Every city has some urban rag that the so-called non-conformists like. In Baltimore, one such newspaper is the City Paper.

In the annual edition of “Best of Baltimore,” City Paper featured a photo of Jesus on the Cross as shown at St. Mary Star of the Sea Convent. But it wasn’t meant to be reverential: it was labeled “Best Scary Cross” in town. It was the description that gave it all away. “Christianity can be frightening: Priests molesting little boys, that eternal damnation thing…but to really scare yourself into submission, visit St. Mary Star of the Sea in South Baltimore.”

And to really experience bigotry in the making, just pick up a copy of City Paper. You can write to editor Andy Markowitz at 812 Park Avenue, Baltimore, Maryland 21201. But don’t expect too much from the shameless.

Ozzy Osbourne is one of those rock musicians who is known more for his obscenities than for his artistry. Back in the early 1980s, he was fond of biting off the heads of bats while performing (he received 27 rabies shots). Oh, yes, there was also the time when he urinated on the Alamo shrine while doing his thing. His latest target is the Blessed Virgin Mary.

The “Ozzfest ’98” T-shirt depicts an obviously demonized version of the image of the Virgin Mary. Opening the folds of her mantle, she reveals a collection of equally demonic characters, including one wearing the collar of a Roman Catholic priest, another in the robed garb of a Catholic monk, and still another holding a cross.

Osbourne’s materials regularly feature satanic imagery and gratuitous uses of the cross. Yet turning an image of the Virgin Mary into a satanic figure is a new low even for him.

We have written to Dell Furano, president and CEO at Sony Signatures, the distributor of the T-Shirt. You can reach him at 2 Bryant Street, San Francisco, CA 74105.

How many times have we heard how “repressive” Catholic education is? Funny how all these repressed kids seem to do so well in society, especially as compared to their liberated public school cohorts.

The latest offender in this regard is a publication called Time/The Princeton Review. The volume purports to provide information to prospective students about higher education opportunities and career choices. It also teaches them about anti-Catholic stereotypes.

In the latest edition of the publication, there is a piece by Ronald Lieber that discusses, rather anecdotally, the educational experiences of Daniel Zemans. We learn that Dan decided to postpone going to college once he graduated from high school. We also learn that when Dan graduated from a Catholic school in Chicago, “he felt beaten down by the repressive atmosphere.”

Poor Dan. How he managed to succeed as a paid Congressional intern after being so “repressed” is beyond us. But he did. How Mr. Lieber explains this apparent anomaly is also something that puzzles us.

We wrote to John Katzman at Time/The Princeton Review (it is not affiliated with the university) stating that “it would be highly unlikely for [the publication] to publish this remark had Mr. Zemans’ comment been about his experience at a yeshiva.” We have asked for an explanation.

We understand that it is not easy to boycott a movie production studio, but that shouldn’t stop us from being on record urging members not to frequent films produced by 20th Century Fox. Our friends in the Muslim community have asked us to join with them in boycotting the studio because of its history of turning out anti-Muslim films. We might add that the same production company was responsible for “Nothing Sacred.”

What’s this? We’re bashed in a book about military strategies and in an astronomy magazine? That’s right, one never knows where Catholic bashing will appear next. It’s ubiquitous.

In Daniel P. Bolger’s book, The Battle for Hunger Hill: The 1^st Battalion, 327^th Infantry Regiment at the Joint Readiness Training Center, the author manages to digress from his war stories to take a shot at Catholics. On page 89 we learn that “American soldiers resemble Roman Catholics.” In what way, you might ask? Here’s how.

American soldiers are like Roman Catholics, Bolger says, because the latter like to “pick and choose, grabbing at half-understood Biblical verses in order to justify a daily faith principally found on tradition.” Want more? “You can search both testaments of the Bible from stem to stern and you will not find a pope, saints, rosary beads, or seven sacraments rattling around, and yet Catholics thinks these conventions are in there, and even contrive to find them when they look.” We’re surprised he didn’t notice that the Bible says nothing about pope-mobiles as well.

