On December 13, the day Cardinal Bernard Law resigned, William Donohue issued the following remarks to the press:

“Most Catholics are greeting the resignation of Cardinal Law with a sigh of relief and sadness. While no one blames Cardinal Law for the entire scandal in the Church, his departure nonetheless represents an important step towards recapturing the trust of the laity. Now the mending process can proceed with alacrity.”

Donohue also took aim at the “small, but vocal, minority for whom nothing will ever satisfy.” He specifically mentioned SNAP president Barbara Blaine, ex-priest and psychotherapist Richard Sipe and victims’ attorney Mitchell Garabedian. Worse, he said, was a radical group called Coalition of Catholics and Survivors; they tried to implicate the pope.

On December 16, Cardinal Law held a press conference. Donohue was asked to be in the studio of the Fox News Channel when Cardinal Law spoke. After the Cardinal’s remarks, Donohue told host Neil Cavuto: “He [Cardinal Law] made a very genuine, sincere statement today, and I do think that he does in his heart of hearts hope that they’re going to have some reconciliation.”

Donohue concluded his comments by taking note of the fact that some are already beating the war drums going after bishops of other dioceses. “This is absurd,” he said, “everyone knows that no other diocese in the nation was qualitatively or quantitatively comparable to Boston. To suggest otherwise is to play into the hands of Fifth-Column Catholics.”

The “Holiday Wars” controversy over the propriety of putting religious symbols on public property drew a response this past Christmas season from the Supreme Court.

On November 29, U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens ruled that the city of Cincinnati could not bar the display of a menorah on a downtown plaza during the holidays. The municipal ordinance that was overturned said that only the city can use Fountain Square during the last two weeks of November through the first week of January.

Stevens, who oversees the Sixth Circuit, upheld U.S. District Court Judge Susan Dlott’s ruling that the city could not grant itself exclusive use of the square during the holidays; Stevens overruled an appeals court decision blocking the display of the menorah. On December 16, the full Supreme Court refused to challenge Stevens’ decision, thus reaffirming his ruling.

Unfortunately, this ruling by the high court was widely ignored. But if there was one court decision that captured national attention, it was a lawsuit brought by the Thomas More Law Center of Ann Arbor, Michigan, and instigated by the Catholic League.

In 2001, the Catholic League objected to a memo by the General Counsel for the New York City Schools Chancellor that permitted public school teachers to display such religious symbols as the Jewish menorah and the Islamic star and crescent while forbidding the display of a manger scene; Christians were told to be content with a Christmas tree. Without reason, New York City declared the menorah and star and crescent to be secular symbols.

When this issue was revisited this past Christmas season, the league had made much progress: a) a Catholic League member, Andrea Skoros, had agreed to have her public school children participate in a lawsuit and b) William Donohue had contacted his friend at the Thomas More Law Center, Richard Thompson, to file the suit. The lawsuit was filed December 10; no outcome has been reached.

What is so maddening about this is that the New York City Parks Department allows the Catholic League to erect a crèche in Central Park but the Department of Education stops us from displaying nativity scenes in the schools. We feel confident that the courts will agree that it is a matter of religious discrimination to allow Jews and Muslims their religious symbols while denying Christians theirs.

William A. Donohue

One of the most spectacular canards of our day is the notion that the Catholic Church is a dictatorship. Not only is this patently untrue, the fact of the matter is that part of the reason the sex abuse scandal took place is due to a collapse of discipline. Yet the myth of tyranny continues.

Dictatorships are marked by involuntary conditions: its subjects are forced to join and are without legal recourse to exit. The Catholic Church, just like other religious institutions, is a voluntary organization. No one is forced to join and everyone is free to leave; freely submitting to rules regarded by others as onerous does not invalidate the point. To be specific, it must be said that the Catholic Church, just like the New York Times, has every right to insist that its house rules be observed. Unfortunately, there is a double standard at work here, one that does a disservice to the Church.

In December 1999, it was reported that 23 employees of the New York Times were fired for violating a company policy prohibiting inappropriate e-mail. Evidently, X-rated e-mails consisting of jokes and photos were circulated during work hours. The official position of the newspaper was that the dismissals were due to a violation of a policy stating “computer communications must be consistent with conventional standards of ethical and proper conduct, behavior and manners and are not to be used to create, forward or display any offensive or disruptive messages.” When New York Times spokeswoman Nancy Nielson was asked by reporters to elaborate on this, her reply was to say that the incident was “an internal matter.”

