This is an excerpt from a longer article of the same name; it can be found on our website.

On October 6, Cardinal George Pell appeared in a Melbourne court on trumped up sexual abuse charges. He did so amidst a frenzy over a report issued in August by the Centre for Global Research at RMIT University, Melbourne, “Child Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church.”

The authors of the report are two embittered ex-priests. Their goal, it is plain to see, is to justify a state takeover of the Catholic Church.

Desmond Cahill is lead author. In 2012, he testified before a committee of the Parliament of Victoria on the subject of sexual abuse. His agenda includes many reforms, ranging from an end to mandatory priestly celibacy to a fundamental restructuring of the priesthood. Most of all he wants to neuter the Church’s authority. “The church is incapable of reform,” he declares, “so the state will have to do it.”

Co-author Peter Wilkinson was one of the founders of the dissident Australian group Catholics for Renewal. Writing in the online publication Catholica, he expressed “a growing conviction that the Church must now rely on outside secular authorities to give it moral guidance.”

There is much about the Church they find objectionable. For example, they oppose the autonomy of diocesan bishops and the “monarchy” of the pope. They find the seal of the confessional extremely problematic, and manage to link it to the abuse scandal. Ditto for celibacy. In both cases, the link they establish is pitifully weak, if not non-existent.

This is particularly telling given that just recently Australia’s Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse recommended that the government overrule the seal of the confessional when it comes to reporting sexual abuse of minors. “Clergy should not be able to refuse to report because the information was received during confession,” the Commission stated. Both of the men were consultants to this Royal Commission.

The authors know that if celibacy were the cause of sexual abuse, there never would have been a sudden increase in offenses beginning in the 1960s, so the best they can do is to say it plays a role “when combined with other risk factors.” The truth is their opposition to celibacy reflects their politics, not the data.

Given their ideology, it is not surprising to learn that nowhere do they confront the overwhelming evidence which shows that most of the sexual abuse of minors was committed by homosexuals. This is typical of dissidents in the U.S. as well as Australia.

We know from the best data in the United States that 81 percent of the victims were male and 78 percent were postpubescent. When men have sex with men, that’s called homosexuality. Furthermore, the 2011 report by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, cited by Cahill and Wilkinson, showed that in the United States less than five percent of the sexual abuse was committed by pedophiles.

Cahill and Wilkinson blame the Church’s “homophobic environment” for the scandal. But if homophobia accounts for the sexual abuse of minors, why didn’t the scandal take place in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s? After all, would not everyone agree that that would be the most likely time, in recent history, for so-called homophobia to balloon? Similarly, why did the explosion in priestly sexual abuse take place when sexual norms in the seminaries were relaxed, if not abandoned altogether? Paradoxically, even the authors offer evidence that makes our point, not theirs.

Citing the 2011 John Jay report, they readily admit that “Men ordained in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s did not generally abuse before the 1960s or 1970s. Men ordained in the 1960s and the early 1970s engaged in abuse behaviour much more quickly after their entrance into ministry.”

Apparently, Cahill and Wilkinson have a hard time connecting the dots. Prior to the sexual revolution of the 1960s, which hit every institution in the Western world, including the Catholic Church, sexual abuse was not a major problem. Why? Precisely because of the reigning ethic of sexual reticence. It is when the lid came off that the rate of sexual abuse soared.

In other words, the more tolerant the Church became of homosexuality, and the less “homophobic” it became, the more homosexual priests began preying on young men. Not to acknowledge this is intellectually dishonest.

The authors are so thoroughly compromised that they make the positively absurd statement that “the majority of offenders were heterosexual even if they abused young boys.” This is twice wrong: (a) most of the victims were not “young boys”—they were adolescents, and (b) it is delusional to say that same-sex acts are acts of heterosexuality.

It is not hard to conclude that Cahill and Wilkinson are not objective researchers. They have an agenda: They seek to destroy separation of church and state, allowing the government to police the Catholic Church. But not to worry, the Church has survived these power grabs before, and it will survive this one as well.

