The sex abuse scandal in the Catholic Church has triggered a rash of draconian bills designed to deal with this and related matters. The states most guilty of trying to subordinate the Church to the state are Colorado, Massachusetts and New Hampshire. The Catholic League has been active in opposing the proposed laws in all three states.

In Colorado, three bills are pending that would suspend the statute of limitation for child sexual abuse lawsuits for two years; they even allow some institutions to be sued for vicarious liability. The bills, however, apply only to private entities: public schools are purposely given an exemption.

Colorado’s three bishops have spoken against these bills. Bill Donohue wrote a letter to all Colorado lawmakers supporting the bishops in an effort to derail these blatantly unfair pieces of legislation (see pp. 4-5). He asked the lawmakers to either amend these bills so that all institutions are equally covered, or to reject them as discriminatory in both intent and practice.

In Massachusetts, the House and Senate introduced bills, similar in nature, that would require religious organizations to file an annual financial statement with the state. After the Senate version passed, those opposed to this legislation organized to defeat it in the House. They did so handily by a vote of 147-3. But it took a united effort among groups across the religious spectrum to do so. For more on this issue, see p. 6.

New Hampshire is now entertaining a bill that would violate the Sacrament of Reconciliation. The sponsor of the bill, Mary Stuart Gile, maintains that any priest who learns of the sexual abuse of a child in the confessional is obligated to report the details to the authorities. We squared off against Gile in 2003 when she tried the same maneuver, and we eventually won. Now we’re at it again. See p. 6 for a more complete account.

There have been other attempts by state legislators to rein in the Church, but none have gone quite this far. At stake are moral, legal and ecclesiastical issues of the highest magnitude.

None of these proposed bills has yet to become law, and it is not likely that the courts would sustain them if they did. But nothing can be taken for granted in this hostile environment.

The Respect Life Ministry of the Oakland Diocese recently waged a pro-life PR campaign in BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) trains, but it was literally attacked by local anarchists.

One of the ads, “9 MONTHS,” called attention to the amount of time the Supreme Court allows abortions to take place. The other ad read, “The Supreme Court says you can choose: after the heart starts beating, after its arms and legs appear, after all organs are present, after the sex is apparent, after it sucks its thumb, after it responds to sounds, after it could survive outside the womb.” They ended by asking, “Have We Gone Too Far?”

Most of the ads were destroyed by the anarchists. But this didn’t stop the Oakland Diocese from replacing them. Many of the placards were covered with the most incredibly vicious anti-Catholic and obscene remarks, and some of them were torn to shreds.

In our remarks to the media, we said that “Most Americans, including those who support abortion rights, have serious reservations about abortion-on-demand. But not these people. Abortion is regarded as sacrosanct because it affirms their vision of genital liberation—every sexual act that can be performed must be performed, and none should be burdened by pregnancy or disease.”

The pro-life campaign by the Oakland diocese is part of a bigger effort sponsored by the bishops’ conference. If more dioceses followed Oakland’s lead, it would surely help to subvert the culture of death.

William A. Donohue

It’s time for some straight talk: the Catholic Church is being raped by some alleged abuse victims and their lawyers, and our side is capitulating. Moreover, the rights of the accused, namely priests, are being sacrificed on the altar of forgiveness.

Don’t get me wrong. Any priest, plumber, pediatrician or painter who violates a young person should have the book thrown at him, without exceptions. Furthermore, anyone who knowingly allows the abuse to continue—when he is invested with the authority to intervene but chooses to do nothing—should similarly be punished. But the rights that the accused are entitled to, principally the right to due process, should never be jettisoned.

In other words, when zero tolerance for abuse becomes zero rights for priests, then there is nothing to cheer about. Is it too much to ask that the rights of the accused be given as much attention as the rights of victims? We know the ACLU will offer us no relief, so if we don’t demand equal justice, who will?

