Over the summer, the Catholic League contacted well over 10,000 members in California alerting them to a vote on a bill in the Assembly Appropriations Committee that unfairly targets the Catholic Church. We also emailed over a thousand pastors throughout the state. It was worth the effort. On August 14, the bill failed 6-4; there were [...]
The Catholic League has filed a complaint with Facebook about an entry that shows an edgy picture of the Virgin Mary with the inscription, “Virgin Mary Should’ve Aborted.” Facebook said it did not constitute hate speech. When others continued to protest, the page was taken down, but then other pages, similar in content, appeared; they are [...]
William A. Donohue If there is one thing that Pope Francis and President Obama have in common, it is their professed interest in helping the poor. Both talk a great deal about this issue, and both occupy a very high status. Truth to tell, their commitment to the poor is hardly unique. While there are some [...]
Pope Francis is the perfect pontiff for our age, a truly populist pope. He can do something few others can: espouse the Church’s traditional moral teachings—which are profoundly countercultural—while speaking with a relevancy almost impossible to duplicate. Style doesn’t change substance, but it can facilitate the transmission of substantive teachings. It’s not just his simplicity of [...]
During Pope Francis’ trip to Brazil for World Youth Day, he spoke about materialism for one straight week before millions, and his formal comments garnered 74 news stories on Lexis-Nexis. He spoke off-the-cuff about homosexual priests before a handful of reporters on the airplane going back to Rome and his remarks triggered 220 news stories. One [...]
Pope Francis has no stomach for any type of sexual abuse. His decision to revise the norms affecting these crimes, with more stringent penalties, is a welcome tonic. However, he does not need to be congratulated for this—he needs to be supported by those in a position to do so. Child sexual abuse affects every organization [...]
According to Ben Urwand’s new book, The Collaboration: Hollywood’s Pact with Hitler, not only did the Hollywood studios obediently bow to Hitler’s masters by killing scenes deemed objectionable, they even hired Nazis at Paramount. The head of MGM in Germany actually acceded to a request by Hitler’s henchmen to divorce his Jewish wife; she wound up [...]
CBS CEO Les Moonves refused to fire Spencer Clawson from the reality show, “Big Brother 15,” yet two other contestants were terminated (from their day jobs) for making racial slurs. On the live feed of a recent episode, Clawson joked how he likes to masturbate to child pornography. “I love it when they’re around 3 or 4 [...]
Recently religion professor Shaun Casey was named to head the State Department’s new Office of Faith-Based Community Initiative. The recently deceased sociologist of religion Robert Bellah once described civil religion as “a set of beliefs, symbols and rituals” that date to the Founding; they represent “the obligation, both collective and individual, to carry out God’s will [...]
In August, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed a federal lawsuit against the Holy See. Earlier on April 3, 2002, Jeffrey Anderson filed suit against the Holy See claiming that it was responsible for the conduct of a priest who had allegedly molested a young man in Oregon in 1965. Anderson contended that the priest [...]
