This is the article that appeared in the July/August 2024 edition of Catalyst, our monthly journal. The date that prints out reflects the day that it was uploaded to our website. For a more accurate date of when the article was first published, check out the news release, here.

An anti-Christian animus has been evident in the Biden administration. Traditional Catholics have been spied on, abortion protesters have been treated like violent thugs, etc. Now we have two new developments.

Last year, a 28-year-old female who considered herself to be a male killed six people at a Christian school in Nashville, Tennessee. She kept a journal detailing her thoughts about a range of things, including her negative sentiments about her Christian parents and the Christian school where the shooting took place (she once attended the school).

The police apparently wanted to release the manifesto, but the FBI intervened and stopped it. Nonetheless, some portions of it made their way to print. What Christians want to know is whether the woman was motivated by hatred or revenge, and whether she was influenced by others who shared her ideas.

Bill Donohue wrote to Rep. James Comer, Chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Accountability, asking him to hold the FBI accountable. Why are they resisting the release of her manifesto? What is it that they don’t want us to know?

Donohue also wrote to Homeland Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas asking about documents that were made public concerning national security threats. An advisory group was formed within his department to offer suggestions about who might be a domestic terrorist. That’s a good thing. But it is not a good thing when noble criteria are now considered troublesome.

On the list of would-be extremists and domestic terrorists are those who served in the military, are religious and who support Donald Trump. As Donohue pointed out, that could include him (he never endorsed Trump but the former president has spoken warmly about him).

What’s going on? Why is the FBI apparently covering up for a transgender mass shooter who harbored a deep animus against Christians? Why is the Department of Homeland Security worried about people like Donohue but not Antifa, Black Lives Matter and violent protesters who take over college campuses and praise Hitler and Hamas?

Why is the president, who identifies as a “devout Catholic,” allowing this to happen? Why are Christians and patriotic Americans under fire? Why are the media not reporting on this story?

To read Donohue’s letters on these issues, see pp. 4-5. He knows that if he says nothing, nothing will be done. But he also knows that if he says something—and it gets into the right hands—it might result in some needed changes.

At the very least, it’s our job to let our adversaries know that we are keeping tabs on them, informing the public of what they are doing.

This is the article that appeared in the July/August 2024 edition of Catalyst, our monthly journal. The date that prints out reflects the day that it was uploaded to our website. For a more accurate date of when the article was first published, check out the news release, here.

Whenever there is a whiff of bad news about the Catholic Church, the mainstream media never miss a beat in reporting it. But when there is good news, they go mute. The latest example is the news about the almost complete eradication of clergy sexual abuse. Not one secular media outlet in the United States ran a story on this issue.

Every year, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops issues an annual report on clergy sexual abuse.

The 2023 report, which covered allegations made between July 1, 2022 and June 30, 2023, found that there were 1,308 allegations involving 17 current year minors. Four of the allegations were made by males and 11 by females; 2 were listed as unknown. Of the 17, only 3 were substantiated.

During this period, there were 47,987 members of the clergy. This means that 0.006 percent of them had a substantiated case of sexual abuse made against him by a minor. Of the accused, 91 percent are either dead or have been kicked out of ministry.

If there had been a sharp uptick in the number of cases, such a story would have been picked up by the Associated Press, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, the Washington Post, NPR, PBS, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC—and every left-wing internet and social media site.

Shame on journalists and the talking heads for the total media blackout. Their bias is palpable.

This is the article that appeared in the July/August 2024 edition of Catalyst, our monthly journal. The date that prints out reflects the day that it was uploaded to our website. For a more accurate date of when the article was first published, check out the news release, here.

William A. Donohue

In his eighteenth century classic, Letters from an American Farmer, J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur said he had never seen such assimilation as in America. The French writer said our ability to “melt” disparate peoples into a new man was remarkable and unparalleled. Thus was the idea of a “melting pot” born. What he said is nicely acknowledged in our national motto, E pluribus unum, “out of the many one.”

That was then. Now we are a badly divided people, and most of the reasons for our predicament are not an accident: they represent the logical consequences of a series of policies and programs, many of which originated at colleges and universities; they are designed to divide us.

From multiculturalism, which teaches hatred of western civilization, to the promotion of mass migration, which makes mince meat out of the “melting pot” ideal, we are nation divided; it is evident along racial, ethnic, religious, class and sex lines.

In June, Pew Research Center released survey results that show the effects of the culture war on politics. The differences between Biden and Trump supporters are vast.

“Someone can be a man or a woman even if that is different from the sex they were assigned at birth.” This question, which is biologically illiterate—no one “assigns” our birth (it is determined by our father)—is seen by Biden supporters as true. But not for Trump supporters. Six-in-ten of Biden’s fans (59 percent) believe this to be true, but only one-in-ten (9 percent) of Trump’s fans believe it makes sense.