We’ve been so beaten down by the scandal that many of us Catholics, clergy and laity alike, have adopted a posture that borders on masochism. “Beat us again,” we seem to be saying. Count me out. I want justice. And justice means that the guilty pay and the innocent walk. As for the innocent, it is not a noble outcome if the accused has been so degraded and assaulted by the media, lawyers and victims’ groups that he has been disabled in the process.

There’s a lot of anger among the laity over the scandal. Rightly so. But anger, however justified, does not give anyone the license to “get even” by thrashing the rights of the accused. Nor does it give Catholic lawmakers the right to “get even” by writing draconian legislation.

I have never met, nor corresponded with, Father Paul G. Seaman, but I like him. He’s got guts. Father Seaman, who is the pastor of St. Pascal Church in Dunning, Illinois, had a letter published in the Chicago Sun-Times on February 2 that was critical of Judge Anne Burke.

Judge Burke used to serve as the head of the National Review Board, the body appointed by the bishops to monitor the Church’s policy on sex abuse. She was so upset about an accused Chicago priest, who admittedly was not dealt with in the right way, that she called for the termination of rights for all priests. She tried to justify her assault on civil liberties as follows: “We understand that it is a violation of the priest’s due process—you’re innocent until proven guilty—but we’re talking about the most vulnerable people in our society and those are children.”

Notice that Judge Burke did not demand that all alleged child abusers have their rights stricken, just priests. No wonder Father Seaman said, “I would find Burke’s dismissive approach to individual rights frightening if I stood before her on a parking ticket, let alone such a serious matter.”

The “get even” mentality is nowhere more obvious than among state lawmakers, many of whom are Catholic. Our cover story provides the evidence. If lawmakers were truly interested in protecting kids from molesters, they would begin by going where the action is—the public schools and abortion clinics. But they never do.

Charol Shakeshaft, the nation’s leading student of sexual abuse of young people, estimates that the rate of molestation by public school employees is “approximately 100 times” the rate found among priests. Moreover, many astute observers of this subject have long maintained that the number of statutory rape cases that abortion counselors have knowledge of—and do nothing about—is staggering. Yet the legislators in Colorado are considering bills that would only target private institutions like the Catholic Church.

To be plain, some state lawmakers are using the scandal in the Catholic Church as an opportunity to exploit it. They are using kids as a ruse—feigning interest in child welfare when their real goal is to “get the Church.” Indeed, many of these lawmakers are mad about matters wholly unrelated to child abuse: celibacy, women priests, gay rights, sexual expression—we all know what their laundry list is. These are the prime reasons for retaliation.

So why aren’t more leaders in the Catholic Church speaking out? Because they’ve been intimidated. They don’t want to be branded as insensitive to real victims of abuse. So they cave. Worse than that, some are so beleaguered that they are acting like hostages who come to identify with their captors: they are literally working against the best interests of the Church. Tragically, they even include a prominent bishop.

The scandal has given the bigots cover, and it’s time we exposed them. It’s also time we stopped being so defensive and started speaking the truth.

By Kenneth D. Whitehead

The Greenwood Press is currently publishing a valuable series of books on “The American Religious Experience.” The books in the series are intended to be basic reference books, possibly even textbooks, on the subjects they cover. At the same time they are supposed to be informative and readable volumes for the general reader who wants to acquire a basic knowledge about the “American” religion covered in a particular volume—Mormonism, for example, or even Buddhism, or, in the present case, Catholicism as it is found in this country. The Catholic Church, of course, is today by far the largest organized religious community in America. How this position was achieved in what was originally “Protestant America” is a fascinating and compelling story in itself, and it is the subject of this very interesting book.

In selecting Catholic sociologist Joseph A. Varacalli to write the volume entitled The Catholic Experience in America, the publisher made a wise and fortunate choice. Varacalli has established his credentials on this subject matter in such previous books of his as Toward the Establishment of Liberal Catholicism in America (1983) and Bright Promise, Failed Community: Catholics and the American Public Order(2001). He teaches at the Nassau Community College in Garden City, Long Island, New York, and is director of the Center for Catholic Studies there—one of the few study centers in a secular institution devoted to the study of the Catholic Church.

