The Biden administration is threatening to excise the religious rights of students on campus installed by the Trump administration.

Under Trump, colleges and universities were prohibited from restricting religious student group activities; if they did, their federal funding would end. Now the Biden administration is seeking to overturn this rule, allowing institutions of higher education to return to their censorial ways.

The Department of Education (DOE), under Secretary Miguel Cardona, said that beginning February 22, the public would have 30 days to comment on the proposal to nix the Trump initiative. The DOE says that “it is not necessary in order to protect the First Amendment right to free speech and free exercise of religion given existing legal protections.” It also says the policy is “unduly burdensome.”

Both of these statements are manifestly false. It was precisely because the religious rights of students were not protected on campus that the previous administration was beckoned to act. Moreover, it is risible for an administration that is regulation-happy to start worrying about rules that are “unduly burdensome.”

When it comes to the rights of LGBT students, the Biden administration says we can’t have enough protections. Why, then, when it comes to the rights of religious students is it deemed they have enough rights?

A few years ago, Princeton professor and Catholic League board of advisor Robert P. George noted, “There is an antipathy, sometimes an open hostility to religion” on campus. George speaks with authority: he is a former chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.

In 2019, the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities’ Presidents Conference, a network of over 180 Christian colleges worldwide, registered their concerns about the religious rights of students. Shirley Mullen, president of Houghton College, a Christian liberal arts college, said, “The standard western narrative of progress has assumed that deeply held religious beliefs, especially when there is diversity in those beliefs, result in intolerance, conflict, violence, oppression.”

There certainly is no shortage of examples of religious students being badgered on campus. Courses, lectures and workshops abound on the prevalence of alleged “Christian privilege,” a term used to bash Christians, especially male heterosexuals.

It is because of this poisonous milieu, where religious students are treated as outcasts, if not the enemy, that their rights on campus merited protections from the previous administration. The Biden administration wants to eviscerate those rights.

To read our report on the plight of religious students on campus, see pp. 4-5.

On February 28, we issued a news release informing our subscribers how they could register their objections with the Biden administration.

When “South Park” creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker depicted Prince Harry and Meghan Markle—making cartoon characters out of them—the celeb couple threatened to sue. This inspired the New York Post to interview Stone and Parker.

The creators said their work has been the subject of “various lawsuits,” adding that they have been criticized so many times “we can’t even remember.” But they did remember one critic: the Catholic League.

“It [the criticism] was all coming from the right, we were considered counterculture. The Catholic League are always on our a-s—it kind of always came from that side.” Bill Donohue immediately set them straight.

“After I was lampooned on April 4, 2007—I was portrayed as taking over as pope from Pope Benedict XVI (only to be done in by Jesus)—I was asked on TV why I didn’t sue them. I didn’t and that is because I am a public figure, and therefore under New York Times v. Sullivan (1964), I am fair game.”

In fact, the day after Donohue was depicted, he said the following:

“I have no idea why ‘South Park’ creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker caricature me as a heartless thug. In any event, I stand convicted and have no defense. Now I have to get back to business—I hear someone just took liberties with the Easter Bunny.”

Every year since 2007, Comedy Central runs the “South Park” episode, “Fantastic Easter Special,” featuring Donohue. Check your listings close to Easter.

William A. Donohue

Fr. Virgil Blum founded the Catholic League in April 1973. On April 27, we will celebrate our 50th anniversary.

Fr. Blum was a Jesuit professor of political science at Marquette University, and he made it his mission to found an organization that would allow lay Catholics to become the defenders of the faith. That was the same year that the Supreme Court legalized abortion, and although this was an issue vital to Fr. Blum, his number-one issue for the Catholic League was fighting anti-Catholicism. His own pet peeve was the battle for school choice.

Blum chose to call his new organization the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights. He did so because both religious and civil rights were being threatened by the onslaught of militant secularism that emerged in the 1960s. While many important battles have been won since that time, the threat continues to mount.

Blum died in 1990. For the next couple of years, the Catholic League floundered under the leadership of several persons. When I took over in 1993, it was a financial and organizational mess. Fortunately, that is no longer true.

