Last spring, Bill Donohue was contacted by Brent Bozell’s Media Research Center to sign a petition protesting a new ABC sitcom, “The Real O’Neals.” Though the show was not slated to air until this year, from what we could learn, it was clear that Catholics would be treated unfairly. After all, it was loosely based on the life of an Irish ex-Catholic gay activist who hates Catholicism, Dan Savage. Donohue signed the petition asking ABC, which is owned by Disney, to cancel the show.

ABC refused to give in: The show debuts March 8. We, too, refused to give in—we submitted an ad in the New York Times, written by Donohue, to alert the public and register our outrage. The first full-page ad was rejected because of its controversial nature, so we settled for an op-ed page ad instead.

Dan Savage is no ordinary bigot: he is one of the most hateful, mean-spirited persons in public life. We printed some of his most choice obscenities—aimed at Catholic leaders and priests—in the initial ad. But we had to abide by the house rules of the New York Times: the newspaper found that even with asterisks substituted for letters, the ad was still too racy. So we ran an ad that described what Savage has said and directed readers to our website to read the original version.

Savage is also one of the executive producers of this show. We know, as does Disney and ABC, what he thinks about the Catholic Church. That they would even consider basing a show on his life is mindboggling enough, never mind giving him a hand in its production.

ABC has won awards from the gay community for its show “Modern Family.” It has won awards from the African-American community for “Black-ish.” It has gone out of its way to invite Asian American elites to offer their advice on how to stage “Fresh Off the Boat,” a show about Asian families. But when it comes to Catholics, ABC gives us Dan Savage.

We cannot alter the plans to go ahead with “The Real O’Neals.” But we can act as a deterrent to future shows that disparage Catholics, whether they be on ABC or some other network. Unless there is some real pushback from the Catholic League, it is likely that Hollywood will continue to mock us. Though it is hard to shame the Tinseltown crowd, they still don’t like getting bad PR.

We’ll provide updates to this story as it unfolds, and we will reprint the ad in the next edition of Catalyst.

The Doritos Super Bowl ad that showed an ultrasound picture of a baby carried by the baby’s mother was condemned by the pro-abortion group, NARAL, for “humanizing the fetus.” It did just that. What else could it have done?

As Scottish professor Malcolm Nicolson has said, ultrasound has a “humanizing effect” that is so powerful that some women report not feeling pregnant until they’ve seen the pictures. He is co-author of an important book on the subject.

Anti-women feminists such as Allison Benedikt also acknowledge the effects of this technology. In a Salon article in 2012, she lashed out at pregnant women who were sharing pictures of their unborn babies on Facebook. She exclaimed that the more women share these pictures, “the harder it will be to deny that they are people.” She is exactly right: When photos of humans are shared, their humanity is confirmed.

Similarly, in 2007, author Melody Rose published a pro-abortion book wherein she decried the way “recent developments in imaging technique certainly have facilitated a reliance on powerful pictures that humanize the fetus in a way not possible two decades ago.” Imagine how human these humans will look two decades from now!

In 1994, the great English historian Paul Johnson, author of Modern Times, compared abortion to slavery. He noted that advances in medical technology have had a dramatic effect. “The fetus is being humanized,” he said, “just as the slave was humanized.” That’s what worries NARAL.

About a year ago, I was asked by a staffer for Tom Monaghan (of Domino’s Pizza fame) to speak at the 2016 Legatus conference. He was upset that Catholics are too complacent; he wanted me to address why. Legatus, founded by Tom, is an organization of Catholic business elites, many of whom are CEOs. I was only too happy to oblige. At the end of January, I gave my talk in Orlando. I will touch on some of the highlights, not having enough space to do more.

Father Virgil Blum, S.J., who founded the Catholic League in 1973, often said that Catholics were eunuchs. I would agree, though I believe we have made some progress. The question is why. Why are we so complacent?

The short answer is: it’s because we’ve made it. Having endured discrimination from the Founding to the mid-twentieth century, Catholics finally broke through and became assimilated. That was a victory, but it was not without a price.