“The criminal justice system in this country is generally not tough enough on criminals.” Only a minority of Biden enthusiasts (40 percent) agree, but most of those drawn to Trump (81 percent) agree.

“Society is better off if people make marriage and having children a priority.” A mere 19 percent of Biden supporters agree with this statement, as contrasted to 59 percent of Trump supporters.

Whether the question is how much slavery still explains racial inequality (Biden fans think it does) or America’s openness to people from all over the world is essential to who we are as nation (Trump fans are not buying it), the chasm is wide.

There is also a lot of hatred. I use the word intentionally. I am not talking about people disagreeing—that is commonplace—I am talking about hatred.

I have met a lot of conservatives who say they hate so-and-so (a public figure) because he is a liberal. In some cases, I know the person rather well, and while I may have sharp disagreements with him, I know him as a friendly and honest person. So I reply by saying, “Do you know him personally?” Of course they don’t. That gives me an opportunity to defend my characterological assessment, insisting on drawing a difference between disagreeing with someone and hating him.

Those who love Biden hate Trump, and vice versa. The hatred of Trump, often called “Trump derangement syndrome,” is so bad that 86 percent of Biden’s biggest supporters, as reported in a recent Rasmussen survey, approve the Justice Department’s authorization of “the use of deadly force” in retrieving documents at Trump’s residence in Mar-a-Lago.

It is interesting to note that most Democrats disagree that we are not tough enough on crime, yet believe that Trump should be subjected to a raid where deadly force is authorized—for an alleged crime of a non-violent nature. The hatred runs deep.

What’s driving these outcomes? As I show in my new book, Cultural Meltdown: The Secular Roots of Our Moral Crisis, the divisions we are seeing are ultimately traceable to a conflict between a religious vision of man and society and a secular one.

The data show conclusively that when it comes to religiosity, or beliefs and practices, Republicans are clearly more likely to say that religion is important to them. Not so for Democrats—they are the Party of secularists. To show how this plays out, consider the Pew question on marriage and the family.

Democrats do not agree that “Society is better off if people make marriage and having children a priority.” But why? Secularists see such a conviction as an anathema because it challenges their belief in autonomy. That which might interfere with career goals is not an option, and in any event it smacks of patriarchy. It also carries a religious meaning, and that is taboo.

Now it may be that for any particular individual, making marriage and the family a priority is to interfere with his or her personal goals, at least at that time. But the question wasn’t about the respondent’s personal life; it was about what is in the best interests of society. To those fixated on themselves, which is more common among secularists, that is not a viable choice. They are drawn to thinking in terms of me, not we.

This, too, shall pass. But in the meantime, that which divides us remains real. It is also eating away at our social fabric.

This is the article that appeared in the July/August 2024 edition of Catalyst, our monthly journal. The date that prints out reflects the day that it was uploaded to our website. For a more accurate date of when the article was first published, check out the news release, here.

Bill Donohue

Bill Donohue, Cultural Meltdown: The Secular Roots of Our Moral Crisis (Sophia Institute Press, 2024)

The principal reason I wrote my new book is to address why America is in trouble. We live in a topsy-turvy world and most people, especially older adults, can’t seem to make sense of it. It is my hope that after reading Cultural Meltdown the reader will have a better handle on how this happened.

We are a country torn between two conflicting visions of man and society. There are those who accept the religious vision and there are those who accept the secular vision. These perspectives are not only different, they are irreconcilable.

Right now everything is in flux. As someone who favors the religious vision, I see signs of optimism. But not always. At some point one side will win. We can’t go on indefinitely living as if we are living in two different worlds.

The religious vision acknowledges belief in God, truth, human nature, the natural law, moral absolutes and Original Sin. It recognizes the limitations of the human condition. While it believes in progress it manifestly rejects the idea of human perfectibility.

The secular vision promotes exactly the opposite view: God does not exist; truth is a mirage; human nature can be changed; there is no such thing as natural law; there are no moral absolutes; and the idea of Original Sin is fanciful. Furthermore, as the secular vision considers the human condition to be infinitely malleable, it champions the idea of the perfectibility of man.

Left-wing intellectuals epitomize the secular vision. They are the ones who have had the greatest influence on the young, liberals, Democrats and the well educated. As survey research shows, these are the most secular people in our society.

The Catholic Church epitomizes the religious vision. We are made in the image and likeness of God. Men and women are biologically different but they possess equal dignity. We are expected to conform our behavior according to the tenets of the natural law. The faculty of reason is important, but it should complement faith, not oppose it.

Those who ascribe to the religious vision reject the moral relativism that secularists promote. Moral relativism holds that what is moral is a matter of opinion and that there is no such thing as an act which is inherently immoral. Intellectuals very much believe this to be true. So did Hitler.

I mention Hitler because he rode the waves of moral relativism right into office. There were political and economic reasons why he succeeded, but it was the moral collapse of German culture during the Weimar Republic (between the two world wars) that left the masses without a clear understanding of right and wrong. He capitalized on this cultural meltdown.

