My first response to these outrageous comments was to say, “John Edwards is a decent man who has had his campaign tarnished by two anti-Catholic vulgar trash-talking bigots. He has no choice but to fire them immediately.” Edwards not only stood by them, he had the audacity to say that “We’re beginning a great debate about the future of our country, and we can’t let it be hijacked.” The implication, of course, was that the Catholic League was not responding in a responsible fashion. According to him, we were out to hijack his campaign. That did it. “We will launch a nationwide public relations blitz that will be conducted in the pages of the New York Times,” I said, “as well as in Catholic newspapers and periodicals. It will be on-going, breaking like a wave, starting next week and continuing through 2007.” I promised to enlist my allies in the Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Muslim, and Buddhist communities. 63
Edwards made his pledge to stand by Marcotte and McEwan on February 8, and three days later Marcotte lashed out at Christians in general by saying, “The Christian version of the virgin birth is generally interpreted as super-patriarchal where god is viewed as so powerful he can impregnate without befouling himself by touching a woman, and women are nothing but vessels.” 64 Marcotte quit right after that, blaming me for her problems. She said she had to resign because “I can’t do the job I was hired to do because Bill Donohue doesn’t have anything better to do with his time than harass me.” 65 McEwan folded the next day.
The Catholic League was delighted with the news, but we quickly had to cancel our plans. President’s Day was coming and we had reserved a spot on the op-ed page of the New York Times to make our case against Edwards. What made this whole episode so surreal was being turned down originally by the lawyers for the New York Times because they said our proposed ad for February 16, which I wrote, violated the newspaper’s policy on indecency. They cited Marcotte’s remark about the “hot, white, sticky Holy Spirit” and McEwan’s comment about religious conservatives. This played right into my hands.
I rewrote the beginning of the ad: “This ad was to begin with two vile anti-Christian quotes penned by two women on the payroll of John Edwards. Though neither contained obscene words spelled in full, the New York Times said it violated their policy and therefore rejected them. The first quote was a reference to the Virgin Mary being injected with semen by the Lord. The second used a patently vulgar term to describe religious conservatives. The first part of the word is ‘mother.’ To read what was actually said, please see the Catholic League Web site.” 66
We didn’t have to wait long before the lawyers said we could go with the original version. They no doubt reasoned, as I knew they would, that the Times would look rather prudish next to the Catholic League if the revised version were printed. In any event, the bloggers folded, making the ad moot; it never ran.
Demonizing Christians
In the buildup to the 2004 election, radical secularists went on a tear, issuing blistering attacks on Christians. They went even crazier when they lost. Some of the comments were so off-the-wall that it made one wonder whether these crackpots would ever recover. And there weren’t just a few of them who crashed.
George Soros’s MoveOn.org was so upset with a Gallup poll showing Bush with a 14-point lead in September that it took out a full-page ad in the New York Times referring to George Gallup, Jr., as a “devout evangelical Christian” who could not be trusted to be fair. 67 As the election neared, Robert Wright, visiting professor at Princeton, said Bush’s “divine-feeling feelings” were part of today’s “problem, not the solution.” A New York Times editorial said that if Bush won again, he would appoint judges who would allow states to become “mini-theocracies.” David Domke, a University of Washington professor, remarked that “one is hard pressed” to distinguish between Osama bin Laden’s religious views and Bush’s. New York University professor Mark Crispin Miller said Bush wanted a “theocracy.” University of Southern California professor Neal Gabler commented that Bush’s ideas were “the stuff of a theocracy—the president as pope or mullah.” Yale emeritus professor Harold Bloom feared that if Bush was reelected, “we could be faced with theocracy, an eventual tyranny of the twice-born.” Robert Kuttner of the American Prospect said Bush “seems to want to move the United States toward a theocracy.” Journalist James Ridgeway wrote that “Bush’s goal is to blur the lines between separating church and state and turn the U.S. toward theocracy.” 68
