Two related anti-Catholic incidents took place over Labor Day weekend involving a high school football game in Scottsdale, Arizona. After parents complained, and the Catholic League contacted school officials, an investigation was launched. We were pleased with the response.

Our cause for concern was twofold: prior to a football game between Notre Dame Prep and Desert Mountain High School, a statue of Our Blessed Mother was vandalized on the campus of the Catholic school; during the game at Desert Mountain, a student dressed as Jesus paraded up and down the sidelines, mocking Catholics.

To be specific, a sex toy was attached to the lower half of the statue of Our Blessed Mother, and a Hillary Clinton mask was put over its head. The “dancing Jesus” character who mocked Catholics continued his stunt in the second half of the game, even after parents complained earlier to security guards.

Catholic League director of communications Rick Hinshaw contacted officials at both schools. He emphasized that we did not see these two incidents as harmless school pranks; rather, we saw them as coordinated assaults on our religion. Had it been the sacred icons of other religions that were trashed, calls for a hate crimes investigation would have been made. The initial response from administrators was encouraging.

The next day, a more formal statement was issued that put to rest our fears.

Dr. A. Denise Birdwell, the Scottsdale Unified School District Interim Superintendent, emailed us a letter that was both responsible and pointed. “On behalf of the Scottsdale Unified School District and Desert Mountain High School,” she wrote, “I want to apologize to you and the entire Catholic community.” She emphasized that she found the behavior “disgraceful, disrespectful and unacceptable.”

She also met with leaders from Notre Dame Prep to apologize. “We, as educators,” she said, “have a profound responsibility to coach our young people—first, on how to behave and second, on how to respond to others’ unfortunate behavior.”

An investigation was immediately launched.

Dr. Birdwell also thanked the Catholic League “for the role you play in educating all people to recognize the difference between right and wrong and, above all else, to respect one another.” She added, “We aim to do the same.”

This is a textbook case of the way incidents such as this should be handled by school officials. We commend Dr. Birdwell and all the administrators at Desert Mountain and Notre Dame Prep for their attention to these offensive actions.

Bill Donohue was checking out Internet stories on a Saturday morning when he noticed a prominently posted news story found on Yahoo on August 27:

He found a news story on the homepage of Yahoo that was puzzling. Titled, “Trump Goes to War with the Pope,” it featured a picture of Donald Trump at a podium. The first sentence read, “The pontiff suggests that Trump is not a Christian.” That sounded very familiar.

Didn’t the pope make the same comment last winter? Donohue recalled doing a lot of media on this issue, even to the point of finding it necessary to correct the record: both the pope and Trump were misrepresented. Donohue now wondered whether the two titans really clashed this time? Apparently so.

In fact, they never did. The Politico piece that was posted on August 27 on the front page of Yahoo was marked August 25, but when Donohue clicked on the entire story, he found it was the Politico article from February 18.

Why did Yahoo mislead its readers? How could a mistake of this gravity be made? After all, many people only read the headlines, and in this case they were given the wrong message. If it wasn’t a mistake, then there is something seriously wrong going on.

Yahoo owed its readers an explanation, but none was forthcoming. This is one more example of journalistic malpractice. It is particularly outrageous when it affects coverage of the presidential election.

Catholics are as divided as the rest of the nation when it comes to voting, and many look to activist Catholic groups for guidance. While there are good people on both sides, not every organization that adopts the Catholic label is to be trusted.

For the record, I am not talking about entities that lean left or lean right—the Church itself is not one-dimensional. I am speaking about activist groups that claim to be Catholic yet receive a large share of their funding from forces that are manifestly hostile to Catholicism. This is certainly the case with Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good.

Catholics in Alliance is a front for George Soros, the billionaire who supports abortion-on-demand and other public policy initiatives that are anathema to the Catholic Church.

It is run by Christopher Hale, a left-wing activist who works with Catholic dissidents and ex-Catholics to oppose the Church. He has an article posted on the website of Time that explains why Soros greases him: It is titled, “Trump-Pence is the Most Anti-Catholic Republican Ticket in Modern History.”

Hale is entitled to his pro-Clinton position, but it is dishonest to pretend that he is not pushing the Soros agenda. Unlike the Catholic League, which never writes grants seeking funding from a foundation, and is wholly dependent on rank-and-file Catholics for donations, Catholics in Alliance is not a true membership organization.

