California lawmakers are selectively targeting the Catholic Church by pushing a bill that would lift the statute of limitations for one year on cases of the sexual abuse of minors; it exempts all public institutions, including the public schools. Fighting the discriminatory law are Los Angeles Archbishop José Gomez, the California Catholic Conference and the Catholic League.

Prior to the Civil War, we had one law for whites, and one law for blacks. In 1868, that was rectified when the equal protection before the law provision was encoded in the 14th Amendment. Now California Sen. Jim Beall wants to turn the clock back: he wants one law for public schools and another for Catholic schools. Differential legislation can be justified in many instances, but not when it comes to crime and children.

Bill Donohue registered his objections to Beall’s bill by sending a detailed letter to every member of the California legislature; see pp. 4-5 [click here]. He followed up with a news release disputing Beall’s reasoning for promoting the bill.

“Public schools and teachers have been held to a higher standard of care when it comes to the protection of children and reporting of child sexual abuse, than have the clergy and private youth-serving institutions,” said Beall. Not true.

In 2007, AP did a major investigation of the public schools and found widespread sexual abuse of minors, a breakdown in enforce- ment, resistance from teachers’ unions to do anything about it, and grossly inadequate legislation. California was specifically cited for its negligence.

They are not shutting down Catholic schools to clean house— they are shutting down schools like Miramonte Elementary in South Los Angeles. In a subsequent audit of the Los Angeles Unified School District released last year, many highly indefensible infractions were cited. Moreover, school districts in San Jose and elsewhere are still telling teachers not to report cases of sexual abuse to the authorities. And unlike Catholic schools nationwide, there is still no mandatory training program for teachers and staff on how to combat this problem.

Beall’s bill got by the Senate and the Assembly Committee on the Judiciary; it has been sent back to the Senate for refinement. Its fate is still uncertain, and it is not known whether Gov. Jerry Brown will sign it if it reaches his desk.

In 2008, California lawmakers unanimously passed a bill that treats public schools and private schools as equals in the application of the law on the sexual abuse of minors. They should not be turning the clock back now.

The Health and Human Services (HHS) mandate forcing Catholic non-profits to pay for abortion-inducing drugs, contraception and sterilization will not kick in on August 1, as scheduled; an extension has been granted to January 1, 2014. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ initial reaction was cautious; a complete analysis of the final rules is forthcoming.

There are some changes in the rules worth noting, but they are not satisfactory. Attempts to distance Catholic non-profits from directly providing insurance coverage for these morally objectionable services are admirable, but we’ve been there before: five months ago we were told that more in the way of accommodation was forthcoming, and we applauded that gesture. But now we know that the Obama administration has come up short.

There were some encouraging signs in late June: in two separate rulings, the courts sided with business owners who challenged the enforcement of the HHS mandate. One was a circuit court of appeals ruling in Denver, and the other was a federal district case in Florida. In both cases, Hobby Lobby and Beckwith Electric, respectively, the rulings were decisive.

The Catholic community, and many others, are not asking for anything new: all we are asking for is to respect the status quo ante as it applies to this issue. It is not people of faith who sought this confrontation—it is President Obama. No matter, it is likely the Supreme Court will eventually decide this issue.

William A. Donohue

July 1 marked my 20th anniversary as president and CEO of the Catholic League. The vice president, Bernadette Brady, started 18 years ago on the same day. Father Philip Eichner, the chairman of the board of directors, was chosen to lead the board the year before I was hired.

While I may be the face of the Catholic League, we wouldn’t have been a success without the steady and inspirational support of Father Eichner, and the scrupulously diligent service of Bernadette. While others have come and gone, we remain, and God willing, we will continue to do so for many years to come. It certainly has been quite a ride.

Father Virgil Blum founded the Catholic League in 1973. It was a tumultuous year: Roe v. Wade brought the culture war to new heights, and Watergate tore us apart politically. While abortion was important to Blum, his central issue was school vouchers. Sadly, it remains an issue.

Looking back at the last 20 years, there are any number of events that stand out. In the summer of 1993, a news release I had written criticizing the anti-Catholic remarks of President Bill Clinton’s Surgeon General, Dr. Joycelyn Elders, surprisingly won the plaudits of the Washington Post. The New York Post gave us a big surge that fall when we were featured on the front page: we made a public stink about a disrespectful ad on New York City buses that compared Our Blessed Mother to pop star Madonna.

