Anti-Catholic bigotry on college campuses is nothing new, but what happened at a Wayne, New Jersey state college this past summer suggests that matters are getting much worse.

On July 5, 1994, Professor Vernon McClean, an instructor in the African-American and Caribbean studies department at William Paterson College, opened the first session of his summer class, “Racism and Sexism in a Changing America,” by having each student identify his religion in writing. He then began his lecture by saying that Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam had once called the Pope a “racist c _ – s_ _ .” Professor McClean then said Farrakhan was right.

One student, a Catholic, discussed the class with his mother that night, prompting her to write a letter to college president, Arnold Speert. Soon after, copies of this private correspondence were distributed to the entire class. The gravity of this action was compounded by the fact that the family’s address and phone number were unlisted. The only response by the college to the mother’s complaint was to arrange a meeting between the student and the Dean of Students.

It became readily apparent that the college intended to quickly dismiss the matter. Generally, a student meets with the Dean of Students only when there is cause for disciplinary action against a student. This case involved faculty misbehavior and thus belonged under the purview of the Academic Dean.

In the meantime, the student’s mother contacted the League for assistance. After gathering all the facts from the mother and the student, we contacted the college. No one in any office would speak with us. They took great umbrage at our inquiry and were totally uncooperative. We received the same treatment from three different offices – we were either dismissed or treated as though we had no right to be questioning the incident.

Following this lack of cooperation and response from the college, we issued a press release demanding an apology from the college and disciplinary action against Professor McClean.

The New Jersey papers gave the issue thorough coverage and the New York radio and television media also took note. But the outcry was tame compared to that which greeted Nation of Islam spokesman Khalid Muhammad last fall. Muhammad, a minion of Farrakhan’s, had uttered bigoted remarks against Jews and Catholics at Kean College last November.

In an official statement, the League declared that “If the same characterization had been made about Martin Luther King, or some other widely revered person, college officials would have been quick to respond. But their silence in the wake of this anti-Catholic statement suggests that Catholic bashing is tolerated at William Paterson College. That this comment was made in a required multicultural course is all the more telling: respect for diversity and tolerance for all religions apparently do not extend to Catholics.”

After the college’s “investigation” was completed, it made a public statement saymg that the student misconstrued the remarks and that, in any event, Professor McClean now “disassociates” himself from the comments he attributed to Farrakhan. President Speert said that the investigation was “confidential” and that “the College is satisfied that the matter has been resolved fully and completely.”

The League, however, was not satisfied. It quickly labeled President Speert’s attempt to resolve the issue as “a monumental failure.” There was no apology, no statement addressing the issue of requiring students at a state college to identify their religion, no comment on distributing private correspondence to the public and no action taken against Professor McClean.

Perhaps most damaging to the college, however, was the information that the League uncovered after the story broke. Several faculty, alumni and students called to report other instances of rank bigotry. It seems that William Paterson has a history of intolerance for certain segments of society, namely for Catholics and Jews. We received word that a female professor had lost her job because she was “an observant Jew,” and that many other professors on the campus were even more bigoted than Vernon McClean.

Accordingly, the Catholic League called upon state officials to conduct a formal hearing on the campus of William Paterson College; Governor Christie Whitman, senior higher education officials and area legislators were contacted. Given Governor Whitman’s quick and sharp response to a New Jersey beach vendor who was hawking anti-gay T-shirts (this happened at the same time as the college incident), the Catholic League expected the Governor to be even tougher in the William Paterson case. But thus far she has been mute. And this is the second incident in nine months at a New Jersey state college where bigotry occurred and nothing was done about it.

The Catholic League will not be satisfied until justice has been done. Our goal is not to simply chastise one college professor, but to root out the bigotry that is systematically lodged in college curricula and administrative behavior. We’re taking the long view on this one and it would behoove people like President Speert to do likewise.

Paul and Ronald Desilets, Catholic landlords who were sued by the state of Massachusetts in 1990 when they refused to rent an apartment to an unmarried couple, are faced with continuing court proceedings.

