A league of the Pope's own - censorship of material deemed unflattering to the Catholic Church and the papacy - Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights - Column

Humanist, Jan-Feb, 1998 by John M. Swomley

The Catholic League has called upon a Los Angeles radio station to fire its talk show host Bill Press, a Roman Catholic, for remarks critical of the pope. It has also criticized FOX TV, Bravo, ABC, Newsday, and numerous others for critical comments about the pope or the Catholic church. Mumford writes that the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel even dropped Ann Landers' advice column because of the Catholic League.

In the fall 1997 season, ABC launched a series called Nothing Sacred about a modern-day priest who occasionally has doubts about his calling. In an opening segment, the priest tells a woman who confesses her intention to have an abortion that she should follow her own conscience. The Associated Press reported on October 5, 1997, that Catholic League objections brought about the cancellation of sponsorship by fifteen national advertisers, including Isuzu, Weight Watchers, Chrysler-Plymouth, and American Honda.

The media are not the league's only target. It has attacked colleges for remarks professors made in classrooms and the University of Michigan for cartoons which ran in a student newspaper. After a threatening letter from Donohue to the president of the university, the cartoonist apologized and the president wrote a conciliatory letter.

The league has also threatened members of Congress--both House and Senate--calling upon them to resign from the Population Institute because, according to Mumford, the institute's May 1995 fundraising letter contained the following:

The Vatican continues to under

mine the advancements we've

made in Cairo on issues of pregnancy

prevention. The anti-contraceptive

gestapo has vowed to double the

number of its delegation to 28

and to turn once more to weaken

the cause of reproductive rights.

The October 1994 Catalyst carried the headline "League Assails Clinton Administration for Bigotry" because of a State Department spokesperson's disagreement with the Vatican over the Cairo conference on population. The league also published an "open letter" to President Clinton as an advertisement in the New York Times, asking the president to apologize for the State Department's statement.

The Catholic League has attacked government employees and even the Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish organization, for its decision to present a literary award to Richard Lukas for his book, Did the Children Cry? Hitler's War Against Jewish and Polish Children.

In a directory of right-wing Catholic organizations published by Catholics for a Free Choice, the Catholic League's main office is listed as 1011 First Avenue, New York, New York, which is the headquarters of Cardinal John O'Connor's archdiocese. In short, that address increasingly has been the agent for censorship of any critique of the Catholic church and for the establishment of a Catholic culture as the norm in American public relations.

Democracy, however, depends upon the free flow of information and opinion and the people's right to know. There is a serious danger to any society or government when the leaders of any church or secret organization under its control can intimidate and suppress information and opinion. The people need to know when taxes are used to finance church institutions or when churches use political and judicial power to write church doctrines into law. Ultimately, the church, the state, and the media face a decline in public confidence when important information is suppressed.