A new Gallup poll shows that coronavirus has led more Americans to deepen their faith. But judging from what happened on one weekend in May, it is evident that the pandemic has done nothing to stop hate speech directed at Catholics.

Bill Maher, an inveterate anti-Catholic, invited Dan Savage, a homosexual activist known for his vulgarities, to be on his show, and the guest made a comment so obscene about priests that we cannot reprint it here.

“Family Guy” depicted cartoon characters at the Last Supper. The exchange between the Jesus character and one of the apostles was so offensive that, again, we’d rather not reprint it.

In both cases we provided email contacts for the shows so our side could join the protest. These are deranged men, and their corporate sponsors are just as sick.

We will have to wait until November before the English version of a biography of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI is available, but the book by Peter Seewald is already generating controversy. Benedict says his writings have been misrepresented beyond recognition, so much so that it has devolved into a “malignant distortion of reality.” Worse, attempts to silence him have been ongoing.

Sexuality and the life issues are what angers his most vociferous critics. That’s because they touch on the most sacred ground coveted by secularists. “One hundred years ago,” Benedict says, “everybody would have considered it to be absurd to speak of a homosexual marriage.” The same goes for “abortion and to the creation of human beings in the laboratory.”

What is most distressing are the attempts to silence Benedict. His critics want him to stay in a retirement home and watch TV. But he won’t cooperate. Those who do not accept gay marriage, he notes, must be prepared to suffer the consequences. “Today one is being excommunicated by society if one opposes it.”

“Modern society is in the middle of formulating an anti-Christian creed,” Benedict says, “and if one opposes it, one is being punished by society with excommunication.” This should be quite a book.

A new survey by the Public Religion Research Institute on LGBT people raises some important moral and political questions, though that is not the intent of the poll.

According to the survey, “5% of Americans identify as LGBT, including 2% who identify as gay or lesbian, 3% who identify as bisexual, and less than 1% who identify as transgender.” A demographic profile of these people yields striking results.

“Among Americans who identify as LGBT, nearly half (47%) are young adults (ages 18-29), about one-third (32%) are ages 30-49, about one in ten (12%) are ages 50-64, and 8% are seniors (ages 65 and older).”

On the basis of race and ethnicity, Native Americans are the only “people of color” who are not slightly overrepresented.

In terms of religious affiliation, people of faith are underrepresented. Almost half (47%) of the unaffiliated identify as LGBT. Geographically, the West is the most overrepresented and the South is the least represented. In terms of party affiliation, LGBT people are much more likely to be independents or Democrats than Republicans.

What these findings suggest is that to a large extent the LGBT community is a cultural phenomenon, not a biological one. How else to explain the disparities?

Take age. Why is there an inverse relationship between age and transgender identity, meaning the older the person the less likely he is to be transgender? To put it differently, why are those who identify as transgender mostly young people?

Young people have been indoctrinated into thinking that being a member of the LGBT community is at least a value-neutral attribute, and may even be cool. As Pope Francis has said, there is a “nasty” tendency in schools to “indoctrinate” children, teaching that our sex can be chosen and changed. This is doing a disservice to young people and it shows up in high rates of depression and suicide in this segment of the population.

Further proof that much of what is driving the increase in the LGBT community is cultural can be found by analyzing the response of Native Americans. Why are they not overrepresented the way other non-whites are? The answer seems plain: they are the least affected by the dominant culture. It is the dominant culture, as shaped by the schools, the media, and the entertainment industry that is driving the LGBT agenda, enticing adolescents to “experiment.”

Those who have no religious affiliation are of course more susceptible to LGBT propaganda: they are the most deracinated segment of the population. It is not devout Christian young people who are at war with human nature—it is secular-minded kids who reject the idea of nature and nature’s God.

Rootlessness explains why the West has the highest proportion of LGBT people and the South has the least. Southerners are more anchored in tradition and religion than any other part of the country, while those on the west coast are the most likely to see tradition and religion as constraining, thus leaving them more susceptible to experimentation.

As to be expected, Democrats, most of whom are liberals, are more likely to be a part of the LGBT community than Republicans, most of whom are conservatives, proving once again the role of cultural values.