A lower court had ruled in the Desilets’ favor against a claim by the state attorney general’s office that their action in refusing to rent to an unmarried couple violated a state anti-discrimination law. But on July 14, a closely divided Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court vacated the lower court’s grant of summary judgment for the Desilets and sent the case back to the lower court for trial.

In December 1992, Superior Court Judge George C. Keady Jr. dismissed the case against the Desilets on constitutional grounds, finding that the Desilets’ right to act on their religious beliefs outweighed the state’s interest in ending discrimination. The state Supreme Court, however, while agreeing that the anti-discrimination law “substantially burdens the free exercise of religion by a landlord who does not believe in leasing premises to unmarried couples,” ruled that the Desilets must stand trial. At trial the state will have the burden of proving it has a compelling interest in “eliminating housing discrimination against cohabiting couples that is strong enough to justify the burden placed on the defendants’ exercise of their religion,” the Court said.

This issue, which pits the constitutional rights of property owners against the power of the state to mandate compliance with state law at the expense of individual conscience, is one which has divided courts across the country. In California, there has been a second decision at the appellate level allowing landlords to refuse to rent to unmarried couples on religious grounds. In Smith v. FEHC, the 3rd District Court of Appeal cited the constitutional guarantee of free exercise of religion in upholding the right of a landlord to refuse to rent an apartment to an unmarried couple. In 1992 the California high court said it would review a similar decision, Donahue v. Fair Employment and Housing Commission, after an appellate court upheld landlords’ refusal to rent to an unmarried couple because of the landlords’ religious conviction that cohabitation is sinful. The state Supreme Court eventually reversed itself and declined to review the Donahue decision, so attention now has turned to Smith which is likely to be appealed.

Two other state supreme courts have reached opposite results when they addressed this question. The Minnesota Supreme Court ruled in favor of a landlord who refused to rent to an unmarried couple while the Alaska Supreme Court ruled for the prospective tenants in a similar case. The Catholic League joined a coalition of religious organizations in filing a friend of the court brief in support of the Desilets, urging the Massachusetts Supreme Court to uphold the decision of the lower court dismissing the case.

When the decision overturning the lower court ruling was announced, the Catholic League issued a press release denouncing the Court’s opinion as “a groundless action by an unabashedly liberal court…that places long-standing constitutional rights at the mercy of aggressive special interests, arbitrary bureaucracies and an activist judiciary.”

The response to the June appeal was so good that the Catholic League will now post two new public service ads. Our first anti-condom ad appeared last June in the New York City subways and generated a great deal of publicity. The “Condoms Don’t Save Lives” ad effectively ended the silence that had been imposed on the sex education debate. Once our ad hit, the entire conversation changed, bringing forth discussion on both the medical and moral dimensions of condom distribution. Our new ads will go beyond even this.

Thanks to the generosity of our members, we will place a new anti-condom ad in the New York City subways this September; it will be followed by another new ad that will appear alongside buses in Washington, D.C. this November. Both ads have already been approved by the appropriate officials in New York and Washington.

The ad that will appear in September reads as follows:

By the time you read this ad, it will already have been posted in the subways, provoking no doubt, great public clamor. As the ad makes clear, the Catholic League regards classroom distribution of condoms to be a foolish ‘ and hypocritical exercise. Only when it comes to sex are educators willing to just give up altogether and assume that young people cannot resist temptation. Educators keep telling youth not to smoke, drink or take drugs, but find it difficult to say that they are too young to engage in sex.

The reigning idea seems to be that adolescents are so sexually programmed that abstinence is all but impossible. This view is dehumanizing: it views young men and women in a mechanistic fashion, casting them as passive agents that merely react to their uncontrollable passions. The Catholic League rejects that position. It believes that young men and women should be treated with dignity, holding them responsible for their behavior.

It might legitimately be asked why any of this is a Catholic League issue. It is true that fighting defamation and discrimination is the heart and soul of what we do, but it is also true that the Catholic League is a rights-driven organization. The way we see it, the free and easy distribution of condoms undercuts the right of Calholic parents to socialize their children according to the precepts of their religion. And no discussion about condoms can proceed very far without addressing this issue.