In this fast-paced survey of many aspects of the Catholic Church in America, the author does something most social scientists fail to do: he constantly reminds the reader of the truth of what the Catholic Church is. In other words, while he does not neglect describing the rich immigrant history of Catholicism in America, he goes beyond the sociological. Dr. Varacalli emphasizes that the Catholic Church remains the one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic Church of the Nicene Creed—the world’s oldest and largest continuously existing institution, one which originated with the apostles of Jesus Christ and which carries on today as a worldwide community under the leadership of the Catholic bishops of the world, successors to those same apostles, in communion with the successor of the chief apostle, Peter, the bishop of Rome, the pope.

This basic truth about what the Catholic Church is, as Dr. Varacalli demonstrates, can easily get lost in an era of either widespread “dumbing down” of the faith to a lowest common denominator in an America in which some type of generic “civil religion” now so largely prevails; or an outright abandonment of supernatural faith in a thoroughly secularized America in which the original ethnically oriented and village “church-bell Catholicism” of the original immigrant groups is now often little more than a dim memory.

Even while describing the Church as a contemporary social reality in America today, Dr. Varacalli never lets the reader forget, in other words, that the Catholic Church possesses a Creed; insists upon a definite faith content proclaimed and defined by the Church’s magisterium, or teaching authority; and is not just what contemporary American Catholics might decide they would like the Church to represent or to be. This author stresses Catholic truth and Catholic doctrine to an unusual if not unique extent in a book that is still basically a historical and sociological survey of the Catholic experience in America.

Within this basic framework of a community which professes a definite faith, the author looks at the undeniable diversity within Catholicism today, including the various national and ethnic origins of American Catholics as well as the unfortunate American “nativism” that arose in reaction to the huge successive waves of Catholic immigrants—and which eventually issued in America’s still too widespread anti-Catholicism today. The author also examines the major turning points in American Catholic history, including the Baltimore provincial and plenary councils of the American bishops which so largely shaped Catholicism in America and produced such things as the Catholic school system and the Baltimore Catechism. He covers major church and state issues and the eventual election of the first Catholic president, John F. Kennedy. He does not neglect how the Church has dealt with such traditional issues as the basic rights of working people or of justice in the world, and how she is dealing today with such hot-button moral issues as birth control, abortion, homosexuality, and the biotechnological revolution.

A recurring theme in the book concerns the question of the degree to which American Catholics have remained—or should remain—loyal to Church authority, especially to that of the pope in Rome, and the degree to which American Catholics may accommodate themselves to American customs, practices, and usages without compromising or abandoning the faith.

Since the author is a sociologist, his treatment of what he calls the Catholic subculture is particularly impressive. He sees that the strength of the Church at her best has lain in her ability both to create a Catholic subculture and community into which American Catholics could be assimilated and formed; and to sustain that subculture through the creation of supporting institutions such as Catholic schools, colleges and universities, hospitals, orphanages, a Catholic press, and a diversity of Catholic associations and societies.

However, not only is Dr. Varacalli very aware that the once solid and substantial Catholic subculture in America has been seriously compromised if not jeopardized by developments in recent years; his book provides one of the best brief accounts currently in print of just how and why this jeopardy has come about—and how both external pressures and dissension within the Church have weakened the seemingly solid American Catholicism that characterized the era of Pope Pius XII. While he understands the legitimacy of Vatican Council II as a genuine ecumenical council of the Catholic Church, he both sees and documents how liberal and dissenting elements in the Church sometimes exploited the Council and the legitimate changes it mandated in order to introduce “changes” in furtherance of their own agendas.

We are living with the effects of all this still, particularly with respect to a contemporary Catholic population of whom many apparently no longer believe all the teachings of the Church as declared by the magisterium; rather, they are “cafeteria Catholics,” who pick and choose what they wish to believe. Dr. Varacalli analyzes and explains this problem in terms that the dissident Catholic sociologist, Father Andrew Greeley, has styled “communal Catholicism,” or the acceptance of many of the symbols, practices, and way of life of Catholicism without necessarily believing in the truths of the faith.