In 1992, Pittsburgh Bishop Donald Wuerl asked me to consider running the Pittsburgh chapter of the Catholic League. I was teaching at La Roche College, now a university, in the North Hills, ten miles from downtown Pittsburgh. Wuerl knew of me by reading my op-ed articles in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and through my radio and TV appearances.

When I met with him at a luncheon at the Duquesne Club, there were many prominent Catholics in attendance. The guest speaker was president of the Catholic League. He took me aside and said he wanted me to be his director of communications, and that the headquarters was relocating from suburban Philadelphia to New York City, my home town. As it turned out, he never contacted me, and when I contacted him, he pretended that he never asked me to work with him.

At that point, I told Bishop Wuerl that since the Catholic League did not seem to know what they were doing, it would make more sense for me to start my own rival organization. He agreed. After I wrote about my plans in the diocesan paper, some lay Catholics found out about it and notified the new chairman of the board of the Catholic League, Fr. Philip Eichner.

Eichner was in charge of finding a new president and CEO, and he called me at the college asking if I would consider being interviewed for the position. I said no. I told him that from what I knew, the Catholic League was badly run and I wanted nothing to do with it. He was not at all defensive. Indeed, he agreed with my observation, but hastened to note that he was new and things were about to change with the relocation to New York City.

I was impressed with Eichner’s honesty and agreed to be interviewed. Those who joined him on the search committee knew of my TV appearances with Larry King, Phil Donahue, “Crossfire,” and other shows. The committee also knew of my two books and my stint as a resident scholar at The Heritage Foundation.

I started at the Catholic League on July 1, 1993. At that time we were located in the headquarters of the Archdiocese of New York. It was my great honor to have the strong support of Cardinal John O’Connor.

People asked me how I was going to jump start an organization that was losing money hand over fist, and was an organizational disaster. Do I know rich people? Not a one, I said. But I do know how to work the media and get us into the news. Once we became known—it didn’t take long—we would find it easier to grow.

The board asked me to visit the chapters around the country, and to stop by the Milwaukee office (it was still in charge of maintaining our membership rolls). When I returned, I asked the board in November 1993 to close all but two offices (in short order, those two would also close). I had to stop the financial bleeding. Quite frankly, we were not getting what we paid for.

The newsletter had to go. Instead, I decided to have a 16-page journal cataloging what we do. I chose the name Catalyst because I wanted to convey the idea that we are a forward-looking organization.

I am proud to have such a small but dedicated staff. Bernadette Brady-Egan started as vice president exactly two years to the day after I did. She is an operations specialist par excellence.

What makes me the proudest is the fact that we are one of the only grass-roots advocacy organizations left in the country. Almost all the others are funded by foundations or sugar daddies. Not us.

What the next 50 years will bring is anyone’s guess. But it is my sincere hope that the Catholic League will continue to thrive and beat back the bigots with vigor.

Thomas D. Williams

Thomas D. Williams, The Coming Christian Persecution:Why Things are Getting Worse and What You Can Do About It (Sophia Institute Press, 2023)

Christian persecution is the sleeper story of the decade. It is perhaps the most newsworthy and least reported of any phenomenon in the world today.

Let me begin with an example. On March 15, 2019, 28-year-old Brenton Harrison Tarrant carried out two horrific consecutive mass shootings of Muslims in mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. Tarrant entered both mosques during Friday prayer, starting with the Al Noor Mosque and continuing to the Linwood Islamic Centre. In his rampage, Tarrant killed 51 people and wounded another 40.

Tarrant’s religiously motivated killing spree was atrocious and rightly captured front-page billing in The Washington Post, New York Times, and the Chicago Tribune. All the major television networks and 24-hour cable news stations likewise accorded the story pride of place.

The problem with this scenario is not what was covered but what was not. In the very same moment when a lone shooter with a documented mental problem was shooting up mosques in New Zealand, 120 Christians lost their lives in brutal, targeted attacks over a three-week period in Nigeria. The difference was that no one in the West heard about it because no one bothered to report it. Not only was it not frontpage news; it wasn’t mentioned at all. That includes NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, Fox News, and all the print media worth mentioning.

