On June 11, Michigan attorney Michael Bogren withdrew his nomination for the federal bench. The Trump nominee was being considered for a seat on the U.S. District Court for Western Michigan. The Catholic League fought his nomination from the get-go, and we were very pleased with the outcome.

We were particularly pleased to note that the Detroit News flagged our campaign against him. We twice contacted key senators, and enlisted the support of our base. Bill Donohue discussed this issue on Fox News radio, and his statement was featured on the front page of Newsmax.com. Here is how our effort unfolded.

On May 22, during a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Bogren said there is no difference between Catholic farm owners refusing to rent their property for the purpose of a gay wedding and the Klan’s right to discriminate against blacks. When asked to clarify what he meant, he stuck to his guns: the teachings of Christianity on marriage are morally equivalent to the Klan’s racist ideology.

On May 23, we contacted every member of the Senate Judiciary Committee expressing our concerns about the propriety of having someone like Bogren become a federal district judge. We asked that Bogren retract his vile analogy.

On June 5, we issued a news release asking the Senate Judiciary Committee to reject Bogren. We did so in support of Sen. Ted Cruz and Sen. Josh Hawley, both of whom pledged to reject his nomination. Donohue also wrote to Sen. Lindsey Graham, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, urging him to join Cruz and Hawley in voting against Bogren. We asked our supporters to contact Graham (listing an email contact).

As Donohue pointed out in a news release on June 5, Bogren’s logic was deeply flawed. Worse, he had a chance to clear his name by insisting that he was only making a legal analogy and in no way was making a moral comparison between the teachings of Catholicism on marriage and the Klan’s racist ideology. His decision not to do so was not a wise choice.

After withdrawing his name, Bogren defended himself, protesting that he is not a bigot. We never called him one. The reason we didn’t want him on the federal bench is because his judgment is impaired. The Catholic Church is deserving of religious liberty guarantees as encoded in the First Amendment because it promotes freedom; the Klan is a hate group that practices terrorism against blacks, Jews, and Catholics. There is no legitimate comparison.

This was an important victory, and we are pleased the media recognized the prominent role that we played.

On June 20, the U.S. Supreme Court, in a 7-2 decision, rendered an important First Amendment victory by upholding the right of patriots to erect a Christian symbol on public lands. Militant secularists, led by the American Humanist Association, wanted it demolished.

One hundred years ago, family members of those who died in World War I drew up plans for a memorial. Six years later, in 1925, the American Legion erected a 40-foot cross in Bladensburg, Maryland on state property. It was meant to give recognition to all those who perished.

Here is what the plaque says: “The Memorial Cross Dedicated to the Heroes Of Prince George’s County who gave their lives in the great war for the liberty of the world.”

Writing for the majority, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito admitted that the cross is “undoubtedly a Christian symbol, but that fact should not blind us to everything else that the Bladensburg Cross has come to represent.” He cogently observed that “destroying or defacing the cross that has stood undisturbed for nearly a century would not be neutral and would not further the ideals of respect and tolerance embodied in the First Amendment.”

Alito was being kind. It could also be said that destroying the cross would be an expression of intolerance: It would be an assault on the free speech rights of those who erected it and those who support it today.

Score one for our side today in the ongoing culture war.

William A. Donohue

The Pew Research Center released the findings of a new survey recently on Catholic clergy sexual abuse. Most were predictable, but some were not.

The survey found that 8 in 10 Americans say that Catholic clergy sexual abuse is an “ongoing problem,” while only 12% say that these problems “happened in the past and mostly don’t happen anymore”; a quarter of Catholics, 24%, hold to the latter interpretation. It was also found that 61% of Catholics say that sexual misconduct is just as common among the clergy of other religions; 51% of non-Catholics think the problem is disproportionately Catholic.

It would be astonishing if the data were otherwise. The steady drumbeat of bad news, mostly traceable to the Pennsylvania grand jury report last summer, and the ouster of Theodore McCarrick (formerly a cardinal), account for the outcome. The latter news coverage was entirely justified; the former was badly skewed and much of it was dishonest. To weigh the veracity of this point, consider another subject.

