FRONTAL ASSAULT ON CATHOLICISM
Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments as follows:
Never has there been a more vicious anti-Catholic advertisement in a prominent American newspaper than the one in today’s New York Times by Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF). The demonization of Catholicism is palpable.
] is the Catholic Church’s opposition to the Health and Human Services mandate forcing Catholic non-profits to include abortion-inducing drugs, contraception and sterilization in its insurance plans. Its real agenda is to smear Catholicism. Here is how the ad begins: “It’s time to quit the Roman Catholic Church. Will it be reproductive freedom, or back to the Dark Ages?”
The ad blames the Catholic Church for promoting “acute misery, poverty, needless suffering, unwanted pregnancies, overpopulation, social evils and deaths.” It says the bishops are “launching a ruthless political Inquisition” against women. It talks about “preying priests” and corruption “going all the way to the top.” In an appeal to Catholic women, it opines, “Apparently, you’re like the battered woman who, after being beaten down every Sunday, feels she has no place else to go.”
FFRF is led by a husband and wife team, Annie Laurie Gaylor and Dan Barker. Fortunately for Gaylor, her mother did not follow through on the advice she gave women in her book,
Abortion Is a Blessing.
Not a single Catholic who reads this ad will be impelled to leave the Church. That is not the issue (Catholicism, unlike many other religions, is actually growing in the U.S., and worldwide). The issue is the increase in hate speech directed at Catholics.
Nothing will stop Catholics from demanding that the Obama administration respect their First Amendment rights, this vile assault by FFRF notwithstanding. Why the
Times allowed this ad is another issue altogether.
catholicleague.org/frontal-assault-on-catholicism/
NEW YORK TIMES BOWS TO MUSLIMS
Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments as follows:
On March 9, the New York Times ran a viciously anti-Catholic ad placed by the radical atheist group, Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF); to read it, and our response, click
here. In response, anti-Islamist activist Pamela Geller decided to submit an ad to the Times that played off the FFRF ad by changing the wording to make it look like an attack on Islam. For example, she asked Muslims to quit their religion because they oppress so many people.
Neil Munro of The Daily Caller has a splendid article on Geller’s courageous gambit today [click
http://dailycaller.com/2012/03/14/times-nixes-anti-islam-ad-runs-anti-catholic-ad/”]here
to read it]. She was turned down by the
Times. It was rejected, they said, because “the fallout from running this ad now could put U.S. troops and/or civilians in the [Afghan] region in danger.”
The
Times’ rationale for denying Geller’s ad is sound: as a veteran, I am opposed to unnecessarily putting our armed forces in harm’s way. But I wonder why it takes fear to impel the
New York Times not to run bigoted ads. Wouldn’t ethics suffice? It certainly wasn’t enough when they decided to run the FFRF ad assaulting Catholic sensibilities.
It would be wrong to merely pick on the
Times. We need to have a national discussion on the way the elite media extend a privileged position to some sectors of our society, while failing to extend the same protections to other sectors.
catholicleague.org/new-york-times-bows-to-muslims/
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