UNITED STATES
Catholic League
The following article appeared in the April 2014 edition of The Limbaugh Letter.
Reprinted with permission from The Limbaugh Letter, ©2014 Premiere Networks, Inc.
For additional information, or to subscribe to The Limbaugh Letter please visit www.thelimbaughletter.com
My Conversation with Bill Donohue
by Rush Limbaugh
A privilege to speak with this religious freedom warrior, president of the Catholic League, a bold presence on television, the author of many books, including Secular Sabotage: How Liberals Are Destroying Religion and Culture in America and Why Catholicism Matters: How Catholic Virtues Can Reshape Society in the 21st Century:
Rush: Dr. Donohue, this is great. I have wanted to talk to you for the longest time, and I’m really appreciative that you’ve been able to make the time here.
Donohue: Wait, what? For you? What, are you kidding me? You’re number one, buddy. [Laughs]
Rush: You intrigue me. I’ve been watching you for years on tv. Since I’ve got you here, could you tell me a little bit about the Catholic League? How old is it? What is its purpose?
Donohue: It was founded in 1973 by a man I never got a chance to meet; he died a couple of years before I took over in 1993. Back in 1973 Father Virgil Blum, a Jesuit priest, professor of political science at Marquette University, founded the Catholic League. Even though that was the year of Roe v. Wade, that wasn’t his top issue. His top issue was anti-Catholicism. He wanted this organization to be somewhat analogous to the ADL [Anti-Defamation League] in the Jewish community. His driving issue more than anything else back in ’73 was actually school vouchers. Then abortion, then other things. But that was it, to defend individual Catholics and the institutional church.
Though he was a priest, he felt the need for a lay organization. I can tell you from my conversations with a lot of bishops and cardinals over the years, they very much feel there is a need for a lay organization because, quite frankly, I can say some things that they may want to say, but they’re constrained by the collar. There’s a need for Catholics to enter into a more robust debate. …
Rush: You don’t worry that the College of Cardinals can somehow be corrupted ten, 20, 30 years from now? What about the priesthood? Some say that the abuse of children thing is the result of infiltration, to create the exact image of the Church that has happened.
Donohue: The sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church was an absolute, utter disgrace. John Jay College of Criminal Justice, not an arm of the Catholic Church, put the timeline as overwhelmingly from the mid-60s to the mid-80s. Mid-60s, the beginning of the sexual revolution. Mid-80s, because I would argue AIDS was discovered in ’81 and that put the brakes on people.
Why did it affect the Catholic Church? When the winds of culture change dramatically, it gets through the military, it gets through the churches, everybody. That’s not an excuse. You had two principle actors: the molesting priest and the enabling bishop. Most of the molesting priests, according to John Jay, were men who had sex with men. Now they don’t use the word I’m going to use: homosexuality. John Jay said less than five percent were pedophiles. In other words, it was guys hitting on adolescent guys.
Now, I can say this to you because you’ll give me a chance to say it. I’ve said it a million times, but nobody wants to quote me on this. Most gay priests are not molesters, but most of the molesting priests have been gay. Now, I’m Irish. My people have a problem with alcoholism. It doesn’t mean if you’re born Irish you’re going to become an alcoholic. It means that maybe you ought to take a look at certain communities. That’s all I’m saying.
Now, the enabling bishop. What drove him? Clericalism. That’s the term that’s used in Catholic circles. Those who are not Catholic would probably understand it more in terms of elitism, arrogance, pomposity. “The bishop knows best.” “Don’t worry about that, I’m taking care of things.” Yes, you took care of things real well, some of you.
This should never have happened. They were teaching in some of the seminaries in the 1970s that all kinds of sexual expression was okay. As in the 1977 book Human Sexuality, by a former priest, Anthony Kosnik. It’s stunning. Everything goes. I’m saying the Catholic Church became corrupt, morally speaking, on matters sexual in the 1970s when the lid blew. Not all seminaries, obviously, but too many of them. So there was this enabling factor, “Send the guy to therapy and he’ll be just fine.” Well, some people are intractable. I’m not saying you throw them in the street or lock them up, although some of them certainly should be, but what you can’t do is put them back into ministry.
“Give the poor devil therapy” was the zeitgeist. That was the spirit of the times in the 60s and 70s. You could rehabilitate anybody. Therapy was for everybody. People were bragging about their analysts, and too many bishops got advice from the psychiatrists and they accepted it. It was a sad chapter. In the last six years, we have seven credible accusations made against 40,000 priests. There’s a serious problem of child rape going on in other demographic communities about which you will hear nothing. Almost every case you hear today is an old case which is being resurrected. There’s no bigger devil in this than the Catholic left and those who claim to be Catholic and have one foot out the door or who have long left and who are angry. Particularly watch out for the ex-priest, the ex-seminarian, and the ex-nun.
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