The rights of priests took a big step forward on July 21 when the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned a lower court ruling that sided with an alleged victim of clergy sexual abuse. The law firm of Jones Day ably represented the Catholic League in an amicus brief that was filed in support of the Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown.

The alleged victim, Renee Rice, argued that she had been molested in the 1970s by Fr. Charles Bodziak at St. Leo’s Church in Altoona, a town about 80 miles from Pittsburgh. The priest denied the accusation.

Rice’s lawsuit claimed that two bishops tried to cover up his behavior, even though the diocese sent her a letter 10 years before her lawsuit encouraging her to come forward about her alleged abuse. Even more bizarre, she never did anything to pursue her claim until 2016. That was when a grand jury report on sexual abuse in the diocese was released. She said the report awakened her to what supposedly happened.

To top things off, Rice’s lawyers maintained that the timeline of the statute of limitations for a civil claim seeking damages for an offense should not start when the alleged injury took place. In her case that meant at the time the grand jury report was made public.

Had Rice won, it would have meant that the established law regarding the statute of limitations would have been thrown out, thus crushing the rights of the accused.

When the Catholic League filed an amicus curiae brief with the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in 2019, Bill Donohue commented on the Superior Court ruling that sided with Rice. “We have reached a new level of creative jurisprudence when a court can invoke a jury decision as the new clock determining when the limitations period starts to run.”

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court rejected the Superior Court’s reasoning. We won 5-2. Justice Christine Donohue (no relation to Bill Donohue) wrote for the majority, saying, “the statute of limitations expired decades ago.” In short, Rice had an obligation to pursue her case within the stated limitation period and elected not to do so.

The Catholic League’s lawyers were very happy to note that Pennsylvania’s high court prominently cited a case that their brief highlighted, Colosimo v. Roman Catholic Bishops of Salt Lake City. It held that the lack of due diligence on the part of the plaintiff (in this case Rice) was fatal.

This victory means that the slew of “copycat” lawsuits filed after the lower court win will die on the vine. Thanks to our friends at Jones Day, the rights of priests are in much better shape.

We lost a true American icon on July 24 when Jackie Mason passed away at the age of 93. He was more than a remarkable comedian, he was a strong foe of anti-Catholicism.

On December 14, 2005, journalist Don Feder, who had recently founded Jews Against Anti-Christian Defamation, held a press conference on the steps of St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Attending were Jackie Mason and several other prominent Jews; Bill Donohue was also there. Jackie hired limousines that rode down Fifth Avenue with a huge banner declaring, “JEWS SAY IT’S OK TO SAY MERRY CHRISTMAS.”

Soon after Jackie and his lawyer friend Raoul Felder wrote a splendid piece explaining why it was important for Jews to speak up about attempts to censor Christmas. They deplored banning “the singing of Christmas carols [and] nativity scenes” in the schools.

“We cannot see how our beliefs are jeopardized by someone else celebrating his beliefs—particularly if the celebrations are those consisting, at least in part, of love, family values, spirituality and giving thought to the less fortunate.”

Jackie also spoke at a rally we held in 2010 outside the Empire State Building protesting the refusal of the building’s owner not to honor Mother Teresa on her centenary by lighting the towers in her colors, blue and white.

Jackie Mason was more than a first-class comedian. He was a first-class person who went against the grain by standing up for the rights of Catholics. May he rest in peace.

William A. Donohue

To be a good writer, it is important, at least for me, to have a passion for the subject. I brought my passion to bear in writing The Truth about Clergy Sexual Abuse: Clarifying the Facts and the Causes. The book is expected to be available from the publisher, Ignatius Press, in mid-September, and in early October from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Catholic bookstores. They all accept pre-orders.

In the October issue of Catalyst, I will offer a synopsis of the book. First I’d like to explain why I wrote it.

It is usually the subtitle of a book that discloses what it is about. In this case, both the title and the subtitle offer an accurate representation. The title indicates that we have not been told the truth about the scandal. While there have been some good books on this subject, many have been written by those with an ax to grind, and none has been written by a social scientist.

