In April, we launched a new campaign against the ABC show, “The Real O’Neals.” Our goal is to kill the show.

Thus far, we have (a) published a New York Times op-ed page ad against the show (b) implored our members to email Disney-ABC executive Ben Sherwood (c) issued news releases on each episode, and (d) granted several interviews. But given a new development, we need to do more.

Those who have been following our objections to the show know that it is not the content of the show that we find most offensive, it is the fact that it is based on the life of one of its executive producers, Dan Savage. The man is an unrepentant, foul-mouthed, anti-Catholic bigot. Now we have learned that Martha Plimpton, who plays the mother in the show, is also an unabashed anti-Catholic.

“The character I play is a homophobe,” Plimpton told the Los Angeles Times, “but she’s a homophobe because she’s based her entire value system on her faith.” She then maintained that Catholicism “tells you that anyone who is gay is going to burn in hell.” She is badly educated.

The Catholic Church’s teachings on homosexuality are no more “homophobic” than are the teachings of Judaism, from which our beliefs on sexuality are drawn. Moreover, the Church teaches that all human beings are equal in the eyes of God. Furthermore, the Church has never proclaimed that any person, or group of persons, is destined to hell.

We knew that Plimpton is pro-abortion, and likes to brag about the two that she had. But we did not know about her bigotry. When coupled with Savage’s bigotry, this demands that we take our response to a new level.

In the April edition of Catalyst, we asked members to write to Sherwood at his New York office. On April 4, we mapped out the rest of the campaign.

Those who are on our email list were asked to contact Robert A. Iger, President and CEO of the Disney board of directors; we wrote to the other members of the board. Then we started with the show’s sponsors, providing email contact information. We are listing one sponsor per weekday, until the list is exhausted. Please go to our website to find the email addresses.

“The Real O’Neals” is crude and offensive, and its ratings are poor. ABC made a big mistake by launching this show. We hope that the pressure we are exerting will convince them that all the bad publicity they are getting just isn’t worth it. It’s time to drop the show.

Mother Angelica died on Easter Sunday at the age of 92.

She was, without a doubt, the most influential Catholic television personality of our time. While Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen was the first clergyman to put his imprint on television, Mother Angelica succeeded in a way no one else did: She created the first Catholic media empire, the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN), and she did it against all odds.

Mother Angelica carried many crosses. She came from a dysfunctional family, suffered a myriad of physical ailments, was shot at for ministering to African Americans in the South during the 1960s, fought with elites inside and outside the Catholic Church, and was ridiculed by those who objected to her orthodoxy. But she not only persevered, she triumphed.

Courage was her quintessential gift, refusing to buckle in the face of adversity. That she did so without ever losing her grand sense of humor made her all the more special. Her laughter, her smile, her radiant personality—these are qualities that touched millions, including those who only knew her through television.

To read about her remarkable life, see Raymond Arroyo’s classic, Mother Angelica: The Remarkable Story of a Nun, Her Nerve, and a Network of Miracles. His love for her shines through.

Look for Raymond’s new book, Mother Angelica, Her Grand Silence: The Last Years and Living Legacy; it will be available this month.

William A. Donohue

Anti-Zionists often say they are not opposed to Jews, just the Israeli state. Some are telling the truth, but others are lying. Similarly, hyper-critics of Catholicism often say they are anti-clerical, but not anti-Catholic. Yes, that is true for some, but not universally so. In both cases, even among those who are not lying, it is an easy slide into the bigoted camp: one animus often bleeds into the other.

Few anti-Catholics will admit to their bigotry. When pressed on it, they typically exercise the default option and maintain that they are just anti-clerical. Two recent examples of this phenomenon are illustrative of how deceitful this position is.

I recently wrote to the president of Colorado State University about an anti-Catholic incident on campus. The student senate voted to implement a “diversity bill” to grant senate seats to select demographic groups on campus: adult learning, veterans, the disabled, LGBT students, women’s groups, as well as various racial and ethnic groups. A Jewish male student offered an amendment to include Jewish, Muslim, and Catholic students; he was supported by a Catholic woman. The amendment failed.