In the mid-90s, we succeeded in having Barneys, a trendy Madison Avenue clothing store, remove a vulgar nativity scene from its store-front window. We ripped the movie “Priest,” sending shock waves through Disney and Miramax; we forced them to move the start date from Good Friday.

We got Calvin Klein to pull a cheesy Times Square ad. In Oregon, we proved victorious in protesting the taping of a priest in the confessional by the local D.A. We also had our first forays in the proverbial Christmas wars.

At the end of the 20th century, we assembled thousands in the streets to protest the ugly play, “Corpus Christi.” We also got Catholics into the streets to take on a particularly offensive exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. We are very proud of the fact that our relentless criticisms of the ABC show, “Nothing Sacred,” forced it off the air. Taking on the House Chaplain issue was a wake-up call: we realized how bigoted some of our evangelical Protestant brothers could be; we succeeded in getting the first priest installed in that post.

At the beginning of the new millennium, we were going head-to-head with Marilyn Manson, Howard Stern, Ted Turner, Opie and Anthony (we got them fired, and then made peace with them), Bill Maher, and “South Park.” As we hit mid-decade, we were engrossed in a long battle over Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ.” Importantly, anti-Catholics in the Democratic Party were shoved out of a job after we exposed who they were.

Christopher Hitchens and I had dueled in 2000 in a major debate, but by 2005 we were regularly fighting with each other on TV. We blasted “The Da Vinci Code” in 2006, and got NBC to drop Madonna’s “Mock Crucifixion” number from a scheduled concert. With the help of the Thomas More Law Center, we sued San Francisco. In an important victory, we got Wal-Mart to apologize for a stupid anti-Christmas stunt.

After Sen. John Edwards hired an anti-Catholic to join him in his presidential campaign in 2007, we made short order of her. We exposed what a scam the “Jesus Tomb” nonsense was, and we pressured Miller Brewing to stop sponsoring a vile anti-Catholic gay event. Our campaign against the film, “The Golden Compass,” hurt box office sales so much that the second and third films that had been planned about the trilogy were scratched. On the fun side, “South Park” creators made a character of me: I bumped Benedict and became pope (only to be killed by Jesus!).

At the end of the decade, I got Sen. John McCain to drop his association with Pastor John Hagee (the minister and I have since become friends), and was targeted by the IRS for opposing Sen. Barack Obama’s pro-abortion policies. We joined the fight against Connecticut lawmakers who sought to take over the Catholic Church, criticized “Angels & Demons,” and launched a serious campaign against Penn and Teller.

In the last few years, we beat the Smithsonian and their elite supporters in the artistic community. We successfully confronted SNAP, the Kansas City Star, and Jon Stewart. We fought discrimi- natory legislation at the federal, state and local levels, and stood firmly against attempts to dumb down Christmas.

These are just a few issues and events that come to mind. Also, I’ve been blessed with many awards from the Catholic community. If I had to pick one that means the most to me, it would be the beautiful statement that Cardinal John O’Connor wrote to me on April 12, 2000; I received his congratulatory letter, nicely framed, at a Crisis dinner in Washington, D.C. He died three weeks later.

Looking forward to many more battles. They won’t ever defeat us.

The following is the text of Bill Donohue’s letter to the members of the California Assembly:

June 6, 2013

Dear Members of the California Assembly:

Congratulations on passing AB 349, the bill that was passed unanimously on May 30 to prevent child abuse in the schools.

A related bill was passed in the Senate the day before (SB 131), and it will now come before you for a vote. It, too, deals with child abuse in the schools, but unlike AB 349, it is flagrantly discriminatory: it does not apply to the public schools. Does anyone doubt that a bill that applied only to the public schools, exempting all private ones, would be roundly condemned? So should this bill.

The bill you passed, AB 349, applies to combating future cases of sexual abuse in the public schools. However, the Senate bill applies to abuse that took place in the past, and would only apply to private schools: it would suspend the statute of limitations for one year, allowing lawsuits to be filed in cases of sexual abuse that allegedly occurred as far back as a half-century ago.

Now if the abuse took place in a public school, and it allegedly happened before 2009, the victim is out of luck—the bill says it is officially too late to matter. Moreover, no state agency is subject to a lawsuit if a claim for damages isn’t made within six months of the alleged abuse.

