In October, President Biden nominated Joseph Donnelly to be the new U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See. Many Catholic media outlets, including Catholic News Service, erroneously claimed he is a “pro-life” Democrat. He is not only at odds with the Catholic Church on abortion, he is pro-gay marriage, against religious liberty, and against school choice.

When Donnelly served as a congressman from Indiana (2007-2013), he was pro-life, but when he became a U.S. Senator (2013-2019), he pivoted and joined the pro-abortion camp.

While serving in the 111th Congress, 2009-2010, Donnelly agreed with the positions of National Right to Life 83% of the time. When he became a senator, his numbers dropped to 20% (2013-2014), 25% (2015-2016), and 28% (2017-2018).

NARAL, the pro-abortion giant, gave him a 0% score in 2016, but he jumped to 84% in 2017 and 80% in 2018.

Donnelly voted for the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, in 2010, even though the bill required Catholic non-profits, such as the Little Sisters of the Poor, to pay for abortion-inducing drugs in their healthcare plans.

In 2017, when President Donald Trump signed a bill that would deny states the right to use Title X funds to enable abortion providers, Donnelly voted against it.

In August 2015, Donnelly voted not to fund Planned Parenthood, but literally four months later he voted to fund it. In 2018, he once again voted to have the taxpayers fund this abortion-clinic behemoth.

On gay marriage, Donnelly went through a similar “evolution.” He was initially opposed to it, but when he got to the Senate he voted for it.

In 2013, the USCCB issued a statement against the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, citing, among other things, the bill for inadequate religious-liberty protections. Donnelly voted for it.

A year later, after the U.S. Supreme Court issued its “Hobby Lobby” ruling—it protected the religious rights of private business owners—the Democrats sought to undo it. Donnelly voted to take away that freedom.

In 2015, he fought against an Indiana bill that would safeguard religious liberty. In Donnelly’s last term in the Senate, he voted against a school choice measure.

Joe Donnelly started out as a Catholic official who was mostly in line with the policy prescriptions of the Catholic Church. But he ended his career in government as a foe of the Church’s moral teachings.

There is a reason why Donnelly was co-chair of Catholics for Biden. Like our “devout Catholic” president, he turned rogue.

California Governor Gavin Newsom did what everyone expected him to do when he signed legislation to remove a statue of St. Junípero Serra from the state Capitol in Sacramento. We opposed this decision but almost every lawmaker was against us.

The attack on Serra is motivated by ignorance of his meritorious service to Indians in the 18th century, and a visceral hatred of Catholicism overall; it has been going on for years. The removal of the statue comes after vandals defaced it and tore it down on July 4, 2020.

On October 11, a few weeks after Newsom’s decision to displace the statue of St. Serra, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti announced that the city would no longer call the park across from Union Station by what it is commonly referred to, Fr. Junípero Serra Park.

The only good news is that Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert filed felony vandalism charges against one of the persons who destroyed the monument to St. Serra in the city.

Newsom and Garcetti preside over the most outrageous exploitation of homeless people in the United States, yet they have the audacity to accuse this Franciscan priest—who treated Indians with respect and demanded that they be given their natural rights—of oppressing them. It doesn’t get much sicker than this.

Pope Francis canonized Fr. Serra in 2015. Honest scholars know that the pope was right.

It is important in a free country for its citizens to have faith in their leaders, their institutions and each other. To be sure, there is nothing wrong with challenging the policies and perspectives of elites, or our fellow citizens—it can be quite healthy—but when skepticism turns to cynicism, that is another thing altogether. Recent survey data should give us pause: public confidence is waning, and it is widespread.

In October, Gallup released the findings of three surveys: they sought to measure public trust in the media; public trust in politicians; and trust in the judgment of the American people. The results are disturbing. Likely causes are media bias, lying politicians, and polarization in society, respectively.

The public’s trust in the media reached its second lowest point since Gallup started tracking this variable in 1972. Only 36% of respondents said they had a “great deal” or “fair amount” of trust in mass media. Eleven percent of Republicans and 31% of independents trust the media; by contrast, 68% of Democrats do.

Why do 64% of the American people not trust the media, but 68% of Democrats do? Clearly most Americans see a bias that Democrats do not detect. We know from many studies done on the media elite, dating back to Stanley Rothman’s work in the early 1980s, that those in command of the major media are overwhelmingly liberal-left in their politics. As a result, what the Democrats see and read mostly confirms their own ideological leanings, so of course they don’t see that as a bias. Almost everyone else does.

To cite one example, I ran a Lexis-Nexis search of the number of times the media used the term “Trump falsely claims” during the past year. When the number tops 10,000 it says, “10,000+.” That was his figure. When Biden’s name was inserted, the figure dropped to 2,200. More likely this reflects the bias of journalists, not the veracity of these men.