Secularists are fond of saying that as long as two people agree on what constitutes proper moral behavior, that’s all that matters. It all boils down to consent. Those who believe in the religious vision know this to be false: it could justify incest. Without an understanding that God has given us commandments to live by—and the moral absolutes they entail—all kinds of monstrosities are possible. History has shown exactly that.

If there is one intellectual strain that is creating mass confusion it is postmodernism. For this we can thank French intellectuals in the 1960s. It is the most extreme expression of the secular vision. At bottom, it regards truth to be a fiction. Once this idea takes hold, look out. Here’s how postmodernism plays out in real life.

David Detmer is a philosopher who knows how absurd postmodernism is. He interviewed one of its practitioners, fellow philosopher Laurie Calhoun. He asked her a simple question, one that any pre-school child could answer. Are giraffes taller than ants? “No,” she replied, it is “an article of religious faith in our culture.”

In an earlier time we would house people like her in an asylum. Today they are working in the academy.

There is a chapter in the book on libertinism, or sexual license. Normal people regard people with perversions as sick and in need of help. Many left-wing intellectuals—who do not want to be regarded as normal, and who indeed reject the idea of normalcy—not only disagree that perverts are abnormal, they want to celebrate them.

In 2022, Indiana University erected a large bronze sculpture of Alfred Kinsey, the zoologist-turned-sexologist. School officials celebrated his years of work there; there is also a Kinsey Institute on the campus. They are proud of his writings and research on sexuality. They shouldn’t be.

As I point out, Kinsey was “a scientific fraud, a pervert, a voyeur, an exhibitionist, a masochist, a gay-bar-hopping homosexual (even though he was married), and a child abuser. Oh, yes, he also had sex with animals.” Guess which institution he hated? The Catholic Church.

The secular vision, especially postmodernism, explains the existence of transgenderism, or gender ideology. If truth does not exist, then it is entirely possible for boys to think they are girls and vice versa. It does not matter what our chromosomes are—all that matters is what we feel is real.

The tenets of Christianity and transgenderism are polar opposites and cannot be reconciled. Pope Francis understands this as well as anyone. He calls gender ideology “one of the most dangerous ideological colonizations” of our time. “Why is it dangerous? Because it blurs the differences and the value of men and women.” So upset was he with this ideological madness that he once called it “demonic.”

Anti-science transgender activists are among the most intolerant people in our society. They believe there are more than two sexes (which they falsely call genders) and anyone who disagrees with them—which is to say most normal people—is dismissed as a bigot.

For example, when the famous British atheist Richard Dawkins said the obvious, “sex really is binary,” he was slammed by fellow atheists. But Dawkins is a biologist, not a pundit. His critics nearly fell off the cliff when he offered this pedestrian definition of a woman: “A woman is an adult female, free of Y chromosomes.” They accused him of being “transphobic.”

The damage being done to young people—80 percent of those who “transition” to the opposite sex are girls who want to be boys—is incalculable. The long-term physical and psychological problems that they will experience has yet to be determined. We already know that puberty blockers, chemical castration and genital mutilation have created enormous suffering. Indeed, this is the greatest child abuse issue of our day.

The last two chapters seek to explain why we are so divided as a nation. To take one example, we are treating racial and ethnic groups as if they were different tribes, pitting one against the other. Robin DiAngelo, the author of the best-selling book, White Fragility, likes it that way. “People of color need to get away from white people and have some community with each other.” They teach this racism—in the name of combating it—in many corporations and the colleges.

No doubt the Klan would agree with her. So does Harvard. That is why it designated “an exclusive space for Black-identifying audience members” when an adaptation of Macbeth was performed in 2021.

Welcome to the world of the “new apartheid.” The much condemned South African practice of separating the races is now very much in vogue in the United States. We have separate dorms on college campuses based on race, as well as separate graduation ceremonies.

Part of the problem is the tendency of left-wing intellectuals to compare the tenets of the American Creed—the belief in freedom, equality and rule of law—to existing conditions. Inevitably, we come up short. But the Creed is the ideal; it is not reality. It gives us something to shoot for—holding out the potential that some day we will make good on this promise. Martin Luther King, Jr. understood this. Why can’t intellectuals?

When I taught a college class on Social Problems, I gave the students one of the standard textbooks. It focused on how unequal social and economic conditions were, especially with regards to race, sex and class. The conclusion that students were invited to draw—how unfair America is—was baked into the game plan. But I didn’t stop there.

I spent a great deal of time showing what conditions were like for minorities, women and the poor in the past—fifty, a hundred, and two hundred years ago. I also compared current conditions in the United States for minorities, women and the poor to current conditions on these three categories in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and Asia.

What makes more sense? Comparing social conditions to some mythical ideal, or to real-life historical and cross-cultural conditions?

