A recent article in the Los Angeles Times about The Satanic Temple said the organization “describes itself as a political activism group that promotes certain beliefs such as free will and political tolerance.” Satanists believe in free will and political tolerance? That inspired Donohue to check out their website.

What he found was surprising: The Satanic Temple is obsessed with abortion. Its mission statement says it offers “legal protection against laws that unscientifically restrict women’s reproductive autonomy.” So critical is abortion to these Satanists that they have a “Religious Rights Reproductive Rights Campaign”: it advocates on behalf of the so-called religious rights of Satanists to campaign for abortion.

The Satanic Temple has a list of legal restrictions on abortion that it finds objectionable: they range from ultrasound tests that allow the mother to hear the heartbeat of her baby to mandatory waiting periods. They also seek to undermine crisis pregnancy centers. So zealous are the Satanists in their quest for abortion rights that they oppose burial rights for the remains of children who have been aborted. To say they love abortion is hardly a stretch.

Donohue decided to engage The Satanic Temple on this issue.

Here is the email exchange:

Q: “I’m curious. Why is abortion such a big issue for Satanists?” [Nov. 13]

A: “It isn’t abortion per se, it is personal freedom.” [Nov. 13]

Q: “But if the personal freedom of a woman to have an abortion results in the wholesale denial of personal freedom for her baby, how is that a victory for liberty?” [Nov. 15]

A: “Because it isn’t a baby.” [Nov. 15]

So there you have it. A pregnant woman who, unless interrupted naturally or unnaturally, will give birth to a baby is not carrying a baby.

Brief Answers to Big Questions is Stephen Hawking’s last book. His family finished the manuscript that he started, launching the book six months after the famous physicist died. The media hullaballoo over the book centers mostly on his professed atheism. CNN shouted Hawking’s conclusion, “There is no God,” calling it a “bombshell.”

It is hardly a “bombshell” to learn that a celebrated atheist was an atheist. Hawking never declared himself a religious man, though his atheism was always shaky. Just last year, in a book about him by Kitty Ferguson, he was asked why there is a universe. “If I knew that,” he answered, “then I would know everything important.” He added, “then we would know the mind of God.”

Now we are told that in his new book, at the end of his life, he was more sure of his atheist convictions. “Do I have faith? We are each free to believe what we want,” Hawking said, “and it’s my view that the simplest explanation is that there is no God…No one created the universe and no one directs our fate. This leads to a profound realisation: there is probably no heaven and afterlife either.” Probably. Which means there may be.

Why did Hawking hedge? And why would a brilliant man who supposedly understands elements of the universe that are too complex and difficult for most of us to understand settle the question of God’s existence by choosing “the simplest explanation” available?

Would it not be just as simple to adopt Pascal’s answer to the wager he proffered? The wager entailed the consequences of believing in God versus not believing. The 17th century French philosopher said it was wiser to err on the side of caution. “If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing.”

A popular reconstruction of Pascal’s wager goes like this: “If I believe in God and life after death and you do not, and if there is no God, we both lose when we die. However, if there is a God, you still lose and I gain everything.”

This is clearly one of the “simplest” alternatives to Hawking’s position. It also has the merit of being more persuasive—to lose the wager is to lose it all.

It is fascinating to learn that while Hawking cannot conceive of a personal God, and doubts there is life after death, he believes in life in outer space. In Brief Answers to Big Questions, he confesses his belief in aliens. Great. But for a guy who insists on scientific evidence for everything else, where is the proof?

Why would Hawking believe in aliens? In the book by Ferguson, he says, “We are such insignificant creatures on a minor planet of a very average star in the outer suburbs of one of a hundred thousand million galaxies.” He is entitled to believe that human beings are “insignificant creatures,” but he has no empirical evidence to support it.

It would have helped had Hawking identified who the significant creatures are and where they live. But he never did. More important, why is it rational for him to believe in aliens but irrational for us to believe in God?

Where Hawking fails, as do all atheists, is in responding to the central issue involving the origin of the universe. Saint John Paul II said it best. “Every scientific hypothesis about the origin of the world, such as the one that says that there is a basic atom from which the whole of the physical universe is derived,” he said in a 1981 Vatican conference on cosmology, “leaves unanswered the problem concerning the beginning of the universe. By itself, science cannot resolve this problem….”

How much of Hawking’s atheism was a function of his disability (he suffered from Lou Gehrig’s disease for most of his adult life) is uncertain, but in his last book he makes this an issue. “For centuries,” he said, “it was believed that disabled people like me were living under a curse that was inflicted by God. I prefer to think that everything can be explained another way, by the laws of nature.”

It is true that in the ancient world it was believed that the disabled must have done something wrong to merit their condition. But Hawking should have updated his readings.

Jesus healed the sick, the blind, the lame—everyone in need of help—and the religion he founded does not abandon the disabled. On the contrary, it tends to their suffering. Christians have had a phenomenal record treating the handicapped of every malady, mental and physical alike. So to invoke centuries-old beliefs (many born of paganism for that matter) as a way of indicting religion today is simply wrong.