It is my contention that we have had not one scandal, but two. Scandal I is the familiar one, namely the one brought about by molesting priests and their enabling bishops. Scandal II, which no one wants to acknowledge, was not caused by the Church: it was caused by those who have distorted the truth, lied about events, and have a vested ideological or economic interest in never letting go.

The subtitle of the book suggests that we have been duped. The guilty parties are many. Importantly, they either cannot, or will not, tell the truth about what happened. For example, they would have us believe that the Catholic Church is unique in having had a problem with sex between adults and minors. As I show, this is patently false. This falsehood is what Scandal II is all about.

I expect that when the book comes out, there will be considerable blowback. After all, I challenge the most popular myths about the scandal. To cover myself, I have 823 footnotes detailing what, in fact, happened, and why it happened.

In some ways this book was a joy to write; in some ways it was troubling. It was a joy because it gave me the satisfaction of setting the record straight. Quite frankly, the conventional wisdom about this subject has been wrong almost every step of the way. It’s time to clear the air and get to the heart of things. It was troubling because much of what I wrote about is not pretty.

There is much good news in the book. Scandal I is long over. What is being reported today about priestly sexual abuse are almost all old cases—very old cases. Much progress has been made. Those involved in Scandal II don’t want to acknowledge this and indeed have tried to manipulate the public into thinking it is still ongoing.

Perhaps the most controversial part of the book will be my analysis of why Scandal I took place. There are many reasons for this, and you will have to read the book to get a full account. Without question, my discussion of the role that homosexual priests have played—they are responsible for most of the abuse—will cause many in the media and education to explode. Unfortunately, this will also be true of some members of the clergy, including higher ups.

I have told my staff many times that as president of the Catholic League, I’m not engaged in a popularity contest. Do I care what people say about me? Sometimes. It matters, in large part, who is saying it. I cannot tell you how many times I have been condemned to Hell, libeled, slandered, and dumped upon in the most vicious and obscene ways—to say nothing of the death threats (and I mean real ones). They all want to silence me, one way or the other. This has been going on for decades.

These people are not so much critics as they are thugs, well educated though many of them are. Regrettably, I have never seen a time where there are more of them than today.

I say at the outset of the book that we as Catholics are “called to tell the truth, not shade it.” That explains why I wrote this book. In other words, just as we need an accurate diagnosis of our ailment from our doctor before we can be treated, we need an accurate diagnosis of clergy sexual abuse before we can make sure this never happens again.

Almost all priests have never had an accusation made against them, and most of them are good guys. Yet they are subjected to invidious stereotypes, innuendo and out-and-out lies. Many are humble and are reluctant to strike back. I get it. But lay people can be more aggressive in defending them.

It is my hope that Catholics who read this book will have a much better understanding of what happened and why, and will come to appreciate the enormous progress we have made. They will also learn how we’ve been played by those who don’t want it to end.

Mike McDonald

As the new school year begins, what children learn has become one of the biggest flash points in the culture war. From curricula to textbooks in elementary schools to high schools and beyond, these are now battlegrounds hotly contested by activist mobs and parents.

So, with this as our backdrop, the Catholic League decided over the course of the 2020-21 school year to take a survey of prominent history and government textbooks to see what children are learning. Our findings should raise the ire of all members of the Catholic League.

One thing becomes abundantly apparent from our deep dive into these textbooks; namely, the current curriculum provides a biased perspective against traditional and Catholic values. By and large, these textbooks present religion, traditional values, and conservatism in a negative light.

First, religion is portrayed as a net negative for society. On the whole, history textbooks tend to be worse than government textbooks at making this argument. History allows for more interpretation of the facts. The writers of these textbooks use that leeway to continually present both religious and traditional values in the most negative light possible.

