The Catholic League scored another victory in August by getting the top religious advisor to the Democratic National Committee (DNC) to resign. We had previously managed to get John Kerry’s religious director silenced by his campaign.

On Friday, July 23, Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe announced the appointment of Rev. Brenda Bartella Peterson as the first-ever Senior Advisor for Religious Outreach to the DNC. One week later, on Friday, July 30, we learned of this hire and immediately investigated her.

On Monday, August 2, we issued a press release noting her support for atheist Michael Newdow in his attempt to get the words “under God” stricken from the Pledge of Allegiance. We issued two more news releases on Peterson on Tuesday and Wednesday. She quit late-day Wednesday, saying she couldn’t take the pressure any more. We declared victory on Thursday. By Friday, the Catholic League was being cited all over the Internet and newspapers across the nation. To find out exactly how we pulled this off, read pages 4-7; we have reproduced all the news releases that finally finished her.

This was the second time in less than two months that the Catholic League scored a victory on this issue. In the last issue of Catalyst we noted our defeat of Mara Vanderslice, the woman who was appointed by the Kerry campaign as his Director of Religious Outreach. The Kerry campaign put a gag on her once she was revealed as a Left-wing extremist who was known to associate with anti-Catholics.

The reaction to our latest effort ran the gamut from exuberance to condemnation. We got phone calls and e-mails from across the country congratulating us for a job well done. But we also received our share of nasty and sometimes vulgar comments.

It is important for both parties to reach out to people of faith. But they must do it in a way that is sincere. It is really not that difficult a task, considering that when it comes to public policy issues, practicing Catholics, Protestants, Jews and Muslims have more in common with each other than they do with the non-observant in their own ranks.

The issue of religion is not going away in this presidential campaign. Our role is that of a monitor—of both parties—and it is a job we will not shirk.

On July 6, the U.S. Senate voted 51-46 to put J. Leon Holmes on the federal bench in Arkansas. The Catholic League had worked hard to persuade the lawmakers to appoint this quality judge; Holmes is a practicing Catholic who accepts the teachings of the Magisterium.

For about a year, the Catholic League has publicly criticized some Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee for their unfair treatment of Holmes. To be specific, pro-abortion Catholic senators on the committee like Patrick Leahy, Dick Durbin and Ted Kennedy have subjected Holmes to a de facto religious test. Indeed, when Holmes was considered for the federal bench last year, Leahy, Durbin and Kennedy, along with non-Catholics like Chuck Schumer, ganged up on Holmes because of his orthodox Catholic beliefs.

When this issue first arose, the Catholic League made it clear that we were not accusing any senator of being anti-Catholic. But we hastened to add that religious profiling, even when indirectly invoked, was anathema. In the case of Leon Holmes, some of the Democrats were upset with a biblical remark the judge previously made about gender roles. They would have been on more persuasive grounds had they been able to point to a single instance when the private religious beliefs of Holmes had unfairly colored his ability to render a fair judgment. Their failure to do so proved to be telling.
It was a narrow but important victory. Justice was finally done.

William A. Donohue

It’s often been said that it’s wise for friends and family members to avoid discussions about religion and politics. These are volatile issues in any given year, but they have become more so this year because of the presidential campaigns of President George W. Bush and Senator John Kerry. And by reading this issue of Catalyst, Catholic League members will discover that we’ve been drawn into the debate big time.

It’s worth restating that the Catholic League is a non-profit organization that is forbidden by law from endorsing candidates or parties. We can discuss any public policy issue we want, but we can’t formally back anyone. That’s fine by us because we are decidedly non-partisan by choice: we don’t want to align ourselves with any political party.

The principal reason for our political agnosticism is that it would only weaken the Catholic League if we were to be thought of as the Catholic arm of the Republicans or Democrats; we would be taken for granted, thus neutralizing our impact. There is another reason as well: our job is to fight anti-Catholicism, and that means we have to go where the action is, sparing no one.

Some members have asked which party I belong to. None. For the record, I started as a Democrat, then I became a Republican, and for more than a decade I’ve been a registered Independent. I have no intention of rejoining either party.

