Melendez won't run for another term as DFL chair

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Harvard educated attorney and divinity school grad Brian Melendez informed state DFL party leaders today that he won't seek another term as state DFL chair.

Melendez, who has faced some criticism after the party's disastrous legislative election results, is leaving after three two-year terms.

In a note to Central Committee members, he wrote about getting U.S. Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken elected on his watch, along with the new DFL governor, but doesn't refer to the DFL's disastrous legislative election results in November.

Nor does he refer to the "Ignore the Poor" postcard campaign that he authorized that became nationally known for its bigotry and ineptness. Here is a comment to this article that first appeared on Minnpost and has Melendez' complete statement:

It's not surprising that Melendez didn't mention the "Ignore the Poor" political postcard campaign that he authorized to attempt to save the Senate District 40 seat for the DFL.

This crude, multi-faceted campaign with three postcards mailings that in addition was aimed at Roman Catholics and their position against homosexual marriage while erroneously tagging them with being against the poor.

The messages of the postcards reminded voters of Archbishop John Nienstedt's mailing of DVD's to all the Catholic families in the State of Minnesota.

That campaign became known for its ineptness and bigotry quickly throughout the entire country, reminding people how how anti-Catholic Democratic leaders happen to be. Who knows how many votes were changed against Democrats partially because of Melendez's incredibly stupid decision?

The Catholic Church, its bishops, its agencies and its laypeople, and their agencies, are far and away the largest suppliers of charity to the poor in this country, not to mention being the largest private provider of education also.

Melendez must not have learned much when he got his Divinity degree from Harvard. Now he will have time to go back for a refresher course.

Tuesday is the Great Minnesota Give-Together; the "Give to the Max Day"

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Please consider giving a donation to the Minnesota's Catholic Defense League, a 20 year old organization of Catholic men and women who further the work of the church in her mission of evangelization. Our work is to protect the church, its bishops, priests and religious from unwarranted attacks or misleading information from many sources but mainly print and broadcast media. This includes items such as:

• Misrepresentation of the church's position or doctrine
• Ridicule of its ministers
• False or misleading statements about what the church has done
• Subtle or even deliberate, vicious lies concerning the church.

Is there really media bias? You bet there is.

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Lots of folks say that the media is incredibly riddled with liberal views used to further an agenda. I suspect that is true on particular issues (not necessarily on the Sports or Dining Out pages, though.

My experience this past week contributing to, and then reading media reports on the postcard mailings, has been a bit of an eyeopener for me.

It recalls an incident, many years ago, when at a government hearing where environmentalists were protesting a development project being considered for the City of Stillwater, where I then worked. Lawyers for the objectors, including the then head of the state's Pollution Control Agency, were quite adept at interpreting state laws and regulations to their advantage. We ended up getting our approvals, but it taught me to watch closely what they say, and what they don't say, that I have retained since then.

The first internet awareness of the DFL mailing to voters in Senate District 40 came from a phone call from a concerned Catholic whose friend had received the version of the over-sized postcard showing the "priest" wearing a large "Ignore the Poor" button.

While a few mainline Lutherans, Episcopalians and others might wear the Roman collar (with the white tab at the throat), virtually everybody would first think of a priest. Evangelicals and non-denominational pastors wear business suits.

Well there is nothing wrong with sending a photo of a priest on a political mailing. The real message was contained in the "Ignore the Poor" button. That message was a reminder to Minnesotans of the controversy created among those proposing legislation legalizing homosexual marriage in the state, something that will be hotly debated in the next session of the Legislature.

A few weeks ago a Marriage DVD, paid for by an anonymous donor, was sent to all the Catholics of the state. The reaction from some was outrage, criticizing the Church's teaching, and remorseful that that money had not been used to "feed the poor."

Charging that Catholics are in favor of "ignoring the poor" is a despicable slap at Catholics and their Church, the largest private providers of charity to the poor in this country.

By the next morning, it was known that there had actually been three different versions of the mailing to SD 40. The second one was that of an angel holding a banner stating "Blessed are the Rich" with a line above, "The Bible doesn't tell us to neglect the poor." This message obviously complements the "Ignore the Poor" button, aimed at Catholics, on the first post card.

The third large post-card had the image of a small side or chapel altar, with a statue of St. Anthony of Padua, traditionally posed holding the Child Jesus, the "Word of God", since St. Anthony was a very great preacher. This statue is commonly found in Catholic churches but I'd bet not in any Protestant churches that you have seen.

In front of the altar is a "prie-dieux", a prayer kneeler. Any of those in Protestant churches? Maybe, but certainly not in non-denominational or evangelical churches.

Off to the left side, are crutches and a cane leaning against the wall. It is a common practices for Catholics who suffer from a disability to pray to saints (or the Blessed Mother) for intercession for a cure for their affliction. If they get permanent relief, and a very few do, they leave their crutches besides the altar as concrete evidence to others that "prayer works."

Above the altar are political statements against candidate Dan Hall, who is mocked and vilified and slandered on the reverse side of the three postcards. They say: "Dan Hall: Talks like a preacher; Acts like a politician.

Dan Hall is not a preacher. He was ordained as a minister many years ago but now works for an organization that supports chaplains and is himself a chaplain for the Bloomington Police Department and the Minnesota State Senate. On the first card, "Preacher Hall", mockingly, is accused of not publicly objecting to Governor Tim Pawlenty's veto of funding for some programs for the poor last summer when Dan was a private citizen.

All of this information has been provided to the major news outlets in Minnesota. And what are their stories about? Whether or not the photo of the guy in the black suit is a priest or a minister. One or two media sites mention in passing the other cards. And they all refer to Hall as "Preacher Hall."

They don't want that information to come out because the cards all were designed to subtly support the proposed legislative bills that will authorize homosexual marriages in Minnesota. This entire postcard campaign was designed to defeat Dan Hall who us up against a very vulnerable incumbent in the district that all thought was very lucky to win last election. And it was also designed to remind voters that Catholics are against the DFL party on many important issues, including homosexual marriage.

But the postcards have backfired, something else that the press has refused to report. State Senate DFLers are privately outraged at the incompetent effort by the state DFL party staff that created and mailed these outrageously anti-Catholic attack ads. Some have apologized to Catholic leaders in St. Paul.

But not Brian Melendez, head of the State DFL party. In his inept response to objections to the cards from the media, he regularly brings up the religion of the minister in the black suit, saying it "could be a protestant." Did you know that Brian Melendez has a degree from the Harvard Divinity School? And he doesn't know what the Roman collar means to virtually everybody?

I've been told, Melendez has been obnoxious and abusive to callers who have gotten through to him. I think he fears for his job and a stain on his remarkable resume'.

You see, many among the DFL leadership don't want the Catholic Church to have a voice in our country. They don't want conservatives to have a voice, either. The Constitution means nothing to them.

Of course the Catholic Church knows that it will receive criticism if it speaks out on issues that are important to it. It has been doing that for 2,000 years.

It also knows that in this country it has freedom of speech and can inform its 70 million members about political issues without fear of legal or financial repercussions. But it doesn't endorse candidates or parties.

And it also knows that receiving criticism means that the power and effectiveness of its messages increase even more, reaching more of its target audience and even non-Catholic who agree with the Church on issues.

Here are the cards. Click twice to see large versions:

Catholic Defense League Press Release and Letter to DFL Chairman Brian Melendez

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PRESS RELEASE

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

CONTACT FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Catholic Defense League
3499 Lexington Ave N # 104
St Paul, MN 55126-7056
651.766.7896

Catholics Demand Apology from Minnesota Democrat Party Leader

Mailed postcard is a shameful attack on the Catholic Church

Click to increase size

St. Paul – Today the Catholic Defense League issued a demand to DFL Party Chairman Brian Melendez to immediately issue a formal apology for a series of shameful political mailings denigrating the Catholic Church. The mail pieces feature images that are clearly Catholic in their origin.