From the pages of Astronomy, we found a curious statement from one of the magazine’s subscribers who blasted the Vatican for its alleged culpability in the Holocaust and the Spanish colonization of the Americas. Our letter of protest elicited a good response.

The editor, Bonnie Gordon, apologized for running the statement and promised to print the apology in the next issue. Indeed, she even said she was doing a “wonderful profile of the Vatican Observatory” in an upcoming issue. So while this was unnecessary to begin with, it’s now over.

Last April, after learning that there was an opening for the position of principal at Atherton High School in Louisville, Kentucky, Nina Bedford asked the superintendent of the Jefferson County Public Schools to submit her name as a candidate for the post; Mrs. Bedford is the assistant principal at Atherton. For reasons which appear to be bogus, Dr. Stephen Daeschner did not do so.

In February, 1997, Mrs. Bedford was appointed by Louisville Archbishop Thomas Kelly as a board member of the Catholic Educational Endowment Foundation. Without delay, Dr. Daeschner asked the principal of Atherton High School to ascertain whether or not there was a conflict of interest between Mrs. Bedford’s public school position and her Catholic post. Moreover, she quickly found herself cut from school committees and task forces that she otherwise would have been expected to serve.

Mrs. Bedford, who is African American, has filed a lawsuit against the Jefferson County Board of Education alleging religious discrimination. She is supported in this effort by the Kentucky Alliance Against Racism and the Rainbow Coalition. In August, she won the support of the Catholic League as well. Here’s how the league explained its support to the media:

“Even after the search committee rejected the first round of candidates, Mrs. Bedford’s name was not forwarded. This is strange given that as assistant principal Mrs. Bedford has received numerous awards and citations of achievement, including certificates of excellence from the Jefferson County Public Schools in 1996 and 1997.

“Nina Bedford is right to smell a rat in this process. The rat is the stink of anti-Catholicism. Now that the new school year is about to begin, it behooves the Jefferson County Public School authorities to come to their senses and settle with Mrs. Bedford out of court. To do otherwise is to postpone justice.”

The attorneys for Mrs. Bedford are grateful for our support. The case is now in the discovery phase. We’ll keep our members posted.

On September 2, William Donohue participated in a unity rally in Harlem at the famous Sylvia’s restaurant. The rally was orchestrated by the Jewish Action Alliance and several leaders in the African American community, the purpose of which was to protest the “Million Youth March” of Khalid Abdul Muhammad. Donohue was the only representative of the Catholic community to appear at the rally.

The march, which drew only a few thousand people, came under fire because of the anti-Semitic, anti-Catholic, anti-white and anti-gay rhetoric of Mr. Muhammad. Donohue went on TV branding Muhammad “a gangster” and the “Imperial Wizard” of the black community.

The Catholic League notes with pride that the media, after much haggling, finally picked up on our demand that Muhammad be labeled as anti-Catholic, as well as anti-Semitic.

The September edition of the pornographic-misogynist publication, Hustler, featured a doctored picture of Pope John Paul II and Fidel Castro hawking the magazine. Castro was shown holding a copy of the magazine, with its pages open, while the pope gazed down at it. On the pope’s clothing was a yellow sticker that said, “I saved 44%”; the word “Hustler” appeared below it. There was a statement above the photo which ended with, “For the Love of Christ, Subscribe Today!”

At the bottom of the full-page picture there was a disclaimer that read: “Not to be taken seriously. While the subscription offer is real, the accompanying photograph of the Pope and Fidel Castro reading HUSTLER has been altered.”

Catholic League president William Donohue wrote a letter to the magazine’s editor, Allan MacDonell. Here is part of what he said:

“Not surprisingly, this [the ad] shows that your appetite for bigotry is on a par with your appetite for obscenity, and that’s really saying something.

“I have just one suggestion: instead of playing off contrasts, why not go to the well (or should I say the sewer?) and use a picture of Marilyn Manson or Howard Stern in lieu of the pope. And don’t forget about home base—a shot of Larry Flynt should work well. There’s always Satan, right?”

The Catholic League knows that Hustler is incapable of being shamed. But it also knows that there are those in American life that still want to deny the existence of anti-Catholicism. It was for this audience that this news release was intended.