Alienated intellectuals who have rejected God find themselves searching for transcendent meaning in some secular universe of ideas. They do not believe in Original Sin, maintaining that there are no limitations to the human condition. As such they believe they can craft a utopian society. Ironically, the word “utopian” means “no place.”

From a Christian perspective, all of this is nonsense. As the Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr said, there is no possibility of creating a perfectly moral social order; we are imperfect and fallen.

If these secular ideas were confined to the classroom, it may not matter much. But they are not. Attempts at utopia were tried by Hitler, Stalin and Mao, yielding a death toll of approximately 150 million. So not only are secularists wrong about their view of man and society, they are a menace to both.

If we are to see a restoration of the religious vision, the Catholic Church is going to have to lead the way. The clergy sexual abuse scandal hurt us, but there have been incredible improvements. The damage done is real but it is not terminal. Besides, who else are we going to turn to for leadership?

It behooves traditional Catholics, Orthodox Christians, Evangelical Protestants, Orthodox Jews, Muslims and Mormons to put aside their theological differences and join hands in the culture war. We share a similar religious vision, and on cultural issues we are in even more agreement. This is especially true of sexual issues. None of these faith communities wants anything to do with the insanity of transgenderism.

We are at a crossroads. We have a self-identified devout Catholic president who may believe in God, but who nonetheless rejects the existence of human nature. The belief in human nature entails the belief that we are either male or female. Our president clearly does not share this perspective.

Our cultural meltdown is a serious matter but it is folly to think that we cannot change course. There is no iron law of history. It is up to us to make the case for the religious vision and to resist top-down measures that seek to subvert our Judeo-Christian heritage.

It is my hope that after reading this book you will encourage others to read it as well. It is not a history book, so after reading the Introduction, feel free to jump to any chapter that interests you.

This is the article that appeared in the July/August 2024 edition of Catalyst, our monthly journal. The date that prints out reflects the day that it was uploaded to our website. For a more accurate date of when the article was first published, check out the news release, here.

The following letter by Catholic League president Bill Donohue to Rep. James Comer, Chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Accountability, explains why he wants the FBI to authorize the release of the “Nashville Manifesto” kept by mass murderer Audrey Hale.

June 17, 2024

Hon. James Comer
Chairman
Committee on Oversight and Accountability
2157 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515-6143

Dear Chairman Comer:

As president of the nation’s largest Catholic civil rights organization, it is my job to combat anti-Catholicism. I am writing to you because you are in a position to inquire why the FBI is stopping the public release of documents pertaining to the mass shooting in Nashville, Tennessee on March 27, 2023. That is when a 28-year-old female, Audrey Hale, shot and killed three children and three adults at Covenant School.

Hale, who falsely identified as a male, kept a journal, more commonly known as the Nashville manifesto. Nashville Police Chief John Drake said after the shootings that “There’s some belief that there was some resentment for having to go to that school.”

Covenant is a Christian school. The police said that the school and the church were both targeted. Hale once attended the school and reportedly disparaged her parents for not supporting her “transition.”

On April 24, 2023, I issued a news release asking, “So where’s the manifesto? Who’s holding it back? What’s driving this decision?” Tennessee Rep. Tim Burchett said at that time that it was the FBI that was holding it back. He was right.

We now know that it was the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit that “strongly discourage[d]” the Metro Nashville Police Department from releasing the manifesto. It said it represents a “legacy token” that could be exploited by other mass murderers.

I am a sociologist who has taught courses on criminology and written extensively about it. Moreover, in my role as a Catholic civil rights leader, I have investigated, and written about, the extent to which a strong anti-Christian animus is prevalent among transgender persons.

Accordingly, it is imperative that Christians learn if Hale’s offenses were in any way driven by hatred against them. The police have admitted that she planned her attack “over a period of months.” Indeed, they said her crimes were “calculated and planned.” Given that she gave great thought to what she was planning, it would be instructive to know what she had to say about Christians. Moreover, the Daily Wire recently obtained selections from her journal entry that expressly show a strong hostility to Christianity.

As I pointed out last year, the FBI elite have had their reputations sullied by probing innocent traditional Catholics. “Given this situation,” I said, “are we to believe that if a crazed Catholic were to blow up an abortion clinic, killing six people, and law enforcement found a manifesto detailing his motive, that the FBI would censor its release? Or would it be more likely to make it public?”

Please do what you can to have the FBI release Hale’s manifesto. Christians should not be kept in the dark, especially when the contents of her journal may reveal information that is threatening to them.

Sincerely,

William A. Donohue, Ph.D.
President

cc: Rep. Tim Burchett
Rep. Jim Jordan, Chairman, House Committee on the Judiciary

This is the article that appeared in the July/August 2024 edition of Catalyst, our monthly journal. The date that prints out reflects the day that it was uploaded to our website. For a more accurate date of when the article was first published, check out the news release, here.

