Over Labor Day weekend, some members of the Winnebago County Board designed a plan to tear down a Catholic Church, St. Mary’s Oratory, and replace it with a new county jail. The Catholic League jumped into the fray, as did Rockford Bishop Thomas Doran, and in no time the plan was scratched.

Here’s what happened. On September 2, the day after Labor Day, Scott P. Richert contacted William Donohue alerting him to the plan. Richert is the executive editor of Chronicles, the flagship magazine of The Rockford Institute (Donohue has written for the publication under the auspices of its director, Thomas Fleming). On September 3, Donohue issued a news release on the subject and e-mailed every member of the Winnebago County Board expressing his concerns.

St. Mary’s Oratory is not just another Catholic church. Built in 1885, it is the second-oldest church in Rockford, Illinois and the only church in the nation to offer the Latin Mass exclusively twice daily. Moreover, it was fully restored as St. Mary’s Shrine in 1997 by Bishop Doran and the Institute of Christ the King. Furthermore, attendance has exploded as hundreds of young people and their families make their way to the church on weekends.

On September 3, Donohue was interviewed by Chris Bowman on a local radio station, WNTA. Joining him on the broadcast was Bishop Doran. Both made the case that the officials were acting hastily and unfairly. Before they even got off the air, some of the officials whom Donohue had contacted were already contacting him saying they would not support razing St. Mary’s.

On September 4, Donohue issued another news release. This time he said he was delighted with the response from county officials; they had met the night before and decided not to go ahead with the plan.

Donohue concluded with the following remarks: “This is a textbook example of democracy in action. The Catholic League is contacted by Scott P. Richert of the Rockford Institute; I issue a news release and e-mail every member of the county board; Chris Bowman of WNTA interviews me; Rockford Bishop Thomas Doran joins the interview; and county officials scratch the plan.”

This also shows what can happen when a bishop decides to engage the media. Bishop Doran has shown himself once again why he is one of our finest bishops in the nation.

On September 9, the Archdiocese of Boston agreed to pay $85 million to settle the hundreds of lawsuits filed against it by persons saying they were abused by priests.

It took the leadership of Archbishop Sean O’Malley to bring closure to the scandal that he inherited. By working tirelessly with victims and their lawyers, he was able to seal an agreement that had escaped the reach of his predecessors.

Most of the money will come from mortgaging churches and other buildings in parishes scheduled to be closed. The insurance companies are not cooperating and it remains to be seen whether they ever will; the archdiocese may be forced to sue them. No matter, none of the money will come from parish funds or from Catholic Charities. Moreover, the Knights of Columbus helped the archdiocese avoid filing bankruptcy by lending $38 million to cover daily expenses.

Now that the lawsuits have been settled, attention will turn to reform. But not everyone agrees what reforms are necessary.

For example, no sooner had the settlement been announced when Mary Jo Bane, a left-wing Harvard professor, wondered aloud about Archbishop O’Malley by commenting, “We don’t know how he is going to be theologically.” Thus did she suggest that perhaps the newly appointed archbishop might (she would say “should”) deviate from established Church teachings.

In short, the scandal may be over but the crisis is not.

William A. Donohue

Over the summer, five bishops from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) met in closed-door session with prominent Catholic men and women from the business community. Also in attendance were a number of distinguished Catholic scholars and leaders. Regarding the latter, all were aligned with the more “progressive” wing of the Church.

This meeting did not sit too well with Catholics of a more orthodox stripe. Deal Hudson, editor of the Catholic monthly, Crisis, was so upset that he, along with veteran Catholic writer Russell Shaw, decided to ask the bishops for a meeting with more orthodox Catholics. The meeting took place in Washington, D.C. on September 8.

Bishop Wilton Gregory, who heads the USCCB, was joined by Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, Bishop William Friend, Bishop William Skylstad and Bishop Robert Lynch. Frank Hanna, III, an Atlanta CEO, opened the discussion; Professor Robert George of Princeton spoke next; author Peggy Noonan was the third speaker. Bishop Gregory did most of the talking for the bishops’ group. There were a few dozen distinguished Catholics in the room (mostly lay people) who asked questions of Bishop Gregory; I was there as well.