In these history books, they routinely point to the Catholic missionaries as the first to come to the New World to destroy the harmonious lives of the Indians. The overall portrayal of the native population, of course, is utopian, and it was torn asunder by the conniving Catholics. While we view these Catholic missionaries as saints and heroes who spread the Gospel, provided for the salvation of souls, and generally brought the moral underpinnings of modernity to the Americas, the textbooks present the missionaries as the vanguard of imperialism making the natives a subservient class to do the biddings of their new colonial masters.

According to the history books, the worst among these Catholic interlopers were the Spanish. The Catholic nature of their empire drove them to commit all levels of depravity against the indigenous peoples. A more honest interpretation of history might have considered the imperial nature of the Spanish Empire as a larger contributing factor to Spanish activity in the Americas. However, these history books seem less interested in providing an accurate historic analysis and more focused on indoctrinating students to despise religion. As such, the consensus they reach is right after the unifying of Spain and the terrible atrocities of the Inquisition, Catholic intolerance drove them to exploit the New World in a similar fashion.

While Catholic Spain might have been the worst, Christians in general are to be understood by the curriculum as ruining the lives of the Indians. British Protestantism is probably the next worse offender; however, French Catholics and Dutch Protestants also contributed in turning America into a paradise lost.

In addition to portraying Catholic Spain and more generally Christian Europe as blood-lusting, religious fanatics seeking the genocide of the native population, these history books also introduce the concept that America from the colonial period to the present has always viewed religion with open skepticism and a subtle hostility.

The textbooks contend that the Wars of Religion in Europe inspired the colonists to chart a different course from the Old World. Religion had promulgated war, destruction, and death, and as such the colonists sought to create a secular world free from the intolerance and bloodletting that is baked into the nature of religion. To this end, America has always had a very strong inclination toward secularism. While America has not always lived up to this ideal, a strong secularist strand has permeated every aspect of the country, and this has allowed the United States to advance as a nation.

Second, from these books’ biased perspective, traditional values are problematic. They stand in the way of the societal march to progress.

The textbooks argue that America has always been a progressive country. In part this is thanks to America’s strong secular streak that freed the nation from the shackles of religion. In doing so, America is truly a progressive country. Further founded on the notion of rejecting the ancient order, America has continually evolved into a society free from the constraints of traditional values.

Anyone who clings to such superstitious beliefs as religion and other archaic notions generally called traditional values only do so because, at best, they do not fully understand American freedom, or, at worst, they wish to oppress the downtrodden.

In this regard, both the history and government textbooks were equally bad. While history lends itself more to interpretation, government books were more constrained to explaining the nuts and bolts of government. The mechanics of the Electoral College or the means by which the legislature can override a veto do not naturally lend themselves to subjectivism; they are what they are.

However, since traditional values play a large role in today’s political environment, the government textbooks had an opening to opine and apparently relished the opportunity to besmirch them.

A favorite example of theirs to explain how rights and liberties were supposed to work was Roe v. Wade. Ultimately, they argued that a woman must have the right to murder her unborn child to be truly free and those opposed to that were barbaric, knuckle-dragging Neanderthals who wished to deny women basic liberties.

Another was school prayer. Again, this issue was framed as there is a Christian-Conservative Axis that is hell bent on establishing a theocracy to force school children to violate their constitutional rights by compelling them to pray.

In a similar vein, both history and government books used the Equal Rights Amendment as evidence that traditional values stand in the way of progress. While government books used it as an example of how amendments can be defeated, it was clear, like their historical counterparts the Equal Rights Amendment would have been a good thing and could have propelled America forward had not the pesky social conservatives and their pro-life allies intervened.

Finally, conservatism, in part because this philosophy is rooted in religious and traditional values, is a threat to freedom, and those who adhere to its principles are the worst oppressors in human history. Conversely, thanks to America’s secular nature and the progressive national spirit, the United States has created fertile grounds for leftism to take root. Running the gambit from workers’ rights to liberalism to socialism and even communism, leftist forces have always played an active role in American society, working to champion the rights of the downtrodden and make America the true land of liberty.

The textbooks would have students believe that these leftists were the true American heroes. They have always been on the forefront of American progress, and they make a new pantheon that has given this nation the true ideals of a leftist utopia.