One of the most intense political fights we’ve ever engaged in was the controversy over the House Chaplain in 2000. This pitted the Catholic League against leading Republicans. Some Republican Evangelicals had intervened to stop the appointment of a Catholic priest as the new House Chaplain (never had a Catholic priest ever held this post) and we entered the fray on the side of the priest. While that particular priest did not get the job, another priest did.

In the last presidential election campaign, we were highly critical of then Governor George W. Bush’s visit to Bob Jones University, a profoundly anti-Catholic institution. After Bush apologized to Cardinal John O’Connor for offending Catholic sensibilities, I went on the “Today Show” to discuss the issue and effectively put it to rest by accepting Bush’s apology as sincere.

This time we’re doing battle with the Democrats. John Kerry and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) have insulted people of faith by hiring religious outreach leaders who are way out of touch with observant Catholics, Protestants, Jews and Muslims. As I’ve said many times to the press, they would never hire a gay basher to reach out to homosexuals. So why would they hire the likes of Mara Vanderslice and Rev. Brenda Bartella Peterson to be in charge of religious outreach?

To understand what is happening, the first thing to realize is that the average Democrat, like the average Republican, believes in God and is proud to be a member of the faithful. But this is not true of many of the most senior officials running the DNC and the Kerry campaign. Instead, they are devout secularists, people for whom “The Passion of the Christ” was not their kind of movie. They would prefer to watch “Fahrenheit 9/11,” and the last time they were in church or synagogue was when a family member died.

In other words, too many in the top echelons of the Democratic Party have lost their religious moorings and look at religious people as if they had two heads. That’s why they hire people like Vanderslice and Peterson.

After we knocked off Peterson, the media were calling asking all kinds of questions about the Catholic League. They wanted to know how many people work here and what our budget is. They were uniformly astonished to learn that we employ only twelve people and have an annual budget of approximately $3 million. Interestingly, when the DNC elite found this out, they were furious. How could it be, they exclaimed, that such a small organization has such enormous clout? Somehow, they reasoned this was unfair.

For her part, Rev. Peterson claimed victim status. “The whirlwind was more than I could just about stand. It was amazing.” What’s truly amazing is her naiveté. Did she really believe that no one would find out about her opposition to the words “under God” in the Pledge? And did she really believe that once the public learned of this they would just shake it off? If so, she lives in a bubble. Ditto for all her friends at the Clergy Leadership Council, from where she came.

The DNC knew what it was getting because Peterson worked right across the street from its headquarters. As soon as she was hired, Peterson went on the PBS show, “Religion and Ethics Newsweekly,” and said, “We plan to go all over the nation.” Little did she know that she would never make it off the block. Thus did Brenda prove them wrong: You really can go home again.

By Rodney Stark

Popular lore, movies, and children’s stories hold that in 1492 Christopher Columbus proved the world is round and in the process defeated years of dogged opposition from the Roman Catholic Church, which insisted that the earth is flat. These tales are rooted in books like A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom, an influential reference by Andrew Dickson White, founder and first president of Cornell University. White claimed that even after Columbus’ return “the Church by its highest authority solemnly stumbled and persisted in going astray.”

The trouble is, almost every word of White’s account of the Columbus story is a lie. All educated persons of Columbus’ day, very much including the Roman Catholic prelates, knew the earth was round. The Venerable Bede (c. 673-735) taught that the world was round, as did Bishop Virgilius of Salzburg (c. 720-784), Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179), and Thomas Aquinas (c. 1224-74). All four ended up saints. Sphere was the title of the most popular medieval textbook on astronomy, written by the English scholastic John of Sacrobosco (c. 1200-1256). It informed that not only the earth but all heavenly bodies are spherical.

So, why does the fable of the Catholic Church’s ignorance and opposition to the truth persist? Because the claim of an inevitable and bitter warfare between religion and science has, for more than three centuries, been the primary polemical device used in the atheist attack on faith.
The truth is, there is no inherent conflict between religion and science. Indeed, the fundamental reality is that Christian theology was essential for the rise of science—a fact little appreciated outside the ranks of academic specialists.