In other words, no one who was abused in a public school before 2009 can sue the teacher, the school, or the school district, but if someone was abused in a Catholic school when JFK was president, he can sue the teacher (if he is alive), the school, and the diocese. This is indefensible on the face of it.

It is hardly a secret that this bill is targeted at the Catholic Church. If, in fact, Catholic institutions were rife with sexual abuse problems today, it would suggest that Catholic officials have learned nothing, in which case I would not be writing to you. But the facts are otherwise: the data collected by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice show that the lion’s share of clergy sexual abuse took place between the mid-1960s and the mid-1980s.

Today, there is no institution in the nation that has less of a problem with the sexual abuse of minors than the Catholic Church. Indeed, in the last six years, the average annual number of credible allegations made against over 40,000 priests is 7.0. So why the need to target the one institution that doesn’t tolerate sexual abuse?

The statute of limitations was already suspended in California for private schools in 2003 (as usual, the public schools got a pass), and it resulted in nearly 1,000 claims totaling awards of $1.2 billion. The big winners were the attorneys: they took at least a third of the money for themselves, and in many cases grabbed more than half. If this bill is enacted, the dioceses will be forced to skim money from parishes and schools, hurting innocent Catholics, many of whom are not wealthy, so they can pay for claims so old that no one can reasonably disprove them.

Approximately 90 percent of California school children attend public schools; outside the home, they account for the lion’s share of sexual abuse cases of any institution in the state. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, every year more than 500,000 cases of child abuse are reported in California. According to the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing, thousands of cases of sexual abuse in the public schools are reviewed annually; action is taken in approximately 800 of those cases.

Only recently has there been any concerted effort to address the scandalous conditions in the California public schools. It took the outrageous cases of sexual abuse at Miramonte Elementary School in a Latino neighborhood in South Los Angeles to finally galvanize officials; as I will show, serious problems remain.

Lots of games were played at Miramonte. The “lollipop game” consisted of second-grade girls being blindfolded while they perform oral sex on their teacher; the “tasting game” was played by a teacher who fed his students his semen on a spoon, or in a cookie. Another game was played by a teacher who masturbated behind his desk. Things were so out of control that the school was closed down for two days while an investigation took place; 128 staff members, including 90 teachers, were temporarily moved to another school.

One of the teachers, Mark Berndt, was arrested in January 2012 and charged with 23 counts of engaging in lewd conduct, over a period of five years, with his third-grade students; he was the author of the “tasting game.” After he was fired by the Los Angeles Unified School District, he appealed. The district did not want to fight him, so they gave him $40,000 to go away.

What happened at Miramonte wound up costing taxpayers millions of dollars to settle 58 claims. Following what happened at this school, the superintendent of the school district, John Deasy, pushed for a zero tolerance policy; it resulted in more than 100 teachers being dismissed for misconduct; 200 others resigned; another 300 were “housed” (they are called “rubber rooms” in New York City) and placed under investigation.

Worse, after news stories on Miramonte surfaced, an attempt was made to right the wrongs of the law that allowed teachers like Berndt to get away with his sick antics. But it was defeated when the California Teachers Association, the largest teachers union in the state, opposed it. That they have only recently come around on this issue is hardly deserving of commendation.

Perhaps the most dramatic fallout of the Miramonte scandal was the call for an audit of the school district. It issued its findings in November 2012. Here is a list of the highlights, taken verbatim from the report, “Los Angeles Unified School District: It Could Do More to Improve Its Handling of Child Abuse Allegations” (all italics are in the original):

• The district often did not properly notify the Commission on Teacher Credentialing (commission) when required to do so. After reviewing past practices, the district reported about 600 cases to the commission in a span of three months.

• At least 144 of these cases—including cases involving employee misconduct against students—were submitted a year or more late.

• Of the 144 cases, 31 were more than three years late when reported to the commission.

• There is no statewide mechanism to communicate among school districts when a classified employee at any school district separates by dismissal, resignation, or settlement during the course of an investigation involving misconduct with students.

• Although it appears the district generally followed state law when reporting suspected child abuse and generally followed its policies, it did not always act in a timely manner on some allegations during the investigation process—one case did not move forward for almost 14 of the more than 18 months the case was open.