One of the mailings features a Catholic priest in a Roman collar [a white tab at his throat] wearing a large button that reads “Ignore the Poor.”

“The Catholic Church has a long tradition of outstanding charitable work,” said Dick Houck, president of Catholic Defense League. “For the DFL party to imply that Catholics don’t care about the poor is despicable.”

Some CDL members believe the mailing may be the Democrat’s retribution for the Catholic Bishops’ marriage DVD mailed to Catholic households in September. Mark Dayton, the DFL-endorsed candidate for governor, supports legalizing gay marriage, a position that is a direct contradiction to the Catholic Church’s teaching.

“I can’t help but feel this was the DFL’s way of trying to sling mud at the Church in response to the marriage DVD,” said Ray Marshall, a CDL board member. “We think this shameful tactic will ultimately backfire.”

“Catholics know in their hearts the outstanding charitable works they do to help lift up people in need,” said Marshall. “The Democrat Party isn’t going to win over any Catholic voters by slandering them as uncaring.”

# # #

The Catholic Defense League is a lay Catholic apostolate organization dedicated to the defense of the Catholic Church by protecting its bishops, priests and religious from unwarranted attacks or misleading information. For more information, including images of all three mailings,visit www.cdlmn.org.

TEXT OF LETTER SENT TO BRIAN MELENDEZ

Brian Melendez
Chairman, Minnesota DFL State Party
255 East Plato Blvd
St. Paul, MN 56107

Dear Mr. Melendez,

I am writing to demand that you immediately issue a formal public apology for the recent Democrat Party political mailings that slander the Catholic Church. Your three mailings prominently feature images that are clearly Catholic in origin. The excuse offered by Democrat Party spokesman Donald McFarland that these mailings were targeting a specific political candidate is not an acceptable response.

In particular, your mailing suggesting that Catholics are ignoring the poor is simply reprehensible. There is no organization in the world that does more for the poor than the Catholic Church.

We cannot help but conclude that these mailings are a thinly disguised attempt at retribution for the Minnesota Catholic Bishops’ strong stance on the defense of marriage, which is fundamental to the Catholic faith.

I cannot believe that these mailings are representative of rank-and-file Democrats in the state of Minnesota. Catholics from across the state have expressed their outrage at these campaign materials.

We look forward to your timely response.

Sincerely,

R. J. Houck, President
Catholic Defense League

Democratic Elected Officials Furious With Minnesota DFL Party Staff

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A well placed source (I've always wanted to be able to use that phrase) has admitted that many DFL elected officials, some holding legislative leadership positions, are extremely furious with the party's paid headquarter staff in St. Paul. They have created and distributed three postcard mailers to registered voters in Senate District 40 in Bloomington and Burnsville that used Roman Catholic images in an attempt to defeat the Protestant challenger there in an extremely close electoral contest.

Those Roman Catholic images were placed there most surely to also subtly remind voters that Catholics were opposed to homosexual marriage and not to vote for candidates supporting Catholic positions on that issue, and abortion issues, two subjects the DFL leadership ardently supports.

The DFL has dreams of winning the governor's seat this year, but it may turn out because of the backfire on these poorly conceived campaign pieces that they might lose both the Senate and the House on election day.

Senior staff executives are so upset that they have been totally in denial and incredibly abusive in their conversations with Catholic Church and Republican officials who have called to complain about the despicable tactics. They deny that the cards use Catholic images to make their point against Protestant Dan Hall, the Republican candidate. Actually, they are frightened for their jobs. They blew it, really bad.

On one side of the three postcards, Hall is mockingly referred to as "Preacher Hall" and criticized for not having objected to Republican Governor Tim Pawlenty's budget cuts that the card claimed were harmful to the poor. Hall did not hold political office when the governor made his cuts. Are private citizens required to go on the record when they don't agree with political decisions?

Where is that record kept? It must be quite large. I've got a few thousand things I object to that I would like to place "on that record."

Hall, while he is an ordained minister, does not work for a church, is a volunteer police chaplain for the City of Burnsville and and is employed by an organization that supports chaplains. He attends a non-denominational church in Apple Valley.

Why the use of the mocking word "preacher?" To most people's knowledge, Hall has never been a preacher.

There are three versions of the very high quality, full color postcard, allegedly paid for by a rich Wayzata family. The "Catholic" images are on the front side with the address, the side that most people would look at first to make sure it was addressed to them.

The first image reported was that of a clergy man, from the chin down, wearing a black suit with a Roman collar (a white tab at the throat) that is most often identified with Catholic diocesan priests, most all of whom wear it. Some mainline Protestant ministers wear it too. But on the model's left side, there is a large campaign type button with the message, "Ignore the Poor", in red, white and blue. Experts say that it was "photoshopped."

They are saying that the Catholic Church "ignores the poor?" The Catholic Charities network is the nation’s fourth largest non-profit, according to The NonProfit Times.

In addition, 19,000 parishes in 195 dioceses, 42,000 priests, 5,000 brothers and 65,000 sisters, working with 70,000,000 Catholics who operate nearly 600 hospitals, 6,000 elementary schools, 1,300 high schools and 231 colleges and universities also provide for the poor.

And then one has to include lay apostolate groups like the Catholic Workers' Movement, founded by Dorothy Day, whose cause for canonization has begun, the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, with their nationwide network of outlets providing inexpensive items for those in need, Sharing and Caring Hands in Minneapolis founded by Mary Jo Copeland , Project for Pride in Living in the Twin Cities founded by Joe Selvaggio and other similar Catholic organizations that add to the incredible positive impact of Catholic services to the poor.

Not having seen the back of the card yet, almost all viewers would assume at first glance that it was a Catholic priest promoting that message.

Most Minnesota voters, however, would also be familiar with the fact that several weeks ago, a Marriage DVD was mailed to all the Catholics in the state, creating large numbers of objections from those who favor the legislature granting homosexuals the right to marry. The DVD was a 10 minute message to Catholics on Catholic teaching opposed to changes in those laws. Most of those who objected to the message additionally thought that the [donated] funds that paid for the production and mailing of the DVDs should have been used for aid to the poor.

There is no doubt that the militants among the DFL leadership who were responsible for the creation and approval of the button message wanted to remind voters not to vote for Catholics on one side of the postcard, and not to vote for Dan Hall on the other side.

The second image used on the postcards was that of an angel holding a banner saying "Blessed are the Rich", and a line saying "The Bible doesn't tells us to neglect the poor," another obvious shot at the Catholic Church for having cooperated with the anonymous donor in mailing the DVD's opposed to homosexual marriage. Ok, most religions believe in angels, and even those individuals who are "spiritual but not religious."

But you might want to sit down when reading about the third image, that shows a Catholic side (small altar on either side of a church's main altar) altar surmounted by a statue of St. Anthony of Padua holding the Baby Jesus. Seen that in a Protestant church lately? On either side are large banners saying, "Vote", and some shots at Dan Hall.

Still not convinced that this is a Catholic image? If you look at the lower left of the altar you will see three crutches. These surely were left there by handicapped individuals who prayed and asked for intercession from a saint, in this case, St. Anthony, (or quite often the Blessed Mother). Upon receiving a miraculous cure, they leave their crutches behind as concrete evidence for others of the power available through asking for help from somebody in Heaven.

These three Catholic images have been used by the DFL Party to defeat a Protestant contesting a state Senate seat, while at the same time furthering the Party's interest in having laws favoring homosexual marriage and abortion passed if only the DFL could control all three law-making bodies of government.