“Meeting in Support of the Church” was the official title of the event. While it is true that everyone there was in support of the Church, it is also true that many were openly dismayed by the scandal. Many of the comments were directed at the issue of dissent. For example, we wanted to know what, if anything, was done about the 70 Georgetown professors who signed a letter of protest last spring complaining about the commencement address of Cardinal Arinze; the African cardinal simply restated the Church’s teachings on sexuality.

And what about Father James Keenan, the Jesuit priest who teaches at the Weston School of Theology? Father Keenan testified before a committee of the Massachusetts legislature saying that official Catholic teaching sanctions marriage between two men! That the bishops in attendance claimed never to have heard about this was troubling.

Another person in the audience wanted to know why AFL-CIO director John Sweeney is given awards by senior Catholic officials; Sweeney is unrelenting in his pro-abortion convictions. Many in the audience took great exception to naming pro-abortion advocate Leon Panetta (former congressman and aide to President Clinton) to the national Catholic oversight committee dealing with episcopal reforms. And so on.

Aside from issues of dissent, there was a discussion on how Catholics can impact public policy issues. The nation is going to have to face the issue of whether anything less than a constitutional amendment can save marriage from gay activists bent on pushing same-sex legislation. Bioethics, especially embryonic stem cell research and cloning, is an area that Catholics must be actively engaged in if disaster is to be thwarted. While there are other issues of importance, too, it was the consensus that these two were paramount.

If there was one thing everyone agreed on, it was the recognition that nothing so damaging has ever happened to the Catholic Church in the U.S. than the recent scandal. We are at a crossroads and something must be done to assure that this never happens again.

It has been my position for some time now that there are two components to the scandal: molesting priests and enabling bishops. The proximate cause of the former is homosexuality and the proximate cause of the latter is clericalism.

USA Today found that 91 percent of the cases of priestly sexual abuse involve male-on-male sex. There is a word for that in the English language and it is called homosexuality. Does this mean that all gay priests are molesters? Of course not, but it does mean that most of the molesters are gay.

Nothing angers me more than to hear pundits say there is a pedophilia crisis in the Church. Nonsense: almost all the cases involve post-pubescent males. In other words, the John Geoghans who preyed on kids were the exception—homosexual priests who preyed on young men were the rule. Unfortunately, millions are in denial over this elementary truth.

As for the bishops, their tendency to secretly handle these problems, while acting as if they are accountable to no one, is a condition that must end. Elitism in any form is not only not helpful, it can actively work to subvert whole institutions. Fortunately, we have a good man like Bishop Gregory at the helm.

Which road we choose at the crossroad will decide our fate. If we turn left, as the dissidents want, the Church will go south. A return to orthodoxy, prudently approached, makes more sense. That, however, will require some tough decisions. But it is folly to think there is another way.

By Edward Klein

In the faint pewter light of an Irish dawn, a young man riding bareback on an old gray draft horse emerged from a fog bank on the outskirts of New Ross, a river port south of Dublin. A cold, hard rain pelted the sides of his horse, and the fog roiled up above the treetops, concealing the road ahead. A stranger might have hesitated to proceed any farther for fear of getting lost, but the young man knew the countryside like the back of his hand. He was a local lad, and the sum total of his life’s experiences, along with the memory and bones of his ancestors, were encompassed within a fifteen-mile radius of the town.

Because he was Roman Catholic, no baptism certificate existed to fix the precise date of his birth (at the time in Ireland, only Protestants were considered deserving of that privilege), but according to family tradition, he was born in Duganstown, County Wexford, in 1823, which made him twenty-six years old.

