Since the last edition of Catalyst, we addressed more than twenty important issues, ranging from anti-Catholicism in the arts to insulting politicians, but none commanded our attention more than three subjects: the Oxford Union, Covington Catholic High School, and the new abortion laws in New York and Virginia.

We garnered significant press coverage for all three issues. There were newspaper stories in the U.S. and the U.K., internet articles, radio interviews, TV appearances, YouTube videos—our role was noted in many key venues. As always, some of the coverage was fair, and some was biased. We drew the applause of many, and the enmity of others.

If there was a connecting thread that bound these issues together, it was lying. The Oxford Union, after inviting Bill Donohue to participate in a debate, disinvited him, and then lied about it. Many of the critics of the Covington students lied about what happened (others were merely mistaken). The governors of New York and Virginia had a hard time telling the truth about their cruel abortion laws. We exposed all of them.

This edition details how these issues unfolded.

Donohue made himself available to the media in England, answering all questions. Everyone associated with the Oxford Union—officials and debating participants alike—refused to speak. This included Marci Hamilton, the Church-bashing lawyer who was invited to take Donohue’s place defending the Catholic Church!

Unlike so many others, we did not rush to judgment on the Covington Catholic students. When the facts emerged, we weighed in defending the innocent students and taking on the Indian and black bigots who were responsible for the fracas.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo from New York and Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam both promoted late-term abortions and beyond: they justified no penalties for infanticide. We graphically told what they were endorsing and unmasked their lying agenda.

Here’s the good news.

The Oxford Union never expected the kind of blowback we initiated. The fact that they could not defend themselves was not lost on the English media or the public. By contrast, we came out on top by extending ourselves to the press.

The critics of the Covington students either apologized or were made to look like fools. We were quick to acknowledge the apologies and just as quick to note the anti-Catholic bigots who sided with the instigators.
Cuomo and Northam took it on the chin. They expected that their bloody abortion laws would amount to no more than a one-day story. We helped ensure that did not happen.

Our response was quick and fair.

Pope Francis didn’t mention New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo by name, but his remarks nailed him anyway.

Last month, Cuomo implored Albany lawmakers to “follow the leadership of Pope Francis” by passing the Child Victims Act. Indeed, he wore his Catholic credentials on his sleeve, boasting of his allegiance to the pope on several occasions. He even had an enormous photo of the pope shown on a screen behind him as he ignited the audience.

Cuomo is a fraud. He champions infanticide. Pope Francis sent him a message on February 3rd.

Speaking of the unborn, the pope said, “they are children of the entire community, and their being killed in large numbers with the backing of the state constitutes a grave problem that undermines the foundations of the building up of justice, compromising the correct solution for every other human and social problem.”

Then the Holy Father took dead aim at Cuomo’s position. He took the opportunity to offer “an appeal to all politicians, regardless of each person’s faith belief, to treat the defense of the lives of those who are about to be born and enter into society as the cornerstone of the common good.”

Pope Francis made his pointed comments, which, of course, were ignored by most of the media, just after Cuomo celebrated his bloody abortion bill, one that legalizes the very acts that got Dr. Kermit Gosnell convicted.

We are delighted that the Holy Father checkmated Cuomo.

Bill Donohue

To be sentimental about certain things in life is not only normal, it is admirable. But sentimentalism is different. One of the definitions found in The Free Dictionary defines it as “excessive indulgence in sentiment or emotionalism, predominance of feeling over reason and intellect.” That is not admirable. Indeed, it can be perilous.

This is part of the Catholic problem. We want to be empathic and understanding, and that is all fine and good. But too many of us, and this certainly includes more than a few nuns, brothers, priests, bishops, and cardinals, overdo it and slide into sentimentalism.

This explains why some Catholics reacted badly to the Covington Catholic students. Unlike the bigots who taunted the students, these kids did not behave badly, yet they were quickly branded as racists. In particular, the sight of seeing a white Catholic male stare down an elderly drum-beating Indian brought out the worst in the student’s critics. They succumbed to sentimentalism.