It is sad to note that the sexperts in the education industry have decided that our kids should be sexually engineered to fit their dream of a liberated society. We disagree. Liberty means the free exercise of religion, speech and other properties associated with the quest for ordered liberty: it does not mean the free exercise of the id. Until that lesson is learned, there will always be some role for the Catholic League. As the name of our journal signifies, our job is not simply to react to events, it is to be a catalyst as well.

By Rabbi Daniel Lapin

I believe that there is only one fundamental set of principles on which to base a functioning society, that the forces which accept these principles will often be tragically divided with regard to methods, priorities, etc., and that the forces which reject the fundamental principles will be united by their rejection. In practical terms, we might say that there are two types of faith: a constructive or positive faith, which accepts universal truths, and what we might call an anti-faith, whose defining characteristic is the rejection of those truths. The positive faith often produces conflict among its adherents, who disagree with one another for the very best of reasons. The anti-faith produces the unanimity of the lowest common denominator.

I now hypothesize that the Left does in fact represent such an anti-faith and that the ultimate principle being rejected is none other than God Himself. Of course, the scientific standard for the acceptance of any hypothesis is: how well does it explain certain phenomena? I believe my hypothesis does this very well, and in a particularly difficult case. The congruence of opinion on the Left is so remarkable, it resembles the rising of the sun: that is to say, were it not so regular and so common, it would cause men to prostrate themselves at the sight. Consider: why on earth should those people who support radical environmentalism, in all its bizarre manifestations, be exactly the same people who endorse the agenda of radical homosexuality? But they are! Why should the same group who enthusiastically advocate widespread abortion also embrace gun control? But they do! And so on, down the line of leftist causes.

This is too remarkable to be a mere set of coincidences; we must strip away the black magic and find the cause and effect. My hypothesis does just that. Restated simply, there are many, many ways to worship God, but only one way to reject Him. This, I think, best accounts both for the divisiveness of the conservative movement and for the congruence of the Left.

Some of you would readily agree with me that the Left is rejectionist but might hesitate over my assertion that it is God they oppose. Let me, then, further test my hypothesis in a more scientific way: I’ll ask how the basic doctrines of the Left compare with their Scriptural counterparts. Scientifically, you would agree that if this were a random matter, if there were no anti-God theme to liberalism, then we ought to find that liberals sometimes agree with Biblical social policy and sometimes do not – perhaps we should see a fifty/fifty distribution. Let us examine a few of them with this purpose in mind.

Now the Bible has some interesting prohibitions; one of them you will notice on me right away. Strangely enough, I possess on my body no tattooing at all, in spite of the artistic themes that from time to time have occurred to me to place across my chest. It happens to be one of the Biblical injunctions that I find easier to obey than others – right up there with not sleeping with one’s grandmother.

Nonetheless, the objection to tattooing is very significant. It ties in to a prohibition in the Bible against any self-mutilation of body. Let us see what drives this prohibition.

The fundamental idea here is stewardship and tenancy. The Bible tells me that my body doesn’t belong to me. I have the use of it, and I must look after it. The tenant has much less freedom to paint the walls or change the plumbing than the landlord. Biblical law, therefore, severely restricts not just tattooing, but also such practices as abortion and euthanasia. The message is consistent: control over the body, including life and death, must be left with God. Man should not interfere.

Of course, the position of the Left on these issues helps confirm our hypothesis. Liberals reject the notion that God gives life, yet God still seems to retain some control over death. So they would seize that power and make matters of life and death into questions of human choice. We now understand why abortion and euthanasia have to be such major themes in the Left’s political landscape.

We also find that the exception proves the rule. The Bible does give society one measure of control over life: it authorizes capital punishment for certain crimes. If human control over life and death, generically understood, were the underlying principle in the Left’s position on abortion and euthanasia, then wouldn’t liberals fight for capital punishment as a logical extension of their principle? But instead they oppose it at every turn. And this moral repugnance for imposing capital punishment is best explained by our hypothesis. This resembles the peculiar ferocity that devotees of the Left reserve for the cigarette smoker in the face of their placid acceptance of the AIDS carrier. They fuel a national movement to prohibit smoking in any public building but resist the suggestion that known AIDS carriers should be excluded from food preparation occupations.

