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CONTACT:
DONATE: ARCHIVES: CATHOLIC ACTION LEAGUE OF
MASSACHUSETTS Board of Advisors
Founders Officers and Directors
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APRIL 30, 2023 — Published on May 2nd
Letters,
Boston Herald
100 Grossman Drive, 4th Floor
Braintree, Massachusetts 02184
letterstoeditor@bostonherald.com
To the Editor,
In a story on a convention of Satanists in Boston, the Herald reported that Mayor Michelle Wu and City Council President Ed Flynn condemned, as racists, one of the groups protesting the gathering, (Boston mayor, council president: White supremacist groups are ‘not welcome here,’ 4/20/2023).
There was no mention however, of any condemnation of the Satanists.
On its website, the Satanic Temple—the organizer of the event—admits to conducting Black Masses. This ritual entails the theft, desecration and destruction of a Catholic Eucharist, which is a hate crime.
As the Boston Herald noted at the time, the Satanic Temple was behind the failed attempt to perform a Black Mass at Harvard University in 2014.
If our city leaders can condemn racism, they certainly ought to be able to condemn crimes against Catholics.
Sincerely,
C. J. Doyle
Executive Director
Catholic Action League of Massachusetts
PO Box 112
Boston, MA 02131
(617) 524-6309
catholicactionleague@gmail.com
FRIDAY, APRIL 28, 2023
Contact: C. J. Doyle
(617) 524-6309
catholicactionleague@gmail.com
www.catholicactionleague.org
I. Witches Night in New England—On the weekend of April 28th to April 30th, The Satanic Temple—one of the two principal manifestations of organized Satanism in the United States today—will hold its second annual national conference in that major American city most identified, historically, with the Catholic Faith.
The sold out event, marketed as “the largest Satanic gathering in history,” is entitled SatanCon 2023, A Weekend of Blasphemy and Remembrance in Boston.
Commemorating the tenth anniversary of The Satanic Temple, the theme of the assembly is “Hexennacht (Witches Night) in Boston.” Its promotional video bears an inscription mocking and inverting the two century old motto of the City of Boston.
Instead of ‘Sicut patribus, sit Deus nobis,’—God be with us as He was with our fathers, it reads ‘Sicut matribus, sit Satanas nobis’—Satan be with us as he was with our mothers.
The event will feature Presentations, Satanic rituals and a Satanic marketplace. Speakers will address such topics as ‘...Reproductive Rights,’ ‘Reclaiming the Trans Body...’ and ‘Sins of the Flesh: Satanism and Self-Pleasure.’
The venue will be the Boston Marriott Copley Place, in the center of the city’s historic Back Bay neighborhood.
II. Professions of Agnostic Naturalism—Founded in New York City in 2012, and headquartered in Salem, Massachusetts since 2016, The Satanic Temple, led by Lucian Greaves, claims to deny any belief in the supernatural, or in the person of Satan.
The temple asserts that Satan is a metaphor for rational inquiry, critical thinking and a “reasonable agnosticism in all things.” It claims that Satan is the symbol of the “Eternal rebel...the heretic...the unsilenced inquirer.”
III. An Obsession With The Culture Of Death—The temple maintains that “Bodily autonomy has been a central pillar of The Satanic Temple’s mission since its founding,” and that abortion is a “religious ritual” for temple adherents, who therefore deserve a religious exemption from state laws which restrict or prohibit abortions.
The organization opposes informed consent laws in states where abortion is legal, believes the bodies of aborted children should be discarded as medical waste, and is an active participant in the campaign to defame and discredit pro-life pregnancy resource centers, deriding them as “fake clinics.”
The temple has filed lawsuits in Missouri and Texas asserting that abortion restrictions violate its religious freedom rights. It now claims to have established what it calls the “world’s first religious abortion clinic” in New Mexico—Samuel Alito’s Mom’s Satanic Abortion Clinic—a purported online telehealth center which will arrange for an alleged “pharmacy partner” to mail abortion pills throughout the country.
The temple also states that it is committed to supporting its “LGBTQIA+ members.”
IV. A Strategy of Provocation—The Satanic Temple has confected a cynical public relations strategy. It seeks to elevate its public profile by provoking controversy, usually in the form of grotesque publicity stunts intended to shock and offend Christian sensibilities.
A cooperative secular media—which routinely ignores public events by pro-life and pro-family activists—invariably rewards the temple with generous coverage.
The temple conducts what it calls a “Satanic Representation Campaign.” It is a three part effort aimed at having temple members give invocations before legislative bodies; placing Satanic symbols or displays on public property; and inserting Satanic clubs into public schools.
The Satanic Temple has sued the City of Boston, unsuccessfully, for the right to deliver invocations before the Boston City Council.
In public forums or on public property where Nativity scenes are displayed, where Ten Commandment monuments have been erected, or where veterans memorials contain crosses, the Satanic Temple counters with demands to exhibit statues of the demon Baphomet.
The temple actually succeeded in placing a “Baby Baphomet” next to a Menorah and a Nativity Scene in the Rotunda of the Illinois State House in 2021, adding a “Serpent of Genesis” in 2022.
The temple has also imposed “After School Satan Clubs,” targeting children, in a number of public schools in the country, including ones in Portland, Oregon and Taylorsville, Utah.
Beyond self-promotion, it is evident that the Satanic Temple has a carefully considered plan of campaign in America’s culture wars, with the objective of marginalizing Christians.
The temple is attempting to turn the First Amendment on its head, using religious freedom guarantees to drive traditional religion from the public square. Public officials are placed in the invidious position of accepting overt and obnoxious displays of demonic blasphemy or banning all religious representations and activities from public forums, public property and public schools.
V. A History Of Blasphemy And Lies—The Black Mass is an obscene, occult and demonic parody of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, intended to effect a ritual desecration, destruction and humiliation of the Holy Eucharist. It is impelled by a preternatural hatred of God, the Person of Jesus Christ, and the Catholic and Apostolic religion.
A Black Mass invariably entails the theft of a consecrated host, a crime made easier in recent years by the lamentable practice of Communion in the hand.
On its website, the Satanic Temple lists the Black Mass as one of four rituals it performs, characterizing it as “a celebration of blasphemy, which can be an expression of personal liberty and freedom.”
Such a muted, even anodyne, description of this sacrilege was not conveyed by the Satanic Temple of Houston--an official affiliate of the Satanic Temple—when it boasted of a Black Mass in the Texas city: “The Catholics and their fati-mama Mary did not stop our Black Mass. The consecrated host was defiled, destroyed, and swept into the trash where it belongs. Hail Satan!”