New York Times: Key Groups Abandon Obama

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[Slate]

Key Groups Abandon Obama

Crucial groups that flocked to Obama's banner in 2008 are now abandoning him in droves, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll. Women, Roman Catholics, poor Americans, and independent voters went blue in 2008, but Democrats no longer hold the upper hand with such groups, according to the New York Times. The rightward shift of women voters would be particularly notable: Women haven't sided with Republicans in House races since exit polling began in 1982. All in all, the poll results suggest a nation in a state of desperation: 57 percent of registered voters said they were more inclined to gamble on a candidate with little experience this year, while a quarter said they could get behind a candidate whose views "seem extreme." Voters know there are problems, but apparently don't know what they want done about them. For example, 90 percent of respondents said they wanted cuts to government spending and more than 50 percent said they wanted the government to offer fewer services. But respondents ardently opposed raising retirement age or reducing retirement benefits in order to cover the cost of Social Security. Opposition to increasing taxes on the wealthy has also increased over the year. The nation is divided on the repeal of health care, with 41 percent supporting the repeal and 45 percent opposing it. In terms of party support, 46 percent of likely voters said they would go with the Republicans, while 40 percent said the Democrats would get their vote.

Read original story in The New York Times | Thursday, Oct. 28, 2010

Just in case you were wondering about how much the Church supports the poor. . . .

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For the record… The Catholic Charities network is the nation’s fourth largest non-profit, according to The NonProfit Times. The combined revenue of the Catholic Charities network from all sources, public and private, was $2.69 billion in 2000. Nearly 90 percent of these funds were spent on programs and services, making the Catholic Charities network one of the country’s most efficient charities. Today, the Catholic Charities network — more than 1,600 local agencies and institutions nationwide — provide help, sometimes with government funding, and create hope for 6,597,998 in 2003, regardless of religious, social, or economic backgrounds thanks to the dedication of more than 51,000 staff and 175,000 volunteers.

That's only Catholic Charities. That doesn't include:

19,000 parishes in 195 dioceses, 42,000 priests, 5,000 brothers and 65,000 sisters, working with 70,000,000 Catholics who operate nearly 600 hospitals, 6,000 elementary schools, 1,300 high schools and 231 colleges and universities.

And then one has to include lay apostolate groups like the Catholic Workers' Movement, founded by Dorothy Day, whose cause for canonization has begun, the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, with their nationwide network of outlets providing inexpensive items for those in need, Sharing and Caring Hands in Minneapolis founded by Mary Jo Copeland , Project for Pride in Living in the Twin Cities founded by Joe Selvaggio and other similar Catholic organizations adding to the incredible positive impact of Catholic services to the poor.

All of these provide incredible amounts of charity at the local level. Plus incredible amounts of prayer, for both the rich and the poor!

Don't tell us that Catholics ignore the Poor!!!

And each of us could do more.

Reflections on the Postcard mailing depicting a priest wearing a "Ignore the :Poor" button

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Here are some thought by me as to the chronology and events on this event. 25 blogs and websites around the country, some of them really popular ones, have picked up the story.

KSTP news story on the subject.

http://kstp.com/news/stories/S1809604.shtml?cat=1

Minnesota DFL Postcard Mailing Insulting Catholics and Bashing a Republican Candidate for State Senate

On Monday, October 25, it was reported that a resident of Minnesota Senate District No. 40, comprising parts of Blooming and Burnsville, received in the U.S Mail a postcard depicting on one side what appeared to be a Catholic priest in a black suit with a roman collar (a white tab at the throat) wearing an approximately 3” diameter red-white-blue button on his coat bearing the message “Ignore the Poor.” The postcard was mailed by the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, the face of the national Democratic Party in the State of Minnesota.

The Republican candidate in District 40, Dan Hall, was the target of an attack ad on the reverse side of the postcard. It showed a picture of Hall, and pictures of an elderly woman, a child, and what appears to be a father and child.

The message on that side read “Who in God’s name would deny health care to the poor? Preacher Dan Hall.”

It then went on to criticize Hall for not speaking out when, according to the card, Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty “cut health care to the poorest Minnesotans.” The message continued the argument, ending with “Preacher Dan Hall protects politicians, not the poor.”

After reading both sides of the card, one supposes that the voter who received the card would read the message look at the photo of the priest and assume that it was “Dan Hall.”

Anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of religion would know that Catholic priests are not called “preacher.” While a few protestant ministers might wear the roman collar, nearly all Catholic diocesan priests wear it.

While Dan Hall has been ordained as a minister, he does not work in a parish. He attends a non-denominational church where clerical clothing is not worn. He is the director of an organization called Midwest Chaplains and has served in the past as a Director with the International Conference of Police Chaplains.

Dan Hall in the pictures on his web site and on the internet is always photographed with a shirt and tie, or tie-less.

Why was he portrayed as a Catholic priest? Why, in a second mailing, is there the photo of a small altar with a statue of St. Anthony holding the Baby Jesus on it? How many protestant churches have statues?

Archbishop John Nienstedt of the Diocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis has within the past few weeks received a tremendous amount of personal criticism for the mailing of a DVD on Catholic Church’s Teachings on Marriage to all Catholics in the archdiocese. The other five bishops in the state mailed the DVD to their parishioners. The rationale for most of that criticism was that the money should have been “used for the poor.”

When it was pointed out that the money came from an anonymous donor, the critics said that the archbishop should have refused it. What they really were against is the Catholic Church’s adamant opposition to any form of homosexual marriage being provided in state law.

There is no doubt but that the Minnesota DFL Party leadership, virtually unanimous in support of homosexual marriage provisions were violently opposed to the mailing of the video. That issue is expected to be very importing in the upcoming session of the legislature, so the DFL leaders obviously decided to take a whack at the Catholic Church while attacking Dan Hall.

Interestingly, among the hundreds of thousands of Catholics in Minnesota, its liberal and progressive segment are among the most committed and active in providing funds and services for the poor of the state. The DFL really was attacking and insulting its diehard supporters. It shows the willful ignorance of Democrats by ignoring what Catholic Charities, the many thousands of Catholic parishes with social justice ministries, especially parishes like St. Joan’s, Cabrini, Christ the King, St Edward's, Pax Christi, St. Stanislaus, some of the most active of Catholic progresssives in the entire country, and the Catholic school system, pre-K to grad schools, and what they have done and continue to do for poor people in this country.

For the record… The Catholic Charities network is the nation’s fourth largest non-profit, according to The NonProfit Times. The combined revenue of the Catholic Charities network from all sources, public and private, was $2.69 billion in 2000. Nearly 90 percent of these funds were spent on programs and services, making the Catholic Charities network one of the country’s most efficient charities. Today, the Catholic Charities network — more than 1,600 local agencies and institutions nationwide — provide help, sometimes with government funding, and create hope for 6,597,998 in 2003, regardless of religious, social, or economic backgrounds thanks to the dedication of more than 51,000 staff and 175,000 volunteers.

http://gatewaypundit.firstthings.com/2010/10/democrats-send-out-disgusting-anti-catholic-ad-for-final-election-push/

Granny
October 26th, 2010 | 12:48 pm | #1

I do not agree with the Catholic Church on many doctrinal matters, but I have to tell you, throughout history none of man’s institutions can come close to the Church’s record of caring for the poor.

Is it a perfect record? No. But whether you are talking about the Catholic nuns who came to the New World to teach children, the modern Catholic Charities who cares for so many of our poor and destitute today, Mother Theresa – who gave every minute of her life in care for the poor of India – the list is nearly endless of those who in the name of the Catholic Church have gone round the world doing good for the poor.