Recent historical research has debunked the idea of a “Dark Ages” after the “fall” of Rome. In fact, this was an era of profound and rapid technological progress, by the end of which Europe had surpassed the rest of the world. Moreover, the so-called “Scientific Revolution” of the sixteenth century was a result of developments begun by religious scholars starting in the eleventh century.

Even in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the leading scientific figures were overwhelmingly devout Christians who believed it their duty to comprehend God’s handiwork. My studies show that the “Enlightenment” was conceived initially as a propaganda ploy by militant atheists attempting to claim credit for the rise of science. The falsehood that science required the defeat of religion was proclaimed by self-appointed cheerleaders like Voltaire, Diderot, and Gibbon, who themselves played no part in the scientific enterprise—a pattern that continues today. I find that through the centuries (including right up to the present day), professional scientists have remained about as religious as the rest of the population—and far more religious than their academic colleagues in the arts and social sciences.

It is the consensus among contemporary historians, philosophers, and sociologists of science that real science arose only once: in Europe. It is instructive that China, Islam, India, ancient Greece, and Rome all had a highly developed alchemy. But only in Europe did alchemy develop into chemistry. By the same token, many societies developed elaborate systems of astrology, but only in Europe did astrology lead to astronomy. And these transformations took place at a time when folklore has it that a fanatical Christianity was imposing a general ignorance on Europe—the so-called Dark Ages.

The progress achieved during the “Dark Ages” was not merely technological. Medieval Europe excelled in philosophy and science. The term “Scientific Revolution” is in many ways as misleading as “Dark Ages.” Both were coined to discredit the medieval Church. The notion of a “Scientific Revolution” has been used to claim that science suddenly burst forth when a weakened Christianity could no longer prevent it, and as the recovery of classical learning made it possible. Both claims are as false as those concerning Columbus and the flat earth.

First of all, classical learning did not provide an appropriate model for science. Second, the rise of science was already far along by the sixteenth century, having been carefully nurtured by religiously devout scholastics. Granted, the era of scientific discovery that occurred in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was marvelous, the cultural equivalent of the blossoming of a rose. But, just as roses do not spring up overnight, and must undergo a long period of normal growth before they even bud, so too the blossoming of science was the result of centuries of intellectual progress.

From Ockham through Copernicus, the development of the heliocentric model of the solar system was the product of the universities—that most Christian invention. From the start, the medieval Christian university was a place created and run by scholars devoted entirely to knowledge. The autonomy of individual faculty members was carefully guarded. Since all instruction was in Latin, scholars were able to move about without regard for linguistic boundaries, and because their degrees were mutually recognized, they were qualified to join any faculty. It was in these universities that European Christians began to establish science. And it was in these same universities, not later in the salons of philosophes or Renaissance men, that the classics were restored to intellectual importance. The translations from Greek into Latin were accomplished by exceedingly pious Christian scholars.

It was the Christian scholastics, not the Greeks, Romans, Muslims, or Chinese, who built up the field of physiology based on human dissections. Once again, hardly anyone knows the truth about dissection and the medieval Church. Human dissection was not permitted in the classical world (“the dignity of the human body” forbade it), which is why Greco-Roman works on anatomy are so faulty. Aristotle’s studies were limited entirely to animal dissections, as were those of Celsius and Galen. Human dissection also was prohibited in Islam.

With the Christian universities came a new outlook on dissection. The starting assumption was that what is unique to humans is a soul, not a physiology. Dissections of the human body, therefore, have no theological implications.

Science consists of an organized effort to explain natural phenomena. Why did this effort take root in Europe and nowhere else? Because Christianity depicted God as a rational, responsive, dependable, and omnipotent being, and the universe as his personal creation. The natural world was thus understood to have a rational, lawful, stable structure, awaiting (indeed, inviting) human comprehension.

Christians developed science because they believed it could—and should—be done. Alfred North Whitehead, the great philosopher and mathematician, co-author with Bertrand Russell of the landmark Principia Mathematica, credited “medieval theology” for the rise of science. He pointed to the “insistence on the rationality of God,” which produced the belief that “the search into nature could only result in the vindication of the faith.”