Over the years, Soros has funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars to Catholics in Alliance through his Foundation to Promote Open Society and his Open Society Institute. In addition to these Soros outlets, Hale is funded by the Tides Foundation and the Arca Foundation, both of which are major contributors to far-left causes.

Two years ago, Catholics in Alliance showed its true colors by co-sponsoring dissident priests who are not in good standing with the Catholic Church, Father Helmut Schüller and Father Tony Flannery.

Father Schüller, an Austrian priest, is the activist behind “Call to Disobedience,” a reform initiative that seeks to pressure the Church to change its teachings on issues ranging from the liturgy to ordination. For example, he wants teachers of religious education to be allowed to give sermons and communion.

Archbishop Christoph Schönborn, who presides over the Austrian Bishops’ Conference, strongly rejected Schüller’s campaign saying that communion services held by the laity constituted “an open break with a central truth of our Catholic faith.”

Pope Benedict XVI denounced “Call to Disobedience” in 2012. “Recently, a group of priests from a European country issued a summons to disobedience,” he said, “and at the same time gave concrete examples of the forms this disobedience might take, even to the point of disregarding definitive decisions of the Church’s Magisterium, such as the question of women’s ordination.”

Boston Archbishop Cardinal Sean O’Malley and New York Archbishop Cardinal Timothy Dolan both contacted Cardinal Schönborn attempting to ban Schüller from speaking in the United States. He was formally banned from dioceses in Boston, Detroit, Chicago, and Philadelphia. None of the bishops wanted him to sow the seeds of confusion among the laity.

Father Flannery rejects several teachings from the New Testament, going so far as to question whether Jesus intended to found the Church. He also questions the virgin birth. Not surprisingly, he rejects the Church’s teachings on sexuality. He was suspended by the Vatican in 2012.

So these are the kinds of priests that Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good likes to sponsor—the ones that divide Catholics. That’s Hale’s idea of the “common good.”

It’s actually worse than this. Unlike the Catholic League, which works to defend the bishops, Catholics in Alliance partners with the professed enemies of the Church.

To be specific, the following organizations were also co-sponsors of “Call to Disobedience”: Call to Action, Catholics for Choice, CORPUS, DignityUSA, FutureChurch, National Coalition of American Nuns, New Ways Ministry, Quixote Center, Women’s Ordination Conference, and Voice of the Faithful.

Most of these groups are openly opposed to the Church’s teachings on abortion, gay marriage, and women’s ordination, and some are so extreme that their members have been excommunicated by bishops; those decisions have been upheld by the Vatican.

The leaders of Catholics in Alliance play musical chairs with Faith in Public Life, another Soros letterhead that was founded by former Marxist radical Jim Wallis. John Gehring carries the water for these men at Faith in Public Life these days.

Not all the major players are still operative: Eric McFadden, founder of Catholic Democrats, got sent up the river in 2009 for promoting an underage prostitution ring in Ohio.

The media cover up for these groups because many reporters and pundits are against the Church’s teachings on sexuality; they will do whatever they can to advance the rogue Catholic agenda. They are intentionally dishonest. This is a stealth campaign, staffed and funded by hard-core leftists, and given cover by the media.

It is not just Catholics who are ill-served when dummy groups are propped up to represent them—the public is misled as well.

Rick Hinshaw

Raymond Arroyo, Mother Angelica: Her Grand Silence: The Last Years and Living Legacy (New York: Image, 2016)

In his previous biography on Mother Angelica, Raymond Arroyo brought us into personal contact with her extraordinary life. He took us through not only her remarkable accomplishments, but the seemingly insurmountable challenges she had to overcome in achieving them, and how God’s intervention in her life put her on this lifelong journey of faith to achieve eternal union with Him—not just for herself, but for countless millions of souls whom she never even knew, but who came to know her.

One expects this final work, then, to recount how she died. And it does that. But anyone who thinks this is simply the telling of a moving story about a remarkable earthly life passing quietly into eternity is in for a surprise. It is, rather, the story of how Mother Angelica in her last years, seemingly hidden away in her sickbed in a corner of Our Lady of the Angels Monastery in  Hanceville, Alabama, only intensified her service to God and to others. Arroyo makes a compelling case that, with her voice virtually silenced and her physical mobility gone, she may have brought more souls to Christ in those last years than in all her extraordinary years of physically active, world-wide ministry.

