Every December the Catholic League goes on high alert over the ever-predictable Christmas controversies. The controversies started early this year when it was revealed in October that there will be no religious displays allowed during the holiday season at Saluda Shoals Park in Irmo, North Carolina. Last year the league was busy restoring the right of [...]
On November 13, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) passed a policy on priestly sexual abuse that the Catholic League hailed as “principled” and “a model of fairness.” The policy reflected the work of the mixed U.S.-Vatican commission that was done a week earlier. Francis Cardinal George, who was one of four panel members [...]
William A. Donohue We live in stressful times but that doesn’t give anyone the right to espouse madness. Yet crazy ideas abound these days and they typically emanate from the keyboards of intellectuals. Just consider the conspiratorial madness of Andrew Greeley, Bill Moyers and Daniel Goldhagen. They are, respectively, Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish. How’s that for [...]
By Kenneth D. Whitehead When a scholarly journal, The Political Science Reviewer, asked me to do an in-depth review-article on the major books that have recently come out about the Pope Pius XII controversy, I was at first not too eager to get involved. The Pius XII controversy seems to go on and on, with no resolution [...]
The Catholic League’s campaign pressuring the Democratic National Committee (DNC) to drop its affiliation with Catholics for a Free Choice (CFFC) continues to escalate. On Monday, October 28, we thought the DNC had finally come to its senses. When we tapped into its website that morning, we discovered that CFFC had been deleted from all categories. [...]
Throughout the fall, but particularly over the weekend before election day, Republicans and Democrats running for office campaigned in churches. For example, on the Sunday preceding election day, candidates for public office campaigned in churches in many states, including Maryland, Virginia, Florida, New York, Georgia, North Carolina, Michigan, Texas, California, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Tennessee. Most [...]
Americans United for Separation of Church and State has asked the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to investigate the Catholic Archdiocese of Santa Fe for violating IRS rules governing electioneering by churches. Americans United charges that Archbishop Michael Sheehan violated the tax-exempt status of the Church when he directed Catholic parishes to send a flier detailing how [...]
The October 21 episode of the CBS show “CSI: Miami” revolved around a priest who learns that a boy has been abused by his father (at first the priest was suspected as the abuser). The priest tries to convince the boy to go to the police, but the boy refuses. The boy’s mother subsequently kills the [...]
The October 26 edition of the CBS show “The District” was an hour-long drama based on the current scandal in the Catholic Church. Viewers were introduced to molesting priests, diocesan cover-ups and the like. It came on the heels of another CBS show that dealt with the same subject, the October 21 edition of “CSI: Miami.” [...]
On October 21, the Los Angeles Times released the results of a survey of Catholic priests. The most salient finding was that young priests are more traditional than their older counterparts. For example, priests under age 41 “expressed more allegiance to the clerical hierarchy, less dissent against traditional church teachings, and more certainty about the sinfulness of homosexuality, [...]