The only possible explanation I can find is that cigarette smoking is not Biblically proscribed. Since homosexuality is Biblically forbidden, any sanctions applied in that direction might look suspiciously like an endorsement of God so must be scrupulously avoided. Likewise, since capital punishment is Biblically mandated, the modernist must oppose it.

Let’s look at another example. The Bible gives us a limited number of commandments, and Deuteronomy specifically prohibits adding to or modifying this relatively short list. Likewise, Aristotle said that laws should be few in number and seldom changed. Compare that with the Niagara-like cascade of legislation that pours out incessantly from a governing bureaucracy that has become dominated by an anti-Godly vision.

Yet another example illustrates the Left’s war on fundamental Biblical themes. Notice that the beginning of all beginnings, the opening chapters of Genesis, shows us a hierarchical universe. God puts Mineral at the bottom of the pyramid and proceeds, day by day, to add Vegetable. When Vegetable is created, we move one level up, to Animal. And when Animal is created, we go to one level above that, to Man. And when Man has been created, we go one level above that to – Woman.

Our tradition tells us that it is right for a man to dedicate himself to providing for a woman, just as there is nothing at all wrong with an animal, as it were, seeking it’s ultimate fulfillment by being of service to the human race. For a man to see his fulfillment as an escape from selfishness, and the ability to start providing for a woman, is only recognizing a fundamental concept of hierarchy that God has imparted to the world.

Well, naturally, if God said “Yes” to hierarchy, then modern liberalism has to say “No” to hierarchy. And one of the very first victims of the war on hierarchy is education. Because what education used to mean was that someone who knew more than I would tell me what he knew. He would teach me how to relate to the world, and he would initiate me into my culture, into my people, into civilization. He could do this only because he occupied a niche above mine. What did the war on hierarchy accomplish? That, for the first time in the American experience, students grade teachers! What’s more, students tell teachers what to teach! What on earth can account for this? It makes sense only in one context: the over-throwing of hierarchy.

Of course, hatred of hierarchy also explains, better than any other notion, the unarguable enmity that the Left has for the military. Because if there is one thing upon which military success rests, it is the concept of hierarchy. Just in case we didn’t understand that, the Book of Exodus explicitly calls God a Man of War. War is admissible, the Bible tells us; there are certain things which can only be resolved by war. When war does come, you’d better have a hierarchy in place, because nothing else will work.

There is still more evidence for our hypothesis. Whether one considers the Bible as light bedtime reading or regards it as the Word of God, nobody, but nobody, can miss this fundamental rule: every single human being has been granted the power of moral choice. Abel’s murderer, Cain, is not gently excused on account of traumatic potty training. The population of Sodom is not the victim of its environment. Everyone is accountable for his actions. Not, perhaps for his thoughts and motivations – only God can know these – but certainly for his behavior.

Well, what is the position of the opposition? Absolutely predictable! They give us an unbelievable proliferation of mental and social disorders, because they want reasons other than free moral choice to account for why people behave the way they do. If God said “personal accountability” the Left has to say “No personal accountability.” Look at the social disorder that inevitably results from such a seemingly small decision.

Let’s look at a final, and most significant, conflict between the Bible and the Left. The Mishna, a part of the Jewish Oral Tradition, which was put in writing just before the time Augustus ruled Rome, says that there are only two answers to a grouping of three fundamental questions of life. The questions are: Where did we come from, where are we going, and what are we supposed to be doing in between?

Have you noticed that any innocent little child always asks you these questions if you have the good fortune to be seated next to one on an airplane? “Where did you come from? Where are you going?” And, “What’s your name, and how old are you?” In other words, tell me about what you are; what are you doing?

Adults say, “What do you do?” It doesn’t just mean, “How do you put bread on your table?” They are trying to relate to the spiritual reality of you.