If the media do not report on sexual misconduct, obviously no one will think badly of the guilty. Take the case of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. FBI data that were recently made public show him to be a hard-drinking, bed-hopping adulterer who cheated on his wife with 40-45 other women. He also watched a pastor friend of his rape a woman and laughed about it while he did so. But thanks to the near total media blackout on this story, King’s glowing reputation remains intact.

Circling back to the survey, what percent of the public knows that not one of the accused priests named in the Pennsylvania grand jury report had a chance to rebut the charges made against him? How many know that most of them are either dead or out of ministry?

The fact is that Catholics are better educated about this subject than non-Catholics: more of them know that the lion’s share of the abuse took place in the past (mostly in the last century) and that it is not “ongoing.” But even there, most Catholics, three-quarters of them, are as ignorant as non-Catholics on this score. Fortunately, the survey shows that Catholics who attend Mass weekly are the most knowledgeable.

This is encouraging. It shows that our relentless effort to tell the truth about this issue is getting through to practicing Catholics. We have constantly cited the fact that the clergy sexual abuse scandal occurred mostly between 1965 and 1985.

Who else but the Catholic League undercut the media narrative on clergy sexual abuse by calculating, and making public, data taken from the latest survey of clergy sexual abuse? On June 10, we showed that .006% (3 priests) of the over 50,000 members of the clergy had a substantiated accusation made against them between June 1, 2017 and July 31, 2018. No religious or secular body can beat those numbers.

The survey says that one-quarter of Catholics say they are going to Mass less often or are contributing less as a result of recent reports on clergy abuse. But, as the data reveal, this is much more true of non-practicing Catholics than it is of those who attend Mass weekly. This is exactly what we would expect: those who do not attend Mass regularly are more likely to digest bad news as a justification for their lassitude.

There was one aspect of the survey that jumped out at me but has curiously garnered no attention.

The survey found that “About one-in-ten (9%) [of the public] say they have attended a place of worship where the clergy or other religious leaders have been accused of sexual misconduct in the past five years in one or more of the following ways: an extramarital affair (6%), sexual abuse of a child (4%), verbal sexual harassment (4%) or sexual abuse of an adult (3%).”

There was one question posed only to Catholics: “At the church you attend most regularly, has a priest been accused of engaging in sexual activity with other priests? Overall, 4% of Catholics say a priest was accused of this at their church, while the vast majority do not (90%).”

In other words, the faithful in religions outside Catholicism have their fair share of clergy sexual misconduct issues, yet non-Catholics seem to believe that the Catholic Church basically owns this problem. Why isn’t this misperception headline news?

Such data also prove my point. The media are shaping public opinion on the issue of clergy sexual abuse in a way that does not comport with reality.

If what the public believes were true—that this problem is “ongoing” in the Catholic Church but not in their church—then the figure for Catholics who have learned of clergy sexual misconduct in their church should be much higher than the comparative figure for non-Catholics. Yet the opposite is true!

This proves what I have been saying all along. Catholics, as well as non-Catholics, are being played. The truth about clergy sexual abuse is not being accurately reported. Furthermore, selective government probes and legislation are only adding to public misperceptions. These two factors constitute Scandal II. Scandal I is the original Catholic scandal. We only hear about the latter.

Bill Donohue

Dennis Prager, The Rational Bible: GENESIS, God, Creation, and Destruction (Regnery Faith)

I have known Dennis Prager for decades. He is not only a friend, he is one of the most brilliant, logical thinkers of our time. An Orthodox Jew, he is a cultural conservative who has much to impart. He is also courageous.

Prager’s latest book is weighty in more ways than one. It tips the scale at 2.3 pounds and is rich with material. Over 500 pages long, it is nonetheless an easy read. He manages to do something no one else has done: He makes the Torah come alive.