Public confidence in politicians hit its lowest mark in 2021, garnering a mere 44%. No one is surprised to learn that politicians lie, but the extent and seriousness of the lies today are extraordinary. When candidates for public office are smeared, and the ones who are responsible for the smearing are lying—and then they get away with it—that hurts public confidence.

When congressmen vote for an infrastructure bill that is over 2,600 pages, and they don’t read it, that lowers public confidence. Worse is when the public learns that only 25% of the goodies in the bill have anything to do with infrastructure. Fighting climate change is one thing, but jamming it into an infrastructure is bill is offensive. And why is the infrastructure bill paying for some of Canada’s bridges and highways?

When we are told by politicians that our border is secure, and are then presented with pictures that prove otherwise, that erodes confidence. Similarly, when we are told that trillions of dollars in new spending won’t cost us a dime, we are dealing with more than lies—we are dealing with insult.

When only 55% of the public trusts the judgment of the American people—another new low—that is not a good sign. But given the high degree of polarization in our society, it is to be expected.

We are divided not only along several demographic lines, we are also divided within families. Thanksgiving is a time when ideally family members come together in harmony, but too often these occasions devolve into spats about politics. Expressions of jealousy among relatives are commonplace during the holidays, but when disagreements about core moral values get nasty, that’s hard to mend.

Our society is so polarized that we can’t seem to agree that males cannot become females, and vice versa. Yet from the medical profession to the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, we are pretending otherwise. We are being told to speak about “pregnant persons,” not “pregnant women,” as if men can become pregnant. Next we will be told that we can no longer talk about “men who have prostate cancer,” adopting instead, “persons who have prostate cancer.”

We need to regain trust of the media, but that can’t come from us. It must begin with them. The men and women who work in the media, especially in senior positions, have got to stop editorializing the news. We need to get back to the time when there was a clear line between hard news reporting and opinion.

Politicians are not going to stop lying, so voters have to make the first move to regain our trust in them. This means we should stop tolerating lies told by those whom we like, not just those we dislike.

To regain the trust in the judgment of the American people, we need to begin with ourselves. Sniping at family and friends via email, Facebook, and other social media, is a disaster. There is no substitute for in-person interaction when it comes to settling disagreements.

If we don’t turn this around, we will find ourselves in a state of mortal distrust. A free society is held together by bonds, and when they fray, we all lose.

Bill Donohue

When the clergy sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church is discussed, the focus is usually on the two principal parties to it, namely the molesting priests and their enabling bishops. In my new book, The Truth About Clergy Sexual Abuse: Clarifying The Facts And The Causes, I call this Scandal I.

It is my contention that there was another scandal. Scandal II is how the media, the entertainment industry, advocacy groups, victims’ activists and their lawyers, state attorneys general and others have been preoccupied with the Church, to the exclusion of other groups and institutions. Quite frankly, they have been playing us. Their interest in combating the sexual abuse of minors depends solely on the identity of the abuser, not his conduct.

Ch.1 “Catholics Don’t Own This Problem”

The opening chapter reviews extensive data on sexual misconduct committed by many other organizations. We have known for a long time that when adults and minors interact on a regular basis, problems of sexual abuse arise. After reviewing the problem of sexual abuse by the clergy of other religions, I turn my attention to sexual misconduct in secular institutions.

The evidence shows that those who work in the media, government, education, healthcare, and many other professions, have had their fair share of sexual deviants. Not only that, they covered up for them. In short, we don’t own this problem, though many elites—those responsible for Scandal II—would like to convince the public otherwise.

Ch. 2 “The Church Confronts the Scandal”

This chapter explores how the Church responded when the Boston Globe broke the news of Scandal I in 2002. There is an analysis of the Dallas reforms and the progress that had been made. Though most of this part is praiseworthy, fault is noted regarding the short shrift given to the due process rights of accused priests.

The progress made is undeniable. In the 1970s, which was the worst decade, over 6,000 accusations were made in any given year against current members of the clergy. Now the figures are in the single digits.

Ch. 3 “The Poisoning of the Public Mind”

This chapter hones in on Scandal II. The faulty public perception that no progress has been made is commonplace. The role played by the media has been huge. By reporting on new accusations—even though the alleged misbehavior took place decades ago—it leaves the impression that nothing has changed. There is no other institution in society that is treated this way.

Hollywood has also fanned the flames by making movies about alleged mistreatment of children by nuns. By doing so, it leads the public to think that sexual abuse of minors is common in many parts of the Catholic Church. Yet a closer look at these films reveals how utterly dishonest the portrayals have been.

The Pennsylvania Grand Jury Report, along with victims’ lawyers and victims’ advocates, have also poisoned the public mind. Their agenda, and their distortion of the truth, is discussed in detail. Included is an extensive takedown of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), a mostly moribund group that was the media’s darling. The role the Catholic League played in dismantling this dishonest entity is given much coverage.