• The district could not adequately explain some delays in disciplining or dismissing certain employees suspected of child abuse—we noted an eight-month delay in one case between the time the district’s investigation unit issued a report concerning the allegation and when the principal took action.

• The district paid $3 million in salaries to 20 employees whom the district has housed—relocated away from school sites—the longest for allegations of misconduct against students, including one employee who has been housed for 4.5 years.

Since the report was issued, there is evidence that some school districts are intentionally violating the law by not reporting to the authorities cases of suspected child sexual abuse. For example, we know that teachers who work in San Jose’s Luther Burbank, as well as in the Dublin, Fremont and San Lorenzo school districts, have been told not to go to the police; they should notify school authorities.

In the Catholic schools, matters are different. Over the past decade, there has been an independent audit of the dioceses, resulting in much progress. Stiff penalties for offenders are the norm and mandated reporting is a must.

Perhaps the biggest gap between the way the Catholic Church handles this problem today, and the way most public school districts do—including those in California—is the mandated staff training programs on the prevention of sexual abuse that takes place in Catholic schools nationwide.

Just last month, the findings of a survey by the Bay Area News Group of 94 local school districts were published. “Fewer than half the districts in Alameda, Contra Costa, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties that responded to the survey said they offer their employees the sort of training that experts encourage and the law suggests: annual instruction in how to recognize signs of sexual or other physical abuse, and clear reminders of the legal requirement to report to the authorities even the suspicion of mistreatment.” It also learned that “only 29 districts said they have provided annual training about abuse and the law to all employees.”

It is important to note that training is not mandated by law in California, as it is in all Catholic schools. Indeed, even non-teachers in Catholic schools must go through a program like Virtus, used in Los Angeles, that addresses such issues as “Good Touch/Bad Touch”; “Establishing Healthy Boundaries”; and “Creating Sacred Spaces.”

The facts speak for themselves. Going after the Catholic schools today for cases of abuse that took place decades ago, while exempting the public schools—at a time when there is a serious problem with the sexual molestation of minors in the public schools—is irrational, discriminatory and grossly unjust.

If someone authorized the National Guard to police a low-crime neighborhood, leaving all other communities alone, we would wonder what in the world is really going on. Similarly, Catholics in California are wondering what in the world is really going on when lawmakers are giving the public schools a pass when those same schools are the source of most of the problems.

Thank you for your attention to this issue.

Last December, Ohio State University president E. Gordon Gee explained to the athletic council why the University of Notre Dame wasn’t invited to join the Big Ten: “The fathers are holy on Sunday, and they’re holy hell on the rest of the week. You just can’t trust those damn Catholics on a Thursday or a Friday, and so, literally, I can say that.” Bill Donohue commented: “It’s time for everyone to take a deep breath. I have never met President Gee, but it is clear from what I read that what he said was made in jest. Was it dumb? For someone of his stature, yes. But context and tone matter, as does the frequency of what may be considered an offensive remark: a real bigot is someone who repeatedly, and maliciously, attacks others. Gee is not such a man.”

Political correctness has gone too far. Vice President Joe Biden has made his share of dumb remarks, some of which could be considered bigoted. But he is no more a bigot than Gee is.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s lust for abortion rights has effectively killed his chances of ever becoming president of the United States. His failed proposal to allow abortions in New York through term was an act of political suicide.

Not since Roe v. Wade legalized abortion in 1973 have more Americans identified themselves as pro-life. And what has Cuomo done? He’s gone the other way. Last year, a Gallup poll found that a majority of Americans (52%) want abortion legal under certain circumstances; 25% want it legal in all cases; and 20% want it illegal in all cases. Cuomo is laying anchor with the 25%.

All the survey data in the last decade show that Americans want abortion to be legal but limited: they want it limited to exceptional cases (e.g., they oppose abortions for the sake of convenience), and they want it limited to the early stages of pregnancy. There is absolutely no demand for late abortions—the evidence is just the opposite—yet this is exactly what Cuomo championed.

Once Cuomo ventures outside the Empire State he will find out—the way his father Mario did—just how out of touch he is with public sentiment on this life and death issue.

