The annual “War on Christmas” continued in 2014 with both sides having achieved roughly the same number of wins and losses. This is certainly an improvement over the days when the anti-Christmas side appeared to be winning this battle in the culture war. The good news is that the pro-Christmas side has been pushing back, even reversing previous losses.

When it comes to putting a nativity scene on public property, the pro-Christmas activists claimed victories in North Augusta, South Carolina; Grand Haven, Michigan; Cherokee County, Texas; Baxter County, Arkansas; Brookville, Indiana; Ogden City, Utah; Austin, Texas; Utica, New York; and New York City.

The presence of the Catholic League was felt in New York City where a record number of people commented on our nativity scene in Central Park; this year it was displayed right in front of the Plaza Hotel.

The anti-Christmas forces won in Maury County, Tennessee; Portsmouth, Virginia; Jay City, Florida; Orange County, Florida; Piedmont, Alabama; and Dallas, North Carolina.

Freedom from Religion Foundation was active in many of the attacks, as were American Atheists, the ACLU, and Americans United for Separation of Church and State; the latter advised Satanists of their rights, thus proving that their real agenda is to attack Christianity. American Atheists erected anti-Christmas billboards in some cities, mocking the holiday.

The Catholic League made a splash in Los Angeles with its billboard: we called attention to hate speech directed at Christians at home and abroad. From the media response, we know we provoked a discussion.

We also drew attention to the extent that militant secularists are terrified about Christmas. For example, their censorial response reached absurd heights when some sought to ban candy canes. That was the initial response of the University of Maine; it changed its policy once the media exposed its madness. Why did it seek to censor candy canes? Because, they said, the candy canes reminded people of Christmas. Evidently, that is not something that an institution of higher learning should be expected to tolerate.

Cambridge, Massachusetts, we pointed out, wouldn’t blink an eye about welcoming terrorists to speak at any venue, but when it came to having Santa appear at a local school winter concert, the open-minded bigots decided to disinvite him.

It never ceases to amaze us that all of those seeking to silence the Christian voice at Christmastime boast of their unwavering commitment to freedom of speech, diversity, and tolerance. Their real political stripes are totalitarian; they are a menace to freedom. But the good news is that they keep running up against people like us.

In the finale of the HBO show, “The Newsroom,” which aired December 14, there was an exchange between Will McAvoy, the anchor/news director (played by Jeff Daniels), and Charlie Skinner, the network president (played by Sam Waterston). They managed to drop Bill Donohue’s name.

The subject of discussion was Pope Benedict XVI. Skinner took McAvoy to task for going soft on the pope for his alleged easy treatment of predatory priests. He challenged McAvoy, wanting to know why he wasn’t tougher. Here is what followed:

Skinner: That’s inexplicable to me.

McAvoy: Bill Donohue

Skinner: Yeah, you don’t want the Catholic League mad at you.

McAvoy: Nobody does.

Bill replied as follows: “If the story is true, we don’t get mad at those who report on bad news about the Catholic Church. We just get mad when we’re cherry picked or when the bad news is embellished. Or when we’re gratuitously bashed by talking heads. Sort of like what often appears on the network news, broadcast prime time shows, late night talk shows, cable talk shows, newspapers, radio, movies, the Internet….”

Donohue wished HBO executives “Merry Christmas.” While he is not convinced that they have turned the page, he appreciates the fact that they know we mean business.

William A. Donohue

Those who are pro-life, as the readers of Catalyst surely are, refuse to take comfort in data that indicate a decline in abortions. That’s understandable. But there is a difference between taking comfort and taking stock: the latter means to assess, possibly leading to a reappraisal of conditions. On that score, the latest abortion data are encouraging.

The Centers for Disease Control recently released its new “abortion surveillance” report covering the years 2002 to 2011. During that time, the total number of abortions decreased by 13 percent. The abortion rate—the number of abortions per 1,000 women age 15 to 44—decreased 14 percent, and the number of abortions relative to births dropped 12 percent.

While no one is suggesting we pop the champagne, it is a serious mistake not to take stock in the data: the vector of change is moving our way and the abortion industry is not happy with the results. Too bad for them.

By nature, I am an optimist. But I hasten to add that I am not a dreamer—I live in the real world. No one will find me basking in these figures; on the other hand, I have little patience for the doom and gloom crowd. It is simply not possible to win a battle in the culture war if we are psychologically predisposed to despair. This is more than a strategic verity—it is a hard-cold assessment of what the numbers mean.

In 1980, when abortions peaked, 1.3 million kids were killed. In 2011, the figure was 730,322. That’s a difference of well over a half million.  But even these numbers mask the reality: when we speak about a life that has been spared, we are not speaking about raw datum; rather, each number represents a unique boy or girl. And it is because our side has fought so valiantly that the numbers continue to decline. That is something to take stock in.