Whitehead ended with the remark that the images of God found in other religions, especially in Asia, are too impersonal or too irrational to have sustained science. A God who is capricious or unknowable gives no incentive for humans to dig deeply into his essence. Moreover, most non-Christian religions don’t posit a creation. If the universe is without beginning or purpose, has no Creator, is an inconsistent, unpredictable, and arbitrary mystery, there is little reason to explore it. Under those religious premises, the path to wisdom is through meditation and mystical insights, and there is no occasion to celebrate reason.

In contrast, Tertullian, one of the earliest Christian theologians (c. 160-225), instructed that God has willed that the world he has provided “should be handled and understood by reason.” The weight of opinion in the early and medieval church was that there is a duty to understand, in order to better marvel at God’s handiwork. Saint Augustine (354-430) held that reason was indispensable to faith: “Heaven forbid that God should hate in us that by which he made us superior to the animals! Heaven forbid that we should believe in such a way as not to accept or seek reasons, since we could not even believe if we did not possess rational souls.” Of course, Christian theologians accepted that God’s word must be believed even if the reasons were not apparent. In matters “that we cannot yet grasp by reason—though one day we shall be able to do so—faith must precede reason,” stated Augustine.

Note the optimism that reason will reveal more and more truth as time accumulates. Saint Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225-1274) attempted in his monumental Summa Theologiae to fulfill Augustine’s optimism that some of these “matters of great importance” could be grasped by reason. Though humans lack sufficient intellect to see directly into the essence of things, he argued they may reason their way to knowledge step-by-step, using principles of logic. This is the methodology of science.

The great figures of the heyday of scientific discovery—including Descartes, Galileo, Newton, and Kepler—actively professed their absolute faith in a Creator God, whose work incorporated rational rules awaiting their discovery. Far from being a rejection of religion, the “Scientific Revolution” was led mostly by deeply religious men acting on religious motivations.

To sum up: The rise of science was not an extension of classical learning. It was the natural outgrowth of Christian doctrine: Nature exists because it was created by God. In order to love and honor God, it is necessary to fully appreciate the wonders of his handiwork. Moreover, because God is perfect, his handiwork functions in accord with immutable principles. By the full use of our God-given powers of reason and observation it ought to be possible to discover these principles. These crucial religious ideas were why the rise of science occurred in Christian Europe, not somewhere else.

Rodney Stark is professor of sociology at the University of Washington.  This piece is excerpted from a longer piece, “False Conflict: Christianity Is Not Only Compatible with Science—It Created It,” which appeared in the October-November 2003 issue of The American Enterprise.  Reprinted with the author’s permission.

On July 23, Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chairman Terry McAuliffe announced the appointment of Rev. Brenda Bartella Peterson as the Senior Advisor for Religious Outreach; she is an ordained minister in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). Commenting on her selection is Catholic League president William Donohue:

“Terry McAuliffe says that the appointment of Rev. Peterson as the new Senior Advisor for Religious Outreach ‘reflects the DNC’s commitment to reaching all people of faith’; he also notes that she ‘will act as liaison to religious organizations.’ Upon learning of this appointment, we decided to find out who this woman is. And what we found will make people of every faith wonder whether McAuliffe and the DNC have totally lost their senses.

“Rev. Brenda Bartella Peterson was one of thirty-two clergy members to file an amicus curiae brief in behalf of Michael Newdow’s attempt to excise the words ‘under God’ from the Pledge of Allegiance. The brief shows infinitely more concern for the sensibilities of atheists like Newdow than it does for the 90 percent of Americans who believe in God. And this is the person the Democrats want to dispatch to meet with the heads of religious organizations? Are they out of their minds? Would they hire a gay basher to reach out to homosexuals?

“The Democrats are now 0 for 2 in appointing senior religious liaison directors. The Kerry campaign first appointed Mara Vanderslice as the Director of Religious Outreach, but when we exposed her as a radical leftist who associates with anti-Catholics, the Kerry staff silenced her. Now they’ve stepped in it again by selecting Rev. Peterson.

