In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, two things seem obvious: the federal, state and local government response has been a disaster, and the response of churches has been nothing short of heroic.

If there is any lesson to be learned, it is that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) should be dumped and that federal aid should be given to churches and other houses of worship that participate in emergency relief efforts. But the aid, either in the form of reimbursements or grants, must be offered without compromising the autonomy of churches.

The evidence that government cannot do the job of churches is overwhelming. To take one example, there was an article in the September 9 edition of the New York Times entitled, “A New Meaning for ‘Organized Religion’: It Helps the Needy Quickly.” The news story detailed the failure of FEMA and the triumph of churches.

Regarding the response of government, the article reported that “many people said they could not wait that long, or did not have the patience to deal with all the bureaucratic mix-ups.” Fortunately, the article said, “churches stepped into the void in what observers say is probably the largest such outpouring in recent memory, with tens of thousands of displaced people stretched out across the country.”

The time has come for common sense to prevail: we need to end the stranglehold that the paranoid church-and-state extremists have had on directing public policy. And that means that in times of emergency, a new partnership between government and religion should be forged: federal dollars—without any strings attached—should be given to churches that provide emergency relief. It’s time we put the best interests of the needy first.

Fortunately, President Bush said in his September 15 address to the nation that he will authorize the federal government to reimburse the churches (to some extent) for their efforts. That, at least, is a start.

Katrina definitely brought out the devil in some people. The hurricane no sooner hit when the crazies made public their reaction.

For example, while innocent persons were dying down South, all Lambda Legal Defense attorney Ken Upton was worried about was whether Louisiana’s ban on civil unions meant that homosexual couples would be denied hospital visitation rights, etc. As he told his buddies at 365gay.com, “It underscores all of the inequities same-sex couples face.”

Even nuttier was the reaction of Michael Marcavage, director of the anti-Catholic Christian group, Repent America: he blamed gays for the hurricane. Why? New Orleans was to host a “Southern Decadence” celebration the weekend after Katrina hit, but because it was cancelled, Marcavage concluded that “this act of God destroyed a wicked city.” As for the innocent victims, Marcavage said there were none: “Let us not forget that the citizens of New Orleans tolerated and welcomed the wickedness in their city for so long.” In other words, this was God’s idea of payback.

Food, water, clothing—the basics of life—these are the kinds of things desperate people need. So what did an animal-rights group, Noah’s Wish, send? Grief counselors for cats and dogs! Not to be outdone, Planned Parenthood, which is drowning in federal dollars, showed how pro-women it was by offering birth control pills and emergency contraception kits. To top if off, they gave their prizes away free for one whole month! And at Florida Atlantic University, condoms were distributed to dorm students as a hurricane supply.

Here’s what Bill Donohue told the press about these incidents: “They’re all mad. In a sane society, they’d be locked up. But not here—with the exception of the website-based Repent America, all the others are tax-exempt organizations. Now how’s that for serving the public interest?”

When the Carmelite Sisters of the Most Sacred Heart of Los Angeles sent a copy of a greeting card mocking Catholic priests to the Catholic League (see left), we thought the style looked familiar. Indeed, we soon realized that the company responsible for the card, Noble Works, Inc., had raised the league’s ire in both 1994 and 2002 by publishing similarly anti-Catholic cards.

A quick look at the Hoboken, NJ company’s website reveals a line of greeting cards dubbed “Extra,” which Noble Works states is “designed to be controversial and outrageous… This range is for the retailer who wishes to make a bold statement, and is not concerned that customers may be offended.”

And indeed, a good portion of the “Extra” cards are focused on mocking Jesus and Christianity. One card depicts the Holy Family in the manger, but the caption above the Blessed Mother’s head reads “Immaculate Schmaculate. That f***ing hurt!” Another portrays a smiling vendor selling T-shirts at the foot of Jesus’ cross. The inside of the card reads “Happy Birthday.” If the connection is lost on you, you are not alone.