In 2014, the Satanic Temple arranged for a Black Mass to be performed in Cambridge, Massachusetts in Harvard University’s Memorial Hall. It was to be sponsored by the Cultural Studies Club of the Harvard Extension School.
The decision by Harvard to host this obscenity ignited a firestorm of protest among Catholic students and alumni from Harvard, and from Catholic students at other universities in Greater Boston.
Catholic students at the nearby Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) organized a Eucharistic Procession to the historic Church of Saint Paul near Harvard Square, bringing 1500 faithful on to the streets of Cambridge.
More than eighty Catholics—including the former U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See, Ray Flynn—joined the Catholic Action League in a Rosary of Reparation in front of Memorial Hall.
Three hours before the start of the event, the leadership of Harvard cancelled it. The Satanic Temple moved to the back room of a small Chinese restaurant in Harvard Square, whose proprietor insisted that no Black Mass ever took place in his establishment.
On its website, the Satanic Temple makes the preposterous claim that the real reason it was moved was because Memorial Hall—which seats 1,600 people—could not accommodate the overflow crowd.
It is not known, with certainty, whether a Black Mass will be performed at Satan Con 2023 in Boston. According to the Catholic News Agency, the Satanic Temple denies any intention of performing one.
VI. The Catholic Response—The Archdiocese of Boston has issued two public statements on Satan Con 2023. The first, on April 3rd, was from the Vicar General, Auxiliary Bishop Mark O’Connell.
In it, O‘Connell warned against any public protest or Catholic counter witness to the event. “Our response must be balanced and focused on prayer. The balance is between countering its intended evil effects, and drawing attention to it and making it more prominent. To that end, we ask you to not organize or encourage any of your parishioners to go to the event to protest. It will only fuel the hate of those who support it and feed the media with images.”
Media images of Catholics praying the Rosary on the streets of the Back Bay is, apparently, viewed as deleterious by the Archdiocese of Boston.
For many Catholics, this aversion to any public witness in defense of the Faith is reminiscent of archdiocesan opposition to the successful Men’s March to Abolish Abortion and Rally For Personhood, which was held in October of 2022.
Bishop O’Connell counseled: “Rather than protesting in person, we hope to storm the Heavens with prayer,” urging Catholics, appropriately, to recite Pope Leo XIII’s Prayer to Saint Michael the Archangel.
The letter also contained some useful practical suggestions, including vigilance against attempts to steal Hosts during the distribution of Holy Communion, not leaving sanctuaries and their tabernacles unattended while churches are open, and watchfulness about those entering churches during Mass.
The Bishop of Worcester, the Most Reverend Robert J. McManus, in an April 13th letter, gave an even more explicit warning: “If necessary, remind people that they should be consuming the sacred species immediately, to assure that the Blessed Sacrament is not being carried off for nefarious use.”
In a second Boston statement, issued on April 26th, the archdiocese reiterated O’Connell’s previous admonition against public protests, saying: “We ask Catholics not to organize or encourage others to go to the event to protest. It will only make it more prominent and give the organizers the attention they seek.”
The archdiocese did produce an impressive list of forty-five shrines, chapels and parish churches where effective instruments of spiritual warfare would be available to the faithful to counter the Luciferian aggression.
These instruments include Eucharistic Adoration, Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, Holy Hours of Reparation, the Act of Reparation to the Sacred Heart, the Chaplet of Divine Mercy, the Prayer to Saint Michael, and the Most Holy Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Not all initiatives have come from the archdiocese however. One lay Catholic activist, Robert Sullivan, a leader of the Church Militant Resistance Chapter in Boston, sponsored a series of billboards in Metropolitan Boston spreading a message of devotion to the Divine Mercy.
Some Catholics, despite official disapproval, will be present outside of the Satanic gathering. TFP Student Action will hold a Rosary Rally of Reparation on each day of the conference, on Huntington Avenue in Boston, in front of the Marriott Hotel.
The rallies will be held on Friday, April 28 from 11:00 am to 12:30 pm, on Saturday, April 29 from 11:00 am to 12:30 pm, and on Sunday, April 30 from 12:30 pm to 1:30 pm.
VII. Why Boston?—One unanswered question remains. Why was Boston chosen as the site for this demon fest? Certainly, proximity to the Satanic Temple’s headquarters in Salem, Massachusetts made for convenient logistics.
Retribution was also a factor. The mocking dedication of the conference to Boston Mayor Michelle Wu speaks to the continuing anger of the Satanic Temple over its failure to prevail in a frivolous lawsuit demanding that it be allowed to deliver an invocation before the Boston City Council.
Perhaps the memory of its decisive defeat in the Harvard Black Mass controversy of 2014 still lingers.
One suspects that Boston was chosen because it represents the model and triumph of de-Christianization in America.
Catholics are now a minority in a city where, sixty years ago, they were an overwhelming majority. Not a single elected official now supports Catholic teaching. The media environment is radically hostile to the Faith, as are all elite institutions.
The leadership of the Church has, effectively, surrendered on virtually all issues of public morality, maintaining a discreet silence, and accepting a kind of dhimmitude towards the dominant secular culture.
Catholic institutions, and most of the Catholic population, have embraced secular values.
Boston represents the very vision of a neo-pagan, post-Christian society which the Satanic Temple wishes to impose on the rest of America.
Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us!
SATURDAY, APRIL 15, 2023
Contact: C. J. Doyle
(617) 524-6309
catholicactionleague@gmail.com
www.catholicactionleague.org
Pro-Life Attorney James Bopp, Jr.
In the realm of law and constitutional jurisprudence, no organization in New England has a longer history or a more distinguished record in advocating for the protection of the unborn than the Pro-Life Legal Defense Fund.
On Saturday, April 29, 2023, the PLLDF will hold its Annual Century Brunch at the Boston Marriott Newton Hotel, at 2345 Commonwealth Avenue, on Route 30, in Newton, Massachusetts. The event will be held from 10am to 12 noon.
On this occasion, the Pro-Life Legal Defense Fund will confer its prestigious Thomas More Award on Attorney James Bopp, Jr., one of the architects of the Dobbs decision, which ended the constitutional fiction known as Roe v. Wade.
Support the pro-life cause, honor an outstanding pro-life hero, and learn how Roe was undone by joining the PLLDF on April 29th. Please encourage others to attend as well.
Tickets are $60, which includes $30 for your brunch and $30 for a tax-deductible donation. Also, help form a future generation of pro-life leaders by donating a ticket for a law student to attend this important event.