More, it is a record that no other religion on earth can match.

DFL Central Committee Insults its Base: Catholic Progressives behind Loaves & Fishes and the Homeless Shelters

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The DFL Central Committee, it's governing body, most probably composed of the most radical of the DFL activists (I actually heard at one convention one candidate being asked, "What is your position on abortion and how radical are you?") has sent out a postcard to prospective voters, with this photo of a Catholic priest wearing a campaign button saying: "Ignore the Poor."

I don’t know how many were sent out, but this was received by a Catholic in the Twin Cities. It shows the willful ignorance of Democrats by ignoring what Catholic Charities, the many thousands of Catholic parishes with social justice ministries, especially parishes like St. Joan’s, Cabrini, Christ the King, St Edward's, Pax Christi, St. Stanislaus, some of the most active of Catholic progresssives in the entire country, and the Catholic school system, pre-K to grad schools, and what they have done and continue to do for poor people in this country.

Is this intended to bring out the Catholic progressive vote? Or those who hate Catholics?

Click for increased size and once more for full size!

There were 3 mailings of postcards in this political race
If you think that this photo shows a protestant altar?
How many protestant churches have statues of
St. Anthony of Padua and the Baby Jesus?

Marlene Reid, the Catholic Defense League's "Defender of the Faith" for the year 2010 -- part 4 of 5

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MAKING A DIFFERENCE

By Marlene Reid
Part four of five

But, back to the porn fight!!! With the election of Ronald Reagan, the appointment of Ed Meese to head the Justice Department, and the positive report of a new Commission, enforcement of obscenity and pornography laws went into high gear. The RICO (Racketeering & Corruption) statute was passed. Ferris Alexander, Minnesota’s porn king, was the owner of the Faust and Flick porn establishments on University and Dale, and many other outlets, that were eventually closed down. When Ferris Alexander came to the legislature to defend his porn empire I went toe to toe with him, and told him and the Committee that we knew he was providing free office space to his mouthpiece, the ACLU Attorney Randall Teague, who was representing him and crying Free Speech. I also told my husband that evening that if I were ever in a mysterious car accident perhaps they should look for a car bomb. After all, I was taking on organized crime!

All of Ferris Alexander’s property was confiscated to pay off his fines for violation of the Interstate Commerce Laws. He died in Federal prison. I only hope that he had a conversion before he died, following the example of Ted Bundy who, incidentally, confessed that it was porn that set him off on his multiple-rape rampages and serial killing spree.

Because of time constraints, I’m not going to be able to get into the pro-life track, or give Human Life Alliance the credit it deserves, but it has been a very rewarding part of my 37 years of activism. Most of you here know that I zeroed in on the pro-life cause for a big part of my life. I reasoned that if we didn’t have life, none of these other issues were going to affect us. You’ll have to come back next year for that Chapter, although Jenni Maas outlined a good portion of it.

But, I do want to hit a few more highlights of the pro-family track. Terry Todd, Mary Prior and I, way back then, coined the word, “pro-family.” It was first picked up nationally in an Oklahoma newspaper quoting one of our news releases. The three of us haunted the legislature. We were known as Women for Responsible Legislation, MN Chapter of Eagle Forum, The Committee for Positive Education, and The Pro-Family Lobby. “Little Women” just didn’t sound professional enough. The Legislators who worked with us, and who were so grateful for our research, became known as the “Pro-life, Pro-Family, Pro-Decency” caucus, lawmakers from both political parties. We were invited for a day to their summer retreat to give our input as to what legislation would be best to pursue, and of course, which ones needed to be defeated in the upcoming session. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention at least a few of these warriors – Representatives Mike Menning and Glen Sherwood, Senator Chmielewski who is here tonight – having driven non-stop after his Polka gig near Duluth to join us. Let’s give him a round of applause for his many years of dedicated leadership on behalf of our causes - and Senator Wayne Olhoft, who later founded the Berean League, now known as the Minnesota Family Council, still doing great things for Minnesota families.

In the 1970’s, the homosexual community was trying to get a bill passed adding “sexual orientation” as a special classification under the Human Rights Act. This was far-out at the time! Who, in their right mind, would think that “sexual orientation” should be given the same legal status as color, creed, age, and gender? Look where we are 30 years later - fighting off a movement for “gay marriage”! The giant is still alive and well, and making inroads. At any rate, we had been successful in defeating this move at every turn, in every session. Suddenly, the bill authored by Senator Spear, the homosexual Senator, was scheduled for a hearing at 12:00 midnight. Guess who he thought would be home in bed? But, that was not the case. Mary, Terry and Marlene were in the gallery. The vote came within one vote of passing. The next morning, when Senator Chmielewski informed us that Senator Spear was promising to trade votes on a bridge bonding bill if the Winona Senator would vote for the “sexual preference” bill, we went into action and hit the phones. Because of our statewide talks opposing the ERA, exposing the feminists’ plan to get sexism out of education and restructure the family, and all of our other pro-family issues, we had phone numbers of concerned citizens throughout MN. Yes, even in Winona! The Holy Spirit did the rest! Within 24 hrs. 10,000 phone calls had come into the Minnesota Senate, jamming the switch-board, and letting the Senators know, in no uncertain terms, that the vote on “sexual orientation” should be “NO.” We had won! That status quo stuck until Arne Carlson became Governor (he had been pro “gay rights” all the time he served in the legislature).

An attorney working with us asked what he could do to help. We said he could notify Mr. Casmey, the Commissioner of Education, that we would be filing a law suit if he and the Department of Education began to implement the feminists’ agenda for getting “sexism out of education” and establishing a feminist in each school district to oversee enforcement. The law suit was never necessary. A Women’s Consortium newspaper, published in the 1990’s admitted that we (“the crazies” they called us) set them back 15 years. I only wish it had been permanently!

At one hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Davies was presenting his Criminal Sexual Conduct Bill, a redefinition of the Rape Statute which listed some significant repealers. At my turn to testify, I asked the Senators if they knew which laws were being repealed. When they admitted that they didn’t have a clue, I informed them that the laws against sodomy, adultery, fornication and bestiality would be struck down if this bill passed as drafted. After they picked their chins up off the table, received a confirmation from the author that this was indeed the intent, they closed their folders and adjourned. I am pleased to say that, while these “so-called consenting adults” statutes have been repealed in about one-half the states, they are still on the books in Minnesota.

Part One of Five
Part Two of Five
Part Three of Five
Part Four of Five
Part Five of Five

Marlene Reid, the Catholic Defense League's "Defender of the Faith" for the year 2010 -- part 3 of 5

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MAKING A DIFFERENCE

By Marlene Reid
Part three of five

But, at the time we discovered CDL they were taking the Regents of the University of MN to task for allowing a blasphemous, anti-Catholic, humor edition of The Minnesota Daily the official campus newspaper) to be printed. We joined forces and demanded a legislative hearing. At stake was whether or not some of the University’s state funding would be cut, or if the U’s official policy would be changed to cease and desist from extorting mandatory fees from every student registering at the U. to go to the Minnesota Daily, which promoted such bigotry. We won! The Regents were embarrassed and chastised. The policy was changed to an opt-out policy. I don’t know if that policy is still in effect, I only know it should be!