Biblical works tend to be dry, but in the hands of Prager, this book is anything but. That’s because he is more than a professor—he is a teacher. A professor professes; a teacher teaches. Regrettably, most professors can’t teach worth a lick. Worse, many are so arrogant that they don’t think it is their job to instill their students or readers with knowledge, never mind wisdom. They are content to babble or scribble, and they are good at both.

The Torah is the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, or what Christians call the Old Testament. It is analyzed with precision by Prager, practically line by line. His style is felicitous, never speaking above the reader while never speaking down to him either. The text is also easy on the eye: the spacing between sentences is generous, and the book is peppered with extended essays on various parts of the Torah.

“I have written this book for people of every faith, and for people of no faith,” he says. Very true. Indeed, Prager often has something specific to say to Jews, Christians, and atheists. He maintains that the prescription for the good society is contained within the first five books of the Bible.

For Prager, the Torah is not just a holy book—it is divine. God, he says, is its ultimate source. Its Jewish cast shines clear: The Torah represents “a rejection of ancient Egypt and its values.” Proud of his heritage, he is not at all ethnocentric. In fact, he wants to reach a wide audience, sharing with Catholics, for example, many of the same values (it would be more accurate to say values that practicing Catholics share with observant Jews).

“I never ask the reader to accept anything I write on faith alone. If something I write does not make rational sense, I have not done my job.” That’s the teacher in Prager—it is important to him that we understand exactly what his faith has to offer. His job is to cajole, to persuade, to offer witness to the truth. He succeeds, and that is because (sounding very much like Pope Benedict XVI) he insists on abandoning “neither faith nor reason.”

Prager can squeeze meaning from the driest of verses. Genesis 3.12 reads, “The woman you put at my side—she gave me of the tree, and I ate.” This refers to what Adam said to God about Eve. Prager astutely notes how “Adam not only shifted blame to the woman, he also blamed God.”

Yes, when Adam referred to Eve as “the woman You gave me,” Prager sees in that construction an attempt by Adam to say that “he never asked God to create the woman; and if God had not made her, he would never have eaten from that tree.” Prager uses this as a jumping off point to say that “Blaming others for wrongs we have done is literally as old as humanity.” This is “not only morally wrong; it makes emotional and moral growth impossible.”

What does the divine order look like? Prager lists several dualities: Human-God; Human-Animal; Man-Woman; Parent-Child; Life-Death; Good-Evil; Holy-Profane. Those realities are challenged today, and nowhere is this more clear than in the mad insistence that there are no fundamental differences between men and women. Yet as Prager reminds us, God made “male and female.” Importantly, “this distinction is part of God’s order” (his italics).

The Lord instructed (Genesis 2.18), “It is not good for man to be alone.” Prager quotes from John Milton in Paradise Lost what this means: “Loneliness is the first thing which God’s eye named not good.” Prager goes on to say how contemporary research has conclusively demonstrated the negative effects of loneliness (something which I documented in The Catholic Advantage: How Health, Happiness, and Heaven Await the Faithful).

How did God deal with Adam and Eve? “And the Lord God made garments of skins for Adam and his wife, and clothed them” (Genesis 3.21). Prager sees this as a statement by God that “he does not want human beings walking around naked.” Its real significance should not be overlooked. “The obvious reason is sexual modesty. But there is an equally important, though much less obvious reason: Clothing distinguished the human being from, and elevates the human above, animals. Animals are naked, human beings are to be clothed.”

The moral message of the Torah, Prager says, can easily be summed up: “God determines good and evil.” Problems arise when man thinks he has no need for God, substituting his own intellectual prowess for that of the Almighty’s. This is what totalitarians believe, and it is also why they carve up those who resist; the crazed social engineers see themselves as the arbiters of truth.

A close cousin to this idea, found in Chapter 8 of Genesis, is the belief that man is basically good, and all that is wrong is the result of bad policies instituted by wrongheaded people. That conviction—typically proffered by atheists and by those who see themselves as occupying the command centers of the culture—rejects original sin, holding that God is morally unnecessary. Historically, that idea has had bloody consequences.

Believers have their problems as well.