Please write a check for $60.00 per ticket, making it payable to PLLDF, and mail it to PLLDF, 2 Neptune Road, #167, Boston, MA 02128.
You may also purchase tickets through PayPal by clicking here and entering $60.00 for each ticket. Please include a note that says Brunch 2023.
For more information, please call PLLDF President Colbe Mazzarella at 617-970-0928, or email the Pro-Life Legal Defense Fund at info@plldf.org
Thank you.
FRIDAY, APRIL 14, 2023
Contact: C. J. Doyle
(617) 524-6309
catholicactionleague@gmail.com
www.catholicactionleague.org
On April 7th, U.S. District Court Judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk issued a ruling overturning the decision of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration—made 23 years ago—to approve, for use in the United States, the cruel abortion drug Mifepristone.
Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey—a partnered lesbian who identifies as a Catholic—immediately condemned the ruling, saying “Medication abortion is safe, effective and legal. Mifepristone has been used safely for more than 20 years and is the gold standard.”
Three days later, on April 10th, Healey held a press conference on the steps of the Massachusetts State House in Boston—bringing together legislative leaders, constitutional officers, representatives of the abortion industry and members of the Bay State’s congressional delegation—to denounce the ruling and proclaim a moral panic over the threatened loss of the homicide pill.
Healey then announced that the Commonwealth’s public system of higher education—which has distributed, at taxpayer expense, Mifepristone since 2022—would purchase and stockpile 15,000 doses of the abortion pill.
Healey also issued an Executive Order claiming to immunize Bay State dispensers of Mifepristone from the legal consequences of its unlawful distribution in states where abortion is banned.
On April 12th, Mr. Bob Katzen, Publisher of the Beacon Hill Roll Call, contacted the Catholic Action League, seeking a comment on the Governor’s defense of chemical abortion.
Catholic Action League Executive Director C.J. Doyle made the following statement:
“Governor Maura Healey’s claim that medication abortion is ‘safe, effective and legal’ and is ‘the gold standard,’ is belied by the fact that every abortion results in the death of an unborn child, and that there is a growing body of evidence that chemical abortions are causing a significant increase in medical complications and emergency room visits by women who resort to Mifepristone.”
“The Governor’s Executive Order seems to be more of a symbolic exercise in political posturing than a substantive effort at public policy making.”
“Chapter 127 of the Acts of 2022—An Act Expanding Protections For Reproductive And Gender-Affirming Care—defines, broadly, reproductive health care and offers explicit and comprehensive legal protections to Bay State health care personnel who perform abortions or dispense abortion pills ‘regardless of the patient’s location’.”
“Healey’s Executive Order merely requires executive departments, which are already under her authority, to comply with the existing law and recognize so-called medication abortions as reproductive health care, which the statute already does.”
“For the Governor to inveigle the taxpayer funded University of Massachusetts into becoming the Fort Knox of abortion pill reserves—the secure repository of 15,000 doses of Mifepristone—suggests a fanaticism that goes well beyond a purported respect for individual choices.”
“Finally, whenever the issue of abortion is raised in connection with the Governor, it should always be remembered that Maura Healey, by her own admission, owes her political career to the Planned Parenthood Advocacy Fund.”
“Referring to her first campaign for Attorney General in 2014, Healey said ‘Planned Parenthood’s endorsement was a game-changer for my campaign.’”
Update: On April 12th, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit granted a partial stay to the federal Food and Drug Administration, ensuring the continued commission of chemical abortions in the United States. The court however, upheld the suspension of mail-order abortion pills and reinstated the requirement that Mifepristone must be dispensed in person at a clinic or hospital, and not at retail pharmacies.
The Appeals Court also reduced the gestational age for Mifepristone use from ten to seven weeks of pregnancy.
TUESDAY, APRIL 11, 2023
Contact: C. J. Doyle
(617) 524-6309
catholicactionleague@gmail.com
www.catholicactionleague.org
An inquiry by the Judiciary Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives has revealed that the Federal Bureau of Investigation used an undercover agent in the production of an infamous memo targeting traditional Catholics.
The January 23rd memo, issued by the FBI’s Richmond, Virginia office, was titled Interest of Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists in Radical-Traditionalist Catholic Ideology Almost Certainly Presents New Mitigation Opportunities.
It was leaked on February 8th by former FBI agent turned whistleblower Kyle Seraphin.
The memo recommended that traditional Catholic groups be subject to “assessment” (surveillance), “threat mitigation” (countermeasures), and “source recruitment” (acquisition of confidential informants).
Now, in an April 10th letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray, the Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, U.S. Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH), disclosed “... we now know that the FBI relied on at least one undercover agent to produce its analysis, and that the FBI proposed that its agents engage in outreach to Catholic parishes to develop sources among the clergy and church leadership to inform on Americans practicing their faith.”
Jordan went on to say that “In this document, the FBI purported to categorize Catholic Americans based on theological distinctions and relied on the Southern Poverty Law Center to suggest that certain kinds of Catholic Americans may be domestic terrorists,” adding that “...we know that the FBI, relying on information derived from at least one undercover employee, sought to use local religious organizations as ‘new avenues for tripwire and source development’.”
Jordan also divulged that the FBI wanted to reach out to the leadership of the Society of Saint Pius X “to sensitize these congregations to the warning signs of radicalization and to enlist their assistance to serve as suspicious activity tripwires.”
Not content to spy only on Catholics who attend the Latin Mass, the Bureau, according to Jordan, also intends to contact “mainline Catholic parishes” and “diocesan leadership” and encourage them “to report on suspicious activity.”
The Catholic Action League called the revelations evidence of “creeping totalitarianism, an appalling Third World style abuse of power, and a demented misdirection of FBI resources that can only be explained by the politicizing of federal law enforcement.”
Catholic Action League Executive Director C. J. Doyle made the following comment: “This chilling assault on the First Amendment suggests that some of the most dangerous extremists in the country are on the payroll of the FBI.”
“Spying upon, infiltrating and procuring informants in churches was a practice common to the Sipo (State Security Police) and the Gestapo (State Secret Police) in Nazi Germany. This is not only anti-Catholic, but unlawful, un-American and unconstitutional. It is unknown in the history of the United States.”
“These disturbing disclosures inform us that some of the leadership of the FBI has subordinated itself to the political and ideological agenda of the Biden Administration. That administration—and its allies on the Left—want Americans to believe that, in the era of Antifa domestic terrorism, destructive BLM riots and the vandalism of Catholic churches and crisis pregnancy centers, the real threat to this country is from the phantom of an allegedly violent ‘Christian nationalism.’”