Now this is interesting. Consider that this same newspaper has often criticized anti-porn legislation on the basis that no one can agree what constitutes offensive material. But it has no problem having an in-house rule that punishes employees for forwarding “offensive” messages. Moreover, if the Vatican ever said that it didn’t have to explain why it was cracking down on dissent—on the grounds that it’s “an internal matter”—every pundit from New York to New Delhi would blast the Church for intolerance.

Want more? In December 2002, it was reported that the New York Times had spiked two sports columns that differed with the newspaper’s editorials on the Augusta National dispute. Throughout the fall, many editorials were written condemning the golf club for barring women golfers; some criticized black golfer Tiger Woods for not leading a protest. But two top sports writers, Dave Anderson and Harvey Araton, didn’t see it that way. When they submitted their columns, their bosses refused to publish them.

“Part of our strict separation between the news and editorial pages entails not attacking each other,” said Times managing editor Gerald Boyd. “Intramural quarreling of that kind is unseemly and self-absorbed,” he added. When spokeswoman Catherine Mathis was asked to elaborate on this she replied, “We never talk about the internal decision-making process.”

It does not matter that eventually the newspaper decided to print an edited version of the two columns; what matters is the way in which this was handled. Imagine, for a moment, the Vatican telling reporters that the reason they are cracking down on dissident priests and nuns is due to the understanding that priests and religious are not to attack the Magisterium. Imagine, too, that the dissidents are labeled “unseemly and self-absorbed” for carping. And that a Vatican spokesman told inquiring reporters to take a hike—“We never talk about the internal decision-making process.”

It needs to be said that the New York Times has every right to insist that its house rules be observed by everyone. It is also true that it does not have to explain itself to others when punitive action is taken against “offenders.” Why, then, does the New York Times, as well as virtually every media outlet in the nation, hold the Catholic Church to a different standard? More troubling, why doesn’t someone from the Vatican simply say he’s taking a page out of the playbook of the New York Times by cracking down on dissent and refusing to comment to the media for doing so?

The Catholic Church need not feel apologetic, then, for insisting that its house rules be followed. The same is true of Catholic colleges and universities: they are under no obligation to practice the politics of inclusion which, if logically pursued, would mean the complete assimilation of Catholic schools to the dominant culture. To be Catholic is to have an exclusive identity and it’s time we all felt comfortable acknowledging this verity.

It is time all Catholics took a stand. Despite some obvious problems in the Church, we still have the most common-sensical and morally defensible teachings of any institution in the world. It would be a mistake to allow the din of dissent stop loyal Catholics from trumpeting our glorious teachings.

By Bronwen Catherine McShea

Daniel J. Goldhagen’s latest book, A Moral Reckoning: The Role of the Catholic Church in the Holocaust and its Unfulfilled Duty of Repair, purports to be a much-needed “moral philosophical” contribution to a troubled field of scholarship. Standing on the shoulders of other critics of Pope Pius XII’s wartime Church—James Carroll, Garry Wills, David Kertzer, to name a few—Goldhagen calls upon all Catholics to own up to the deep-seated antisemitism in their Church’s past which he calls “a necessary cause” of the Holocaust.

As Goldhagen’s “inquiry” proceeds, it becomes increasingly clear that his program for “moral reckoning” has less to do with the historical record of Catholic involvement in the Holocaust, criminal or otherwise, than it does with the author’s opinion of Catholicism itself—that it is inherently flawed, and must be reformed out of all recognition.

At first Goldhagen focuses his attention on the hypocrisy of a Church whose wartime leaders preached “love and goodness” but failed in many instances to exhibit Christ-like heroism in defense of innocent Jews. In his excitement over what he considers an insightful use of the Catholic “sins of ommission” concept, Goldhagen allows its definition to balloon to the point where he faults the Church for failing “to tend to the souls of the mass murderers and of the other persecutors of Jews.” One wonders what Goldhagen pictured in his mind when writing such a line: a toddling Hitler and Goebbels in kindergarten, given less tender, loving care by their nuns and priests than they deserved? Does Goldhagen honestly believe the Church was in a position to reach and reform all those who chose the demonic descent into Nazism?

The integrity of Goldhagen’s arguments seem less a priority than taking swipes at the Church wherever he can. How else can we explain his frequent demands that the Church be held to the highest of standards—to live Christian love and goodness to perfection—and his simultaneous suggestions that the very faith which is the lifeblood of such love and goodness should be rejected? For indeed, while he asks the question, “What would Jesus have done,” his contention that he is only concerned for Catholics to strive more fully in their faith quickly breaks down as soon as his program for a Catholic “moral reckoning” takes shape. Catholics, he proposes, to do right by the Jews, must effectively cease to be Catholics—must abandon their Scriptures, their Pope, and even the Cross itself.

