The Terrence McNally play, “Corpus Christi,” which opened in New York City ten years ago, came back for a short stint in Greenwich Village. But this time the Catholic League chose not to protest the play; rather, we protested two insulting articles about the play that appeared in the New York Times.

The play depicts Jesus as an ordinary person who has sex with his apostles. In 1998, Bill Donohue led 2000 demonstrators in a protest against the play when it opened at the midtown Manhattan Theater. Because the play was not at a prominent location this time, the league ignored it. However, Donohue did not ignore what the New York Times  said about the play.

“If only the New York Times thought of Catholics as if we were all gay, we’d have no problem with the newspaper,” Donohue said. The vile play which they love—not for artistic purposes but for its assault on Catholicism—features the Jesus character, Joshua, saying to his apostles things like, “F*** your mother, F*** your father, F*** God.” The Jesus-character is dubbed “King of the Queers” and the script is replete with sexual and scatological comments. At one point, a character named Philip asks the Jesus-figure to perform fellatio on him.

On October 22, Jason Zinoman of the New York Times applauded the play for its “reverent spin on the Jesus story.” To which Donohue said, “One wonders how debased a performance against Catholicism must become before this guy would call it irreverent. Moreover, one wonders what this guy would say if the play substituted Martin Luther King for Jesus.”

On October 19, Mark Blankenship said those who protested the play in 1998 offered “stark reminders of lingering homophobia.” Donohue responded by saying, “So when anti-Catholic homosexuals like McNally feature Jesus having oral sex with the boys, and Catholics object, it’s not McNally who is the bigot—it’s those protesting Catholics. One wonders what this guy would say if a Catholic made a play about Barney Frank showing him to be a morally destitute lout who ripped off the taxpayers. Would he blame objecting gays for Catholic bashing?”

Donohue ended his comments by saying, “So nice to know what the gay-friendlyTimes thinks about Catholics.” On the league’s website, and in the e-mail blasts to members who get our news releases, he also asked Catholics to contact the paper’s ombudsman, Clark Hoyt.

To his surprise, Donohue received a phone call from Hoyt; he wanted to know more about the league’s hot reaction to what happened. On November 9, Hoyt ran an article about the controversy, stating Donohue’s concerns.

Donohue did not object to the Times’ decision to cover the play, but he did object to the two articles about it. The conversation was lengthy and cordial, but it was Donohue’s conclusion that although Hoyt noted why Catholics might be upset with such a play, the newspaper’s public editor struggled to really appreciate Donohue’s reasoning. Not surprising was the reaction of liberal Catholic Paul Baumann ofCommonweal: he was much more upset with Donohue’s protest of the filthy, anti-Catholic play than he was with the play itself.

All in all progress was made, but big problems remain.

In the October 19 edition of the News Journal, Joe Biden offered his thoughts on faith and values. The Delaware daily also printed a 2007 interview with Biden on the subject of abortion; it was not previously published.

In his latest interview with the News Journal, Biden said, “I accept my Church’s teaching on when life begins. But we live in a society where a large number of people don’t agree with that position.” This is true and much the same could be said about racism: The Catholic Church calls racism “intrinsically evil” and supports laws to criminalize it. Biden agrees with this Church teaching and has no problem imposing his view on “a large number of people [who] don’t agree with that position.” But when it comes to abortion, which the Church also labels as “intrinsically evil,” Biden objects. This is a glaring contrast to what Biden said in his earlier interview with the newspaper.

In 2007, Biden declared “my church has wrestled with this [abortion] for 2,000 years.” Wrong—the Catholic Catechism clearly states that “Since the first century the Church has affirmed the moral evil of every procured abortion. This teaching has not changed and is unchangeable.”

Biden also said, “throughout the church’s history, we’ve argued whether or not it [abortion] is wrong in every circumstance and the degree of wrong.” Wrong again—as the U.S. bishops recently said, “Modern science has not changed the Church’s constant teaching against abortion, but has understood how important and reasonable it is….”

Biden dug himself in even deeper when he opined, “One of my avocations is theology,” boasting that “I’m a John XXIII guy, I’m not a Pope John Paul guy.” Apparently Biden had no idea that John XXIII was every bit as anti-abortion as was John Paul II.

He followed this theological gaffe by appearing on “Ellen” and telling Ellen DeGeneres that “if I lived in California, I would vote against Proposition 8,” the initiative defining marriage as between a man and a woman. Despite this claim, during his debate with Gov. Sarah Palin, Biden said, “Barack Obama nor I support redefining from a civil side what constitutes marriage.”