And as to where we came from, again, there are only two possibilities. I characterize them as: we came from the apes or we came from the angels. That’s it. Pay your money and take your choice. You want to wait for proof? I’m afraid that life calls upon you to make a commitment before the proof is in. Just as it always does. We marry before we know every last knowable detail of the intended. We invest often before knowing every possible knowable fact about the fiscal outcome of our decision. In exactly the same way, we must decide, where are we going? The choices, again, only two: the Godly choice and the anti-Godly choice. Either there is something after death or not.

To clarify the practical implications of this dilemma, let me tell you what happened to one of my teachers, a great rabbi. On a trip to Israel, he found himself seated next to the head of the Israeli socialist movement. As the plane took off, my teacher’s son, sitting several rows behind, came forward and said, “Father, let me take your shoes; I have your slippers here. You know how your feet swell on the airplane.” A few minutes later, he came and said, “Here are the sandwiches Mother sent; I know you don’t like the airline food.”

This went on in similar fashion for some time, and finally, the head of lsrael’s socialist movement turned to my teacher and said, “I don’t get this. I have four sons. They’re grown now. But in all my life I don’t recall them ever offering to do anything at all for me. Why is your son doing all of this?”

And the rabbi said, “You have to understand. You mustn’t blame yourself. Your sons are faithful to your teachings, and my sons are faithful to my teachings. It’s simple, you see. You made the decision to teach your sons that they are descended from apes. That means that you are one generation closer to the ape than they. And that means that it is only proper and appropriate that you acknowledge their status and that you serve them. But, you see, I chose to teach my sons that we came from God Himself. And that puts me one generation closer to the ultimate truth, and that means it’s only appropriate that they treat me accordingly.”

On the other hand, with respect to the question of where we are going, we shouldn’t be surprised that the Left tells us that we are hopelessly doomed, whether because of environmental catastrophe, nuclear war, overpopulation, or what-have-you. Tell the Left that man’s God-given ingenuity creates solutions, and what is the answer? Only apocalyptic measures will save us: from elimination of aerosols to banning human beings entirely from the open wastes – we’ve got to save the planet, which is in imminent peril of destruction.

Well, I think we’ve amassed more than enough evidence to prove our hypothesis. To summarize: it’s quite clear that the power and unity of the Left come not from any intrinsic merit of their policy ideas or from any well-considered public philosophy. That power and unity could only come from a religious faith: what I call Anti-Godism. And this truth brings us face to face with an even more terrifying fact: that the Left’s goal in the current culture war is not a negotiated peace, but unconditional surrender. The enemy is intent on capturing our capital city, nothing less.

It follows that only a similar effort on our side can possibly succeed. Conservatives cannot fight this powerful and all-encompassing religious faith with a few good policy ideas; we must reach back to God’s word, the ultimate source of our convictions, if we are to prevail. I do not believe that a superior system can be developed than that which we have inherited, and to which our founding fathers so faithfully subscribed. I refer to the Judea-Christian value system, and I believe that we have no choice but to adopt it as the unifying theory of existence for our side of the great American culture war. To some extent, we have little choice, because the other side has already chosen Scripture as the battlefield.

They have made the abolition of transcendent value the centerpiece of their struggle. For us to ignore Judea-Christian thought is to abandon the main battleground of this war to the political enemy.

This article is excerpted, with permission, from an address that Rabbi Daniel Lapin gave at The Heritage Foundation last Winter. Rabbi Lapin is President of “Toward Tradition” a Seattle-based organization uniting Jews and Christians in an eff0rt to restore a more traditional vision of culture, economy, and politics.

September marks the month of the International Conference on Population and Development, otherwise known as the Cairo Conference. Regrettably, events leading up to the Conference have already exposed a virulent strain of anti-Catholicism (see the June Catalyst), and it is therefore unlikely that the Cairo proceedings will close without additional incidents of Catholic-bashing. This is particularly unfortunate given that the trigger issue – the Vatican’s opposition to abortion as a means of curbing population growth – would not be an issue at all were it not for a misguided approach to the problem of world population growth.

