“October Baby,” a movie with a pro-life message, opened on March 2. Abortion fans trembled.

The A.V. Club, an entertainment website, called the film “propaganda for the already converted.” The Detroit News branded it “indecent propaganda” (decent propaganda would be a pro-abortion movie). The St. Paul Pioneer Press said the flick had “a lesson it wants to smash into our heads” (as opposed to being thoughtfully pro-abortion). But none could match Jeannette Catsoulis of the New York Times.

Catsoulis said that “at its core” the movie was “like the bloodied placards brandished by demonstrators outside women’s health clinics.” Indeed, it was meant to foster “guilt and fear.” Referring to the moving comments by Jasmine Guy, who plays the role of an abortion assistant, Catsoulis said her remarks are analogous to “a gory portrait of fetal mutilation and maternal distress.” Not only that, but get this: the purpose of Guy’s comments is to “terrify young women—and fits right in with proposed state laws that increasingly turn the screws on a woman’s dominion over her reproductive system.”Then she really went ballistic, saying that despite the movie’s message, “abortion is not a crime, no matter how fervently some people continue to wish that it were.”

All of this in a 319-word movie review! Catsoulis is obviously frustrated that she is not an op-ed writer; this explains why she writes them anyway while supposedly doing movie reviews. In any event, it would be helpful to know why she reacted with such hysteria to a pro-life movie. One thing it did prove: a movie is not just a movie (every time I complain about a Catholic-bashing film I’m told to beg off—it’s just a movie).

The Los Angeles Times’ Gary Goldstein was quite fair when he said the “poignancy is hard to deny whatever side of the abortion debate you fall on.”

Indeed, “October Baby” is one of the most provocative pro-life films of all time. Its limited opening was so successful that more theaters are picking it up this weekend. We are proud to have helped make this film a success.

The Hollywood of the 1950’s respected religion and avoided crudity. Today, it promotes crudity and trashes Christianity, especially Catholicism. Enter the “The Three Stooges.” The movie is a cultural marker of sociological significance. What it says about the way we’ve changed is not encouraging.

According to one AP movie critic, the directors “never wanted to tinker with the Stooges.” The New York Times agreed, saying the brothers “strove for absolute fidelity to the original.” CBS News also cites their “loyalty to the subject.”

The slapstick is there, but the TV show never mocked nuns or had infants urinating in the face of the Stooges. The film does.

The Stooges seek to raise money for their orphanage run by stereotypical nuns. Swimsuit model Kate Upton plays one of the sisters and is shown wearing a “nun bikini” with a large rosary around her neck. Sister Mary-Mengele, named after the Nazi war criminal, is played by Seinfeld creator Larry David.

On his own show in 2009, David splattered urine on a picture of Jesus in a Catholic home. He recently told Conan O’Brien that dressing as a nun in the film made it easy to understand why nuns are “so mean.” He said, “You know, the outfits might have something to do with that. Forget about the fact that they never have sex. If you gave me a choice of no sex or having to wear that outfit the rest of my life, I would definitely take the no sex.”

Madonna’s new CD, MDNA, broke no records. Her single, “Girl Gone Wild,” didn’t make the Billboard 100 was called “the worst single she’s ever released.”

That was too kind. The song’s obscene video shows the 53-year-old tramping around in black hot pants and stiletto heels while gyrating with well-greased topless guys in tight black pants. The homoerotic show is so vulgar that YouTube says the video is unfit for those under 18 and even asked Madonna to recut a video for the teeny boppers. Good luck.

She is also a notorious Catholic basher. “Girl Gone Wild” starts with Madonna reciting the first few lines of “The Act of Contrition.” She must have known it was Lent. She prances around to a light-show resembling a cross. A guy wearing a crown of thorns was another Easter present.

The CD also featured “I’m a Sinner.” With lyrics like “I’m a sinner, I like it that way,” Madonna made clear that she always has Catholicism on her mind: “Hail Mary full of grace” was followed by a quip about Jesus, St. Christopher and St. Anthony.

Madonna likes narcotics. She admitted that MDNA was chosen to reference her name and the drug MDMA; “I’m a Sinner” has a line referring to “magic dust,” the PCP drug. The open-minded gang tolerates this. In their moral universe, Catholic bashing is cool; homosexual themes are beautiful; and drugs are fun. But there is one thing that Madonna does while performing “Girl Gone Wild” that will tick them off: she is shown smoking a cigarette.

On Saturday, March 25, atheists staged a “Reason Rally” in Washington, D.C.