Many of our contemporaries, Christians included, mistakenly think of Christian persecution as a historical curiosity, a one-time occurrence happening during the first three centuries of the modern era, which forever disappeared with the Edict of Milan and the fall of the Roman Empire. This is unfortunately far from reality.

The troubling fact is that a full 75 percent of religiously motivated violence today occurs against Christians and some 360 million Christians around the world live in situations of serious persecution, meaning they fear for their lives and wellbeing on a daily basis. As grim as these statistics are, you would never know it because Western mainstream media—for a number of reasons—refrain from reporting on this, leaving ordinary people in the dark.

Widespread ignorance and downplaying of the magnitude of the problem is an important factor explaining why Christian persecution is getting more serious by the year. The other is the intensification of the drivers of such persecution, which are not getting weaker but stronger.

According to the director of Open Doors Italy, which monitors Christian persecution, there are nine primary drivers of persecution in today’s world: radical Islam, communist and post-communist oppression, religious nationalism, ethnic antagonism, tribal oppression, denominational protectionism, secular intolerance, dictatorial paranoia, and organized crime.

In a country like North Korea, run by an explicitly atheistic Marxist regime, Christians have no rights whatsoever, and a crime as simple as being found with a Bible can mean winding up in prison or even death. China, another communist state, offers a veneer of religious freedom but only on the communist party’s terms, and the state employs advanced surveillance methods to be sure that the content of Christian worship coheres with the ideology of Maoist socialism. Children under the age of 18 are not allowed in church for any reason.

Radical Islam is the number one driver of violent Christian persecution today and nine out of the ten countries where it is most dangerous to be a Christian are Muslim majority nations, including Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen, Nigeria, Pakistan, Iran, and Sudan. Unsurprisingly, the nation in which a Christian is most likely to be killed for the faith is among these: Nigeria.

Some of this persecution has come from governments, some from individuals and mobs, and some from organized Islamic terror groups like Boko Haram, Al-Shabaab, or the Islamic State. Who can forget the scene of 21 Coptic Christians martyred by the Islamic State on a beach in Libya in February 2015? Wearing bright orange jump suits, the Egyptian Christians were forced by their captors to kneel down before having their throats slit. Given the chance to save themselves by denying their Christian faith, not one did.

While these and the other drivers seem in no way to be abating, the post-Christian West seems to be losing its will to defend Christians, which ties in with the shameful lack of reporting on Christian persecution. Worse still, in the West, Christians are looked upon increasingly as part of the problem, especially those who espouse biblical morality and are unwilling to conform to society’s expectations.

This is where “secular intolerance” comes into play. Whereas Christian ideas about the human person, the family, and society itself historically formed the undergirding of Western civilization, Christianity is now often equated with bigotry by radical secularists and Christians are viewed with suspicion or even outright hostility. This is particularly true when it comes to the LGBT lobby and so-called “abortion rights,” which orthodox Christians naturally oppose. As part of this trend, religious freedom is often downgraded to just one right among many with no special status, and Christians are often expected to act against their conscience when it comes to the rights of others.

This secular intolerance also manifests itself in hostility to those who take their Christian faith seriously, as if this would disqualify them from participating fully in society, especially in a formal capacity. In 2017, President Donald Trump nominated Amy Coney Barrett to serve as a U.S. Circuit Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. Barrett, who held a named chair of law at the University of Notre Dame at the time and is also the mother of seven children, was fiercely hazed during her confirmation hearing by members of the Senate Judiciary Committee and multiple senators challenged her fitness to serve due to her Catholic faith.

“When you read your speeches, the conclusion one draws is that the dogma lives loudly within you,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein famously said. “And that’s of concern when you come to big issues that large numbers of people have fought for for years in this country.”

One simple fact that has strengthened oppressed Christians down through the ages has been the entirely expected nature of the abuse. From the Apostolic Age to the present, no follower of Christ can reasonably say that he never knew persecution was coming. Even before His disciples knew what the “cross” was, Jesus made it quite apparent that it would accompany all those who chose to associate themselves with Him.