Prager comments in Chapter 12 that it is not unusual for the faithful to have doubts. “I have rarely met a believing Jew who never experienced doubt,” he says. He admits that he has met a few Christians who say they have never experienced doubt, and he suspects there are more Muslims in that camp.

Significantly, he says it is one thing not to believe—that is not what doubt is—and another to be a believer who has doubts. For Jews, this is not hard to understand given that the word Israel literally means “struggle with God.” It is also not hard for Catholics to understand.

Mother Teresa herself confessed that there were times in her life that she did not feel the love of God, something she felt despondent about. This was interpreted by her enemies, chief among them being the English atheist Christopher Hitchens, who said this was proof that she “did not believe that Jesus was present in the Eucharist.”

Nonsense. There is a profound difference between doubting whether the touch of God is always present and rejecting belief in the Real Presence. Father Brian Kolodiejchuk, who promoted Mother Teresa’s cause for sainthood, and authored the book, Come Be My Light (a collection of her letters which contain examples of her “dark days”), said she “lived a trial of faith, not a crisis of faith.” This explains why she was “up at 4:30 every morning for Jesus, still writing to him, ‘Your happiness is all I want.'”

Chapter 28 of Genesis details another challenge for believers. “Remember, I am with you: I will protect you wherever you go.” This has unfortunately allowed many Christians and Jews to conclude that it is not fair for God not to intervene and protect them from bad things. Prager has a more mature understanding of this verse.

“Many people believe God will protect them from tragedy,” he writes, “and when it turns out they have not been protected, they lose not only trust in God but even belief in God’s existence. That is one reason it is a bad idea to have such an image of God.”

Such a view, Prager informs, is irrational, and it inexorably leads to disillusionment. It is irrational because we have free will, thus we cannot reasonably expect that God will intervene whenever adversity strikes.

Also, always allowing for exceptions, “if God protects you or me, He will have to protect every decent person in the world. Otherwise, He would be an unfair and capricious God.”

Not to be misunderstood, Prager says that this “does not mean God never protects us or intervenes in any of our lives. I believe God intervenes in any number of people’s lives. We simply cannot expect Him to.” So what can we expect from God? We can expect that “God will honor His promises. And God will provide ultimate justice in the afterlife.”

Prager’s discussion of the afterlife is one of his most insightful in the book. He readily admits that most Jews do not believe in an afterlife, but then again most Jews are not observant. He argues in Chapter 25 that “it is a mistake to equate what most Jews believe with what Judaism teaches. Most Jews do not observe the Sabbath, yet Judaism clearly teaches observance of the Sabbath, which is one of the Ten Commandments.”

What counts most of all is the belief that “if God is just, it is axiomatic there is an afterlife” (his emphasis). Which gets us to the next question: What must we do to be saved?

On this issue, Prager, who works more closely with evangelical Protestants than Catholics, takes the same position as enunciated by the Catholic Church: it takes faith and works to be saved.

He quotes from the Old Testament, “He [God] has told you, O man, what is good and what the Lord requires of you: Only to do justice, and to love goodness, and to walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8). He quotes from the New Testament, “What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say that you have faith but do not have works?” (James 2:14).

Prager does not opine on whether atheists can be saved, but what he says about them is enlightening.

How do atheists explain existence? Or, as Prager puts it, “Why is there anything?” (his italics.) He acknowledges that believers cannot prove the existence of God, but at least they have a logical answer: “A Creator. God.” What does the atheist have? Science?

Not so fast. “Science explains what is. But it cannot explain why what is came about—why something, rather than nothing, exists. Only a Creator of that something can explain why there is something rather than nothing.” Atheists are in a bind. “To be an atheist is to believe that the universe came about by itself, life came from non-life by itself, and consciousness came about by itself.” That simply does not make any sense.

The Rational Bible is a gift to believing Christians and Jews. It is also a book that everyone, regardless of faith, or none at all, can wean something of great value from. Chock full of cogent interpretations, logical conclusions, and persuasive advice, it has the added value of being based on sound scholarship. It is a stunning achievement.