Although atheists claim that people of faith brainwash kids, it is they who are the masters. “Hey Kids,” one of the signs read, “It’s Okay—GOD is PRETEND.” Being vulgar comes natural to them: “Religion is Like a Penis,” another sign read, “It’s OK to have one…But it is NOT OK to whip it out in public, shove it in my face, or tell me what to do because you have one….” Then there was the gal who held a sign demanding that adherents of the three monotheistic religions “Get Out of My Panties.”

They got specific with signs such as “So many Christians, so few lions.” There was a man dressed as Jesus riding an inflatable dinosaur; another man held a large wooden cross with a mask of “The Joker” on top. They really got specific when Australian songwriter Tim Minchin thrilled the crowd with “The Pope Song.” Here are some of the lyrics: “I don’t give a f*** if calling the pope a motherf***er means…You see I don’t give a f*** what any other motherf***er believes about Jesus and his motherf***ing mother.”

The big draw was Englishman Richard Dawkins. He implored the crowd to “ridicule and show contempt” for people of faith. “Mock them, ridicule them in public,” he bellowed. Especially Catholics. Dawkins not only mocked the Eucharist, he advised the crowd to ask Catholics, “Do you really believe…that when a priest blesses a wafer, it turns into the body of Christ?”

A recent Gallup poll found that 73 to 80 percent of the public consider the following issues to be either extremely important or very important in this year’s presidential election campaign: healthcare; unemployment; the federal budget deficit and national debt; international issues, including national defense and terrorism; and gas prices. Only 44 percent answered that way when asked about government policies on birth control.

The issue of government policies on birth control is a non-starter. Anyone who wants contraception can get it either inexpensively or for free. No one running for president is threatening to change things. So why ask the question? The goal is to turn what is primarily a First Amendment right to religious liberty into a battle over the pill. When the public is asked about the right to a religious exemption, or the right to choose among competing insurance plans, the results are quite different.

Here’s a thought experiment. Suppose there is a gay gene. Suppose prospective parents can learn whether a gay gene is present in their unborn baby. Suppose a president proposes that employee insurance carriers, including religious non-profits, must cover abortions in those instances where prospective parents elect to abort their gay-gene carrying unborn baby.

A survey could consider several issues: preventive health care; the First Amendment right to religious liberty; the public funding of abortion; and the intentional weeding out of the homosexual population. If the issue were framed as a debate over the propriety of the government spending public funds for preventive health care, would this be an accurate way to pose the question?

Get it? It’s time to stop playing the birth-control card and start addressing federal encroachment on the religious rights of Americans.

Ever fond of Christians, Newsweek decided to roll out the venerable Andrew Sullivan for its April 9 cover story, a Holy Week special called “Christianity in Crisis.” Quite a choice.

Sullivan likes the teachings of Christianity (well, some) but not its teachers. In his aversion to organized religion, he does not address how religion can be expected to survive absent an organizing structure. What attracts him to Christianity are its affective elements, not much more. But, his childish embrace of the affective explodes in anger when the discussion turns to Christian strictures on sexuality, a subject that is very, very dear to him.

Sullivan’s heroes are Jesus, St. Francis and Jefferson. They shouldn’t be. Jesus, after all, was not content to be a street preacher—he commanded Peter to build his Church (back to hierarchy!). St. Francis was a supreme organizer: after founding his order, he founded several others, reaching out to women and the laity. As for Jefferson, his reduction of the New Testament to Jesus’ actual teachings is of no relief to Sullivan either: there are too many passages to make a narcissist quiver.

The Jesus that Sullivan has created—“calm, loving, accepting,” and, of course, “homeless”—is what happens when “Occupy Wall Street” becomes mistaken for Catholicism. Worse, Sullivan’s “Etch A Sketch” Jesus accounts for his remarkable conclusion that “the cross was not the point” of Jesus’ life.

Sullivan’s article reads like a public confession. It is not the Catholic Church that is obsessing about people’s sex lives, as he alleges. No, it is people like him. He wants a Catholic Church without Catholicism. And some want cotton candy without cavities.

It’s official: the National Catholic Reporter (NCR) rejects Church teachings. A recent editorial, “NCR Endorses Call for a New Sexual Ethic,” supported retired Australian Bishop Geoffrey Robinson’s plea for the Church to change its teachings on sexuality.

Bishop Robinson wrote a book a few years ago called Confronting Power and Sex in the Catholic Church. Here is what the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference said about it in 2010: “Catholics believe that the Church, founded by Christ, is endowed by him with a teaching office which endures through time. This is why the Church’s Magisterium teaches the truth authoritatively in the name of Christ. The book casts doubt upon these teachings. This leads in turn to the questioning of Catholic teaching on, among other things, the nature of Tradition, the inspiration of the Holy Scripture, the infallibility of the Councils and the Pope, the authority of the Creeds, the nature of the ministerial priesthood and central elements of the Church’s moral teachings.”