Young women, those in their twenties, or younger, account for over 70 percent of abortions. However, teens are having fewer abortions: in 1980, they accounted for 29.2 percent; in 2011, they made up 13.9 percent. Women above 35 witnessed an uptick, the largest increase occurring among women over 40. In almost all cases, it is unmarried women who are having an abortion (they account for 85.5 percent of the total). A high number—over 46 percent—had at least one previous abortion.

While abortion rates have declined for all races and ethnicities, including blacks, African American women have an abortion rate that is three times the white rate; they easily outpace Hispanics. With regard to the latter, the abortion rate among Hispanic women is now only slightly higher than the national average.

It is a sad commentary on the black leadership in this country that few have chosen to speak to this issue. Dr. Alveda King, the niece of Rev. Martin Luther King, has been outspoken, as has evangelical activist Kay James. More recently, Dr. Ben Carson, a neurosurgeon, has condemned abortion. But where has Al Sharpton been? Where has he been on the epidemic of black males murdering black males? Blacks are being killed inside the womb at a rate far above that of everyone else, and they are being shot in the street on a daily basis—by their own people—and the only thing that exercises this man is when a white cop kills a black man.

Sharpton is the best friend Planned Parenthood ever had. The abortion mill giant accounts for almost half the abortions in the nation (46 percent), killing black kids at a knockout rate. Sharpton could use his influence to rail against Planned Parenthood but his left-wing donors wouldn’t take kindly to such a gambit. So he politely shuts up.

What makes this so sick is Planned Parenthood’s racist origins. Margaret Sanger, its founder, felt it was her duty to “weed out” what she labeled the “undesirables.” And just who might they be? Blacks, of course.

To this day, Planned Parenthood continues to focus on African Americans, which is why they have so many of their clinics in their  neighborhoods. At least Sanger did not support killing blacks in the womb: she was a big time supporter of birth control but she was also anti-abortion. Sharpton, by contrast, is not opposed to either artificial birth control or abortion. Maybe that is because the “Reverend” never had an opportunity to study the issue in divinity school: he was ordained at the age of nine, not long after he got off his tricycle.

The fight for the unborn should unite liberals and conservatives the way the fight for black civil rights should have united both groups in the 1960s. Shame on conservatives for not standing with Rev. Martin Luther King back then, and shame on liberals for not fighting for the rights of the unborn today, a disproportionate number of whose victims are black.

The anniversary of Roe v. Wade is never a happy one for pro-lifers, but given that the data are encouraging, we need to take stock in those numbers and press forward with renewed vigor. After all, many lives are dependent on our resolve.

The following article by Bill Donohue was published by Newsmax on December 9:

A remarkable document, “Statement of Catholic Theologians on Racial Justice,” released December 8, is a clear window into the thinking of those who are teaching on Catholic campuses. It is not a pretty picture. Signed by hundreds of professors, the statement evinces a wholesale disregard for the truth. Just as bad, the phony hand-wringing is nauseating.

What prompted this moralistic outburst are the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner. To make sure the reader gets the point they want to make, the theologians write about the killings of “Black” persons by “White policemen”; the capitalized letters are done for racial effect. What angers the professors are “the failures of the grand jury process to indict some of the police officers involved” and other instances of alleged racial injustice.

They need to be specific. Where is the evidence that the grand jury failed in either the Brown or the Garner case? After all, the scholars believe that the two cops involved, Darren Wilson and Daniel Pantaleo, should have been indicted, so either the classroom experts have evidence that the jury didn’t hear or they simply didn’t like the verdict.

Here are some inconvenient facts:

Ten minutes before the encounter between Wilson and Brown, Wilson  learned of an emergency call about a two-year old who was having trouble breathing. EMS was supposed to respond but the police officer volunteered to go because he could get there sooner. The child he attended to was African American.

Ten minutes before they met, Brown was robbing a store, flying high on drugs. On his way back from the emergency call, Wilson spotted Brown walking in the middle of the street and told him to use the sidewalk. This provoked Brown who then assaulted Wilson. Brown fled, Wilson pursued him, and then the 6-foot-four, 292 pound Brown lunged at the cop with his head down. Wilson saw him put his hand on his waistband and fired.

Brown was never shot in the back and all the forensic evidence supported Wilson’s account, as did many witnesses. There were three blacks on the 12-member grand jury.

The chief officer on the scene of the Garner confrontation was a black female cop, though few media outlets have said so. She supervised Pantaleo and the other police officers, and at no time did she order them to stop doing what they were doing. Garner, like Brown, resisted arrest, and given his size—he was 6-foot-3 and weighed 350 pounds—he was not easy to take down.

For nine weeks, the grand jury heard from 50 witnesses and assessed 60 pieces of evidence. There were nine non-whites on the 23-member panel of jurors. In order to indict Pantaleo, they had to conclude that he knew there was a “substantial risk” that Garner would have died if he pursued him.

Do the Catholic theologians have evidence that these mixed-race jurors got it wrong? Do they think the jurors are just as racist as the cops? I am a sociologist who has taught Criminology; I also worked in a high-crime neighborhood with blacks and Hispanics. From my research and experience, most people of color are good, law-abiding persons, but they are plagued by a minority of young men who threaten their security. It is the innocent who deserve our empathy, not the thugs who prey on them.

The theologians got one thing right: they should examine themselves for their “complicity in the sin of racism.” There is much to ponder, but it is not racism against blacks they need to consider;  rather, it is their racism and their classism against white police officers that should command their attention. One passing positive reference to the police doesn’t cut it.

Similarly, it is a cheap throwaway line to say, “We commit ourselves to placing our bodies and/or privileges on the line in visible, public solidarity with movements of protest to address the deep-seated racism of our nation.” If they had any guts, they never would have given themselves an option—it’s time they took to the streets to see what the urban anarchists are really like.

What do Americans United for Separation of Church and State have in common with Satanists? Everything—they’re on the same page. That’s why Barry Lynn of Americans United offered to represent the Satanic Temple in its quest to assault Christian sensibilities in Florida. The Devil worshipers sought, and the government agreed, to put a Satanist display next to a nativity scene in the Capitol rotunda this past December.

Anyone familiar with the history of Americans United knows that its support for Satanism is hardly a shocker. It was founded after World War II as an expressly anti-Catholic organization called Protestants and Other Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Its first director, Glenn L. Archer, said the Catholic Church was “more dangerous and clever than communism.” In all honesty, he lied—he believed that the Church was far worse. We know this because Archer loved Joseph Stalin: he defended the mass murderer even after Stalin launched the world’s first man-made famine; millions of Ukrainians were intentionally starved to death.

During the Christmas episode of “Tosh.0” on Comedy Central, host Daniel Tosh opened a segment, “Beef Baby Jesus,” by explaining that in a previous episode viewers were encouraged to tweet using the hashtag #beefbaby. Tosh then showed a clip on how the “beef baby” was made using meat, human feces, and semen. Tosh then wrapped the “beef baby” in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger.

Here is a transcript of his remarks:

A few weeks ago this show made hashtag #beefbaby the number one trending topic in the world. That’s not a big deal, Twitter is meaningless. And when I told the network that we were doing a Christmas episode they insisted that I show everyone how the beef baby was born. And I thought it was a little controversial, but hey, they’re the boss.

Here’s what you’ll need if you want to make your own beef baby at home. You take a quarter pound of beef [shows raw meat] and two sticks of steamy hot fudge [shows an up close video of a person defecating] and put it in a very obscure device called a uterine box. Then top it off with a batch of fresh squeezed glaze [a man is shown masturbating—the penis is censored]. Combine all the ingredients, and out comes a perfectly formed miracle beef baby [a clump of meat that looks like a fetus is shown]. Look at that beef baby—such a beautiful beef baby. Don’t forget to wrap that beef baby in swaddling clothes, before laying him in a manger [a piece of fabric is wrapped around the beef baby and it’s superimposed into a nativity scene].

We have men and women in the armed forces fighting for our freedoms, but what they are not fighting for is the right to abuse those freedoms. Let’s be clear about this: The depraved executives at Comedy Central who authorized this frontal assault on Christians did not exercise their First Amendment right—they perverted it.

No wonder many Muslims look at the way we interpret freedom and wind up hating us. It is the likes of Comedy Central that fuels the animus.

We are not supposed to say that we are a Christian nation, but everyone knows we are. In 1892, the U.S. Supreme Court explicitly said we were. Atheist Sam Harris knows we are as well, which is why he titled his anti-Christian book, Letter to a Christian Nation. Indeed, 8 in 10 Americans are Christian, and 95 percent of Americans who practice a religion are Christian. Moreover, the people who founded America were not Hindu or Muslim—they were Christians, men who drew on the Judeo-Christian ethos to establish the freest nation in the world.

Given the data, why are we afraid to recognize Christian and Jewish holidays in the public schools, while saying no to all other religious holidays? Because of the secular virtue of inclusion? All holidays exclude people. To wit: Mother’s Day and Veteran’s Day exclude most people. So what? Moreover, is there any other nation in the world that feels compelled to lie about its history by recognizing cultures and traditions that have absolutely nothing to do with its heritage?

In New York City, we have an agnostic mayor, Bill de Blasio, who refuses to march in the St. Patrick’s Day Parade but is committed to recognizing Muslim holidays in the schools; Diwali, the Hindu holiday, is giving him fits over what to do. The New York City Council speaker, Melissa Mark-Viverito, also believes in nothing (save for dabbling in Voodoo), will not march with Irish Catholics, and is mostly known for refusing to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. Both of these neo-Marxists now want to close the schools for the Lunar New Year, a Chinese holiday that is so “sacred” it is celebrated in Communist China.

The Board of Education in Montgomery County, Maryland said it will continue to close the schools on Christian and Jewish holidays, but it will not allow the schools to say why. By pretending no one knows why the schools are closed on these days, they believe they are practicing tolerance. Actually, they are lying. Welcome to the Land of Diversity and Dishonesty in 2014.

What do the Obama administration and Marquette University have in common? Neither respects conscience rights.

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has issued an important statement on a new Department of Labor regulation that implements President Obama’s Executive Order of July 21 prohibiting government contractors from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. It cited the Catholic Catechism.

The Catechism opposes all “unjust discrimination” against homosexuals, allowing for instances when drawing distinctions on the basis of sexual orientation accord with justice. It appears, the bishops indicate, that the Department of Labor regulation does not meet the test of justice.

The USCCB said that its early read on the regulation indicates that it prohibits “far more than that of ‘unjust discrimination.'” Furthermore, the executive order upon which it is based, the bishops said, was “objectionable.”

Referring to the regulations, the bishops said they appear “to prohibit employers’ religious and moral disapproval of same-sex conduct, which creates a serious threat to freedom of conscience and religious liberty, because ‘[u]nder no circumstances’ may Catholics approve of such conduct.”

Jesuit institutions such as Marquette University share Obama’s position. At a recent “anti-harassment” training presentation, employees of the university were told that merely voicing objections to gay marriage may be considered discriminatory; they were urged to report such offenses. Which begs the question: Would they bring the pope up on charges following a speech on marriage?

The contempt for conscience rights, our first freedom, is no longer coming from barbarians abroad—home-grown ones are inside our gates.

CNN executives were very excited that one of their own, Morgan Spurlock, was the man behind the trailer to a documentary, “I Am Santa Claus.” To prove how happy they were, they were flagging a supremely positive article about the flick by one of their online columnists, John D. Sutter. The source of their ebullience had nothing to do with the artistic quality of the documentary: it had everything to do with Santa’s homosexuality. They like that a lot.

How do we know that Santa is a homosexual? Not by his dress—he looks like a regular Santa. It’s by his behavior: he likes to kiss men and boasts about his job working in a strip joint. Reference is made, of course, to male genitalia. But at least Santa was prudent: he pointed to a sign above a food station that warned homosexuals to keep their pants on. This reminded Bill Donohue of San Francisco where homosexuals are told to put a towel below their bottom before sitting down in a restaurant. Warning signs are a thoughtful, if regrettable, gesture.

We will know the day when homosexuals are just like the rest of us when they stop stereotyping themselves. Until then, play it safe and “make the yuletide” straight.

Recently, Washington Post art critic Philip Kennicott reacted to an exhibition, “Picturing Mary,” that opened a few weeks ago in the National Museum of Women in the Arts.

Kennicott was furious that the exhibition offered a reverential treatment of Our Blessed Mother. He likes his Virgin Mary adorned with feces.

In his Washington Post article, Kennicott blasted the museum for not including Chris Ofili’s “The Holy Virgin Mary” in the exhibit. That piece was unfurled at the Brooklyn Museum of Art in 1999: a portrait of the Virgin Mary was laden with elephant dung. Kennicott called this crap “perhaps the most famous image of Mary painted in the last quarter century.” Really? Wonder what he would say about an African-American exhibit that featured a picture of Rev. Martin Luther King with human excrement in his mouth? Would that be a classic as well?

Bill Donohue led the protest against the Brooklyn Museum of Art in 1999 and got plenty of support from Catholics, Mayor Rudy Giuliani, and Africans. The latter took umbrage at the idea that putting elephant dung on pictures is considered honorific by Nigerians. Indeed, the Nigerians Donohue spoke to called that understanding racist (it was usually made by liberal white boys).

Kennicott slammed the Washington museum for promoting “the dogmatic tradition of Catholicism rather than its rich, exuberant and open intellectual tradition.” In essence, art is enriched when it defiles Catholicism.

He invoked Simone de Beauvoir to make his case: she saw the Virgin Mary as the enemy of “women’s dignity and empowerment.” This French feminist was also pro-pedophilia and anti-women. She signed a petition in 1977 seeking the elimination of all laws on sex between adults and children. She is also known for her quip that “Women should not have that choice [of staying at home to raise their children] precisely because if there is such a choice, too many women will make that one.” So much for being pro-choice.