Ch. 4 “Myths of the Scandal’s Origins Debunked”

Before I explain what really caused Scandal I, the myths regarding its origin are debunked. Celibacy, for example, had nothing to do with it. If celibacy were the problem, then why were so few priests engaged in sexual misconduct in the 1940s and 1950s? Why were the 1960s, 1970s and the 1980s the worst decades?

Some critics actually blame Catholic moral teachings, as if teaching the virtue of sexual restraint somehow caused priests not to restrain themselves. Just as ludicrous are attempts to blame homophobia.

This chapter also explains why some bishops enabled the molesters. Six explanations are offered: fear of scandalizing the Church; in-group favoritism; elitism; ineptitude (e.g., not picking up on red flags); the role of therapists; and the failure to follow Vatican norms.

Ch. 5 “The Role of Evil”

The fifth chapter makes clear that while all of the molesters were sick men, most were not evil. However, some were. When a priest uses sacred objects or sacred words when abusing his victims, this is evil. There is an extensive analysis of the McCarrick Report, named after former cardinal Theodore McCarrick. While he was solely responsible for his behavior, many in the Church were derelict in their duties by not reining him in decades earlier.

Ch. 6 “The Role of Homosexuality: Denying the Obvious”

This chapter focuses on those bishops, priests, nuns, and laypeople who have danced around the obvious, namely the overwhelming role that homosexuals have played in creating the scandal. Indeed, the dance is still ongoing, as witnessed by the Vatican Summit of 2019. Those clerics put the blame squarely on clericalism, as if elitism had anything to with why priests molested minors (it may have had something to do with why some bishops enabled the molesters). Also, such supposed causes of priestly sexual abuse as pedophilia and ephebophilia are examined and discredited.

Ch. 7 “The Role of Homosexuality: Admitting the Obvious”

Some Church leaders, such as Pope Benedict XVI, have been courageous in discussing the role that homosexuals have played, though they have been hammered for doing so. To understand what happened, we need to give due consideration to the deleterious effects of the gay subculture. The evidence that a gay subculture contributed mightily to the scandal cannot be denied. The good news is that the seminaries have undergone a much needed reformation.

Ch. 8 “The Role of Homosexuality: An Analysis of the John Jay Thesis”

I credit the methodology of the John Jay College for Criminal Justice researchers for doing the two reports on this subject for the bishops. But I fault them for being deceptive in their analysis of the data.

For example, they admit that most of the abuse was male-on-male sex, and that most of the victims were postpubescent. They also do not deny that the sexual acts were homosexual in nature. Yet they discount the role that homosexuality played. How did they pull off this magic trick? They said that many of these molesting priests did not identify as homosexual.

So what? Sexual identity is not dispositive. It is one’s behavior, not his perception of it, that counts. If the molesters identified as heterosexual, would the social scientists at John Jay have concluded that we had a heterosexual-driven scandal?

Ch. 9 “The Role of Homosexuality: Does Homosexuality Cause the Sexual Abuse of Minors?”

This may be the most controversial chapter in the book. While I conclude that homosexuality does not, per se, cause the sexual abuse of minors, I also conclude that there is a link between the two (otherwise homosexual priests would not be so overrepresented).

There is an intervening variable, one that intervenes between homosexual priests and the sexual abuse of minors, and that variable is the emotional and sexual immaturity of the offenders. In other words, homosexuals are more likely to be immature, and immaturity is associated with the sexual abuse of minors. The immaturity that is prevalent among homosexuals was noted by Freud and Jung. Subsequently, the evidence has only grown.

There is another homosexual trait, narcissism (it is a close cousin to immaturity), that helps explain why homosexuals are overrepresented among those who abuse minors. Gay psychiatrists and psychologists have been open about the role that narcissism plays in the gay community.

The self-destructive behaviors that gays engage in is also discussed. By this I mean promiscuity (almost all homosexual men are promiscuous, and most can’t form lasting relationships). This is not easy reading, but the sources cited are authoritative and the truth needs to be told.

Ch. 10 “The Role of the Sexual Revolution”

The tenth chapter shows the social context in which the scandal occurred.

The sexual revolution was felt everywhere, but nowhere was it more impactful than in Boston. There is a reason why Boston was the epicenter of the scandal: it spawned a deviant cultural environment. Father Paul Shanley, who abused males of all ages, was a hero to liberal non-Catholics, as well as to the Catholic left.

There is a section in this chapter, “Justifying Man-Boy Sex,” that focuses on American and European intellectuals, celebrities, and psychiatrists who have sought to justify sex between adult men and children. It shows how phony these people are. To be specific, why are they upset when molesting priests did exactly what they promote?

Ch. 11 “The Role of Dissent in the Church”

The scandal could not have happened if men who were already troubled or disordered were not given the rationale to do so. Those who provided the rationale were Church dissidents. The evidence is clear that the assault on traditional Catholic moral teachings that occurred in the second half of the 20th century did much to feed the scandal.

Beginning in the late 1960s, many seminaries became hotbeds of dissent. This chapter devotes considerable attention to the sexual misdeeds of Father Shanley and Archbishop Rembert Weakland, two dissenting and morally compromised clerics.

