This is the article that appeared in the June 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.

In 2021, Disney stock was trading at close to $200. Recently it announced it is trading at $105. It was the worst trading day in 18 months; shares were down almost 10 percent.

Last year, the Catholic League released a documentary, “Walt’s Disenchanted Kingdom,” that detailed the spike in LGBT-friendly movies aimed at young people. Available on Amazon, YouTube, Rumble and our website, it has been seen by millions. We are glad to play a role in alerting the public to Disney’s morally debased agenda.

While Disney CEO Bob Iger claims to have gotten the message, the company has a long way to go to get back on track.

GLAAD is a gay organization that monitors the entertainment industry for gay-friendly fare. In its last report, it noted that of the 59 films released by Disney in 2022, 24 of them were “LGBT inclusive.” Walt Disney Studios was responsible for 7 of them; Disney+ did 5; and Hulu rolled out 12.

GLAAD listed its six favorites. Here is a quick look at why GLAAD is so happy with them.

Lightyear features a female commanding officer who gets engaged to her girlfriend. The lesbians marry and manage to raise a family (not of their own doing, of course).

Strange World casts two boys who have a crush on each other, something which is portrayed as perfectly acceptable by family members. GLAAD was ecstatic. “Featuring a queer co-lead in an animated Disney film marketed to children and families is a commendable first step toward ever-increasing inclusion, and a young gay man of color leading Strange World makes it all the more ground-breaking.”

Fire Island offers a “unique queer” perspective about Asian homosexuals. It revolves around two Asian men who “crave different kinds of love.” Everyone knows what that means. One poor soul, Luke, is “nonconsensually filmed during sex,” meaning the chap was raped. GLAAD accurately describes the flick as “a movie by queer people for queer people.” Why queers enjoy male rape scenes was not explained.

Crush is about a gal who joins the track team—not because she wants to compete—because she wants to hit on one of the girls. As luck would have it, she subsequently falls for the gal’s sister, a self-professed bisexual. GLAAD says, “We hope to see more queer teen romantic comedies follow Crush’s lead.”

Zombies 3, the third in a series, introduces aliens to a high school. One of the students is “nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns.” That alone is worth the price of admission.

Better Nate Than Ever features a girl who is attracted to a guy, only to learn that the guy admits that he’s “not like that.” GLAAD shows its true colors when it objects to the scene where the gal says her would-be boy friend is cool “no matter who he chooses to love.” GLAAD fumes that “the word ‘chooses’ is the wrong verbiage for talking about sexuality, as it is not a choice.” Their anger is revealing.

If Disney is to recoup, Iger will have to listen to what the people want. A recent Rasmussen poll found that 71 percent of American adults agree with the statement, “Disney should return to wholesome programming and allow parents to decide when their children are taught about sexuality.”

Disney is still reeling because it still wants to manipulate children, selling the pernicious idea that it is normal for young people to want to switch to the other sex. It is not. It cannot be done. And it is nothing less than child abuse.

This is the article that appeared in the June 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.

Anti-Catholics are famous for saying the Catholic Church is anti-science. Yet it is well acknowledged that the role played by the Catholic Church in the making of the scientific revolution was central. Today, those who are profoundly anti-science are militant secularists, many of whom, ironically, work in higher education and in the medical profession.

Scientists like Copernicus, Boyle, Linnaeus, Faraday, Kelvin, Rutherford and Kepler were responsible for the origins of modern science. As David Klinghoffer notes, they were “overwhelmingly religious.” To be specific, they sought to understand God through his creation.

This doesn’t stop Catholic critics from pointing to Galileo as the classic example of the anti-science legacy of the Catholic Church.

But Galileo did not get into trouble because of his ideas; after all, his ideas were taken from a priest, Copernicus, who was never punished. Indeed, Father Roger Boscovich continued to explore Copernican ideas at the same time that Galileo was charged with heresy, without attracting a bit of opposition. Had Galileo not presented his hypothesis as fact—that was the heresy—he would have escaped trouble.

Contrary to the mythology, Galileo never spent a single day in prison. Nor was he tortured. In fact, he spent his time under “house arrest” in an apartment in a Vatican palace, with a servant. More important, his work was initially praised by the Catholic Church: Pope Urban VIII bestowed on him many gifts and medals. A century later all of Galileo’s works were published, and in 1741 Pope Benedict XIV granted him an imprimatur.

Today many of those who follow science are being punished for doing so. Just consider what is happening to students and professors who insist that sex is binary. They are being stigmatized, if not silenced altogether, by the masters of the cancel culture.

When a 67-year-old woman found someone “with a penis” grooming himself next to a young girl in a Planet Fitness ladies’ locker room in Fairbanks, Alaska, she took a photo of him to prove her experience. Those who run the gym said he had every right to be there: he identified as a woman, so that was that. She was banned from ever entering again.

