The Terrence McNally play about Jesus having sex with the twelve apostles will be performed this summer at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne (IPFW). The Catholic League entered the fray and immediately drew front-page coverage in local Fort Wayne newspapers. Bob Lockwood, our research director, lives in Fort Wayne and represented the league to the media. [...]
William A. Donohue "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me." Kids who repeat such rubbish can be forgiven for mouthing childish statements, but adults should know better. If anything, history is replete with examples where a lot more than bones have been broken by name-calling. Remember what happened when they [...]
By Robert P. Lockwood The public debate over abortion was critical in a resurgent anti-Catholicism in the mid-1960s. With the cooperation of media, abortion became an ongoing battle waged with a war of words mired in anti-Catholicism. Why did Catholicism become the issue in the abortion debate? It was in many ways a planned effort by [...]
On May 17, Christie’s auctioned one of two versions of "The Ninth Hour" by Maurizio Cattelan. The installation depicts Pope John Paul II being crushed by a meteorite while clutching his crozier. The Cattelan sculpture has been the source of controversy when shown in parts of Europe. This was especially true when it was featured in [...]
This is a story all Catholic League members should savor. It involves a member who contacted William Donohue about some offensive artwork and how successful we were in getting the artist to alter her work. There’s more: we handled this issue without going to the media but it wound up on page one of a major [...]
Sometimes it’s not the written word that gets our back up, it’s a picture. Take, for example, the following. On the Monday of Holy Week, the New York Daily News printed a big picture taken by an AP reporter of participants in a Holy Week procession in Spain. The byline was innocent enough—it explained that since the 15th century [...]
Sometimes we can’t quite believe what we’re reading. In less than a week, we read that "The Catholic Church is tearing America apart with the abortion issue, so they can take over" (letter to the editor, Southampton Press, May 9); the pope might actually be "an accomplice to Palestinian violence" (Cragg Hines, columnist for the Houston Chronicle, May [...]
In a libelous statement made against those involved in the pro-life movement, New York State Senator Eric T. Schneiderman sent a letter to his supporters linking Father Frank Pavone, National Director of Priests for Life, with those involved in criminal attacks against abortionists. Schneiderman called on his friends at NARAL, Planned Parenthood and NOW to join [...]
The Book-of-the-Month Club not only is selling John Cornwell’s book, Hitler’s Pope, it is hyping the book’s flawed thesis. Bob Lockwood took Club president William Byrnes to task for this outrageous slap at Catholics. Lockwood commented that the book "was savaged by reviewers and historians alike for its poor use of history, exaggerated claims and false assumptions." [...]
We know there are bigots of every kind, those who hate Catholics, Jews, African Americans, Asians, Hispanics, et al. But when a bigot submits a column to a mainstream newspaper, we don’t expect it to see the light of day. Well, one did. On May 12, The Desert Sun, a Palm Springs, California daily, published a piece [...]
