Professional "Catholic" William Donohue has declared a war on John Edwards. Here's what was posted just this morning on his website:
John Edwards has apparently decided that there is more to be gained by aligning himself with the cultural left than by standing on principle and firing the Catholic bashers on his payroll.
And here's his declaration of war:
We will launch a nationwide public relations blitz that will be conducted on the pages of the New York Times, as well as in Catholic newspapers and periodicals. It will be on-going, breaking like a wave, starting next week and continuing through 2007. It will be an education campaign, informing the public of what he did today
He'll undoubtably get a lot of free press time--just like Pat Buchanan, John McCain and all the other darlings of Pundit-world. Who is this guy who gets to speak for America's Catholics?
Well, he's not ignorant. He's well trained and has had a long career of right-wing advocacy.
The League is lead by William Donohue (Ph.D. in Sociology from NYU, 1980), a former Heritage Foundation Scholar who made himself a name as the author of several books against the ACLU. The League's board of advisors reads like a who-is-who of far-right opinion makers, including such notorious personalities as Brent Bozell III, Linda Chavez, Alan Keyes and Kate O’Beirne.
Donohue makes over $350,000 a year from The Catholic League. But he's also involved with any number of other groups, including the Heritage Foundation, Washington Legal Foundation, the Educational Freedom Foundation, the Society of Catholic Social Scientists, Catholics United for the Faith, the Jewish Action Alliance, Ave Maria Institute, the Christian Film & Television Commission and Project Moses, so his actual income is much higher.
Donohue has made a career of claiming bigotry against Catholics, while displaying his own. Here's a quote he has repeated frequently on cable interviews: "Hollywood is controlled by secular Jews who hate Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular..." Like O'Reilly and Dobbs, he gets rich off rage.
Christmas, 2005--Donohue gets paid to appear on ABC's World News Tonight, Scarborough Country, and American Morning, moaning that the word "Christmas" didn't appear on the White House's holiday card.
He described the omission as a "dumbing down" of the holiday, and charged President Bush with "pulling a Clinton" by "caving in to the forces of political correctness."
He doesn't seem to realize that the term hadn't appeared on White House holiday cards for years! His reward for his ignorance--more bookings.
Unknown to most of the cable hosts who introduce Donohue, he's actually part of an internal war within the Catholic church in the United States. His league campaigns against the "Voice of the Faithful," a grassroots and politically diverse organization of Catholics who are seeking greater Church accountability in light of the recent pedophilia scandals.
Because Donohue's group is bankrolling the effort to squelch opposition to official Church top-down control and the efforts to create more transparency (especially in child abuse challenges) the Bishops appear to turn a blind eye to the selective interpretation of Catholic doctrine from people like Donohue. He actually represents:
... a reactionary, "Church within a Church" whose followers often employ ultra-traditionalist lay groups... to do this dirty work, many of which were elevated during the reign of Pope John Paul II. Members of this Rightist clique will constantly scream their opposition to choice and stem cell research, while, in sotto voce, give lip service to the death penalty and war-- and say nothing at all, to name one example, about the influence of big tobacco in politics, and the addiction, ill health, death and -- the destruction of families that it leaves in its wake. This is a highly selective use of Church doctrine that cleverly promotes friendly non-mainstream conservative political action often designed to further the personal interests of friendly individuals of superfluously wealth. It is also an outrageous abuse of church teachings to thwart the views of the Church in other areas.
What's at the heart of this clique? Some authorities associate it with a European movement called "Carlism"
Carlism...sees ultra-orthodox Catholicism as the cornerstone of the state. Secondly, sovereignty is vested not with the people, but with a monarch, who in turn is answerable only to the Catholic Church
Sound like Dominionism?
Sure does.
Until Catholics ignore all the NT allegories about sheep and demand accountability in their own organization, right wing nuts like Donohue will be allowed to speak for all of them again and again on cable television. Time to call your local cable station and say: "That bigot doesn't speak for me."