On September 13, Senator Arlen Specter and Senator Dianne Feinstein both asked Supreme Court nominee John Roberts whether he agreed with the comment made by President John F. Kennedy in 1960 regarding matters of church and state.

Neither one of them even hinted at the fact that Kennedy was forced to make his infamous Houston speech just to ward off the anti-Catholic bigots who were trying to destroy him. “Indeed, by taking us down this dirty road again,” Bill Donohue said in a press release, “Specter and Feinstein brought us right back to where JFK started.”

Roberts handled himself well, but the shame of it is that he had to answer these questions at all. What did Specter and Feinstein expect him to say—that he takes his marching orders from the Vatican? Too bad one of the senators on the Judiciary Committee didn’t interrupt Specter by asking him why he didn’t press Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer to discuss the relationship between their Jewish heritage and their jurisprudential philosophy. And too bad Feinstein wasn’t asked whether she believes that having “In God We Trust” on our coins violates her absolutist understanding of the First Amendment.

Feinstein proved to be particularly obnoxious. The day before she insulted Catholics by blaming them for the deeds of Nazis. In her opening statement, Feinstein said she was going to question the Supreme Court nominee on “the constitutional provision of providing for the separation of church and state.” As an example of religious persecution, she cited Jews who lost their lives in Budapest during the Holocaust, a tragedy, she said, that “occurred in the name of religion.”

We branded her remark obscene. As Rabbi David Dalin pointed out in his new book, The Myth of Hitler’s Pope, “Jeno Levai, the great Hungarian Jewish historian, was so angered by accusations of papal ‘silence’ that he wrote Hungarian Jewry and the Papacy: Pius XII Did Not Remain Silent.”

Stung by our criticism, Feinstein sent us a copy of what she said at the hearing. Curiously, her speech makes no mention of the offensive remark about the Holocaust having “occurred in the name of religion.” So either she decided to read over the remark or someone altered her speech at the last minute. This much is certain: the copy of her speech that was released by her office prior to giving it contained the remark in question. It was even printed in The Congressional Record!

News reports indicate that the Vatican will soon be issuing guidelines on homosexuals in the priesthood. But there is no consensus on what exactly it will say.

In April, 2002, Pope John Paul II summoned U.S. cardinals to Rome following media stories on the sexual abuse scandal. The cardinals said they wanted Rome to conduct a review of the seminaries; the last one occurred 25 years ago.

The Catholic League has maintained that most gay priests are not molesters, but most of the molesters are gay. Therefore, it would be delinquent not to address the issue of homosexuality in the priesthood. The subject gets complicated, however, when the issue of celibate gay priests arises. On this score, there is a lot of division within the Catholic community.

We know from the report that was released by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice that 81 percent of the victims of priestly sexual abuse were male, and that the majority were postpubescent males. From this it is not hard to conclude that homosexual promiscuity is a problem that the Church must face.

A 1961 Church document called for a ban on gays in the seminaries, but it was not widely enforced in the United States. Whether the Vatican will seek to ban all homosexuals, or whether it will seek to screen for homosexuals not likely to abide by their vow of celibacy, remains to be seen. Whatever the outcome, it is likely to be controversial.

William A. Donohue

Forbes magazine published an article in September about an attempt by lay Catholics to help the Church reorganize and get on firm financial ground. That’s a noble goal. But when I was interviewed for the piece, I was asked whether the answer to matters like declining vocations and declining attendance at Mass could be solved via “modern management techniques.” This was not the answer. I said, “we need a return to orthodoxy.”

Vocations and church attendance have to do with cultural matters, not managerial ones. The way to increase the numbers is to tap into the cultural reasons why some seminaries are doing well while others are not; it also makes sense to get a profile of those Catholics who attend Mass on a weekly basis.

Regarding vocations, Catholic World Report published an excellent article on the subject in July. Generally speaking, the smaller dioceses tend to be doing better than the larger dioceses, and the more orthodox dioceses tend to be doing better than the more progressive ones. Regarding the latter, Charles R. Morris found the same phenomenon to be true when he wrote his 1997 book, American Catholic: the more progressive the diocese, the less successful they were in attracting young men to the priesthood. Not surprisingly, the same pattern is evident among religious orders of priests and nuns: the more orthodox they are, the less problem they have in garnering new recruits.