Although the Conference’s title indicates that population concerns cannot be separated from the subject of economic development, in reality most of the attention will focus on the former issue. That’s too bad because it is highly unlikely that population growth can be effectively curtailed without addressing economic development.

In general, there is an inverse relationship between eco- nomic development and population growth, meaning that the wealthier the nation, the lower is its expected rate of population growth. It doesn’t always happen that way (per capita income declined recently in Latin America and so did the birth rate), but overall it is clear that the underdeveloped nations have fertility rates that are approximately five times larger than the developed nations. It is also true that within nations the birth rate among the poor far exceeds the birth rate among the rich. In short, throughout the world the pattern is the same: those who can least afford to have children have the most while those who can best afford to have children have the least.

The reasons for this anomaly are largely psycho-cultural. The poor tend to have short horizons, that is they tend to be present-oriented. This live-for-today attitude reflects the sense of resignation that many of the poor have. For those who live in abject poverty, today was a mirror image of yesterday and, more important, tomorrow will be no different than today. On the other hand, the wealthy (and that certainly includes the middle class in the developed nations) tend not to live for today but for tomorrow, that is, they are future oriented. Family planning comes as naturally to them as financial planning.

To the extent that population growth is considered a problem, solutions to the problem that do not address economic development are bound to fail. Unfortunately, many of those in the developed nations who are pushing the hardest for population control have little or no interest in tackling the problem from anything other than a “stop the birth rate” type of approach.

It is simply fascinating to observe the overlay between those who favor contraception and abortion as a means of curtailing population growth and those who favor economic policies that make for poverty and increasing rates of population growth. There is by now conclusive evidence that market economies engender economic growth while state socialist models deliver nothing but poverty. It is bizarre beyond reason, then, that those who worry the most about increasing rates of population growth should also sponsor the very economic programs that create the problem they hope to alleviate. What is even more perverse, however, is that the same people want to solve the problem by killing innocent unborn children.

Logic would argue that the underdeveloped nations, almost all of which practice some variant of socialism, should be encouraged to adopt a market economy. Where markets flourish so does economic development, and it, in turn, abets a decrease in fertility rates. Therefore, the way to stem population growth in places like China, India and Africa is not via contraception and abortion, but through the free market place.

But ideology often triumphs over the truth. Those who are most exercised about population growth are pro-abortion for the same reason they favor pro-socialist prescriptions for the economy: what drives them is control, the ability to engineer the outcomes of private individuals for collectivist ends, ends which are, of course, determined by them. They not only want to put a cap on the population, they would like to determine what the mosaic should look like. Furthermore, it is their insatiable appetite for power that explains their fondness for socialism and distrust for capitalism.

China is a splendid example. From 1949 to 1976, Mao Zedong ruled China with a fierce totalitarian grip. With socialism came unprecedented poverty and a sharp increase in population growth. Only now, long after Mao’s death, is the economy rebounding, and this is due entirely to the development of a quasi-market model. Population control enthusiasts, however, dislike this development and prefer a socialist model.

What meets their approval, however, is the common practice of having government agents track the menstrual cycles of women. This tracking is done so that if a woman who is not authorized to have a baby misses her period, government agents can order her – and physically coerce her if necessary – to have an abortion. Control is what matters, and nothing else. All this from those who fancy themselves as “pro-choice.”

Population control fetishists not only promote abortion and socialism, they vigorously condemn anyone who obstructs their quest for power. And that explains why anti-Catholicism is so prevalent among their ranks.

According to Duquesne University professor Charles Rubin, author of the brilliant new book, The Green Crusade, “anti-Catholic sentiment has played a role among influential thinkers in the population debate.” Rubin knows of what he speaks: The Green Crusade is the most informed account of the ideological roots of the environmental movement.

If there is one person that the population control crowd can’t stomach, it is Pope John Paul II. The Pope is not only unalterably opposed to abortion, he is unalterably opposed to the socialist model. Indeed, the Pontiff was a major player in the war against the evil empires that were built on socialist blocks. It is not surprising, then, that anti-Catholic statements tend to appear whenever the elites tackle the issue of population control. With Pope John Paul II at the helm, the Catholic Church provides a formidable adversary to those who want to make the world safe for abortionists and socialists.