The approved Proposition 8 secured marriage as an institution that is exclusively between a man and a woman, so in other words, Biden did not tell the truth in his October 2 debate with Palin. He cannot logically be opposed to both gay marriage and Proposition 8, but that is exactly what he was trying to get away with.

Last year, in Sacramentum Caritatis, Pope Benedict XVI pointedly said the following about people like Joe Biden: “Worship pleasing to God can never be a purely private matter…it is especially incumbent upon those who, by virtue of their social or political position, must make decisions regarding fundamental values such as respect for human life, its defence from conception to natural death, the family built upon marriage between a man and a woman….These values are not negotiable.” (Our emphasis.)

Last year, the U.S. bishops issued Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenshipwherein it said that the family based on marriage between a man and a woman “should be defended and strengthened, not redefined or undermined by permitting same-sex unions or other distortions of marriage.”

After Biden’s defiance of the pope and the bishops and his misrepresentation of the Catholic Church, we dubbed him, “Joe the Theologian.”

On the October 19 episode of Fox Broadcasting’s “Family Guy,” characters Brian (a dog) and Stewie (a baby) traveled back in time to rescue Mort Goldman (a Jewish friend) from the Nazi invasion of Poland. After Brian and Stewie disguise Mort as a priest to sneak him out of the country, a Nazi officer asks Mort, “Are you sure you’re a real priest?” Stewie replies, “Yeah, yeah, I can vouch for him, he’s real. He’s molested me many, many times.”

A couple of nights later, on October 21, FX (the Fox cable network) aired its show, “The Shield,” in which a Catholic priest was portrayed as someone who allowed gang members to deal drugs under his watch, taking a share of the profits for himself.

In another scene, the priest is accused of being a child molester. At this, the priest explodes, stating, “Just because some sick perverts decide to live out their fantasies through the collar doesn’t mean that every priest is a gay pedophile.” The confrontation continues and the priest admits to fathering a child with the gang leader’s sister.

It should be noted that the Fox News Channel has nothing to do with either one of these shows and actually criticized the “Family Guy” episode because it implied that the Nazis would have supported a McCain-Palin ticket.

Needless to say, there is something sick going on over at Fox. In October alone, the Fox program “Bones” mocked the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation;  “Family Guy” painted gay priests as molesters; “The Shield” introduced a morally corrupt priest, not to mention floated the stereotype of gay priests as pedophiles.

We called on Fox to end this bigotry before things heat up any more.

Much to its surprise, the Catholic League recently learned that left-wing activist and billionaire George Soros is the man behind two ultra-liberal Catholic groups, Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good and Catholics United. Both organizations claim to be pro-life while supporting mostly pro-abortion candidates for public office.

In 2003, after Soros (who is Jewish) blamed Jews for anti-Semitism, the ADL branded his comments “obscene.” Two years later, the Catholic League accused him of anti-Catholicism: His group, MoveOn.org, posted a picture of a smiling Pope Benedict XVI holding a gavel outside the U.S. Supreme Court, along with the following inscription: “God Already Has a Job…He does not need one on the Supreme Court.”

Now we have found out that this same bigot is connected to two apologists for abortion rights, Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good and Catholics United.

In 2006, Soros’ Open Society Institute (OSI) gave Catholics in Alliance $100,000 (double the amount he gave in 2005), and in the same year Catholics in Alliance listed Catholics United on its 990 as an organization with which it has a formal relationship.

John Podesta, who runs the Soros-funded organization, Center for American Progress, and has been appointed to run President-elect Barack Obama’s transition team, admits that he works closely with Catholics in Alliance and Catholics United. The Center for American Progress is also the sponsor of Faith and Public Life.

Why would any Catholic organization take money from a man like Soros? Because legitimate sources of revenue aren’t available? And why would Soros have any interest in funding Catholic groups? He doesn’t give the Catholic League any money, and if he offered, we would refuse it.

The reason Soros funds the Catholic Left is the same reason he funds Catholics for Choice, the pro-abortion group that has twice been condemned as a fraud by Catholic bishops: they all service his agenda, namely, to make support for abortion rights a respectable Catholic position.

Just before we exposed the Soros-Catholic Left nexus, Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput accused Catholics in Alliance and Catholics United as doing a “disservice” to the Catholic Church. He was right. Bill Donohue then told the press, “And now we know what really makes them tick.”

It didn’t take long before the Catholic Left struck back. Chris Korzen of Catholics United replied by saying that OSI also funds Catholic Charities, Catholic Relief Services (CRS) and Catholic Legal Immigration Services (CLIS), thus making them morally equal.