Previous appeals to any sense of decency that those in charge of Noble Works may possess were answered with scorn. In fact, former Noble Works president Christopher Noble wrote to us that “it is a horror how many lives of homosexual men the Catholic Church has directly ruined. I was strong enough to survive. Many others are not…The Catholic Church, by my experience, spreads bigotry, intolerance and homophobia throughout the world.”

However, the company has a new president now, Mr. Ron Kanfi. The Catholic League has written to Mr. Kanfi about the offensive cards, and is awaiting his response.

It would be good if he heard from you. Write to him at:
NobleWorks
P.O. Box 1275
123 Grand Street
Hoboken, NJ 07030
(800) 346-6253
fax: (201) 420-0679 RKanfi@NobleWorksInc.com

In the following news release, we replied to a September 12 statement by SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests):

“Gerald Payne, Kentucky’s SNAP coordinator, wants state authorities to warn residents when Catholic priests who have been accused, but not convicted, of sexual abuse live in their neighborhood. Those who think this is an anomaly are wrong: the headquarters of SNAP is flagging this story on the front page of its website.

“It is not everyday that a national advocacy organization, on either the right or the left, argues that civil liberties should be suspended for one class of citizens. Indeed, this kind of tactic is usually branded fascistic. But this is what happens when an organization that used to be in the media spotlight is increasingly ignored—it tends to become more radical. And make no mistake about it, the reason the media are shunning SNAP (and groups like it) is a direct consequence of the reforms instituted by the Catholic Church: the new policies make SNAP’s very existence moot.

“In any event, to say that SNAP has snapped would be a gross understatement: It has fully discredited itself and will be unable to recover whatever credibility it once had.”

After our statement was released, some so-called progressive Catholics complained that we are soft on abusive priests. Not at all. We just make a distinction between those who are charged with a crime and those who have been found guilty in a court of law. The former are presumed innocent and are therefore to be accorded all the rights the law provides.

We thought progressives cared about civil liberties for everyone, but perhaps we were wrong. But the fact is we do, and we will continue to insist that priests not be treated as second-class citizens.

Comedian Dennis Leary is up to his old tricks again. The lapsed Catholic whose stand-up act includes jokes about the crucifixion and who has stated, “I’m trying to get excommunicated, banned from the church,” is currently starring in (as well as writing for and co-producing) the FX series “Rescue Me,” now in its second season.

Leary plays Tommy Gavin, a veteran firefighter and recovering alcoholic. Tommy has an estranged wife, a loony girlfriend, children he doesn’t see very often, and a taste for pain-killers. Tommy also has one more situation he must deal with: he has a penchant for imagining that he is visited by Mary Magdalene and Jesus.

In some scenes, visits from Mary Magdalene and Jesus help Tommy to explore and strengthen his faith. That the issue of religion is explored in a personal manner on a popular drama seems encouraging at first. Seeing a lead character turn to prayer for help in his marriage is not a very frequent occurence these days.

However, Mary Magdalene and Jesus don’t just appear to offer this harried man some solace. Not content to present an honest portrayal of a man who struggles with his religion and his belief in God, “Rescue Me” tries to titillate its audience through shock value, at the expense of the Lord and the Church.

In one dream sequence, Tommy has sex with Mary Magdalene. Jesus walks in on the pair, declares that Tommy is “just like Judas” and shoots at him. Tommy wakes up before this charming scene can play out any further.

In another episode, when Tommy is worried about the fate of a young burn victim and waiting for Jesus to appear, Mary Magdalene informs Tommy that Jesus is “full of goddamn promises” and that she has been “waiting for a ring since three weeks before the Last Supper.”

Another plot twist has Tommy meet a Catholic priest named Fr. Murphy, who may or may not be Tommy’s half-brother. Tommy is initially fond of Fr. Murphy, but this family reunion isn’t all hugs and laughs.

Tommy’s cousin Mickey (himself an ex-priest) is worried about how close Fr. Murphy is with Ricky, one of the boys in the parish. After speaking with Ricky’s older brother who reports that he himself was abused by Fr. Murphy, Tommy and Mickey decide to demand the wayward cleric find a new job.

When Tommy confronts the priest, Fr. Murphy shrugs off Tommy’s disgust and reveals that he himself was molested by a priest when he was a boy. And what’s more—he liked it!