Ch. 12 “The Role of Organized Dissent”

Starting in the 1960s, there was no shortage of organized Catholic dissidents who were in open rebellion against the Church’s teachings on sexuality. The National Catholic Reporter certainly inspired dissidents in many Catholic circles, including those who worked in the dioceses. Just as disconcerting, legions of nuns openly defied Catholic teachings, giving support to the sexual offenses committed by homosexual priests.

Catholic colleges and universities were infected with dissent, and many still are. But not all the agitation occurred within the Catholic community. Outside activists also sought to undermine the Church; their role is covered in detail.

I expect that many Catholics will welcome this book. But not everyone will be happy.

The pushback against the book will be formidable. There is a segment of our society that does not want the truth to be told about the damage that many homosexual priests have done, as well as the disastrous role played by Catholic dissidents.

However, this book was not written to shade the truth, but to tell it.

In a study recently published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, six researchers from four universities concluded that there is no evidence to support the idea that LGBT progress comes at the expense of increasing bias against Christians. If this were true, it would undercut one of the more salient bases for opposing LGBT rights.

As will be seen, there are good reasons to question this conclusion. Moreover, a palpable bias on the part of the professors is evident.

If, as the study contends, that anti-Christian bias does not proceed from gains won by the LGBT community, then why do Christians believe there is an animus against them? “Christians’ beliefs about conflict with sexual minorities are shaped by understandings of Christian values, social change, interpretation of the Bible, and in response to religious institution.”

In other words, the notion that bias against Christians tends to increase as LGBT rights progress is not real—it’s in their heads. The study finds that the source of their faulty perception is due to their Christian beliefs, not to any real instances of anti-Christian sentiment or behavior. This, in turn, is a consequence of Christians being on the losing side of the culture wars. Having lost “their sway,” they now see themselves as victims of a “symbolic threat.”

The authors further claim that since Christians are “relatively privileged,” it suggests that their “desire to maintain group dominance may be driven by desires for cultural dominance.”

The study ends in a way that is customary for research papers, with a section titled, “Limitations and Future Directions.” It’s too bad that these psychologists didn’t list their own predilections as a limiting factor. In fairness, this hardly makes them unique. Though it ought to be done.

When they say that Christians are “privileged,” they are making a statement that is more political than scientific. Surely low-income and working class Christians are not members of some “privileged” segment of society. By what measure are middle class Americans, many of whom are struggling to pay their mortgage and saving for their children’s education, members of some “privileged” group?

In fact, if being “privileged” were defined by the number of hours worked per week, and the number of days off per year, professors would be the most privileged class in the world. In fact, once they get tenure they can slide and do practically nothing and still keep their job. (Bill Donohue was in the professoriate for 16 years, so he speaks with experience.)

Where is there evidence that Christians want “group dominance”? This is an assertion, not an empirical finding. Reclaiming, or maintaining, rights that are being diminished is hardly proof that “dominance” is the goal. The end that is sought may be nothing more than equity.

At the beginning of the article, the Masterpiece Cakeshop case is cited. The authors never mention that it was the anti-Christian statements made by the Colorado Civil Rights Commission that persuaded the U.S. Supreme Court to side with the Christian baker. Surely evidentiary findings of bigotry would matter if the victims were LGBT persons. Why should anti-Christian bigotry count for less?

The way the authors see it, this case was about “being obligated to serve sexual minorities,” something which “violated Christians’ religious freedom.” Similarly, at the end of the article they maintain that “same-sex couples continue to experience more discrimination from wedding industry professionals than heterosexual couples.”

The truth is that the owner of the bakeshop never refused anyone, including gays, from buying one of his goods. What he refused to do was custom-make a wedding cake for two men, a request that would force him to sanction a ceremony that violates the tenets of his Christian faith. That is not a small difference.

The authors have found that “Perceptions of anti-Christian bias seem to be particularly acute for conservative Christians.” It would be shocking if they found otherwise.

As any survey research findings show, liberal Christians and secular Americans on moral issues are virtually identical these days. To put it differently, if a Christian is okay with gay marriage, he is not likely to spot anti-Christian bias in anything the parties to it might request.

One of the main conclusions of this study holds that while LGBT individuals “bear the brunt of discrimination,” there is “less evidence of widespread bias against Christians.” They take it a step further by arguing that “there is no evidence, to our knowledge, connecting the experience of LGBT individuals to bias against Christians.”

If bias against Christians is measured by discrimination in school and in the workplace, then it is true that much progress has been made. But if bias is measured by Christian bashing, there is a big problem.

Those who work in the media, education, the entertainment industry, the arts, and government have said the most vile things about conservative Christians, comments that would never be counseled if said about gays or transgender persons. If anything, the ruling class has locked arms with the gay community, and that often pits them against Christians.