“Congressman Jordan is to be commended for his revelatory letter and for the vitally important work of the House Judiciary Committee.”
APRIL 8, 2023
Marco Basaiti, Resurrection of Christ, 1520
At that time, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome, brought spices, that they might go and anoint Jesus. And very early on the first day of the week, they came to the tomb, when the sun had just risen. And they were saying to one another, “Who will roll the stone back from the entrance of the tomb for us?” And looking up they saw that the stone had been rolled back, for it was very large. But on entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, clothed in a white robe, and they were amazed. He said to them, “Do not be terrified. You are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, Who was crucified. He has risen, He is not here. Behold the place where they laid him. But go tell his disciples and Peter that He goes before you into Galilee; there you shall see Him, as He told you.”
The Holy Gospel of the Mass on Easter Sunday (Mark 16, 1-7)
Laus tibi Christe!
********
The Regina Caeli (Queen of Heaven) is one of four musical antiphons, addressed to the Blessed Virgin May, that are sung or recited during the liturgical year of the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church.
This Antiphon, with its versicle and collect, is sung during Paschaltide, from noon on Holy Saturday till the Saturday noon before Trinity Sunday.
During this time, it replaces the thrice daily Angelus, the traditional devotion which is said at 6am, 12 noon and 6pm.
It is also recited as part of the Divine Office, as the conclusion of Compline, the Night Prayer.
Its origins date back to the reign of Pope Saint Gregory the Great (590-604).
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Johannes Brahms are among the composers who have set it to music.
It is among the most sublimely beautiful of all Catholic prayers.
V. Queen of Heaven, rejoice, alleluia.
R. For He whom thou didst deserve to bear, Alleluia.
V. Has risen, as he said, alleluia.
R. Pray for us to God, alleluia.
V. Rejoice and be glad, O Virgin Mary, alleluia.
R. For the Lord has truly risen, alleluia.
Let us pray. O God, who by the resurrection of Thy Only Begotten Son, Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, hast vouchsafed to make glad the whole world, grant, we beseech Thee, that, through the intercession of the Virgin Mary, His Mother, we may attain the joys of eternal life.
Through the same Christ Our Lord. Amen.
V. Regina Caeli, laetare, alleluia.
R. Quia quem meruisti portare, alleluia.
V. Resurrexit, sicut dixit, alleluia.
R. Ora pro nobis Deum, alleluia.
V. Gaude et laetare, Virgo Maria, alleluia.
R. Quia surrexit Dominus vere, alleluia.
Oremus. Deus, qui per resurrectionem Filii tui, Domini nostri Iesu Christi, mundum laetificare dignatus es: praesta, quaesumus; ut per eius Genetricem Virginem Mariam, perpetuae capiamus gaudia vitae. Per eundem Christum Dominum nostrum. Amen.
HOLY THURSDAY, APRIL 6, 2023
Contact: C. J. Doyle
(617) 524-6309
catholicactionleague@gmail.com
www.catholicactionleague.org
Boston Globe columnist Joan Vennochi—an apostate from the Catholic religion—is a malevolent bigot and a dishonest journalist who has a long and disreputable history of maligning all things and all persons Catholic.
Many remember the sneering headline of her 2020 column “Pope John Paul II was no saint...”
Following the leak of the Dobbs decision in 2022, Vennochi parroted the anti-Catholic party line of NARAL Pro-Choice America when she wrote that the expected ruling was the “ultimate triumph for the Church.”
Vennochi invoked the separation of church and state, brought up the Catholic Faith of the anti-Roe justices, and pointed out that Catholics were, in proportion to the population, overrepresented on the Supreme Court.
She even quoted the anti-Catholic hate group, Catholics for Choice. America’s Ian Paisley—Paul Blanshard—the old Catholic-hating bigot from the 1940s, could not have done a better job.
In her latest polemic against President Donald Trump, Vennochi launched a gratuitous and mendacious assault on the memory of a local Catholic hero, Boston Mayor and Massachusetts Governor James Michael Curley.
In defaming Curley, Vennochi cited Curley’s hostile and revisionist biographer, Jack Beatty. Even there, she got it wrong. In her haste and malice, she misrepresented what Beatty wrote.
My longtime friend and colleague, Professor Larry Overlan of Suffolk University, a noted Curley scholar, sent the following reply to Vennochi’s slipshod distortion of history.
The Catholic Action League wishes to thank and commend Larry Overlan for his courage and integrity in speaking truth to Vennochi’s reckless lies.
########
March 24, 2023
Letters to the Editor
The Boston Globe
One Exchange Place, Suite 201
Boston, MA 02109-2132
letter@globe.com
To the Editor:
Joan Vennochi’s disappointing column on James Michael Curley was characterized by inaccuracies, unproven assertions, and a tendentious attempt to harness history in the service of modern partisan politics, (Crime, Trump, and the ghost of James Michael Curley, 3/22/2023).
Contrary to Vennochi’s claim of a $60,000 bribe, Curley never received any payout from his involvement with the so-called Engineers Group, which resulted in his mail fraud conviction. U.S. Attorney General Francis Biddle called Curley’s profit “trifling,” which may have been a factor in President Harry Truman’s decision to pardon Curley.
Vennochi contends that Curley had “a reputation for taking kickbacks.” Despite antagonizing both Democrats and Republicans, Curley, in his six decade long political career, was never charged with graft by any prosecutor—federal, state, or local—of either party.
As for the old canard that Curley “stoked the politics of ethnic and religious polarization”—for which no evidence is ever provided—this is victim blaming. Irish Americans, after all, never put up signs which read ‘No English Need Apply.’
Sincerely,
Lawrence A. Overlan
Senior Lecturer
Department of Political Science & Legal Studies
Suffolk University
MARCH 31, 2023 — Published April 3rd
Letters,
Boston Herald
100 Grossman Drive, 4th Floor
Braintree, Massachusetts 02184
letterstoeditor@bostonherald.com
To the Editor,
The Boston Herald story on the death of former State Representative Mel King omitted some pertinent facts about his public record, (Beloved Boston civil rights icon and activist Mel King dies, 94, 3/29/2023).
Some remember King as the mean spirited extremist who once picketed the Pope. When most Bostonians were celebrating Saint John Paul’s 1979 visit to the Hub, King brought 1,800 protestors to Holy Cross Cathedral, where one of his followers held a sign which read, memorably, “Pope: tell your people not to be racist.”
