Critics of Vatican efforts to reform the LCWR have their talking points down in lockstep so well that everyone now just assumes that the reform initiative was triggered by concerns over these nuns pushing for ObamaCare.

All of them are wrong, and it is not a matter of opinion. Just consider a couple of important dates.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare) legislation wasn’t introduced in the House until September 17, 2009. The decision to undertake a doctrinal assessment of the LCWR was announced on April 8, 2008, while George W. Bush was president. In other words, the narrative about “payback” is simply faulty: the timeline undercuts the critics’ argument.

The way some pundits rallied on behalf of nuns made for quite a circus this month.

Anyone who has ever read New York Times columnists Maureen Dowd and Nicholas Kristof, and the editorials in the Boston Globe (owned by the Times), knows how thoroughly contemptuous they are of the Catholic Church.

However, there is one exception: they love left-wing dissidents. Hence, their all-to-predictable rally for “progressive” nuns.

On April 29, Dowd sounded like quite the stand-up comedian when she said “the Vatican is trying to muzzle American nuns.” Maybe she should talk to the Sisters of Life and then write a column on how “muzzled” they feel.

On the same day, Kristof also showed how clueless he is when he wrote about “a stinging reprimand of American nuns.” Perhaps he should speak to Mother M. Assumpta Long of the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist and ask if she’s been reprimanded.

On April 30, the Boston Globe said “the pope has rebuked the disobedience of European priests,” and has “set in motion a severe disciplining of American nuns.” Imagine that? The pope rebukes disobedient priests. So what exactly do they do at the Globe when a staff member disobeys the newspaper’s policies? Give him a raise?

Whenever these newspapers fire a reporter, they refuse to comment, saying these are “internal matters.”

Indeed, when the Times fired A.M. Rosenthal in 1999, they didn’t want to speak to the press about it.

Ten years later they went silent again when they fired Ben Stein.

But for some reason, these same people think they have a right to condemn the Catholic Church when it seeks to discipline its flock.

If these examples show anythying, it is that the New York Times and the Boston Globe should emulate the way the Catholic Church publicly deals with miscreant staff.

The sad fact is that these newspapers love dissident nuns, but reject those sisters who are not in rebellion. Their twisted priorities are a national disgrace.

On May 9, President Obama declared his support for gay marriage. In 1996, when Barack Obama was up for a state senate post in Illinois, he said he supported gay marriage. Eight years later, when he set his sights on the U.S. Senate, he discovered his Christian roots and said he was against it. In 2008, he said he was opposed to homosexuals marrying, but he also opposed a ballot initiative in California, Proposition 8, that affirmed marriage as being exclusively between a man and a woman. In other words, his Christian roots were losing their grip. Since then he was “evolving,” to the point of breaking with his Christian moorings.

The president likes the idea of Tom and Dick marrying. He did not say whether he supports Tom, Dick and Harry marrying, or whether he is “evolving” in that direction. Perhaps he has to consult with his mentor on this issue, Mr. Joseph Biden of Delaware.

On May 8, North Carolina voters affirmed marriage as being between a man and a woman. In the 32 times voters have been asked to decide this issue, they have voted 32 times to support traditional marriage. Gay rights advocates have never won.

President Obama will be hurt by this decision in the swing states, and he has now made this cultural matter a major issue in the presidential campaign.

The time has finally come to pass a constitutional amendment affirming marriage as an institution reserved to the only two people who can naturally produce a family, namely a man and a woman.

This month, some of the Vatican’s critics tried to defend the indefensible. Only 3% of the 55,000 nuns in the U.S. actually belong to the LCWR. One would never know this by reading the secular press. But facts don’t matter to those gone loopy.

Joan Vennochi of the Boston Globe wanted to know why the pope doesn’t “crack down on protectors of pedophile priests” instead of nuns. But there is nothing to crack down about. As the latest report on priestly sexual abuse showed, no credible accusations were made in 2011 against 99.98% of the priests. Besides, the problem has been homosexuality, not pedophilia (less than 5% of the old cases dealt with pedophilia).