To say that there is no evidence “connecting the experience of LGBT individuals to bias against Christians” is fatuous. There are scores of cases involving Catholic schools which have been sued by deceitful gay teachers.

None was fired because he was a homosexual: every case involved gay teachers who claimed to be married to a person of the same sex, in direct defiance to the norms they voluntarily accepted as a condition of employment. In many cases, these teachers deliberately went public with their status, hoping to force a confrontation in the courts.

The federal government has been sued for allowing orthodox religious schools to receive federal funds, schools which maintain that marriage is the union of a man and a woman, not people of the same sex. Colleges have been sued for denying biological men to live in women’s dorms.

Speech codes have been adopted in the workplace, ordering employees to use pronouns for transgender persons that violate their free speech rights and deny common sense. Catholic adoption agencies have been sued for following Catholic teachings on marriage and the family. Catholic hospitals have been sued for not agreeing to perform transgender surgery. Pro-life activists have been harassed by LGBT store owners.

The collision between LGBT rights and religious liberty is at a fever pitch. LGBT rights are not mentioned in the Constitution, but religious liberty is enshrined in the First Amendment.

It’s time to stop floating the fiction that LGBT advances have not resulted in a diminution of rights for Christians, or in a bias directed at them. The elites have laid anchor, and it is not in the Christian camp.

[Note: This article contains graphic language.]

According to the organizers of this year’s Women’s March on Washington, there is nothing dangerous, scary or harmful about a pregnant woman inserting a wire hanger into her vagina to kill her child. That’s why those who show up with a hanger, or hanger imagery, would get booted, even if their purpose was to protest abortion-law restrictions.

On the website of this event, it lists items that should and should not be brought. Among the latter, it says: “Coat-hanger imagery: We do not want to accidentally reinforce the right wing talking points that self-managed abortions are dangerous, scary and harmful.”

Liberals, they suggest, are fine with women using a hanger to abort their child. It’s a safe instrument. Thus have they made the case to shut down Planned Parenthood. We don’t need more abortion clinics—we need more coat hangers.

They further instructed women wearing Handmaid’s costumes that they can take a hike.

Why? Even though these outfits are being worn by women to protest abortion restrictions, the organizers contend that they are used “primarily by white women across the country.” That sends a bad message to “Black women, undocumented women, incarcerated women, poor women and disabled women.”

Pro-abortion activists have changed a lot. In 1969, four years before Roe v. Wade, 300,000 protesters marched in Washington demanding the legalization of abortion. According to the Los Angeles Times, “marchers wore coat hangers around their necks and held signs reading, ‘Never again.'”

But not everyone is convinced that hangers are safe. Dr. Jen Gunter is a Canadian-American gynecologist and pro-abortion activist.

She describes what happens when a woman or girl “thrusts it [the coat hanger] blindly upwards into the vagina.” She may not know, Gunter says, that “to get into the uterus the coat hanger has to navigate the small opening in the cervix called the os.” The problem with that is the end of the hanger is “sharp not tapered so it can lacerate and perforate.”

Let’s say the woman gets through this stage. “The uterine wall is soft and easily perforated,” and if this happens “there is a high risk of lacerating a uterine artery.” This, in turn, means that the woman could “easily bleed to death.”

That’s not all. “The other dangers with uterine perforation is the bowel. If it is punctured, it will “most certainly kill her unless she gets appropriate medical care.” This means “major surgery to drain abscesses, remove necrotic bowel, and possibly even a colostomy. The uterus will also be infected and may be damaged beyond repair.”

Even if the woman gets this far, “it is unlikely she will induce an abortion immediately.” She risks infection, and “bacteria from septic abortions often disseminates and each hour the condition remains untreated death takes a step closer.”

If the organizers of the Women’s March on Washington are right, that would make Dr. Gunter a right-wing misogynist nut. But if she is right, that would make them monsters.

“The Administration strongly supports House passage of H.R. 3755, the Women’s Health Protection Act of 2021.” That is the statement released by the White House on September 20. In actual fact, the proposed law has nothing to do with women’s health—it is a pro-abortion bill.

This is true notwithstanding the bill’s contention that “Abortion is essential health care and one of the safest medical procedures in the United States.” Essential health care would be things like heart surgery and treatment for Covid, not elective abortion. And it is fatuous to say that it is safe. Safe for whom?

The bill maintains that abortion restrictions are “a tool of gender oppression.” If this were true, why were America’s first feminists staunch opponents of abortion? In 1858, Elizabeth Cady Stanton spoke about “the murder of children, either before or after birth.” She branded it “evil.” Similarly, Susan B. Anthony called abortion “child murder” and “infanticide.”

So if the first feminists were strongly opposed to abortion—they said it was analogous to treating women as property—when did abortion restrictions become “a tool of gender oppression”? In the 1960s.

That was when two men, Lawrence Lader and Dr. Bernard Nathanson (who later became a Catholic and a pro-life activist), convinced feminists such as Betty Friedan that abortion should be seen as an example of women’s liberation. In other words, it took the boys to teach the girls about their own “emancipation.”

