The August 27 episode of Showtime’s Penn & Teller program will go down in history as one of the ugliest assaults on Catholics, or any other group, ever to air on television. Indeed, we know of no other show in the annals of television history that has even come close to this one-half hour of unrelieved [...]
Philip Pullman will release a book next year, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, that once again demonstrates his curious obsession with Catholicism. Pullman’s new book will attempt to show that St. Paul affected the Gospels more than anyone else. According to the English atheist, “He had this great ability to persuade others and his [...]
Bill Donohue serves on the Christian Film & Television Commission’s Board of Reference, the chairman of which is Ted Baehr; he publishes MOVIEGUIDE, a publication which monitors Hollywood from a Christian perspective. Baehr has asked his board members to support him in a petition drive aimed at curbing offensive fare in the movies. We urge you [...]
Taylor Swift is a teenager who received an MTV Video Music Award in September. But rapper Kanye West thought singer Beyoncé should have won. This wouldn’t have been newsworthy except for what he did: he walked on stage, grabbed the microphone from Swift and told the world that his favorite singer should have won. When the [...]
Over the past several months we have been jolted by the inconsistencies of the Obama administration regarding abortion in the health care bills. In the September issue of Catalyst, we noted that we were skeptical of the president’s intention to exclude abortion funding in the health care bill. Later on, we decided to give him the benefit [...]
The debate over what is and what isn’t covered in the health care bills has triggered a slew of unfair misrepresentations. For example, Planned Parenthood ripped the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) for its opposition to a bill that would provide funding for abortion. Also, a normally responsible New York Timesjournalist wrote a grossly distorted [...]
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has been the leading advocate for universal health care for decades. While initially supportive of congressional efforts to pass health care reform, the bishops withdrew their support in light of abortion being funded under legislative proposals. In addition, conscience rights were not being protected. As the debate unfolded nationally, [...]
There can be no excuse for the vicious rant that Penn & Teller delivered against the Vatican in their season finale. The language and the tone were scurrilous enough to merit condemnation. However, our outrage is not simply directed at their style: the substance of their accusations is just as pernicious. Since Penn Jillette, as always, [...]
Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol was published on September 15. This time the author of The Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons decided to focus on the Freemasons. Brown may loathe Catholics, but he just adores the Masons. “Brown goes out of his way in ‘The Lost Symbol’ to present the lodge as essentially benign and misunderstood,” reported the AP the [...]
Yale University has disgraced itself. Even those with no connection to the prestigious Ivy League institution are rightly angry at the hypocrites who run the university. Here’s what happened. In 2006, a Danish newspaper printed some inoffensive cartoons of Muhammad. None was obscene and none came close to the kind of incredibly disgusting portrayals of Catholicism [...]