Monica Yant Kinney in the Philadelphia Inquirer said the Vatican “slammed nuns for devoting their lives to educating the poor, treating the sick, and feeding the ravenous.” That she still had her job after writing such drivel was the real story here.

Melinda Henneberger of the Washington Post said the LCWR got in trouble for supporting ObamaCare. However, legitimate concerns about this group extend back many years, having nothing to do with ObamaCare.

Pat Buchanan was fired from MSNBC because his bosses didn’t like a book he wrote. By contrast, the Vatican doesn’t fire anyone for breaking ranks. Which of these two organizations really can’t tolerate dissent? One more thing: we await a column by these voyeurs on the sex segregation that is commonplace in Orthodox Judaism and Islam.

During his MSNBC show of April 19, Lawrence O’Donnell opened fire on Bishop Daniel Jenky, the Vatican and Bill Donohue.

Peoria Bishop Jenky recently said that President Obama’s radical secular agenda is violative of the First Amendment. Moreover, he warned that this path to religious intolerance had been followed before by the likes of Hitler and Stalin. Anyone is free to agree or disagree, but it is just plain stupid to argue that Jenky is putting the tax-exempt status of the Catholic Church in jeopardy. O’Donnell obviously knows nothing more about the First Amendment right to free speech than he does about the right to religious liberty.

O’Donnell called into question the right of the Vatican to discipline its flock. He was upset because the Vatican is concerned about some nuns who are not in line with Church teachings on abortion and gay rights. Of course, if an MSNBC host were all of a sudden to adopt a pro-life or pro-traditional marriage position, he would be fired. By contrast, the Vatican is quite liberal in its handling of such matters.

O’Donnell said the Catholic League “has absolutely no official affiliation” with the Church, and that it is run by a “fraudulent operator.” Really? While we are independent, maybe O’Donnell can explain why the Catholic League is listed in the Official Catholic Directory and has the support of many bishops. To show how clueless the man is, he then interviewed Sister Jeannine Gramick and an official from Dignity. Last year, Donald Cardinal Wuerl, representing the bishops, said that Gramick’s New Ways Ministry group was not authorized “to identify itself as a Catholic organization.” Similarly, Dignity has long been rejected as a Catholic entity. And we’re the fraud? O’Donnell is out of his league, which is why he doesn’t have the courage to take on Bill Donohue.

Gay activist Dan Savage gave one of two keynote addresses at the April 13 National High School Journalism Conference sponsored by the National Scholastic Press Association and the Journalism Education Association. He insulted the students, used profanity and trashed Christianity; many walked out. Savage was there to protest bullying, but he only demonstrated his hypocritical intolerance.

The story, broken by Breitbart.com, initially led the National Scholastic Press Association to defend Savage’s speech. They commended him for his “level of thoughtfulness,” saying it is important for journalists to “listen to speech that offends you.” Only after praising him did this group, along with the Journalism Education Association, pivot to issue an apology, acknowledging that Savage’s speech fell short of the standards of civil discourse.

The first mistake was inviting a man who has a long history of making the most vile, disgusting and bigoted remarks. What did these people think he would do? Act civilly?

The second mistake was the initial defense of Savage’s hate-filled rant by the organizations that invited him. If his words rose to the level of “thoughtfulness,” then toilet speech has been sanctified.

The third mistake was made by Savage himself: he tried to weasel out of this by saying that his vicious comments on the Bible are “being spun as an attack on Christianity.” Next time he ought to trash the Koran and then explain to Muslims that it has nothing to do with attacking Islam.

Indeed, the only ones who acted admirably were the students who walked out in protest. They showed a lot more “thoughtfulness” than the adults who ran the conference. Ironically, Savage’s bullying of Christian students was done in the name of protesting the bullying of homosexuals. When it comes to bullying, Savage has no peer.

The Obama administration, has welcomed Savage to the White House. We hope they take note.

On April 29, gay activist Dan Savage apologized for belittling students at an April 13 conference of high school journalists; he did not apologize for his vulgar anti-Christian remarks. That same day he spoke before a crowd at Elmhurst College in Illinois. Here is what he said about Pope Benedict XVI’s rejection of gay marriage:

“What the pope is saying is that the only thing that stands between my d**k and Brad Pitt’s mouth is a piece of paper.”