As for this bill, it is anything but “women friendly.” To be explicit, it would abolish the requirement that abortion can only be performed by a physician, thus allowing mid-wives, nurses and doctor’s assistants to do the job. The bill also eliminates health and safety regulations that are specific to abortion facilities.

Now ask yourself this: If a bill were passed that would allow dental hygienists to pull your tooth, and that it could be done in a facility without customary health and safety regulations, would anyone in his right mind consider this to be progress?

The bill also talks about “reproductive justice” and the necessity of opposing “restrictions on reproductive health, including abortion, that perpetuate systems of oppression, lack of bodily autonomy, white supremacy, and anti-Black racism.”

This is the mindset of those who are positively obsessed with race, the kind of people who find discussions about chocolate and vanilla to have racial undertones. Just as some who were obsessed about communism in the 1950s found communism under every pillow, those who work in the Biden administration find racism under every blanket.

The bill insists that “Access to equitable reproductive health care, including abortion, has always been deficient” for blacks and other minorities. In actual fact, thanks to Planned Parenthood, this is a lie: access to abortion services have been fantastic for blacks.

Planned Parenthood erects 86 percent of its abortion facilities in or near minority neighborhoods in the 25 counties with the most abortions. Although these 25 counties make up just 1 percent of all U.S. counties, they accounted for 30 percent of all the abortions in the U.S. in 2014.

Is it any surprise that although blacks comprise roughly 13 percent of the population, they account for at least a third of all the abortions? It is therefore dishonest to claim that they lack access to abortion mills.

Another novelty found in this bill is the linguistic game of pretending that males and females can change their sex. For example, it says that abortion services “are used primarily by women (our italic).” This is factually wrong. Only women can get pregnant and only women can abort their child. A man can identify as a woman (or as a gorilla for that matter), but he can never get pregnant.

Similarly, the geniuses who wrote this bill make more than two dozen references to “pregnant people”; this is roughly twice as often as they speak of “pregnant women.” Now if a man can get pregnant, in what orifice does his baby exit? His ear?

If this isn’t nutty enough, the bill’s authors add that it is their intention “to protect all people with the capacity of becoming pregnant—cisgender women [meaning real women] transgender men [meaning delusional women who think they are a man], non-binary individuals [there is no such breed], those who identify with a different gender [the mentally challenged], and others.” Who the “others” are remains a mystery.

There are many media reports on the release of a report on sexual abuse in the Catholic Church in France that are misleading, incomplete or simply wrong.

The Report found that over a 70-year period, from 1950 to 2020, approximately 3,000 molesters allegedly abused an estimated 216,000 minors. Contrary to some news stories, not all were priests: one-third of the offenses were committed by those who worked in Catholic schools, youth programs, and other agencies.

No one would know anything about this had it not been for French bishops asking the French government to conduct such a probe. That was three years ago. The Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church was launched to do the investigation with no strings attached. There was no budget—the Church paid for everything—and full access to Church archives was allowed.

Before proceeding, there is no institution in France, or anywhere else, that has asked the government to probe sexual misconduct among its employees. None.
The Report found that 2.5 percent of the French clergy and lay Catholics working for the Church since 1950 were accused of sexually abusing minors; this makes up less than four percent of all such abuse in France. Most of the abuse took place between 1950 and 1968; the 1960s was the heyday of the sexual revolution.

The Report found that 80 percent of the victims were boys, so this rules out heterosexual priests. At one point it says that most of the victims were “pre-adolescent boys,” but nowhere does it define when adolescence begins.

This is not unimportant. The Report’s finding that 8 in 10 cases of abuse were male-on-male sex cannot escape the conclusion that homosexuals were the offenders.

Indeed, Jean-Marc Sauvé, president of the Commission, admitted as much when he said, “we can say with a high degree of certainty that within the Catholic Church, the abuses mainly concerned men and not women, unlike society.” His use of the word “men” is telling.

The Report contains pages of recommendations. Some are quite good; others are banal. The authors should have been more careful not to intrude into the internal affairs of the Church, such as making suggestions on how to deal with Confession. Just as clueless, the Report concludes that “the paradoxical obsession with Catholic morality on issues of sexuality could be counterproductive in the fight against sex abuse.”

It is not the Church that is obsessed with sex—it is those who work in the media and education that have sex on their brain. No matter, the Commission just does not get it. To wit, if Catholic sexual ethics had been exercised by those who abused minors, there would have been no scandal.

The real paradox is the sight of French authorities and elites lecturing the Catholic Church on the sexual abuse of minors. No country in the world harbors more intellectuals who have justified man-boy sex than in France. Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Simone de Beauvoir were not only sexually promiscuous in their own lives, they, and many other left-wing writers, have long advocated eliminating laws barring sex between adults and children.