The Catholic student protested and was quickly attacked. “I haven’t ever experienced hate like this, ever,” is how she put it. Those who justified the exclusion of Catholics said, “the Catholic Church does not need to be represented because you are the ‘oppressors’ of the LGBTQ communities and others.”

This makes my point exactly: Catholics on campus were excluded from the “diversity bill” because the institution to which they are affiliated is allegedly guilty of oppression. Those who were truly anti-clerical, but not anti-Catholic, would not punish Catholic students for the alleged sins of their religion’s clerics.

On Easter Sunday, six animal rights protesters from a group called Collectively Free invaded St. Patrick’s Cathedral during the noon Mass. They interrupted the service, using the Mass as an exercise in “direct action.” One had a camera strapped to his chest—parishioners thought it was a bomb—and others held signs. They shouted at the faithful, using a bullhorn to amplify their message. They were protesting ham. That’s right—they said too many Catholics eat ham at Easter.

After I issued a news release on this incident, I eblasted it to our members, listing the email address of the co-founder; she was at the event. One of our members, Eddie Guanajuato, Director of Music at Cardinal Ritter High School in Indianapolis, asked her, “Why didn’t you visit a Mosque and disrupt their service?” She replied, “Why not Muslims? That is such a racist comment.”

Leaving aside the obvious—Muslims are not a race—it is striking how offended she was at Eddie’s question. In her mind, it is bigoted just to hypothetically ask about invading a Muslim house of worship, but it is not bigoted to actually invade a Catholic church. In other words, we Catholics deserve it, and that’s because of the teachings of the Catholic Church. Once again, anti-clericalism is masking anti-Catholicism.

The late Anthony Cardinal Bevilacqua was fond of reminding us that lay Catholics make up close to 100 percent of the Catholic Church. It is too bad that so many of them have deluded themselves into thinking that most of today’s professed anti-clerics are not anti-Catholic. In fact, their venom is aimed directly at the laity, as well as at the hierarchy.

There is a related problem at work here. Many lay Catholics refuse to interpret attacks on their Church as attacks on them. They reason that as long as they are not discriminated against at work, and their kids are free from discrimination at school, all is well. According to this logic, the most vicious portrayals of Catholicism can surface in the arts and in the movies, and on radio and TV, and none of it matters. But it would if they took their religion seriously.

Mother Angelica took her religion seriously. Indeed, she knew that much of what passes as anti-clericalism was really anti-Catholicism. She also knew that those who stuck a dagger in the heart of her religion were piercing hers as well. She did not live a dual life: She knew that those who hated the Catholic Church had no use for those who loved it.

One of the reasons why the Catholic laity, especially young Catholics, tolerate intolerance against their religion is because they are not taught about the rich contributions of Catholicism to Western civilization. In fact, these days they are more likely to hear how awful their religion is. Take Villanova, for instance.

Villanova has a great tradition, but there are some on the campus who are exploiting its good name to make political points. Beginning in the fall, it will feature a new course, “Racism and the Catholic Church.” Students will learn how the Church has failed “to bring blacks and whites together,” and how it instead “operated as an instrument not of racial unity and justice but racial segregation and white supremacy.”

Those who promote this collective self-hatred know exactly what they are doing. So don’t think that justifying anti-Catholicism is always the work of those outside our ranks.

Bill Donohue

This is Part I of a two part series; the June Catalyst will feature Part II. These articles represent an abbreviated version of Donohue’s monograph, “BBC Reports on Sexual Abuse: From Jimmy Savile to the Catholic Church.” It was sent to the bishops, and to select media outlets in the U.S. and the U.K. The original is available online.