His name was Patrick Kennedy, and on this foggy February morning in the year 1849, he was about to leave his family and the tangled web of personal relationships in Ireland that had sustained him and given his life meaning. He was going to leave Ireland and the Great Famine that had claimed more than one million lives, and take his chances in America.

Once in Boston, Patrick would marry, have children, then die of consumption—all within the space of nine years. In that brief period of time, however, this little-known man became the founding father of the greatest political dynasty in American history. Through his blood-line, he gave America its first Catholic President (John F. Kennedy), three United States Senators (JFK, Robert and Edward Kennedy), a U.S. Attorney General (Robert), two members of the House of Representatives (Joseph II and Patrick Kennedy), two additional presidential contenders (Robert and Edward), and the dream of a golden age called Camelot.

In Boston, Patrick moved into the cold-water flat of an old friend, where the two men shared a table, a couple of chairs, a bed, and a black cast-iron stove that supplied heat in the winter and fire for cooking. On Saturday nights, his friend poured hot water from a large kettle into a galvanized-iron tub for his once-a-week bath. When he stepped out of the tub, Patrick stepped in, and bathed in the same water.

The only indoor toilet for the tenement’s thirty families was located in the dirt-floor basement. “No one was responsible for the care of these communal instruments,” observed the sociologist Oscar Handlin, “and as a result they were normally out of repair. Abominably foul and feculent, perpetually gushing over into the surrounding yards, they were mighty carriers of disease.”

“Of all the immigrant nationalities in Boston, the Irish fared the least well, beginning at a lower rung and rising more slowly on the economic and social ladder than any other group,” the historian Doris Kearns Goodwin wrote.

The Irish were despised by Boston Brahmins for their rural customs, poverty, and Roman Catholicism. They were thought fit only for manual labor.

“Even the Negro,” wrote Richard J. Whalen, “…faced less discrimination than the Irishman.”
“The Negroes,” added the Rev. John F. Brennan, “held jobs closed to the Irish, such as cooking and barbering.”

Many want ads in the Boston papers read, “None need apply but Americans.” When Irish men and women showed up for jobs, they encountered notices that read, “No Irish Need Apply,” which eventually became shortened to “NINA.” The only jobs available were the most menial and the cheapest. Live-in Irish maids, called “potwhallopers,” “biddies,” and “kitchen canaries,” were paid $2.00 a week. Unskilled Irish laborers made about the same wage, and were called “clodhoppers,” “Micks,” and “Paddies.”

Constant humiliation only deepened Patrick Kennedy’s view of the world as a dangerous place that had to be kept at arm’s length.

“If anything,” wrote Terry Golway in The Irish in America, “America could be worse than Ireland, for here Catholics were a distinct minority in a nation that increasingly took the view that democracy and Protestantism were inseparable.”

Even skilled workers like Patrick did not avoid the virulent anti-Catholic nativism that was fomented by the infamous Know-Nothing Party. In 1854, five years after Patrick’s arrival, the Know-Nothing Party captured the governor’s office and virtually every seat in the Massachusetts General Court. The party harassed Catholic schools, disbanded Irish militia companies, and tried to pass legislation mandating a 21-year wait before a naturalized citizen could vote. All this struck Patrick like a replay of the notorious British Penal Laws in Ireland.

But Patrick Kennedy never regretted leaving his blighted homeland. Within weeks of his arrival in Boston, he married Bridget Murphy. And over the next several years, they had five children—a son, who died in infancy; three daughters; and second son, who lived and was named after his father.
“Nurtured from birth with the doctrine that they have a lien on greatness, the Irish were unable to come to terms with their own powerlessness,” noted the historian Thomas J. O’Hanlon.

In America, this outlook created two distinct strains in the Irish character. One type was the compliant, loyal, God-fearing Irishman, an easy-go-lucky people-pleaser who got along by playing by the rules; who went to mass on Sunday, was deeply moved by the depiction of Christ bleeding under His bloody crown of thorns; who readily confessed his sins; who accepted suffering in silence; and who often ended up as a priest, or a day laborer, a train conductor, a garbage collector, a policeman, a fireman, or some other kind of civil servant who counted the days to retirement on a secure government pension.