Such is the way that “Rescue Me” seeks to entertain its audience. One would think that a drama about New York City firefighters in the years after 9-11 would offer its writers plenty of material. Apparently though, Leary and his cronies need to fall back on the old standby of bashing the Church.

“Rescue Me” airs Monday nights at 10pm (ET) on FX Networks, a subsidiary of Fox Entertainment Group, Fox Plaza 2121 Ave. of the Stars, 19th Floor, Los Angeles, CA 90067.

On March 11, 2005, MTV2, sister channel to MTV and a Viacom subsidiary, aired the first episode of a new program called “Wonder Showzen.” Seven additional episodes were shown throughout the season. MTV2 is planning to air six new episodes, at a date not yet set.

The show is styled like the PBS show “Sesame Street,” with child actors, puppets and cartoons. The content, however, is far from child-friendly. Gratuitous sexual references and lewd portrayals of all things Christian are the norm in this prime-time program.

Many quick and cheap shots at the Church are taken by “Wonder Showzen.” In one skit, a scrolling tape reading “Catholic Church approves condom-flavored breath mints” runs across the screen during a mock newscast. A segment in which a little girl writes a letter to her dead grandmother includes mention of a priest feeling granny’s breasts while she was in the coffin. In another, a child answers the question “What is your greatest wish?” with “to punch God in the face.”

But one episode, titled “History,” delves into new levels of sickness. A cartoon shows a young boy praying by his bed. An animated Bible walks into the bedroom along with a syringe full of heroin, a knife and a bottle of liquor. After the Bible injects the heroin and drinks the liquor, it performs a sex act with a prostitute.

As if this isn’t enough, the next scene shows a priest reading from the Bible in church. The figure of Jesus comes down from the cross and begins break dancing. At this point, the rest of the statues in the church transform into bikini-clad blondes.

The show’s co-creator John Lee stated “Our mission statement is to kill civilization.” His partner Vernon Chatman was actually disappointed that “Wonder Showzen” didn’t garner more criticism, saying “We were so hoping the world would be offended” and MTV bigwig Tom Calderone, “Wonder Showzen’s” executive producer, boasted “The show assaults you on so many levels.”

Write to Calderone at:

MTV2
c/o MTV
1515 Broadway
New York, NY 10036
(212) 258-8000

You might ask Calderone if he learned how to assault Christians in college or whether it comes naturally to him. You might also ask why he chooses a safe group to bash—anti-Catholicism is so routine—and not a protected group.

A woman shopping at an Elder-Beerman department store (a division of Bon-Ton Stores) in Ohio notified the Catholic League of a T-shirt that she found inappropriate. She snapped a picture of the shirt and sent it along to us. We thought it crossed the line as well. The shirt reads “Who can resist a catholic girl,” with the words encircled by Rosary beads.

We wrote a letter to Steven Mason, Chairman of Elder-Beerman Stores Corp., informing him that the shirt makes a sexual innuendo about Catholic girls at the same time as it trivializes a devotion to the Mother of God. We requested that he pull the shirt from his stores and informed him that after the Anti-Defamation League objected to a T-shirt sold at Urban Outfitters that was sprinkled with dollar signs and read “Everybody Loves a Jewish Girl,” the retailer realized its error and ceased sale of the item.

What is also troubling about the T-shirt in question is that those who purchase it are doubtless almost exclusively Catholic girls. Why even nominal Catholics would want to slam the Blessed Virgin and make themselves look like tramps is beyond us.

On September 19, we received a letter from The Bon-Ton Department Stores saying, “As of today, all Elder-Beerman and Bon-Ton stores will be pulling the T-shirts mentioned in your letter off the sales floor. It is never our intent to offend our customers.”

We commend Bon-Ton for making this decision.

At a recent scientific conference in New York, a student asked a panel of scientists, “Can you be a good scientist and believe in God?” To which a Nobel prize winner in chemistry, Herbert A. Hauptman, thundered, “No!”