Donohue wrote this in the aftermath of a report on BBC icon Jimmy Savile, and his employer’s reaction to his long history of serial rape. That report was written by a former judge, Dame Janet Smith; below is a shortened version of Donohue’s analysis of her report on the BBC. The next Catalyst will address the way the BBC has treated senior officials in the Catholic Church over the priestly abuse scandal.

As will be shown in Part I, the Smith report exonerates all the senior management of the BBC—she claims none of them knew anything about Savile’s conduct. Yet the BBC’s reports on the Vatican, as will be shown in Part II, claim that everyone from the pope on down knew about instances of priestly sexual abuse all over the world.

Overview

The Dame Janet Smith Review Report on BBC serial rapist Jimmy Savile has many strengths and weaknesses. Her greatest strength is her ability to understand the sociological underpinnings of Savile’s predatory behavior and the reasons why his conduct was not taken seriously at work.

Smith’s greatest weakness is her readiness to exculpate the BBC hierarchy: she wants us to believe that no one in a senior management position ever knew anything about Savile’s sexual offenses. What makes this so remarkable is Savile’s long history of abuse: he worked at the organization for more than 25 years—molesting some of his victims on the premises of the BBC—and he bragged about his exploits in public.

The report was three years in the making and it runs more than 700 pages. By any measure, Jimmy Savile was one of the most beastly sexual abusers in recent history.

To get a sense of who Savile was, Americans can fathom a cross between Dick Clark of “American Bandstand” and comedian Jerry Lewis (this was how Bill Keller of the New York Times aptly put it). If we coupled this admixture with a heady dose of Michael Jackson and Pee-wee Herman, we get a sense of who he was. Regarding his behavior, he made the latter two look angelic.

What brought Savile instant recognition was his show “Top of the Pops,” which debuted in 1964. It was broadcast early on Saturday evenings, bringing him to the attention of families. In 1975, he launched a new BBC show, “Jim’ll Fix It”; it attracted 16.5 million viewers, an astonishing number even by today’s standards. Two years later, he won a prestigious award for “wholesome family entertainment.” One major newspaper said that this show made him the “favourite uncle to the nation’s children.” Yet by this time he had raped many of them.

Savile’s role as a regular BBC host ended in 1994 when “Jim’ll Fix It” went off the air. But he was not done: he co-hosted the final “Top of the Pops” show in 2006. He died five years later.

Savile’s Predatory Behavior

“Savile had a voracious sex appetite,” the report says. “So far as I can tell,” Smith observes, “he never had and did not want a lasting sexual relationship and he never had an emotional attachment to anyone with whom he had a sexual relationship.” That’s because he was a classic narcissist, incapable of giving himself to another human being. Savile did what he did—fondling, grabbing, raping—because that is what he wanted to do. How others felt, even those he did not force himself on, did not matter.

Before turning to Smith’s report, consider what we know from other independent sources.

Savile was so sick that he actually assaulted his own niece. Sadly, her grandmother knew about it but kept quiet, and that is because her brother, Jimmy, made sure she had a comfortable lifestyle. Savile routinely got away with conduct like this. In 1976, when a man walked into Savile’s dressing room and found him molesting a 9-year-old boy, he simply said, “Oops,” and shut the door.

Here is what MailOnline said about Savile’s victims in 2012: “The picture they paint is of a ‘classic’ child abuser, targeting vulnerable youngsters at schools, hospitals and children’s homes….He plied them with treats—under the noses of teachers, doctors and BBC managers—and took them for rides in his Rolls-Royce….Savile sexually abused them in his car, his BBC dressing room, on hospital wards and in the bedrooms of girls at Duncroft boarding school in Surrey.” Indeed, one of his victims at the latter institution said that he “treated Duncroft like a paedophile sweet shop.”

Savile was evil. How else to describe a man who would rape a 12-year-old girl during a secret Satanic ritual in a hospital, screaming “Hail Satan” in a candle-lit room? What other word could be used to describe a man who performed sex acts on hundreds of dead bodies in a hospital where he was a volunteer—for over 60 years (1951 to 2011, the year he died)?