Maybe going to the legislature isn’t your “thing” but everyone needs to get involved. At one point during this period we learned that the Movie the Exorcist was scheduled to be shown at 7:00 p.m. on a Sunday evening on our CBS affiliate, WCCO. We were outraged! This was not family fare! We activated the phone chain to get concerned parents to call and complain. We wrote letters. We protested in the strongest possible language. On Sunday evening, as scheduled, The Exorcist aired. It appeared that our efforts had been in vain. But something happened on the way to the Forum – or more correctly - on the way to Phoenix. The next day I boarded a plane for Phoenix to spend a little time with my mother. A young woman and her companion sat behind me, and I couldn’t help overhearing the conversation. The young woman said, “I’ve just put in the worst week of my life. I never want to go through that again.” When her companion inquired as to the source of such frustration she said. “Well, last night our station aired the movie, The Exorcist. Our switchboard was jammed all week. We received over 7,000 phone calls complaining and protesting our decision. The manager had to take the film home with him and spent his whole Saturday evening editing it enough to be able to show it.” I wanted to cheer! Isn’t that a powerful message for us? We never know what effect we are having! I’ll just bet that manager didn’t want to repeat that experience anytime soon. We made a difference without even realizing it. I’m here to tell you - every phone call, email, or letter can make a huge difference!

One time Mary Prior wrote a letter to Honda protesting one of their ads she found offensive. A couple days later, early in the morning, Mary had a phone call from the President of the Honda Corp. He listened to what she found objectionable - the ad was pulled! I had a similar experience. I complained to 3M about a “sexually-suggestive” ad the Company was running. I told them my husband worked for 3M and I was embarrassed by it. No, he didn’t get fired! I never saw the ad again! We have so much more power than we realize, or put to use!

When Merlyn Scroggins was president of CDL the St. Paul Pioneer Press was featuring a certain cartoonist who had a personal bias and vendetta against the Catholic Church. Some of the cartoons were downright malicious. The Catholic Defense League Board, and Merlyn, wrote letters and filed complaints with the editorial staff. The cartoonist was given his walking papers! Thanks be to God! When you see a letter-to-the-editor or a column written by one of our articulate CDL leaders, Dick Houck, Pat Phillips, Pat Shannon, or others, take a second to call or email the paper commending them for printing it. Or how about a call or letter to Target to thank the corporation for a contribution to a pro-life candidate? The opposition certainly raised a stink about it, but does our side follow up with support? “The squeaky wheel gets the grease!”

I have another hot-off-the-press example. Just this month the Winona County Commissioners voted 4 to 1 to adopt a “clean hotel” policy that will restrict county employees from staying in hotels that offer pay-per-view pornography. The prepared policy paper cites studies which link pornography to sexual violence, the incidence of which the Commissioners hope to reduce. Someone in Winona is “making a difference.” Wouldn’t it be powerful if everyone in this room contacted his/her respective County Commissioners to urge them to follow suit?

One evening I was called upon to debate Minneapolis Council Member DeMars who wanted to zone an area to allow porn shops to operate undisturbed, establishing a “Combat Zone” patterned somewhat after the notorious “Boston Combat Zone.” I posed this question: “If abortion were declared illegal tomorrow or next week, would we zone an area in St. Paul for the Planned Parenthood abortion mill to continue operating?” Of course, the answer was “NO.” That pretty much ended the debate. The re-zoning move died (at that time)! But later that evening, another Council Member, Tom Johnson, came up to me. He told me that after he heard me speak at the Nokomis Community Center about three years earlier he had gone home, had gone to bed, but couldn’t sleep. He walked the floor until 5:00 a.m. and before he went to bed the second time he had decided to run for the Minneapolis City Council. He did! He won! He was responsible for scheduling me to debate the zoning issue. Likewise, a woman from ND told me, years after I had given a seminar in Bismarck, that she was motivated by my presentation to run for the School Board, had won, and was an ever-vigilant watchdog, and positive contributor. They were both making a difference!!
[end of part two of five]

Part One of Five
Part Two of Five
Part Three of Five
Part Four of Five
Part Five of Five

Father Robert Barron: The depressing Pew Forum Study

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The Catholic Church is suffering mightily today from two self-inflicted wounds.

The first is the clerical sex abuse scandal, involving the gross violation of the most vulnerable members of the community by some priests and the countenancing or enabling of this crime by some bishops. This outrage has been the perfect storm. Not only has it deeply wounded young people; it has also compromised the work of the church in almost every way, since it has undermined so thoroughly the credibility that the church requires in order to teach, preach, catechize, and evangelize.

If you had asked me 20 years ago what the worst moment in American Catholic history was, I would have identified the mid-19th century, when anti-Catholic bigots were burning down convents, attacking priests and organizing political parties whose purpose was the elimination of Catholicism on these shores.

But now I would say that we are living, right now, through the worst moment in American Catholic history.

A lost identity

The other self-inflicted wound occurred many years ago but has had, perhaps, just as devastating an impact as the sex-abuse crisis. In the years immediately following Vatican II, many Catholic leaders felt that the primary mission of the church was to embrace the modern world and accordingly, they threw off much of the philosophy, art, poetry and theology that made Catholicism counter-cultural, distinctive, unique.

As the slogan of the 1960s had it, “the world sets the agenda for the church.” The conditions for the possibility of this approach were both an extraordinary under-appreciation for the genius of the Catholic tradition, and an equally extraordinary over-appreciation of modern culture.

The consequence was what I have termed a “beige Catholicism” — bland, accommodating, hyper-apologetic, unsure of itself. The beige church certainly went running after modernity, but modernity continued to run away, indifferent to its ardent pursuer.

And then, in the wake of the events of Sept. 11, elements of that modern culture turned aggressively round on the church and accused it of irrationality, superstition and violence.

The “new” atheists — Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins and others — have been characterizing the very idea of God as ridiculous and attacking the institutions of religion as corrupt and backward-looking. And confronted with this enemy, the church has found itself defenseless, having jettisoned much of its own rich intellectual tradition. The beigification of Catholicism has, therefore, also crucially compromised the church’s ability to evangelize.

Pew study challenge

All of this came to mind when I read the results of the recent Pew Forum Study on religious knowledge among Americans. The surveyors asked a representative sample of Americans a series of 35 questions dealing mostly with Christianity but also with the other great world religions. They discovered that, of all the groups who were questioned, atheists and agnostics performed best of all.

They were followed by Mormons and Jews, with mainstream Protestants and Catholics considerably back in the pack. Distressingly, the worst performers of all were Hispanic Catholics. Apparently the enemies of the faith know it best, while the supposed defenders of the faith are rather confused about it.

Not surprisingly, the atheists have seized on the results of this survey with a certain glee, arguing that to know religion is to hate it and, by implication, not to know it very well is the condition for the possibility of falling for it. This is, obviously, a sorry state of affairs for us believers, and it has been produced, in large part, by the accommodating, beige attitudes I described above.

If the program is primarily dialogue with the culture, why bother reverencing and passing on the intellectual and cultural heritage of the Catholic Church? If all that really matters is “being a nice person,” then why bother learning the faith?

The good news is that this trend can be reversed; the bad (or at least challenging) news is that it will require a lot of work.

Teachers needed

Catholicism is a smart and beautiful tradition. It includes the varied and complex texts of the Bible, the systematic theology of St. Irenaeus, the Platonizing theology of Origen and Augustine, the sermons of John Chrysostom, the exquisitely articulated arguments of Thomas Aquinas, soul-stirring Gregorian chant, the life-changing poetry of Dante, the mysticism of Bernard, Teresa of Avila, and John of the Cross, the stained glass of Chartres Cathedral, the Sistine Chapel Ceiling, the soaring polyphony of Palestrina, Mozart’s “Requiem,” John Henry Newman’s Essay on the Development of Doctrine, Hans Urs von Balthasar’s stunningly rich theological vision, and John Paul II’s Veritatis Splendor.