Christians believe in mysteries, and so did Hawking, albeit of a different kind. Pascal believed in mysteries as well, but he was much more rational than Hawking.

Megyn Kelly was obviously not dropped by NBC because all the executives and hosts who work there are opposed to bigotry. In fact, many of them like it. Indeed, they have been promoting it for decades.

But the tolerant ones are not equal opportunity bigots. They are careful not to offend African Americans, Hispanics, Asians, illegal aliens, Indians, Jews, Muslims, homosexuals, et al. But when it comes to priests, NBC loves to make sweeping condemnations against them, feeding every negative stereotype there is.

No other demographic group is relentlessly treated with derision, mocked in ways that range from below the belt to the positively obscene. Here is a small sample.

Let’s start with Al Roker. He called Kelly’s “blackface” remarks “ignorant and racist.”

In 2000, Roker had a book published about parenting, Don’t Make Me Stop This Car. He made the rounds on TV shows saying that his wife used a fertility drug, perganol, one he claimed was made by a company that was a subsidiary of the Vatican.

Before getting to his “joke,” it should be known that the weatherman had his facts wrong: Serono, the fertility-drug maker, was never a subsidiary of the Vatican. At one time, the Vatican owned shares in the company, but it sold them in 1970, thirty years before Roker’s book was published.

More to the point, on June 16, 2000, Roker told Larry King that perganol is extracted from a hormone, FHS, which he contended was obtained from the urine of “menopausal nuns” who live in the Vatican [note: it was actually collected from 110,000 postmenopausal women volunteers in Europe and Latin America]. He told King that the drug was “expensive stuff,” adding that “it was cheaper to adopt a nun, you know, and just have her pee in a cup.” Roker made similar cracks on other shows.

Kelly never made a cheap joke about blacks. But Roker did about nuns. Yet she is the “ignorant” bigot, not him.

Jay Leno made a career out of bashing priests. His “jokes” are too numerous to recount here, but here are a few examples.

A news story about a priest who stole church money for male escorts led Leno to quip, “Why buy the escort when the altar boys are free?” [July 7, 2010]
When told that a priest was calling for a boycott, Leno said, “Well, maybe he was just calling for a boy on a cot.” [May 14, 2010]

In his monologue, Leno commented, “And according to a New York Times poll, 54% of people feel that the Vatican is out of touch with Catholics. The other 46% are young Catholics who feel they’re way too much in touch. Way too much in touch.” [May 10, 2010]

Here’s another monologue remark. “According to a new report on teenage sex by researchers, 4% of teenagers lost their virginity in a car, and 56% lost it in their homes. When they heard this, child development experts said it might help if teenagers talked to someone like their teacher or a priest, which is how the other 40% lost it.” [February 26, 2008]

Here’s a really sick one. “In fact this Harry Potter book is so popular a lot of L.A. priests are now using it as bait.” [July 23, 2007]

This is another gem. Leno discusses a priest who accidentally drove his car into a restaurant. “Thank God it was not Chuck E. Cheese.” [June 21, 2007]

This one is hard to beat. Leno comments on a news story about the bishops holding a meeting at the Fairmont Hotel in Dallas. “They wanted to hold it at the Ramada Inn because at Ramadas, the kids stay free.” [June 17, 2002]

Many more of Leno’s “jokes” could be listed, but this suffices to make the point: NBC adored his bigotry, cheering him on as he portrayed all priests as pedophiles. [Fact: Less than 5% of molesting priests were pedophiles—most were homosexuals—but NBC executives do not want to go there. They are very protective of homosexuals.]

Seth Meyers went beyond Leno by trashing the Eucharist. In one egregious instance, he stuffed his mouth with what he pretended was the Communion wafer, mocking Catholics at the same time. [October 29, 2014]

Meyers said that a Spanish hotel, inspired by Fifty Shades of Grey, was delaying its opening because it was too close to a Catholic church. “We don’t want to be next to all those creepy perverts,” he said. [August 6, 2014]

Recently, Meyers “joked” with one of his writers, Jenny Hagel, saying, “The Vatican recently refused to host an international women’s day conference because one of the speakers was a lesbian.” Hagel responded, “…and because they’re too busy hosting a 2000-year-long pedophile convention.” [October 4, 2018]

NBC’s new show, “You, Me and the Apocalypse,” wasted no time attacking priests this year. The character, Father Jude, played devil’s advocate for priests being considered for sainthood. He said, “My job is to prove they felt up kids.” [February 1, 2018]

To this could be added obscene portrayals of Catholic priests on shows such as “Law and Order,” “The Blacklist,” and “Committed” (it defiled the Eucharist). Then there are the sick remarks made on MSNBC by the likes of Keith Olbermann and Lawrence O’Donnell.