According to the U.K.’s National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, Savile abused more than 500 people. But Smith, relying only on uncontested evidence, understandably puts the figure much lower. As a judge, she confined herself to 75 complainants, accepting the evidence of 72 of them. What she found is reeling.

Of the 72 victims that Smith interviewed, 57 were female and 15 were male. Twenty-one of the female victims, and 13 of the male victims, were under 16. Eight were raped (six female and two male; there was an attempted rape of one female victim). Forty-seven victims were the subject of indecent/sexual assault excluding rape (34 female and 13 male).

Savile was born in 1926 and started working in ballrooms and doing radio jobs in the 1950s. In 1959, he made his first appearance as a guest on “Juke Box Jury” at Lime Grove Studios. That same year he raped a 13-year-old girl at work. On January 1, 1964, he started his fabulously successful “Top of the Pops”; it was the beginning of his long career at the BBC. He then went on a rampage sexually assaulting and raping young men and women in bathrooms, his home, dressing rooms, his camper, and on staircases. So bold was he that he even sexually assaulted a 15-year-old girl on a podium during the recording of “Top of the Pops.”

In 1974, Savile published his biography, As It Happens (more about this later). The following year he launched “Jim’ll Fix It.” He continued his predatory behavior, sexually assaulting a child (aged 10-12) in a church. In 1976, his autobiography was republished under the new title, Love is an Uphill Thing. That same year he raped a child of 10 or 11 in his dressing room.

Savile ceased presenting “Top of the Pops” in 1984, but it wasn’t until 2006 that the final episode of this show was aired. In 2009, he was interviewed by the police following reports of sexual assault at a school, but nothing came of it. In fact, nothing ever came of any investigation. Savile died in 2011, and six weeks later a BBC probe of his offenses was abandoned. But a year later, the BBC announced there would be two independent investigations.

Most of Savile’s assaults took place in his residence, but he was not shy about attacking his victims at work. According to Smith, “Savile would gratify himself whenever the opportunity arose.” Indeed, she learned of incidents “which took place in every one of the BBC premises at which he worked.” Whether on the set, in dressing rooms—even when recording live on camera—he did exactly what he wanted.

Savile’s victims were across age and sex lines. “Savile’s youngest victim from whom I heard was just eight years old,” Smith said. Of course, Savile’s sexual appetite was not limited to the very young. He would seek gratification from men and women, boys and girls. Those most at risk were teenage girls.

The BBC’s Response

The BBC had very relaxed norms in the 1960s and 1970s. They were effectively exploited by Savile. Smith found that officers would tolerate sex but not being drunk or coming to work late. For example, in 1969, a woman complained to her superiors after Savile grabbed her breasts but nothing was done about it. “The reaction of one of the managers was to show no surprise and to suggest that it would have been more surprising if Savile had not tried to touch her.” Smith concludes, “That was an inappropriate reaction but one which is not surprising given the culture of the times.”

Savile’s bosses were actually worse than being indifferent to his offenses. For example, Smith describes how he “put his hand down inside her knickers underneath her bottom,” and when the young girl complained, “a security officer was summoned and told to escort her off the premises. She was taken out and left on the street.”

Smith contends that even though Savile’s superiors knew of his conduct, the BBC’s hierarchy was kept in the dark.

“In summary,” Smith says, “my conclusion is that certain junior and middle-ranking individuals were aware of Savile’s inappropriate sexual conduct in connection with his work for the BBC. However, I have found no evidence that the BBC, as a body corporate, was aware of Savile’s inappropriate sexual conduct in connection with his work for the BBC.” Similarly, “No senior manager ever found out about any specific complaint relating to Savile’s inappropriate sexual conduct in connection with his work for the BBC.”

The English media rejected Smith’s exculpatory account of senior management. Indeed, most newspapers branded her report a “whitewash.”