We need a new army of priests, sisters, teachers and catechists who love this tradition enough to know it inside and out-and who have the passion to pass it on. As I have argued before, we have instructors in our Catholic high schools, who are willing and able to communicate “Hamlet” and Virgil’s “Aeneid” to young people. Why not some masters willing and able to pass on Aquinas and Dante?

That the atheists know this faith of ours better than we is, quite frankly, pathetic. But it is also a call to arms. Let us reclaim our great heritage.

Father Robert Barron, a priest of the Chicago archdiocese, is a prominent theologian who started a global media ministry called “Word on Fire.” He is the Cardinal Francis George Chair of Faith and Culture at University of St. Mary of the Lake/Mundelein Seminary in Mundelein, Ill. Catholic Spirit

Stella Borealis comment: There wasn't a heckuva lot of Catholic information in that 35 question survey. The people who did well on it were generally those who were knowledgeable about religions other than their own. I am no defender of the catachesis (or lack thereof) that has been given in the Church lo these past 50 years, and I don't think most Catholics would have done well on a test that examined their knowledge of their Catholic faith. But this Pew survey studied people who were interested in religion, either to fight it, or to search for a faith.

There were several questions on Bhuddism and Hinduism, if you must know.

Marlene Reid, the Catholic Defense League's "Defender of the Faith" for the year 2010 -- part 2 of 5

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MAKING A DIFFERENCE

By Marlene Reid
Part two of five

One could say that 1973 was my “coming out” year. Besides being catapulted into a defense of our faith by a faith-less priest, it was the year Minnesota had ratified the Equal Rights Amendment (the ERA) which I soon realized needed to be stopped; the U.S. Supreme Court had made two far-reaching decisions, one the disastrous Roe v. Wade abortion ruling, and the other, the Miller decision, a positive tool for fighting pornography and obscenity.

Well, the saying goes, “Birds of a feather flock together” and I was out looking for other birds! A group of Catholic women, who had experienced their awakening before I, had already organized to become a formidable force. These warriors called themselves “The Little Women.” Some of them are here tonight – Helen Johnson, Eloise Becker, Eleanor Staler, Kaye Hilpisch & Terry Todd. Mary Prior has left to follow the birds south for the winter, while Kaye Schierman (at whose Summit Avenue home we met), Mary Kluck, Tory Bowlin, Peg Cullen and others have already gone to her eternal reward. I don’t remember how we found each other, but I was invited to join their ranks. They quickly filled in the blanks on any of my missing research.

I was so driven, and so energized, that I was working on about four tracks at the same time. I was willing to travel, to debate, to share our research with anyone who would listen, and was given ample opportunity, sometimes via radio or TV, giving seminars in the Dakotas, Iowa or Wisconsin, and often just talking to groups of concerned citizens, from ten at a time to hundreds.

Terry Todd and I made several trips to Washington to testify and lobby. Congressman Phil Crane, a historian from Illinois, was dumb-founded when we showed him how history was being re-written in the textbooks. Congressman Bob Dornan from California gave us hours of his time as we revealed what was being taught under the guise of drug education, and showed him the blueprint for the radical feminsts’ destruction of the family and denigration of marriage. He assured us he would be our mouthpiece and we were to send information, as we uncovered it, to his home in Virginia so it wouldn’t get misplaced by his aides. With this outlet, and ever-eager listeners and activists at Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum, we garnered national audiences to hear and spread the word.

First, I want to pick-up on one track, but we need to start with a little ancient history. Back in the late 1960’s, Presidents Lyndon Johnson appointed a Commission to study the effects of pornography/obscenity and provide advice on how to deal with it. President Nixon continued this quest. They both knew porn was a problem. They wanted to know how to solve the problem.

The 18-member Commission was Chaired by William B. Lockhart, Dean of the Univ. of MN Law School. Both he and his legal counsel, Paul Bender, were members of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), so you can guess what their conclusions were going to be. Two clergymen were also appointed, a Jesuit Catholic priest, Morton A. Hill, who had founded the National organization, Morality in Media, (incidentally, still a powerful force in the anti-porn crusade), and Dr. Winfrey Link. The majority report concluded, not surprisingly, that pornography is harmless, should be ignored, and that it actually “strengthens conjugal ties” and “heightens marital satisfaction.”

“Not so fast!” said Father Hill and Dr. Link! They charged that the Chairman had been prejudiced, that evidence of harm had been swept under the rug, and that the majority report was “a magna carta for the pornographer.” They subsequently held some of their own hearings and published a Minority Report, rebutting the Majority’s conclusions. President Nixon and Congress rejected the Majority Report, adopted, and read into the record of the House & Senate the Minority Report with its recommendations for controlling pornography & obscenity. While the terms are often used interchangeably, “obscenity” is the hard core material as legally defined by the U.S. Supreme Court, while “pornography” is associated with the likes of Playboy. With this Minority report now being official, and reasonable, The U.S. Supreme Court referred to it often, and relied on it, in reaching their 1973 Miller v. California decision.

Father Hill came to Minnesota to advise us on what action could be taken in our state. He was sponsored by Gene and Mary Conway, God rest their souls, and presented to: “Who else? - The Little Women!” I learned that the MN statute on the books, while not written in the specific language needed for easy comprehension, could be construed to “bear the teeth” of the positive Miller decision. We accepted the challenge, and began our efforts with a 3-pronged approach. We raised public awareness, and mobilized the grassroots with picketing, protesting, and lobbying. We worked to change the statute to be specific, so prosecutors could understand it, and we educated the prosecutors on how they could proceed in the meantime. At one point we organized a one-day seminar for attorneys, legislators, and prosecutors at William Mitchell College of Law for this educational purpose, bringing in several national presenters including a successful prosecutor from Tennessee. Soon thereafter, we started seeing some convictions!

In this capacity we soon became aware of another Catholic organization making an impact on MN laws. The Catholic Defense League (at that time known as the MN Chapter of the national Catholic League for Religious & Civil Rights) had succeeded in getting legislation passed entitled State Aid to Private Schools. This was 1975. The law provided some state funds for books, materials, and a limited transportation subsidy for students in parochial & private schools.
[end of part two of five]

Part One of Five
Part Two of Five
Part Three of Five
Part Four of Five
Part Five of Five

Marlene Reid, the Catholic Defense League's "Defender of the Faith" for the year 2010 -- part one of five

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On September 20, the Catholic Defense League resumed its practice of having an annual banquet at which a Minnesota Catholic was honored for his or her activities on behalf of the Church. This year's event was held at St. Helena's parish in south Minneapolis where nearly 200 showed up to honor Marlene Reid of Shoreview as the 2010 "Defender of the Faith." Archbishop John Nienstedt was also in attendance to celebrate a Mass for those in attendance and speak to them about the Church, the Sacrament of Marriage and the threats to that human institution.

Marlene, who has been active for many years, besides raising a family, was one of the early activists who spent countless hours lobbying and agitating on behalf of her fellow Catholics to alter discriminatory legislation and achieve fair treatment for Catholic born and unborn. She began to be active about the time of the Roe v. Wade abortion decision in 1973.

Marlene was kind enough to give Stella Borealis her recollections of her incredible experiences, a portion of which she delivered to the banquet attendees. Because of its length I will post it five installments to make it easier for readers to assimilate this extremely important, and very interesting, memoir of Minnesota Catholic history

MAKING A DIFFERENCE

By Marlene Reid
Part one of five

There are so many people who played key roles in my efforts over 37 years of activism. I want to thank them at this time, even though their whereabouts may be unknown. I would like to introduce, and thank, my husband of 56 years - Dan, who has been the wind beneath my wings. The wind from the Holy Spirit also came into play, and maybe a little fire as well. Dan always saw to it the car was filled with gas for my next trip into the vineyard, or the lion’s den. Some of my family is here too. I would like to thank them for their support, with a minimum of grumbling, throughout the years. Long before there was hamburger helper, I had discovered 100 different quick ways to fix ground beef. They didn’t seem to mind! Tonight they will hear why I didn’t have time to bake as many cookies as our next-door-neighbor, Betty Grausnick.