Bill Donohue sent the following letter to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas:

June 25, 2024

Hon. Alejandro Mayorkas
Secretary of Homeland Security
Washington, D.C. 20528

Dear Secretary Mayorkas:

It was recently reported that internal files from the “Homeland Intelligence Experts Group” were made public, and although the Group is now defunct, the contents of the second batch of documents secured by America First Legal are disturbing. This advisory panel was under your watch, which explains why I am writing to you.

The Group included former CIA director John Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. They indicated that when seeking national security information, when all else fails the Department of Homeland Security should look for “indicators of extremists and terrorism.”

“If you ask researchers to dive into indicators of extremists and terrorism, they might indicate being in the military or religious. This being identified as an indicator suggests we should be more worried about these. We need the space to talk about it honestly.”

The Group then added a third indicator of domestic terrorism, saying, “Most of the Domestic Terrorism threat now comes from supporters of the former president,” meaning supporters of Donald Trump.

I know this group has since been disbanded, but the documents that were collected are extant. It is important that all documents pertaining to this issue be made public. What is your Department doing with these records? Have they been given over to some other committee or advisory group? Where is the evidence that being in the military, being religious and being a supporter of Donald Trump is a threat to national security?

I ask these questions because according to these criteria, I check all three boxes.

• On August 28, 1970 I was honorably discharged from the United States Air Force.
• On July 1, 1993 I began my tenure as president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, the nation’s largest Catholic civil rights organization.
• On February 13, 2016 Donald Trump tweeted, “Nice column [in Newsmax] by Bill Donahue, head of Catholic League. He’s a blue collar New Yorker and gets it.” In a second tweet, he said, “A very big thank you to Bill Donohue, head of The Catholic League, for the wonderful interview on CNN and article in Newsmax! Great insight.”

This begs the question: Am I on a watch list? My family, friends and Catholic League members would like to know if I may be considered a domestic terrorist.

Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

William A. Donohue, Ph.D.
President

This is the article that appeared in the July/August 2024 edition of Catalyst, our monthly journal. The date that prints out reflects the day that it was uploaded to our website. For a more accurate date of when the article was first published, check out the news release, here.

On June 14, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) issued a report on boarding schools for Native American children, some of which were run by the Catholic Church. From 1869 to the 1960s, the government removed thousands of these children from tribal lands and placed them in boarding schools. The express purpose was to assimilate them into American society.

There were more than 500 of these schools, more than 80 of which (16 percent) were Catholic-run. According to an investigation by the Washington Post (WaPo) at least 122 priests, sisters and brothers who were assigned to these schools were later accused of sexually abusing these children.

The report by the USCCB and the report issued by the Washington Post agree on some matters but differ on others. The bishops’ report includes an apology for inflicting a “history of trauma” on Native Americans, but the findings of the newspaper’s probe are much more critical.

The WaPo report was based on interviews with more than two dozen Indian boarding school attendees who claimed they were abused physically, sexually or emotionally in these boarding schools, three-fourths of which were run by the government. Oral histories, court documents, lawsuits, diaries, correspondence and the like were examined.
WaPo says it relied on information taken from the ProPublica database. This is the same organization that was mentioned by Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito when he was setup by a left-wing woman posing as a conservative; she surreptitiously taped him. He named ProPublica as the source of the hit jobs, mentioning their efforts to smear his Catholic colleague, Clarence Thomas.

Bill Donohue has had his own problems with ProPublica. In 2020, it issued a report, jointly done with the Houston Chronicle, that contended that the Catholic Church did not keep tabs on priests that it threw out of the priesthood. Guilty as charged! As he said at the time, neither does the media or any other organization. So what? Perhaps ProPublica expects the Church to stalk its dismissed employees.

But for the sake of argument, let’s say the methodology is acceptable. What exactly did WaPo find? Serious questions are extant.

The report cites a Department of Interior report from 2022 that investigated conditions in government-run boarding schools; it did not probe the ones operated by the Catholic Church. That report mentioned the word “Catholic” twice, both times in passing, having nothing to do with abuse.

More important, the timeline of the investigation under review extends back to 1869, so the kind of record keeping that lends itself to conclusive results is simply impossible. The WaPo report, which claims “pervasive” abuse in Catholic-run boarding schools, readily confesses that “lists of accused priests are inconsistent and incomplete, and many survivors have not come forward. Others are aging and in poor health, or, like their abusers, have died.”

Instead of admitting that this is a clear shortcoming, the journalists conclude this means that “the extent of the abuse was probably far worse.” Really? Let’s face it—they could have come to a very different conclusion. Precisely because the record-keeping was found wanting, it is hard to know the truth. It is even possible that good data would reveal how small this problem was. But such considerations would have gotten in the way of their narrative.