Being an LGBT person is difficult enough (e.g., they suffer from high rates of depression and suicide), and this is especially true of the sexually confused (a male who thinks he is female and vice versa). That is why attempts to culturally mass produce them are pernicious.

Rapper Kanye West announced last October that he is a convert to Christianity. His album, “Jesus Is King,” made it to the top of the charts and he is currently working on a follow-up. In May, he made the cover of GQ magazine; he sat for a four-part interview with the magazine’s editor-in-chief, Will Welch.

West startled Welch, and will no doubt startle many readers. His penchant for busting stereotypes is on full display, hitting on race, religion, Hollywood, the media, and politics. Indeed, he has become quite the iconoclast.

Christians had every right to be skeptical of West when he said he had turned the corner and discovered Jesus. After all, this is a man who lived on the wild side. He was also disrespectful. In 2006 he appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone wearing a crown of thorns with “blood” streaming down his face; we criticized him for this stunt.

In 2013, we criticized him again when he kicked off his “Yeezus” tour in Seattle. “His performance also included a Virgin Mary, incense, a crucifix, etc. all trotted out to make a Catholic statement. That it was not exactly reverential is obvious.”

Now, however, there is reason to believe that West has turned the corner. He came across reflective and sincere in the GQ interview.

“I definitely think there’s an alter ego. And definitely Christ altered my ego (original italic).” He says he has given his life to Christ, crediting Jesus as his “anchor.” “I’m definitely born again.” He recognizes that there are those who have done things “with the word of Christ that were bad,” but, he hastens to add, “That’s not going to stop my love for Christ. I’m going to keep on expressing what God has done for my life.”

Jesus, West says, has been a source of “healing,” noting that his succumbing to alcohol—he wound up drinking Grey Goose in the morning—was the work of the devil. He began rebounding the day he said, “Devil, you’re not going to beat me today.” He hasn’t had a drink since.

West has a keen understanding of the importance of religion. Perhaps reflecting on the Hollywood milieu, he said, “when you’re not in service to God, you can end up being in service to everything else.” That is certainly true of many in the entertainment world. Tinseltown is known for alcoholism, drugs, promiscuity, and high rates of depression and suicide.

West takes umbrage at those who claim Christianity is “judgmental.” “They think that all of a sudden you believe in Christ, so we’re not even supposed to speak up. And if we speak up, people will say, ‘Oh, you’re being judgmental.'”

His interviewer is clearly in the secular camp. For example, Welch opines that he sees religious institutions as “systems of control,” and asks his subject to respond. West floored him. “You know, I see opportunity for creativity inside our faith.”

To a secularist, this is unintelligible, but to the faithful it makes perfect sense. Truly creative people are always disciplined, otherwise what they produce is random and hollow. Christianity may be restrictive, but it is a healthy tonic. It is not restraint that levels people—it is the abandonment of it.

West, ever countercultural, says the penchant for control in society is extant, but its source is not Christianity. “Black people are controlled by emotions through the media. The media puts musicians, artists, celebrities, actors in a position to be the face of the race….” West, who has warmed to Trump, also resents the kind of control that dictates how blacks should vote, saying, “I will not be told who I’m gonna vote on because of my color.”

Perhaps the most surprisingly astute observation West made—it is shared by many devout Catholics and evangelicals—is his comment on surrender. “Now all the energy and that creativity that I have channeled and put on track comes from me surrendering to God and saying that everything is in God’s will.” That is the voice of a mature Christian.

As Catholics, we prize forgiveness and redemption. It is never a good thing to give up on someone, and this is especially true when the person trying to pivot is reaching out to us. If that person fails to turn his life around, we have lost nothing. But if he succeeds, we can all be grateful.

Those cultural elites who once embraced West are uneasy with his conversion odyssey. Some seem to have liked him better when he was offending people. That made him hip. But now that he appears to be serious about his faith in Jesus, all bets are off. The secular kings and queens who comprise the entertainment industry prefer raunch to the sacred.