Once, our son Todd complained that if we were a “normal” family he could be driving the station wagon to school so the high schoolers wouldn’t have to wait for some Committee hearing at the legislature to adjourn before I picked them up at St. Agnes. He survived, despite the inconvenience! I guess you could call this the confessions of a Mother of an “abnormal” family.

I told President Dick Houck that it is cruel and inhuman treatment to hand me a microphone, then limit me to 30 minutes. Because of the time crunch, I am going to read most of my remarks.

Walt Disney once said, “It’s kind of fun to do the impossible.” In some cases, I think that’s exactly what we did, but didn’t recognize it as such at the time.

Back in 1973 I was a busy housewife, and mother of six. I had retired from my profession as a Medical Technologist, and was managing a little time for tennis and bridge! Our five oldest children were attending parochial schools. I guess a little angel whispered in my ear to check out their religion texts. I did, and what I saw shocked me beyond belief.

Our 7^th grader’s religion text spent a whole chapter on the transistor radio. The message went something like this: “If you are having a bad day, feeling lonely and misunderstood, you can find solace by turning on your trusty companion, the transistor radio. The songs of today are very much like the psalms in the Old Testament. They tell the story of man’s journey and struggles here on earth.” Mind you, these were the hippie songs of the 60’s and 70’s. Search as I might, I couldn’t find any resemblance to the psalms. I wondered, “What’s going on here? A priceless opportunity to teach our children the core principles of their faith was being squandered.”

Our 6^th grader’s book was more insidious! The message (I’m paraphrasing) was: “There’s no longer any need for Catholic missionaries to serve in the 3^rd world countries. We now have Communist agents who are working hard to promote Social Justice among the poor and downtrodden.” The authors were so arrogant they didn’t even use the word Socialist to try to throw off nosey mothers. As I delved into this notion I found that the approach was known as Liberation Theology, but I didn’t know it at the time. Nor, did I know then that when Pope John XXIII ushered in Vatican II, throwing open the Church windows to let in fresh air, some bad seeds also blew in, and sprouted, forming a renegade contingency that promoted many abuses under the guise of change and progress “in The Spirit of Vatican II.”

Being naïve as I was, I figured I would just have to point out these erroneous teachings to the right people and “bingo” everything would get fixed. I found our parish priest sympathetic to my concerns, and he invited me to come the following week to a regional Council meeting where representatives, some lay, some clerical, from five parishes would be meeting to facilitate “the Spirit of Vatican II.” These regional meetings were very democratic. The parish priest was given one vote and could systematically be neutralized with his pastoral authority completely relinquished to the “group-speak.” But, at the point when I was making my presentation I still believed this group of Catholic Leaders would be as outraged as I to discover that some change agents had wormed their way into the Catholic textbook business, indoctrinating our children.

Was I in for a surprise! The group reacted as though I were a hold-over from the glacier age. One local pastor uncharitably informed me that I was “a threat to my children.” I was awe-stricken - I who had held nothing but the highest respect for priests and nuns! I stumbled out of the meeting, sobbing, and shaken to the core. I went home and cried for three days straight. I burst into tears every time I thought about it. Then I licked my wounds, and started my research with a vengeance!

In retrospect, perhaps I should thank that priest. He awakened, not a sleeping giant (the giant was already stalking our land), but more like a David – a David without a sling shot or a sword. I soon discovered that the pen is mightier than the sword, and those soap-boxes with a microphone attached are powerful weapons. The real giant to be reckoned with was, and is, Secular Humanism which was recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court, on two different occasions, as a Religion. I made the analogy that it was like a huge octopus with its tentacles reaching into every facet of our lives – from abortion, euthanasia, and pornography, to radical feminism, sexual liberation, educational indoctrination, dissolution of the family, and an all-out war on our Judeo-Christian culture.
[end of part one of five]

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Part Two of Five
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Part Five of Five

Crusade against the pope: an Inquisition-in-Reverse The campaigners against the pope’s visit have more in common with the fanatical Inquisitors of ol

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Frank Furedi, Spiked-online.com

spiked is an independent online phenomenon dedicated to raising the horizons of humanity by waging a culture war of words against misanthropy, priggishness, prejudice, luddism, illiberalism and irrationalism in all their ancient and modern forms. spiked is endorsed by free-thinkers such as John Stuart Mill and Karl Marx, and hated by the narrow-minded such as Torquemada and Stalin. Or it would be, if they were lucky enough to be around to read it.

Crusade against the pope: an Inquisition-in-Reverse

The campaigners against the pope’s visit have more in common with the fanatical Inquisitors of old than with Enlightened liberal humanists.

Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to Britain, which starts today, has provided much of the British cultural elite with a figure that it is okay to hate. Indeed, anti-Catholic prejudice is one of the main themes of today’s increasingly conformist imagination. It has reached a level where anyone who doesn’t possess a strong feeling of animosity towards the pope and his visit is viewed as a hopeless apologist for the abusive authority of theocratic despots.

The current display of anti-papal prejudice is not only conformist. Worse than that, it is the kind of conformism that is usually seen amongst children who, under peer pressure, compete to see who can come up with the meanest phrase to castigate the playground scapegoat.

Consider the infantile exchange between anti-papal zealots who were recently asked what they would say to the pope if they met him. ‘Go home to your tinpot Mussolini-concocted principality, and don’t come back’, said the Grand Inquisitor of the new atheist sandbox, Richard Dawkins, who refers to the pope as ‘Mr Ratzinger’ and describes him as the ‘head of the world’s second most evil religion’. Not to be outdone, the journalist Johann Hari imagines that he is a policeman and declares to a pretend pope: ‘I am placing you under arrest for conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, and for your central role in the systematic cover-up of the rape of children across five continents.’ Francis Wheen would also like to don a policeman’s helmet: ‘You’re nicked’ is what he would say to the pope. Such role-playing is an endearing aspect of childhood; but when grown-ups behave like aggressive four-year-olds, publicly fantasising about throwing spiteful insults at another person, they are simply adopting the immature mannerisms of attention-seeking toddlers.

If all the extravagant accusations thrown at Benedict are true, then it seems he bears responsibility for virtually every evil afflicting the modern world. When he is not busy covering up the deeds of child molesters, he is sabotaging the work of embryonic-stem-cell researchers. He is apparently totalitarian, a manipulative homophobe, an enemy of women.

The promotion material for Peter Tatchell’s tendentious TV programme – titled The Trouble with the Pope and shown on Channel 4 on Monday – informs us that the pope is ‘manipulating and distorting’ the image of Cardinal Newman to ‘serve his own autocratic, homophobic leadership’ (the pope is in Britain primarily to beatify Newman). According to Tatchell’s programme, Benedict’s teachings are also directly responsible for large numbers of unwanted children. The press release tells us that Tatchell heard ‘from a poor Filipino family, headed by Wilma and Ramon, whose following of papal teaching against birth control has resulted in them having more children than they can care for adequately’. Oh, and Benedict also refuses to take a stand against the legacy of Nazism. ‘I am shocked that he has embraced Catholics accused of being soft on Nazism’, says Tatchell. Getting carried away with his melodrama, Tatchell warns: ‘This is a pope to fear.’

