William A. Donohue Before the horror of September 11 a year ago, only those branded intolerant would dare use the word evil to describe evil. Now every airhead from the Hamptons to Hollywood uses it. What's going on? Fear did it. It was fear that led the nonjudgmental types to rediscover the meaning of evil. Prior [...]
William A. Donohue When the cardinals left Rome in April, they came away with a statement that most branded inadequate. The same judgment befell the draft document of the bishops prior to the Dallas meeting. After Dallas, there is still much discontent, but a closer look at the survey data reveal a Church on the mend. [...]
William A. Donohue No figure in the Church sexual abuse scandal is more notorious than Rev. Paul Shanley. Though defrocked priest John Geoghan may be the biggest pervert (he is accused of molesting 130 children), Shanley is the real All Star of sexual deviants. Unlike Geoghan, he publicly advocated the merits of sexual deviance. What shaped [...]
William A. Donohue The Catholic League had two choices in dealing with the sex abuse scandal in the Catholic Church: shut up or speak up. I decided we should speak up. To shut up would have been to throw the floor open to every dissident voice in the Church. Moreover, bigots would have gone unanswered. So [...]
William A. Donohue Every priest, religious and Catholic lay person I admire is furious with the extent of the pederasty problem in the clergy and the way it’s been handled. Indeed, if someone claims to be a good Catholic and isn’t outraged, I’d begin to wonder. It always hurts more when those whom we trust let [...]
William A. Donohue On January 24, we received a call from a San Francisco Chronicle reporter saying a $100 million lawsuit has been filed against William Donohue and the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights. The suit contends that I libeled a man who claims to be an artist and part Indian. He was upset [...]
William A. Donohue The in-your-face type of anti-Catholicism is, by definition, easy to spot. Not so that which surfaces on the sly. Take, for example, some recent items that were brought to my attention. · An article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette mentions that a new club, the Chapel of Blues Club, was formerly a Catholic Church. [...]
William A. Donohue This is the season of giving and give we should: to the surviving family members of the horror of 9-11; to the needy; to the disabled; to all those unable to provide for themselves. But let’s do it without the smugness that too often accompanies the giving. I say this because it’s been [...]
William A. Donohue No sooner had the World Trade Center been bombed than the public was treated to two types of "root cause" analyses of what had happened. One type was psychologistic; the other political. From a Catholic perspective, both were flawed. Catholicism places a premium on individual accountability. When we go to Confession, we say, [...]
William A. Donohue Unfair judgments are made all the time. But there is a profound difference between judgments that are unfair due to error and judgments that are unfair due to calculation. We must tolerate the former but never the latter. With regard to the work of the Catholic League, it is the difference between those [...]