Surely, some of this was due to the continued growth and expanded programming of EWTN, the worldwide Catholic media network she had founded. As it reached ever more people around the world, EWTN allowed them to experience and be drawn to the faith. Indeed, it allowed whole new generations to come to know Mother Angelica—to feel her love, receive her wisdom and guidance, and experience the depth of her personal relationship with Jesus—through the regular re-broadcasts of her own powerful preaching on “Mother Angelica Live” and other EWTN programs.

But EWTN was only part of the story of Mother Angelica’s extraordinary witness to and evangelization of the Gospel during those final, bedridden years. There was, first of all, her determination, for as long as possible, to still be active in whatever ways she could in advancing the mission of her community. For example, she urged and inspired the sisters to establish new foundations, and she even traveled, as far away as Japan, to help gain acceptance and support for these undertakings.

But most of all there was her prayer and spiritual life: her willingness, indeed her joy, in joining her sufferings to those of her beloved spouse, Jesus, and offering them for others. In this way she gave totally of herself in service to all manner of human concerns: physical, emotional and spiritual healing for those close to her; all those around the world who asked for her help and prayers; and for millions of people with whom she had no contact, but knew to be suffering. She also offered her suffering for the successes of the work of her community, and of the Church’s worldwide evangelization efforts; for the leaders of our Church; for a world in terrible spiritual crisis; and for all whom she knew to be in need of prayer—in short, for all humanity, past, present and future, whom she longed to help into heaven through her own sacrificial suffering.

“In her protracted silence—for more than a decade,” Arroyo writes, “Mother Angelica would struggle for her soul, fight for her religious community, see the fulfillment of her last mission, and radically transform the lives of people she had never known.”

It was indeed “a grand silence.” Arroyo brings us into it, transforming us from outside observers to insiders who in a sense actually share the experience of Mother Angelica’s life, or at least the experiences of those who, like Raymond Arroyo, did share intimately in her life. He is able to do this in part, of course, because of his closeness to her, and his descriptions of their interactions as he visited and interviewed her over this last period of her life are powerful and inspiring. So too are the testimonies of some of the sisters who saw to Mother’s care in her last years, and who, through Arroyo, also generously share with us their moving personal observations and reflections.

Arroyo draws us into these extraordinary final years of Mother Angelica’s life by employing his manifest skills as an author—and one who himself lives and evangelizes the Catholic faith. So he fully understands and affirms the concept of redemptive suffering, and the deep personal holiness and fidelity to Christ and His Church that were the essence of Mother Angelica.

Her “grand silence” really began, Arroyo recounts, on Christmas Eve 2001 when a stroke caused by a brain hemorrhage nearly killed her. Having retired from EWTN the previous March, she had already planned to spend her time in the cloister, in meditative prayer, “mothering her community,” and preparing her sisters to eventually establish new monasteries elsewhere. Now her severely limited speech and movement would seemingly further enforce such a quiet, uneventful retirement.

But that was not to be. As she had her entire life, Mother Angelica struggled mightily against the challenges life had dealt her, working as always to carry forward the will of God. This led her to insist, three years later, on accompanying several members of her community on a trip to Japan to look into establishing a monastery there. It was a grueling trip, from which she returned in great pain from a fractured tailbone, resulting in her “most onerous” cross: the “abrupt loss of mobility and independence.”

To “release the last shred of control she still possessed—her self-rule—was an extreme sacrifice,” Arroyo notes. But it was a trip the previous year—to Lourdes—that perhaps provided Mother Angelica with the spiritual strength to accept even this cross. “She traveled to the famed grotto and miraculous springs in search of healing,” Arroyo recounts. What she found instead, “in the sea of pain all around her was the spiritual strength to embrace her suffering, and to appreciate its rich value beyond the awful frustrations of the moment.” This affirmed what she had once told Arroyo: “those who continue to suffer may not be healed, because they are healers themselves.”

And so she surrendered to her own suffering, in order to heal others—physically, if that was God’s will, but more importantly, spiritually. For as Arroyo notes, while ministering throughout her life to the downtrodden, having suffered material deprivation herself, she focused her charitable work and prayers especially on the spiritually impoverished. And as this book recounts through numerous testimonies of those whose lives she touched, that special care for the spiritual health of others worked many wonders in the lives of those who, through her, found or rediscovered Jesus.