“The Catholic Church has a Bible problem,” writes Goldhagen matter-of-factly in the latter part of the book. “The antisemitism of the Bible is not incidental to it but constitutive of its story of Jesus’ life and death and of its messages about God and humanity.” Adding that “the structure of the Gospels in particular is antisemitic,” Goldhagen proposes that the Pope and all those who teach the Catholic faith must teach as “falsehoods” some 80 “antisemitic” passages in Matthew, 40 in Mark, 60 in Luke, 130 in John, 140 in Acts, and so on. He then begs the question whether it would not also be just to demand that the Church expunge these several hundred passages from the Christian Scriptures.

Goldhagen defines as “antisemitic” any passage in the Bible which in any way implicates Jews in the death of Christ, or which in any way suggests that Christianity has superceded Judaism as the faith of God’s people. Apparently, we are supposed to reject as “null and void” the Gospels accounts of Judas’s betrayal of his Lord, Christ’s mockery of a trial before the Sanhedrin and His being handed over to the Roman authorities, and the crowds of men and women who cheered for Christ’s death sentence. Also, Goldhagen explicitly says that the phrase “New Testament” is itself offensive to Jews, as it implies the Old has been superceded or fulfilled by Christ’s divine mission. His suggestion to Rome for righting this offense? It must declare and teach every last Catholic that Christianity has in no way superceded Judaism, and it must “renounce the Church’s position that the Catholic Church is universal.”

For it was fervent belief in the universality of the Church, Goldhagen argues, which animated Christian persecutions of Jews in the past, and made Europe’s soil fertile for the Holocaust. Likewise, it was the Catholic identification of their Pope as the divinely-appointed leader of all Christians which encouraged them in “imperial aspirations” that were deadly for many Jews. Goldhagen’s recipe for “moral reckoning” in this area is for Catholics, first, to renounce the doctrine of papal infallibility, and to acknowledge that its “authoritarian structure and culture, undergirded by the infallibility doctrine, is inherently dishonest.” Second, the Church must “cease to be a political institution” and abdicate its rule over the Vatican city state. Additionally, the Church must stop its missions around the world, as missions are, in Goldhagen’s opinion, inherently “political” ventures designed to forward the Pope’s ultimate aim of acquiring “suzerainty” over all mankind. Lastly, this depoliticized Catholic Church must at every opportunity support and advocate for the interests of the state of Israel—this, Goldhagen believes, is the proper way of repaying a modicum of the debt Catholics owe the Jewish people.

It is perhaps when discussing the “political” nature of the Catholic Church where Goldhagen strays into his most offensive diatribes. “Seen from the outside, and certainly from the vantage point of a political scientist,” he writes, “Catholic doctrine, theology, and liturgy looks, historically and even today, more like the ideology of an imperial power, sometimes an antagonistic power, than a mere set of beliefs about God.” And an “antagonistic power,” of course, must be fended off by a society concerned for its well-being generally and the well-being of its Jews specifically. It is quite remarkable that Goldhagen feels so free to attack Catholic “doctrine, theology, and liturgy” in a book that is ostensibly about the Church’s comportment during the Nazi era. It is in such diatribes where Goldhagen shows his hand as a bigot whose concern is to actively undermine a faith he detests, rather than simply to seek justice for Jews in a manner appropriate to one who professes allegiance to the ideals of a pluralistic society.

At the heart of Catholic theology is the Crucifixion—the redemptive death of the God-man Christ, who was born of a Jewish virgin. The Crucifixion symbolizes many things for Catholics (not least the supernatural, self-sacrificing love and goodness Goldhagen reminds Catholics to imitate), but among them is the tragedy foretold in the Old Testament that the Messiah would be rejected by many of his own nation—the necessary, painful tragedy of the New Israel’s birth amidst the Old. Goldhagen, as a Jew, has every right as a free man to reject all such teachings about the Crucifixion, and every right to state his own belief in their error in a scholarly text on the subject. Yet he goes farther than this: he makes the inflammatory suggestion that the Cross, historically seen as “an antisemitic symbol and weapon,” is “all too likely to provoke further antipathy toward Jews.” Elsewhere in the book Goldhagen describes any such provocation as veritably criminal in light of the horrors endured by the Jewish people in the last century, and that the Church must take every step possible to avoid even “planting the seed” of antisemitism in any human heart.