We found Korzen’s argument fallacious and explained why. Unlike the three Catholic organizations cited by Korzen, Catholics United and Catholics in Alliance are apologists for abortion rights. “Their passion for abortion rights is so strong that they refuse to endorse the legal ban on partial-birth abortion,” Donohue said.

Donohue continued as follows: “So scandalous is their work that they were singled out by Archbishop Charles Chaput for doing a ‘disservice’ to the Church. He said they have ‘confused the natural priorities of Catholic social teaching, undermined the progress prolifers have made, and provided an excuse for some Catholics to abandon the abortion issue….’ Chaput would never say that about the three legitimately Catholic social service groups.”

Catholic Charities, CRS and CLIS have been around for decades. All receive tens of millions of dollars from government, foundations and individuals, and it is a sure bet none has a clue who OSI is. The two discredited Catholic groups were founded after their pro-abortion hero, John Kerry, lost the election in 2004. More important, two years ago Catholics in Alliance received nearly 10 percent of its money from OSI. And it is a sure bet that its officials know exactly who is behind OSI.

The bottom line is this: When it comes to social welfare causes, Soros  gives money indiscriminately. But when it comes to abortion, he prefers to give to pro-abortion and anti-Catholic groups like Catholics for Choice. Now he likes to give to Catholic abortion apologists as well. “Thus,” said Donohue, “Korzen’s moral equivalency argument fails miserably.”

If further proof were needed about these organizations, consider that the left-wing National Catholic Reporter favorably quoted Pew researcher John Green lumping Catholics in Alliance (and Pax Christi) with the notoriously anti-Catholic group, Catholics for Choice (previously Catholics for a Free Choice). No self-respecting Catholic organization would ever allow such a comparison to be made. It made sense, then, for Bishop Robert Finn of Kansas City-St. Joseph to brand Catholics in Alliance as a group that “has its priorities backward.”

Regarding Catholics for Choice, its president Jon O’Brien, told the Washington Post that “In Catholic theology there is room for the acceptance of policies that favor access to the full range of reproductive health options, including contraception and abortion.” This, of course, is a lie.

Adding to the deceit was Kathleen Munley, a professor at Marywood University in Pennsylvania. A member of Catholics for Obama, she defended Obama’s pro-abortion record, noting that there was “an undercurrent of racial bias” to some of Obama’s critics. To make her point, her group took out full-page ads in newspapers reminding Catholics of the wisdom of the Church’s teaching on racial tolerance. Nothing was said regarding the Church’s teaching on abortion.

n 2007, the Catholic League vehemently protested an exploitative movie that debuted at the Sundance Film Festival, “Hounddog.” Those behind the film, which featured a rape scene of 12-year-old actress Dakota Fanning, were so shaken up that when “Hounddog” finally hit the big screen in September of this year, the worst parts of it were completely excised.

Similarly, last year we waged a strong protest against Miller Brewing Company for sponsoring an obscene, anti-Catholic display, the Folsom Street Fair; the San Francisco event is held at the end of September every year. There was no Miller sponsorship in 2008.

We ended last year with a boycott of “The Golden Compass,” hoping to hurt its sales and make it unlikely that a planned sequel would be made. It appears we’ve seen the last of Philip Pullman’s works to hit the big screen.

We took on the movie “Hounddog” because we wanted to send a message to the cultural elites in New York and Hollywood: their anger over a small minority of priests who have molested youngsters is belied by their robust embrace of movies that sexually exploit children. Quite simply, if sexual molestation of minors is immoral—and it is—then it is also immoral to sensationalize such degradation in a movie.

We did more than issue a news release—we asked for a federal investigation into the movie. Our position was that the child pornography statutes may have been violated. Fortunately, the Justice Department agreed with us and turned the case over to the FBI. All of this effectively killed any prospect of “Hounddog” being picked up by a reputable distributor.

When “Hounddog” was released this fall, filmmaker Deborah Kampmeier admitted that “Fifty percent of the footage is different,” adding that “the film is much more nuanced.” Eric Parkinson, the chief executive of the movie’s distributor, Empire Film Group, was more blunt: “We knew there was a lot of negative publicity. But we predicated our deal not on the Sundance cut [the original version]; we made it on the new cut, which is substantially different.”

The Folsom Street Fair protest last year was occasioned by the Miller Brewing Company’s adamant refusal to apologize for sponsoring an incredibly offensive event. Every year at this “street fair,” homosexual men have sex in the street, get whipped in public and engage in grotesque anti-Catholic acts. San Francisco is so far gone that the police are instructed to do absolutely nothing while sodomy, mutilation and Satanic acts are conducted in broad daylight.