The other type was the defiant, unruly, rebellious Irishman, a dark, brooding, frequently manic-depressive character, who nurtured a sense of resentment against all established authority; who did not show up at church very often, if at all; who could not deal with the humiliations of the past, and who rarely if ever talked about the Great Famine because he did not want it reported that he had not been able to feed his family; whose primary loyalty was to his wife and children, not to his country; and who often became a journalist, a scholar, a pub keeper, a politician, a gangster, a lawyer, a businessman, or a secret sympathizer of outlawed Irish rebels like the Fenians.

Patrick Kennedy was the rebellious sort. Though he eked out a meager existence as a barrel maker, and had a wife and four children to support, he contributed his pennies to the cause of Irish independence, and was an ardent supporter of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, or Fenians, who used modern methods of terrorism in their fight against the British.  “The British,” said Patrick, “understand one thing—force. The only way to get them out of Ireland is to bomb them out.”

Patrick was a popular figure in the Irish pubs along Summer Street. Like his father, he was a born story-teller. With an actor’s flair for impersonation, he could keep his drinking companions entertained for hours with rousing tales of heroism during the Great Uprising of 1798.

Everyone said that Patrick Kennedy had a way with words, which was a high compliment indeed, for language was the Irishman’s most potent weapon. Patrick kept his weapon honed with sarcasm; he liked to quote John Mitchel, the prominent nationalist writer of the Irish Famine, who was a master of mockery and ridicule.

“Now, my dear surplus brethren,” Patrick would say, quoting one of Mitchel’s most famous passages, “I have a simple, a sublime, a patriotic project to suggest. It must be plain to you that you are surplus, and must somehow be got rid of. Do not wait ingloriously for famine to sweep you off—if you must die, die gloriously; serve your country by your death, and shed around your name the halo of a patriot’s fame. Go; choose out in all the island two million trees, and thereupon go and hang yourselves.”

“[Sarcasm] was used for offense and defense,” wrote Peter Quinn, one of the most astute observers of the Irish in America. “It was a weapon to cut down anyone in the community who might think or act like he was better than his peers.”

In the fall of 1858, Patrick, now thirty-five, fell ill with tuberculosis. His complexion became pale, he lost a good deal of weight, experienced pains in his chest, and began spitting up blood. Bridget insisted that they call a doctor. By the time the doctor arrived, Patrick had hemorrhaged several pints of blood, and was delirious with a high fever. His voice was almost entirely lost, and he could only make himself heard in a whisper when the doctor asked him to describe his symptoms.

Bridget stood in the door, holding their ten-month-old son, who had been named after her husband, Patrick Joseph, and was nicknamed “P.J.” Peeking from behind her skirts were her three young daughters.

“Please, can you do something for him, doctor?” Bridget said.

The doctor took Patrick’s pulse. It was 124. He gave him some creosote and nitro-muriatic acid with cod-liver oil. Under this course of treatment, Patrick’s pulse fell to 100, and he was able to take a few spoonsful of clear soup. However, over the next few days he continued to lose weight, and soon he was but a shadow of the handsome, muscular man with bright blue eyes who had come to America.

On November 22—exactly 105 years to the day before John. F. Kennedy’s assassination—Patrick, much emaciated and profusely sweating, emitted one last loud gurgling noise, and died.

“He had survived in Boston for nine years, only five less than the life expectancy for an Irishman in America at mid-century,” Peter Collier and David Horowitz wrote. “The first Kennedy to arrive in the New World, he was the last to die in anonymity.”

Edward Klein is the author of The Kennedy Curse: Why America’s First Family Has Been Haunted by Tragedy for 150 Years, available from St. Martin’s Press. See page 2 for more information.

On August 28, New York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind held a press conference outside Fox News Corp. headquarters demanding that 20th Century Fox not distribute Mel Gibson’s film “The Passion.”