The author also sees how the widespread acceptance of the doctrinal dissent which came about in the Church, especially following the issuance by Pope Paul VI of his encyclical Humanae Vitae in 1968, has helped undermine the Catholicity of the very schools, colleges and universities, hospitals, and such that did so much to maintain the Catholic subculture in America. At the moment, many of these institutions are badly in need of re-Catholicization.

While he is respectful of legitimate Church authority on principle, especially that of the Holy Father, Dr. Varacalli is both knowledgeable and candid about some of the failures of the Church’s leadership in recent years. He believes much more could and should have been done to quell dissent and uphold authentic Catholic teaching and discipline.

Of special interest to many readers will be the author’s excellent Chapter 20 on “Historical Events before Vatican II,” and his relatively lengthy Chapter 21 on “Contemporary Issues after Vatican II”—this latter chapter being one of the better existing surveys of what has happened in and to the Catholic Church since the Council. Unlike some of the bland accounts that characterize Vatican II and the post-conciliar era as unalloyed successes for the Church, Dr. Varacalli understands that the Church has in fact been undergoing a major crisis. Better than in most accounts he understands and explains both the causes and the possible remedies for this crisis. In particular, he lauds the leadership of the late Pope John Paul II, who did so much to restore authentic Catholicism (though, needless to say, he did not do everything). Similarly, he counsels loyalty to Pope Benedict XVI as the road Catholics should continue to follow: he titles his final chapter, appropriately: “Staying the Course with Pope Benedict XVI.”

Since this book is intended to be a basic reference text, it contains a number of Appendices with valuable information on the Church in America. It is thus worth having to refer to as well as to read through. You should inquire at your public library asking for this book—if only to motivate the librarians to order the book. It is the kind of book that should be available in the library for citizens doing research on the Church or for students writing papers and such.

Kenneth D. Whitehead is the author, among other books, of One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic: The Early Church was the Catholic Church (Ignatius, 2000). He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Catholic League.

Bill Donohue sent the letter below to Colorado legislators on February 1, 2006.

On January 24, Bill Donohue appeared on Neil Cavuto’s show on the Fox News Network debating Marian Walsh, the sponsor of the Massachusetts House bill that was designed to force religious institutions to provide the government with financial data. The next day, Walsh’s bill was defeated: of the 150 lawmakers who voted, only two of Walsh’s colleagues sided with her.

Walsh wanted to require all religious organizations that have annual revenues of more than $500,000 to file annual financial reports, and to report real estate holdings to the attorney general’s office. Driving the bill was anger over rulings made by the Archdiocese of Boston to close some parishes and schools. Some of the laity felt excluded from Archbishop O’Malley’s decisions and thought that this bill would help make the archdiocese more accountable.

The major problem with the bill, aside from its dubious constitutionality, was its reach: all religious institutions were covered by the same strictures. This ignited a coalition of religious groups to protest Walsh’s bill: they knew what was at stake for them.

Rev. Dr. Diane C. Kessler, executive director of the Massachusetts Council of Churches, said it best: “We are concerned about the impropriety of using the legislative arm of government to deal with an internal conflict of one church and the dangerous precedent of the legislature getting into the business of regulating and…reforming religious institutions.” This reasoning prompted Donohue to tell Walsh that “Protestants and Jews and Muslims are standing up against this.”

Donohue also challenged Walsh and the need for the bill in the first place. After she said that her bill would force the religious organizations “to make an annual financial report,” Donohue held up a copy of the Boston Archdiocese’s report. “It’s a phony issue,” he said. “I have it right here, the annual financial report. Anybody can download it from the Internet, from the Archdiocese of Boston. Case closed.”

It is important to note that Archbishop O’Malley repeatedly said that he was not opposed to making the archdiocese’s financial report public. Indeed, the audit for 2005, soon to be released, will be the most complete detailed statement ever done. His complaint, shared by the Catholic League, was having the government mandate such a measure.

