This is the article that appeared in the September 2023 edition of Catalyst, our monthly journal. The date that prints out reflects the day that it was uploaded to our website. For a more accurate date of when the article was first published, check out the news release, here.

Irish singer Sinead O’Connor passed away on July 28.

In her better years, she sold millions of record albums, winning a Grammy for her work.

She became an overnight sensation in 1992 when she appeared on “Saturday Night Live” and ripped up a picture of Pope John Paul II. Her antics, often controversial, were condemned not only by rank-and-file Catholics, but by celebrities such as Madonna and Frank Sinatra.

The “SNL” stunt was uncalled for, but it was her advocacy of violence that was more disturbing. In 2011, she warned Pope Benedict XVI not to come to Ireland, saying that if he did there would be a “f***in bloodbath.”

O’Connor was also delusional, perhaps a reflection of her drug habits. In 1999, she announced that she had become a priest; she even wore priestly attire. She described herself as Mother Bernadette Mary and claimed to have the authority to say Mass and administer the Sacraments.

Bill Donohue once debated her on Larry King’s CNN show on the subject of clergy sexual abuse. The discussion floundered when she had to ask King, “What does postpubescent mean?” Donohue had just mentioned that most of the abuse involved postpubescent males.

When she died, many celebrities and talking heads in the media lionized her for her “bravery” in ripping up a picture of the pope. Her fans commended her for calling attention to clergy sexual abuse.

A Facebook page was set up, saying, “Apologize to Sinead O’Connor NOW.”

But Sinead was not some great scholar who commanded great prescience. In fact, she was a troubled soul who was badly educated. She was no more a “truth-teller” than were those who worshipped her.

The Associated Press (AP) had an embarrassing article on Sinead. It cited as authoritative the pro-Sinead remarks of David Clohessy, the man who once headed the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP). He had to leave in disgrace. As Donohue showed in his book, The Truth about Clergy Sexual Abuse, he was shown to be an utter fraud. The Catholic League was pleased to have played a major role in his ouster.

AP reported that Clohessy was in his early 30s when Sinead pulled her “SNL” stunt. It said that “he had only recently recalled the repressed memories of the abuse he suffered.” Never mind that the idea of “repressed memory” has been thoroughly discredited—no serious psychologist defends it anymore—Clohessy has said that his memory of what allegedly happened to him was jarred when he and his fiancée were watching a Barbra Streisand movie. That would do it.

Michael McDonnell was quoted in the AP article speaking favorably about Sinead. He was identified as the “interim executive director” of SNAP. What readers didn’t know is that poor Mike has been the “interim director” for quite some time now. The reason he is still “interim” is because SNAP does not exist anymore. It’s nothing but his cell phone.

AP also cited comments by Jamie Manson, the lesbian head of an anti-Catholic pro-abortion group, Catholics for Choice. Manson said that when Sinead ripped up the picture of the pope she was “feeling a call to the priesthood at the time.” “Now if a male Catholic activist said he once felt called to be a nun,” Donohue said, “wouldn’t it make sense to call the mental health hotline?”

Molly Olmstead at Slate wrote a beauty. She went after Pope John Paul II for his “role” in covering up the scandal. The link she provided was to a story by National Public Radio saying the pope was aware of accusations against homosexual predator, and former cardinal, Theodore McCarrick.

The pope should have listened to New York Archbishop John Cardinal O’Connor. He had McCarrick’s number and explained in detail to the Vatican why he was alarmed. Instead the pope was persuaded by two high-ranking Vatican officials who took McCarrick’s side. He heeded the wrong advice, but this is not the same as instituting a cover-up.

Olmstead resurrected the fictitious tales about the Magdalene Laundries, where Sinead stayed, so she could bash the Catholic Church. As Donohue recounted in his monograph, “Myths of the Magdalene Laundries,” data contained in what is known as the “McAleese Report” demonstrate that these homes for wayward girls that were run by nuns were not anything like its harshest critics have alleged. No one was imprisoned, forced to stay or engage in slave labor. Not a single woman was sexually abused by a nun. Not one. It is all a lie.

It is true that Sinead was sexually abused. But not by a nun—it was her own mother who molested her. So it was hardly surprising that her father decided that she would be better off being taken care of by the nuns.

Olmstead said that “Bill Donohue of the Catholic League led the public charge against O’Connor back in 1992.” Donohue replied, “I would have been happy to do so, but I didn’t become president until 1993.”

This is the article that appeared in the September 2023 edition of Catalyst, our monthly journal. The date that prints out reflects the day that it was uploaded to our website. For a more accurate date of when the article was first published, check out the news release, here.

When someone says he is “not big on” something, it indicates that he is not a fan. There may be many reasons for this—the smell of brussel sprouts is enough to deter some from eating them—but it is a rare occurrence when someone who is “not big on” something winds up vigorously endorsing it. President Biden is one of those rare persons.

Over the summer, Biden admitted he is “not big on abortion.” He did not say why. After all, he vigorously supports abortion for every conceivable reason, and at any time during pregnancy. Indeed, he even supports partial-birth abortion.

After he made this remark, he was quick to say that the decision in Roe v. Wade making abortion a constitutional right (since overturned) was the right thing to do. Too bad reporters never ask him to explain himself.

This is the article that appeared in the September 2023 edition of Catalyst, our monthly journal. The date that prints out reflects the day that it was uploaded to our website. For a more accurate date of when the article was first published, check out the news release, here.

The ongoing culture war between those who adhere to Judeo-Christian principles on one side, and militant secularists on the other, is increasingly taking on a political dimension. While there has long been funding for anti-Catholic art exhibits, what’s relatively new is the decision by Democrats to force taxpayers to fund the radical LGBT agenda. This issue is currently at a fever pitch.

On July 18, at a hearing on funding for transportation and housing programs, members of the House Appropriations Committee got more than testy—they engaged in the kind of verbal abuse we would expect from cable TV talking heads, not members of Congress.

Rep. Mark Pocan, a homosexual Democrat, branded Republicans who disagreed with him “bigots,” resorting to foul language while making the case for the radical LGBT agenda. Worse was Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the most anti-Catholic pro-abortion Catholic in the House. She called her critics “terrorists.” After she was called out for her invective, she asked that her “offending words” be withdrawn. But the damage was done.

Politico, the liberal media outlet, published a fine piece on this story (none of the major dailies covered it).

“What Do Drag Shows, Pride Flags and Latino Museums Have to Do with Roads and Parks?” The headline, while baiting, hit on something real: Republicans are becoming much more aggressive in tackling social and cultural issues. Perhaps that is because they realize, as a Gallup poll recently found, that social conservatism is rebounding.

Some of the issues that are being hotly debated include providing for so-called gender-affirming care; diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives; the distribution of Pride flags; drag queen workshops, performances and documentaries; and dishonest exhibits that portray Hispanics as “victims.”

The national debt has never been greater, yet some members of Congress think we should pay for these ventures, several of which are morally offensive. They are taking their cues from the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the influential gay activist organization.

To show how extremist HRC is, consider some of its objectives:

• It believes that it is acceptable to allow a person who misidentifies as transgender to use whatever bathroom he wants. In other words, women who object to showering with men have no rights.
• It contends that by ensuring safety and fairness in women’s sports that this amounts to a total ban on transgender persons from participating in athletics. However, transgender persons are not prohibited from competing against each other. But this is not what HRC wants—it wants males to compete against females, effectively destroying women’s sports.
• It contends that LGBT persons are being discriminated against if students and teachers are not forced to use “preferred pronouns.” In other words, it wants the government to abridge the free speech rights of students and teachers by mandating what words they must use when identifying those who have misidentified their sex, or who falsely think that they are more than one person (as in being called “they”).
• It is strongly opposed to parental rights. For example, it is opposed to state laws that notify parents if their child has chosen to adopt a transgender identity.
• It argues that age restrictions on drag queen shows—of any kind—are tantamount to discrimination against the performers. Moreover, it contends that protecting children from sexually explicit material is an expression of bigotry.

It is fashionable to say both sides are crossing the line these days. With rare exceptions, this is not true.

Those who are promoting the anti-science view that the sexes are interchangeable are all liberal Democrats. These are the same persons who want to gut women’s sports, allow boys to share locker rooms with girls, dictate what pronouns people must use, nullify parental rights, and expose children to perverted theater. To top things off, they want the taxpayers to flip the bill for their sick agenda.

Paradoxically, referring to those who object to this madness as “terrorists” may actually be a good sign. It suggests that the DeLauros of this world are losing, and in an act of desperation, the only ammo left in their armor is vitriol.

This is the article that appeared in the September 2023 edition of Catalyst, our monthly journal. The date that prints out reflects the day that it was uploaded to our website. For a more accurate date of when the article was first published, check out the news release, here.

There are extremists in both the Republican and Democrat parties, and some support violence to achieve their goals; this is true even among some self-described independents. But the enthusiasm for violence is clearly more popular among Democrats.

In a large survey recently released by the Chicago Project on Security & Threats, which is affiliated with the University of Chicago, researchers tapped hot button issues for Republicans and Democrats, seeking to measure support for violence. For Republicans, the issue was Trump; for Democrats it was abortion.

The report, “Dangers to Democracy,” found that 6.8 percent of Americans agreed that “the use of force is justified to restore Donald Trump to the presidency.” Among Republicans the figure was 9.5 percent. It also found that 12.3 percent of Americans agreed that “the use of force is justified to restore the federal right to abortion.” Among Democrats, the figure was 16.4 percent.

The Democrats were also more likely than Republicans to favor using violence to attain other goals.

One in four Democrats (25.6 percent) say “the use of force is justified to protect the voting rights of Black Americans and other minorities.” But when it comes to using force “to prevent the teaching of CRT [critical race theory] in schools,” far fewer Republicans (14.6 percent) were inclined to violence.

Among Democrats, 16.3 percent are in favor of using force “against the police to prevent police brutality against Black Americans and other minorities.” When Republicans are asked if the use of force is justified “to preserve the rights of whites,” 9.9 percent agree.

The inescapable conclusion is that Democrats are more comfortable endorsing violence to accomplish their goals than Republicans are in achieving their ends.

It is striking that neither the authors of the report, nor the media who covered this story, decided to highlight this conclusion. Indeed, an article by The Hill on the survey only mentions Republicans who support violence over the treatment of Trump, never mentioning that hot button issues for Democrats elicit more support for force. Sometimes it’s not hard to connect the dots.

This is the article that appeared in the September 2023 edition of Catalyst, our monthly journal. The date that prints out reflects the day that it was uploaded to our website. For a more accurate date of when the article was first published, check out the news release, here.

Hemant Mehta is an atheist activist who is not too happy with Richard Dawkins, one of the most prominent atheists in the world. He is angered that his fellow God denier insists that “sex really is binary.” This should be about as controversial as saying the world is not flat, but in some circles it is cause for apoplexy.

Dawkins is someone whom Bill Donohue has mostly criticized, and occasionally defended, in the past. In 2016, Donohue called him out for his hate speech when he said, “I’m all for offending people’s religion.” In 2017, he defended the Englishman on free speech grounds when a left-wing radio station based in Berkeley, California disinvited him after he called Islam the “most evil” of world religions. Now Donohue is defending him once again.

Mehta holds to the anti-science view that sex is fluid. It is not. It is binary, just as Dawkins said it is. We are either male (XY chromosomes) or female (XX), notwithstanding the biological disorder that affects boys called Klinefelter Syndrome (XXY). That does not make for a third sex.

Dawkins is a biologist. Mehta is a blogger. Despite the glaring difference in credentials, the occasionally employed blogger is accusing Dawkins of “abandoning” science.

“What is a woman?” We know that Mehta can no more answer this question than can Ketanji Brown Jackson, but when Dawkins was asked to respond, he was not puzzled. “A woman is an adult human female, free of Y chromosomes.” Mehta says, “That flies in the face of what many scientists have said about the subject.”

What Mehta is referring to is the alleged category of “intersex” persons. Yes, there are rare instances of babies who are born with both male and female genitalia. Anomalies exist in nature. It is also true that there are people who suffer from polydactyly, a condition in which a person is born with extra fingers or toes. So what?

Father Tad Pacholczyk has a doctorate in neuroscience from Yale and did postdoctoral work at Harvard. Even those born with “confounding physiological factors,” he says, are either intrinsically male or female. In other words, humans are “marked by sexual ‘dimorphism,’ or ‘two-forms,’ namely, male and female. When problems arise in the development of one of these forms, this does not make for a new ‘third form,’ or worse, for an infinite spectrum of different sexual forms.”

Mehta is upset that Dawkins has previously said that trans people are similar to Rachel Dolezal, the white woman who claimed to be black. The analogy is apt: if self-identity is dispositive, then Dolezal is as black as the guy who claims he is a gal.

Finally, Dawkins insists that it is people like him who are being bullied today, not trans people. Mehta disagrees but Dawkins is right. It is true, as Mehta contends, that trans people are much more likely to experience violence than normal people are, but what he leaves out is that most of the violence against trans people is being carried out by other trans people. That’s the dirty little secret no one wants to talk about.

This is the article that appeared in the September 2023 edition of Catalyst, our monthly journal. The date that prints out reflects the day that it was uploaded to our website. For a more accurate date of when the article was first published, check out the news release, here.

More than 30 congressional Democrats who call themselves Catholic recently issued a robust defense of abortion-on-demand claiming their position is entirely in keeping with the teachings of the Catholic Church. They know this is not true.

“The Statement of Principles,” led by Rep. Rosa DeLauro, was issued in response to the Supreme Court’s decision last year in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that overturned Roe v. Wade. The statement contains at least four egregious falsehoods.

First, the Democrats claim that in the Dobbs decision “the Justices stripped women of their right to abortion and escalated an ongoing reproductive healthcare crisis in this country.” That is a lie. The Supreme Court declared there was no federal right to abortion. It did not outlaw abortion in the United States; it left that decision up to the states.

Second, the Democrats are playing the typical pro-abortion game of interpreting survey data that validates their position. They claim that 68 percent of Catholics support “the legal protections for abortion access enshrined in Roe” and 63 percent “think abortion should be legal in most cases.”

A survey of Catholic voters taken a year ago by RealClear Opinion Research found that 82 percent support some restrictions on abortion. Roe effectively permitted abortion through term, and thus did not reflect the thinking of most Catholics, or, for that matter, most non-Catholics.

Third, the Democrats falsely argue that their extreme pro-abortion stance is consistent with the Catholic Catechism’s teaching on conscience rights. It is not. The statement quotes the Catechism as saying, “A human being must always obey the certain judgment of his conscience. If he were deliberately to act against it, he would condemn himself.”

That is a selective reading of paragraph 1790. The statement never mentions the next sentence: “Yet it can happen that moral conscience remains in ignorance and makes erroneous judgments about acts to be performed or already committed.” Shortly thereafter (1792), it explains that among the expressions of ignorance is an “assertion of a mistaken notion of autonomy” and a “rejection of the Church’s authority.”

Fourth, the Democrats invoke “separation of church and state” by claiming that Catholics cannot “impose our religious beliefs and customs on others who may not share them.” That’s true, but it has nothing to do with abortion. Opposition to abortion is grounded in science, as well as in the teachings of the Catholic Church.

It cannot go without saying that abortion is regarded by the Catholic Church as “intrinsically evil.”

This is the article that appeared in the September 2023 edition of Catalyst, our monthly journal. The date that prints out reflects the day that it was uploaded to our website. For a more accurate date of when the article was first published, check out the news release, here.

Media bias is not new, and this is especially true when it comes to hot button issues such as abortion.

An AP-NORC poll on abortion conducted in late June resulted in four news stories that were picked up nationwide by various media outlets. In three of them, the headline was skewed toward a pro-choice position.

This is not unusual: reporters who write the stories generally do not write the headline. And headlines tend to be more sensationalistic. It is also true that most reporters, at least in the major media, take an abortion-rights position.

The survey was taken to see if public opinion on abortion had changed since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year, sending the issue back to the states to decide. Alas, not much has changed: most Americans have never wanted to ban all abortions, and most have never supported all abortions. This poll did not dispute that conclusion.

But one might never know this by simply reading the headlines. Here are three of them:

(1) “Few US Adults Support Full Abortion Bans, Even in States That Have Them, an AP-NORC Poll Finds.”
(2) “Most Americans Support Abortion Access One Year After Roe v. Wade.”
(3) “Most in US Don’t Support Full Abortion Bans, Even in States With Them.”

There was another headline, however, which conveyed a somewhat different outcome. Here is what it said:

(4) “AP-NORC Poll: Most US Adults Support Some Abortion Limits, But Few Want Full Bans.”

The news story that followed the first and fourth headlines were identical. However, the first emphasized that most Americans don’t want full abortion bans, and the fourth emphasized that most Americans want some limitations. Both are accurate but they convey different outcomes.

In both of these stories, it was reported that “only about a quarter say it should always be legal.” That finding would likely come as a surprise to those who only read the first three headlines.

Why does this matter? Because in today’s soundbite society, where few have the time or attention span to read an entire news story, headlines carry more weight in influencing public opinion than they did in times past. The public is increasingly relying on tidbits of information provided by bloggers, social media sites, and news aggregates. Thus, when the headlines are skewed—and they are almost always slanted in a liberal direction—it is easy to deceive the public.

If it is true that “what you see is what you get,” it is also true that what you get—from reading news headlines alone—is often misleading.