People sometimes speak of the “prosperity gospel” or the “gospel of success,” but except in the most metaphorical of senses, such terminology stands diametrically opposed to the message of Jesus. While no Christian can be certain of reaping material benefits from his faith, all Christians can be sure that the more closely they follow Christ, the more they will experience the persecution that was the hallmark of His own life on earth.

Jesus not only foretold His own Passion and death, preparing His disciples for the agony of seeing Him brutally tortured and killed; He also foretold their own sharing in His fate, insisting that whoever follows Him will partake of His Passion as well. It is because of their union with Jesus that this will happen, He asserts, and thus persecution is a mark of the true disciple’s intimate sharing in the life and mission of Jesus, just as the world’s love and acceptance is a sure sign that a would-be disciple has not attained to this union.

This persecution began in earnest in the Roman Empire, especially under the reign of the emperor Nero when Peter, Paul, and many others were martyred, but it has continued down through the centuries to our own time. There are, in fact, more martyrs today than at any other time in history.

Various theories have been advanced as to why Christians have been a particular magnet for persecution ever since the foundation of the Church. While Christians themselves have generally accepted the fact of persecution as a mark of authenticity and faithfulness to Jesus, others have proposed that there is something essentially intolerable about Christianity that provoked even the famously tolerant Roman Empire to treat Christians with cruelty.

Monotheism alone, for instance, cannot explain the unique hostility toward the followers of Jesus. The Jews, in obedience to the first commandment, declined to take part in many of the religious rituals prescribed by the Roman emperors and yet were generally given a pass when it came time to enforce their civic duty. Being Jewish was not illegal in the Roman Empire, whereas being a Christian was.

Some, like Voltaire and Edward Gibbon, have tried to downplay Christian persecution and even to blame persecution on the Christians themselves, but these efforts reveal more about those who make them than about the Christians.

A better explanation for the motives behind antipathy toward Christians was offered by the author of an ancient Christian text known as the Letter to Diognetus. Written by an unknown author sometime between AD 130 and 200, the letter attempts to describe the relationship between Christians and the world, thereby elucidating what it is about them that the “world” finds so irritating and intolerable.

Outwardly, Christians are not all that different from others, the text explains, and Christians “are distinguished from other men neither by country, nor language, nor the customs which they observe.” They do not live apart in self-made ghettos or communes, but inhabiting Greek as well as barbarian cities, they follow “the customs of the natives in respect to clothing, food, and the rest of their ordinary conduct.”

But by their lives, Christians stand as a silent reproach to the worldly and their pursuits, and this fact alone is sufficient to explain the hostility they elicit.

Regardless of the motivations behind it, however, Christian persecution is a fact that is not going away but only intensifying.

No one seeks persecution for its own sake; it is unpleasant, painful, and repulsive to our human nature. No one wants to be mistreated, misunderstood, or ridiculed—much less punished, tortured, or put to death. And yet a willingness to endure such things out of fidelity to Jesus points to the truth of the faith and the sustaining power of God’s grace even in the most trying ordeals.

In today’s world, the greatest temptation for many Christians is not apostasy per se but rather assimilation. It is so much easier to shade the truth of the gospel in order to be well liked, to advance in our careers, and to be accepted by “the world” than to stand firm and expose ourselves to ridicule and ostracization for our fidelity to Christ.

This is the challenge that faces today’s Christians: to stand firm in the faith, emboldened by the grace of the Holy Spirit and sure of the victory that Christ has already won for his Church. Jesus’ words must be a light for our path: “In the world you have tribulation, but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.”

Thomas D. Williams, Ph.D., is Rome Bureau Chief, Breitbart News.

October 2021—The University of Nebraska-Lincoln denied funding from the mandatory student activity fee to Ratio Christi to host a lecture because university officials required the student group to include another speaker with a different ideological perspective to counterbalance the invited lecturer. However, the university spends thousands of dollars each year hosting and funding events that are political and ideological in nature without imposing the same requirement.