When the United States was founded, Catholics were looked upon with skepticism, if not disdain. John Jay, our first Supreme Court Chief Justice, didn’t trust Catholics. Like Milton and John Locke before him, he saw Catholics as disloyal—their primary allegiance, they contended, was to Rome.

The dominant WASP establishment did not look kindly on Catholics. Catholic kids understood this as well as anyone: they were forced to read the Protestant bible in the public schools; some were assigned Irish Heart, a book that denigrated the pope and Irish Catholics. When Irish and German immigrants came over in large numbers in the 1830s and 1840s, things got worse.

One person who had had it with the bigotry was the first bishop of New York, John “Dagger” Hughes. He earned his nickname because he didn’t take any guff from the bigots. Indeed, when anti-Catholic thugs threatened to come after Catholics in the 1840s—they had already ransacked his residence—he told the Catholic masses to arm themselves and stand guard outside the churches. They did.

Given the anti-Catholicism that marked the public schools, Bishop Hughes pushed for public monies for Catholic schools. When he was turned down, he threw down the gauntlet and implored Catholics to fund their own schools. That was the start of parochial education; the schools were founded as a reaction to discrimination.

The bigots kept fighting Catholics. The Ku Klux Klan, we should remember, was founded after the Civil War as a terrorist organization that targeted blacks, Jews, and Catholics. In some parts of the country, Catholics were the number-one target. Indeed, in Oregon in the 1920s, the Klan tried to force every Catholic school to close; a bill was drafted to mandate that all children attend public schools.

By the 1930s, Catholics almost gave up seeking assimilation. They founded parallel institutions: this was the start of Catholic lawyers, doctors, social scientists, writers, educators, poets—every professional group—founding their own organizations. It worked. Not only did they succeed economically, the WASP elite took note of their achievements. It laid the groundwork for the heyday of Catholicism, the 1950s.

When John Kennedy was elected in 1960, it signaled the end of rampant discrimination against Catholic men and women. But it also signaled the beginning of a new wave of anti-Catholicism: defamation against the Church.

The 1960s witnessed tremendous changes outside and inside the Church. Some were long needed, such as civil rights for African Americans. But on the cultural front, we were hit with a tidal wave of radical individualism; it hasn’t stopped yet. Inside the Church, the social effects of Vatican II led to an exodus of nuns and priests; too many sisters who stayed shed their habits, and some priests evcn shed their vows.

What the dominant culture and Catholic institutions had in common in the 1960s was the relaxation of norms. Moral relativism reigned—it still does. Bad as these forces were, it was the acceptance of Catholics by the Protestant establishment that led them to let down their guard.

Adding to the assimilation “victory” was affluence. The 1960s saw a burst of affluence. To be sure, earning a middle-class station in life is certainly a good thing, but when it makes us too comfortable, we tend to shut ourselves out from anything that doesn’t directly affect us. So when the institutional Church is being defamed, we often look askance, concluding that Father Murphy was best suited to deal with such offenses. In short, affluence breeds complacency.

“Making it,” then, is a double-edged sword. Catholics have made it by climbing the economic ladder, but in the process they lost their master status—they are no longer Catholics first. Once the outsider, we have become the consummate insider.

Here’s the rub: our culture has become increasingly debased, and needs to be changed, but Catholics have gone limp. That is one good reason why the Catholic League exists—we act as a catalyst to mobilize the faithful, imploring them to shrug off their complacency and get involved. There is too much at stake to take a passive stance.

Robert Royal

Anti-Catholicism in America stems from many sources. Historically, of course, this predominantly Protestant nation had a built-in prejudice against Catholics, on theological grounds. But there were many other factors as well. Our mostly British early Americans also resented it when large waves of immigrants—Irish, German, Polish, Italian, and many others who were largely Catholic—began to dominate the social and political landscape in the major Eastern cities, Chicago, and elsewhere. During the same period, Catholics also became prominent in business, society, and culture, so much so that the American establishment had to come to terms, somewhat reluctantly, with the presence of what it had earlier regarded as a foreign faith, with divided loyalties.