Tatchell has indicted the pope on the grounds that he is out of touch with British public opinion, is doctrinaire and believes in traditional conservative values. Consequently, the world would be a better place without him. Back in the seventeenth century, a French Catholic political theorist expressed a similar form of bigoted intolerance by stating: ‘I have the right to persecute you because I am right and you are wrong.’ That is more or less the message of the contemporary anti-pope crusade. The principal hallmark of today’s new breed of secular moraliser is unabashed intolerance, and a demand that everyone conform to their zero-tolerance values.

Historically, religious intolerance was focused on denouncing deviant theological beliefs – for example the heresy of Pelagianism or Tritheism. Of course we still have this form of traditional intolerance today, but we now also have to contend with its younger cousin: intolerance towards religion. Increasingly, religion is indicted for taking its own doctrines too seriously – that is, for being a religion. Today’s opportunistic atheists even take it upon themselves to get stuck into the theological controversies of religions that they actually despise. So critics who claim to hate the pope go out of their way to reassure ordinary, genuine Catholics that they are only targeting Catholic leaders who force their traditional dogma on the church. Emulating the cavalier manner in which Western politicians explain to their Muslim constituents what true Islam means, anti-papal crusaders tell ordinary Catholics that they are on the same side and should all join in the battle against the forces of evil.

But of course, these secular moralisers are not really interested in the intricacies of theological disputes; they merely want to exploit them. Their mission is to call into question the moral integrity of their opponents, by depicting them as a malevolent force that violates the elementary norms of contemporary society. This is not theological criticism – instead the Catholic Church is denounced for the alleged threat that it poses to morality and health. So celibacy is attacked because it is deemed so unnatural that it makes priests suffer profound psychological distress, leading them to countenance suicide or paedophilia. The pope’s criticism of contraception is denounced because it encourages unprotected sex, leading to the spread of AIDS. In other words, Catholicism represents a health problem; it leads to the moral pollution of the innocent.

This is what Tatchell meant when he said in his televised hatchet job on Benedict that ‘the pope’s dogma is literally putting lives at risk’. This is about stigmatising the pope through pathologising the religious imagination itself. When the Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee declares that ‘sex and death lie at the poisoned heart of religion’, she is betraying her own passionate hatred for those who can still be inspired by something higher than reacting to the MPs’ expenses scandal.

Typically, these moralisers find it difficult to acknowledge their inner insatiable appetite for a secular Antichrist that they can rail against, so instead they tend to masquerade as ‘secular humanists’ or ‘concerned democrats’. However, liberal humanism has traditionally distanced itself from the venomous rhetoric of intolerance and from conspiratorial thinking. No doubt some of the opponents of the pope’s British visit mistakenly believe that they are acting from a liberal humanist perspective. But one of the main features of liberal humanism was its refusal to accommodate to the intolerance of minority opinions. Liberal thinkers such as John Stuart Mill recognised that social or cultural intolerance was no more acceptable than state intolerance. So when Tatchell argues that ‘the trouble with the pope’ is that his views do not reflect the opinions of the British public, he is really arguing for the silencing of a minority outlook. It’s worth noting that back in the Eighties, when Tatchell’s views on gay and lesbian rights were very much in a minority, he was forced to tackle precisely the kind of cultural intolerance that he now advocates against the pope.

The seventeenth-century liberal philosopher John Locke, in A Letter Concerning Toleration (1689), put forward the first serious critique of religious intolerance. He argued that while it was legitimate for the state to curb people’s actions and behaviour, it was wrong for the state to interfere in our religions and beliefs. His argument that no double standards should be applied against people with the ‘wrong’ beliefs had a great influence on liberal humanism in subsequent centuries. He would have strongly objected to the illiberal outpourings of Polly Toynbee, who asked this week: ‘Why invite the pope on a state visit – at a cost of millions in a time of cutbacks – when the vast majority are secular?’ Of course Locke would have had no problem with cancelling state visits on the basis that the government might need the cash for more worthy purposes – but he would have objected to justifying a cancellation on the grounds that the visitor possessed ideas and religious beliefs that ran counter to those of the majority. Intolerance comes in many shapes and forms. Do not be misled into thinking that the current crusade against the pope has anything to do with liberal humanism, at least in the way that liberal humanism was classically understood.

Intolerance has always been fuelled by an irrational and visceral sense of existential disgust, leading to moral disorientation. In line with this, consider the words of the former agony aunt Claire Rayner, as she attempts to describe her feelings for the pope. ‘In all my years as a campaigner I have never felt such animus against any individual as I do against this creature’, she says, stripping this personification of evil of any human qualities. It is not really surprising that she casually concludes ‘that the only thing to do is to get rid of him’. The phrase ‘get rid of him’ is not a slip of the tongue, either – from the standpoint of a seemingly hi-tech but actually medieval moral crusade against the pope, getting rid of ‘evil’ is its own justification.

It is almost as if the current anti-pope crusade represents an unconscious mimicking of the Catholic Church’s Inquisition. Inquisitors are not interested in rational argument or a free debate. And the vitriolic invective hurled at the ‘second most evil religion’, as Richard Dawkins describes Catholicism, is similar to the passions of the old fanatical Inquisitors. Like the Spanish Inquisition, anti-religious fanatics are constantly on the lookout for secret conspiracies and plots. Johann Hari condemns the pope for orchestrating an ‘international conspiracy of silence’ in relation to clerical child abuse. And apparently that is only ‘one of Ratzinger’s crimes’. He is also responsible for the spread of AIDS in Africa because he says that wearing a condom is a sin.

There is of course an honourable tradition of fighting against papal authority in the interests of freedom and liberty. For example, in the fourteenth century, the conciliar movement rejected the attempt by the papacy to dominate both religious and political life in Europe. The move to subordinate both secular rulers and lower clergy to papal authority was contested by philosophers and theologians, who were concerned about the expansion of papal power. One of the clearest statements of this standpoint came from Marsilius of Padua. In his Defensor Pacis (1324), he questioned the idea of the papal fullness of power, and argued that the pope was not the source of secular power. He also claimed that the authority of the Catholic Church, which was principally concerned with doctrinal authority, was not the provenance of the pope but of the church’s council. Similar sentiments were expressed by William of Ockham and others involved in the conciliar movement.

The conciliar movement argued that the authority of the council of the church took precedence over the authority of the pope. This questioning of the church hierarchy can be seen as a very early attempt to curb the power of despotic authority. The fundamental idea behind the conciliar movement was that authority should be based on the principle of consent. The anti-authoritarian implication of this avowal of consent was not lost on the church hierarchy, which regarded the conciliar movement as a direct threat to its survival. Later, some of the ideas first raised by the conciliar movement were adopted by secular leaders who also wished to assert their independence vis a vis Rome. The conciliar movement’s ‘principle of consent of the governed’ inspired future generations of thinkers to develop and push forward ideas about liberty.

It is important to note the fundamental difference between the progressive demand for the institutionalisation of consent and the infantile gestures made by today’s anti-pope crusaders, who are actually demanding conformism. It is perfectly legitimate to criticise church doctrine on a variety of social and moral issues; no institution or individual should claim immunity from questioning and criticism. But adopting the ideology of ‘evil’ to dehumanise an individual and to pathologise his religion represents a form of Inquisition-in-Reverse.

It took many centuries for Locke’s idea of religious tolerance to gain influence, and to assume a genuinely liberal and open-minded form. Tolerance is too precious an idea to squander through childish displays of anger. The pope may be wrong on contraception, abortion, stem-cell research, sexual orientation and many other things. But the errors of his critics touch on a more fundamental question of our age: the question of tolerating people’s beliefs.

Frank Furedi’s latest book, Wasted: Why Education Isn’t Educating, is published by Continuum Press. (Buy this book from Amazon(UK).) Visit Furedi’s website here.