Kanye West is his own man. He is also a man at home with the Creator. He should be welcomed, not disparaged, for going against the grain of the dominant culture. Given his huge following among young people, maybe he can he help to transform it. We could certainly use his help.

Do human beings possess natural rights, rights given by God that all governments must respect? Or is this plain nonsense?

A recent Pew Research Center survey shows how this philosophical question comes into play in real-life settings. If ventilators are in short supply, whom should we service first? Those who are most in need at the moment? Or those most likely to recover?

The answer, like so many ethical issues, turns on religion. The majority of those who are religiously affiliated say those who are most in need of a ventilator should take priority, while the majority of the unaffiliated (mostly agnostics and atheists) say those who are the most likely to recover should get it.

Similarly, when questioned about the role of religion in one’s life, religious Americans favor giving the ventilator to those in need at the moment; those for whom religion does not play a role prefer giving it to those most likely to recover.

On a related issue, a Pew survey in 2013 found that religious Americans were the least likely to say suicide is a moral right; the unaffiliated were the most likely to support it.

A 2018 Gallup poll disclosed that euthanasia and doctor-assisted suicide varied widely on the basis of religiosity: religious Americans were the least likely to support these options; the unaffiliated were the most likely to support them.

In 2010, the British Medical Journal found that atheist and agnostic doctors, as compared to those who are religious, were almost twice as likely to decide, by themselves, that it is proper to hasten a person’s death if the patient is very sick.

To put it differently, those who are not religious are more likely to devalue the sanctity of human life. This is not a desirable outcome for anyone, especially the vulnerable.

This all traces back to natural rights. Those who take their religion seriously are more likely to believe in natural rights: they believe all humans possess equal rights, and that they cannot be overridden on the basis of utility, or what works best overall. So when ventilators are in short supply, those who are most in need deserve to get them—we are all equal in the eyes of God. Their rights should never be subordinate to those who are the most likely to live.

Those who believe otherwise embrace a utilitarian ethics.

Atheists embrace the utilitarianism as espoused by Jeremy Bentham. The British philosopher maintained that morality was best served by providing for the greatest good for the greatest number of people. Such a philosophy advantages the powerful and the healthy—it can be used to justify slavery and euthanasia—which is why it is fundamentally an amoral ethics.

Bentham called natural rights “nonsense upon stilts.” Not surprisingly, he was an atheist. For him, the idea that innocent human life is sacred was chimerical. What counts, he believed, was serving the best interests of the majority of people, even if it comes at the expense of others.

Atheism is amoral because its ethics devolves to the individual. It’s all about me, not we. It is this kind of thinking that allows irreligious doctors to decide whether their patients should live or die. Ironically, even atheists who are sick would not want to have such a physician.

Society prospers morally when we have more religious persons, not less. This does not mean that all atheists are immoral or that all religious persons are moral. But it does mean that society, as a whole, is better off, generally speaking, when it is populated by people of faith, and not their atheist counterparts.

On May 13, the man who smeared Pope Pius XII died. Rolf Hochhuth’s 1963 play, The Deputy, is what started the lie that the pope did nothing to save Jews during the Holocaust. It was this fictional account that poisoned the minds of millions.

We learned in 2007 from a senior defector from Soviet intelligence that the play was created by communists working in the Kremlin.

After World War II, Jews from all over the United States, Europe, and Israel praised Pius for his incredible efforts to save the lives of hundreds of thousands of Jews. Indeed, he did more to help Jews than any other religious or secular leader.

Those who praised the pope, before the Hochhuth Soviet-crafted disinformation campaign, included Albert Einstein, Golda Meir, the ADL, the Synagogue Council of America, the Rabbinical Council of America, the American Jewish Committee, the World Jewish Congress, and many others. Leonard Bernstein of the New York Philharmonic was so moved that he called for a moment of silence during one of his performances when he learned the pope died in 1958.

Hochhuth is dead. We hope his lies die with him.

The assault on religious liberty quickened when dozens of international left-wing organizations recently signed a statement lecturing the U.S. State Department’s Commission on Unalienable Rights. Leading the pack are the Center for Reproductive Rights, Human Rights Watch, and the International Women’s Health Coalition.