It would be hard to find a more orthodox—and courageous—bishop in the nation than Fabian Bruskewitz, the bishop of Lincoln, Nebraska. If orthodoxy sells, then he should be smiling. In fact, he’s beaming: the ratio of Catholics to seminarians in Lincoln puts Bishop Bruskewitz at the top of the class—Lincoln has the best record of any diocese in the nation.

Progressive Catholics are certainly aware of such data, but it has had little effect on them. Take, for example, Peter Steinfels, the religion writer for the New York Times. Two years ago, he wrote a book warning that if the Church did not become more modern in its teachings, it would risk going south. This struck many orthodox Catholics as bizarre: hadn’t the Church been going south for the past generation precisely because it became unhinged from its traditional moorings? So why would it want to compound the problem by going back to the same well that made us sick in the first place? Since Steinfels’ book appeared, Joseph Ratzinger was named Pope Benedict XVI, thus ending the suspense about the future direction of the Catholic Church.

Regarding Mass attendance, we know from many surveys that those Catholics who attend Mass on a weekly basis tend to be the most orthodox; progressive Catholics—those who dissent from many Church teachings, especially on sexuality—generally attend Mass much less often. Which means that the bread and butter of the Catholic Church are not found among the ranks of the dissidents: the ones who pay the bills are also the most loyal to the teachings of the Magisterium.

Orthodoxy works for Protestants, too. This is what David Shiflett reports in his new book, Why Americans are Fleeing Liberal Churches for Conservative Christianity. The trendy churches are taking a beating: the United Churches of Christ lost approximately 15 percent of its members in the last decade; the United Methodists are down by almost 7 percent and the Episcopalians have declined by 5 percent (the drop off is even worse when the last few decades are calculated). The orthodox Christians, on the other hand, are booming: the Evangelical Free Church is up 57 percent; Conservative Christian Churches and Churches of Christ have increased by 40 percent; the Assemblies of God are up 18 percent; and the Church of God has surged by 40 percent.

Why does orthodoxy sell? Because it contrasts sharply with moral relativism that colors the dominant culture and the pabulum served up by progressive Christians. The pursuit of Truth is what orthodoxy is all about; Christians who fancy themselves as modernists have a hard time even acknowledging the existence of Truth. In other words, there is no bright line between what progressive Christians believe and what progressive secularists believe.

Most important, orthodoxy should matter because the teachings of Christ and the Catholic Church are not mere opinions: they are the Truth. Unfortunately, there are legions of Catholics who think that to embrace orthodoxy is to surrender one’s conscience. Ironically, such persons are under the illusion that their rejection of orthodoxy makes them independent thinkers, when in reality it makes them conformists.

The so-called progressives have it backwards: it takes far more guts to go against the masses than to be absorbed by them.

by William Donohue

Like most Catholics, I know Mother Angelica through EWTN (Eternal World Television Network). Now, thanks to Ray Arroyo’s inspiring portrait of her, I know her much better. The subtitle of Mother Angelica accurately reads, The Remarkable Story of a Nun, Her Nerve, and a Network of Miracles. Yes, it is all that and more—it is a gripping tale of a woman who suffered greatly yet always managed to beat the odds.

Born Rita Rizzo, and reared in Canton, Ohio, Mother Angelica experienced poverty, a broken home, maltreatment, multiple physical ailments, jealously, back stabbing, betrayal—she was even shot at—but nothing could stop her determination. It does not exaggerate to say that the object of her determination never had anything to do with her—it always had to do with God.

In her lifetime, Mother established the Poor Clare Nuns of Perpetual Adoration and gave birth to the Franciscan Friars of the Eternal Word and the Sisters of the Eternal Word. She built the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament, as well as the largest shortwave network in the world and the world’s first Catholic satellite network. Not bad for a high school graduate who had everything going against her.

Her father was abusive, both physically and verbally, and eventually abandoned her (he tried to reconcile with her later in life). It took such a toll on her that she wondered why God would ever subject a little girl to such a miserable family. It also meant that she missed out on what other kids were used to, so much so that one of her cousins would later say of her, “She was an adult all her life. She never had a childhood.”