This article by Bill Donohue was published by CNSNews.

Why did Stephen Paddock murder at least 59 people, wounding well over 500? His rampage was not politically motivated, and he has no history of mental illness. He was a multimillionaire and quite intelligent. Indeed, he worked for Lockheed Martin, the defense contractor, and was an accountant and property manager. But he was socially ill.

To be specific, he was a loner, unable to set anchor in any of his relationships, either with family or friends. That played a huge role in his killing spree, which ended when he killed himself.

Before considering his upbringing and lifestyle, the role that nature may have played cannot be dismissed.

Paddock’s father was a bank robber who was on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list. More important, he was diagnosed as “psychopathic” and “suicidal.”

“It has been established for some time that genes play a significant role in the makeup of those individuals eventually diagnosed with such conditions as Antisocial Personality Disorder,” writes Dr. George Simon, an expert in this area.

There is no doubt that Paddock was acutely antisocial, and there is much evidence linking that trait to pathological behaviors.

Dr. Samuel E. Samenow is a clinical psychologist and author of Inside the Criminal Mind. He co-authored, with Dr. Samuel Yochelson, the highly influential book, The Criminal Personality. His understanding of mass shooters as loners has much to recommend.

Who are these people? “They are secretive individuals who do not want others to know them. They may be highly intelligent, achieve high grades in school, and even obtain responsible positions.” But their inability to establish bonds is undeniable, and that is critically important to understanding what makes them tick.

Significantly, the loner turned murderer possesses a personality that drives people away from him. “These are not likable individuals,” Samenow says. “No one seems to have known them well. They marginalize themselves, rejecting the world well before the world rejects them.”

Now consider what we know about Paddock.

Paddock had no relationship with his gangster father, and was estranged from his brothers. Moreover, he had few, if any, friends. Twice divorced, he had no children. Moreover, he was not in a position to make friends with co-workers: the last time he had a full-time job was 30 years ago.

Paddock never laid anchor anywhere. Growing up, his family moved from Iowa to Tucson to Southern California. His next door Florida neighbor, Donald Judy, said, “Paddock was constantly on the move, carrying a suitcase and driving a rental car,” noting that he “looked like he’d be ready to move at a moment’s notice.”

He certainly got around. He once owned 27 residences in four states, and bragged how he was a “world traveler” and a “professional gambler.” There is no evidence that his world traveling, which was done on cruise ships, ever involved someone else.

Paddock’s recreational pursuits were always solo enterprises. He owned single-engine planes and was a licensed fisherman—a popular solitary sport—in Alaska. His gambling was also a solitary experience. For instance, Paddock did not play the crap table, where gamblers interact. No, he only played video games by himself.

His brother Eric is distraught at his inability to understand Stephen. No matter, his observations about him shed much light on who he was.

Eric said Stephen got bored with flying planes, so he gave it up. It appears that he was looking for some excitement in his lonely life, which explains his gambling preference. “It has to be the right machine with double points,” Eric says, “and there has to be a contest going on. He won a car one time.”

Similarly, Eric notes that Stephen “was a wealthy guy, playing video poker, who went cruising all the time and lived in a hotel room.” He added that he “was at the hotel for four months one time. It was like a second home.” It would be more accurate to say that Stephen never had a home.

Eric recalls that Stephen excelled at sports but never played or joined organized clubs. “He wasn’t a team kind of guy.”

Stephen was not close to any of his brothers, and in the case of Patrick, the two had not seen each other for 20 years. This explains why Patrick did not initially recognize Stephen when his face was shown on TV.

Stephen’s Florida neighbor, Donald Judy, said that the inside of Paddock’s house “looked like a college freshman lived there.” There was no art on the walls, etc, just a bed, two recliners, and one dining chair.