That’s pretty much where things stood until the mid-1960s when a new factor entered into the equation. It’s hardly a secret that the moral and cultural revolution associated with “the Sixties” moved in direct opposition not only to traditional Catholicism; it abandoned the morals, and often the faith, of mainline Protestantism as well. There had been a liberal Christianity in America and Europe for several decades that had tried to reduce Christianity to a vaguely spiritual inspiration with uncertain moral content, but nothing like this. These developments put in doubt the very basis of what counted as “Christianity,” which now seemed reduced to essentially two commandments: “judge not” and “tolerance” of what all Christian groups had earlier thought intolerable, especially with regard to sex.

In order to make this revolution plausible, the old ways had to be redefined. A group of Protestant leaders centered around the Princeton Theological Seminary had earlier developed what they called Christian “Fundamentals” against the very liberal theology that would eventually lead to quite novel forms of faith and morals. They happily called themselves fundamentalists, thinking they could defend a kind of Mere Christianity, as C. S. Lewis later called his own efforts in this vein. But after the 1960s revolution, the term “fundamentalist” was used much more widely by those who were not part of the movement. It became—and still is today—intended to be a term of abuse, and today anyone who adheres to what were common faith and morals is very likely at some point to hear him or herself described as a fundamentalist.

This has also become an extremely useful stick to beat Catholics, “traditional” Catholics as we’re now forced to say, as if the rich Catholic tradition of philosophy, theology, scripture studies, magisterial teaching, art, architecture, poetry, music, and liturgy counts for nothing. Primarily because of its sexual mores, the Catholic Church, too—at last in the perspective of popular culture and no small part of the media, the academy, the political system—is nothing other than a “medieval” holdover, which is to say that for purposes of public discourse Catholics can be dismissed in just the same way as the new national and international elite dismiss rednecks from the American South and traditional believers in Africa, Latin America, Asia, and the Southern Hemisphere generally.

   It was not always so. I wrote my latest book A Deeper Vision: The Catholic Intellectual Tradition in the Twentieth Century (Ignatius Press) to document how utterly wrong that view is. At least for the first two-thirds of the twentieth century—and I’d argue in the papacies of St. John Paul II and Benedict XVI after the great disruption of the 1960s—the Church gave birth to and nourished a dazzling group of philosophers, theologians, novelists, poets, thinkers of all kinds. And they were appreciated and taught at some of the most prestigious universities in the world. Current secular culture knows little of this because it cannot see over the Iron Curtain of sexual license that it has erected, as if real Christianity never got going until 1968. That is only to be expected. But it’s quite sad that even few Catholics know much about this extraordinarily rich cultural period in their own tradition. Hence, my effort to offer this readable, accessible survey.

Let’s be clear, the great Catholic tradition is not restricted merely to matters of sex or abstract ideas, important as both are. One of the telling characteristics that I recount in my book was how urgent Catholicism seemed to everyday life for many people in the twentieth century, sunk as they were in what seemed the inescapable and meaningless world of scientific materialism and a philosophical nihilism that was slowly undermining all traditions.

Jacques Maritain, for example, who some Catholics will know went on to become the most influential Catholic philosopher of the twentieth century, felt these twin threats in his very bones. In 1901, he and his future wife Raïssa (a Jewish refugee from Russia, later a poet and mystical writer) were walking in the Jardin des plantes in Paris. They were both studying science at the University of Paris, and the vision of the world that science presented was so depressing that they decided they would kill themselves if they couldn’t find something more worthy to live for.

They did, almost by direct divine guidance, through a series of personal encounters with figures like Leon Bloy, Charles Péguy, Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, and others. It’s important to understand what Catholicism brought to people like the Maritains – and there were many such in the twentieth century – because several of the things they found most bleak about the scientific materialism of their day are still with us, if in a somewhat different form.

To begin with, what is a human person, that odd being that politicians, celebrities, media types claim we must “respect” and “accept,” but with no notion as to why, other than the vestiges of what was once widespread Christian belief? The Judaeo-Christian values stemming from the very first pages of the Book of Genesis give us clear reasons why the person is something unique— namely that God made us in His own image and likeness, male and female. And as the Bible tells us later, knew us in the womb even before we were born. The human person, as Maritain and others argued has intrinsic dignity and worth—if we see how we are connected to the source of all goodness and truth. Without belief in that divine connection, as we now see in the disrespect shown to children in the womb, those near the end of life, and many vulnerable beings in between, the human person is just another animal to be managed for domestic purposes.