Indeed, for many readers these testimonials, carefully selected by Arroyo to give a sense of the reach and impact of Mother Angelica’s ministry—in lives touched, in healings assisted, in conversions inspired—will be the highlight of this book. Certainly many readers who also found their way through their spiritual connection to Mother Angelica will see themselves in similar stories recounted here.

Other challenges beset Mother Angelica during what Arroyo poignantly calls her “white martyrdom” of sacrificial suffering for Christ. Among those that “pained her greatly” was disharmony among the sisters, due in part to conflicts of personality, but also deeper concerns about the future direction of the community. While she struggled in her weakened state to guide the sisters away from such division—”Support! Support!” she told one nun she heard complaining about another—this strife led to her again having to surrender to God’s will, when Rome addressed the problem by appointing a new superior from outside the community.

Some of the sisters who cared for Mother Angelica are certain that they also witnessed her dealing with the most terrifying of challenges: personal confrontations with the devil. Arroyo recounts these in his chapter on her mysticism, which he traces back to a miraculous event from her childhood, when she felt herself being picked up and moved out of the path of an onrushing motor vehicle. (Witnesses marveled that they had never seen anyone “jump” so high.) The author then relates various mystical occurrences during her years of ministry—appearances to her by the Child Jesus and St. Michael the Archangel, among others, and accounts of people who insist that Mother Angelica appeared to them, in a dream or a vision, while she was still living.

Admirers of Raymond Arroyo and all he has himself done to evangelize the Gospel, at EWTN and beyond, will appreciate his willingness to share with us details of his own special relationship with Mother Angelica. That relationship, he makes clear, presented difficult challenges, particularly when Mother Angelica took it upon herself—loving him, she told him, “like a mother”—to teach him some humility. She was not above harsh words, even public humiliation, and he found himself on the receiving end of that in one particularly painful episode.

Like Mother Angelica, he responded by persevering for the greater good, and that’s exactly what was achieved. He gained a “spiritual mother” who he says taught him so much.  EWTN and its worldwide audience continued to benefit from his dedication and his many abilities—some of which, like his interviewing skills, he credits Mother Angelica with enhancing. And of course, we all received the spiritual gift of his wonderful writings on Mother Angelica, made possible by the deep and warm personal relationship that developed between them.

In 2010, one of the sisters caring for Mother asked her—”impetuously,” Arroyo writes—if she thought Jesus was going to take her soon or heal her.

“I don’t want to live,” Mother Angelica replied, but “I owe Him much.” Later, as she caressed an image of the Divine Child, she uttered the words, “For the people. For the people.”

“The sisters,” Arroyo writes, “interpreted Mother’s statements to mean that she had a personal desire to die—to be with Him—but she felt she owed the Lord a great deal and therefore would continue to suffer ‘for the people.'”

When she was 20-years-old, Rita Rizzo, the future Mother Angelica, was finally relieved of years of excruciating stomach pain after a mystic advised her to pray a novena to St. Therese of the Child Jesus.

“All I wanted to do after my healing was to give myself to Jesus,” she told Arroyo years later. Ultimately, she did so much more than that. For in giving herself totally to Him—surrendering always to His will—she brought countless others along with her to Jesus.

Arroyo’s powerful recounting of how she evangelized the Gospel through the pain and suffering of these last years will leave readers hungry for more. Which, happily, they can find in his four previous works on Mother Angelica, detailing her extraordinary life story, her lessons on life, spirituality and the Scriptures, and her prayers and personal devotions.

 “Many have written and spoken of the New Evangelization,” Arroyo observes. “Mother Angelica was the New Evangelization.”

On August 31, Bill Donohue requested the New York City branch of the New York State Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) to launch a formal investigation of Anthony Weiner for suspected child sexual abuse. The bid was quickly granted.

Weiner is a former Congressman who is married to Huma Abedin, close confidant of Hillary Clinton. In 2011, he tweeted a sexually explicit photo of himself to a female friend; it cost him his seat in Congress. In 2013, he lost any chance he had of becoming mayor of New York when he was involved in a similar offense. This time his transgression was worse—he used his son as sexual bait. Abedin and Weiner separated immediately following these revelations.