“What the pope is saying, once we’re all gay married, we’re going to go extinct in a generation. Because once we’re all gay married, we’re going to forget which hole s**ts babies.”

They had to have known about Dan Savage’s history of offering obscene anti-Catholic rants when they asked him to speak at the campus chapel. The president of Elmhurst College must have known—he was certainly there to welcome him. S. Alan Ray, a former Roman Catholic seminarian, issued no apology for Savage’s vulgar attack on the pope. Perhaps his silence indicates that he agreed with Savage’s bullying.

We sent a news release to the Elmhurst media, the college’s board of trustees, local government officials, and every Catholic high school principal in the Archdiocese of Chicago and the Diocese of Joliet to inform them all about how this college, which boasts of its commitment to diversity and tolerance, treats Catholics.

Had a Catholic speaker, invited to talk about bullying Catholics, taken the opportunity to bully homosexuals, the president would have been forced to resign. It is also ironic to note that Dr. Ray is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation; he can no doubt speak for hours about the horrors of anti-Native American prejudice. Too bad he couldn’t spare Catholics a minute to apologize for Savage’s assault. But maybe he agreed with Savage’s intolerance.

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on an e-mail sent to the Catholic League by Rev. Robert Ullman of the Elmhurst College Board of Trustees:

On May 2, the Catholic League issued a news release on the obscene anti-Catholic talk given by Dan Savage at Elmhurst College on April 29. On May 7, we received an e-mail from Rev. Robert Ullman (he is a member of the Board of Trustees at Elmhurst) that sounded as if he had gone off the rails. Without a shred of evidence, the United Church of Christ minister accused us of making a racist statement against the Elmhurst president, and then veered off in a wild way denouncing the Catholic Church. Not only is he obviously a very troubled man, he is also a disgrace both to Elmhurst College and to higher education, in general.

The invitation of HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to speak at Georgetown University is yet another indication of that school’s compromised Catholic identity. The Archdiocese of Washington strongly criticized Georgetown with an editorial in the Catholic Standard, calling the university’s response to Sebelius “disappointing, but not surprising.”

Another disappointing signal this month was the letter signed by nearly 90 faculty members and priests at Georgetown University. They criticized Rep. Paul Ryan’s visit to campus, saying his budget plan represents a “continuing misuse of Catholic teaching” because it allegedly hurts the poor.

In 1999, hard-core pornographer Larry Flynt spoke at Georgetown, with no letter of protest from the faculty. The Archdiocese of Washington was not pleased, saying the decision provided “a platform which furthers the degradation of women, immoral behavior and the anti-religious opinions Mr. Flynt represents.” In 2003, 70 faculty members signed a letter protesting a speech by Cardinal Francis Arinze when he defended the traditional family at his commencement address; they were angry that he cited abortion, euthanasia, infanticide, fornication, adultery, divorce, pornography, and homosexuality as negative elements.

In 1997, the Washington Archdiocese publicly criticized Georgetown for refusing to put crucifixes in the classrooms. In 2010, years after the crucifixes were restored, the university hid them, and other religious symbols, at the request of the Obama administration; Obama’s advance team did not want the president to speak with Catholic symbols visible.

Georgetown welcomes pro-abortion clubs on campus. There is “Hoyas for Choice,” and “Georgetown University Law Students for Reproductive Justice” (formerly run by Sandra Fluke). There have been no letters of protest from the faculty about the “misuse of Catholic teaching.”

It’s time they held a campus forum on their identity, inviting representatives from the Washington Archdiocese, alumni, and non-Catholics to participate. They can begin by stating what makes Georgetown University different from George Washington University.

Bill Donohue: “There are few Catholic writers in North America who are as appealing as Michael Coren, and when it comes to demonstrating wit on TV, the Canadian host is in a league of his own. His new book, Heresy: Ten Lies They Spread About Christianity, is as entertaining as his previous work, Why Catholicism is Right. Indeed, it is a gem.”