Last summer, the Catholic League opposed an initiative launched by some members of the Boston City Council to allow a referendum on the operations of the Archdiocese of Boston. Donohue said at the time that “The real purpose of this measure is to intimidate the Archdiocese of Boston by having an arm of the state whip the public into a frenzy about matters they have no constitutional business sticking their noses into.”

The New Hampshire state legislature is currently considering a bill (House Bill 1127) sponsored by Representative Mary Stuart Gile that would mandate all members of the clergy to report instances of suspected child abuse to the authorities, allowing no exceptions. The bill seeks to remove the priest-penitent privilege that has traditionally been granted by legislators.

William Donohue wrote to New Hampshire lawmakers who serve on the Children and Family Law Committee urging them to reject this initiative. In his letter of January 30, Donohue said that Gile’s remedy to the problem of child molestation “would effectively trample on the Sacrament of Reconciliation.”

In January 2003, the Catholic League publicly protested a proposed New Hampshire bill designed to break the seal of the confessional—all under the guise of protecting young people. The bill eventually lost. But now the same person who sponsored that bill is back, Mary Gile, thus assuring round two. She seems not to know when to quit.

Gile’s bill is flawed in three ways: (a) it is an unconstitutional encroachment by the state on religion, (b) it is based on the superstition that child molesters are going free because priests are shielding them from the authorities, and (c) it is premised on the fatuous notion that priests would violate the seal of the confessional before ever going to prison.

The priest-penitent privilege has been honored by the courts for over 200 years. Neither Rep. Gile, nor anyone else, has one scintilla of evidence suggesting that child abuse would decrease if what is heard in the confessional were made public. Moreover, the Sacrament of Reconciliation is conditioned on confidentiality, much like lawyer-client, doctor-patient, reporter-source relationships.

“For all these reasons,” we said in a statement to the media, “Gile’s bill is a loser, and should be shot down again.”

It was so bad that it began and ended in the same month. We’re speaking about NBC-TV’s monumental flop, “The Book of Daniel.” The show portrayed a Christian family, with an Episcopalian priest, as morally bankrupt. It died an early death not only because there is no audience for such a show, but because the writing was horrendous.

After we confirmed with an NBC affiliate producer that the network had indeed cancelled the show, we issued a news release saying, “This is good news for Christians, and bad news for those who get their jollies trying to disparage them.”

It should be known that we had two different reactions to “The Book of Daniel.” Our first reaction was critical of the show’s plot, but after we got a chance to preview, we simply decided to pan it.
Our first reaction was purely descriptive. Our news release read as follows:

“The father dabbles in drugs, the wife is a boozer, the daughter is a dope dealer, one son is a homosexual, the other son is a womanizer, the sister-in-law is a bisexual, the brother-in-law is a thief, and the father’s father is an adulterer. Just your ordinary Christian family—in the eyes of Hollywood, that is. That both the fathers in ‘The Book of Daniel’ are Episcopalian priests is no coincidence: the desire to paint this Christian family as totally dysfunctional is the work of an embittered ex-Catholic homosexual, Jack Kenny.

“A self-described ‘recovering Catholic,’ Kenny is quick to dismiss the ‘myths’ surrounding Jesus, but is far less skeptical about Buddhist teachings on reincarnation. Regarding heaven, Kenny—ever the deep thinker—opines that ‘I don’t know specifically what’s going on up there.’ It would be interesting to know how much time he has spent wondering about ‘what’s going on down there.’

“In any event, Kenny has a comrade in Aidan Quinn, the lead character who plays the Episcopalian priest: Quinn is another ex-Catholic Irishman. When asked if the TV show might offend some Catholics, Quinn lets his honesty, and his bigotry, shine through: ‘I really don’t care that much.’ Catholic viewers, by the way, are not likely to be enamored of Kenny’s treatment of a Catholic priest, especially if they’re Italian: Father Frankie has links to the mob. Kenny, by the way, says organized religion is ‘almost the same organism as the Mafia.’