Hikind, who never saw the movie, asserted that the film “resurrects the age-old canard of deicide,” flouting the Vatican’s 1965 declaration Nostra Aetate, which denied that all Jewish people were responsible for the death of Jesus. He has also charged that the film “can incite anti-Semitic violence.”
William Donohue wasn’t too happy and decided to contact the media about his concerns. “The furor over Mel Gibson’s film has now reached a fever pitch,” he charged. “Assemblyman Hikind’s response,” Donohue said, “is an example of how reaction to ‘The Passion’ has spilled into hysteria.”

In a press statement, Assem-blyman Hikind alleged that the movie implicates all Jews in the Crucifixion, a common misconception of those who haven’t seen the movie. In fact, absolutely nothing in the film is inconsistent with Nostra Aetate, which repudiated the idea of collective guilt of the Jewish people for Jesus’ death.

Donohue flatly responded, “The contention that the film ‘will spur anti-Semitic fervor’ is nonsense.” Donohue pointed out that Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Association of America, after seeing the film, commented, “You can quote me—Mel Gibson’s ‘The Passion’ is not anti-Semitic. I did not see any anti-Semitism in it.”

If the Catholic League for one moment thought that the movie would inspire anti-Semitism, we would condemn the movie. Indeed, just last year, the league joined with Dov Hikind and other Jews in calling for a boycott of New York’s Jewish Museum, which exhibited art that trivialized the Holocaust.

“Having seen the movie twice,” Donohue commented, “I agree with the hundreds of Catholics, Protestants, and Jews who have now seen ‘The Passion.’ It is near unanimous: this movie will not foment anti-Semitism. Any such blind charges are vacuous.”

A few dozen Jews joined Assemblyman Hikind at his press conference. Donohue showed up as well. Before anything got under way, Donohue and Hikind shook hands. Hikind, who had seen Donohue’s response to his news release, said to the Catholic League president, “You’re a friend.” Donohue tried to convince the assemblyman that the movie was not anti-Semitic.

When the press conference began, Hikind was joined by three other Jewish politicians from New York. Protesters held signs condemning the film but everyone was peaceful. Some of the remarks were moderate in tone while others were quite severe. “Throughout history,” Hikind told the crowd, “the week leading up to Easter was one of the most dangerous for Jews, because the rabble had been stirred up by passion plays which portrayed hooked-nose Jews clamoring for Jesus’ death.”

Hikind asked all “New Yorkers to join me in calling on News Corporation to reject Mel Gibson’s depiction of Jews as killers. ‘The Passion’ in its current form will spur anti-Semitic fervor.” City Councilman Simcha Felder said it appeared that Gibson had a passion for inciting hatred and bigotry; it was his wish that the film go straight to video stores and bypass theaters. Shulamit Hawtof, a Jewish administrative assistant from Brooklyn, didn’t even want the movie to go direct to video. “I would like to see it buried, frankly,’ she said.

Malka Moskowitz, the elderly woman in the picture holding the sign, is a Holocaust survivor who claimed that the atmosphere surrounding the movie reminded her of the Third Reich. “This is the way it started,” she said.

When the press conference was over, reporters who know Donohue spotted him and asked him a series of questions. He was surrounded by a circle of Jewish protesters, most of whom listened attentively as Donohue presented them with a question and answer: “Who does the Crucifixion? It’s all the Romans!”

Things got tense when a rabbi from Brooklyn charged that the story of the Passion was pornographic. When Donohue asked him if he was saying the Gospels were pornographic, he backed down. But then the rabbi told Donohue that he would hold him personally responsible if violence broke out. Donohue responded by saying, “I’ll be no more responsible than if violence broke out against Germans after you show a film on the Holocaust.”

Donohue then challenged the crowd that had gathered to put in writing what part of the Mel Gibson movie was historically inaccurate and then send it to him. He was greeted with silence.

Those opposed to the film say they will continue their protest over the next several months. This doesn’t bother the Catholic League. We will confront Gibson’s critics whenever and wherever they appear.