It can be debated how much or how little the higher ups in the BBC knew of Savile’s behavior from managers below them. But it strains credulity to suggest that none of them knew of his very public admissions of sexual conquest: he wrote about them in his books.

In his autobiography, As It Happens, Savile bragged how he liked group sex, saying that his celebrity status meant that girls were “throwing themselves” at him. He estimated that about 20 percent of female audiences would “fancy” him, concluding that about 25 “super dolly birds” would be “putting the pressure on me” each night.

The Guardian loved his book, calling it “very funny.” The review, as Smith notes, included a quotation about all the places Savile had sex: “trains and boats and planes and bushes and fields, corridors, doorways, floors, chairs, slag heaps, desks and probably everything except the celebrated chandelier and ironing board.”

In short, Savile did not hide his sickness—it was there for everyone to see. His superiors were enablers, and for that they should be held accountable. But no one was ever held accountable for anything he did, regardless of whether his victims were boys and girls or young men and young women.

The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights is waging war on religious liberty.

Recently, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case that pits the Obama administration against non-profit groups, mostly Catholic, which object to the Health and Human Services mandate. This provision would force religious non-profits to be complicit in support of abortion-inducing drugs, contraception, and sterilization in their healthcare programs.

Noting that the high court was about to consider this case, The Leadership Conference, a coalition of left-wing groups, released an updated version of its report, “Striking a Balance: Advancing Civil and Human Rights While Preserving Religious Liberty.” The title is a ruse: no attempt is made to balance these rights. In fact, the group’s president, Wade Henderson, a former ACLU activist, showed his contempt for religious liberty when he referred to our “so-called” religious rights.

The report accurately stated that “Religious liberty is a fundamental civil and human right,” one that often conflicts with “equal protection under the law [as] a fundamental American and constitutional principle.” But the symmetry doesn’t last long. “Unfortunately, these ideals are clashing as claims of religious liberty are being used to strike at the core principle of equal protection.”

The truth is the other way around. It is not religious organizations that are telling the government that it must adopt their precepts; rather, it is the government that is telling religious entities that they must swear allegiance to secular values. To be exact, the Little Sisters of the Poor are not the aggressors—they are the victims of government overreach.

The Leadership Conference, which is lavishly greased by George Soros, is also fighting for Merrick Garland to be confirmed to the Supreme Court. No wonder they like him—this “moderate” is a big fan of partial-birth abortion. What he would have to support to be labeled an extremist is anyone’s guess.

Recently, Georgia Governor Nathan Deal decided to veto a religious liberty bill.

Soon after, Bill Donohue wrote a Newsmax article on how the left-wing establishment, led by the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, and the corporate establishment, led by Georgia Prospers, were independently working to crush the Georgia equivalent of the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act; 30 states have similar laws. Then Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal pledged to veto the bill.

If Gov. Deal were honest, he would have said that the pressure coming from the corporate elite was overwhelming and that it threatened to cause economic ruin to his state. Even men and women of faith could understand why he vetoed the bill.

Instead, he justified his veto saying, “I do not respond very well to insults or threats.” That is a lie—he responds very well to threats. Indeed, it is precisely the kinds of threats issued by the NFL, Disney, and Marvel Studios that made him cave: the NFL threatened to deny Atlanta a future Super Bowl, and Disney and Marvel threatened to relocate.

Gov. Deal made matters worse when he snickered at the faithful. According to CNN.com’s account of his position, he commented how ironic it is that “some people acknowledge that God grants the freedoms enumerated in the First Amendment, but want the government to enact laws to secure those rights.” He was quoted as saying, “Perhaps we should heed the hands-off admonition of the First Amendment.”

That is an astounding argument. The same Founders that acknowledged that our rights come from God, not government, insisted that it was the job of government to ensure those rights. If Gov. Deal can’t understand the difference between the origin of our inalienable rights, and the duty of government officials to protect them, he ought to take a remedial course in civics.