Once Bush won, the secularists really lost it. Writing in the Wichita Eagle, Mitch Albom of the Detroit Free Press wondered if Bush understood that “he was not chosen god, bishop, rabbi or high priest.” The publisher of Harper’s magazine, John R. MacArthur, showed his incredible narcissism when he blasted Bush and Kerry for advertising “their subservience to Jesus Christ and the Christian god, without the least concern about whether it might offend me.” Ex-seminarian Garry Wills demonstrated his usual arrogance in the New York Times: “Can a people that believes more fervently in the Virgin Birth than in evolution still be called an Enlightened nation?” He ended his piece by saying that “moral zealots” will scare moderate Republicans with their “jihads.” 69
New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd accused Bush of running “a jihad in America so he can fight one in Iraq.” Dowd’s colleague, Thomas Friedman, said Bush’s base wanted “to extend the boundaries of religion” and promote “intolerance.” Without providing a single example, Margaret Carlson opined in the Los Angeles Times that Catholic bishops “demonized” Kerry’s supporters by warning them “they could go to hell just for voting for him.” Sheryl McCarthy of Newsday accused Bush of “pandering to people’s fears, petty interests and prejudices” against gays and others. Sidney Blumenthal, writing in Salon.com, nervously observed that the new Senate majority was “more theocratic than Republican.” In the same spot, Sean Wilentz must have embarrassed his colleagues at Princeton when he said that “religious fanaticism” had “seized control of the federal government.” 70
A week after the election, the secularists were still steaming. Onetime presidential hopeful Gary Hart proclaimed in the New York Times, “There is a disturbing tendency to insert theocratic principles into the vision of America’s role in the world.” DeWayne Wickham of USA Today fretted, “Putting God in the public square runs the risk of turning our democracy into a theocracy.” Miami Herald writer Leonard Pitts, Jr., warned that social conservatives were “the soldiers of the new American theocracy.” Ellen Goodman of the Boston Globe said that people like her “don’t want their country racked by the fundamentalist religious wars we see across the world.” Similarly, Barbara Ehrenreich argued that we were polarized because of “Christian fundamentalism.” Syndicated columnist Byron Williams warned that we were moving “closer to a theocracy.” And playwright Tony Kushner believed we now had “a kind of unholy alliance between theocracy and plutocracy.” 71
These are not the words of rational people. The theocracy they envisioned has not taken place. But religious conservatives have learned a lesson: many of their adversaries are not simply without faith—they harbor a hatred against them that is so visceral as to make them mad.
Some Democrats have also learned a lesson. Obama, for instance, is not embraced by religious conservatives, but he has shown a deftness in handling the issue of religion that his predecessors have lacked. His presidential campaign had a religious outreach program that was professional, and it paid off: 54 percent of voters saw Obama as “friendly” to religion, a 16-point improvement over his party’s numbers. While John McCain was seen as “friendly” to religion by 58 percent of voters, it was Obama who made the largest gain. 72 Nonetheless, as Pew researcher John Green said, the overall numbers did not produce a religious “realignment,” and that’s because economic issues trumped cultural ones in 2008. 73
Obama may be good at “God-talk,” but that didn’t stop him from moving quickly to satisfy his secular base. For example, his stimulus package barred colleges from using federal funds to build or repair
buildings used for religious services. Worse, he moved with lightning speed to strip healthcare workers of their right not to perform services they find morally repugnant. 74 The fact is that radical secularists, not the faithful, were emboldened by his victory. And it is they who are a threat to democracy—not religious conservatives. If they had things their way, they would silence the faithful and drive them underground. They are a menace to liberty.
CHAPTER 8
Self-Sabotage: Catholicism
If Only He Would Die
They couldn’t wait for him to die. Although Pope John Paul II was held in higher regard by evangelicals than anyone in their own community, including Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, 1 Catholics seeking to sabotage the Church’s teachings had actually been praying for him to drop dead for years. Before a packed house of dissident Catholics at the annual Call to Action convention in November 1997, Sister Maureen Fiedler proclaimed that “a lot of people in this Church are waiting for a person in this Church to pass away.” 2 Everyone knew whom she meant.