The first story on Weiner’s latest exploits appeared on the front page of the New York Post on August 29. He was shown sitting in bed in his underwear, sexually aroused, with his four-year-old son next to him. That was bad enough, but it was the front-page story on August 31 in the New York Post that drove Donohue to contact the authorities: Weiner was using his child as a “chick magnet” to lure females.

Donohue felt compelled to act because of the glowing inconsistencies that mark the subject of the sexual abuse of minors. A few years ago, charges were brought against a New Jersey priest for grabbing the behind of a teenage boy while they were wrestling; it took place in front of the boy’s mother. Yet it seemed that Weiner was going to get away with his indefensible act, just because of who he is, and who his wife is.

Donohue completed New York State form 2221A, “Report of Suspected Child Abuse or Maltreatment.” It called for an explanation of the behavior in question. Below is the text of his letter.

As president of the nation’s largest Catholic civil rights organization, I am well aware of the plague of child sexual abuse that marks virtually every sector of society, including, regrettably, the Catholic Church. I am writing to express my concerns about the emotional and physical well being of Jordan Weiner, son of Anthony Weiner and Huma Abedin.

The New York City Administration for Children’s Services defines child sexual abuse to include “incest, rape, obscene sexual performance, fondling a child’s genitals, intercourse, sodomy, and any other contact such as exposing a child to sexual activity, or commercial sexual exploitation such as prostitution of a minor or production of pornographic materials involving a minor.”

Enclosed find a front-page story in the August 31 edition of the New York Post on the sexual exploitation of four-year-old Jordan Weiner by his father, Anthony Weiner. On August 29, we learned that Mr. Weiner took crotch shots of himself sporting an erection with his son lying next to him in bed. That was disturbing enough, but now we know that he used his child as a “chick magnet” to allure sexual relationships.

It would appear that Mr. Weiner’s sexual exploitation of his child meets the definition of child sexual abuse as defined by the Administration for Children’s Services. Please investigate this matter.

The next day, September 1, the New York Post cited Donohue’s bid to have ACS investigate this matter. “Donohue’s complaint lists both Weiner and Abedin, who declined comment,” the story said.

The Daily Mail contacted ACS about this issue and was told by a spokesman that it had to follow the policy of non-disclosure; in the interest of protecting the child, it does not comment on such investigations. The British daily then said the following:

“It came after Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, urged the New York State Office of Children and Family Services to investigate Weiner for sexually exploiting his young son.” The news story then explained his reasoning.

Donohue released a statement to the press that ended with a plea to remember the boy. “This case is now in the hands of ACS. I have no reason to doubt that it will do its duty and seek justice in this matter. Please keep the four-year-old boy, Jordan Weiner, in your prayers.”

We will keep you posted.

The following article written by Bill Donohue was recently published by CNSNews.com.

On September 4, Blessed Mother Teresa will forever be known as Saint Mother Teresa. I know of no one in my lifetime, save for Saint John Paul II, who could rival her qualifications for canonization.

If ever there were an altruist, it was Mother Teresa. She selflessly gave of herself for decades, helping the sick and dying, picking them up off the street, securing medicinal care, and comforting them in their closing days. And she never asked for anything in return.

Those she ministered to were the most destitute of the destitute: children who survived abortions, the malnourished, lepers, AIDS patients, the physically and mentally handicapped, elderly cripples—she never turned anyone away. Indeed, she implored those who would abandon the dispossessed—this included hospitals—to “give them to me.”

Given all of this, she still had her detractors. That is why I wrote, Unmasking Mother Teresa’s Critics (Sophia Institute Press).

There are two principal characteristics that mark every one of Mother Teresa’s biggest critics: their militant atheism and their support for socialism, or left-wing politics.

It is entirely possible to be an atheist and be a fan of Mother Teresa, and I name them. It is also possible to be a socialist and admire her work; I name them, too. But when these two attributes are combined, those who harbor them are more likely to be her enemy. This is certainly true of the most extremist in their ranks.

Militant atheists, by definition, are predisposed not to embrace religious figures, especially Catholic titans. What is perhaps not as self-evident is why radical socialists might find Mother Teresa distasteful.

Radical socialists believe that it is the job of the state, and the state alone, to tend to the poor. As such, any private, voluntary effort to help the needy is viewed as a deterrent to the role of the state. When the source of assistance is faith-based, that is even more alarming.