When a man walked around totally naked in a Planet Fitness ladies’ locker room in North Carolina, he was arrested for indecent exposure. But not because the gym is unalterably opposed to such behavior—they were upset because he didn’t tell them in advance that he believes he is a woman. In other words, indecent exposure is not indecent if the pervert with male genitalia says he is a woman.

“Brittney Griner and Her Wife Are Expecting Their First Child.” That is the headline published by “Today” on the famous woman basketball player and her girlfriend.

In the Planet Fitness examples, and in the “Today” instance, it is painfully obvious that we are living in a surreal world, one where politics has thrown science overboard.

A man can say that he is a woman—or a worm for that matter—but when self-identification contradicts reality, such declarations are palpably false. To be explicit, there is no such thing as a transgender person. It is a fiction. We are either male or female (intersex persons are not a third sex). Planet Fitness can rely on politics, e.g., the ideology of transgenderism, but in doing so it is contradicting science.

Similarly, it is a legal fiction to say that two people of the same sex can marry. Marriage is a universal institution designed to channel the sex drive of men and women in a socially responsible way. An important function of marriage is the possibility of the procreation of children; they need a stable and patterned environment in which to grow.

In other words, the most important cell in society, the family, is integrally tied to the institution of marriage. They are both the reserve of one man and one woman, and no amount of ideological protestation matters.

Brittany and her lover are denied by nature from having a family. They can rent a womb, acquire someone else’s baby, or adopt the children of some other couple, but they cannot create their own offspring. That’s the way nature, and nature’s God, work.

Science is not based on whim or fancy. It is based on laws that reflect the empirical reality of nature.

In a sane society, those who teach that the sexes are interchangeable, and that two people of the same sex can realistically marry and have a baby, should be fired for misrepresenting science. They are more akin to the devotees of the Flat Earth Society than they are to serious scholars.

To those who say such a position is lacking in compassion for those who disagree with this analysis, it needs to be said that when compassion conflicts with truth, it needs to take a back seat.

It is regrettable, yet understandable, that those who work in higher education and in the medical profession have witnessed an attrition in the prestige they once enjoyed. They alone are to blame and they alone can fix it. Rediscovering the verities of science is a good place to start.

This is the article that appeared in the June 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.

Just over a week before the 2020 election, vice-presidential candidate Kamala Harris was interviewed by Harper’s Bazaar. “My message to the many women who will continue to break barriers and be ‘firsts’ in their fields is don’t give up, believe in yourself, and let your talent lead you.”

Recently, she spoke before an Asian American organization, saying, “We have to know that sometimes people will open the door for you and leave it open. Sometimes they won’t, and then you need to kick that f**king door down.” She then descended into her proverbial cackle.

What changed? The Kamala of 2020 spoke eloquently to women, encouraging them to “break barriers.” Now she’s using an obscenity to make the same point. Why the need to be low class?

Kamala’s learned a lot from her boss. In 2020, Joe Biden, who, like Trump, is known to be crude, told a Detroit steel worker, “You’re full of s**t.” The presidential candidate then put his hand in the face of a woman aide who tried to end the confrontation, telling her, “Hush! Hush!”

In his inaugural address, Biden said, “We can treat each other with dignity and respect.” He implored Americans to “Show respect to one another.” He also spoke about what defines us as Americans, listing “Dignity” and “Respect.”

When athletes get into a brawl, or when things get crazy in a pub, obscenities are often let loose. But we don’t expect the sitting vice president to intentionally drop the “F-word.”

When Kamala assumed office there were no end to the stories about her being a role model, especially for women and girls. She is aware of her status. She knows that what she says has an effect on them. But apparently she doesn’t care—she’s now contributing to the coarseness of our culture.

Perhaps this assessment is too harsh. There is reason to believe that Kamala doesn’t know what the word “culture” is.

Last year, she spoke at the Essence Festival of Culture. She described what culture means to her.

“Culture is—it is a reflection of our moment and our time. Right? And present culture is the way we express how we’re feeling about the moment and we should always find times to express how we feel about the moment. That is a reflection of joy. Because, you know…it comes in the morning. We have to find ways to also express the way we feel about the moment in terms of just having language and a connection to how people are experiencing life. And I think about it in that way, too.”

Midway through her statement she broke into uncontrollable laughter.

Kamala may be the only person on earth who believes that culture “comes in the morning.” We thought it was the sun. And if it “comes in the morning,” where does it go at night?

Kamala may not know how to define culture, but that is no excuse for corrupting it. She has won the race to the bottom.

This is the article that appeared in the June 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.

Democrats in many parts of the country have endorsed the legalization of marijuana, and the Biden administration is pushing hard to deemphasize its negative effects. Ironically, the Biden team is hell bent on banning menthol cigarettes. From a public health perspective, none of this makes any sense.

What gives? Al Sharpton’s National Action Network, the NAACP and the ACLU don’t want a ban on menthol cigarettes. Why? To these activists, every issue, no matter how trivial, is seen through a racial lens. Sharpton said it best. “A menthol ban would severely target and harm African American smokers, who overwhelmingly prefer menthol cigarettes.”

