Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on who the guilty parties are in the Covington Catholic controversy:
The Catholic white boys from Covington Catholic High School—hated because they are Catholic, white, male, and Trump supporters (some of them)—have been indicted by lots of pundits, politicians, reporters, and celebrities, both liberal and conservative. Yet the record shows that the students were the only innocent party to this fracas. None of them said or did anything bigoted, but this is not true of the Indians and the black Israelites.
A group of about 20 Indians, led by activist Nathan Phillips, tried to storm a Mass on January 19 at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington D.C. They were stopped by security who had to lock the doors. This is what the Nazis did to the Jews in Hitler’s Germany—they crashed the synagogues during services.
It is against the law in D.C. to disturb a religious service. Had Phillips succeeded, it would have been a hate crime. If the Catholic students had barged into a crowd of Indians while they were praying, they would be on the front page of every newspaper in the country and it would be the lead story on the broadcast and cable news outlets.
However, this unprovoked attack by Phillips and company—on innocent persons exercising their First Amendment right to religious liberty—was ignored by most of the mainstream media. The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Associated Press, ABC News. CBS News, NBC News, CNN and MSNBC never said a word about it. Only Fox News did.
Phillips also made disparaging remarks about Catholicism, saying the students are not being told the truth about their religion. Yet not one student made a disparaging remark about Indians. But the black thugs did—they called the Indians “savages.” That being the case, why didn’t Phillips and his merry band of church busters confront them? Why did they seek to crash a Mass instead? They are the bigots, not the kids.
The black Israelites bashed white people, black people, Christians (especially Catholics), Puerto Ricans, and homosexuals. Where were the gay rights groups? If the kids called gays “faggots”—which is what these thugs did—the media would have been up in arms. So it is not the content of an insult that matters, it is the identity of who says it.
The mainstream media picked up a few of the anti-Catholic statements by the black activists, but overall they did a lousy job. We watched the video and here are some of the most anti-Catholic statements that were made.
- [Black Israelite responding to a question] “You want to see hate in the Bible? Let’s see hate in the Bible. Let’s see what the Christians and the Catholics don’t go into.” [He then reads a verse from Ecclesiastes]
- [Black Israelite pointing out a Catholic priest standing nearby] “And like this, child molesting faggot priest right there… the Catholics are a bunch of child molesters.”
- [Black Israelite speaking to crowd] “You want to talk about R. Kelly. Why we don’t talk about the Catholic Church? Why we don’t talk about the Roman Catholic Church, and especially you so-called Hispanics and Negroes, you got no business calling yourself a Roman Catholic. When’s the last time you’ve been a Roman?”
- [Black Israelite speaking to Covington students] “And Jesus Christ is not a white man. This ain’t Jesus Christ…the truth matters. This is a faggot child molester. This is not Jesus Christ. If you look in the Bible, you will see he is a man of color” [man referring to a Catholic/Christian depiction of Jesus]
- [Black Israelite speaking to a Catholic prayer circle nearby] “The child molesting Catholic Church here. This is what we’ve come to. How long are we going stay in the Catholic Church? How long are we going to continue worshipping idols in the Catholic Church? Where is Hail Mary in the Bible? There’s no Hail Mary in the Bible. You can’t worship Mary. You’re supposed to worship the Lord.”
- [Black Israelite speaking to prayer group] “You have your reward. Your reward is your Catholic Church being tax exempt, being child molesters and getting away with it. You’ve been raping children since 1492 in the Catholic Church. You’ve been raping children in Rome before you got here. “
- [Black Israelite speaking to separate group of students] “When you walk in a Catholic Church, it is filled with idols. When you worship and kiss and bow down to a statue, you’re breaking the commandments of God. So the Catholic Church is totally against God, not even speaking about the child molestation. We’ll leave that one alone. But against God’s laws and commandments, yes. You say ‘Hail Mary, full of grace’. You say that prayer. Where is that prayer in the psalms? Where is that prayer in the Bible?”
No white student responded in kind to either the Indian or black activists. They, and they alone, were innocent.
What happened on January 18 has been nicely captured by my good friend, Rabbi Aryeh Spero. Here is what he told me.
“This is a contrived and false episode pounced on by people who hate religious white Catholics and are always on the look-out to demonize Catholics. These people are bigots. It is all part of the anti-Christianism by many segments in today’s leftist America and media collaborators. If they could, they would physically beat up Catholics and take away their jobs and livelihood simply because they are white, conservative, and people of biblical faith. They are consumed by hate. Who taught these people to SO hate white, religious Americans?”