WaPo cites Rev. Mike Carson, who worked on this issue for the bishops, and he “also noted a likely dearth of records.” Similarly, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland acknowledges that given the situation, “I doubt that you could find a lot of Catholic records or federal government records about abuse and neglect toward the students.” Even in cases where, for example, the Jesuits kept tabs on alleged cases of abuse, WaPo quotes them as saying the list “does not imply the claims are true and correct or that the accused individual has been found guilty of a crime or liable for civil claims.”

There are other problems that should have given the journalists pause. In several parts of the report, they admit that the alleged victims whom they spoke to “kept secret” what happened. That being the case, how can Church officials be blamed? Indeed, after detailing one case of alleged abuse, they write that “It is unclear whether church officials were aware of the abuse at St. Mary’s at the time.”

Then there is the issue of the accused denying that they committed the offense. For instance, Sr. Sigfrieda Hettinger denied in 2015 that she abused a boy decades ago. “I loved them all. I never hurt them at all. I never touched them at all.” She died in 2016 at age 87. Was she telling the truth or lying? We don’t know. But in such cases, fairness dictates that we have to assume she was innocent.

There is another issue that needs to be addressed, one that is not discussed by the WaPo authors. They cite a Jesuit priest, Rev. Edmund J. Robinson, who was a serial offender. Could it be that a small number of priests were responsible for a disproportionate number of cases?

We know from the John Jay studies on this issue nationwide that between 1950 and 2002, 149 priests (3.3 percent) who had more than ten allegations of abuse were responsible for abusing 2,960 victims, thus accounting for 26 percent of all the allegations. As Donohue said in his book, The Truth about Clergy Sexual Abuse: Clarifying the Facts and the Causes, this means that “a very small percentage of accused priests are responsible for a substantial percentage of the allegations.”

The same may be true in the case of the Indian boarding school story.

Moreover, WaPo journalists offer no comment on something that should have concerned them. Why is it that when the federal government commissioned a study of this issue in 1928, this report “chastised the schools for the mistreatment and malnourishment of students,” but never said a word about physical or sexual abuse? Was it a cover up? Or was there nothing to report? It seems plausible that a probe that took notice of “mistreatment” would have cited serious cases of abuse.

The credibility of the WaPo authors is seriously undermined by their decision to cite the Catholic Church’s legacy of abuse in Canadian boarding schools for indigenous peoples. That story has positively been proven to be a hoax. It does not help their cause to say that Pope Francis apologized for what happened—he did so before the story was proven false.

In 2021, the Catholic Church was accused of creating “mass graves” for indigenous children in the residential schools. But it didn’t take long before it was totally debunked. In 2022, Jacques Rouillard, professor emeritus in the Department of History at the University of Montreal, questioned, “After seven months of recrimination and denunciation, where are the remains of the children buried in the Kamloops Indian Residential School?”

A second round of accusations emerged in the summer of 2023 when excavations of the “mass grave” began. In August, the National Post reported that “No evidence of human remains has been found during the excavation of a Catholic church basement on the site of a former Manitoba residential school.” Again, the body count was zero.

There is also the matter of the scope of the WaPo investigation. Why didn’t they investigate the boarding schools run by the government? After all, they operated most of them. Are they content to rely on the Department of Interior study? Similarly, they mention that several Protestant denominations also operated these schools. Why were none of them probed?

As Donohue has pointed out many times, wherever adults regularly interact with minors, unfortunately we find abuse. So why is it that time and again, the public schools get a pass, Hollywood gets a pass, etc.? Why is it always the Catholic Church that is the source of investigation? Isn’t this religious profiling? And wouldn’t that suggest that bigotry is at work?

By contrast, the USCCB report has two mentions of “violence” and six mentions of “abuse,” but none have anything to do with wrongdoing on the part of the Church.

The bishops’ report rightfully cites heroes such as Dominican Fr. Bartolomé de Las Casas, the sixteenth century defender of human rights for Indians, and St. Junípero Serra, the eighteenth century missionary who was canonized by Pope Francis for his courage in calling out colonizers for their mistreatment of Native Americans.

There is not a single person, from any other religion, who did more to champion the rights of Indians than these two priests.

The bishops’ report does not sanitize anything. It admits that many Native Americans feel abandoned by the Church, citing a “lack of understanding of their unique cultural needs.” Hence, the apology. But the report also notes the “joy,” as well as the “sorrow,” that so many experienced. It also makes note of the many wonderful priests and nuns who did yeoman work among indigenous Catholics.

The motive to assimilate Native Americans was noble, though looking back at it from today’s vantage point it may seem overbearing. But it is important to acknowledge, as the bishops’ report does, that in places like Alaska, “many Church-run boarding schools were created to shelter youth who were orphaned during epidemics or whose parents were experiencing illness or dire poverty and could not care for them.”

Moreover, “Many Native alumni of those boarding schools who are still living today express gratitude for the care and educational opportunities they received from the men and women religious who administered mission schools.” Similarly, it bears noting that many of these indigenous peoples “willingly embraced the Gospel when missionaries offered it to them.”