King also advocated that form of racial discrimination in public employment known as affirmative action. Nor should we forget King’s divisive attempt to partition Boston by creating the separate municipality of Mandela.
It came as no surprise that Boston voters rejected King by a 30 point margin when he ran for mayor in 1983.
Sincerely,
C. J. Doyle,
Executive Director
Catholic Action League of Massachusetts
PO Box 112
Boston, MA 02131
(617) 524-6309
catholicactionleague@gmail.com
Immaculate Conception, by Peter Paul Rubens 1628
“She shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel” (Gen 3:15b).
MARCH 30, 2023
On May 13, 1846, the Catholic bishops of America, meeting in the Sixth Provincial Council of Baltimore, declared “With enthusiastic acclaim and with unanimous approval and consent, the Fathers have chosen the Blessed Virgin Mary, conceived without sin, as the Patroness of the United States of America.”
On February 7,1847, the Holy Father, Blessed Pope Pius IX, ratified this decision.
This proclamation was made eight years before the apostolic constitution Ineffabilis Deus, in which Pius IX defined the dogma of the Immaculate Conception.
In it, he declared: “The most Blessed Virgin Mary was, from the first moment of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege of almighty God and by virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ, Savior of the human race, preserved immune from all stain of original sin.”
As our beloved country, the United States of America, approaches its end stage, descending from a federal constitutional republic—“a city upon a hill”—to a corrupt, Third World plutocracy, let us invoke the intercession of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception to protect Christians, and all other persons of goodwill, from the chaos which is now befalling us.
Let us hope and pray that whatever successor state emerges from the wreckage of the Great Republic, it will be founded upon the Cardinal Virtue of Justice and it will recognize, for the first time on American soil, the Social Kingship of Jesus Christ.
Let us pray for our country, and let us pray for President Donald J. Trump!
God Save the United States of America!
O Mary conceived without sin, Pray for us who have recourse to thee!
MARCH 25, 2023
Letters to the Editor
The Boston Globe
One Exchange Place, Suite 201
Boston, MA 02109-2132
letter@globe.com
To the Editor:
Early in March, Providence Bishop Thomas Tobin announced that he would not allow a general dispensation from Lenten abstinence for Rhode Island Catholics on Saint Patrick’s Day.
This internal, Catholic Church issue provided a convenient pretext for Kevin Cullen to take a parting shot at Tobin, just two weeks before the prelate’s scheduled retirement, (Is it a sin to eat corned beef and cabbage on St. Patrick’s Day? 3/16/2023).
Cullen’s hypocrisy is audacious. Despite writing, at least, nine columns maligning Tobin—including one where he called him a troglodyte, and another where he derided him as a clown—Cullen actually accused the bishop of being “uncharitable” and “judgmental.”
Whatever might be said about Bishop Tobin, he never mocked, or belittled with invectives, someone who disagreed with him. He never exhibited a sneering contempt for his adversaries, and he never cultivated vindictiveness as a virtue.
Sincerely,
C. J. Doyle
Executive Director
Catholic Action League of Massachusetts
PO Box 112
Boston, MA 02131
(617) 524-6309
catholicactionleague@gmail.com
MARCH 23, 2023
Contact: C. J. Doyle
(617) 524-6309
catholicactionleague@gmail.com
www.catholicactionleague.org
On March 22nd, Christian Wade, the Massachusetts Bureau Chief of the North of Boston Media Group/Community Newspapers, contacted the Catholic Action League for a comment by C. J. Doyle on the proposal to repeal the Bay State law which provides a state sales tax exemption for the distribution of Bibles in the Commonwealth.
Repeal is part of a multi-decade, nation-wide campaign by the anti-Catholic bigots of the American Civil Liberties Union, who, with unceasing malevolence, seek every opportunity to punish Christians.
Catholic Action League Executive Director C. J. Doyle made the following comment: “The Free Exercise of religion is guaranteed by both the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and by Article II of the Declaration of Rights of the Massachusetts Constitution.”
“The production and distribution of religious texts, such as the Bible, are as integral to the enjoyment of that right as are the erection and maintenance of houses of worship and the organization of religious denominations.”
“As houses of worship and religious bodies are tax exempt, there is no reason that a different standard ought to apply to the production and sale of the Bible.”
“The tax exempt character of churches was created to establish a legal and fiscal barrier that would prevent excessive government entanglement with religion.”
“The legal challenges to tax exemption for Bibles in Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island are all a consequence of special pleading by the American Civil Liberties Union, a militantly secular, left-wing organization with a longstanding history of radical hostility to the religious freedom rights of Christians.”
“Legislation and public policy in the Commonwealth should not be determined by a powerful special interest with a national agenda.”
“The Massachusetts law ensuring tax exemption for the distribution of Bibles—reaffirmed by the Commissioner of Revenue of the Democratic administration of Governor Michael Dukakis in 1984—ought to be preserved.”
MONDAY, MARCH 20, 2023
Contact: C. J. Doyle
(617) 524-6309
catholicactionleague@gmail.com
www.catholicactionleague.org
An article in today’s Boston Globe celebrates the participation of Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey—a partnered lesbian—in Boston’s Saint Patrick’s Day Parade.
The news story, which read more like an opinion column, said Healey’s presence was “a sign of how far the parade has moved on from its ignominious history.”
This was an unmistakable reference to the principled resistance from faithful Catholics in the Allied War Veterans Council—who organized the parade—to the event being exploited as a propaganda platform by homosexual groups which scorn, despise and reject the moral code of Saint Patrick’s religion.
The article went on to complain that “as late as 2017,” there was still opposition to homosexual messaging in the parade.
Another Globe article reported that participants in the annual South Boston Saint Patrick’s Day Breakfast devoted much of their alleged humor to mocking the pro-life former Chairman of the Massachusetts Republican State Committee, Jim Lyons.
Michelle Wu, Boston’s Planned Parenthood endorsed Mayor, said, sarcastically, “I propose Jim Lyons Day for his unparalleled contribution, helping us drive all the Republicans out of the State House.”
Massachusetts Senate President Karen Spilka, a pro-abortion non-Catholic, used the event, named for the Apostle of Ireland, to derisively suggest that the conservative Catholic Lyons was “getting ready for his new job making license plates at Walpole”—the maximum security state prison.
Lyons, ironically, was the last Irish Catholic in the Commonwealth, to hold a position of state-wide political leadership, who actually supported the moral teachings of Saint Patrick’s Catholic Faith.
Catholic Action League Executive Director C. J. Doyle made the following comment: “The triumphalist tone of the callous bigots who authored the Globe article on the parade confirms what we have long known.”