If ever there was concrete evidence that pro-women’s organizations have never been interested in women’s rights—save for the right to kill unborn babies—it was the decision by the New York Women’s Coalition to pull its support for Governor Cuomo’s women’s rights bill after it became clear that reference to abortion would be deleted. While the bill passed the Assembly, it was defeated in the Senate due in large part to the efforts of State Senator Jeff Klein, the leader of the Independent Democratic Conference, and Republican Senate co-leader Dean Skelos. The Senate is now prepared to pass the other nine planks of Governor Cuomo’s Women’s Equality Act. It is to be hoped that the Assembly will do the same.

As reported in the New York Times, Cuomo admitted that the Women’s Coalition “concluded that if the abortion component was not included, they did not want a scaled-down proposal.” Furthermore, Democratic lawmakers “also said they would only support a package that included the abortion language.”

The New York Women’s Coalition is not a rag-tag group that represents a few extremist organizations: 850 organizations belong to the coalition. These include the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws (NARAL), Planned Parenthood, NOW, and the dissident group Catholics for Choice.

Cuomo’s bill dealt with such issues as pay equity, domestic violence, sexual harassment in the workplace, pregnancy discrimination, and human trafficking; all total, the bill enumerated ten women’s rights. But NARAL in particular showed that their primary concern was about abortion. Andrea Miller, President of NARAL Pro-Choice New York, made it clear in the course of the debates surrounding this issue that the organization wanted all or nothing. “It’s simply not good enough to say you’re pro-choice and then refuse the one moment when you have an opportunity to take an absolute, crystal-clear vote,” she said. “You have that moment and you’re going to walk away from that? You cannot call yourself pro-choice.”

Indeed, the New York Times story following the Senate’s defeat of the bill summed it all up with its title: “All or Nothing Strategy on Women’s Equality Legislation Ends with Nothing.”

In short, the Women’s Coalition is now on record of intentionally subverting the rights of women. In other words, women who are beaten by men, discriminated against on the job, sexually harassed in the workforce, and are victimized by modern-day slaveholders, can all take a walk. Unless killing kids shortly before birth is a slam dunk, there is no need to be concerned about so-called women’s rights.

Glad to know the mask is off, once and for all.The New York Women’s Coalition has shown its true colors for all to see. Clearly abortion rights trump all other rights in their eyes.

The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) recently announced that the International Criminal Court (ICC) decided not to investigate or prosecute Pope Benedict XVI. SNAP, in an act of pure vindictiveness, had asked the ICC to prosecute the pope, and other high ranking Catholic leaders, for “crimes against humanity.”

On September 14, 2011, the day after SNAP contacted the ICC to proceed against the pope, Bill Donohue wrote a letter to Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the ICC’s Chief Prosecutor, at The Hague detailing the fraudulent, dishonest, politicized, and anti-Catholic history of SNAP; he offered a detailed description. Donohue made plain his goal: it was done to subvert SNAP’s efforts.

Not surprisingly, the ICC officially tossed the bogus complaint filed by SNAP and the Center for Constitutional Rights; the latter is a far-left wing group that specializes in defending Muslim terrorists sitting in Guantanamo Bay. The ICC even rejected the bid to investigate the Holy See.

SNAP leaders Barbara Blaine and David Clohessy, both of whom have been involved in covering up for sexual abusers, said they were “neither deterred nor discouraged by this news.” Nice spin, but it won’t work. They have, in fact, been stopped in their tracks, and are now wringing their hands over this colossal defeat.

Thanks in large part to the Catholic League, SNAP has lost a lot of its mojo. We have exposed its leaders and its agenda, and we are delighted they lost. Justice has been served.

The Obama administration recently announced that it “strongly objects” to a National Defense Authorization Act amendment that would protect the religious liberty of men and women in the Armed Forces. The reason, it was announced, was that the amendment would have a “significant adverse effect on good order, discipline, morale, and mission accomplishment.”

If the religious liberty of the Armed Forces were secure, there would be no need for an amendment to safeguard it. Sadly, however, there is. Not so long ago, for example, a senior officer at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, sent out a lengthy email in which he instructed his subordinate officers to recognize “the religious right in America” as a “domestic hate group” akin to the Ku Klux Klan and the Neo-Nazis, because of its opposition to homosexual behavior.

In another instance, the Air Force censored a video created by a military chaplain on the grounds that it made use of the word “God” in its presentation. It was feared that making use of the word might offend Muslims and atheists. Coast Guard Rear Admiral William Lee told a National Day of Prayer audience that religious liberty was being threatened and service members are being told to hide their faith in Christ. There are many more examples at hand to cite; far too many, unfortunately.