“Here’s a real cultural marker: Christian groups are protesting ‘The Book of Daniel’ and the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) is encouraging its members to watch it. Not that this is altogether unusual given the way Christians, especially the clergy, are portrayed on TV and in the movies. Couple this with the almost uniformly positive portrayal of homosexuals, and the conclusion that Hollywood has an agenda is inescapable.”

The day after we issued this news release, we changed our tune. Why? Kiera McCaffrey, our director of communications, had an opportunity to preview the first two episodes. When asked by “Entertainment Tonight” what she thought of it, she replied that she “couldn’t be offended by it because it’s more moronic than anything else.”

It needs to be pointed out that our take on the show was not shared by many TV critics. For example, Salt Lake City’s Deseret Morning News called it “the best thing to hit TV this season.” The Chicago Sun-Times found it to be “well written and well-cast.” People labeled it “more entertaining than offensive.” USA Today branded it “wildly entertaining and superbly cast.” The Detroit Free Press bragged about the “fine cast [and] clever writing.” Entertainment Weekly said it was “refreshingly intelligent.” And we said it was moronic.

In an interview with Broadcasting & Cable, Jack Kenny, the show’s writer and producer, was asked whether NBC Entertainment President Kevin Reilly was going to stand by the show. “He [Reilly] has expressed to me complete faith in the show,” said Kenny. Indeed, the day before NBC canned the show, Reilly told reporters that “the network stands behind its decision to air” the show. So much for loyalty.

Anyway, we got what we wanted.

On the cover of the February 9 Rolling Stone magazine was a picture of hip-hop artist Kanye West wearing a crown of thorns with “blood” streaming down his face. The article, “The Passion of Kanye West,” revealed the Grammy winner’s personal reflections on a range of subjects.

Our official take on this issue caught many in the media off-guard. Here is what Bill Donohue said:
“At first glance, it appears that both Kanye West and Rolling Stone are equally culpable of misappropriating Catholic iconography. But on closer inspection, it looks like Rolling Stone deserves the lion’s share of the blame.

“West is a young rapper who is hard to peg. On the one hand, he eschews gangsta rap and likes to sing lyrics like, ‘They say you can rap about anything except Jesus/That means guns, sex, lies, videotapes/But if I talk about God, my record won’t get played.’ On the other hand, he is capable of saying plainly foolish things, e.g., the government is responsible for the spread of AIDS among blacks and gays.

“If it is true that West is a morally confused black young man, it is also true that Rolling Stone is staffed by morally challenged white veterans: they are to West what white boxing agents in the 20th century were to black boxers—rip-off artists. It is not for nothing that West poses as a Christ-like figure on a magazine geared to whites. To top it off, the white readership is bound to get a kick out of knowing that the ‘The Passion of Kanye West’ is the rapper’s self-confessed passion for pornography.

“Is Rolling Stone as racist as it is anti-Catholic? Hard to say, but one thing’s for sure: it will only be offended by the former charge.”

After Donohue’s comments were picked up by the media, none other than Howard Stern chimed in on the subject. He basically agreed with Donohue’s charge of racism: in 1997, a picture of Stern that was almost identical to the one depicting West as Jesus was submitted to Rolling Stone for a cover shot, but they rejected it. Why, then, did the magazine find West as a Christ-like figure acceptable, but not Stern?

CNN gave Donohue plenty of air time to voice his position, as did other media outlets.

The U.S. Court of Appeals recently ruled that the New York City public schools are allowed to ban nativity scenes during Christmas while simultaneously allowing the display of menorahs. The Catholic League arranged for a plaintiff in this case, Andrea Skoros and her children, and the Thomas More Law Center supplied the lawyers. Bill Donohue said that he wasn’t unhappy because it has been his goal all along to have the U.S. Supreme Court make the final—and we expect favorable—decision on this issue. The case is surely going to reach them eventually.