The nuns she met in school were anything but kind. Their opposition to divorce unfortunately led them to oppose the children of divorce, and this was something the young Rita couldn’t bear (the priests her mother encountered were just as condemning). Some family members were just as cruel, including an uncle who verbally beat up on her mother so badly that Rita literally threw a knife at him.

Yet there were miracles. There was the time when, at age eleven, she was crossing a street only to see two headlights staring her right in the face. She thought she was dead. Incredibly, she was able to jump high enough that she avoided being hit. The driver called it “a miracle,” while Rita and her mother dubbed it a graceful “lifting.”

Her stomach ailments were so bad that she was forced to wear a corset. The doctors tried to help, but to little avail. Then she met a stigmatic, Rhoda Wise, and that’s when things began to change. One day, when she was 20, a voice told her to get up and walk without the corset, and she did just that. Immediately, her suffering was relieved. Her doctor, of course, insisted it had to with his treatments, but Rita knew better.

Her mother wasn’t too happy when she learned that Rita had decided to enter a Cleveland monastery. After all, she had first been abandoned by her husband, and now her daughter was leaving her as well. But in time she would come to accept it. As for Rita, her failing knees (and the five stories of steps she had to traverse at the monastery), led to her being dispatched back home to Canton.

After nine years in the cloister, Sister Angelica took her solemn vows. Her legs and her back were so twisted she could hardly walk (she wore a body cast), leading her to beg God to allow her to walk again in exchange for a promise: she would build a monastery in the South. What she wanted was a “Negro apostolate,” a cloistered community in service to poor blacks. After undergoing spinal surgery, and after being rebuffed initially by her bishop, she got her way; approval was given to build a monastery in Birmingham. Then came to the hard part—coming up with the bucks to pay for it.

In 1959, the year before she became Mother Angelica, she spotted an ad in a magazine for fishing lure parts. She decided that the nuns would go into the fishing-lure business, thus was St. Peter’s Fishing Lures born. In 1961, Sports Illustratedhonored her with a plaque for her “special contribution to a sport.” Remarkably, this half-crippled nun with no business experience was able to garner national attention for her entrepreneurial acumen. It was just the beginning.

Building a monastery in the South in the early 1960s, especially one that would service African Americans, was not exactly a popular enterprise. It didn’t take long before local opposition mounted, even to the point of violence: Mother Angelica was shot at one night by one of the protesters (he barely missed).

Amidst what seemed like eternal struggles to keep the revenue coming, Mother started the Li’l Ole Peanut Company. Score another hit: By the end of 1968, she paid off all the monastery debt. Over the next decade, she would write books and give talks, managing to walk with an artificial hip.

In 1978, her life was forever altered when she was introduced to a TV studio in Chicago. Instantly, she got the bug: she had to have one of her own. Then came the first of many disappointments dealing with the bishops. When she contacted them about a Catholic TV show, none replied. Undeterred, she secured funding from New York philanthropist Peter Grace, and in 1981 got a young lawyer and Catholic deacon, Bill Steltemeier, to craft a civil corporation called the Eternal Word Television Network. Bill would remain a loyal and talented ally throughout the tumultuous times to come.

When word reached Rome that a cloistered abbess was traveling the country in pursuit of her broadcasting dream, she ran into trouble with both American bishops and Vatican officials. But thanks to Cardinal Silvio Oddi, head of the Sacred Congregation for the Clergy, she prevailed.

It was never easy. Every time Mother Angelica thought she was in the clear, another bishop would raise objections to her venture. Indeed, the bishops tried to outdo her by launching their own effort, the Catholic Telecommunications Network of America (CTNA). It was clear from the beginning that Mother Angelica was seen as a threat: EWTN had a traditional orientation and CTNA took a modernist stance. EWTN won. CTNA collapsed.

It was not easy for the bishops to watch their own creation flounder while EWTN won the admiration of Pope John Paul II. Adding to their chagrin was their inability to get Mother Angelica to switch to a new interfaith satellite network. As to her own operations, Mother Angelica did not take kindly to those clerics who questioned her authority to showcase some bishops, but not others. “I happen to own the network,” she instructed. When told that this would not be forever, she let loose: “I’ll blow the damn thing up before you get your hands on it.”

