It’s been a wild autumn fighting verbal and graphic bombs lobbed at the Catholic Church. Most disconcerting has been the totally gratuitous nature of these ugly incidents. Sarah Silverman styles herself as an edgy young comedian. We see her as a foul-mouthed bigot. She began her October tirade against Catholicism by lamenting the problem of world [...]
In the October Catalyst, we described how bad the Penn & Teller season finale was on Showtime, asking members to let their voices be heard by contacting CBS, owner of Showtime. As always, they did not disappoint—CBS got walloped. On October 15, Bill Donohue received a call from the same high-ranking CBS official with whom he spoke [...]
The Catholic Church is committed to strong interreligious relations, as well it should be. Being respectful of other religions is a good thing, and it very often leads to crucial coalitions on timely political, economic, social and cultural matters. There is a difference, however, between respecting other religions and fawning over them. Surely we want children [...]
Comedian Sarah Silverman appeared on Bill Maher’s HBO show on October 9 attacking the Vatican. She began her monologue bemoaning the plight of world hunger, and then found a solution: “What is the Vatican worth, like 500 billion dollars? This is great, sell the Vatican, take a big chunk of the money, build a gorgeous condominium [...]
Bill Donohue wrote to Patrick W. Hayes, Legal Director, City of Rockford, Illinois, on September 24. Here is an excerpt: I am aware that the Northern Illinois Women’s Center has long been the subject of controversy in Rockford; the rights of pro-life demonstrators have allegedly been violated. That is an important issue, but that is not [...]
The Center for Inquiry, an atheist organization, launched the first International Blasphemy Day on September 30. It chose that day because it marked the anniversary of the 2005 publication of the Danish cartoons that so inflamed Muslims worldwide. Billed as a free speech event designed to oppose such things as a Muslim-sponsored U.N. resolution banning criticism [...]
On October 18, Fox broadcasted the 20th episode of “The Simpsons” Halloween special. One of the three stories, “Don't Have a Cow, Mankind,” was about people in Springfield becoming zombies after eating hamburgers infected with tainted meat. After 28 days, Bart (the son) tries one of the infected hamburgers, but proves immune to the virus. He [...]
Most people, including many of those who like President Obama’s policies, were taken aback when they learned that he won the Nobel Peace Prize. We were stunned, too, but for a different reason: it was not his short tenure as president and relative lack of accomplishments that made us wince, it was his constrained idea of [...]
The Catholic League has long suspected that, in many quarters, the outrage over priestly sexual abuse has had more to do with the status of the accused than the crime itself. The evidence became indisputable when we saw Hollywood defend and lionize Roman Polanski and David Letterman. Clearly there is a major difference between the two: [...]
When questions arose whether CBS was up to covering, as well as investigating, the Letterman scandal, we seconded that concern. But we preferred that CBS concentrate on the malicious thrashing of Catholicism delivered by Penn & Teller on their August 27 season finale on Showtime (CBS owns Showtime). What Letterman did was indefensible. But Penn & [...]