“The selections of Vanderslice and Peterson suggest that either no one bothers to vet candidates for religious outreach, or the elites making the choices are anti-religious. If the former is true, then this shows that the Democrats place no priority on appealing to people of faith. If the latter is true, then Kerry needs to bring in a big broom and clean house.”

Yesterday, the Catholic League issued a news release exposing the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) newly appointed Senior Advisor for Religious Outreach, Rev. Brenda Bartella Peterson, as one of thirty-two clergy members to file an amicus brief seeking to excise the words “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance. Today, Catholic League president William Donohue reveals more about her:

“Last November, a small group of mostly Protestant clergy members on the Left started a group called the Clergy Leadership Network (CLN) to counter the efforts of the so-called Religious Right. Its first executive director, Rev. Brenda Bartella Peterson, explained that ‘Our sole mission is to get a national leadership change.’

“The CLN seems more at home with politics than religion. For example, when Rev. Peterson was asked whether Christians and Muslims worship the same God, she breezily answered, ‘I would rather you not quote my theology.’ She is similarly uneasy talking about abortion. That is why she said her clergy group takes no position on abortion, saying only that it would interfere with the CLN’s ‘reason for existence.’ Which means getting rid of Bush.

“When Rev. Peterson was tapped to become the DNC’s Senior Advisor for Religious Outreach, the Democratic activists knew exactly what they were getting: all she had to do was walk across the street from her CLN office to join the DNC. And what they got is a person who believes that ‘paying taxes is a way of loving your neighbor.’ Maybe she’ll persuade Teresa Heinz Kerry to tell us how much she pays in taxes so we can get a handle on just how much the billionaire loves her neighbor.

“So this is the kind of person the DNC wants practicing Catholics, Protestants, Jews and Muslims to embrace. If Peterson were a plant by the Bush camp, we’d understand it. What we don’t understand is political suicide.”

Catholic League president William Donohue commented today on the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) new Senior Advisor for Religious Outreach, Rev. Brenda Bartella Peterson:

“We know that Rev. Peterson wants ‘under God’ thrown out of the Pledge, and that she believes ‘Love Thy Neighbor’ means paying taxes. Now we will show the positions of the Clergy Leadership Network (CLN), the organization she recently left as its executive director.

“In the CLN’s ‘Debate’ section of its website, it says a lot about separation of church and state, but virtually nothing about religious liberty (e.g., it is against faith-based initiatives). Regarding tax policies, it would be an understatement to say it likes taxes: ‘Taxes provide a way to look out for our neighbors….Slashing taxes denies that!’ It then says that slashing taxes is ‘inevitably an appeal to our greed, not to our generosity or compassion.’ In other words, the greedy want to keep the money they’ve earned; those who want to take it from us are the altruists. No wonder Rev. Peterson says, ‘The federal budget is a moral document.’

“Under the ‘Current Issues’ section, there are three issues listed: stem cell research, global security and the federal marriage amendment. It has something to say about the first two issues, but, inexplicably, the third issue cannot be accessed. This is deceitful. Consider that the CLN’s CEO, Albert Pennybacker, is on record favoring gay marriage. And another senior official, William Sloane Coffin, has said that most of the other CLN officials ‘view marriage as a human right, not a reward for being heterosexual.’ The ‘Focus Statement’ of the CLN website even says that ‘gay, lesbian, bisexual [and] transsexual people are being attacked through legislation and even constitutional amendments.’ It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what Rev. Peterson believes.

• “The website even provides a link to an anti-Catholic site, Chuck Currie (see his piece, ‘When Catholic Girls Go Wild’). To top it off, there is a link to MoveOn.org, a smear site that has nothing to do with religion. Remember, Rev. Peterson presided over it all, and for this she was rewarded by the DNC as its number-one liaison to religious groups.”

Catholic League president William Donohue commented today on the resignation of Rev. Brenda Bartella Peterson as the Senior Religion Advisor to the Democratic National Committee (DNC):

“Rev. Peterson told Religion News Service that ‘it was no longer possible for me to do my job effectively.’ The Washington Post added today that her decision was made ‘after the New York-based Catholic League issued three blistering news releases attacking her positions.’