The public connection here is not accidental, and was evident quite early to the great modern Catholic philosophers and theologians as well. The human person made in the image and likeness of God has a mind that can understand the good and the true, and a freedom of the will that enables us to embrace and follow them both. The whole modern democratic order, as the Declaration of Independence asserted, depends on our recognizing that “men have been endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights.”

Atheist regimes, such as Communism, saw things quite differently; instead of dignity and respect towards every individual, they put all value in the collective, which very soon led to high body counts as people began to conflict with the implacable dictates of the Party. Something similar occurred with Fascism and Nazism. Those murderous movements found value in the Volk or “the people,” and made the state the embodiment of all value. The very term “totalitarian” was invented by Benito Mussolini—and he did not mean it as a term of criticism but a claim for political totality: “everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.” It was no surprise that he and Hitler sought to intimidate and marginalize one of the few institutions capable of standing up to the totalitarian state: the Catholic Church.

Communism and Fascism alike were reacting to what they regarded as the disorder of excessive individualism in the democracies—a problem, but not nearly as dangerous as the misguided remedies these movements proposed.

It was out of these modern disorders, which led to tens of millions of corpses in the Gulags, concentration camps, political prisons—not counting the wars to which they gave rise—that people like the Maritains developed notions such as Christian Democracy. Jacques was one of the major architects of CD parties, which were important in combating all forms of political tyranny, but especially Fascism and post-WWII Euro-Communism. He was also instrumental in writing the U. N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which—whatever the subsequent shortcomings of the U.N.—enshrined some common understandings of what human beings are and how they must be treated.

I mention all these real-world consequences of modern Catholic thought because they are an often-ignored dimension of the twentieth century, which cannot be properly understood without the role Catholicism played in responding to various crises in Western societies. As the great historian Christopher Dawson was perhaps the first to recognize, the West entered into a general cultural crisis in the twentieth century, and it needs the global remedy that only an institution like the Church can provide.

But it’s also important for us today to realize that there is a vital and specific content to Catholicism without which our world is headed for renewed woes. Many people today misunderstand Pope Francis’ emphasis on mercy, for example, as if it simply makes reflection on sin and evil irrelevant in a fuzzy forgetfulness of the past. But as he’s said in his recent book The Name of God is Mercy: “The Church condemns sin because it has to relay the truth, ‘This is a sin.’ But at the same time it embraces the sinner who recognizes himself as such, it welcomes him, it speaks to him of the infinite mercy of God.” [emphases added]

His image of the Church as a kind of “field hospital” in an ongoing spiritual battleground has captured the world’s attention. This is a useful image—if we understand it properly. And the way to understand it best is to familiarize ourselves with how some holy and brilliant modern Catholic people have tried to address our current difficulties utilizing the riches of the Catholic tradition. Without that developed knowledge and wisdom, the Church would be like a doctor with a good bedside manner who knows no medicine. He can hold your hand and comfort you, but he can’t do what a real doctor is supposed to do: cure you.

We have tremendous resources in modern Catholicism that are being neglected, even as they are most needed in our troubled twenty-first century. We need to get to know some of our great brothers and sisters in the faith—not only the Maritains, but figures like Edith Stein, Joseph Pieper, Henri de Lubac, Christopher Dawson, Alasdair MacIntyre, Elizabeth Anscombe, Karol Wojtyla, Joseph Ratzinger, and many, many more. That’s why I wrote my book. If we don’t take advantage of the wisdom and insight they have to offer, then we risk becoming mere Catholic “Fundamentalists.”

Robert Royal is the founder and president of the Faith & Reason Institute in Washington, DC and is a member of the Catholic League Board of Advisors.

A few weeks ago, Donald Trump went on a tear at Liberty University. “We’re going to protect Christianity,” he said. This needs to be done because “Christianity is under siege.” He noted that in Syria, “if you’re Christian, they’re chopping heads, they’re under siege!”

