On June 26, the U.S. Supreme Court in Vacco v. Quill upheld the laws in New York and Washington state that make it illegal for doctors to assist in the suicide of their patients. The decision said that "the New York statutes outlawing assisted suicide neither infringe fundamental rights nor involve suspect classifications." The court added that "The [...]
On May 31 and June 1, the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) was host to the performance of a comic opera, "Sisters of the Visitation." The performance ended a month-long series of events celebrating the inauguration of the new chancellor of the school, Dr. M.R.C. Greenwood. The opera involved a reckless young man and his [...]
The Statesmen Journal of Salem, Oregon, recently ran a lengthy front-page story on a young Hispanic girl who was about to receive her First Holy Communion. Of course, the article had much more to say than simply report on the experiences of the young girl. Indeed, it quickly became apparent that the real purpose of the story was [...]
Our lead story on Cinnabon and Bongo Java are only two instances where commercial establishments have sought to market their products by using nun figures. Other examples of this trend include the selling of "Fighting Nuns" (a toy with boxing gloves), Squeak Toy Nun (it squeaks when squeezed) nun dolls and comic strip characters. The first [...]
In the April and May editions of MAD magazine, Catholic priests were portrayed as child molesting homosexuals. The April edition had a priest preaching from the pulpit asking parishioners to help pay for the millions that the Church has had to pay in lawsuits to cover the cost of "priests who have molested young boys." In May, the [...]
It is one thing for Saturday Night Live to engage in satire, quite another to single-out a religion for scorn by regularly featuring a character that ridicules it. Such is the case with the character Mary Katherine, played by Molly Shannon. And guess which religion she likes to mock? Shannon poses as a Catholic schoolgirl, wearing a very [...]
In May, a playhouse in the suburban Pittsburgh town of Cranberry, the Comtra Theatre, yielded to pressure and amended many parts of a script that the league found objectionable. The play, "Once a Catholic," supposedly portrayed the confusion and awkwardness of Catholic schoolgirls who discovered their sexuality in the 1950s. But the script went far beyond [...]
A small Catholic college in Indiana has responded to a complaint lodged by the Catholic League that seems to guarantee that it will pay more attention to its Catholic status in the future. The league was notified by one of its members that the school newspaper refused to run pro-life ads on the theory that it [...]
In the last Catalyst, we reported that Bethany College allowed the performance of the anti-Catholic play/movie, Agnes of God. The league sent a letter to the president of the school, Dr. D. Duane Cummins, stating its objections and calling into question the propriety of a Christian college (Bethany is affiliated with the Disciples of Church) sponsoring an anti-Catholic [...]
ABC, which is owned by Disney, is scheduled to unleash a show about a priest this fall that already has garnered the league’s concern. The priest in "Nothing Sacred," Father Ray (played by Kevin Anderson), is described by Entertainment Weekly as an "irreverent priest who questions the existence of God, feels lust in his heart, and touches [...]