A final trend worth noting, textbooks written for Advanced Placement (AP) tests were far worse than textbooks that were not geared toward that test. Why that is, we cannot say. Perhaps the notion is that these students need to be fully indoctrinated as if they were in a university setting. Seeing the point of the test is to pass and not have to take those classes in college, the College Board might want to make sure these children fully hate America as if they had sat through a semester at college.

After all, the College board is a cartel, but instead of trafficking drugs, guns, or people, it peddles a far more toxic substance, the ideological poisoning of young minds in hopes of turning them against the principles that made America great.

Equally plausible, the less advanced classes have been written off as unlikely to benefit from this degree of propaganda; even worse, they might be so unenlightened that they or their parents might take offense with the egalitarian utopia presented in the AP textbooks.

On the whole, while the non-AP textbooks had the same biased worldview, they did a fairer job presenting the other side. Reading through them one gets the notion that religion might have had a hand in some bad things in history, but it also had a few positive contributions. The same could be said of traditional values. These two were presented as net negatives for society, but they were not all bad. Conservatives were still the bad guys, but they were more nuanced villains that may have had some redeeming qualities. They were almost like anti-heroes and less like evil personified. These textbooks were typically longer, but that allowed them to be more balanced in comparison to their AP counterparts.

While we cannot concretely say why the AP textbooks were so blatant in their bias, we can say they were definitively worse than non-AP textbooks. For those who are parents of a child in an AP class, it is important to remember that the benefit of your child earning a few university credits comes with the risk of them becoming steeped in anti-Americanism and ideology contrary to Catholic teachings.

Ultimately, the best guidance the Catholic League can offer from our findings in this survey is, as a parent, you must constantly be involved in your child’s learning. The textbooks are generally very biased, and they can lead children to despise religion, traditional values, and conservatives. You need to engage your child, the teachers, and the school to make sure your student’s world view is not warped. Keep in mind, that even if your child is in Catholic school or homeschooled they might be using one of the textbooks we used in our survey.

One final point, our survey used books in circulation prior to the great push that is underway to teach Critical Race Theory (CRT) in the schools. Radicals, the National Education Association, and numerous school boards across America are working to ensure that CRT becomes the national standard for education.

No doubt what we found is just the beginning of the battle of the textbooks. The publishers are more than likely producing new editions that make the objectionable material we found seem pedestrian. This is a long fight, and it is only heating up. Parents must remain vigilant. At the Catholic League, we will continue our efforts to combat these biased perspectives against traditional, Catholic values that are printed in these textbooks.

Mike McDonald is our director of communications

All over the world, the best educated white people are also the most likely to be stupid. There are exceptions, of course, but the generalization remains true nonetheless.

By educated, Bill Donohue means the number of years spent in school, and nothing more. By stupidity, he means a lack of common sense, as in a denial of human nature. By this measure, a large swath of the well-educated white people who live in North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand are plainly stupid people.

The latest evidence to support this observation can be found in the results of a Pew Research Center survey, published July 27. Donohue hastens to add that the researchers at Pew did not come to his conclusion, but that has no bearing on Donohue’s interpretation of their data.

Pew found that 56% of adults surveyed believe that “gender is determined by sex assigned at birth,” and 41% believe it can be different. Who believes the latter? “Liberal Democrats are particularly likely to say gender can be different from sex assigned at birth.” In fact, 81% believe this to be true.

Also, “those with a bachelor’s degree or more education are more likely than those who do not have a college degree to say a person’s gender can be different from sex assigned at birth.” Regarding race, white people are the most likely to accept this position; blacks are the least likely.

Let’s begin with Sociology 101. Then we can proceed to Biology 101.

The term “gender” is constantly misused these days: it means socially learned roles that are deemed appropriate for men and women. Thus, asking someone on an employment or medical form what “gender” he is makes no sense: the proper question is what “sex” the person is.

It is also inaccurate to say that someone’s sex was “assigned at birth.” No one is ever “assigned” his sex—it is a given. To be exact, every person who ever walked the face of the earth had his sex determined by his father. Period. In other words, the only person “assigning” the sex of the baby is the one keeping hospital records. Similarly, “gender-reveal” parties, which are really “sex-reveal” parties, are actually celebrations of what has been learned in utero about what the father has bequeathed.

Contrary to what so many educated white people believe, there is no such thing as a “non-binary” person. A human being is either a male or a female. He or she may deny this, but that is of no consequence. A person could, conceivably, think of himself as a giraffe, but self-identity is not dispositive. Reality matters more than subjective interpretations of it.

Here are some more basic biological facts that are resisted by educated white people.

A male carries the XY chromosomes; a female carries XX. Sorry, folks, there is no third combination—no XYZ exists. It’s a binary fact of life.

Another fact of life is that only females produce eggs. Males are incapable of doing so, and this would certainly include those biological men who identify as a woman. Here’s another reality check: a man can think of himself as a woman until the cows come home, but he will never be able to menstruate.

Donohue has more bad news for those who have stayed in school too long.

Males have a penis, scrotum, and testicles. Females have a vagina, uterus, and ovaries. Yes, one can pay a doctor to mutilate his genitals and construct a Lego-type replacement—though many trans persons refuse to finish the job—but this is still not a game changer.

For example, males are continuously fertile from puberty—their sperms never stop being produced. Females are fertile for 12 hours a month, until menopause. Men have more testosterone and less estrogen than women; the obverse is also true. Males have a larger brain, thinner face, and larger veins than females. And so on.

The biological differences are evident everywhere. To take one example, the Olympics are the greatest demonstration of nature-based differences in the world. Men are stronger and faster than women, and it is this fact of life that drives sex segregation in sports. Even the most ardent feminists know this to be true. Otherwise, they would scream about discrimination and demand that all events be “inclusive” of both sexes.

The fundamental question remains. Why are educated white people the most likely to swallow the moonshine that a man who thinks he is a woman is, therefore, a woman (and vice versa)? The only plausible answer is that they have been the most indoctrinated by radical egalitarian ideologies.

To rebel against one’s own nature is sick; for others to affirm it is even sicker.

Fortunately, the notion that human nature does not exist is rejected by most of those who have less schooling, and who are non-white. More good news: It has had even less effect on those who live in Latin America, Africa, Russia, or Asia.

Educated white people who deny what nature, and nature’s God, has ordained, need to be deprogrammed. Either that or they will continue to prove just how stupid they really are.

The idea that the descendents of slaves are owed reparations is based on the notion that white people owe black people money today because dead white people mistreated dead black people long ago. On this score alone, this is a racist proposal, the victims of whom are white.

Why should those who did not suffer the indignity of slavery be awarded financial compensation? And why should those who had nothing to do with it be forced to pony up? But if this crazed idea is to be taken seriously, then white Christians are also deserving of reparations. Who should pay? Muslims.

Economist Thomas Sowell recalls that it was Adam Smith, author of The Wealth of Nations, who observed in 1776 that Western Europe was the only place in the world where slavery did not exist. Sowell further notes that nowhere in the world was slavery a controversial issue prior to the 18th century. It wasn’t controversial in Africa or Asia or the Middle East—they were accustomed to slavery. No, it was in Western Europe and the newly created United States where objections were first registered.

It seems odd, then, that the nations which ended slavery are the ones being tapped for reparations. Yet that is exactly what the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, wants. She recently said that those nations that “engaged in or profited from enslavement, the transatlantic trade in enslaved Africans, and colonialism—as well as those who continue to profit from this legacy,” should pay reparations.

Bachelet, like so many other elites around the world, never addresses the need for reparations to white Christians. They need to do so.

Charles Sumner was an 18th century American politician, and one of America’s most famous abolitionists. He not only condemned black slavery, he condemned white slavery. Indeed, he wrote a book about it, “White Slavery in the Barbary States,” published in 1853.

Sumner detailed how Muslim pirates from North Africa, called corsairs, “became the scourge of Christendom, while their much-dreaded system of slavery assumed a front of new terrors. Their ravages were not confined to the Mediterranean.” In fact, they extended to “the chalky cliffs of England, and even from the distant western coasts of Ireland,” forcing the inhabitants into “cruel captivity.”

The most authoritative work on this subject can be found in Robert Davis’ book, Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast, and Italy, 1500-1800. The Ohio State University professor of history estimates that “between 1530 and 1780 there was almost certainly 1 million and quite possibly as many as 1.25 million white, European Christians enslaved by the Muslims of the Barbary Coast.”

How did the Muslim slavemasters manage to capture these white Christians? The Barbary pirates trolled the Mediterranean looking for ships to raid, taking their cargo and enslaving those on board. They also showed up at coastal towns of Italy, Spain, France, England, Ireland, and the Netherlands.

“While the Barbary corsairs looted the cargo of ships they captured,” writes Davis, “their primary goal was to capture non-Muslim people for sale as slaves or for ransom.” Meaning that the Muslim pirates were out to enslave white Christians. It should be noted that they treated their slaves just as harshly as white slavemasters in America treated their slaves. “As far as daily living conditions,” he says, “the Mediterranean slaves certainly didn’t have it any better.”

According to political scientist Abraham H. Miller, “For over two hundred years, during the mid-1600s to the 1830s, Barbary Muslims trafficked in white European Christians. The Ottoman Muslims trafficked in White Christian slavery started even earlier, in the 15th century. All in all, Muslims enslaved more than two million white European Christians.”

Similarly, Sowell contends that the number of whites who were enslaved in North Africa by the Barbary pirates “exceeded the number of Africans enslaved in the United States and in the American colonies put together.” In fact, he adds, “white slaves were being bought and sold in the Ottoman Empire decades after blacks were freed in the United States.”

This raises an interesting question: Are white Christians today owed reparations?

Sowell knows the answer. “Nobody is going to North Africa for reparations, because nobody is going to be fool enough to give it to them.” “So,” Miller asks, “should white European Christians condemn all Muslims for their role in the enslavement of white European Christians? Should the Europeans of the Southern Mediterranean demand reparations from Muslims for the enslavement of their ancestors?”

We would go further: Should present-day Muslims living in America be forced to pay reparations to white Christians living here today?

According to the logic of those who work in the reparations industry—you don’t have to be personally guilty or personally victimized to qualify—the answer is clearly yes (though we would not support it).

Perhaps the U.N.’s chief Human Rights official can offer some advice. But to do so she would first have to admit that her selective interest in this subject makes her unsuitable to continue. She should resign.

Many conservatives deny that systemic racism exists. They are wrong. Racism runs deep into our institutions, and it explains why African Americans are being held back.

Does this mean that the Left has the right analysis? No, it only means they have correctly identified a serious problem. Where the Left errs is in its diagnosis. Systemic racism today is largely the result of “progressive” initiatives, policies and laws. In other words, the Left is responsible for the malady it purports to abhor. They are the new racists.

Dictionary.com defines racism as “a form of prejudice in which a person believes in the superiority of what they consider to be their own ‘race’ over others.” That is what the Klan has long believed, and it is what the Left believes today, with one important difference: most of those who espouse this view are white, and it is their contention that while they are not racists, white America is.

The Left is twice wrong: a) white America, like every segment of the country, is extraordinarily tolerant and fair-minded and b) this is not true of the new racists, namely, those who are indicting America. Here is the evidence.

To combat racism, Idaho passed a law in April that bans schools from teaching that “any sex, race, ethnicity, religion, color, or national origin is inherently superior or inferior.” Other states have since passed similar laws.

Not too long ago, if someone were to object to what this Idaho law says, that person would be branded a racist. Today those who object include the National Education Association (the NEA), the nation’s largest teachers’ union, and virtually every politician, activist, and media outlet on the Left. It is they who have embraced the deeply racist agenda that marks critical race theory.

Critical race theory, which will be taught in the schools this fall, thanks to the NEA, holds that white people today are inherently racist and are responsible for past racial injustices even if there is zero evidence that most white people have never discriminated against a single African American. Being white is all that counts.

According to this perspective, there are no individuals in white America—just clusters of white people. In other words, it is the immutable characteristic of race that determines who we are, not the biographical data that makes us all unique individuals. If this isn’t racist, the term has no meaning.
Critical race theory, however, is only one weapon in the arsenal of the new racists. Others simply resort to hate speech. Their hatred of America is palpable.

Over the Fourth of July weekend, one left-wing pundit and politician after another declared how racist America is. None was more forceful than Rep. Cori Bush, the newly elected black Democrat from Missouri; she quickly joined the Squad this year, the anti-American contingent of House Democrats. “Black people still aren’t free,” she exclaimed.

To the extent that blacks are not free, is due almost exclusively to people like her. For example, blacks are the biggest victims of abortion and crime: she champions the former and wants to defund the police. She apparently does not care that innocent blacks pay the biggest price in both instances.

Blacks are overrepresented in the armed forces and have served our nation with distinction; they have also used their service as a lever to achieve a middle-class status. She wants to defund the armed forces. Blacks strongly favor school choice, but Bush, who attended a Catholic high school, wants to deny poor blacks the right to go to a charter, private or parochial school.

What Bush is promoting is systemic racism—it is baked into her policy preferences. Moreover, if she really believed that black lives matter, she would seek to curb the killing of innocent black lives in the womb, and would go into East St. Louis on a Saturday night demanding that blacks stop killing each other. Instead, she wants more funds for abortion and none for the police. Thus has she systematized racism.

Nothing epitomizes systemic racism more than denying poor black people the right to compete equally with whites, Hispanics and Asians in school. Bush, however, wants to make sure that her own people are locked into failed public schools, the kinds of schools her parents rejected when they enrolled her in a Catholic school.

The reality is that it is not white supremacists whom African Americans need to fear today—it is those who champion their cause. The new racists need to be outed, confronted and defeated. They are a threat to the wellbeing of African Americans, and to the nation as a whole.

Never before has the education establishment in the United States been more determined to promote racism in the schools than today. In the past, there have been texts that glossed over slavery, and curriculum that did not adequately address racial inequities in American history, but those are instances of omission. What we are witnessing today is a full-court press to deliberately divide the races, and it is coming from the top.

What makes this especially perverse is that this is not being done by Klan-like educators. No, it is being done by those who claim to be combating racism. The public is being played: Those responsible for indoctrinating students with critical race theory, and its ilk, are dishonestly maintaining that their agenda is anti-racist. In fact, they are mainlining racism in the schools.

To tell one race of students that they are morally inferior to the other is racist, and that is the point of telling white kids that they belong to the oppressor class. To tell white students that their skin color alone makes them racists is manifestly racist. This is what critical race theory espouses. The logical effect of this agenda is to divide the races. The Klan could not do better.

Those who champion this pernicious assault on racial equality often lie about their cause. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) recently said that “Critical race theory is not taught in elementary school.” Yet the title of the msn.com article wherein she is quoted accurately notes, “AOC Defends Critical Race Theory Being Taught in Schools.”

To prove how dishonest AOC is, consider that in June the National Education Association (NEA) approved a motion to adopt critical race theory in the schools. Here are some of the curriculum items the NEA instructed teachers to adopt.

• “Share and publicize, through existing channels, information already available on critical race theory (CRT).”
• “Provide an already-created, in-depth, study that critiques empire, white supremacy, anti-Blackness, anti-indigeneity, racism, patriarchy, cisheteropatriarchy, capitalism, ableism, anthropocentrism, and other forms of power and oppression at the intersections of our society, and that we oppose attempts to ban critical race theory and/or The 1619 Project.”
• “Join with Black Lives Matter at School and the Zinn Education Project to call for a rally this year on October 14—George Floyd’s birthday—as a national day of action to teach lessons about structural racism and oppression.”