Aside from addressing the “War on Christmas,” all of Trump’s references to protecting Christianity were to conditions in the Middle East. He could have said more about threats to Christianity at home, beginning with the Obama administration’s Health and Human Services mandate. Attempts by the federal government to redefine what constitutes a Catholic entity are pernicious, and so are efforts to force them to assent to healthcare plans that fund abortion-inducing drugs.

Virtually all the presidential candidates understand that Christianity is endangered in the Middle East, but few have noted that it is being trashed at home. In the schools, the multicultural curriculum frequently shines a negative light on Christianity (while elevating Islam). On television and in the movies, Christianity is more often denigrated than respected. In the arts, depictions of Christianity are too often crude and morally debased. Moreover, radical secularism is in high gear among activist organizations seeking to neuter Christianity’s influence on our culture. Regrettably, the courts have shown a propensity to favor establishment clause considerations over religious liberty interests. And so on.

Is Trump serious about his commitment to religious liberty? Who knows? He can survive criticism over his Corinthians misstatement (it’s Second Corinthians, not Two Corinthians), but his comments on forgiveness are more important. NPR has reported that last year Trump told Iowa evangelicals “he had never asked God for forgiveness…and he repeated that Sunday on CNN.” Wrong. He said on CNN, “I don’t like to have to ask for forgiveness.” This is profoundly different from what NPR said. In fact, even last year he commented, “I am not sure I have” asked God for forgiveness. In short, more spin from a hostile media.

On December 18, 2011, Donald Trump’s national spokeswoman, Katrina Pierson sent the following tweet:

“Just saw a commercial from Catholic Church stating that Catholic Church was started by Jesus. I bet they believe that too.”

No one makes a comment like this without harboring an animus against Catholicism. It would be instructive to learn more about Pierson’s thoughts on the subject. Perhaps she can share them with us.

In the meantime, Pierson needs to apologize to Catholics for making such a snide remark. We would also like to hear assurances from Donald Trump that he will not tolerate anti-Catholicism in his campaign.

The Catholic League never condemns anyone for expressing disagreement, in a reasonable manner, with a public policy position taken by the Catholic Church or a Church leader. Thus we have no reason to condemn Donald Trump for simply expressing his disagreement with Pope Francis on the issue of immigration.

Yet we have the spectacle of Niall O’Dowd, a chronic Catholic-basher, labeling Trump’s remarks “anti-Catholic rhetoric.” This is the same Niall O’Dowd who has repeatedly used his Irish Central website and other media platforms to attack the Catholic Church, its hierarchy and its teachings. He is also a strong backer of Hillary Clinton.

O’Dowd has gone out of his way to support Quinnipiac University President John Lahey’s efforts to detach the New York City St. Patrick’s Day Parade from its Catholic heritage, falsely claiming that the parade had “banned gays” from marching. He has labeled the Catholic Church “too conservative and intrusive in its teachings,” and his writings, publications and interviews over the years have been filled with similarly disparaging and snarky comments about the Church. He accused Boston Cardinal Sean O’Malley of “insulting the Irish” because O’Malley boycotted an address by Ireland’s pro-abortion prime minister. And he lectured Rhode Island Bishop Thomas Tobin for “treading on dangerous turf” because the bishop had called Catholic Congressman Patrick Kennedy to task for his support of abortion.

Agree or disagree with Trump on immigration. But please spare us the selective indignation of professional Catholic-bashers like O’Dowd who suddenly “get religion” when it becomes politically expedient.

The following article by Bill Donohue was recently published by Newsmax.

In 1972, Pauline Kael, film critic for the New Yorker, famously said after the presidential election, “I can’t believe Nixon won. I don’t know anyone who voted for him.” Following the New Hampshire primary, former New Hampshire Governor John Sununu said, “By name, I know only five people supporting Donald Trump. So I can say I cannot understand this electorate.”

The difference between Sununu and most conservative pundits is that he is honest about his cluelessness. For several months, night after night conservative talking heads have been bashing Trump, dismissing him as if he were a carnival freak. Oh, yes, they readily concede, he may be able to whip up the masses, but he cannot engage them for the long fight. That they look increasingly silly cannot be denied.

The fundamental problem with conservative critics of Trump is their class bias. They don’t understand the working class. Sheltered in prep schools and Ivy League institutions, their world is one where ideas count, and not much else. They don’t understand the visceral appeal of someone like Trump.