In fact, many tribes “requested Catholic missionaries.” Let’s also not forget that “Many early Indigenous converts to Catholicism faced persecution and even martyrdom for their belief, either within their own communities or from others outside their communities.”

We shouldn’t have to rely on Catholic sources to highlight the great work done by the missionaries. This is a matter of history, not religion. But the animus against the Church today is palpable, especially in elite quarters.

It is important that the truth be told. The WaPo report contains some disturbing information, and undoubtedly instances of abuse occurred. But when the data are incomplete, it’s time to tap the brakes and not come to condemnatory conclusions.

The issue of abuse must also be put in context. If corporal punishment was commonplace at the time, why should we be horrified to learn that it existed in Catholic institutions? It must also be asked how common was abuse within the Native American community? Not to ask questions like these reveals a bias, thus further undercutting the credibility of those pointing fingers.

The Senate Indian Affairs Committee is interested in having a federal commission do a more thorough investigation of the assimilative policies of Indian boarding schools. If they do so, they need to raise issues that seem to have escaped the WaPo journalists, as well as many others. That would include this committee.

This is the article that appeared in the July/August 2024 edition of Catalyst, our monthly journal. The date that prints out reflects the day that it was uploaded to our website. For a more accurate date of when the article was first published, check out the news release, here.

Pedophilia, which is sex between an adult and a prepubescent child, is different from homosexuality, which is sex between adults of the same sex. Though they are different, unfortunately there are prominent gay leaders who have been supportive of adults having sex with minors, and some even justify man-boy rape. Moreover, while there are heterosexual pedophiles as well, the only ones who have an organization dedicated to pedophilia are gays.

June was Gay Pride Month. We called attention to this issue, asking gay leaders to speak to it with clarity. If everyone can’t agree that the sexual abuse of children is an abomination, we will never get rid of this problem.

The following is our report on this subject. For a slightly longer version, which notes the sources for these entries, see our website for our news release of June 3rd, titled, “Pedophilia and Homosexuality Revisited.”

Harry Hay

Harry Hay was “The founder of the gay movement in America.”

“…[I]f the parents and friends of gays are truly friends of gays, they would know from their gay kids that the relationship with an older man is precisely what thirteen-, fourteen-, and fifteen-year-old kids need more than anything else in the world. And they would be welcoming this, and welcoming the opportunity for young gay kids to have the kind of experience that they would need.”

Larry Kramer

Larry Kramer was a leading gay rights activist and founder of the “queer-led” terrorist organization ACT UP.

“In those cases where children do have sex with their homosexual elders… I submit that often, very often, the child desires the activity, and perhaps even solicits it, either because of a natural curiosity… or because he or she is homosexual and innately knows it…. And unlike girls or women forced into rape or traumatized, most gay men have warm memories of their earliest and early sexual encounters; when we share these stories with each other, they are invariably positive ones.”

Harvey Milk

Harvey Milk was the first openly gay man to be elected to public office; he served as a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1978.

“[Harvey] Milk’s sexual history with young people is well documented. Milk’s biographer Randy Shilts in ‘The Mayor of Castro: the Life and Times of Harvey Milk,’ spends half a dozen pages detailing the 33-year-old’s sexual relationship with a 16-year-old.”

Craig Rodwell

Craig Rodwell, a leading gay activist, told his biographer that from the age of 13 to 14 he had sex with “hundreds of men.” Rodwell went on to say, “This is what I lived for, literally. And that’s all I thought about all day long, just so I could get downtown and go cruising.…It had a great sense of freedom about it and adventure and, oh, I met all kinds of guys….”

Prostasia Foundation

While it claims to be a “child protection organization,” Prostasia is in fact one of the leading advocacy groups to normalize sexual relationships between adults and minors, or as it prefers to call them “Minor-Attracted Persons.” The group regularly downplays the criminality of such relationships and instead focuses on reducing the “stigma” surrounding individuals who engage in such abhorrent acts.

Prostasia blog editor Sheila van den Heuvel-Collins tweeted, “Merry Christmas to everyone, including the nepiophiles [someone who has sex with infants], pedophiles, hebephiles [someone who has sex with minors between 11 and 14] and ephebophiles [someone who has sex with adolescents between 15 and 19] who have to put up with stigma every single day of the year.”

B4U-Act

Another advocacy group for “Minor-Attracted Persons,” B4U-Act also works to normalize perverse relationships between adults and minors. In addition to countering “stigma,” B4U-Act has additionally supported studies to provide a “scientific basis” for its advocacy. Some of these studies have been conducted at Nottingham Trent University in the United Kingdom, Royal Ottawa Mental Health Centre, and McGill University in Montreal.

NAMBLA

The North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) was founded in 1978 with the stated goal of ending “the extreme oppression of men and boys in mutually consensual relationships.”