Militant atheists and radical socialists, beginning with Christopher Hitchens, have always hated Mother Teresa because she is an altruist. In their minds, there is no such thing as altruism. Why? Because historically altruists have been religiously inspired champions of the poor and the neglected. Think of it: Who is the secular analogue to Mother Teresa?

Samuel and Pearl Oliner are non-observant Jewish sociologists who wrote The Altruistic Personality. They wanted to know who were the most likely to risk their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust, and what they found were characteristics more closely aligned with people of faith than atheists. These altruists were not the kinds of people that would endear themselves to the likes of Hitchens.

In other words, Mother Teresa represented a threat. She was a threat to the worldview that holds that religion is inimical to freedom, and faith-based programs for the poor are an obstacle to statist prescriptions. Indeed, she represented a target that was so rich, so big, it was irresistible.

In my book, I take on every major criticism made against her. And unlike Hitchens, who wrote a book that had not one citation—no footnotes, no endnotes—my volume has more footnotes than pages. I am not a fan of unsupported opinions, especially when the subject is the debunking of someone the stature of Mother Teresa. Put up or shut up.

The critics of Mother Teresa, and there are many more than Hitchens, have an agenda: to take her down. They failed. I, too, have an agenda: to defend her. After writing my book, I can honestly say that I love her now more than ever. She made my job easy—there is so much to love.

Following her canonization, the United Nations honored Mother Teresa with a weeklong celebration. There was an exhibition that featured her contributions, as well as statements she made on various issues.

 An international array of speakers, some of whom knew her well, were also included. They spoke about her service to the “poorest of the poor” and her commitment to peace. This was not the first time the United Nations paid tribute to her.

In 1985, the United Nations Secretary General said, “Mother Teresa is the United Nations.” She certainly was a role model for all and hero to mankind.

It will come as no surprise to our members that we are relentless in our efforts to render justice. Macy’s executives, we guarantee, are fast learning who we are.

We made Macy’s the lead story in the September Catalyst. Below see the note that Bill Donohue sent to Macy’s officials about it. It is followed by a summary of our news releases documenting previous instances of intolerance shown by Macy’s against others.

Dear Macy’s Executive:

As you can see, Macy’s intolerance merited the lead story in our monthly journal, Catalyst. Firing a man for his thoughts—not his deeds—is un-American and cannot be tolerated. Obviously, this matter is of particular interest to us because of the man’s professed Catholic beliefs.

Over the summer, I took advantage of many media interviews to discuss this issue (they were occasioned by our non-stop news releases on this subject). Indeed, just yesterday I addressed this issue with New York Archbishop Timothy Cardinal Dolan on his weekly TV and radio show.

There is more to come. Much more. The ball is in your court.

Sincerely,

William A. Donohue, Ph.D.
President

We are delighted that so many of our members have contacted Macy’s, expressing their disgust with its anti-Catholic actions. We are not happy, however, with the way the mega-department store is responding when challenged. The form response is simply dishonest.

Carrie Anderson of the executive office is replying to those who have written to Terry Lundgren, chairman and CEO of Macy’s. “We do not condone or tolerate discrimination of any kind,” she says. Tell that to Javier Chavez: He was shown the door because he disagreed with Macy’s policy of allowing cross-dressing men to use the ladies bathroom.

“Although our bathrooms may be located in an area of the store primarily trafficked by either men or women, our bathrooms are gender neutral.” This is deceitful. No one objects to unisex bathrooms that accommodate both men and women—as long as each bathroom can be used only by one person at a time. That is not the issue. What many find objectionable, and this is especially true of women, is a policy that allows men dressed as a woman to use the women’s restroom (the obverse is rarely an issue).

Anderson goes on to say that “if a customer does not feel comfortable, an associate can be located to remedy the situation.” What does this mean? It was a woman customer, accompanied by her daughter, that complained to Javier Chavez about a man using the ladies room, and look what happened to him when he tried to “remedy the situation.”

Should he have instead left his post to contact some Human Resources manager to see if he could make the two ladies feel comfortable without doing anything about the source of the problem? Perhaps talk therapy works for Macy’s, but mature adults simply want to be able to go to the bathroom without finding someone of the opposite sex in it. They are not looking for a massage or for someone to explain to them why they are wrong. That’s not a remedy—it’s a dodge.

Look for us to take this issue to another level. In fact, by the time you are reading this, we will be doing just that.