October 2021—The University of Houston-Clear Lake excluded Ratio Christi from Registered Student Organization status and the benefits that come with that recognition because the student group required its leaders to agree with its values and mission.

April 2020—The Georgia Tech Student Government Association denied funding to the school’s chapter of Students for Life to host Alveda King because she is “inherently religious.”

November 2018—The University of Colorado refused to register Ratio Christi because the student group required that its members and officers be Christians.

June 2018—The University of Iowa deregistered InterVarsity Graduate Christian Fellowship because the student group required that its leaders be Christians.

June 2018—The University of Iowa deregistered the Sikh Awareness Club because the student group required that its leaders embrace its faith.

June 2018—The University of Iowa deregistered the Chinese Student Christian Fellowship because the student group required that its leaders embrace its faith.

June 2018—The University of Iowa deregistered the Imam Mahdi Organization because the student group required that its leaders embrace its faith.

June 2018—The University of Iowa deregistered the Latter-day Saint Student Association because the student group required that its leaders embrace its faith.

February 2018—Ball State University refused to allow the school’s chapter of Students for Life to access funds from the school’s mandatory student activity. Other student groups did not have their requests for funds denied.

February 2018—Kennesaw State University relegated Ratio Christi to a “free speech zone” because school officials believed that the group’s pro-life display was “controversial.” Even though the student group had secured a permit to set up the display in a prominent area on campus and the location was unoccupied at the time, school officials refused to allow the students to exercise their constitutional rights.

October 2017—Michigan’s Wayne State University refused to renew InterVarsity Christian Fellowship because the student group’s chapter constitution required its leaders to be Christians.

October 2017—The University of Iowa kicked Business Leaders in Christ off of campus because the student group required its leaders to sign a “Statement of Faith,” agreeing that they believe and follow the group’s religious beliefs.

October 2017—Miami University of Ohio refused the school’s chapter of Students for Life to put up a pro-life display unless it contained a “trigger warning.” Other student groups did not have to put a warning on their displays.

September 2016—Queens College refused to register Students for Life as an official student group.

September 2016—Colorado State University denied funding from mandatory student fees to the school’s chapter of Students for Life to bring a speaker to campus because university officials believed the speaker’s content “doesn’t appear entirely unbiased as it addresses the topic of abortion,” and the “committee worrie[d] that folks from varying sides of the issue won’t necessarily feel affirmed in attending the event.”

September 2015—North Carolina State University selectively enforced a speech policy against the student group Grace Christian Life. While other student groups could actively engage anyone in the student union, university officials restricted Grace Christian Life to speak only at the table they had acquired a permit for.

May 2015—California State University deregistered the Christian Fraternity Chi Alpha because the student group required its members to be Christian.

June 2014—The California State University system deregistered the 23 chapters of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship operating on 19 campuses because the student group required its leaders be Christians.

June 2014—The California State University system deregistered Chi Alpha, the student arm of the Assemblies of God, because the student group required that its leaders be Christians.

May 2014—Boise State required Abolitionists4Life to place warning labels on its pro-life displays and refused to allow the group to distribute fliers unless they were within the university’s “speech zone.” Other groups did not have these requirements.

April 2013—The University of Buffalo charged the school’s chapter of Students for Life nearly $650 for security fees to host an on-campus event. The university had no guidelines for applying such fees and other student groups were not charged security fees for their events.

February 2013—Eastern Michigan University denied funding from the mandatory student activity fee to the school’s chapter of Students for Life for a pro-life display because university officials believed the message was “too controversial, biased, and one-sided.” Other student organizations promoting controversial and ideological messages had no problem accessing funds.

July 2012—Oklahoma State University denied Cowboys for Life’s request to put up a pro-life display outside of the student union. Instead, the student group had to put their display in a less traveled area of campus. Further the school forced the student group to put warning signs on the display. Other student organizations did not have these requirements.

May 2012—The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill began investigating Psalm 100, a Christian a cappella group, for voting to remove a member whose views about homosexuality contradicted the Bible.