“The parade controversy was never really about admitting homosexual marchers to the event. Why would practitioners of sodomy, who repudiate Christian morality, and castigate that morality as hatred and homophobia, want to celebrate the Catholic heritage of Ireland?”
“It was always about forcing Catholics to set aside their values and submit to homosexual ideology. It was about using the parade to mainstream public acceptance of homosexuality. It was, as we said thirty years ago, about imposing a discordant, anti-Catholic message on a parade in honor of a Catholic saint.”
“Meanwhile, the Saint Patrick’s Day Breakfast has become a forum for apostates and non-Catholics to insult one of the last sons of Saint Patrick who has not betrayed the Faith of his Baptism.”
“These events should remind us that our Bay State political class is hideously depraved and systemically corrupt. Christians should consider ways and means to escape from the repulsive kakistocracy which rules us.”
“Amidst all of this, no public defense of the Christian character of Saint Patrick’s Day has been heard from the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston.”
MARCH 18, 2023
The Dream Of Saint Joseph, Anton Raphael Mengs, 1773
March 19th is the Feast of Saint Joseph, Spouse of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Head of the Holy Family, Confessor, and Patron of the Universal Church.
The Gospel of Saint Matthew tells us that Saint Joseph was “a just man.” The New Testament records no words of Saint Joseph. The Foster Father of Our Savior instructs us and edifies us however, by his example—of profound Faith, humility and resignation, and of perfect obedience to the will of God.
In Quamquam Prulies, his 1889 Encyclical On Devotion To Saint Joseph, Pope Leo XIII reminds us that “...Joseph was the spouse of Mary and that he was reputed the Father of Jesus Christ. From these sources have sprung his dignity, his holiness, his glory.” The Holy Father emphasizes again that “...Joseph shines among all mankind by the most august dignity, since by divine will, he was the guardian of the Son of God and reputed as His father among men.”
According to Pope Leo “Fathers of families find in Joseph the best personification of paternal solicitude and vigilance; spouses a perfect example of love, of peace, and of conjugal fidelity; virgins at the same time find in him the model and protector of virginal integrity.”
Devotion to Saint Joseph bears a special significance to the contemporary struggle to protect the sanctity of innocent human life.
In 1997, Pope Saint John Paul II commended the life of children not yet born to the protection of Saint Joseph.
Just as Saint Joseph, upon the instruction of an angel, carried the Christ Child, Innocence Himself, to Egypt to escape the murderous wrath of Herod, let us invoke the intercession of Saint Joseph, Patron of the Unborn, to deliver the innocent children of today from the modern day successors of Herod who pursue, with fiendish zeal, the Luciferian obseession to destroy human life in the womb.
Saint Joseph is the Patron Saint of Canada. Here in New England, the Virgin Spouse of the Virgin Mother of God is the Patron Saint of the Archdiocese of Hartford and the Diocese of Manchester.
*******
The Feast of Saint Joseph is, in accordance with the Code of Canon Law, one of ten holydays of obligation in the Universal Church. It is not however, one of the only six days in the United States when attendance at Mass is required under pain of serious sin. This is not because of any lack of esteem for the role of Saint Joseph in the economy of the Incarnation.
Rather, it relates to particular historical circumstances, specifically, the economic and cultural conditions faced by Catholic immigrants to this country in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. America then was a laissez faire capitalist society where 72 hour work weeks—12 hour days—were common.
Protestant employers moreover, were usually unsympathetic to Catholic religious practices, and would often dock or fire Catholic workers who showed up late for work on holydays. As a consequence, Catholic workingmen, like this writer’s grandfather, who emigrated from Galway to Boston in 1906, would, on holydays of obligation, have to rise before 4am so they could attend Mass at 5am, thus ensuring that they would arrive at work on time at 6am.
As a concession, taking into account this hardship, the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore decreed in 1884 that there would be only six holydays of obligation in the United States.
| THE LITANY OF SAINT JOSEPH | |
|---|---|
|
Lord, have mercy on us R. Christ, have mercy on us. |
Kyrie, eleison R. Christe, eleison. |
| Lord, have mercy on us. Christ, hear us. R. Christ, graciously hear us. |
Kyrie, eleison. Christe, audi nos. R. Christe, exaudi nos. |
| God the Father of Heaven, R. have mercy on us. |
Pater de cælis, Deus, R. miserere nobis. |
| God the Son, Redeemer of the world, R. have mercy on us. |
Fili, Redemptor mundi, Deus, R. miserere nobis. |
| God, the Holy Ghost, R. have mercy on us. |
Spiritus Sancte, Deus, R. miserere nobis. |
| Holy Trinity, One God, R. have mercy on us. |
Sancta Trinitas, unus Deus, R. miserere nobis. |
| Holy Mary, R. pray for us. |
Sancta Maria, R. ora pro nobis. |
| Saint Joseph, R. pray for us. |
Sancte Joseph, R. ora pro nobis. |
| Illustrious Scion of David, R. pray for us. |
Proles David inclita, R. ora pro nobis. |
| Light of Patriarchs, R. pray for us. |
Lumen Patriarcharum, R. ora pro nobis. |
| Spouse of the Mother of God, R. pray for us. |
Dei Genetricis sponse, R. ora pro nobis. |
| Chaste guardian of the Virgin, R. pray for us. |
Custos pudice Virginis, R. ora pro nobis. |
| Foster-father of the Son of God, R. pray for us. |
Filii Dei nutricie, R. ora pro nobis. |
| Watchful defender of Christ, R. pray for us. |
Christi defensor sedule, R. ora pro nobis. |
| Head of the Holy Family, R. pray for us. |
Almæ Familiæ præses, R. ora pro nobis. |
| Joseph most just, R. pray for us. |
Joseph justissime, R. ora pro nobis. |
| Joseph most chaste, R. pray for us. |
Joseph castissime, R. ora pro nobis. |
| Joseph most prudent, R. pray for us. |
Joseph prudentissime, R. ora pro nobis. |
| Joseph most valiant, R. pray for us. |
Joseph fortissime, R. ora pro nobis. |
| Joseph most obedient, R. pray for us. |
Joseph obeodientissime, R. ora pro nobis. |
| Joseph most faithful, R. pray for us. |
Joseph fidelissime, R. ora pro nobis. |
| Mirror of patience, R. pray for us. |
Speculum patientiæ, R. ora pro nobis. |
| Lover of poverty, R. pray for us. |
Amator paupertatis, R. ora pro nobis. |
| Model of workmen, R. pray for us. |
Exemplar opificum, R. ora pro nobis. |
| Glory of home life, R. pray for us. |
Domesticæ vitæ decus, R. ora pro nobis. |
| Guardian of virgins, R. pray for us. |
Custos virginum, R. ora pro nobis. |
| Pillar of families, R. pray for us. |
Familiarum columen, R. ora pro nobis. |
| Solace of the afflicted, R. pray for us. |
