William A. Donohue Dialogue has become more than a buzz word, it’s become a mantra. Just invoking the word makes some feel good, if not altogether righteous. Like a kid on dope, we expect that uttering the "D" word will relieve us of pain and sorrow. Until we sober up, of course. Then it starts all [...]
William A. Donohue Catholics are not a monolithic entity and it is therefore not surprising that the Catholic reaction to "Nothing Sacred" has been anything but uniform. On the one hand, we have bishops, priests, nuns, religious and lay persons who have signed our petition against Disney and are incensed about the show. On the other [...]
William A. Donohue Perhaps the most aggravating aspect of "Nothing Sacred" is the audacity of the executive producers, David Manson and Richard Kramer, to admit that it is their purpose to create "dialogue" among Catholics about the teachings of their church. Who ever asked—or appointed—these two men, both of whom are Jewish and both of whom [...]
William A. Donohue The Catholic League is dubbed "pathetic" by Father Andrew Greeley and is called "semiparanoid" and "un-American" by David Carlin of Commonweal, a journal of liberal Catholic opinion. Both claim to be exercised about anti-Catholicism and yet neither has a good word to say about the one organization that has done more to combat it [...]
by William A. Donohue It is more than just a pet peeve of mine to encounter gratuitous slams against Catholicism. To be sure, what I’m going to describe is hardly the worst of what crosses my desk, but it is the kind of stuff that gets my goat. The recent movie, The Saint, has virtually nothing to [...]
by William A. Donohue In some Catholic quarters, it has become commonplace to assert that Catholics are free to do what their conscience instructs. But if this were the case, then there is nothing particularly Catholic about this position. After all, are not agnostics and atheists also free to let their conscience decide moral questions? The [...]
by William A. Donohue My trip to Hollywood proved to be productive. First I met with Jeffrey Katzenberg of DreamWorks and then I participated in a conference sponsored by the American Cinema Foundation and the UCLA Center for Communication Policy. I liked Katzenberg. He is an extraordinary bright and affable person, the kind of no-nonsense, yet [...]
At the end of February, I will be going to Hollywood to score a few points for our side. Jeffrey Katzenberg, who is a partner with Steven Spielberg and David Geffen in DreamWorks, has invited me to preview a new movie, Prince of Egypt. Scheduled for release in November 1998, it is an animated film whose story [...]
If a Martian were to descend on our shores in the month of December, he would no doubt conclude that Christmas is a fun time. What else he would conclude is uncertain, but it is not likely that he would identify the holiday season with the birth of Jesus Christ. Each year it gets worse. Department [...]
We spend much of our time at the Catholic League fighting double standards: there seems to be one set of rules for those who are not Catholic and another for those who are. Nowhere is this more true than in the old battleground of politics and religion. On September 22, Rev. Al Sharpton formally announced that [...]