May 2012— The State University of New York at Buffalo stripped InterVarsity Christian Fellowship of official recognition because the student group asked a gay student leader to resign when he would not accept its belief statement.

July 2008—Michigan’s Wayne State University denied funding from the mandatory student activity fee to the school’s chapter of Students for Life because the university refused to award the funds to student organizations with a religious purpose.

January 2008—Spokane Falls Community College refused to allow the Spokane Falls Christian Fellowship to host a pro-life event because “Washington is a pro-choice state.” The school also forbade the student group from putting up a pro-life display because it was too “one-sided,” “biased,” “discriminatory” and “racist.” When the students complained about the decision, school officials threatened to have them expelled.

December 2007—The University of Montana School of Law derecognized the school’s chapter of the Christian Legal Society because it required members to be Christian.

September 2007—The University of Wisconsin-Madison denied funding to Badger Catholic, the largest Catholic club on campus, from mandatory student fees.

July 2007—The University of Florida refused to register the Christian fraternity Beta Upsilon Chi because the student group required all members to be Christian.

December 2006—The University of Missouri refused to register the Christian fraternity Beta Upsilon Chi because the student group required all members to be Christian.

November 2006—The University of Georgia refused to register the Christian fraternity Beta Upsilon Chi because the student group required all members to be Christian.

April 2006—Savannah State University axed Commissioned II Love because the Christian student group made its new leaders take part in a washing of feet ceremony, which the university deemed as hazing.

April 2006—Arizona State University required the school’s chapter of Students for Life to pay to insure an on-campus display even though there was no policy that student groups had to insure their displays and other groups did not have to secure insurance.

February 2006—The University of Wisconsin-Madison cut funding from mandatory student fees for the school’s Roman Catholic Foundation after the radical secular group Freedom from Religion Foundation complained that the university’s financial support of the student group was unconstitutional.

December 2005—After initially refusing to allow Arizona State University Students for Life to put up a display on campus, university officials only relented on the condition that the student group secured insurance for the display. There was no policy that student groups had to insure their displays and other groups did not have to secure insurance.

December 2005—California State University, San Bernardino refused to allow the Christian Student Association on campus because the student group’s proposed constitution included a statement on sexual morality and required members and officers to be Christians.

November 2005—California State University, Long Beach refused to certify Every Nation Campus Ministries because the student group required officers to profess their faith in Jesus Christ and adhere to a biblical code of conduct.

November 2005—San Diego State University refused to certify Every Nation Campus Ministries because the student group required officers to profess their faith in Jesus Christ and adhere to a biblical code of conduct.

November 2005—San Diego State University refused to certify Alpha Gamma Omega because the student group required officers to profess their faith in Jesus Christ and adhere to a biblical code of conduct.

November 2005—San Diego State University refused to certify Alpha Delta Chi because the student group required officers to profess their faith in Jesus Christ and adhere to a biblical code of conduct.

October 2004—The University of California’s Hastings College of the Law refused to recognize the campus Christian Legal Society chapter because the student group required its members and officers be Christians.

2004—The Washburn University School of Law stripped the Christian Law Society of funding because the student group required that its leaders be Christians.

2003—Louisiana State University (LSU) denied recognition to the Muslim Student Association of LSU because the student group restricted its membership based on religion and sexual orientation.

No teacher has the right to make bigoted remarks about the parents of students. Such an occasion recently took place in a school district in Washington. What follows is Bill Donohue’s March 6 letter to the school superintendent in charge of the school where this happened.

Dr. Alan Spicciati
Superintendent
Auburn School District
915 Fourth St. NE
Auburn, WA 98002

Dear Dr. Spicciati:

The purpose of this letter is to inquire about your school district’s response to the blatantly anti-Christian statement recently made by Kelly Love; she teaches at Auburn School District 408.

It has been widely reported that Love was upset with a teacher who sought to alert parents to some school policies that were being kept from them. In reply, Love said, “I cannot disagree with this more. So many students are not safe in this nation from their Christo-fascist parents.”

