In many parts of the country, this past Christmas was marked by conflict over its public celebration. The Catholic League was engaged in battles over the public display of crèches, winning some and losing some. In Lorain, Ohio, the ACLU threatened to sue city officials for erecting a crèche in Veterans Park; the ACLU director who [...]
In a story that received national attention, the Catholic League protested a painting that hung in the front window of the Art Students League in New York City. The painting, by Robert Cenedella, showed Santa Claus nailed to a cross, hovering over New York. The artist claimed that his work was designed to protest the commercialization [...]
There are many genres of anti-Catholicism, the most well-known of which are discriminatory practices against individual Catholics and bigoted assaults on the institutional Church. Both forms continue to exist, but the contemporary strain of Catholic bashing that is most common, if less visible, is best understood as a manifestation of cultural politics. Culture is an expression [...]
By Rick Hinshaw, Director of Communications It is now 25 years since the Supreme Court declared unborn children to be non-persons, opening the floodgates to a slaughter of innocent human life unprecedented in our nation's history. Pro-life people were horrified by Roe vs. Wade. They foresaw the mass destruction of pre-born life which it would unleash; and they [...]
The Catholic League’s New York Times ad on Pius XII triggered a storm of protest from Jewish readers. The e-mail, phone calls and letters took great umbrage at the suggestion that the Catholic Church was less than complicit in the killing of Jews during the Holocaust. While some of the letters were reasoned, many could easily be classified [...]
Travelers Insurance Company trespassed on the rights of Robert Cospito and lost. The Catholic League saw to that. On December 17, the New York Times ran a remarkable story by David Gonzalez on the decision of Travelers to deny further coverage to Cospito on the grounds that his house was a church. Cospito, who lives in Forest Hills, [...]
One question the league is often asked is how we make determinations on what we deem to be offensive. Here’s a good example of how the process works. This past fall, the Dallas Morning News ran a story, "Crimes of the Father," on a death row prisoner in Arkansas. It showed a picture of the man holding a [...]
Media coverage of Pope John Paul II’s trip to Cuba began over a month before the actual encounter of the pope and Fidel Castro. Already there were those drawing comparisons between the two men. Perhaps the most frequently heard unfair comment is that both men are dictators. But a dictator is one who oppresses the masses [...]
Last October, the Catholic League sent a letter to the director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, and a news release to the media, stating our objections to a piece of art by Robert Gober (see November Catalyst). Gober’s work showed a phallic culvert pipe piercing Our Blessed Mother, the purpose of which, he [...]
As soon as the Catholic League learned that the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) was planning on starting a cable station in the U.S., William Donohue wrote a letter to John Birt, Director General of the BBC, expressing his concerns. The BBC, Donohue said, produced the movie, "Priest" (it was distributed by the Disney owned firm, Miramax) [...]