We are left to conclude—though Goldhagen is not bold enough to state it outright—that Goldhagen sees it as a duty, or at least a welcome idea, for Catholic leaders to remove the Cross from their churches—inside as well as out. If he can call for the expurgation of Catholic Holy Writ, surely he is capable of calling for the removal of all Catholic sacred symbols from any wall, any steeple, if those symbols give any kind of encouragement to antisemitism.

Goldhagen, for all his moral outrage at one of the most criminal treatments of any religious group or people known to history, openly encourages the suppression of Catholic teachings, Catholic symbols, and even Catholic autonomy from the world’s political powers as it is entailed by the existence of the Vatican city state. How such a posture can benefit the cause of greater tolerance of, and accommodation for, any religious community is a great mystery which Goldhagen does not even attempt to answer in his fustian “moral philosophical inquiry.”

After reading A Moral Reckoning, it is very easy to see why Rabbi David Rosen, international director of interreligious affairs at the American Jewish Committee, a year ago criticized Goldhagen for his “unconcealed antagonism against the Catholic Church.” Rosen is among many Jews who are embarrassed and angered by Goldhagen’s imprudent, vicious posture against Catholics. Goldhagen is upsetting and retarding the already stormy (though recently fruitful) efforts by Jews and Catholics to arrive at better understanding of each other’s communities. Jews and Catholics alike rightly regard Goldhagen’s brand of “scholarship” as poison to productive dialogue and genuine moral philosophical inquiry.

The lukewarm to negative reviews the book has elicited from the critics have been its one saving grace. Even New York Times critic Geoffrey Wheatcroft threw up his hands at the close of his review and asked how Goldhagen “can in good faith plead with the church to abandon the very doctrines that define it.” Nevertheless, such critiques have not prevented the editors of the Times and other newspapers from naming A Moral Reckoning one of the “best books” of 2002. That the organs of the popular press react with such knee-jerk favorability to any book—no matter its merits—which attacks the Catholic Church is perhaps the most important lesson to be drawn from Goldhagen’s efforts. In a way, Goldhagen ought to be thanked for reminding us yet again that unabashed anti-Catholicism is alive and well both in the press and in the academy.

Bronwen Catherine McShea was a policy analyst for the Catholic League. She is now enrolled in a Master of Theological Studies program at Harvard Divinity School.

As the lead story in this issue of Catalyst indicates, the “Holiday Wars” lost no steam in 2002. Here are some other examples of how deracinated our culture is becoming:

• Every December on New York’s Park Avenue the Helmsley Building nightly features a huge display of lights in the shape of a cross. This is the first year it has been discontinued.

• GAP stores on the East Coast banned Christmas decorations because they might make some feel “uncomfortable.”

• For the first time in 30 years, a Rossmoor retirement community in Walnut Creek, California banned a nativity scene.

• The song “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” was censored from this year’s Old Town School of Folk Music holiday party in Chicago because some Jews labeled it anti-Semitic.

• All religious songs were forbidden by the Los Angeles Unified School District and replaced by tunes about snowballs.

• Teachers in a public school in Sacramento, California were told they were not allowed to utter the word “Christmas.”

• Virginia Tech issued a memo to all university employees warning that they “do not promote one cultural/religious tradition at the exclusion of another” and that they should “make all students and employees feel included.”

• In Pittsburgh, the ACLU and others objected to a sign placed near a nativity scene that simply read, “Crèche Viewing”; the sign was put up to allow 10-minute parking near the site of the crèche.

• A sign in eastern Pennsyl-vania, in Phillipsburg, was also found objectionable by the ACLU. It read “Keep Christ in Christmas.”

• Schoolchildren in Nevada who wanted to distribute candy canes with the inscription “Jesus Loves You” on them were forbidden to do so. School officials reversed themselves after being threatened with a lawsuit.

• Kids at South Orange Middle School in New Jersey were told they were going on a school trip to see a rendition of the Charles Dickens classic “A Christmas Carol.” But then the trip was cancelled because of fear the play was too religious.

• A firefighter in Tennessee was ordered to take down a sign he placed on the lawn outside of his firehouse. City officials objected to the word “God” in his “God Bless America” tribute to the firefighters of 9-11 who lost their lives.

• In Dunwoody, Georgia, a musician was told not to play Christmas music at a large corporate Christmas party. He was told to stick to such songs as “Silver Bells” and “Winter Wonderland.”