The American Civil Liberties Union has been on a tear against the religious liberty of Catholic health care facilities. In a well-greased, coordinated campaign, the ACLU has made it a top priority to force Catholic hospitals to provide “services,” like abortion and sterilization, that violate Catholic moral teaching. But their efforts keep getting slapped down by the courts.

In the latest case, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan on April 11 tossed the ACLU’s suit against Catholic non-profit Trinity Health Corporation. The ACLU was seeking to force Trinity Health, which operates 86 facilities in 21 states, to perform abortions. The court found that the “alleged harm” claimed by the ACLU was “speculative” at best, and thus “not ripe for review.”

Last January, San Francisco Superior Judge Ernest Goldsmith similarly dismissed the ACLU’s motion to force Mercy Medical Center in California to carry out sterilization procedures in violation of Catholic teaching.

The following article written by Bill Donohue was published by Newsmax on March 24.

The two Democrats running for president are rarely asked to address religious liberty issues, and that is because everyone knows that neither Hillary Clinton nor Sen. Bernie Sanders places much of a premium on such matters.

The three Republican candidates are more likely to be questioned on this subject, yet none has been asked to comment on the most pressing religious liberty legislation currently being considered: the bill that recently passed both houses of the Georgia legislature. It’s time they were asked.

The Georgia bill is similar to the laws passed by 30 other states. Essentially, it would give Georgia the same rights as enumerated in the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) at the federal level.

That bill placed a heavy burden on the federal government whenever it sought to override religious liberty objections: It had to prove a “compelling government interest” before it interfered with religious rights.

The majority of states adopted their own RFRA laws because the protections afforded by the bill signed by President Clinton in 1993 did not extend to the states.

There was little controversy over this issue until Indiana sought to implement its own RFRA law last year. LGBT groups objected, claiming that there should be no religious exemption for anyone who refused to service a same-sex event, even if the objections were religiously grounded.

Gov. Mike Pence, under pressure to veto the law, signed a revised version of it, over protests from the NCAA (it is headquartered in Indiana). At the time, most of the sports establishment stayed out of it, but this time Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal is being lobbied hard by the Atlanta Braves, the Atlanta Falcons, and the Atlanta Hawks.

Most important, the NFL has jumped on board, threatening not to award Atlanta with the Super Bowl: Atlanta is a finalist for the 2019 and 2020 Super Bowls, along with New Orleans, Miami, and Tampa.

As Kyle Wingfield of the Atlanta Journal Constitution has said, the NFL is not only entering into highly political territory, it is hypocritical: Louisiana and Florida already have RFRA laws, so why is Georgia being singled out for retribution? It could also be asked: Where are all the horror stories of gay rights being eviscerated in the 30 states that have their own RFRA laws?

None of this should be enough to stop Donald Trump, Sen. Ted Cruz, or Gov. John Kasich from taking the side of religious liberty. But opposition to the bill is not coming merely from the sports world, or from a coalition of left-wing groups represented by The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. No, it is being led by the corporate establishment.

A recently founded non-profit group, Georgia Prospers, has organized scores of businesses to work against the religious liberty bill, HB 757. Here are some of the luminaries:

AIG, Apple, AT&T, Bain, Bank of America, Atlanta Convention & Bureau, Coca-Cola, Cox Enterprises, Cushman & Wakefield, Deloitte & Touche, Delta, Ernst & Young, Google, Home Depot, Honeywell, Hyatt Regency, IBM, InterContinental Hotels, Marriott, McKesson, Mercedes-Benz, Metro Atlanta Chamber, Microsoft, Nordstrom, PNC, Porsche, Pricewater-houseCoopers, Ruth’s Chris, Sheraton, SunTrust, Tishman Speyer, Turner Broadcasting, Twitter, Unilever, UPS, Verizon, Wells Fargo.

Oh, yes, the Girl Scouts of Greater Atlanta has also sided against religious liberty.