What is driving much of the antipathy against Gibson is the fact that he is a very traditional Catholic. It is not just secular elites who are overreacting, Catholics who fancy themselves as progressive are just as guilty. They are not interested in granting Gibson a fair hearing—they are literally out to destroy his career. We have pledged to see to it that they fail.

An influential Vatican official, Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos, has spoken highly of “The Passion.”  Interviewed in the Italian publication, La Stampa, Cardinal Hoyos said the film is not only not anti-Semitic, it is deeply inspiring. “I felt moments of deep spiritual intimacy with Jesus Christ,” he said. He encouraged all Catholic priests to see the movie.

This will certainly make the blood boil of the Catholic scholars who sounded off against the movie without seeing it. From the beginning, they acted as though they had some superior authority to judge the film. Now they look rather silly.

A brief of amici curiae has been filed before the U.S. Supreme Court by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty and the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights in the case of Locke v. Davey. The brief argues that it is unconstitutional for the state of Washington to disqualify a student “from an otherwise available government benefit, only because the student would use the benefit for a religious purpose.”

At issue is the right of a student who won a partial scholarship to attend a college affiliated with the Assemblies of God; he was denied use of the scholarship because of the religious nature of the college. The law reflects the thinking of the Blaine Amendment, a 19th century piece of federal legislation that expressed nativist sentiments against Catholics; though that law never passed, many states incorporated Blaine amendments into their constitutions and 37 still have them.

Richard W. Garnett of Notre Dame Law School is responsible for the Catholic League’s contribution to this brief. The brief not only seeks to demonstrate the bigoted historical basis for the Blaine Amendment and its progeny, it seeks to challenge amici for the petitioner who even now seek to obfuscate the historical record. Perhaps most important, the brief takes aim at those who seek to legitimate religious discrimination; we specifically go after the American Jewish Congress.

“It is nothing short of amazing,” we said in a news release, “that the American Jewish Congress would file a brief in the year 2003 that argues that some of the fears expressed by 19th century anti-Catholic bigots were real.” Believe it or not, the brief by the American Jewish Congress says that anti-Catholic laws “were undertaken in response to positions of the Catholic Church as authoritatively enunciated by consecutive Popes in well publicized encyclicals” prompting “a legitimate fear” of Catholic domination.

Our brief, not surprisingly, shows how impoverished this conception of history is. But the real travesty is that it has to be argued at all. “Shame on the American Jewish Congress and its ilk,” we said, “for seeking to resurrect discredited and pernicious ideas about the Catholic Church.”

On September 10, leaders of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) went on record offering their “general support” for a constitutional amendment that would define marriage as a union between a man and a woman. The amendment is being pushed by those who want to defeat attempts to codify homosexual marriage in some states.

The Catholic League wasted no time commending the bishops. Here is the text of our remarks:

“The administrative committee of the USCCB was right to speak to the inherent dignity that homosexuals share with heterosexuals. But they were also right to insist that nothing should disturb the traditional understanding of marriage. Quite frankly, to grant the right of men to marry each other is to devalue the institution of marriage.

“If marriage is not to become an alternative lifestyle, then we must maintain its privileged position in law. Society has no interest in affirming the sexual desires of individuals, but it does have an interest in providing children with a stable and patterned relationship. For society not to take its cues from nature on this subject is to render it sociologically clueless: there is a reason why nature denies children to those who have sex with members of the same sex. Lawmakers who seek to deny nature and nature’s god run the risk of alienating our social institutions from our being. Such a disjunction is morally intolerable.

“Those who say that a constitutional amendment on this issue would violate federalist principles are not living in the 21st century. It is pretty late in the game to assert states’ rights when those committed to gay marriage will stop at nothing to get their way. Add to this the phenomenon of highly politicized judges who regard judicial restraint as an anathema and the stage is set. Here’s what we’re faced with: either we amend the constitution to protect society’s most fundamental unit or we suffer the consequences of establishing a smorgasbord of sexual liaisons.