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops latest findings on clergy sexual abuse continue to show how this problem has largely been checked.

The 2018 Annual Report, “Findings and Recommendations on the Implementation of the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People,” covers the period from July 1, 2017 to June 30, 2018.

During this period, there were 26 new allegations involving current minors. But only three were substantiated (all three men were removed from ministry). Seven were unsubstantiated; three were unable to be proven; two were referred to a religious order; two were reported as unknown; and three were boundary violations, not instances of sexual abuse.

If we consider the three cases that were substantiated, this means that only .006 percent of the 50,648 members of the clergy had a substantiated accusation made against him in that one-year period. Everyone will agree that ideally the figure should be .000, but fair-minded people will conclude that .006 percent is a negligible amount.

We would go further: Show us a demographic group, or an institution, secular or religious, where adults intermingle with minors on a regular basis, which has a better record than this. As we have said many times before, Catholics are being played by those—many of whom are Catholic—who do not want the scandal to go away. That way they can push for their reforms. This includes those on the right as well as the left.
As usual, most of the alleged victims were male (82 percent). Only about a fifth were prepubescent, meaning that once again it is obvious we are dealing with homosexual predators, though, as always, the annual report refuses to so say.

This report broke new ground in one way: it sought to measure the diagnosis of some alleged offenders. We say “some” because the questionnaire only applied to religious institutes. Moreover, the survey did not seek a diagnosis of the most common abuser—the homosexual clergyman. It only applied to pedophiles. This decision is never explained in the report.

The findings revealed that 57 percent of the pedophiles were deemed “situational offenders,” meaning they did not have a preference for prepubescent children; 43 percent were diagnosed as “preferential offenders,” meaning they sought out prepubescent children.

The latter category is easy to understand: they are true pedophiles. What about the former? What kind of man abuses a child simply because it is convenient for him to do so? It suggests that such a man would have hit on an adolescent if the situation were ripe, and since most of the victims are male, the problem circles back to homosexuality.

The good news is that the problem of clergy sexual abuse is being checked. The bad news is that those who do these reports refuse to ask some of the really hard questions.

This news release by Bill Donohue was printed as an op-ed column by the Indianapolis Star on June 23rd.

On June 20, Indianapolis Archbishop Charles Thompson revoked the Catholic status of Brebeuf Jesuit Preparatory School. He did so because the school rejected his request not to renew the contract of a teacher who said he was married to his boyfriend. The archbishop came under fire for doing so.

Two years ago, the teacher’s gay marriage became known on social media. It was therefore no longer a private matter. It is important to note that the archbishop did not demand that the teacher be fired, though he could have: the teacher violated his contract. Thompson simply asked that his contract not be renewed.

To understand this issue better, consider the following analogy.

In the business community, a franchise is allowed certain leeway in making decisions, but it is also expected to abide by the core strictures of the parent company. If it violates them, it cannot reasonably expect to be treated as if it were in good standing. It would have to go its own way.

The same is true of religious orders in their relationship to the local diocese: they are allowed a degree of autonomy but they are expected to follow the house rules, and when they don’t, they effectively break the trust and forfeit a right to claim association with the diocese.

Fr. Brian Paulson, S.J., the head of the Jesuits’ Midwest Province, defended the teacher, saying he “respects the primacy of an informed conscience of members of its community when making moral decisions.”

Really? What would he do to a teacher who said he felt morally obliged to join a white supremacy organization—on his own time—and insisted that he would not let it interfere with his job. Wouldn’t he fire him?

Those who defend the school argue that lots of teachers in Catholic schools violate Church teachings, yet they are not treated the way those who are in same-sex marriages are. That’s a lame defense.

The difference is that in most cases Church officials would have to monitor the private lives of every teacher, often violating their privacy rights, or subject them to an inquisition. In the instance of the teacher in the gay marriage—and this is typical of such cases—the contractual violation was made public, thus inviting a showdown.

Archbishop Thompson acted wisely and with great restraint.