Such a sweeping and clearly anti-Christian remark runs counter to the Auburn School District’s policy on equity. Dr. Gary Howard, an equity specialist whose work is flagged on the District’s website, cites several “Culturally Responsive Teaching Practices.” Among them are the following: a) “Students are affirmed in their cultural connections” b) “Teachers are personally inviting” c) “Learning environments are physically and culturally inviting” and d) “Classroom is managed with firm, consistent, loving, guidance.”

Love violated these tenets. By calling the parents of Christian students “fascists,” she is clearly not affirming the “cultural connections” of these students, nor is she being “personally inviting.” Indeed, the environment she has created is anything but “culturally inviting,” and she sure doesn’t exhibit the kind of “love” and “guidance” these students expect.

If a teacher called the parents of Native Americans “Christo-fascists,” swift punishment would follow. It should not matter what the ethnicity of the parents is. What matters is that Christians should not be smeared by a state employee. That is a serious matter.

I would appreciate hearing from you about the disposition of this case.

Sincerely,

William A. Donohue, Ph.D.
President

cc: Erin Mersino, Esq.
Kelly Love

Most pro-life Americans understand, but do not condone, why some young girls and adult women make a terrible mistake by terminating the baby in their womb. Some make this decision out of fear, or they panic. They need to be ministered to, and that is why the Catholic Church has an outreach program, Project Rachel, that offers them help and guidance.

What pro-lifers don’t understand is why anyone would celebrate those doctors who make their living by exploiting women and killing their children. Abortionists are no heroes.

March 10 was Abortion Provider Appreciation Day. According to the Abortion Care Network, the sponsor of this event, they celebrated “all of the courageous, compassionate people who provide abortion care.” They did so “through love notes, art, acts of kindness and support, messages of affirmation, a giant love-fest Tweetstorm, and more.”

There is nothing compassionate or loving about killing the innocent. This infamous day tells us volumes about the character of those who support it. They prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that they are not reluctantly pro-choice. No, they are rabid pro-abortion enthusiasts.

March 1 was not a good day for U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland. He got his clock cleaned by several members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. His failure to stem the tide of violence against pro-life Americans, many of whom are Catholic, is not debatable.

As Sen. Mike Lee pointed out at the hearing, there have been 81 violent attacks on pro-life crisis pregnancy centers, and 130 attacks on Catholic churches, but only two persons have been charged. Yet the Department of Justice (DOJ) has brought charges against 34 non-violent pro-life protesters. This is purely a function of politics. There is no other rational explanation for such a glaring disparity.

No domestic terrorist group has been more vocal and active in violently attacking pro-life individuals and institutions than Jane’s Revenge. They have claimed responsibility for at least 18 violent attacks on pro-life centers since the leak of the Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade.

It is bad enough that Garland’s DOJ has been missing in action in prosecuting Jane’s Revenge, it was mind-blowing to learn that Garland claimed not to have known who they were until the hearing!

Here is what Sen. Marsha Blackburn said to him. “You told me earlier that you didn’t know who Jane’s Revenge is. They are all over Twitter.” Garland did not contest what she attributed to him.

Assuming he wasn’t lying, why is it that no one on his staff ever bothered to apprise him of Jane’s Revenge? It’s not as though he hasn’t been contacted about their violence.

On June 10, 2022, Sen. Marco Rubio wrote to Garland about “radical pro-abortion groups, like Jane’s Revenge, that have relentlessly targeted pro-life centers, groups, and churches with arson, vandalism, and violence due to their pro-life views.”

On June 15, Rubio again wrote to Garland about Jane’s Revenge, saying they have now “doubled-down on its commitment to violence, threats and intimidation, writing that the ‘leash is off’ and it is now ‘open season’ on any pro-life group that refuses to close its doors.”

On June 16, 2022, Sen. Tom Cotton said Garland should resign over the DOJ’s failure to deal with Jane’s Revenge violence. “Houses of worship and pro-life pregnancy centers are under attack.”