We pressed Miller to issue four apologies for four specific outrageous incidents. When it decided to issue only one, we launched a boycott of Miller beer and launched a huge PR campaign against the Milwaukee brewer: we sent graphic photos of what went on to all Catholic, Protestant, Jewish and Muslim clergy in Milwaukee, as well as to Miller officials and community leaders.

The avalanche of bad publicity, coupled by a boycott led by a great Chaldean Catholic from Michigan, Mike Setto, proved too much for the company. Miller delivered on the other apologies and made it clear that it was not about to sponsor this sick event ever again.

At the end of last year, we called for a boycott of “The Golden Compass.” The movie, based on the first book of Philip Pullman’s trilogy, His Dark Materials, did well in Europe but it did not do well in the United States. We objected to the movie not because we thought it was profoundly anti-Catholic, but because the watered-down film might prove to be “bait for the books.” In other words, unsuspecting Catholic parents might buy the trilogy for their children if they found the movie unobjectionable. That was the danger—the books are clearly anti-Catholic.

We had another objective and that was to hurt box office sales to such an extent that it would kill the chances of making a movie based on the second book of Pullman’s trilogy. Well, it appears we have succeeded. In an article in the U.K. publication, The Independent, it recently said that it looks “increasingly unlikely” that “the planned film sequels” will be made. Plans have been “put on ice following the fervent Christian protests surrounding the first film, which led to boycotts and box office disappointment in the United States.” In other words, we won.

We fight these fights whether we win, lose or draw. It’s always nice to win, even if sometimes it takes a while to reap the harvest.

By: Susan A. Fani

Steven Mosher, Population Control: Real Costs, Illusory Benefits, Transaction Publishers

Matthew Connelly, Fatal Misconception: The Struggle to Control World Population, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press

Steven W. Mosher’s book explains the tragedy of the population control movement and the need to prevent depopulation as a result of the mass conversion of the West into believing that the world is dangerously overpopulated. Matthew Connelly’s book addresses the “politics of population” by exploring the history of the movement, its coercive methods and the groups, primarily the Catholic Church, that challenged the movement’s ideas. Both men expose the terrible things done by those claiming to improve the world through population control. Both authors oppose coercive reproductive measures used to compel people to reduce fertility. Where Mosher explores the personal, economic and demographic disaster the population control movement has wrought, Connelly attempts to equate the pro-life and pro-choice factions as equally reprehensible, thus missing the lesson to be learned from the failures of the population control movement.

Mosher, the leading expert on population issues, sets the record straight about alleged overpopulation. In his well-researched book, he makes the important point that, due to decreasing death rates as a result of improved healthcare around the world, there are more people around because we are living longer. At the same time, the birth rate has steadily declined. As he points out: “Our numbers didn’t double because we suddenly started breeding like rabbits. They doubled because we stopped dying like flies. Fertility was falling…from an average of 6 children per woman in 1960 to only 2.6 by 2002.”

As a result of the brainwashing that people have undergone, what awaits society is depopulation, which will result in many older people being supported by increasingly fewer young people. And the baby boomers and their children will have no one to blame but themselves. Women are putting off marriage and children and in many Western countries the replacement rate of 2.1 children per woman is not being met. The fertility rates are even going down in many developing countries, according to research by the United Nations. With people living longer and fewer children being born to take care of their elders, a preventable disaster is coming.

Whereas the developed world chose to be largely barren, the developing world had it forced upon them. “The United States and other developed countries consciously set out in the 1960s to engineer a radical decline in Third World fertility. Weak nations, dependent…for financial aid, military security, or access to markets, were bullied or suborned into mandating anti-natal measures.” Providing financial and other aid to developing countries in exchange for controlling birthrates via contraception, sterilization and abortion not only shows the dangerous priorities of the population controllers, but has also led to coercive measures by the recipient nations to insure that the aid keeps coming from the West.

The focus on preventing births also led to misappropriation of aid that would be better spent on improving healthcare for the poor. A case in point is money spent on malaria. This is a treatable disease that is devastating to those who cannot afford the medicine that could save their lives. But money that is poured into reproductive health measures dwarfs the amount spent on treatment of malaria. The United States Agency for International Development, which spends so much time and money on working with developing countries to get their citizens sterilized or on contraception, decreased its funds for malaria treatment from $50 million in 1985 to $10 million in 1994. However, over $400 million was provided in 1994 alone for “fertility reduction” programs.