In 1989, a report by the bishops complained that EWTN rejected “one out of every three programs submitted by the bishops conference.” The bishops and Mother Angelica were clearly on a collision course: she had no tolerance for the theological dissidence that was tolerated by many bishops and their staff. The last straw came when the bishops conference sent a show to be aired featuring a cleric promising female ordination under the next pope.

The dissent, whether voiced by the Catholic Theological Society of America, or by feminist nuns who favored gender-neutral language in the Catholic Catechism, distressed Mother badly. She even had to endure being lobbied to push for “inclusive” language in the Catechism by the likes of “conservatives” such as Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston. That he failed should surprise no one.

Mother was more than distressed—she was angered beyond belief—when a woman portrayed Jesus doing the Stations of the Cross at World Youth Day in Denver, 1993. “Try it with Martin Luther King,” she said on the air. “Put a white woman in his place and see what happens.”

She was not prepared for what happened next. The reaction of leading bishops to her outburst was swift and vocal. Archbishop Rembert Weakland, who like Law would later be forced to resign in disgrace, blasted her for what he labeled “one of the most disgraceful, un-Christian, offensive, and divisive diatribes I have ever heard.” He had nothing to say about the incident that provoked her.

The bishops weren’t finished with her. In retaliation, they recalled priests who had been assigned to work at EWTN, and attempts were made to get EWTN thrown off diocesan TV channels around the country.

Just when it seemed things couldn’t get any worse, Mother Angelica and Roger Cardinal Mahony locked horns. In 1997, she accused the Los Angeles archbishop of questioning the Real Presence: “In fact,” she said, “the cardinal of California is teaching that it’s bread and wine before the Eucharist and after the Eucharist.” She added that she would not obey an Ordinary like him if she lived there, and hoped that those who did would no longer provide him with their assent.

That was it. Mahony exploded. But while demanding that Rome punish Mother Angelica—and this went on for years—Mahony’s archdiocese was home to “a cavalcade of dissenters and anti-Vatican agitators.” This is the stuff that drives orthodox Catholics mad.

While she survived in the end, Mother Angelica had to ward off attempts by the bishops to take control of EWTN (one archbishop allegedly told her that certain bishops “want to destroy you”). To make sure this would never happen, Mother Angelica resigned from the network in order to save it: the bishops would have no lien on a purely autonomous, lay-run, civil entity.

Twenty years ago, Ben Armstrong of the National Religious Broadcasters aptly dubbed her, “the Bishop Fulton Sheen of this generation.” Cardinal J. Francis Stafford was also right when he observed that “Mother Angelica represented the plain Catholic, who is 90 percent of the Church.” Let it also be said that she overcame all kinds of adversity, and she did it all—and continues to do it all—for Jesus.

The following statement was made by Kenneth Whitehead on September 8 at a news conference held in Washington, D.C. by the Family Research Council. Mr. Whitehead is an author, a former official in the Reagan administration and a member of the Catholic League’s Board of Directors.

The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights believes that President George W. Bush’s nominee to become the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, Judge John G. Roberts, Jr., should be evaluated on the basis of his qualifications as a lawyer and a judge, not on the basis of his religion. The fact that Judge Roberts is a Catholic Christian should have no more bearing on his ability and suitability to be a Supreme Court justice than the fact that other sitting justices on the court profess the same faith—while yet others profess different faiths or perhaps no religious faith at all.

The Constitution of the United States, in fact, in very plain language forbids any religious test for public office. Yet merely by raising the question of Judge Roberts’ religion, some of those who oppose his nomination are, in effect, attempting to impose such a religious test. Another very large question here, from the standpoint of the Catholic League, is the question of whether the religious issue would have come up at all if Judge Roberts were not a Catholic. No such question arose in the case of Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg or Stephen Breyer, for example, and it should not arise in the case of Judge Roberts either.

Again, Justices Ginsburg and Breyer were not required to state how they might judge hypothetical future court cases on currently controversially issues, and Judge Roberts should not be required to answer any such hypothetical questions either. To change the rules because a nominee who happens to be Catholic is under scrutiny unmistakably sends the signal that a religious test is being attempted. This is inadmissible.

Similarly, the questions which former New York Governor Mario Cuomo said on “Meet the Press” on August 7 should be posed to Judge Roberts by senators are inadmissible and out of bounds as acceptable public discourse in the United States. Governor Cuomo said that senators should ask the nominee the following questions, among others:

“Are you going to impose a religious test on the Constitution”?