But there is hope, nonetheless. Now Congressman John Fleming of Louisiana wants to make sure that the military accommodates religious expression, and for that he should certainly be commended. Congressman Fleming was recently quoted in an interview as saying that “This administration is aggressively hostile towards religious beliefs that it deems to be politically incorrect.” Importantly, however, Fleming is not an absolutist. A former military man himself, he explicitly allows for exceptions based on “military necessity.”

In a statement later released by the federal government’s Office of Management and Budget, it was said that officers in the military need to exercise greater discretion in order “to address potentially problematic speech and actions within their units.” The office also said that Fleming’s amendment “would have a significant adverse effect on good order, discipline, morale and mission accomplishment.”

All speech is “potentially problematic,” but, still, that is hardly an argument for curbing it. It is also a red herring to say that by ensuring the First Amendment rights to free speech and religious liberty, it will cause a threat to “good order, discipline and mission accomplishment” in the military. Really?

The Obama administration didn’t worry about “good order, discipline and mission accomplishment” when it was touting the virtues of gays serving openly in the military. As for morale, it is being undermined by the censorial environment that religious men and women in uniform have to tolerate. Again, the examples are too many to enumerate here.

When it comes to those who elect to mutilate their genitals in transgender surgery, we are told they can’t have too many rights. When it comes to suspected Muslim terrorists, we are told they cannot have too many rights. When it comes to pre-teen girls seeking to get birth control pills behind their parents’ back, we are told they cannot have too many rights. But when it comes to the religious rights of the Armed Forces, we are told they already have too many rights. We wonder why the discrepancy in the distribution of rights.

There was a time when we needed a group called Catholic Whistleblowers, but this assembly is a little too late: they missed the boat by a half-century. The homosexual scandal began in the mid-1960s and ended 20 years later. Today, it hardly exists. In 2012, six credible allegations were made against approximately 40,000 priests. To put it differently, if someone said in 1955 that we must do something about polio, just after the approval of the Salk vaccine, we’d think him nuts.

One might think Catholic Whistleblowers would blow the whistle on bishops shielding molesting priests. But they can’t name one. The best they can do is mention Father Michael Fugee’s arrest in Newark for violating a judicial order. In the 12 years since his case was thrown out of court—for groping a teenager while wrestling in front of family members—there have been no complaints. No matter; this is all about getting Archbishop John Myers, not Fugee.

It’s Anne Barrett Doyle of BishopAccountability who is responsible for forming the new group. If she’s in earnest, she can begin by finally naming the 55 predator priests her entity says Cardinal Timothy Dolan is hiding. She knows the accusations are a lie.

Sr. Maureen Turlish is another member, known for calling allegations made against priests in the Philadelphia grand juries “facts,” although over 20 of them are patently untrue. Fr. James Connell, now a hero to victims’ groups, was himself charged with covering up for the worst molester in the history of the Catholic Church in America. Fr. Thomas Doyle believes Jesus Christ didn’t found the Catholic Church, and that the Mass is composed of “magic words.” Robert Hoatson, a former priest, picketed the building where the Catholic League is housed wearing a sign, “Cath. Lg. Opposed to Jesus.”

What a motley crew. They’re fighting a war long over. Alhough it’s not easy to do so, it’s about time to let go. Let the healing begin.

Peter Steinfels, in his obituary on Father Andrew M. Greeley in the New York Times, notes “there was resistance among liberal Catholics to his [Greeley’s] positive findings about Catholic schools.”

This is striking. Steinfels, who is himself a liberal, writes about Greeley, another liberal (on most subjects), about how liberal Catholics react to good news about Catholic schools. Which raises the question: Why do liberal Catholics treat good news about Catholic schools as bad news? Would they prefer that they fail?

Steinfels added that Greeley’s “research debunked the received view at the time that Catholics had low college attendance rates. He found instead that white Catholics earned bachelor’s degrees and pursued advanced degrees at higher rates than other whites, and he attributed their success to the quality of education in parochial schools, a controversial assertion in a time of public-school ascendancy.”

Conservative Catholics cheer such news about Catholic education. Apolitical Catholics cheer such news. So what’s wrong with liberal Catholics that they resist such news? Is their craven need for acceptance by the secular elites so debased that it drives them to resist any good news about Catholic education?