On June 17, 2022, Bill Donohue wrote to Garland. “We have witnessed a rash of vandalism against Catholic churches, firebombings of crisis pregnancy centers (many of which are run by Catholics), Masses being interrupted, illegal protests outside the homes of Catholic Supreme Court Justices, and an attempted murder of one of the Catholic Justices. While there are several groups involved in these attacks, none is more dangerous than Jane’s Revenge.

“Jane’s Revenge is a domestic terrorist group, par excellence. Recently formed, it brags about blowing up crisis pregnancy centers. Worse, it is calling for a ‘Night of Rage’ on the day the Supreme Court is expected to overturn Roe v. Wade.”

Donohue ended by asking him to take “aggressive action” against Jane’s Revenge.

Even though Rubio, Cotton and Donohue independently alerted Garland to Jane’s Revenge, he appears positively clueless as to who they are. His ignorance is stunning.

Sen. Cotton is right—Garland should resign. If he doesn’t, he should be impeached.

If there were any doubt that the religious vision of sexuality, as represented by the pope, and the secular vision, as represented by Hollywood, were dissimilar, they were wiped away.

On March 10, an Argentine daily newspaper, La Nación, published an interview that Pope Francis gave on the subject of transgenderism. “Gender ideology, today, is one of the most dangerous ideological colonizations. Why is it dangerous? Because it blurs the difference and the value of men and women.”

The pope also said that “some people are a bit naïve and believe that it [gender ideology] is the way to progress.” Such persons, he said, do not recognize “an anthropology of gender, which is extremely dangerous because it eliminates differences [between men and women].”

Two days later, at the Academy Awards, Daniel Scheinert, the co-director of the Oscar-winning movie, “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” took the occasion to defend drag queens and drag children. He said they were “a threat to nobody!” The crowd loved it.

The pope understands that human nature is fixed: there are only two sexes. Hollywood thinks human nature is fluid: there are many sexes, or what they inaccurately call “genders.”

Is the Hollywood crowd naïve, as the pope says, or are they something more sinister? To conclude they are naïve is to say they can be educated as to their follies. But if they are not naïve, and they know exactly what they are doing, then they are willfully promoting what the pope calls “one of the most dangerous ideological colonizations.” We think it’s deliberate.

Something sinister is going on, and it is not by coincidence. Within the course of one week, at the beginning of March, five states either heard testimony on a bill that would deny the priest-penitent privilege, or had bills of this nature introduced.

Vermont heard testimony from Burlington Bishop Christopher Coyne. Delaware, Kansas, Utah and Washington had bills to bust the seal of confession introduced. It looks like the one in Utah died a quick death, and the ones in Kansas and Washington are not likely to succeed.

In every case, the alleged proximate cause was gathering information about child sexual abuse cases as learned in the confessional.
We are used to doing battle with lawmakers who want to violate the seal of confession. In the last few years we succeeded in beating back attempts to vitiate the priest-penitent privilege in Utah and North Dakota. The same lawmaker we beat in Utah last year introduced a similar bill this year, but it got nowhere.

We wasted no time contacting the lawmakers in Vermont and Delaware. We asked them to reconsider that part of their bill that touched on the priest-penitent relationship. If the seal of the confession is broken, we stressed, it would vitiate its raison d’être. It is also unenforceable: no priest would ever violate his obligation to maintain confidentiality.

Whenever we have dealt with this matter, we always ask those who sponsor these bills the same question. “Where is the evidence that the priest-penitent privilege plays a role in the unfolding of the clergy sexual abuse scandal?” There is none.

It must be said that the scandal that rocked the Catholic Church took place mostly between 1965 and 1985. Moreover, the reforms enacted over the past two decades have been a stunning success: the average number of credible accusations made against approximately 50,000 members of the clergy is in the single digits. The fact is that most of the molesters are either dead or have been kicked out of the priesthood.

Journalists will go to prison before giving up their sources. Psychologists would never divulge what they learn from their patients. Lawyers learn of things from their clients that must remain secret. Ditto for priests in the confessional.

There are some important steps that can be taken to curtail the abuse of children. They should be implemented. But not among them is busting the seal of the confessional.