“Are you going to say that because the pope says this or the Church says that that you will do it no matter what”?

The idea that a reasoned position on any public issue could be declared suspect merely because it happens to be held by a Catholic citizen, or happens to accord with a Church teaching, is demagoguery of the first water and should be rejected out of hand as un-American. The same thing is true of the idea implied in Governor Cuomo’s second question that somehow Catholics are mere robots or puppets who automatically and mechanically carry out the “orders” of the pope. This bespeaks gross religious prejudice, which is no less offensive just because it is mouthed by someone who is ostensibly Catholic himself. In reality, Governor Cuomo seems to be cheaply using his own religion here in order to advance his political preferences.

The Catholic League believes that Judge Roberts should be treated by the Senate Judiciary Committee exactly as every other nominee for judicial office is treated. Certainly he can be questioned, even sharply, concerning his own qualifications, his legal training and legal philosophy, and even his view of the judiciary. It would surely even be the duty of the Judiciary Committee to try to ascertain his views on the Constitution of the United States which he would be sworn to uphold as Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

In no way, however, should Judge Roberts be questioned about his religious beliefs; nor should he be subjected to any kind of a “litmus test” on any of the controversial issues of the day which might come before the court during his tenure. On the contrary, he should be pledged to judge such cases on their merits in accordance with the law and facts that apply. This latter pledge is something that the Senate Judiciary Committee should require. Following that, Judge Roberts should be given a clear up-or-down vote by the full Senate.

Most Americans embrace tolerance for homosexuals while opposing such fanatical ideas as same-sex marriage. This is what the Catholic League believes as well. Unfortunately, there are some gay activists who are not interested in tolerance—they demand social affirmation. And they will use the law as a club to beat down those who disagree with them. Consider the case of an Irish couple from Vermont who recently contacted the Catholic League for help (to protect their anonymity, we will not disclose their name).

Jim and Mary own an inn in Vermont that occasionally hosts wedding parties. Earlier this year, Jim got a call from a woman who requested use of his inn for a civil union reception for her and her woman lover (civil unions are legal in Vermont). This put Jim in a pickle: Jim and Mary are good Catholics and look with disfavor on civil unions, so when asked about this, Jim made it clear that he wouldn’t be too happy about providing his facility for such an event. But that didn’t sit too well with the woman. So she filed a complaint against him with the Vermont Human Rights Commission.

Keep in mind that Jim never said he would unequivocally deny the woman his inn—he simply said that his heart wouldn’t be in it given his religious convictions. No matter, she deemed this as sufficient cause to seek a legal remedy. It is crystal clear what is going on here: the lesbians want to impose their beliefs on Jim and Mary, having absolutely no respect for their religious objections.

We referred Jim to a legal group that deals with such matters and he has since obtained counsel. Interestingly, what may help Jim and Mary out is a ruling in 1994 by the Vermont Supreme Court that said a Catholic couple who owned a printing company could turn down a request by a pro-abortion group to print its flyers. It was the Catholic League that rallied to the side of that couple, Chuck and Susan Baker, and now the precedent that has been set may help Jim and Mary. We hope and pray it does.

Two recent events have convinced us that the Catholic Church had better learn to play hardball with those who are out to destroy it.

For example, an article appeared in the September edition of San Franciscomagazine attacking former San Francisco Archbishop William Levada that is completely irresponsible. Even worse was a ruling by a federal bankruptcy judge in Washington state that says all church assets belonging to the Spokane diocese are eligible for liquidation in claims made by the victims of sexual abuse.

Our statement to the press was as follows:

“The sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church is no longer about the alleged victims—they have had their day in court—it is about the victimization of the Catholic Church. The time has come for the Catholic Church to put the vultures in their place.

“Jason Berry’s savage attack on the former San Francisco Archbishop includes the vicious allegation that Levada ‘worked tirelessly throughout his career to protect sexual predator priests.’ Now if this were true, then Berry—who has made a career out of writing about this subject—would have blown the whistle on Levada long ago. So why didn’t he? Could it be because Levada is a much juicer subject these days (he is Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith)? What makes this so ugly is the fact that when Levada was auxiliary bishop in Los Angeles in 1985, he was one of the first bishops in the nation to seriously address this issue! In short, what Berry has done is yellow journalism.