Unfortunately, Hauptman’s ignorance is not uncommon. “For the last fifty years,” writes Church chronicler Thomas E. Woods, Jr., “virtually all historians of science…have concluded that the Scientific Revolution was indebted to the Church.” Sadly, people like Hauptman never seem to recognize the dogmatism that occurs in their own circles. Three recent stories in the news prove this point.

Scientists are said to be engaged in the pursuit of truth. At a minimum, this should mean that they are receptive to new ideas. Yet when it comes to ideas that challenge the Darwinian theory of evolution, many scientists not only recoil at the suggestion that they may be wrong, they actively seek to punish those with whom they differ. Just ask Richard Sternberg.

Sternberg is the former editor of a journal published by the Smithsonian Institution. In the August 2004 edition of Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, an article by Stephen C. Meyer appeared that made the case for intelligent design (ID); ID holds that life is so complex that an unspecified intelligent agent must be responsible for the design of the universe, not natural processes.

When the article was published, many in the scientific community were rip-roaring mad and wanted the head of Sternberg for allowing the piece to be published. Never mind that Sternberg holds two doctorates in evolutionary biology, or that the work by Meyer was peer-reviewed by three outside scientists (meaning it was approved as being worthy of publication). What mattered in the end was that Darwin’s theory was challenged.

“I was singled out for harassment and threats on the basis that they think I’m a creationist,” said Sternberg. Smithsonian officials, of course, denied these accusations. However, a preliminary federal investigation by the Office of Special Counsel (OSC) supported Sternberg’s complaint of bias; the case had to be dropped because of the OSC’s jurisdictional authority.

Vicious rumors were spread about Sternberg and attempts were made to dig for dirt on him—they did everything they could to destroy him. All this because he allowed one article to be published that ran against the grain of conventional wisdom in the scientific community.

As the next case shows, some scientists are not above engaging in Catholic bashing, even in professional journals. Thanks to Catholic League member Dr. Judith McGuinn of Pueblo, Colorado, we learned of a cheap shot that appeared in the June edition of the Archives of Dermatology.

In an article co-authored by four scientists (the lead one being from Denmark, Dr. Kaare Weismann), it was maintained that a 55-year-old man’s intestinal tract was infected with S marcescens, a bacterium that produced a reddish stain on his clothes. The bacterium was also named Monas prodigiosum, “the miracle bacterium”; the first reported account of this in Denmark occurred in 1169 and was found in a bleeding host.

So what’s this got to do with anti-Catholicism? Dr. Weismann, et al., wrote that the bacterium “thrives on starchy matter such as polenta, bread, and sacramental wafers and apparently flourished in the damp churches of medieval times.” That’s fine, but what is not is their conclusion: “No doubt, S marcescens has contributed to human death more because of religious fanaticism than because of pathogenicity.”

Over the summer, Dr. Bill Donohue wrote to Dr. Weismann asking her one question: “Could you please submit the source you used to come to this conclusion, as none was cited?” As expected, she never did.

A much more disturbing story emerged in late summer over an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) that held that unborn babies cannot feel pain before they are 29 weeks old. Appearing on “Paula Zahn Now” was Dr. Beverly Winikoff of Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health, a pro-abortion group.

Dr. Winikoff was asked to respond to Doug Johnson, a National Right to Life Committee official; he contended that the fetus can feel pain much earlier than 29 weeks. “People can believe what they wish,” Dr. Winikoff said. “People have reasons for believing aside from science.” In other words, trust her—she’s a real scientist.

“I think this study is extremely non-controversial among real scientists,” the good Dr. said. “This is the science. So from the point of view of good science, this study meets all the standards.”

But the “real scientist” is wrong: no sooner had the media reported on this “scientific” article when we learned that two of the five authors are connected to the pro-abortion industry. The study’s lead author, Susan J. Lee, is a former NARAL Pro-Choice employee; NARAL is the most radical pro-abortion organization in the nation. Another author, Eleanor Drey, directs an abortion clinic in San Francisco.

The dogmatists in the scientific community must be watched. The degree of certitude they entertain is disturbing, and may even be dangerous to your health—or at least to the health of the unborn.