Recent surveys on religion in public life reveal that America is still a vibrantly religious nation. But there is also evidence that the raging culture war is a reflection of the burgeoning disharmony between believers and non-believers. The believers are numerically stronger, but it is the secularists who staff the cultural command posts. A recent Pew [...]
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 [...]
William A. Donohue If you haven't read pages 8-9 yet, please do so before reading this article; it will facilitate what I'm about to say. The late philosopher Hannah Arendt wrote brilliantly on the causes of totalitarianism, especially as it occurred in Nazi Germany. Perhaps her most memorable phrase—used to describe the way in which Germans became almost [...]
William A. Donohue Few things in life are more contemptible than intellectual dishonesty. It's one thing to be wrong from time to time (true of all of us), quite another to make a living advancing an ideological position that is wholly without principle. Unfortunately, many discussions on church and state are of this sort. And now [...]
William A. Donohue The Catholic Church rightfully emphasizes that all human beings share an inherent dignity. It matters not a whit what a person's race, ethnicity, national origin, sex, sexual orientation or age is—all are equal before God. Because we do not choose any of these attributes, they are of no moral consequence. It's only when [...]
William A. Donohue "The Passion of the Christ" was not only a stunning artistic achievement for Mel Gibson, it was a great Lenten gift to Christians. But it didn't happen by chance. It happened because Mel wouldn't give up, and neither would we. But it took all we had to defeat those bent on spiking the [...]
William A. Donohue This issue of Catalyst is not like any other. Normally, we run a series of articles that touch on anti-Catholicism and related issues. But this time we are featuring two very special items: "An Open Letter to the Jewish Community" and a Special Report, Sexual Abuse in Social Context: Catholic Clergy and Other Professionals. Both were [...]
William A. Donohue It all happened quite accidentally. On June 11, 2003, I was asked to debate Rabbi Marvin Hier of the Simon Wiesenthal Center on the MSNBC show "Scarborough Country." The subject—the hullabaloo over a movie that virtually no one had seen, "The Passion" (the name has since been changed to read, "The Passion of [...]
William A. Donohue The Boston Globe broke the story on the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church in January 2002. Two years later, it is evident the scandal will not go away. Don't get me wrong—it is neither enabling bishops nor molesting priests who are prolonging the scandal—it is a diverse group of people who have an [...]
William A. Donohue As a kid who grew up in New York in the 1950s, I had no idea what a homosexual was. There were a few effeminate boys, of course, but they were simply regarded as sissies; the most exaggerated of this group were known as fairies. What this conveyed was an inability to be [...]