“We look to the leaders of other religions to speak as courageously as the U.S. bishops have. We’d also like to hear from presidential contenders.”

Jay Milano, a victims’ lawyer who is suing the Cleveland Diocese for racketeering, has asked the Ohio Supreme Court to disqualify any Catholic judge from presiding over his lawsuit.

Milano maintains that from the day Catholic youngsters enter a parochial school, they are taught that an attack on their Church is an attack on God. “We believe it is too much to ask any judge to rule against their God, their diocese, their church and their bishops.”

Milano is no stranger to the Catholic League. He has publicly stated that the Catholic Church is engaged in organized crime. He has abused the notorious RICO statute by seeking to apply it to the Catholic Church. Now he is libeling all Catholics by saying they are unfit to preside over cases involving the Catholic Church.

The only good thing we can say about Milano is that unlike other rogue lawyers involved in the Get-the-Catholic Church movement, he is honest. For some time now, the Catholic League has been saying that some of the victims’ lawyers are fundamentally dishonest men. Not Milano—he hates the Church so much, and is unafraid of bashing it in public, that he is a different breed.

When the scandal in the Church first broke at the beginning of last year, the Catholic League said it would not defend wrongdoing committed by the Church. We hold to that principle. But we also said, and continue to say, that we will always honor our mission—the defense of individual Catholics and the institutional Church against defamation and discrimination. Let it also be said that Jay Milano is defaming the Catholic Church and is lobbying to discriminate against Catholics.

William Donohue decided it was time to confront Milano. On September 5, he wrote to Jonathan Coughlan, Office of Disciplinary Counsel of the Ohio Supreme Court, seeking disciplinary action against him. Disciplinary Rule 1-102 of the Ohio Code of Professional Responsibility dealing with discrimination is the operative provision.

In the end, the courts saw Milano for the bigot that he is. On September 16, the Ohio Supreme Court threw out Milano’s request.

We’ve long suspected it, but now we know it to be true: there is an unsavory link between some victims’ lawyers and some victims’ advocacy groups. In the September 15 edition of Forbes magazine, Dan Lyons detailed with precision how some lawyers for alleged victims of priestly misconduct have generously donated to victims’ advocacy groups.

For example, SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests) receives more money from Laurence E. Drivon than anyone else ($20,000 last year alone); Drivon is one of the most active victims’ attorneys in the nation. Jeffrey Anderson, who has made tens of millions of dollars suing the Catholic Church, is also one of SNAP’s biggest donors. Then there is Michael S. Morey, a victims’ lawyer known for writing generous checks to another victims’ advocacy group, Linkup.

This was too much for us. The odor that this relationship emitted led us to release the following statement to the media:

“The nexus has now been revealed: victims’ lawyers are greasing victims’ advocacy groups. Shame on SNAP and Linkup for allowing these lawyers to pimp them. If this were happening in the corporate world, everyone would see this as another Enron scam. But just because it involves the Catholic Church, those who are hostile to the Church will no doubt find it difficult to slam SNAP and Linkup.

“Nonetheless, the mask has now been pulled off SNAP and Linkup. How dare they lecture attorneys for the Catholic Church for defending their client in an aggressive manner when they are on the dole of their sycophant lawyers. If ethical standards mean anything to them, they will immediately announce that they will model themselves on Survivors First and forswear any funding from victims’ attorneys in the future. No wonder these groups are holding out for more money in Boston—the more they can squeeze the Church the more their rebate is likely to be.”

No sooner had our news release been sent out when a frantic woman from SNAP called our office to say she was going to refute in writing everything the Forbes piece said that was untrue. We said we looked forward to reading it. We still do—weeks have passed and she still hasn’t sent it. To make sure that our side didn’t miss this important article, we mailed it (along with our news release) to every cardinal and bishop in the nation. It is our hope that their lawyers put it to good use.