Diane McKay lived next door to Paddock in Reno. “He was weird. Kept to himself. It was like living next door to nothing.” Indeed, “He was just nothing, quiet.”

The local sheriff from Mesquite, Nevada, where Paddock also lived, labeled him “reclusive.” One of Paddock’s neighbors agreed, noting that he was “a real loner.”

“Real loners” are not only unable to commit themselves to others, they are unable to commit themselves to God. So it came as no surprise that Paddock had no strong religious beliefs. It would have been startling to find out otherwise.

It’s all about the “Three Bs”: beliefs, bonds, and boundaries. As I found out when I compared cloistered nuns to Hollywood celebrities on measures of physical and mental health, as well as happiness (see The Catholic Advantage: How Health, Happiness and Heaven Await the Faithful), it is not the nuns who are unhealthy, or who suffer from loneliness, depression, and suicide.

“People who need people are the luckiest people in the world.” This is one of Barbra Streisand’s most famous refrains. She didn’t quite nail it. There is nothing lucky about needing people—it’s a universal appetite. People who have people are the luckiest people in the world. Paddock was not so lucky.

Most loners are not mass murderers, but most murderers are loners. In the case of Paddock, it appears that his antisocial personality, coupled with an acute case of ennui, or sheer boredom with life, found relief by lighting up the sky. Sometimes the mad search for causation can lead us astray; we should not overlook more mundane reasons why the socially ill decide to act out in a violent way.

Sadly, our society seriously devalues religion, celebrates self-absorption, and disrespects boundaries. This is not a recipe for well-being; rather, it is a prescription for mass producing Paddock-like people. We are literally planting the social soil upon which sick men like him feed.

This article by Bill Donohue was published by CNSNews.

Pundits on both the right and the left cannot understand why there is no apparent political or religious motive involved in the Las Vegas killings. There doesn’t have to be: Paddock was socially ill, a loner whose boredom was relieved by taking risks—flying single-engine planes and engaging in high-stakes gambling. Consistent to the end, his life ended in a blaze of excitement.

The media have a hard time thinking outside the box. So when politics and religion are taken off the table, one of the few things left for them to chew on is race. Take the Associated Press story, “Terrorism, Race, Religion: Defining the Las Vegas Shooting.”

The AP is impressed that Paddock was “a white gunman”who attacked “a mostly-white country music crowd.”So what? Blacks kill each other in the streets of Chicago all the time. If AP has something it wants to impute to Paddock’s race, it should say so. But it chose not to, and that’s because there is nothing there. However, that didn’t stop it from looking at this story through a political lens.

For example, the AP story mentions the role of Islamic extremists in acts of terror, which is undeniable, but then it tries to “balance”the piece by noting Norwegian mass killer Anders Breivik; he is described as a “neo-Nazi”who gunned down 77 people in 2011.

Breivik was never a neo-Nazi. In fact, as Norwegian social scientist Lars Gule said, he was a “national conservative, not a Nazi.”Nor was he a Christian, as some said he was: he put his faith in Odinism. In terms of his politics, the Jerusalem Post called him out for his “far-right Zionism.” So what was he? He was a deranged man who was high on drugs when he struck.

The problem with Breivik, like Paddock, was his persona, not his politics. He was initially diagnosed as having paranoid schizophrenia, and shortly thereafter he became increasingly isolated and withdrawn. He was subsequently declared criminally insane.

A second round of psychiatric evaluations said his problem was best understood as an antisocial personality disorder, not a mental illness; he was also diagnosed as having a narcissistic personality disorder.

Those conditions are clearly reflected in the life of Stephen Paddock (see pp. 10-11 to read Donohue’s account). And just as Paddock had a severely dysfunctional upbringing, so did Breivik. His parents divorced when he was a year old, and his mother brutalized him: she “sexualized”him, beat him, and told him that she “wished that he were dead.”

Obviously, most people raised in a lousy family do not turn out to be mass killers. But when a background like the one Breivik, and Paddock, endured is coupled with other psychological and social factors, it makes a lot more sense to probe these personal experiences than it does to look exclusively a t external matters.