There are many people, of course, who are genuinely concerned about the population issue and aren’t the slightest bit anti-Catholic. But when the focus turns to the elites, namely to those organizers who proudly carry the pro-abortion and pro-statist banners, something less innocent appears. It is not an exaggeration to say that abortion is, for some elites, the single most important right a woman can have. Indeed, they’d rather yield the franchise before ever giving up the right to legally summon an abortionist. Given their fixation, they cannot resist taking aim at the Catholic Church.

In recent years, every attempt has been made by the save-the-planet gang to discredit not only the teachings of the Catholic Church on population matters, but to question its right to even address such issues. What is demanded from this crew is ideological purity, and that is why they loathe the Catholic Church: it is refreshingly obstinate in its convictions. Ironically, accusations of dogmatism are hurled against the Catholic Church by the very people who specialize in smear attacks against those who quarrel with their secular theology.

The Vatican is right to charge its critics with cultural imperialism. It is amazing to listen to Western male and female Caucasians – all of whom swear allegiance to the god of multiculturalism – lecture their non-white brothers and sisters from around the world about the benefits of saline injections. The same people who profess to hate the imposition of Western values on the Third World have no qualms about indoctrinating women of color with their Planned Parenthood ideas. If the elites valued the rights of unborn African children the way they value the fate of the African elephant, much of the real problem would be resolved.

Catholics can be proud of the Vatican’s position on population control. Nowhere in its documents is there any language which sacrifices innocent human life for utilitarian ends. In an age when relativism is rampant, the Catholic Church is still prepared to say that some things are intrinsically evil. That may not be fashionable, but it remains as true today as it was when it was proclaimed in Scripture.

On July 15, Dr. Donohue met with Newsday editor Anthony Marro to discuss the paper’s coverage of Catholics. The exchange was frank, serious and cordial. At the meeting, Dr. Donohue presented 76 petitions signed by Long Island pastors expressing their concern for the way Catholics have been portrayed by the newspaper. Expectations are that more equitable treatment will be forthcoming.

On July 26, Dr. Donohue met with Fran Reiter, Deputy Mayor of the City of New York. He conveyed his outrage at Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s silence in the wake of the incredibly anti-Catholic exhibition that took place in front of St. Patrick’s Cathedral during an illegal gay parade on June 26th. After listening to the Deputy Mayor Reiter’s response, Dr. Donohue labeled her account unsatisfactory. She pledged to convey his sentiments to the Mayor.

The Catholic League has become the first organization in the United States to call for a prosecution of church disrupters under the new federal Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (F.A.C.E.) Act of 1994. The League’s action stems from the June 10 robbery of St. Mary’s Church in Lawrence, Massachusetts, where two men desecrated the Blessed Sacrament while stealing two chalices and a communion paten off the altar during Mass. In a letter to U.S. Attorney Donald Stern, Daniel T. Flatley, President of the Massachusetts Chapter of the Catholic League, called the attack “an outrageous and unprecedented crime” and called upon Stern to invoke the FACE law against the perpetrators.

The FACE Act was crafted to drastically restrict pro-life activities outside of abortuaries by imposing draconian punishments for non-violent civil disobedience. Under FACE, obstructing an abortion facility could result in a six month prison sentence and a $ 10,000 fine for the first offense and an 18 month sentence and a $525,000 fine for the second offense. If the “threat of violence” can be demonstrated, penalties escalate to one year in prison for the first offense and three years in prison for the second offense.

Compounding the severity of the Act are the harsh civil remedies available to abortionists. Abortion clinic owners and personnel can obtain injunctive relief from federal courts, be awarded punitive and compensatory damages from pro-life protesters, and have pro-lifers assessed court costs and attorneys’ fees.

In an unparalleled innovation, state attorneys general, will, along with the U.S. Attorney General, be allowed to sue pro-life protesters and rescuers in federal courts, which will now be authorized to levy civil penalties against individual pro-lifers.

