November 20 Alsip, IL – The Freedom From Religion Foundation used the threat of a lawsuit to force the Village of Alsip to cancel the display of a cross on its water tower, which had been a tradition going back decades. November 27 Madison, WI – The Freedom From Religion Foundation placed its “Natural Nativity Scene” [...]
January 22 Dorcester, MA – At Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta Church, a statue of Jesus was decapitated and moved off its base. February 22 Union City, CA – On Ash Wednesday, vandals attacked St. Anne’s Church, splitting and toppling an eight-foot cross from its cement foundation. Statues of the Holy Family were spray-painted black. The [...]
There are many ways of writing an annual report: some organizations list a few major accomplishments, while others provide a tally of incidents or events. We don’t quantify—it’s not easy to do so with qualitative data— but we do offer a descriptive account of the challenges that Catholicism faced in the previous year. Our goal, of [...]
When 2011 began, we did not expect that we would spend a disproportionate amount of time addressing attacks on the Catholic Church stemming from charges of clergy sexual abuse. But we did. Consider how this unfolded. At the beginning of 2002, the Boston Globe published a series of articles on priestly sexual abuse in the Boston [...]
January 24 Colorado Springs, CO – The Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) filed a lawsuit against the United States Air Force Academy (USAFA) because they scheduled a prayer luncheon on February 10. The Superintendent of the USAFA, Lt. Gen. Michael C. Gould, invited 1st Lt. Clebe McClary, a committed evangelical, to be the guest speaker. MRFF [...]
January Panel discussions were held in several American cities and in Europe discussing the 2010 decision of the Smithsonian to remove a vile video from the National Portrait Gallery that the Catholic League had objected to; we did not call for it to be removed, but we did ask the Congress to reconsider funding the Smithsonian [...]
February 22 Hilliard, OH – A statue of the Virgin Mary that had been kept in front of a resident’s condo for ten years was ordered to be removed by The Hilliard Village Association. It claimed the presence of the statue was against the Association’s rules and had to go. Moreover, one resident said that lawn [...]
February 17 Davis, CA – The University of California at Davis decided to back away from a school policy that would identify religious discrimination as “The loss of power and privilege to those who do not practice the dominant culture’s religion. In the United States, this is institutionalized oppressions toward those who are not Christian.” After [...]
February 23 Washington, D.C. – Attorney General Eric Holder wrote a letter to members of Congress announcing President Obama’s decision not to defend the Defense of Marriage Act, stating that it was unconstitutional. The president, of course, is constitutionally bound to enforce federal legislation, and it is up to the courts, not the executive, to determine [...]
Media Response to John Jay Report On May 18, we addressed what the media said about the 2011 John Jay Report on the “Causes and Context” of clergy abuse. Bill Donohue’s analysis of the report is at the end of the annual report. After the New York Times criticized the study as the “blame Woodstock” report, many [...]
