The November 2 episode of the Fox TV show, "Ally McBeal," featured a nun who sued the Church because she was dismissed for breaking her vow of celibacy. Throughout the show, repeated attacks were made on Catholic sacraments, teachings and practices. Here is a sample of the lines that were voiced. Ally: "Nuns are not supposed [...]
It was bad enough that the show was classic Catholic-baiting. What made it worse was that it was an animated-history lesson for kids done to fulfill FCC requirements. We are speaking of an edition of the Warner Bros. show "Histeria!" that ran nationwide on October 31 and November 1. In the show that we addressed, there [...]
William A. Donohue For the past five-and-a-half years, I have had to reason by analogy with the media, educators, activists, artists and others, just to get my basic point across. Unfazed by anti-Catholicism, our adversaries generally respect the rights of gays, blacks and Jews. Even when they don’t, they generally know enough to keep their mouths [...]
William A. Donohue We get so much anti-Catholic literature sent to us from Protestant, mostly Evangelical, sources that it’s enough to make me wonder whether the Reformation ever ended. Some of it is just plain stupid, but there is also some pretty sophisticated stuff being published. This is not the place for a rigorous analysis of [...]
In 1997, Jeffrey Katzenberg of DreamWorks asked me to come to Los Angeles to preview a movie that was still in its early stages. What I witnessed was an animated version of the Biblical story of Moses called, "The Prince of Egypt." It left a great impression on me. In March of this year, I was [...]
Two thugs kill a homosexual in Laramie, Wyoming (Matthew Shepard) and a nut kills an abortion doctor in suburban Buffalo (Barnett Slepian). Immediately, gay-rights advocates and abortion-rights advocates (often one and the same) blame Christianity. Some get specific and either criticize, or blame, Pope John Paul II, Cardinal O’Connor and William Donohue for what happened. "There’s [...]
Just in time for Halloween came "John Carpenter’s Vampires," a movie about as dumb as they get. The Office of Film and Broadcasting of the U.S. Catholic Conference’s Department of Communications found it to be "morally offensive" and noted its "cynical disdain for religion" (Roman Catholic, that is). Yet the Catholic League said nothing. Why? The [...]
In a new twist on the old saw that the best defense is a good offense, ABC and NBC are now bragging that in some of their shows, they seek to offend everyone equally. The league complained to ABC about two editions of "Politically Incorrect" that aired back-to-back on October 8 and 9. The October 8 [...]
Disney owns the ABC network and, of course, it claims never to interfere with programming decisions that might compromise the profession of broadcasting. To those who buy the party line, well, think again. Regnery has published a great new book by Peter and Rochelle Schweizer called, Disney: The Mouse Betrayed. The book details how the once family-friendly [...]
The fall of 1998 has been a busy season for Catholic-bashing playwrights. In the lastCatalyst, we covered Terrence McNally’s "Corpus Christi" and Thomas Disch’s "The Cardinal Detoxes." Bringing up the rear, so to speak, is Richard Vetere’s "Holy Water," Christopher Durang’s "The Marriage of Bette and Boo," and Paul Rudnick’s "The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told." [...]