Congressman Henry Hyde (R-Illinois) has described the penalties prescribed by FACE as “not proportionate to the crime and grossly out of proportion to the penalties for most other acts of peaceful civil disobedience.” Neither anti-war protesters, nor civil rights marchers, nor anti-nuclear environmentalists were ever confronted with comparable punishments.

FACE was sponsored by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Rep. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) reportedly at the behest of the National Abortion Federation, the trade association of the abortion industry. Endorsed by the National Organization for Women (N.O.W.), the measure had 31 co-sponsors in the Senate and 128 co-sponsors in the House, the vast majority liberal Democrats.

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) amended FACE to include a provision prohibiting the disruption of church services, with punishments tracking those provided for blocking abortion mills.

Under FACE, the criminal sanctions directed at pro-lifers will also apply to those who “by force or threat of force or by physical obstruction intentionally injures, intimidates, or interferes with or attempts to injure, intimidate or interfere with any person lawfully exercising or seeking to exercise the First Amendment right of religious freedom at a place of religious worship,” and who “intentionally damages or destroys the property of a place of religious worship.”

The civil remedies authorized by FACE are obtainable by “a person lawfully exercising or seeking to exercise the First Amendment right of religious freedom at a place of religious worship or by the entity that owns or operates such place of religious worship.”

Radical, Catholic-hating homosexual groups which have a history of violence towards Catholics, may now be targeted for prosecution and civil litigation under FACE. Given the reluctance of state and local prosecutors to bring civil rights charges against homosexual hate groups, and with police departments unwilling to even charge them with disturbing the peace, FACE, despite its punitive origins and oppressive character, presents Catholics with an opportunity to counteract the violent homosexual aggression which has victimized Catholic worshippers over the past five years.

Therefore, the Catholic League will not hesitate to use FACE whenever Catholics are denied their First Amendment right to worship.

C. Joseph Doyle

On July 21, 1994, a pro-life sign on the property of the Church of the Holy Child in Staten Island, New York, was defaced by an anonymous group of anti-Catholic bigots. The sign which reads “Abortion Stops a Beating Heart,” was paid for through donations raised by the parish Respect Life Committee.

Holy Child pastor, Monsignor John D. Burke, reports that he had received several anonymous phone calls ordering him to remove the sign prior to the defacement. In the July 21 incident, inscriptions were made on the sign and an anti-Catholic poster was taped to the sign.

The poster accuses the Catholic Church of holding “vast economic and political resources” that are used by its “undemocratically chosen hierarchy” to enforce “its archaic views” about “abortion, women’s rights, homosexuality and contraception.” The poster goes on to say that ” ‘free speech’ in America is NOT free,” and criticizes the Catholic Church for not supporting abortion in the Health Care Reform bill.

The poster also says, “We have chosen to use this sign to say: STOP IMPOSING YOUR RELIGIOUS BELIEFS ON THOSE WHO DO NOT SHARE THEM.” It concludes, “STOP ABUSING AND RESTRICTING WOMEN IN THE NAME OF GOD.”

A statement issued by the Catholic League denounced the defacement as an act which “should be condemned by persons of every faith.” The statement went on to add: “They hate the Catholic Church because the Church doesn’t yield on its positions. This is clearly the work of those who think that freedom means emancipation from constraint. Instead of looking at the moral debris that this conception of liberty has wrought, the libertines pursue their agenda with characteristic fanaticism. And it is this fanaticism that explains their hatred of the Catholic Church.”

The 5th annual week of prayer and fasting – World Prayer Movement 1994 – has been set for the week of October 2-8, 1994.

The movement is a national and international program that stretches around the globe and bridges all denominations in its call for a week of prayer for peace in our hearts, our homes, our world, and an end to all killing, including abortion. All Christians are asked to say seven “Our Fathers” each day during the week. Unplugging home televisions is also encouraged because of the violence brought into homes by this so-called “entertainment” medium.

The World Prayer Movement is officially sponsored by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops.