It’s not clear where the worst abuses are taking place—New York State, Connecticut or San Francisco. In all three cases, some government officials have sought to bully the Church. Their goal is to silence Church leaders, and in every case they have been met with stiff opposition. The Catholic League has been integrally involved in all [...]
A news report in late June showed that when the infamous Roe v. Wade decision was granted by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1973, President Richard M. Nixon worried that abortion would promote “permissiveness.” But he also thought that abortion would be justified in cases of interracial pregnancies. “When you have a black and a white,” he said, [...]
The first book that I wrote, The Politics of the American Civil Liberties Union, was published in 1985. The groundwork for that book had already been done: my NYU dissertation was on “Organizational Change Within the ACLU.” To write the book, I not only revised my dissertation, I added much new material and concentrated more on the [...]
Father Gordon J. MacRae This article is expanded from a commentary by the same author entitled “Crime and Punishment” published in the November 2008 issue of First Things. Psychologist Daniel Kahneman won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2002 for his work on a phenomenon in psychology and marketing called “availability bias.” Kahneman demonstrated the human tendency [...]
After months of controversy, New York Assemblywoman Margaret Markey’s sex abuse bill that would suspend the statute of limitations was stifled and will not pass unless a special session is called and the bill is put to a vote. It was no surprise that Brooklyn Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio—whose diocese covers Markey’s district—vigorously opposed the legislation because [...]
In March, two lawmakers from Connecticut sought a state takeover of the governing structure of the Church. This gambit, which we properly labeled a “fascist stunt,” lost. The reason it lost was because of the courageous reaction of Catholics, led by their bishops and organizations like the Catholic League. Among the steps taken to thwart this [...]
When President Obama chose Judge Sonia Sotomayor to be the next justice on the U.S. Supreme Court we wondered if there would be an outcry due to her Catholic faith. Barely a peep was made. When John Roberts was nominated to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, left-wingers accused President Bush of “Playing the Catholic card.” [...]
The following comments were made in 2005 following President Bush’s nomination of John Roberts to the U. S. Supreme Court. The anti-Catholic bias that was apparent towards Roberts was non-existent towards Sonia Sotomayor. NPR, Lynn Neary: “And he is a Roman Catholic, and that might affect the way he views an issue like abortion, for instance.” To [...]
When abortionist Dr. George Tiller was killed in late May, the Catholic League unequivocally condemned the shooting. Bill Donohue told CBS Evening News, “We have to get the message out that life means we have to respect all life, including somebody as bad as Dr. Tiller was.” Unfortunately, his death occasioned a highly political response from [...]
· Dr. George Tiller began performing abortions in 1973 after he found out that his deceased father, a family physician, had quietly performed illegal abortions. · In 1984, his medical license was restricted by the Kansas State Board of Healing Arts when he was charged with driving under the influence. After treatment for drug and alcohol [...]