“The situation in Spokane is even more outrageous. At a minimum, separation of church and state means that sitting judges have no right to make determinations regarding the organizational chart of the Catholic Church. But that is exactly what’s being done. By declaring all diocesan assets fair game for every steeple-chasing lawyer, a green light has been given to plunder the resources of the Catholic Church. This has gone too far. Bishops would do well not to listen to those who always want to settle and start playing hardball. It’s time to countersue.

“No amount of wrongdoing by some priests can ever justify attempts to subvert the Catholic Church, whether by the media or by the courts.”

It is understandable that, given so many self-inflicted wounds, many bishops do not want to play hardball: if they did, they would be accused of bullying. But lay Catholics are under no such burden, and that is why more of them need to stand up and be counted.

After our news release was circulated, Jason Berry professed outrage at Donohue’s comments. He said Donohue was inaccurate but never cited a single example of any alleged inaccuracy. That’s because there were none.

A Jewish chapel at the U.S. Naval Academy is built with federal funds and not a word of protest is heard from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Americans United for Separation of Church and State (AU).

From September 16-18, several events took place at the Naval Academy celebrating the opening of the Commodore Uriah P. Levy Center and Jewish Chapel; formal dedication was held on the last day.

Bill Donohue could not pass up the opportunity to release a statement to the media:

“The Catholic League understands the central role that religion plays in the lives of most Americans, and it is particularly sensitive to the need for religious expression among our men and women in uniform. That is why we congratulate the Naval Academy for opening the Jewish Center and heartily approve of federal funds being used to build the Jewish chapel. Our problem is with the hypocrites at the ADL, ACLU and AU.

“To the applause of the ADL, ACLU and AU, Catholic schools are denied government money for the purchase of maps in the classroom, but the federal government can spend nearly 2 million dollars to build a Jewish chapel at the Naval Academy without a word of protest from any of them. Catholic kids in New York City public schools cannot have a crèche in their classroom but Jewish kids can have a menorah (all to the approval of the ADL), and now a U.S. military building on the grounds of the Naval Academy can display a huge Star of David on its exterior without a peep from any of the church-and-state watchdog groups. Moreover, since 1845 the Naval Academy has had a non-sectarian prayer said before lunch, but the ADL and the ACLU now want it censored; the ADL has even written to the Armed Services Committees of the House and Senate calling the practice ‘deeply troubling.’

“In other words, prayer rugs can be purchased with federal funds to accommodate suspected Muslim terrorists in Guantanamo Bay, and Jewish chapels can be built with federal monies, but Christian kids can’t sing ‘Silent Night’ in the classroom. Got it everyone?”

We hope that all Catholic League members remember to cite this example the next time they hear someone complain about separation of church and state. We will use it for years to come.

On September 14, Catholic League president William Donohue issued the following call to action to California public school teachers:

“Now that U.S. District Judge Lawrence Karlton has said he would sign a restraining order banning the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance in some California school districts, the time has come for patriotic teachers in those schools to practice civil disobedience. They need to lead their students in the Pledge, bellowing the dreaded words ‘under God.’ But nothing should be done until the television cameras are in place—the sight of teachers being handcuffed by the police would be an invaluable teaching moment.

“Settling this issue in court is fine, but it is inadequate: it’s time to shock the conscience of the nation by bringing this matter directly into their living rooms.”

On Saturday, October 8, EWTN will air the global award- winning documentary film “The Call to Fatima” at 8pm (ET). EWTN will replay the movie on October 9 and 13.

You won’t want to miss this amazing film, which was inspired by the book Calls, written by Sr. Lucy, the last surviving visionary of the 1917 apparition.

“The Call to Fatima” covers the miracle at Fatima from the first visits of the angel and our Blessed Mother to the children through the events that followed throughout the century, even including the death and funeral of Sr. Lucy herself.

Fans in New York City may want to visit St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Thursday, October 13. After the Angelus at 11:30am, one of the bishops will address the crowd, followed by the film’s producer, Thomas McCormack. Mass will be held at noon.

Anyone wishing to purchase a copy of the film can order from www.thecalltofatima.com. Both DVD and VHS copies are available. If you mention the Catholic League, the producers will donate $10 to the league for every purchase.