Solatium miserorum, R. ora pro nobis. |
| Hope of the sick, R. pray for us. |
Spes ægrotantium, R. ora pro nobis. |
| Patron of the dying, R. pray for us. |
Patrone morientium, R. ora pro nobis. |
| Terror of demons, R. pray for us. |
Terror dæmonum, R. ora pro nobis. |
| Protector of Holy Church, R. pray for us. |
Protector sanctæ Ecclesiæ, R. ora pro nobis. |
| Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world, R. spare us, O Lord. |
Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, R. parce nobis, Domine. |
| Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world, R. graciously hear us, O Lord. |
Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, R. exaudi nobis, Domine. |
| Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world, R. have mercy on us. |
Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, R. miserere nobis. |
| He made him lord over His house, R. And the ruler of all His possessions. |
Constituit eum dominum domus suæ, R. Et principem omnis possessionis suæ. |
| Let us pray O God, who in Thine ineffable providence didst vouchsafe to choose blessed Joseph to be the spouse of Thy most holy Mother: grant, we beseech Thee, that we may have him for an intercessor in heaven, whom we venerate as our protector on earth. Who livest and reignest world without end. R. Amen. |
Oremus Deus, qui ineffabili providentia beatum Joseph sanctissimæ Gentricis tuæ sponsum eligere dignatus es: præsta, quæsumus; ut, quem protectorem veneramur in terris, intercessorem habere mereamur in cælis: Quis vivis et regnas in sæcula sæculorum. R. Amen |
Remember, O most chaste spouse of the Blessed Virgin Mary, that never was it known that anyone who implored thy help and sought thine intercession was left unaided. Full of confidence in thy power, I fly unto thee and beg of thee thy protection. Despise not my humble supplications, O foster-father of the Redeemer, but hear and answer me. Amen.
THURSDAY, MARCH 16, 2023
Contact: C. J. Doyle
(617) 524-6309
catholicactionleague@gmail.com
Perhaps nowhere else, in what was once Christendom, can an entire nation and its vast diaspora of descendants trace their Catholic Faith and culture — and their hope of eternal salvation — to the evangelism of a single saint. Our debt of gratitude to Saint Patrick is beyond measure.
Saint Patrick (+461) is the Apostle of Ireland and was the first bishop and archbishop of Armagh. He is also the principal patron saint of the Archdiocese of Boston.
Sent by Pope Saint Celestine I, Patrick, in a single lifetime, transformed the people of Ireland from bondsmen of death dealing Druids to disciples of the Author of Life.
As a consequence, a small island upon whose soil no Roman Legionary ever trod, would help form the character of Christendom by its leadership in the two great civilizational movements of the early Middle Ages—the preservation of the learning of Classical Antiquity, and the evangelization of Europe, known to history as the Conversion of the Barbarians.
The feast of Saint Patrick is not “a municipal festival,” as Judge Hiller B. Zobel erroneously asserted during the Saint Patrick’s Day parade case thirty-one years ago. Nor is it merely a communal celebration of ethnic pride, as one low wattage, nominally Catholic, ex-state senator once tried to tell us.
We commemorate the feast of our patron saint because he brought the Catholic Faith to Ireland, delivering that nation, and us, from the darkness of paganism, and showing us the fountains “that rise in the heart of Our Savior above.”
Only two Catholic organizations in Massachusetts in the last three decades, the Immaculate Heart of Mary School and the Catholic Action League of Massachusetts, have publicly defended the venerable name of our patron saint from sacrilegious exploitation and coarse trivialization by the enemies of Catholicity.
The silence of our bishops, priests, deacons, and religious is a terrible betrayal, which speaks to cowardice, the loss of Faith, the desire for human respect, and the malign influence of effeminacy in the ranks of the Church.
As the contemporary forces of paganism continue their assault against the Christian character of March 17th, and attempt to deform and de-Christianize our feast day, let us never forget that Saint Patrick’s Day is a Catholic holy day in honor of a Catholic Saint.
Sancte Patrice, Ora pro nobis.
O God, You deigned to send Blessed Patrick, Your Confessor and Bishop, to preach Your glory to the Gentiles; grant by his merits and intercession, that those things which You command us to do, we may be enabled to accomplish by Your mercy. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Your Son, Who lives and reigns with You in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. Amen.
— Collect of the Feast of Saint Patrick from the Missal and Breviary of Saint Pius V
There are only two writings of Saint Patrick extant. The first is his Confession, while the other is his Letter to the Soldiers of Coroticus. The latter bears a prophetic relevance to the modern crisis of abortion.
In it, our patron saint exhorts Catholics to avoid all fraternization with those who participate in the willful murder of the innocent: “Therefore I ask most of all that all the holy and humble of heart should not fawn on such people, nor even share food or drink with them, nor accept their alms, until such time as they make satisfaction to God in severe penance and shedding of tears...” He goes on to warn that “The Most High does not accept the gifts of evildoers.”
When you see our modern priests, prelates, and Catholic schools giving, unlawfully, awards, honors or platforms to politicians who promote the mass killing of the unborn, please remind them of the words of Saint Patrick!
Sadly, the name of our patron saint will be misappropriated by partisans of the Culture of Death when they gather on March 19th, for the so-called “Saint Patrick’s Day Breakfast” in South Boston. These enemies of the Cross will include Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey, Bay State Attorney General Andrea Campbell, U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey, Congressman Stephen Lynch and Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley, State Senate President Karen Spilka, and Lieutenant Governor Kimberley Driscoll.
All are in favor of child killing, sodomy, the corruption of minors and the homosexualization of the Saint Patrick’s Day Parade. Warren, Markey, Healey, Pressley and Campbell are now leading the authoritarian campaign to deprive pro-life Catholics of their constitutional rights.
Sadly and repulsively, some priest or auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Boston will likely be present to devalue their evil by engaging in amicable social intercourse, and even pathetic attempts at humor, with these blood stained destroyers of the unborn and persecutors of the faithful.
Neither Scripture, nor Tradition, nor secular history record instances of the Apostles Peter and Paul, in Rome, consorting and trading jokes with Nero.