There are two hosts on TV today who would be fired if they said about other demographic groups and institutions what they say about Catholics and the Catholic Church: Bill Maher and Trevor Noah. It is Noah who recently commanded our interest.

On June 11, Noah went on an obscene rant about Catholics and the Catholic Church that was so bad that we cannot reproduce everything he said. He took aim at the Vatican document on gender ideology that was released recently, lying about its contents and then using it as a platform to attack.

He went on and on—the man is fixated on filth—so we won’t even attempt to cite most of what he said. “I mean we all know the Church thinks if you’re a girl,” he said, “you’re a girl forever, and if you’re a boy, they’re going to f*** you.” He then offered several “pedophile jokes” targeting homosexual priests. The crowd loved it.

Noah’s show appears on Comedy Central and the network is owned by Viacom. There are 22 top executives at Viacom, and on June 13 we hand-delivered each of them (Viacom’s headquarters is 10 blocks from our New York City office) a copy of Noah’s remarks about Catholicism from March 26, April 22, May 29, and June 11. Surely there are some executives who will agree that what Noah is saying cannot be justified. They need to sit him down or fire him.

Below is the memo that Bill Donohue sent to the top brass at Viacom.

To: Viacom Top Executives
From: Bill Donohue, President, Catholic League
Date: June 13, 2019
Re: Trevor Noah

“They’re going to try to f*** you.” [Note: Donohue did not use asterisks in his corrrespondence.] That’s what Trevor Noah told his audience on June 11. He was talking about what priests do to boys.

There is something really sick going on. Noah is on a tear, speaking about the pope, priests, and Catholic teachings in the most obscene way possible. If he said this about anyone else—imagine him making these kinds of vicious remarks about gays—he would be fired, and you know it. Yet no one does anything to rein him in, effectively giving him the green light to express his bigotry.

Enclosed are news releases detailing what Noah has been saying about Catholics and the Catholic Church this year. This is indefensible.

There are other actions we can take, and I will not hold back. But I thought I should at least apprise you of this matter now in the hope that we won’t have to pursue other options.

Thank you for your attention to this issue.

John Gehring runs a front group for his senior left-wing patron, atheist billionaire George Soros. Faith In Public Life, it needs to be acknowledged, represents no rank-and-file constituency.

Gehring found a home for his latest assault on Catholicism in a piece distributed by the Religion News Service.

Gehring is upset that two bishops have recently defended the teachings of the Church against those seeking to impose the LGBT agenda on them. He is also mad that a new Vatican document on gender ideology affirmed the Church’s position on this subject. In a pitiful ploy, he tries to rescue his argument by citing the pope.

The Catholic League was proud to defend Providence Bishop Thomas Tobin for admonishing Catholics not to buy into the LGBT agenda by supporting “Pride Month” celebrations. We were also happy to defend Indianapolis Archbishop Charles Thompson for reminding a Jesuit high school that if it is to be identified as a Catholic entity it had better respect the Church’s teachings on marriage. And we were delighted with the Vatican document that showed gender ideology to be intellectually bankrupt.

Gehring is livid at both bishops. His anger is misplaced: He is at war with the Catholic Church, not the hierarchy. Moreover, his attempt to draw the pope to his side is a total bust. Pope Francis has never recognized the fiction of a gay marriage, and he labels gender ideology “demonic.”

George Soros wants to silence the moral voice of the Catholic Church, and he bankrolls Gehring to be his rabbit. Indeed, in the first sentence of Gehring’s article he says “Church leaders should take a year of abstinence from preaching about sex and gender.” What a joke. It will never swap its teachings for the prevailing insanity of the LGBT agenda.

The Congregation for Catholic Education has published the most brilliant and authoritative document on the sexes that is currently available. It literally tears to pieces the fatuous claims of gender ideology. Fortunately, it does not water down its account by trying to appease its critics.

“Male and Female: He Created Them” is not only the title of this work, it accurately conveys reality. God did not create mere human beings. No, he created two very different, yet complementary, sexes.
The document takes aim at gender theory, which, it says, “denies the difference and reciprocity in nature of a man and a woman and envisages a society without sexual differences, thereby eliminating the anthropological basis of the family.” Such a vision postulates the absurd notion that “human identity becomes the choice of the individual, one which can also change over time.”