What is Trump’s appeal? Candidness and an intolerance for business as usual (Bernie Sanders employs these qualities as well). The working class has long believed that most politicians—it matters not a whit whether they are Republicans or Democrats—neither speak to them or for them. They speak above them, or past them, but never to them.

How is it possible for a billionaire to connect to blue-collar workers but polished politicians cannot? Because Trump speaks their language: he is bold and decisive, and he is not owned by the political class. Regarding the latter, he is not surrounded by big donors, consultants, handlers, pollsters, and lobbyists who seek to manipulate the public. This is music to the ears of blue-collar men and women.

The political class is so well orchestrated, so fine-tuned, that it lacks the kind of authenticity that appeals to the working class. The jeans, boots, and lunch-bucket guys and gals like their politics straight up—they can spot a phony a mile away. Moreover, they like those who (unlike Mitt Romney) are not apologetic about their wealth. After all, they want to be rich, too, and if they can’t be, they want their kids and grandkids to be.

Who speaks for cops, firefighters, construction workers, barbers, bus drivers, bartenders, small businessmen, truckers, military personnel, and the like? Who of the candidates, save for Trump, can relate to their alienation? Moreover, many of these workers are veterans, and they have no patience for those who commit troops abroad but won’t let them finish the job.

The working class also resonates with Trump’s no-nonsense approach to Mexico and China. When conservative pundits tout the virtues of immigration, saying nothing about the free ride that illegal aliens are getting, they are treating workers with contempt. Similarly, when blue-collar jobs are being lost to nations who don’t believe in reciprocity, conservatives who tout the virtues of free trade sound like professors who never left the comfort zone of their library carrel.

One might have thought that Republicans would have learned something from the phenomenon of Reagan Democrats. They haven’t. Secure in their elite ghettos, they think they can finesse their way to victory. They usually can, but not this time.

The biggest mistake that Republicans can make—many are already talking about it—is to try to unseat Trump at the convention. That would ignite a backlash the likes of which the elites have never seen.

If Trump’s conservative critics want a crash course on what makes the working-class tick, they ought to stop by a blue-collar pub and listen. Just don’t order a glass of wine.

Following Bill Donohue’s interview with CNN’s Mike Smerconish on February 13, Donald Trump twice tweeted on his performance, as well as on his Newsmax article (above):

“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.”

“Nice column by Bill Donahue, head of the Catholic League. He’s a blue collar New Yorker and gets it newsmax.com/Bill Donohue.”

Some have asked if Donohue is supporting Trump. No. He is not publicly supporting any candidate, though he has said he would vote for “anyone but her.”

Our goal is to persuade the candidates to stand up for religious liberty and denounce anti-Catholicism. We are beholden to no one.

At President Obama’s State of the Union address, there was an empty seat, purposely set aside, in the First Lady’s guest box: it represented the victims of gun violence. Those who are seriously interested in this issue might want to ponder the cultural reasons why violence is so prevalent in our society. Cardinal Wuerl offered great insight into this.

In a Newsmax TV interview, he addressed the societal effects of abortion, tying it to violence. He said “one reason why we are so casual in our country with violence” is the “disrespect for human life.” He called attention to the mindset that abortion engenders: “What we have done is create a mentality that so depreciates the value of life, that all these things follow very easily. You can’t say to someone, life only has the value you give it and expect that they’re not going to apply that principle in areas where you might differ.”

Cardinal Wuerl nailed it. Consider young men. They have always been, for reasons grounded in nature, the most violent segment in society. They take their cues from the dominant culture, and the lesson they learn from our casual attitude toward abortion-on-demand is that life is cheap, expendable. As Cardinal Wuerl put it, they learn that “It’s all right to kill as long as the person is inconvenient to you.”

In 1979, when Mother Teresa received the Nobel Peace Prize, she said that “the greatest destroyer of peace is abortion.” Why? “Because if a mother can kill her own child—what is left for me to kill you and you kill me—there is nothing in between.” She understood the corrosive cultural effects of abortion—it softens our resolve to condemn violence in all of its manifestations.