Author Gabriel Matzneff is a hero to French intellectuals. He is a well-known sexual predator who molested boys and girls as young as 8-years-old, and he did so for decades, garnering the applause of the literati.

In short, the French need to clean up their own house before pointing fingers at anyone else. As even the Report notes, the Church has made great progress handling this problem. It is now time for French intellectuals to take their cues from the Catholic Church and stop idolizing molesters in their midst.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was recently asked to comment on abortion. Here is what she said.

“Yeah, I’m Catholic. I come from a pro-life family. Not active in that regard. Different in their view of a woman’s right to choose than I am. In my right to choose, I had five children in six years and one week. And I keep saying to people who say things like that, when you have five children in six years and one day, we can talk about what business it is of us to tell anyone else [what] to do. For us, it was a complete and total blessing, which we enjoy every day of our lives. But it is none of our business how other people choose the size and timing of their families.”

We responded with an analogy.

“Yeah, I’m Catholic. I come from an abolitionist family. Not active in that regard. Different in their view of a slavemaster’s right to choose than I am. In my right to choose, I bought five children in six years and one week. And I keep saying to people who say things like that, when you have bought five children in six years and one day, we can talk about what business it is of any of us to tell anyone else [what] to do. For us, it was a complete and total blessing, which we enjoy every day of our lives. But it is none of our business whether other people choose to own slaves.”

Those who oppose slavery and abortion rest their case on moral absolutes, not opinion. Pelosi’s moral relativism places her outside the Catholic community.

Prior to Columbus Day, we posted a three-part series on the degree to which politics has been infused into discussions about this holiday. We are offering a sample of our report in Catalyst; those who would like to read more about this subject should reference our website.

Origins of the Assault on Columbus

In the 1990s, Yale University gave up $20 million given to them by Lee M. Bass: he wanted the money spent on efforts to expand the Western civilization curriculum, but highly politicized members of the faculty wanted to replace it with a multicultural program. The faculty won and Bass got his money back.

The fact is that many professors, especially in the humanities and social sciences, hate Western civilization; they have a particular animus against the United States. That this is happening at a time when many poor people from Latin America are crashing our borders is perverse. Yet the pampered professors still keep railing against the U.S. They just don’t get it.

The attack on Columbus, and on Columbus Day, is traceable to the ideology of multiculturalism. Pope Benedict XVI correctly observed that multiculturalism has bred not only a contempt for the moral truths that adhere to the Judeo-Christian ethos, it has led to “a peculiar Western self-hatred that is nothing short of pathological.”

No intellectual is more responsible for distorting the historical record of Columbus than Howard Zinn. His 1980 book, A People’s History of the United States, sold millions of copies and has been the go-to book for left-wing faculty and students for decades. He is the inspiration behind the attacks on Columbus Day and the one most responsible for replacing it with Indigenous Peoples’ Day. The Zinn Education Project, which disseminates his work, is the force behind the Columbus bashing in the schools.

Zinn is falsely regarded as a man who hated oppression. He did so only selectively. He found it almost impossible to condemn atrocities committed by the Communist regimes of Stalin and Mao, owing, no doubt to his membership in the Communist Party. According to Ronald Radosh, one of the most prominent students of Communism, “Zinn was an active member of the Communist party (CPUSA)—a membership which he never acknowledged and when asked, denied.”

Mary Grabar, who wrote the definitive book exposing Zinn as a fraud, Debunking Howard Zinn, notes that there are plenty of glaring omissions in his writings. Zinn would never acknowledge what Carol Delaney, a Stanford University anthropologist had to say about Columbus. She maintained that Columbus acted on his Christian faith and told his crew to be kind to the Indians.

It is not as though Zinn was unaware of this side of Columbus—he just glossed over evidence that contradicted his thesis. Here’s a quote from Columbus he never mentions. “I want the natives to develop a friendly attitude toward us because I know that they are a people who can be made free and converted to our Holy Faith more by love than by force.”

Another one of the left-wing intellectuals who has contributed mightily to the assault on Western civilization is the Brazilian educator Paulo Freire. In 1970, he released his bestselling book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed.

This is the kind of thinking that appeals to children and intellectuals. Children understand black and white, night and day, good guys and bad guys. Intellectuals do, too, the only difference is that they get to decide who the good guys are (the oppressed like Indians) and who the bad guys are (oppressors like Columbus).

Any objective scholar knows that the ideas of Marx and Lenin were put into play by Mao Zedong, Che Guevara, and Fidel Castro. To Freire, just like Zinn, they are his heroes. That’s right, the same man who is known for sympathizing with the oppressed adores some of history’s most vicious oppressors.

Mao murdered 77 million of his own people, yet according to Freire and his professor clones, China’s Communist genocidal maniac should be exalted and Columbus condemned.

To top things off, those who are bashing Columbus are simultaneously lauding the legacy of Indigenous peoples. Yet a closer, and independent, examination of their historical record raises serious questions about their assigned “oppressed” status. But given the Manichean dualism that is operative—the good guys are non-whites and the bad guys are white—the outcome is predictable.

