Catholic League president Bill Donohue announces the Catholic League’s Christmas project for 2010:
The atheists are out in force this year trying to neuter Christmas. While a few of their efforts are benign, e.g., the United Community of Reason’s bus billboards, “Don’t Believe in God? Join the Club”, most are predictably hostile, e.g., the American Atheists’ billboard that features a picture of a nativity scene with the inscription, “You Know it’s a Myth. This Season Celebrate Reason.”
The Catholic League does not have to resort to negative advertising to get its point across, and that is why we raised the money last month to launch a Christmas campaign that almost everyone will like, save for embittered atheists. A week ago, we mailed a Holy Family Nativity Scene [click here] to the nation’s 50 governors; a letter to the governors alerting them that our gift was being sent in care of their chief of staff was first sent. We know they arrived because we already received a kind letter from one governor, Phil Bredesen of Tennessee.
In my letter to the governors, I explained that it was our “sincere hope that it [the crèche] will be displayed in the Capitol Rotunda alongside secular symbols (e.g., a Christmas tree) this coming Christmas season.” I also made clear that this is entirely legal: “We are paying for it because we believe it would be inappropriate to use public monies to pay for religious symbols. But we also believe, consistent with Supreme Court rulings, that there is no constitutional prohibition banning privately-funded crèches from being displayed alongside secular symbols.”
In the December edition of our monthly journal, Catalyst, we are publishing the names of the 50 chiefs of staff [click here]; this way our members can contact them if they do not see a manger scene in the Capitol Rotunda.
So let the militant atheists do their thing, appealing to debased motives. We’re taking the moral high road.