Now Disney and Marvel Studios have pledged to move their Georgia offices elsewhere if the bill becomes law. Walt Disney must be turning over in his grave —his child-friendly empire is more gay-friendly than it is religion-friendly. Pushing for Hollywood to work against religious liberty is the Human Rights Campaign, the gay activist organization.

It is one of the more astounding social transformations of our time: corporate America has gotten into bed with gay activists. These elites maintain that when there is a conflict between LGBT rights and religious rights, the latter should yield. Which means that sincerely held religious convictions about the sanctity of marriage, properly understood, should no longer be honored by the state.

In real life terms, this means that the government has a right to force practicing Christians to service a gay wedding event. Similarly, it has the authority to punish the Knights of Columbus if they do not rent their halls to two homosexuals seeking to marry.

The Republican candidates should no longer be allowed to pontificate in general about the religious exercise provision of the First Amendment. They ought to be asked to choose: Do they side with the left-wing and corporate establishment, or with men and women of faith?

On Holy Thursday, an episode of “Rachel Dratch’s Late Night Snack” on TruTV featured an exchange between two girls about sex. “What does that mean? Do you mean the first time I had vaginal intercourse?” To which it was said, “Yeah. Okay. That’s such a Catholic girl question. Yeah. It’s a vagina.” Comedy Central’s “@Midnight with Chris Hardwick” had a Holy Thursday episode about Jesus that joked about that “barren cross” and “sacramental wine.”

Also on Holy Thursday, Seth Meyers on his NBC “Late Night” show commented, “No wonder Judas dropped a dime on you.” The next day, Good Friday was panned on the Fox 5 show, “TMZ”: referring to the meaning of the crucifixion, it was said, “Screw that cause.”

Reports of a Catholic priest being crucified in Yemen on Good Friday have not been confirmed. But no one disputes that 70 people were killed in Pakistan on Easter Sunday, 29 of whom were children. Ehsanullah Ehsan, one of the Taliban terrorists, explained, “The target was Christians.” But not all Muslims are barbarians. Last week, a Muslim shopkeeper in Scotland posted an Easter greeting on Facebook: “Good Friday and a very Happy Easter, especially to my beloved Christian nation.” For this he was knifed to death on Easter Sunday by a Muslim.

Yes, there is a profound difference between ridicule, even in its most vulgar manifestation, and murder. But none of this can be justified. Those who preach the gospel of tolerance yet make light of mocking Christians—during Holy Week—are part of the problem. Even Bill Maher did not go off on Christians on his Good Friday show.

It’s about time we connected the dots. When attacks are aimed almost exclusively and relentlessly against one religion, whether violent or non-violent, they should be condemned by everyone.

Six young people invaded the noon Mass on Easter Sunday. With a bullhorn in hand, a 23-year-old North Carolina teacher screamed, “Only the devil” could create “animals capable of love and joy just so humans can make them suffer and die.” Many in the congregation thought that the camera that was strapped to his chest was a bomb.

Others held signs and pictures of animals, shouting, “Easter is a time for love! No more shedding animal blood!” The police and security moved quickly to restore order.

The protesters were not a random group. They belong to Collectively Free, an animal rights organization. It is confused at best and dishonest at worst. On the one hand, it emphasizes “Integrity and Empathy,” urging its members to “Show respect for and value individuals.”

On the other hand, it encourages members to be “provocative & experimental” in their tactics, making sure they push “the boundaries.” Regarding the latter, the organization says it believes in “direct action,” including “actions [that] involve entering an establishment that normalizes the exploitation of non-human animals, holding space, and speaking out on behalf of the victims.”

That the two goals are contradictory escapes them. In practice, “direct action” is what defines Collectively Free.

Ham. That is why the activists invaded St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Raffaella Ciavatta, co-founder of the group, told a reporter, “Ham is a big thing on Easter, so that is why we decided to bring those voices to the public.” Not that it gets Bill Donohue off the hook with her, but he had a steak on Easter Sunday.