“The only question now is whether John Kerry and the DNC have finally got the message. When we exposed Mara Vanderslice as a Left-wing activist who cavorts with anti-Catholics, the Kerry camp silenced her as its Religious Outreach Director. When we exposed Rev. Peterson as a Left-wing activist who went into the U.S. Supreme Court on the side of atheist Michael Newdow to censor the words ‘under God’ in the Pledge, she was forced to quit her role with the DNC. The first hire may have been a mistake, but it is not credible to maintain that the DNC erred in hiring Rev. Peterson: they knew what they were getting and they knew what happened to Vanderslice, and yet they persisted anyway.

“Why are Kerry and the DNC imploding on religion? Because too many of the elites running the show are devout secularists who put a premium on freedom from religion. Their idea of religious liberty is banning nativity scenes on public property. Their idea of diversity is censoring ‘under God’ from the Pledge. Their idea of tolerance is forbidding a moment of silence in the schools. Their idea of a good Catholic is Frances Kissling of Catholics for a Free Choice. Their idea of compassion is hiking taxes. Their idea of helping the poor is giving them directions to a soup kitchen. And their idea of choice is abortion, not school vouchers.

“Kerry and the DNC now have two strikes against them in their religious outreach efforts. Whether they strike out is up to them. We’re certainly not dropping out of the game, and we’re certainly monitoring Bush and the RNC on this subject just as closely.”

Catholics for a Free Choice (CFFC), directed by Frances Kissling, is known for its abortion advocacy and anti-Catholicism. Over the summer, it descended to new lows.

According to the Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute, at an economic summit on Latin America held in Puerto Rico in July, CFFC operatives “sought the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary to bring victory to their cause….” They did so by distributing a prayer card of the Virgin Mary with the words, “The Love of God and Mary of Guadalupe is greater…For women’s lives, safe and legal abortion.” If this isn’t evil, then the word has no meaning.

Also in July, CFFC released a spurious poll that was designed to rebuke the bishops. We read it and then released the following statement to the media:

“The purpose of this poll, authorized by the nation’s leading anti-Catholic organization, is to persuade the public that a) Catholics are not concerned about abortion b) what the bishops say doesn’t matter and c) church-going Catholics are not influenced by their religious practices. It fails on all counts.

“To begin with, the survey concludes that Catholics are more concerned about the war on terrorism and the situation in Iraq than anything else. Which makes Catholics about as remarkable as, say, Eskimos.

“The poll also says that 70 percent of Catholics say it is not very important to them what the views of the bishops are in deciding whom they should vote for. The predicate of this question is flawed: the bishops not only do not tell Catholics whom to vote for, they themselves are deeply divided. And with regard to public policy issues, few are as clear-cut as abortion. For example, the bishops implore Catholics to help the poor, but how they should do so is left for individual Catholics to decide. The same is true of issues like the environment, health care, etc.

“The poll discloses that the more Catholics attend Mass, the more likely they are to vote for Bush. This is not surprising—it confirms what all the other surveys have said. But because this is greeted as bad news, the spin doctors who wrote the summary statement say that among liberal Catholics who are frequent church-goers, most of them will vote for Kerry. What they conveniently left out is that the proportion of frequent church-goers who are liberal is quite small. Nice try.

“Frances Kissling, the director of the group that commissioned the poll, has previously said that it is her goal to ‘overthrow’ the Catholic Church. Given her latest effort, it is clear that she has her work cut out for her.”

One piece of good news: the media generally ignored CFFC’s survey. More and more are catching on to the fact that Kissling is a front for the anti-Catholics who fund her.

Paula Fredriksen, the Jewish professor from Boston University who predicted that “The Passion of the Christ” would lead to violence against Jews, was recently asked to explain why not one act of violence was reported anywhere in the world. She says she’s still not wrong, and that’s because she has now decided to redefine violence as constituting a “hostile environment.” To top it off, she says it is Mel’s supporters who have “redefined violence” to exclude anything less than “dead bodies strewn everywhere.”

Which only goes to show that Paula is as dishonest as she is foolish. And by the way, according to her definition, she must be found guilty of genocide against Christians for what she’s said about us.