Ten years ago, Bill Donohue said on “Hardball” that neither NCR writer Tom Roberts (now NCR’s editor-at-large), nor his paper, “believe in anything the Catholic Church says on sexuality” (Roberts was on the show with him). As Donohue went on, guest host Mike Barnicle jumped in, saying, “Wait, Bill, please. Tom, take it up. I mean, you just got whacked across the face.” Roberts replied, “I’m not going to take that up.”

Need further proof? The March 30-April 12 edition of NCR had a full-page ad by the pro-abortion anti-Catholic group, Catholics for Choice (CFC). It wouldn’t accept a dime from a racist group (nor should it), but it had no problem cashing a check from CFC. It’s time the newspaper changed its name to the National Reporter.

Cuba acceded to Pope Benedict XVI’s request, declaring Good Friday a holiday. In the U.S., nine major league baseball games were played. Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig should took a page from the Communists and exercised some prudence: there should be no games on Good Friday.

In 2009, Congressman Anthony Weiner asked Selig to move the start of the Yankees’ home game against the Red Sox from 8:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. so that observant Jews could attend Yom Kippur services after sundown. Selig agreed, rightly. But, it should not take a congressman to get Selig to be more respectful of holy days.

While it was too late to cancel the games, Selig might consider the “O’Connor Rule” in the future: in 1998, John Cardinal O’Connor was critical of the decision to play major league baseball on Good Friday, and was particularly disturbed by playing during the 12 to 3 hours (the period of the crucifixion). O’Connor said it well when he remarked that “playing on Good Friday, at the very least from 12 to 3, is cheap and cheapens our culture, no matter how big the box-office receipts.”

We asked that Selig respect the “O’Connor Rule” in the future.

When an agency of the bishops’ conference was awarded a five-year grant in 2006 to fight human trafficking, the proposal explicitly said that no funds would be spent on “activities that would be contrary to our moral convictions and religious beliefs.” At the end of last year, when the bishops sought to renew their grant, their proposal was awarded a score of 89 by an independent review board at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). It was subsequently denied and two other organizations with scores of 69 and 74 were given a grant. Yet none of this was mentioned in a recent New York Times editorial.

The Times sided with a judge who ruled in March that the old contract was unconstitutional because it allowed the bishops “to impose religiously based restrictions on the expenditure of taxpayer funds.”

One of the persons who established the HHS program recently said that none of the organizations that initially sought funding wanted to provide for abortion. He said the program was founded with the understanding that it was “totally inappropriate” to see abortion as a remedy to women in need.

At work was the Times’ insatiable appetite for abortion rights, and its hostility to religious liberty. The “right” to abortion was invented. Religious liberty is enshrined in the First Amendment.

In saying that the contract was not renewed because the bishops were “unwilling to meet the needs of trafficking victims,” the Times insults the bishops and women. Killing the child of an exploited woman is not meeting her needs—it exploits her even further.

The U.S. Supreme Court decided not to accept a church-state case that involved the Archdiocese of St. Louis.

A man claimed he was abused by another man back in 1971 when he was a teenager. The alleged offender is dead. The alleged victim never knew what supposedly happened to him until one day, in therapy ten years ago, his memory was restored. Sound familiar? It happens all the time to priests. Strangely enough, the jarred-memory-phenomenon does not often happen when the alleged molester is a school teacher.

The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case because the Missouri Court of Appeals reached an eminently defensible conclusion in 2010: in order for the courts to determine whether the Archdiocese of St. Louis was negligent in its handling of the accused priest, Father Thomas Cooper, it necessarily had to involve itself in the Church’s internal affairs. Such a level of intrusion would cross church-state lines, and therfore violate the First Amendment.

This was a big loss for Marci Hamilton, an attorney who is notoriously partisan against the Catholic Church. It also signfied a loss for the editorial board of the New York Times, which called the Missouri decision “bizarre.”

One more thing: It is wrong for the Times, and the media in general, to continue to discuss the “pedophile” problem in the Catholic Church. There never was such a problem—less than 5 percent of accused priests fit the description of a pedophile. In the lion’s share of these cases, homosexuality was at work, not pedophilia. Indeed, in this particular case, the man who made the charges was also post-pubescent when the alleged offense took place more than 40 years ago. Failure to tell the truth about this matter stands in the way of corrective action.