Mosher points out that overpopulation has often been blamed for widespread societal ills, and those problems are considered by those in the movement as sufficient justification for pushing this agenda, at the expense of much needed basic healthcare. The population controllers have also justified their massive funding for reducing fertility by hiding behind lofty goals such as advancing women’s rights, improving the environment, and raising the standard of living for the poor.  However, these claims are belied by the fact that the movement measures success by the amount of people, called acceptors, using contraceptives and sterilization with the result of fewer babies being born in developing nations. Those on the receiving end of these programs, Mosher observes, are justifiably upset that the Western world is targeting them for elimination. Many people have rebelled only to be forced to have their most basic rights violated, most notably in China and India.

Mosher’s justifiably negative view of population control measures is shared by Michael Connelly who agrees that many countries have participated in coercive population control programs instead of addressing underlying political and economic problems. Unlike Mosher, he objects to the actions of the Catholic Church, which he accuses of promoting patriarchy at the expense of the faithful. In doing so, his detailed history goes off track but he nevertheless manages to show the leading role the Church has had in promoting the sanctity of life.

While Connelly challenges the claims of the population controllers, he sympathizes with their intentions. He argues that population did seem to be growing out of control in the twentieth century and those who were concerned tried to alleviate the problem in ways that often were coercive and ultimately unnecessary. Fertility was decreasing despite the expensive programs that showed no evidence of success. He concludes that birthrates were falling because it was individual women who decided the number of children they wanted. “It is therefore the emancipation of women, not population control, that has remade humanity.” Thus, he credits education for reduced birthrates and he advocates that women and men individually should decide whether or not to have children.

An obvious objection by Connelly through his thorough documentation of the population control movement is how racist it has been. Particularly in the early and mid-twentieth century, white liberals fought for population control measures against non-white people for fear they would overwhelm the West with their numbers. In a short time span, the idea that non-whites were breeding and had to be stopped for the sake of mankind took hold. Unlike the Catholic Church, which values every human life, these zealots devalued those who did not look or act like they did. The family planning movement increasingly became coercive when the population controllers did not see the results they wanted. Connelly states, “The atmosphere of alarm, even hysteria, surrounding the population issue made coercive policies seem inevitable.”

Connelly labels as a “fatal misconception” the idea that the population controllers know the interests of the people better than they do themselves. He rightly chides them for sponsoring coercive measures, but his charge that the Catholic Church—because it is opposed to abortion—is no better, makes for a strained analogy. It is one thing to champion a reduction in the non-white population; it is quite another to champion the rights of the unborn.

He is concerned that a new wave of population control measures may be implemented in light of the fact that populations are rapidly falling. He is also worried about the effect of sex selection abortions, particularly in India and China, because they may promote patriarchy since girls are targeted for elimination. His solution to these problems is what he considers true reproductive freedom for the individual. “Those who consider themselves pro-life must eventually realize that making people breed at any price cheapens all of our lives. And those who consider themselves pro-choice would be in a stronger position if they were at the forefront in opposing all manipulative and coercive policies designed to control populations.” Connelly’s false comparisons between the Roman Catholic Church and the militant population controllers is what undermines his otherwise well-documented history of the fertility reduction movement.

Connelly fails to appreciate that the Catholic Church teaches human life is sacred and must be respected. Understanding the worth of each child of God, Pope Paul VI, in his prescient 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae, called married people to be open to human life:

“Responsible parenthood, as we use the term here, has one further essential aspect of paramount importance. It concerns the objective moral order which was established by God, and of which a right conscience is the true interpreter. In a word, the exercise of responsible parenthood requires that husband and wife, keeping a right order of priorities, recognize their own duties toward God, themselves, their families and human society.”

What Connelly calls true reproductive freedom is just the opposite; it is the Catholic Church that points out that freedom is achieved by living in accord with God’s will. Connelly is advocating exchanging coercive population control measures for family planning as a result of decisions made by individuals. However, those decisions can only be moral if the choices people make are in accord with God’s law. Roman Catholics are instructed to have properly formed consciences to enable them to make these vital decisions.

In summary, Mosher’s book is an eye-opening, informative educational tool that is worth a close examination by those who want to learn what is needed to reverse the rapid decline in population. Mosher argues that the United States government must stop funding population control measures. What the West needs to focus on is reversing the demographic suicide now taking place. Connelly’s book, with its unfair and defective comparisons between population controllers and the Catholic Church, is one to skip. His inability to see that the Catholic Church is trying to help humanity and not hurt it smacks of political correctness.

Susan A. Fani is the Director of Communications for the Catholic League.