Sharpton did not address the health effects of smoking cigarettes or marijuana—his mind is exclusively fixated on the racial dimension. So is the Biden administration. Interestingly, it goes the other way, maintaining that because menthol use is popular with blacks, that smacks of racism. The one thing they agree on is that racism is everywhere.

For years conservatives such as William F. Buckley, Jr. have been telling us that drug legalization will put an end to the black market. The data prove them wrong. When drugs are plentiful, more people will try them, including the very young, and when government-approved drugs are regarded as too restrictive—in terms of potency, quantity, availability and new substances—black market profiteers move in for the kill. Nothing will ever stop this barely underground occupation.

Moreover, when drugs are legalized, social disorder follows. Truancy, street crimes and morally destitute acts spike. We should have learned by now: Cultivating virtue and citizenship is never easy—destroying it is.

But to those who are obsessed with race, none of this matters. They are the true regressives, having learned nothing about the frailty of the human condition.

This is the article that appeared in the June 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 Diocese of Brooklyn, ably led by Bishop Robert J. Brennan, has entered into an agreement with the Office of New York State Attorney General Letitia James regarding the diocese’s two-decade child protection policy. Both organizations have issued a press release on this matter. But there are instances where the Office of the Attorney General’s (OAG) account misrepresents the terms of the agreement that were reached with the Diocese of Brooklyn (DB); in some instances, existing Diocesan policies are not properly noted by OAG.

• OAG says the Diocese “failed to consistently comply with its own policies and procedures for responding to sexual abuse.”

DB notes that the agreement specified that the Diocese’s “policies and procedures were significant and improved the Diocese’s response to sexual abuse.”

• OAG claims “The Diocese did not have policies in place to ensure a prompt and thorough response to allegations of sexual abuse or misconduct.”

DB says the agreement admitted that “in most cases, the Diocese timely referred the Abuse Allegations to the Diocesan Review Board and hired an independent investigator to investigate the charges.”

• OAG argues that “the Diocese will also post online a confidential portal and telephone number for submitting complaints.”

Breaking News: The Diocese has had such a phone number for 20 years.

• OAG opines that “The Diocese will also refer all complaints it receives to law enforcement.”

Hello! Unlike other religious and secular institutions—which are never scrutinized—the Diocese has been doing this for a very long time.

• OAG contends that “The agreement requires the Diocese to take significant action to prevent and address allegations of clergy sexual abuse” and make reforms such as “Installing an independent, secular monitor who will oversee the Diocese’s compliance with policies and procedures….”
Fact Check: It was the Diocese which proposed the appointment of an independent third party to monitor compliance.

Why OAG misrepresented the Brooklyn Diocese’s response to these issues is unknown. But the public, and state lawmakers, need to know the truth. It is important for the state not to feed anti-Catholicism, and one way to avoid doing that is to accurately report interactions with Catholic officials.
As Bill Donohue recounts in his book, The Truth about Clergy Sexual Abuse: Clarifying the Facts and the Causes, there is no institution in the nation that has a better record in combating the sexual abuse of minors today than the Catholic Church. This is not open to debate: the data are conclusive. And this has been true for decades.
The heyday of the scandal was between 1965 and 1985. Current reports are typically about old cases. The fact of the matter is that almost all the offending priests are either dead or have been kicked out of ministry. To suggest otherwise is egregiously unjust.

We contacted Attorney General Letitia James and all members of the New York State legislature.

This is the article that appeared in the June 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.

President Biden showed his bigoted side on April 23 when he spoke in Tampa, Florida about the glory of abortion. It wasn’t abortion, per se, that got him going—it was those whom he identified as pro-life that set him off.

To be specific, he railed against Donald Trump’s pro-life stance, saying the former president made “a political deal” with “the evangelical base of the Republican Party to look past his moral and character flaws.”

Fifty percent of all the money raised by the Democrats comes from Jews. Yet no one is going to say that Biden made a “political deal” with “the Jewish base of the Democratic Party to look past his cognitive flaws.”

Biden refuses to condemn the anti-Jewish rhetoric stemming from Muslims in Dearborn, Michigan. Yet no one is going to say that he made a “political deal” with “the Muslim base of the Democratic Party to look past his cognitive flaws.”

Notice that Biden’s comment in Tampa wasn’t about Protestants in general. He focused exclusively on evangelicals, and that is because to take a swipe at all Protestants would be to slam the mainline denominations; they are mostly in the pro-abortion camp. He chose a subset of Protestants who are known for their pro-life convictions.

Biden intentionally red-flagged evangelicals, knowing it would appeal to his bigoted base (survey data also show that Democrats do not think highly of Catholics, either). This was a classic example of religious baiting, and it should be condemned by everyone.

As the election year progresses, look for Biden to continue with this demagogic strategy. The “devout Catholic” has no problem manipulating religion to serve his militantly secular agenda.