This is the kind of Marxist claptrap we would expect from a brainwashed high school student, to say nothing of its illiteracy.

Nice to know that the NEA is opposed to capitalism but not socialism. There is a reason for this: The Zinn Education Project, a Marxist teacher-resource endeavor that the NEA endorses, is named after Howard Zinn; he was a member of the Communist Party.

The bulleted items listed were taken from “New Business Item 39” that was adopted by the NEA in June. But it does not want the taxpayers and the parents of students to know about it: it has been deleted from its website. We obtained a copy before it was nixed.

It is important to acknowledge that the leadership of the NEA, and those who, like AOC, support critical race theory, are not liberals. They are far left-wing activists. The problem is they are drowning out the voice of reasonable liberals. Unless those who were previously in the center, and were pushed to the fringes, recapture their command seats, the result will be more racism, not less of it.

Why would Disney, the alleged family-friendly entertainment giant, want to encourage kids to reject their sex? And why aren’t the media covering this story?

The Muppet character, Gonzo, has “transitioned” to a girl, Gonzorella. That is why he is wearing a dress to the “royal ball.” He does more than wear a dress—he instructs Miss Piggy and Summer that “doing things a little different can be fun.”

The message to children is: a boy can be a girl, and vice versa. Making this choice, they are told, is not something abnormal, it’s just “a little different.” Moreover, it can be “fun” to reject your sex and pretend that you belong to the opposite sex.

This needs to be called out for what it is: child abuse. Anyone who is even remotely knowledgeable about what sex transitioning entails—the physical and psychological problems that boys and girls experience are multiple—knows how pernicious this process is. Seven in ten of those who transition are girls wanting to be boys, and the extent of their suffering is well documented.

So why is it that, aside from some gay and conservative news sources, this story was ignored by the most influential newspapers, as well as the broadcast and cable news networks? Is it their insouciance that is driving their passivity? Or cowardice?

The big disappointment is the lack of response from the conservative community (thank God we have some like Candace Owens who will not be intimidated). Genuine conservatives are concerned about the three “M’s,” namely, markets, missiles and morality. In recent years, many have all but given up on the latter “M.” Hence, the advent of Disney poisoning the minds of children.

In the 28 years that Bill Donohue has been president of the Catholic League, few newspapers have been more hypocritical in their coverage of the Catholic Church than the Kansas City Star. It added to its legacy on July 28 when it ran an editorial claiming that the Church is still not transparent in its handling of the sexual abuse of minors.

The newspaper says the Church can correct this alleged deficiency by publishing a list of priests who were “credibly accused.” It praises those dioceses which have done so. Donohue doesn’t. If anything, they are deserving of our condemnation, not commendation. The accused have rights, and that includes Roman Catholic priests.

Why should the Catholic Church publish a list of accused priests when no institution in the United States publishes a list of its employees who have been accused of sexual misconduct (or any offense, for that matter)? If they did, the list of those who work in the media would be extensive.

Moreover, if the names of those who have been accused, but not convicted, were made public by their employer, the employee should sue for reputational damage. In fact, the Catholic League filed an amicus brief in a case involving 11 Pennsylvania priests whose reputational rights were damaged when a grand jury report was made public listing their accused status. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled 6-1 in our favor in December 2018.

In a report on the public schools published in 2016 by USA Today, it found the following. “Congress passed a law in December 2015 requiring states to ban school districts from secretly passing problem teachers to other jurisdictions or face losing federal funds. But 45 states have not instituted the ban.”
The sentinels at the Kansas City Star should get on this one right away. But they won’t—it doesn’t involve the Catholic Church.

In 2011, when the Kansas City Star was relentless in its news stories on clergy sexual abuse, we sought a corrective: we offered the newspaper $25,000 to pay for an advertisement that sought to set the record straight, especially about the work of SNAP. We were denied without an explanation. It was not as though the newspaper couldn’t have used the money—in the previous decade it had laid off a thousand employees. We all know why it was turned down.
For all of these reasons, the Kansas City Star is a joke.