Columbus Day or Indigenous Peoples’ Day

In 2019, the National Education Association (NEA) announced that it “believes that the history of colonization needs to be recognized and acknowledged in every state.” To that end, it said “the name of the current holiday known as ‘Columbus Day’ should be renamed and recognized as “Indigenous Peoples’ Day.” Its position remains unchanged.

The NEA was only partially successful. Some cities and states have adopted its stance, but many others have not.
On October 11, some schools were closed in observance of Columbus Day; some were closed in observance of Indigenous Peoples’ Day; some were closed in honor of both days; others recognized neither day and remained open.
This is not a healthy situation. A country that cannot agree on who to honor is in trouble. Worse, a country whose public officials take no action against those who destroy statues on public land of those who have made significant contributions to American society are sending the wrong message. When a nation’s historically renowned figures become part of our throw-away culture, it does not bode well for instilling patriotism in young people.

Judging past historical figures through today’s lens will likely mean that some of those in favor of excising tributes to legendary persons will themselves be erased from history. So be it.

The Dark Side of Indigenous Peoples

Serious historians know that when it comes to war, different parties to the conflict have had different motives, ranging from the just to the unjust. They also know that it is a rare occasion when all sides are equally innocent or guilty. To be sure, some may be more aggressive, but it is a mistake to assume that had the vanquished been in possession of the means to do so, they would not have been as vicious as the victors. Not all the losers in war were noble.

This needs to be said in light of what is now fashionable every October—Columbus bashing is all the rage. Just as bad, some promote the idea that virtually all the Indians were kindly souls who respected the land and treated each other with dignity. This is a romantic fairy tale having no basis in history. The truth is that some were gentle while others were brutal.

It is also part of the conventional wisdom that almost all the Indians were massacred by the white man. Wrong.

Renowned historian William D. Rubinstein, in his book, Genocide, writes that “recent historians sympathetic to the plight of the American Indians at the hands of European settlers from 1492 onwards have repeatedly noted that while 95 percent of Indians living in the Americas perished (according to those historians) over the century or so after the coming of the white man, most of this diminution in population occurred through such factors as the importation of virulent diseases previously unknown in the Americas, the destruction of settled life-styles, enslavement, and the psychological effects of conquest rather than through overt murders and slaughters, although plenty of these took place.”

On the flip side, we have some commentators who want to portray the Indians as savages who never contributed to America’s greatness. They, too, are wrong.

The Indians served with distinction in both World Wars. During the First World War they enlisted in the Army in greater numbers, proportionally, than non-Indians. In the Second World War, tribes with very strong warrior traditions volunteered, again with “disproportionate numbers.”

It should be noted that the term “Indigenous” is misleading. The Indians immigrated to the New World just like everyone else. In “prehistoric times,” they “crossed the land bridge across the Bering Strait to the lands of the Western Hemisphere.”

The following are a few examples of the ignoble practices of the Indians.

• The Navajo believed that witches ran rampant and caused all manner of destruction. This belief filled the tribe with a sense of fear and foreboding. To counteract this, anyone believed to be a witch (usually someone on the fringes of the tribe) faced violence and death. Frequently witches were scapegoats for anything that negatively impacted the tribe.
• The Chumash Indians, who lived on the Channel Islands off southern California, had an established class system in which the upper class owned slaves. Because the Chumash had no established agriculture, their food came from fishing, hunting, and gathering, they appeared to own slaves for no other purpose than for wealthy tribe members to flaunt their power.
• Among the Yanomamo, women were forbidden to have intercourse with their husbands throughout pregnancy and until the child was weaned. To avoid extended periods of celibacy, Yanomamo couples would kill their infants.
• Inuit adults encouraged children to kill small animals and birds by torturing these defenseless creatures to death. Even their sled dogs, vital to their ability to cross the vast icy expanses, were not spared abuse. Sled dogs were frequently kicked and abused for no reason. If a dog was injured during a journey across the tundra, the dog would be mercilessly beaten and then abandoned to die alone in the frozen wilderness. Although some have claimed that this might have been done to direct aggression away from humans and towards animals, the Inuit were prone to outbursts of lethal violence and killed one another at alarmingly high rates.
• The men of the Mehinaku tribe in Brazil frequently used threats of gang-rape to assert their dominance over their women.
• The Kwakuitl people of Canada practiced an extremely hierarchical society. About 15 percent of the population lived as slaves and the sole property of the chief. The chief’s family subsisted entirely off the labor of their slaves. The economic productivity of the tribe went primarily to the chief. Further, the Kwakuitl would war with neighboring tribes to capture more slaves.
• The Aztecs sacrificed as many as 250,000 people per year to appease their blood-thirsty gods. Victims had their beating hearts ripped out of their chests, and their corpses were eaten by the Aztec nobility. Most of the sacrificial victims were either prisoners of war or tribute from surrounding tribes.