NBC executives should be honest and admit that they were looking for a way to get rid of Kelly and seized upon her “blackface” Halloween story to do so. They should also admit that they lie when they say they are opposed to bigotry in all of its manifestations. They clearly are not.

The “mass grave” hoax is back. The Irish government is planning to exhume the remains of babies allegedly buried in a mass grave in Tuam, Ireland. According to the New York Times, Ireland’s Minister for Children, Katherine Zappone, is leading this campaign. The so-called mass grave is on the grounds of the Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home in the County Galway town of Tuam.

The Times reports that this story began in 2014 when “a local amateur historian, Catherine Corless, said she had found death certificates for 796 children who died in the home from 1925 to 1961—but whose burial places were not officially recorded.”

There are several factual errors in this news story by Ed O’Loughlin. He has a history of distorting the record.

Earlier this year O’Loughlin referred to Corless as a “dogged local historian” who made headline news when “she published evidence” that nearly 800 children had died in the Tuam home, and that the remains of “some” were found in the septic tank. (Our emphasis.)

As Bill Donohue has noted several times before, the “mass grave” story is a cruel myth promoted by those whose agenda it is to smear the Catholic Church.

The myth began when Corless published a 2012 article titled, “The Home,” in the Journal of the Old Tuam Society. In it, Corless made no mention of any “mass grave.” If anything, she offered evidence that contradicts what she later claimed.

Here is what Corless said: “A few local boys [in 1975] came upon a sort of crypt in the ground, and on peering in they saw several small skulls.” She mentioned there was a “little graveyard.” That is not the makings of a mass grave.

The primary source for her “mass grave” thesis is Barry Sweeney. When he was 10, he and a friend stumbled on a hole with skeletons in it. In 2014, he was asked by the Irish Times to comment on Corless’ claim that there are “800 skeletons down that hole.” He said, “Nothing like that.” How many? “About 20,” he said. He later told the New York Times there were “maybe 15 to 20 small skeletons.” Is O’Loughlin aware of this? It was printed in the newspaper that employs him.

Corless herself admitted in 2014 that she learned from local residents that the Tuam graveyard outside the Home was dotted with “tiny markers there.” There were “bits of stones left to indicate graves.” Those “tiny markers” suggest this was a cillin graveyard, or a graveyard for children. A “mass grave” is not dotted with “tiny markers” or “bits of stones.” Yet Corless has been able to get away with these contradictory explanations.

In a 2014 news story by Douglas Dalby of the New York Times, he says of Corless’ account that she “surmised that the children’s bodies were interred in a septic tank behind the home.” (Our italic.) His verb is accurate. To surmise is to guess—it is proof of nothing.

As for Corless, she is neither an “amateur historian” nor a “local historian.” She is not a historian—local, regional, or national. She doesn’t even have an undergraduate degree. She is a typist.

Furthermore, last year, when Zappone released her second Interim Report on this subject, she never used the term “mass grave,” or implied anything like it. So why is she so dogged about this issue?

She now says it is important to “demonstrate our compassion and commitment to work towards justice, truth and healing for what happened in our past and, most especially, for those who were previously abandoned.” She should instead worry about the wellbeing of children in Ireland today, beginning with child abuse in the womb.

Zappone’s alleged interest in protecting the welfare of children would be more persuasive were it not for her rabid pro-abortion record. She is an activist, not a health minister. “Married” to her girlfriend, an ex-nun, she is part of the effort to besmirch the historical record of Irish nuns. Yet were it not for the care these nuns gave to abandoned children, they would have died in the street. No one else wanted them in the early part of the last century.

Just as in the United States, pro-abortion and pro-gay activists seek to discredit the Catholic Church, thus making it easier for them to succeed. To accomplish their agenda, they are prepared to lie about the Church’s past so as to marginalize its voice today.

Catherine Corless is the typist responsible for floating the “mass grave” hoax in Tuam, Ireland. She is back in the news, this time for blasting the Bon Secours sisters for not forking up enough cash to pay for an exhumation of an alleged “mass grave” of children’s remains she says exists on the grounds of the sisters’ Mother and Baby Home. Ireland’s Minister of Children, Katherine Zappone, is behind the effort to see what is buried in the grounds.

The nuns have offered to pay almost $3 million toward the digging, an amount that Corless predictably says is too “meager.” She says the sisters have “private hospitals all over the place” and should pay much more.

In other words, the typist wants to drain money from the sick and dying today to pay for her wild goose chase about an incident that allegedly took place a hundred years ago.

The nuns should pay nothing. Let the activists like Corless in Ireland, and the Church-bashing activists in the United States like Irish Central, pony up first, then rip the Irish taxpayers for the remainder.

For two reasons, this will never happen: the nuns are too humble, and those who hate the Church—they hate its teachings on sexuality—simply want to soak it. These people are not motivated by justice for children—they are motivated by revenge. That is a sin, though in their eyes it is a virtue.