When their death wish came true in 2005, they started bashing “John Paul the Great” as soon as they heard the news. John Carroll left the priesthood a long time ago, but he has never been able to overcome his anger. “John Paul II has faithfully tried to preserve this medieval, absolutist notion of pope-centered Catholicism with everything going out from the Vatican,” he opined. 3 Father Andrew Greeley said the pope was a “brave, holy man,” but quickly added that he had an “authoritarian style” on sexual issues that “polarized the Church.” 4 A radical dissident group, We Are Church, said the pope deserved to be criticized because he strengthened “authoritarian structures within the Church itself.” 5 Thomas Cahill was featured in the New York Times predicting that John Paul “may, in time to come, be credited with destroying his church.” 6 And St. Louis University theologian Ronald Modras condemned the pope because he once chastised Anthony Kosnik for writing “a dull book on human sexuality.” 7 What he failed to mention was that the “dull book” spoke nonjudgmentally about sex between man and beast, among other perversions, and was required reading in some of the wild seminaries a generation ago.
In the two-week period following the death of John Paul II and preceding the election of his successor, the saboteurs laid down the gauntlet. New Ways Ministry, a group that rejects the Church’s teachings on homosexuality, admonished the Church not to oppose gay marriage initiatives “being enacted in secular governments.” Dignity, an organization of Catholic gay dissidents, implored the Catholic hierarchy “to learn how God is speaking through GLBT [Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender] people to spread the gospel.” Feminists such as Sheila Durkin Dierks boasted that “Groups of women are gathering in their homes [to] celebrate the liturgy without an ordained presider.” Call to Action said it hoped “the new pope recognizes the necessity of lifting the mandatory celibacy ban,” and made another pitch for women priests. They were joined in this chorus by Women-Church Convergence, We Are Church, Catholics Speak Out, and the National Coalition of American Nuns, all of which are pro-abortion; 8 the latter group urged Catholics to vote for pro-abortion and pro–gay marriage candidates in 2006. 9
During this period, I had another one of my run-ins with Christopher Hitchens, someone I love to debate. Three days after the pope died, I was asked to debate Hitchens on the MSNBC show Scarborough Country. The show, which was taped, never aired.
Hitchens started bashing the pope, blaming him for the sexual abuse scandal, obstruction of justice, etc. As he often does, he provided no evidence for his ridiculous charges. When asked by Joe Scarborough whether I agreed, I replied that only a madman or a bigot would do so. At that, Hitchens started screaming bloody murder and stormed off the set (he was in Washington and I was in New York). I continued with my comments, as did Pat Buchanan. But Chris Matthews, who was also on the show, was uneasy. The pope had not yet been buried and already the fireworks had begun. Matthews persuaded his colleagues that the show should not air (it was bad timing), and though this was the right call, I only wish the viewers could have seen Christopher flip out.
With the pope dead, the dissidents thought their day had come. Finally, they stood to get a pope who would deliver on all the reforms they so craved. Little did they know that their worst nightmare was about to come true.
If there was one cardinal the malcontents hated, it was Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, John Paul II’s right-hand man. So when Ratzinger addressed his fellow cardinals the day before the new pope would be named, his detractors paid close attention. He spoke forcefully about a “dictatorship of relativism” that had gripped the West, and of libertinism, the descent of liberty into license. This was music to the ears of conservatives, but to Catholics like E. J. Dionne they were “fighting words.” 10 Interestingly, Reverend Richard P. McBrien of Notre Dame took some consolation in Ratzinger’s address: “I think this homily shows he realizes he’s not going to be elected. He’s too much of a polarizing figure. If he were elected, thousands upon thousands of Catholics in Europe and the United States would roll their eyes and retreat to the margins of the Church.” 11 Both Dionne’s and McBrien’s comments appeared in the Washington Post on April 19, 2005, literally hours before the newspaper’s Web site posted the news that Cardinal Ratzinger was named the new pope.