The document notes how gender ideology developed in the 20th century. It celebrates the “freedom of the individual,” emphasizing that “the only thing that matters in personal relationships is the affection between the individuals involved, irrespective of sexual difference or procreation which would be seen as irrelevant in the formation of families.” To put it mildly, this position is sociologically illiterate.

This kind of subjectivism allows the gender ideology promoters to separate sex from gender. “This separation is at the root of the distinctions proposed between various ‘sexual orientations’ which are no longer defined by the sexual differences between male and female, and can then assume other forms, determined solely by the individual, who is seen as radically autonomous.” This kind of madness is now being taught in the schools.

The Vatican document rightly notes how gender ideology seeks to separate the body from human will, as if one can will his sex. This nonsense finds expression in the “fictitious construct known as ‘gender neutral’ or ‘third gender,’ which has the effect of obscuring the fact that a person’s sex is a structural determinant of male or female identity.” These theories, which include such wild notions as “intersex” or “transgender,” are, at bottom, attempts to “annihilate the concept of ‘nature.'”

There is so much more to this splendid document. It is written for Catholic educators, but it should be read by everyone. The loss of common sense, as evidenced by many in the humanities and social sciences, is directly challenged in this real-life reading of some eternal truths. [See Bill Donohue’s new book, Common Sense Catholicism: How to Resolve Our Cultural Crisis, especially the chapter titled, “Sex Equality,” for more on this subject.]

No wonder the gender ideology promoters are furious. This is a cogent take-down of their plainly stupid, indeed pernicious, ideas about man and society. Its timeliness could not be more fortuitous—it is a heady antidote to the many fictions entertained during “Pride” month events.

It cannot be said too emphatically that any Catholic who is at odds with this document is at odds with more than just the Catholic Church. He is at odds with nature, and nature’s God.

Providence Bishop Thomas Tobin has incurred the wrath of homosexuals and their alphabet ilk for tweeting on June 1 that Catholics should not support LGBTQ “Pride Month” events. He tweeted that such celebrations “promote a culture and encourage activities that are contrary to Catholic faith and morals. They are especially harmful to children.”

Immediately, the bishop was bombarded with 70,000 comments on Twitter, some calling on him to resign. Tobin responded on June 2 by saying, “I regret that my comments yesterday about Pride Month have turned out to be so controversial in our community, and offensive to some, especially in the gay community.” He did not intend to hurt anyone, he said. He also acknowledged the “widespread support I have received on this matter.”

Bishop Tobin was right to call attention to the gay culture and what Pride Month entails. While many of the events are without controversy, some are obnoxious. There are pictures from the 2017 Providence Pride Month that are disgusting.

Unlike virtually every other parade that celebrates the heritage of various racial, ethnic, and religious groups, as well as marches that honor immigrant nations, many of the participants in Pride events have a hard time keeping their pants on. No one has ever explained why this is such a common occurrence.

Pictures from the Providence Pride Month, posted by J.S. Photography, show lesbians wearing t-shirts inscribed with obscenities, as well as bare-breasted women adorned with nipple shields. Lots of men are shown parading atop floats wearing nothing but skin-tight briefs, or less.

This is not exactly what we would expect from any other demographic group. But these homosexuals are different.

Then there are the demonstrations of debauchery. One of the nightlife venues promoted by Pride Month is Mirabar, a gay dance club. But it’s not a normal dance spot. This year it is featuring a “Bare As You Dare” party. Posted online is its dress code: “Bathing Suits or Underwear or Whatever.”

Imagine a Salute to Israel parade, a St. Patrick’s Day parade, or a Puerto Rican Day parade where participants are invited to party in their underwear, or wearing “whatever.” It just wouldn’t happen. But these homosexuals are different.

Bishop Tobin is a man of courage. He is not out to hurt anyone, but he is also committed to speaking the truth, and that makes him a man of principle.