Their opposition to religious liberty was on grand display. As usual, it’s all about sex. In their world, every time religious liberty clashes with abortion rights or the LGBT agenda, the former must bow to the latter.

The letter addressed to the Commission on Unalienable Rights says, “we urge the Commission to reject the prioritization of freedom of religion as a cloak to permit violations of the human rights of women, girls, and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people.”

The hostility to religious liberty could not be more evident. In their formulation, religious liberty is not a foundational right. No, it is a “cloak” designed to rob people of their newly discovered rights.

The fact is that religious liberty has long been recognized throughout the world as a foundational right. Therefore, it should never be put on the same moral or legal plane with reproductive or sexual rights. To do so is to devalue religious liberty. This, of course, is exactly what these organizations seek to do.

It is illuminating to note that early on in the letter, the signatories list reproductive rights as “essential to the realization of fundamental human rights, including the rights to health, life, equality, information, education, privacy, non-discrimination and protection from torture and other ill-treatment.” These sages obviously don’t see the irony in mentioning the right to life in a statement that rejects it. And, of course, religious liberty is intentionally left out of their list of “fundamental human rights.”

It has not escaped the Catholic League that many of the most prominent organizations attacking religious liberty have a history of bashing religion, especially Catholicism. Let’s begin with the three organizers.

Center for Reproductive Rights has attacked the Catholic Church with such venom that we once registered a formal complaint with the United Nations after it released its highly politicized report, “The Holy See at the United Nations: An Obstacle to Women’s Reproductive Rights.” It is funded by George Soros.

Human Rights Watch also labels the Holy See “obstructionist” for standing up for the rights of the unborn. When Filipino bishops merely stated the Church’s position on contraception and abortion, it launched an attack on them. It is funded by George Soros.

International Women’s Health Coalition went bonkers when the Commission on Unalienable Rights was launched. “Despite its innocuous name, the concept of natural rights and natural law is rooted in 13th century theology and used anti-rights actors to attack women’s and LGBTQI rights.” It noted that Mary Ann Glendon was chairing the commission, no doubt another red flag.

Much the same could be said about the other signatories. Here is a sampling.

Guttmacher Institute has consistently criticized Catholic hospitals for buying secular hospitals. It is appalled when Catholic-owned hospitals follow Catholic norms.

Human Rights Campaign opposes laws that allow a religious exemption for adoption agencies, and relentlessly opposes religious liberty whenever it clashes with the LGBT agenda.

International Planned Parenthood Federation has attacked the Catholic Church for its sex education curriculum and has sought to delegitimize the Holy See’s role at the U.N.

NARAL Pro-Choice America opposes Catholic hospitals exercising their right to buy secular entities, and has a well-documented record of anti-Catholicism dating back to its origins in the 1960s.

Catholics for Choice is an anti-Catholic front group that specializes in disseminating disinformation about the Catholic Church, especially its teaching on the sanctity of life. It is funded by George Soros.

Center for Constitutional Rights provided assistance to an anti-Catholic victims’ group when it petitioned the International Criminal Court to prosecute Pope Benedict XVI for allegedly covering up clergy sexual abuse. Its bogus campaign failed. It is funded by George Soros.

National Center for Transgender Equality opposes the conscience rights and religious freedom protections afforded by the Trump administration.

Planned Parenthood Federation of America has a long history of attacking Catholic teachings on sexuality. It also opposes Catholic faith-based initiatives. It is funded by George Soros.

Population Institute calls the Holy See an “anti-contraception gestapo” and works to undermine its work at the U.N.

In other words, these left-wing organizations have long harbored an animus against the Catholic Church. Were it not for its atheist-billionaire benefactor, George Soros, many would be struggling and some crash.
There is no other religion where rich people like Soros contribute mightily to its adversaries. The media do not report on this because many are on his side, that’s how deep the bias is. There will be no “60 Minutes” episode on Soros. PBS won’t touch him. The New York Times and the Washington Post will never expose him.

Interestingly, Soros, who is Jewish, was condemned by the ADL’s former director as anti-Semitic (the current head would never say so). And, of course, he is a committed anti-Catholic. He’s quite the bigot.