Deborah Caldwell of Beliefnet accurately summed up what was going on: “For a couple of decades now, liberals taking shots at the Vatican would telegraph their disgust with one word—Ratzinger. That sour puss German Inquisition meister. Prince of the New Dark Ages. Torquemada of the 21st century. God’s Rottweiler.” 12 Father Robert Drinan, a former congressman from Massachusetts, said he was “pretty depressed,” and Sister Fiedler confessed that “I was standing in St. Peter’s Square when I heard the news [of the election] and my heart sank.” 13
Dissidents as Nihilists
What would make them happy? It’s not clear even the dissidents know at this point. That is why they have become nihilists: they reckon that if they can’t get their way, neither should the rank and file get what they want. Indeed, they’d rather be a nuisance than bolt. They could join another religion, but that wouldn’t be as much fun. Besides, they have too much invested at this point—in many ways—to cut and run.
They’re also dishonest. For example, they complain endlessly about papal power but if they ever had a pope who accepted their views on women and sexuality, they would insist on blind obedience. This isn’t a matter of conjecture. For example, dissidents never put capital punishment on the table for dialogue, and that’s because they like the way Pope John Paul II spoke against it in most instances. So when the left wins one, they take a “shut up and get in line” position. Which explains why they still want to dialogue about abortion—they haven’t gotten their way on that one. Nor will they.
Similarly, the dissidents were bent out of shape in 2004 when some bishops threatened to withhold Communion from pro-abortion politicians. Tom Fox, publisher of the National Catholic Reporter, said at the time that “some Catholic bishops and conservatives now fail to distinguish moral from civil law, the ideal from the real.” 14 When exactly this occurred, he did not say, but it’s a sure bet that this alleged blurring of the lines wasn’t operative in the 1960s when New Orleans Archbishop Joseph Rummel was busy excommunicating prominent local Catholic politicians for their pro-segregation politics. Outside the Church, the secularists took the same position. The same New York Times that was aghast over bishops who threatened sanctions against pro-abortion officials congratulated Archbishop Rummel for his “unwavering courage” and for “setting an example founded on religious principle.” 15
Much of the anger directed at the Church begins and ends with sex. Quite frankly, the dissidents don’t ascribe to the Church’s ideal of sexual restraint. Here’s a perfect example. In 2002, I debated Tom Roberts, a colleague of Tom Fox’s at the National Catholic Reporter, on MSNBC’s Hardball. At one point, I said, “Now guys like Roberts, the National Catholic Reporter, t
hey don’t believe in anything the Catholic Church says on sexuality anyhow, so of course he doesn’t want to talk about homosexuality.” Mike Barnicle, sitting in for Chris Matthews, interrupted me: “Wait, Bill, please. Tom, take it up. I mean, you just got whacked across the face. Take it up.” To which Roberts replied, “I’m not going to take that up.” 16 How could he?
The issue of women’s ordination continues to fire dissidents. Some of the dissidents are masochists who park themselves where they’re not wanted. If masochism isn’t at work, then only self-delusion could explain why eight adult women would board a sailing ship and go through a make-believe three-hour ceremony “ordaining” themselves as priests in a religion whose teachings and traditions they loathe. Their little stunt, which the media loved, got them excommunicated, but the riverboat queens were nonplussed. Six of the eight worked for the Catholic Church in one capacity or another. 17 Similarly, it came as no surprise that when Jean Marie Marchant resigned her position in 2006 as director of health-care services for the Archdiocese of Boston—after revealing that she had participated in a secret “ordination” ceremony a year earlier—she admitted that it was her goal “to stay within the church and to push the boundaries.” Just as unsurprising was the fact that her husband is an ex-priest. 18
The National Catholic Reporter is the New York Times of Catholic dissidents. In an editorial on the subject of women “ordaining” themselves priests, the weekly said the rebels “aren’t discussing whether women should be ordained; they aren’t asking for permission to be ordained; they are just doing what, as they see it, a church crying ‘priest shortage’ needs them to do.” They also managed to get themselves excommunicated. The editorial then got downright silly when it said, “The hierarchy is rightly nervous about women declaring themselves ordained, however illegally, because these ceremonies carry a strong implicit message.” 19 It is doubtful that any bishop ever lost a single night’s sleep fretting over elderly women playing priest.
Secular Sabotage Page 17