There is a whole world out there besides politics, religion, race, sex, and sexual orientation, though this escapes most pundits these days. Unfortunately, those looking to blame anyone or anything but the culprit—”the guns did it”—are totally blind to this reality.

Just as it is important not to simplify complex issues, the temptation to over-analyze must also be resisted. Sometimes the answer is right before our eyes.

The following article by Bill Donohue was published by CNSNews.

Catholic League President Bill Donohue has written a letter to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell—regarding the controversy over players not standing for the national anthem—telling him that he should be fired.

Donohue also told Goodell he was sending him “my Giants lawn flag as a token of my disgust for you.”

Below is the full text of Donohue’s letter to Goodell:

Dear Mr. Goodell:

You are responsible for the polarization in the NFL. Had you invoked the NFL rule regarding inappropriate apparel, you would have sanctioned Colin Kaepernick for wearing socks depicting the police as pigs. And you could have enforced the rule requiring players to stand during the national anthem. But you did neither, hence the protests.

Accordingly, I am sending you my Giants lawn flag as a token of my disgust for you; as a veteran I am particularly incensed over your delinquency. I no longer support the NFL and hope that professional football takes a nose dive. Then you should be fired.

Sincerely,

William Donohue

On Columbus Day most American cities and states had the usual celebrations, but there were important exceptions.

The Los Angeles City Council voted in August to rename the explorer’s holiday “Indigenous Peoples’ Day.” In doing so, it followed the lead of San Francisco, Berkeley, Santa Cruz, Seattle, and Minneapolis, as well as South Dakota, Hawaii, Alaska, and Oregon.

No one really knows who, or what, an “indigenous” person is. For one thing, all so-called indigenous peoples migrated here from across the Bering Strait. Moreover, even the United Nations confesses it doesn’t know how to define them.

In 2004, the U.N.’s Department of Economic and Social Affairs issued a document, “The Concept of Indigenous Peoples.” After much study, it concluded that indigenous peoples were not a reality—they were a “concept.” It further noted that “the prevailing view today is that no formal universal definition of the term is necessary.”

That being the case, no one knows exactly who, or what, was celebrated in those cities and states that hate Columbus.

The furor over Columbus, just like the hysteria over many of the monuments, is as contrived as it is baseless. With few exceptions, up until recently, no one felt put upon by these public tributes to prominent Americans.

It is not as though there was some new revelation about those honored in the public square. For example, everyone knew that many of the Founders owned slaves. What changed is our reaction.

This is a game, and it is a dishonest one. Most of those demanding that we take down the monuments are not driven by some noble sentiment—they are driven by hate. That is what is fueling the anti-Columbus agenda. They’re also phonies.

The haters are not upset about slavery—many of these mean-spirited activists have long supported the slavery that marked the Soviet Union and Mao’s China—they are upset that their goal of subverting America hasn’t materialized. So they play their slavery card as a way to bring shame to our nation.

They need a reality check.

There is not a place on the globe that has not known slavery. The ancient Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans not only tolerated slavery, they saw nothing wrong with it. Neither did the Chinese and Japanese. Slavery was outlawed in the U.S. in the 1860s, but was not made illegal in Africa until the 1980s (it still exists there today).

The evidence is clear: there are those who have a vested ideological interest in putting the worst possible face on America. Their anti-monument madness is only their latest foray into disabling the nation, and that is what is driving the animus against Columbus.

So who did we pay tribute to on October 9th? Columbus? Or Indigenous Peoples? The decision was an easy one for us at the Catholic League. It all came down to partying. Those who celebrated Columbus were party animals—just our kind of people. By contrast, we had nothing in common with those who were bent on honoring a “concept.”

Kudos to New York Italians who stood firm on honoring Columbus. They forced New York politicians not to side with the hate-filled radicals.