, despite chatter to the contrary, this is a clear case of assault and battery.

Renee Good’s blood is on the hands of the anti-ICE agitators. They are itching for a confrontation, and they have no interest in following the nonviolent model of Martin Luther King. Indeed, they have more in common with violent street gangs than they do practitioners of King’s philosophy and activism.

Shame on the Presbyterian Church (USA) for ripping off King’s work in service to their perverse agenda. He would want nothing to do with them.

Contact the director of communications for the denomination: rick.jones@pcusa.org