When we learned that Macy’s had fired Javier Chavez for his Catholic beliefs—he expressed disagreement with allowing cross-dressing men to use the women’s bathroom, but agreed to abide by the policy—we spoke out. We also researched other instances of intolerance by Macy’s. What we found is a sordid history:

• Natalie Johnson, an African American employee at Macy’s San Antonio Rivercenter store, was fired after she told a cross-dressing man he could not use the women’s changing rooms.
• Army Specialist Kayla Reyes had returned home after a year-long deployment in Afghanistan when she applied for a job at Macy’s Fresno, Calif. store. But Macy’s treated Reyes’ military service as a disqualifier! Having been “over there (Afghanistan),” Reyes says she was told, “you wouldn’t really know how to approach people.” Only after this became public did Macy’s offer her a job. She turned it down.
• When elderly widows Karen Padgett and Dr. Sonia Saceda, both of Florida, found charges on their Macy’s credit cards for purchases they did not make, they contacted Macy’s and were assured the charges would be removed. Instead, Macy’s harassed Saceda, 79 and a 20 year army veteran, with constant phone calls and threats of legal action; while Padgett, 75, kept receiving monthly statements with not only the bogus charge, but interest and late payment penalties added! Then Macy’s threatened to send a collection agency after her.
• Anabelle Mayi had been working at Macy’s flagship store in Manhattan for two-and-a-half years when she was diagnosed with a high-risk pregnancy. Macy’s denied her request for reasonable accommodations, like a chair or stool so she could sit periodically while working at the counter. When Mayi took several sick days for pregnancy-related illness, her employee access was blocked. Then she was terminated.
• In June of 2013, Macy’s paid a civil penalty of $175,000 after the U.S. Justice Department determined that the company had engaged in unfair practices against work-authorized immigrants. The government found that although these workers were already legally permitted to work in the United States, Macy’s demanded documentation that they don’t require of other employees. This added burden caused economic harm to some employees, in lost wages or seniority.
• In 1998, Macy’s West was facing three separate class action lawsuits for violating both the Americans with Disabilities Act and the California civil code, in its failure to take steps to make merchandise accessible to disabled customers. The lead attorney for Oakland-based Disability Rights Advocates, which brought all three suits, said they received more complaints about Macy’s than any other retailer.
• Back in 2005, Macy’s paid New York State $600,000 to settle a complaint that its New York stores engaged in racial profiling—detaining disproportionate numbers of black and Latino shoppers on suspicion of shoplifting. Then in 2014, Macy’s was nailed again, on complaints from 18 customers—all from African-American, Latino or other minority communities— detained on suspicion of shoplifting at its Herald Square store in Manhattan. Macy’s agreed to yet another payout, this one for $650,000.
• Jenny Mendez was an NYPD officer for less than a year when she found herself wrongfully arrested for shoplifting at Macy’s—and out of a job, because she was still in her probationary period with the NYPD. She was later acquitted—and a Macy’s store detective testified that her boss had told her to lie in claiming that Mendez had admitted the theft.
• Samya Moftah was accused of shoplifting at Macy’s flagship store in Manhattan. Taken down to the basement to what she said “looked like jail cells,” she was threatened with handcuffs and taunted for stealing during Ramadan and being a Muslim. A Macy’s manager told her to sign some documents and pay $500, and she could go home. When she refused to pay, her credit card was removed from her wallet and charged for the $500. The charges against Moftah were later dismissed, and a judge subsequently ruled that Macy’s had violated her due process rights.
• Kevin Schiller had worked for Macy’s in Texas for 21 years when he was injured on the job. Suffering persistent headaches, memory loss, disorientation and extreme sensitivity to bright light and loud sound, he was unable to work regularly. Macy’s, however, claimed the accident never happened, and implied that it was staged. They cut off all benefits for medical care and lost pay. Schiller lost his house and pick-up truck as a result. Doctors Macy’s sent him to concluded that he was either psychosomatic or faking. However, specialists Schiller went to at his own expense—about $90,000— diagnosed a traumatic brain injury. And a Social Security judge declared Schiller disabled.
• Even in its use of store mannequins, Macy’s managed to offend. After many people protested displays of a black mannequin with an unflattering look, they were forced to stop using it.

This is just a sampling of the intolerance and abuse displayed by Macy’s toward customers and employees alike, at stores all across the country.