It is so much bunk to say all religious displays must be banned because some feel excluded or uncomfortable. Christians, who are 86 percent of the population, feel excluded and uncomfortable by this kind of censorship! The answer is respect for diversity and free speech.

On December 27, Brigitte Boisselier, the head of Clonaid, said her company was responsible for the world’s first cloned human baby; the company is tied to a religious group by the name Raelian.

William Donohue strongly protested this outrageous development:

“A woman who calls herself a Raelian ‘bishop’ holds a press conference alleging that her company has cloned the first human. She will not say where the baby was born and admits she has no evidence to share at this time that would substantiate her claim. Fortunately, not everything about Raelian is a mystery. Here’s what we know.

“The central link between the cloning company, Clonaid, and the religious group, Raelian, is Claude Vorilhon. He is both the founder of the company and the head of the group known as Raelians; he goes by the name Rael. He claims that in the 1970s he met with aliens who arrived by way of a UFO. They told him they used genetic engineering to create the universe and he believed them hook, line and sinker. Sounds nuts but I didn’t make this up.

“Here’s some more info about the Raelians. There is good news for hedonists, African Americans and Jews: Raelians are for free love and oppose racism and anti-Semitism. But there is bad news for Catholics: they hate them.

“Raelians advocate cross burnings to protest Catholicism; they’ve blanketed Canada telling Catholic schoolchildren they must renounce their faith; they’ve posted anti-Catholic signs outside Catholic schools; they’ve appealed to the U.N. to denounce the Holy See; they want the Vatican sued for ‘crimes against humanity’; they’ve mocked Catholics during Gay Pride Parades; and so on.

“In short, Raelians have no respect for the sacredness of human life and treat baby sheep with greater kindness than they do Catholics.”

When Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chairman Terry McAuliffe called on Republican leaders to “denounce” recent statements made by Senator Trent Lott regarding the record of Senator Strom Thurmond, William Donohue didn’t hold back in commenting to the media.

“There is no question that what Senator Trent Lott said was inexcusable,” Donohue said. “But it is the height of arrogance and hypocrisy to hear Terry McAuliffe lecture others on their need to denounce bigotry,” he continued. Donohue pointed out that this is the same man who refuses to break his ties with anti-Catholic bigotry: the DNC still maintains a link on its website to a professed anti-Catholic organization, Catholics for a Free Choice (CCFC).

The Catholic League’s protest of Kissling’s Catholic bashing has triggered an avalanche of letters and phone calls from Catholics and non-Catholics alike directed at Terry McAuliffe. Yet he stubbornly refuses to break his association with her.

“Now he has the gall to demand that others condemn Senator Lott for his admittedly irresponsible comments,” Donohue remarked. Furthermore, Donohue said, “What Lott did was bad, but it was a one-shot deal for which he has apologized. What McAuliffe has done has now dragged on for six months and he shows no signs of remorse or changes in his conduct.”

Donohue closed his statement to the press as follows: “What price Senator Lott will pay for his remarks, I do not know. But I know one thing—it is the firm position of the Catholic League that we will hound this issue of the DNC’s support for anti-Catholicism right up to and including the Democratic National Convention. We are busy on many fronts these days but we will not let go of this matter until someone gets McAuliffe to drop CFFC from its website altogether.”

On December 17, William Donohue wrote a letter to Democratic hopefuls for the presidency in 2004 asking them to oppose the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) association with an anti-Catholic organization, Catholics for a Free Choice (CFFC); the DNC provides a link on its website to CFFC.

Donohue’s letter was sent to the following: Senator Thomas Daschle; Governor Howard Dean; Senator John Edwards; Congressman Richard Gephardt; Senator John Kerry; Senator Joseph Lieberman; and Rev. Al Sharpton.

The closing paragraphs of Donohue’s letter are as follows:

“The Catholic League is strictly non-partisan. I spoke out against George W. Bush on the Bob Jones matter and went on the “Today Show” to accept his apology. I led the fight against the Republicans when they unfairly treated a Catholic priest in his bid for the House Chaplain post (the priest did not get the job but another one did, thus becoming the first Catholic to hold this position). In short, we are neither Republican nor Democrat at the Catholic League: our job is to fight Catholic bashing whenever and wherever it occurs.

“You are in a particularly critical spot to help Catholics. By publicly opposing the DNC’s link with Catholics for a Free Choice, you could have a direct impact on its willingness to continue this affiliation. And it would certainly endear yourself to Catholics.