“NAMBLA is working to change public perceptions and laws about consensual sexual relationships between adults and minors. Today, the law and public prejudice make little or no distinction between a man who forcibly rapes a child and one who genuinely cares for and loves a boy. Some judges have condemned boy-lovers as being ‘worse than murderers,’ even though their only ‘crime’ has been to share their body and affection with a boy in a friendship that includes mutually enjoyable sexual experiences. It is a shame that in American society, it is a greater crime to love a child than it is to beat—or even kill—a child.”

This is the article that appeared in the July/August 2024 edition of Catalyst, our monthly journal. The date that prints out reflects the day that it was uploaded to our website. For a more accurate date of when the article was first published, check out the news release, here.

The “fact checkers” at the Associated Press, CNN, the Washington Post and WCBS radio (NY) are claiming that former president Donald Trump was wrong to say in the debate that not only do late-term abortions and partial-birth abortions still occur, babies are being killed after an abortion, and that the Democrats support it. They are wrong. Trump is right. Here are some facts they overlook.

• 1977: Dr. C. Everett Koop, later U.S. Surgeon General, told the American Academy of Pediatrics, “Well, you know that infanticide is being practiced right now in this country…I am concerned that there is no outcry…I am concerned about this because when the first 273,000 German aged, infirm, and retarded were killed in gas chambers there was no outcry from that medical profession either, and it was not far from there to Auschwitz.” He titled his speech, “The Slide to Auschwitz.”
• 1995: Partial-birth abortionist Dr. George Tiller said, “We have some experience with late terminations; about 10,000 patients between 24 and 36 weeks and something like 800 fetal anomalies between 26 and 36 weeks in the past 5 years.”
• 1997: Ron Fitzsimmons, executive director of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers, admitted on national TV that he “lied through [his] teeth” when he “just went out there and spouted the party line” about how rare partial-birth abortions are.
• 2001-2003: Illinois State Senator Barack Obama opposed bills that would have mandated that a child born alive as a result of a botched abortion be given medical care.
• 2003: The U.S. Senate voted 64-33 to outlaw partial-birth abortion. Of the 33, 29 were Democrats, 3 were Republican, and 1 was an Independent.
• 2007: Senator Joe Biden, who voted for the ban on partial-birth abortion in 2003, changed his mind and said the ban on killing a baby who is 80 percent born is “paternalistic.”
• 2019: The pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute admits that at least 12,000 late-term abortions take place annually in the U.S.
• 2019: New York State Gov. Andrew Cuomo signs a bill that removes legal penalties to any medical staff personnel who intentionally allow a child born as a result of a botched abortion to die.
• 2019: Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam said that if a mother sought to abort her baby, but the baby was born anyway, “the infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and her family decide, and then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.” He added that the baby would be “kept comfortable” before they put him down or let him die.
• 2019: Montana Gov. Steve Bullock vetoed the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act, a law that would have required children born alive who survived an abortion to be treated like any other human being.
• 2019: The Born-Alive Infant Abortion Survivors Protection Act was blocked by Senate Democrats Bernie Sanders, Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren; all were presidential candidates.
• 2019: The Washington Post conceded that at least 10,000 late-term abortions take place each year.
• 2023: All but two congressional Democrats voted to kill the Born Alive-Infant Abortion Survivors Protection Act.

It’s time the media stopped lying and covering up for those who support late-term abortions, partial-birth abortions and infanticide.

This is the article that appeared in the July/August 2024 edition of Catalyst, our monthly journal. The date that prints out reflects the day that it was uploaded to our website. For a more accurate date of when the article was first published, check out the news release, here.

Caitlin Clark has done more for women’s basketball than any other person. One would think that the superstar would be treated with applause by fellow players, the media and pundits. While many have lauded her, she has been savaged by others. The stench of bigotry is in the air.

Clark is a white heterosexual Irish Catholic with a boyfriend. That is hardly exceptional, but unfortunately for her, that matters to some of her critics.

Clark’s Catholic faith is important to her. In 2018, she gave an interview to the Des Moines Register about her time at Dowling Catholic High School. “We get to live our faith every day. Dowling starts every day with prayer and ends every day with prayer. This is a big reason why Dowling has such a special culture and is such a special place to go to school.”

Sports columnist and podcaster Jason Whitlock notes that “Caitlin Clark’s sanity cannot survive the racial, sexual, and political blender participation in the WNBA will cause. She’s a 22-year-old white woman with a boyfriend raised in the Catholic faith. She’s playing in a league that is hostile to virtually everything about her – skin color, sexuality, and faith.”

Clay Travis, the host of “Outkick,” notes that “Caitlin Clark is white and straight in a league that is primarily minority and lesbian. I told you this was going to be an issue, and now you got everybody acknowledging it all over the place.”

We are happy to report that basketball great LeBron James came to Clark’s defense.