Knee-jerk responses by onlookers to confrontations between whites and minorities are never good. White racists will always blame the minorities. They should be condemned. But we should also condemn those who exercise “excessive indulgence in sentiment or emotionalism” by rushing to defend the minorities. That is what happened in the Covington case.

Feelings that trump reason and intellect are as dangerous as racist outbursts. Even when it turned out that the “elderly” (not quite a senior citizen) Indian was the guilty party—the next day he led a crowd to storm the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception during Mass—some critics of the student were still unmoved.

The good news is that the Bishop of Covington reversed course and apologized. His problem was never racism; it was sentimentalism.

Sentimentalism also played a role in allowing some critics of the Virginia governor to complain about his blackface stunt. They were upset because this was seen as a stab at blacks. Yet when they learned of Gov. Ralph Northam’s support for infanticide, they were unmoved. This is the way they think. It is more offensive to mock blacks than it is to allow innocent kids to die.

When President Barack Obama was scheduled to speak at the University of Notre Dame commencement exercise in 2009, and receive an honorary degree, I appeared on TV with a prominent priest who defended this decision. I had no problem with Obama speaking there—he was the president of the United States—but I objected to his receiving the honorary degree.

I told the priest that both of us would object to an anti-Semite receiving an award from a Catholic university. But when the person being honored is a rabid champion of abortion, only I object. He did not disagree.

Obama’s mother was white but his father was black, and that is all it took for sentimentalism to kick in. This explains, at least in part, why the priest supported the decision to honor him. That abortion was not seen as evil as racism was as disturbing as it was predictable.

When I gave a talk to Ph.D. students at Carnegie Mellon University in the early 1990s, I unsettled the students. They noted the tenor of my pro-American remarks, and one of them—they were all white male engineering students—called me out saying I should not be so patriotic given America’s historic treatment of blacks.

The student went on to say that all white people were guilty of discriminating against blacks. I asked if that included him. He nervously said yes. I stunned the class when I responded that he should be arrested. Discrimination, I said, was against the law.

I continued by saying that I did not have to be arrested—I never discriminated against anyone. Indeed, I told the class that I had taught young black kids how to read and write when I taught in Spanish Harlem. They were speechless.

Sentimentalism clouded their thinking. These otherwise bright men allowed their feelings about racial injustice to conquer their intellect, permitting “excessive indulgence in sentiment and emotion.”

The religious and the clergy are especially vulnerable to sentimentalism. They are wired to helping the needy, many of whom are black and brown, and this explains their heroic efforts. But when they maximize their charitable impulses they risk losing sight of reality. And the reality is that no one is served by patronizing them. At that point, we are not treating minorities as equals.

There are good and bad people in all socio-economic classes. The same is true among people of all ethnic, racial, and religious groups. Stereotyping is not just about making unwarranted negative judgments about a whole category of people; it comes into play when we make unwarranted assumptions of a positive kind as well. Just as it is wrong to cast all people of color in negative terms, it is equally wrong to cast them in positive terms. Ditto for whites.

God gave us a heart and a head. We need to strike the right balance.

To read Bill Donohue’s letter to Oxford Union president Daniel Wilkinson, click here.

Is the Oxford Union committing suicide? It is one thing to lie to me after being disinvited from participating in a debate on February 28, quite another to knife itself by staging a phony debate on the Catholic Church.

“This House Believes That England Can Never Pay For Its Sins Against Irish Catholics.” Imagine a debate on this subject with representatives of the Irish Republican Army on one side and Sinn Fein (the political arm of the IRA) on the other. This is what the Oxford Union did by stacking the deck against the Catholic Church on the motion, “The House Believes The Catholic Church Can Never Pay For Its Sins.”

The three defending the House motion were Mitchell Garabedian, Elizabeth Coppin, and Thomas Reilly. I am familiar with the two American men.

Garabedian was a good choice. Last year he appeared on WGBH (PBS) in Boston arguing that the Catholic Church should be stripped of its tax-exempt status. In 2011, he was accused by a reporter for the Boston Globe (not exactly a Catholic-friendly source) of maligning the good name of an exonerated priest whom the attorney was hounding. When I called Garabedian to see if he had any regrets about trying to destroy Father Charles Murphy, he went berserk, screaming like a madman. He fits in with this circus like a glove.

Reilly was also a splendid choice. He showcased his contempt for separation of church and state when he was the Massachusetts Attorney General: He said he wanted his office to be involved in the recruitment, selection, training, and monitoring of priests.

If a Boston bishop, acting on reports of corruption in the state government, said he wanted the Church to police public officials and their staffs, he would be accused of trampling on the First Amendment. Indeed, he would be called a fascist. Perhaps Reilly could have been asked why he never returned a single indictment of a Boston priest in 2003, and why he thinks he was justified in wasting a colossal amount of public funds on a wild-goose chase (he knew the statute of limitations had long run out on miscreant priests).

The side that was selected to defend the Catholic Church was even better. It included only two persons, one of whom, Dr. Jay R. Feierman, is a former psychiatrist who treated offending priests. I am not familiar with him.

The big prize was Marci Hamilton. For the Oxford Union to treat her as a champion of the Catholic Church is analogous to selecting a supporter of the Klan to defend African Americans.

To begin with, Hamilton and Garabedian are one and the same. They have jointly sued the Holy See, unsuccessfully, and have served on the same panels at anti-Catholic conferences for years. She has quite a resume.

• Hamilton’s career attacking the Catholic Church began when she was sought out by Jeffrey Anderson, the most anti-Catholic, Church-suing lawyer in the U.S. His goal, he once said, is to “sue the s*** out of the Catholic Church.” He has made good on his promise.
• A few years back, Hamilton teamed up with Anderson to sue the Holy See. They lost.
• Hamilton is opposed to the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, the seminal bill protecting religious liberty that was overwhelmingly passed by the Congress and signed into law by President Bill Clinton.
• Hamilton falsely accused Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Archbishop of New York, of hiding $55 million from victims when he was the Bishop of Milwaukee. She has never apologized.
• In 2013, Hamilton said that the Catholic Church’s objections to having Catholic non-profits pay for abortion-inducing drugs in their healthcare plans was proof of its “all-out war on women.”
• Hamilton always seeks to rescind state laws on the statute of limitations so that she can sue the Catholic Church for decades-old offenses, while at the same time arguing that such legislation should not apply to the public schools. She made this case in her 2008 book, Justice Denied: What America Must Do to Protect Its Children, and worked to implement her ideas in Colorado and other states.
• In 2016, Hamilton told the press that the U.S. bishops pay my salary. I emailed her on May 5, 2016 calling her a liar. She had no response.
• When discussing the Muslim terrorists involved in the Danish cartoon issue, Hamilton said, “There is no meaningful difference between the reasoning of imams and the Catholic League on these issues,” thus maliciously claiming the Catholic League engages in, or promotes, violence against its critics.

There we have it. The Oxford Union is in free-fall. It hosted anti-Catholic bigots to defend the Catholic Church, making a mockery of its once stellar reputation.

If any of these haters would like to debate me, I will arrange it and pay for all the expenses. But I won’t hang by the phone. At least Christopher Hitchens, whom I debated many times, was honest, which is more than I can say for the Oxford Union and its stooges.

There were three parties to the dustup that occurred on January 18.

Catholic students from Covington Catholic High School in Kentucky, who had participated in the March for Life, assembled on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial waiting for buses to take them home. In the same vicinity were Native Americans; they had come for the Indigenous Peoples Rally. Black Israelites, who believe that black Americans are God’s chosen people (they claim to be the real descendants of the Hebrews), were also there.

Initial news reports blamed the students. One of the students, Nick Sandmann, was shown smirking at a Native American man, Nathan Phillips—who was standing very close to the student beating a drum—and it quickly became a social media sensation. Much was made of the Donald Trump hat that Sandmann and other students wore, “Make America Great Again.” The students were shown in a short video laughing and chanting. They were accused of mocking the 64-year-old Phillips.

The Diocese of Covington and Covington Catholic High School issued a joint statement apologizing for what happened and pledged to investigate the matter; they said sanctions would be forthcoming, possibly expulsion.

Politicians, pundits, and bloggers went wild. A second video emerged, one that was much longer, and it shows that the black Israelites were the real thugs. Moreover, interviews given by Phillips show him to be a liar.

Here is a selection of news reports on the second video that was published on January 21.

The following was taken from abc.net.au/news.
“The Black Israelites had a spot on the steps where they quoted from the Bible and yelled abuse, some of it racist.

“‘You got all these dirty-ass crackers behind you with a red Make America Great Again hat on,’ one of the Black Israelites said in the video of the event filmed by another of their members.

“Later, the man told another person: ‘I bet you’re a dumb-ass Puerto Rican.’

“He also abused African Americans nearby.

“As the abuse continued, the school students surrounded the Black Israelites and started to sing songs, dance and cheer each other on, drowning them out.

“At one point in the video one of the black men told the students around him, ‘You got on the back of the court system ‘In God we trust’, on the back of the dollar bill it says ‘In God we trust’, but you give faggots rights.'”

The news story also said “Footage does not show students seeking out Mr. Phillips, or ‘attacking’ him,” thus corroborating the statement by Sandmann that was released to the press. It was Phillips who approached the students.

The following was taken from CNN Wire.

“In the new video, another group taunts the students from Covington Catholic High School in Kentucky with disparaging and vulgar language. The group of black men, who identify as members of the Hebrew Israelites, also shout racist slurs at participants of the Indigenous Peoples Rally and other passersby.

“The men [black Israelites] repeatedly use the n-word to refer to the black teens in the group, prompting cries from the group. The men ask the students if the water they’re drinking ‘tastes like incest’ and call the students ‘young Klansmen.’

“The teens listen for a few minutes longer, accusing the men of being racist and booing when the main speaker uses the word ‘faggots’ when talking about equal rights.

“Then, the students get a signal from off camera to leave. They cheer and wave, chanting ‘let’s go home’ as they run off.

“The video continues for another 20 minutes as the men turn their focus to a prayer circle that formed while they were talking to the students. The lead speaker shouts denunciations of the Catholic church, calling its members ‘child molesters’ and quotes scripture.”

The following is from the New York Times.

Speaking of the first video, the paper notes that the students were widely criticized. “But on Sunday, Mr. Phillips clarified that it was he who had approached the crowd and that he had intervened because racial tensions—primarily between the white students and the black men—were ‘coming to a boiling point.’

“In his statement, Mr. Sandmann said he did not antagonize or try to block Mr. Phillips. ‘I did not speak to him. I did not make any hand gesture or other aggressive moves,’ he said.

“I did smile at one point because I wanted him to know that I was not going to become angry, intimidated or be provoked into a larger confrontation,” he said. ‘I am a faithful Christian and practicing Catholic, and I always try to live up to the ideals my faith teaches me—to remain respectful of others, and to take no action that would lead to conflict or violence.'”

The following is from the Washington Post:

“The Israelites and students exchanged taunts, videos show. The Native Americans and Hebrew Israelites say some students shouted, ‘Build the wall!’ although that chant is not heard on the widely circulated videos, and the Cincinnati Enquirer quoted a student at the center of the confrontation who said he did not hear anyone say it.

“At one point, the Hebrew Israelites began arguing with Native American activists, telling them the word ‘Indian’ means ‘savage,’ according to the video.”

Regarding Phillips, the Native American told the Washington Post that he sought to act as an intermediary between the white students and the black provocateurs. But peacemakers don’t taunt, and that is what he did: he taunted Sandmann by beating his drum in his face. More important, he told the Detroit News that the white boys provoked the black men, which is (a) not true and (b) does not square with what he told the Post.

Having addressed the events of January 18, Bill Donohue now wants to assess some of the most prominent critics of the Covington Catholic students. That the students were not the guilty party in the dustup is obvious to every fair-minded person who has seen, or learned about, the second video.

Donohue did not issue a statement on this incident immediately, and for good reason: the Catholic League defends wrongdoing committed against individual Catholics and the institutional Church; it does not defend wrongdoing done by either.

Those who weighed in on this story include some members of the Catholic clergy, Catholic lay leaders, and non-Catholics. Some were temperate in their remarks and some were vicious. Some have issued a full-throated apology, while others have offered less than a complete apology. Others are sticking to their guns. Two persons went off the cliff.

Erik Abriss was fired after he wished the students and their parents were dead. “I just want these people to die. Simple as that. And their parents.” The freelance writer for Vulture was terminated by INE Entertainment, a digital company. Comedian Kathy Griffin took second prize. She wants the students hunted down. “Names please. And stories from people who can identify them and vouch for their identity.” No wonder the students have received death threats.

It does not please us to say that the most irresponsible voices in this controversy have come from the Catholic clergy.

On the day of the incident, the Diocese of Covington and Covington Catholic High School issued a joint statement saying, “We condemn the actions of the Covington Catholic High School students towards Nathan Phillips specifically, and Native Americans in general….We extend our deepest apologies to Mr. Phillips. This behavior is opposed to the Church’s teachings on the dignity and respect for the human person.” They promised to “take appropriate action, up to and including expulsion.”

What should be condemned is what the Diocese and the school said on January 22. It said that a “third-party investigation” is planned regarding what happened between “Covington Catholic students, Elder Nathan Phillips and Black Hebrew Israelites.” What part of the second video does it not find persuasive?

After condemning the students without knowing their side—they did not call for an investigation on Friday—they are now going to probe this “very serious matter that has already permanently altered the lives of many people.” It sure has—the students have been damaged. Sadly, the Diocese and the school have played a major part in this tragedy.

Three of the most pro-LGBT priests in the nation slammed the students. Father James Martin ripped the students for “sham[ing] and disrespect[ing] a man at the Indigenous People’s March,” saying that what they did was “not Catholic, not Christian and not acceptable.”

Martin later said, “I would like to apologize to them for my judgment of them.” He elaborates by saying that “we may never know what was going on inside the hearts of the students.” We certainly don’t know what they were thinking, and that is because the student at the center of the standoff, Nick Sandmann, never opened his mouth. Phillips was the one who walked over to the student and taunted him with his drum.

It is important to note that we have a very clear understanding of what was on the minds of the black Israelites—they bashed whites, blacks, Hispanics, and gays. One might have thought that the gay bashing would have gotten Martin’s back up, but apparently he was unfazed by it. He did not help himself by saying, “despite repeated viewings of all the videos, and reading all the participants’ statements, these actions remain unclear.” He does not disclose the source of his confusion.

Father Dan Horan, a Franciscan, went off the deep end. “I’m so deeply appalled and disgusted by the racist, shameful, disrespectful behavior of the Catholic high school students wearing MAGA (“Make America Great Again”) hats and harassing a Native American elder and Vietnam Vet. I’m so angry and yet not at all surprised at pervasive white supremacy exhibited.”

Donohue is appalled and disgusted that a priest would make such a totally unfounded condemnation of these Catholic students. He even admits in a later tweet that “even if a third party provoked, it doesn’t justify their behavior.” There it is. Even if the students didn’t provoke anything—and we know they did not—they are still guilty.

Father Edward Beck is a Passionist priest with a passion for liberal-left causes. The second video had zero effect on him. He said his “feelings” are “unchanged,” saying the “boys should not have been permitted to wear MAGA hats if they were representing the school.” Would Beck have objected if the students were wearing a pro-Hillary hat? Not on your life.

Among Catholic laypersons, no one did a better job of apologizing, without qualification, than Princeton’s Robert George and First Things’ Matthew Schmitz. Robbie said, “I apologize to the Covington Catholic boys.” He added, “I jumped the gun and that was stupid and unjust. It is I, not the boys, who needs to take a lesson from this.” Hard to beat that.

Matt Schmitz was also excellent. “It’s easy to find fault in others, difficult to admit our own. For what it’s worth, I believe that the boys acted in a more moral and Christian manner than those who condemned them and then refused to admit the error.” Honest and thoughtful.

Sobrab Ahmari, a convert to Catholicism and op-ed editor of the New York Post, made a commendable statement to the students. “I also failed you. I rebuked you, though more mildly than others did, because I too can sometimes be credulous in the face of a media consensus; lesson learned.” Well said.

Jeannie Mancini, who leads the March for Life, dived into this mess with both feet by condemning the students for their “reprehensible behavior.” Now that she has had time to reconsider her remarks, she refuses to do so. But she did find time to delete her accusatory tweet.

Talking-head Hugh Hewitt has also taken down his offensive tweet about the students. He lectured the students on their need for “respect, forgiveness, courtesy.” It is he who needs to do so, beginning with an apology to the students whom he has maligned.

CNN’s Kirsten Powers is looking more foolish by the minute indicting the students for their “white privilege,” a subject that she should know very well. She owns it.

Among non-Catholics, Rod Dreher began walking back two of his harsh tweets, though without offering an apology. But he mostly took the side of the students, noting how irresponsible the media have been. He took them to task for “conveniently ignor[ing] the provocative, racist, foul-mouthed attacks on the boys by one of Phillips’s Native American companions.” Exactly.

National Review has been on both sides of this issue. Rich Lowry criticized the boys but then took down his tweet. He also took down the incendiary tweet by his colleague, Nick Frankovich. “The Covington Students Might as Well Have Just Spit on the Cross. They mock a serious frail-looking older man and gloat in their momentary role as Roman soldiers to his Christ.”

With a comment like that, it is clear that Lowry has a loose cannon on his hands. A more recent article by Kyle Smith, which was quite good, was posted on the website of the magazine, suggesting that Lowry got the message.

New York Times columnist David Brooks had a mostly fair take on the controversy in the paper’s January 22 edition, but it was marred by one key omission. He admited that “The Covington case was such a blatant rush to judgment—it was powered by crude prejudice and social stereotyping—I’m hoping it will be an important pivot point.” It would have been helpful had he said that it was Catholic males who were the victims of prejudice and stereotyping. It would have been even better had he told the readers that his first statement on this issue was to criticize the boys.

Author Reza Aslan seemed to invite violence against Sandmann by saying he never saw a more “punchable face” than his. Aslan took down his vile tweet though he left up some despicable comments he found worthy of retweeting.

Bill Kristol, who has finally found a home with the Never Trumpers at CNN, blasted the students and then took down his tweets. What a class act. He offered no apology.

Howard Dean said he wants the school to close because it is a “hate factory.” He has offered no retraction or an apology for his jackass remarks.

The Catholic League fights anti-Catholicism and, like every organization, we make mistakes as well. But when we do we own up, which is why we are not at the least bit bothered by those who have apologized to the students. For them, it’s over, at least as far as we’re concerned.

Why did some really good people make a mistake? Donohue contacted Robbie George about this, and he was frank as always. When he saw the first video clip, it looked like the students were taunting the Native American man. A staunch pro-life intellectual, he said, “I was extremely concerned about how such behavior could give our great movement a bad name. So, much too hastily I issued a condemnation. When I saw the full video the next day, I realized I had been misled by the short clip. I immediately apologized, no ifs, ands, or buts.”

Robbie did exactly that and his reasoning was sound.

What accounts for the most hateful comments? As an organization that fights anti-Catholicism, it would be tempting to conclude that it is old-fashioned anti-Catholic bigotry. This is certainly true of the Indians—they tried to crash a Mass the following day—and of the black thugs who attacked virtually everyone, but it does not explain everything.

Surely the Diocese of Covington and the school are not driven by bigotry, so what explains their lame response? Their statement focuses much on Native Americans. It is sad but true that there are some in the Catholic Church today who are more sensitive to the rights of minorities than they are their own people. This is Exhibit A.

What else is in play? Politics. The politics of hate, made manifest in the delirious hatred of President Trump. It is the pro-Trump hat—cited by many—that drove them over the top. They need help.

Will anything be learned from this? For some, the answer is yes, but regrettably such persons are likely to be in a minority.

The Catholic white boys from Covington Catholic High School—hated because they are Catholic, white, male, and Trump supporters (some of them)—have been indicted by lots of pundits, politicians, reporters, and celebrities, both liberal and conservative. Yet the record shows that the students were the only innocent party to this fracas. None of them said or did anything bigoted, but this is not true of the Indians and the black Israelites.

A group of about 20 Indians, led by activist Nathan Phillips, tried to storm a Mass on January 19 at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington D.C. They were stopped by security who had to lock the doors. This is what the Nazis did to the Jews in Hitler’s Germany—they crashed the synagogues during services.

It is against the law in D.C. to disturb a religious service. Had Phillips succeeded, it would have been a hate crime. If the Catholic students had barged into a crowd of Indians while they were praying, they would be on the front page of every newspaper in the country and it would be the lead story on the broadcast and cable news outlets.

However, this unprovoked attack by Phillips and company—on innocent persons exercising their First Amendment right to religious liberty—was ignored by most of the mainstream media. The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Associated Press, ABC News, CBS News, NBC News, CNN and MSNBC never said a word about it. Only Fox News did.

Phillips also made disparaging remarks about Catholicism, saying the students are not being told the truth about their religion. Yet not one student made a disparaging remark about Indians. But the black thugs did—they called the Indians “savages.” That being the case, why didn’t Phillips and his merry band of church busters confront them? Why did they seek to crash a Mass instead? They are the bigots, not the kids.

The black Israelites bashed white people, black people, Christians (especially Catholics), Puerto Ricans, and homosexuals. Where were the gay rights groups? If the kids called gays “faggots”—which is what these thugs did—the media would have been up in arms. So it is not the content of an insult that matters, it is the identity of who says it.

The mainstream media picked up a few of the anti-Catholic statements by the black activists, but overall they did a lousy job. We watched the video and here are some of the most anti-Catholic statements that were made.

• [Black Israelite responding to a question] “You want to see hate in the Bible? Let’s see hate in the Bible. Let’s see what the Christians and the Catholics don’t go into.” [He then reads a verse from Ecclesiastes]
• [Black Israelite pointing out a Catholic priest standing nearby] “And like this, child molesting faggot priest right there… the Catholics are a bunch of child molesters.”
• [Black Israelite speaking to crowd] “You want to talk about R. Kelly. Why we don’t talk about the Catholic Church? Why we don’t talk about the Roman Catholic Church, and especially you so-called Hispanics and Negroes, you got no business calling yourself a Roman Catholic. When’s the last time you’ve been a Roman?”
• [Black Israelite speaking to Covington students] “And Jesus Christ is not a white man. This ain’t Jesus Christ…the truth matters. This is a faggot child molester. This is not Jesus Christ. If you look in the Bible, you will see he is a man of color.” [man referring to a Catholic/Christian depiction of Jesus]
• [Black Israelite speaking to a Catholic prayer circle nearby] “The child molesting Catholic Church here. This is what we’ve come to. How long are we going stay in the Catholic Church? How long are we going to continue worshipping idols in the Catholic Church? Where is Hail Mary in the Bible? There’s no Hail Mary in the Bible. You can’t worship Mary. You’re supposed to worship the Lord.”
• [Black Israelite speaking to prayer group] “You have your reward. Your reward is your Catholic Church being tax exempt, being child molesters and getting away with it. You’ve been raping children since 1492 in the Catholic Church. You’ve been raping children in Rome before you got here.”
• [Black Israelite speaking to separate group of students] “When you walk in a Catholic Church, it is filled with idols. When you worship and kiss and bow down to a statue, you’re breaking the commandments of God. So the Catholic Church is totally against God, not even speaking about the child molestation. We’ll leave that one alone. But against God’s laws and commandments, yes. You say ‘Hail Mary, full of grace’. You say that prayer. Where is that prayer in the psalms? Where is that prayer in the Bible?”

No white student responded in kind to either the Indian or black activists. They, and they alone, were innocent.

What happened on January 18 has been nicely captured by Bill Donohue’s good friend, Rabbi Aryeh Spero. Here is what he told him.

“This is a contrived and false episode pounced on by people who hate religious white Catholics and are always on the look-out to demonize Catholics. These people are bigots. It is all part of the anti-Christianism by many segments in today’s leftist America and media collaborators. If they could, they would physically beat up Catholics and take away their jobs and livelihood simply because they are white, conservative, and people of biblical faith. They are consumed by hate. Who taught these people to SO hate white, religious Americans?”

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. had a dream: it was to unite the races. While that dream remains unfulfilled, much progress has been made, thanks largely to him. Gov. Andrew Cuomo also had a dream: to allow children to be killed in their mother’s womb right up until birth by non-physicians. Now his dream has been realized.

It is indisputable that in the third trimester the baby is capable of feeling pain, so when the baby has his head punctured with a blunt instrument—that’s what happens in partial-birth abortions—he feels it.

Cuomo has also sanctioned the killing of infants. Even babies who survive a botched abortion are now allowed to die unattended by staff. Infanticide is usually associated with Hitlerian regimes, not democratic ones.

Cuomo was so ecstatic about winning that he ordered One World Trade Center to light up the sky in pink. Red would have been a more apt choice.

It would be impossible to find any politician in the United States who is more enthusiastic about abortion than Andrew Cuomo. He is literally orgasmic about it. “Because it’s her body, it’s her choice. Because it’s her body, it’s her choice. Because it’s her body, it’s her choice.”

Cuomo’s three-time refrain was voiced in 2013. He failed then, largely because of the Republican controlled Senate. But now that the Democrats own both houses of the legislature, he finally won. Gloria Steinem, who aborted her child when she was 22, was among the first to congratulate him. In his victory speech, the former altar boy ended by saying, “God bless you.”

If this isn’t demonic, the word has no meaning.

There are many parts of Cuomo’s bill that are obscene, but there is one part that deserves special mention. That is the part that allows non-physicians to perform abortions. Not surprisingly, the media downplayed this aspect of the law.

Under the new law, physician assistants, midwives, and nurse practitioners can now perform abortions. This has never been done in New York State. That this is being championed by those who say they are pro-women makes it all the more sickening.

Licensed midwives, for example, are trained in maternity care, pre-conception counseling, routine gynecological care, family planning, and how to administer health screenings and exams. They are not trained to perform an abortion, and they certainly have no competence in how to deal with serious complications arising from an abortion.

Cuomo knows there aren’t enough doctors who will agree to suction a baby out of the mother’s womb at nine months, so he has to allow those who have no training as a physician to do so. By the way, when Planned Parenthood pushed for the same type of legislation in California in 2012, the California Nurses Association fought it.

What will Cuomo do if there aren’t enough non-physicians to do the dirty deed? Permit orderlies to do it?

Here’s a fast quiz. Which women will be the most likely to have a non-physician do their abortion? Rich white women? Or poor blacks and Hispanics?

Doing an abortion successfully (meaning not hurting the woman) takes a lot of experience, so don’t expect the midwife to catch on quickly. In 1990, Minnesota abortionist Jane Hodgson received The Margaret Sanger award from Planned Parenthood. Here is what she said.

“When I first started doing abortions, I took my boards in Obstetrics and Gynecology, and therefore I knew I was competent to do it. After I had done my first few hundred I realized how silly I had been. At this point, having done somewhere around 12,000 procedures, I’m beginning to think I am reasonably competent.”

It is not likely that the average nurse practitioner will be able to reach that level of competence about this “procedure” any time soon.

So what happens to the women who undergo an abortion and wind up bleeding all over the place? What will the midwife do? We know from the work of emergency room physician Dr. Matt Zban that trained doctors have a difficult time as it is tending to women pushed out of clinics after experiencing severe complications following their abortion. What can we reasonably expect the physician assistant will do?

The family of the first woman to die as a result of an abortion performed by a non-physician should sue New York State.

Rep. Lee Zeldin is an observant Jewish congressman from Long Island. Here is what he said the day Cuomo signed his bill.

“As a parent of identical girls born in their 2nd trimester at less than 1.5 pounds, I’m especially disgusted by the NYS legislature voting today to allow late term, partial birth abortions up to the end of the 3rd trimester & allowing non doctors to perform abortion. So wrong!”

It’s a tragedy that the non-observant Catholic governor of New York can’t see the truth in Zeldin’s observation.