“Catholic newspapers all over the country have been following our protest of the DNC-CFFC link and I have garnered the help of many Catholics, Protestants and Jews on this issue. All we want is for the DNC to drop CFFC from its website. In a time when Republican notables are being questioned about their sentiments towards African Americans, it is more important now than ever before that everyone who either holds or seeks positions of high office stand strongly against bigotry of every kind.

“We will let our members know if and when we get a response.”

In the last issue of Catalyst, we cited the Catholic-bashing script of David E. Kelley’s November 10 episode of the ABC show “The Practice.” We also mentioned his obsession with Catholicism. Kelley, it should be noted, is Protestant.

He continued his obsession on November 17 with another episode of “The Practice.” Then on December 2 he struck again, this time airing his bigotry on the Fox TV show “Boston Public.” And on December 16, Kelley launched another salvo at Catholicism, using “Boston Public” as his delivery system.

The man has a problem. All of his shows exploit the scandal in the Church. Take, for example, the December 2 episode of “Boston Public.”

That show featured a reckless boy who admits to his concerned teacher that he has been sexually abused by a priest, Father Egan. It turns out that the molesting priest previously abused the boy’s teacher, Danny Hanson. Hanson then confronts Father Egan threatening him with violence. The next episode continued the storyline.

William Donohue struck back with the following statement to the media:

“There is no one in Hollywood who hates the Catholic Church more than David E. Kelley. We know this by his acts: he has written or produced more anti-Catholic shows than any of his peers. Less than a month ago, I issued a news release titled ‘David E. Kelley’s Obsession With Catholicism.’ It addressed the November 10 episode of the ABC show, ‘The Practice.’ Like last night’s attack, this episode drew on the scandal in the Catholic Church for script.

“It cannot be argued that Kelley is a master of adapting current events for TV material. For instance, he has shown no interest in portraying Muslims as terrorists. To do so would be to invite charges of stereotyping Muslims, and this is one sin Kelley avoids like hell. But when it comes to painting an ugly face on Catholic priests, he shows his masterful credentials. More important, Kelley did not need the scandal to vent his bigotry—he’s been doing it for years. Consider this: the November 9, 2000 episode of ‘Boston Public’ painted the Catholic Church as anti-gay. Yet for some reason, Kelley’s interest in the role of gays in the Church never extends to portraying gay priests as molesters. This is another sin Kelley avoids like hell.

“The scandal in the Catholic Church is of its own doing. But the outburst of anti-Catholicism that has come in its wake is not. If it is wrong to bash X for its dirty laundry, why is it acceptable to make exceptions for the Catholic Church? After all, 99.3 percent of priests are in good standing. This should matter, even to the likes of David E. Kelley.”

It’s time this unrelenting bigot heard from you. Here’s his address:
David E. Kelley, David E. Kelley Productions, c/o 20th Century Fox, 10201 W. Pico Blvd., Bldg. 80, Los Angeles, California 90064.

William Donohue sent the following news release to all 134 parishes on Long Island:

“Jimmy Breslin is out of control and Newsday is irresponsible for not firing him. It is one thing to write critically of the Catholic Church, quite another to slander the Church and its leaders. In 2002, Breslin wrote 31 articles mentioning the Catholic Church and all 31 are sprinkled with his venom. Disdain and derision mark his comments about the pope, cardinals, bishops and pastors, and outright falsehoods are relentlessly told about Bishop William Murphy of Rockville Centre.

“Breslin is so far gone he doesn’t even know the names of those whom he bashes. His latest screed attacking the Catholic Church, which Newsday deliberately ran on Christmas Eve, mentions ‘Cardinal John Law.’ But there is no one by that name in the Catholic Church. This is, sadly, emblematic of a deeper problem: for whatever reason, Breslin’s ability to write cogently and to remember basic facts has deteriorated greatly in recent years.

“Newsday’s publisher, Raymond Jansen, defends this man by saying, ‘Obviously, Mr. Breslin is angry.’ That is exactly what he told Rev. Msgr. Daniel S. Hamilton of Our Lady of Perpetual Help when Msgr. Hamilton wrote a rational letter of complaint to Jansen. In short, Newsday has decided to stand by its man. All Catholics on Long Island need to know this; the Catholic League will get the word out.

“How ironic it is that Newsday continues to employ a man whom they had to suspend for two weeks in 1990 because of his sexism and racism. Breslin was suspended for calling a 25 year-old Korean Newsday reporter a ‘yellow cur,’ ‘slant-eyed’ ‘c—.’ Breslin can now add anti-Catholic to his resume of racism and sexism. And this is the man Newsday defends.”