The City of Worcester has already had its Saint Patrick’s Day Parade. Among those marching, ostensibly to honor Sant Patrick, was Mayor Joe Petty, who cast a tie breaking vote in the City Council, to pass an ordinance that would force crisis pregnancy centers to commit or make referrals for abortions.
Also marching was Congressman Jim McGovern, a co-sponsor of the so-called Equality Act, which would compel Catholic physicians to perform abortions.
What a surfeit of hypocrisy it must require for these two apostates to participate in the celebration of a Catholic saint!
Once again, we are happy to present the good Sisters of Immaculate Heart of Mary School, who lightheartedly memorialized their departure from the South Boston parade with this melody to the air of “The Leaving of Liverpool” entitled “The Leaving of Boston.”
Christ be with me, Christ within me, Christ behind me, Christ before me, Christ beside me, Christ to win me, Christ to comfort and restore me.
Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,
Christ in hearts of all that love me, Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.
From the Breastplate of St Patrick
MARCH 15, 2023
The Washington Times
3600 New York Ave NE
Washington, DC 20002
yourletters@washingtontimes.com
To the Editor:
It is astonishing that, The Washington Times, in its story on the Pope's remarks on celibacy, would actually treat married ex-priest Jonathan Morris as a credible source, (Pope Francis says married priests possible, calls celibacy a 'temporary prescription,' 3/13/2023).
Morris not only abandoned his vocation and renounced his solemn vow of perpetual chastity, but defended dissent from Catholic moral teaching.
Many pro-life Catholics remember the 2007 incident when Morris—who was then a Fox News contributor—joined Sean Hannity in attacking Father Thomas Euteneuer, who had rebuked Hannity for his public advocacy of contraception.
Since then, Morris deserted the priesthood and Hannity apostatized from Catholicism.
It is not unreasonable to expect that the Times could have found, for its story, a Roman Rite Catholic scholar who was willing to defend priestly celibacy, not as a medieval innovation, but as an apostolic tradition.
Sincerely,
C. J. Doyle,
Executive Director
Catholic Action League of Massachusetts
PO Box 112
Boston, MA 02131
(617) 524-6309
catholicactionleague@gmail.com
MONDAY, MARCH 13, 2023
Contact: C. J. Doyle
(617) 524-6309
catholicactionleague@gmail.com
www.catholicactionleague.org
In 2017, the Catholic Action League of Massachusetts issued a Special Report on how Catholic institutions in the Commonwealth routinely betrayed the dedicated defenders of the unborn in the pro-life movement. Today, that culture of betrayal is alive and well in the Archdiocese of Boston.
As the New Boston Post reported in January, the eight members of the Boston City Council have signed an order requesting a public hearing to investigate pro-life crisis pregnancy centers in the city.
This is the latest offensive in a malevolent campaign, initiated by the anti-Catholic bigots of NARAL Pro-Choice America, and led by Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), to defame, demonize, and ultimately suppress—through restrictive regulation and costly litigation—pro-life centers which offer women, in troubled pregnancies, compassionate alternatives to abortion.
This campaign against crisis pregnancy centers, if successful, will likely increase the number of innocent children killed through abortion, by crippling or eliminating groups which effectively oppose the abortion industry. It will also directly impede the constitutional rights of Catholics and other pro-life advocates.
The oldest pro-life pregnancy center in Greater Boston, dating back to 1973, is Pregnancy Help, which is a ministry of the Archdiocese of Boston.
The sponsor of the City Council order to investigate pro-life centers was City Councilor Ruthzee Louijeune, a former Elizabeth Warren campaign aide. Louijeune’s longstanding advocacy of abortion however, has never been an obstacle to cordial relations with the Archdiocese of Boston.
On February 4, 2022, Councilor Louijeune was a guest speaker at Saint John Paul II Catholic Academy in Dorchester. Louijeune spoke before her nephew’s sixth grade class for Black History Month.
According to its website, Saint John Paul Academy was “established as a new pilot for transforming Catholic education in Boston under the direction of Cardinal Seán P. O’Malley.” Its mission statement promises an “Enhanced faith formation curriculum in the Catholic tradition.”
The school’s Board of Trustees includes the Superintendent of Schools for the Archdiocese of Boston; the President of the Catholic Schools Foundation; the Pastor of Saint Teresa of Calcutta Parish in Boston; and the Assistant Vicar for Administration of the Archdiocese, the Reverend William P. Joy.
This is the same Father Joy who dodged, weaved and deflected when pro-lifers complained in 2022 about Catholic Memorial School conferring an award on pro-abortion Labor Secretary Marty Walsh.
In its 2004 statement, Catholics in Political Life, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops enjoined: “The Catholic community and Catholic institutions should not honor those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles. They should not be given awards, honors or platforms which would suggest support for their actions.”
This was not the first interaction between Councilor Louijeune and the Church. In January of 2022, Cardinal O’Malley, from the altar of Holy Cross Cathedral, publicly acknowledged the pro-abortion Councilor during a Mass commemorating Haitian Independence Day.
An even more disturbing development in this controversy is a 2022 statement from the Director of the Pro-Life Office of the archdiocese, which seemed to signal that the Church was less interested in defending crisis pregnancy centers, than it was in carving out an exemption for itself.
Marianne Luthin told NBC 10 Boston, “It’s unfortunate that Pregnancy Help is lumped in with a generic category of so-called centers doing horrible things. We are truthful, we are a ministry of the church, and we are very proud of the work that we do for women.”
Catholic Action League Executive Director C. J. Doyle made the following comment: “An institution that is genuine in defending the right to life would never permit an abortion fanatic to address a group of sixth graders. As the League has said before, no rational person can reasonably be expected to take seriously Catholic opposition to abortion in the Archdiocese of Boston.”
“Luthin’s statement confirms what we already know—that pro-life Catholics should expect no reciprocity from the Church in Boston. The Archdiocese will sacrifice others to protect its own interests.”
The seven members of the City Council who, on January 11, 2023, joined Louijeune in calling for an investigation of crisis pregnancy centers were Councilors Ricardo Arroyo, Kenzie Bok, Liz Breadon, Tania Fernandes Anderson, Gabriela Coletta, Brian Worrell, and the Council President, Ed Flynn.
THURSDAY, MARCH 9, 2023
Contact: C. J. Doyle
(617) 524-6309
catholicactionleague@gmail.com
www.catholicactionleague.org
Conservative media platforms have been reporting the arrest of a staff attorney for the Southern Poverty Law Center—Thomas Webb Jurgens—who participated in a violent Antifa attack on a police and fire training center outside of Atlanta.
On March 5th, armed and black clad Antifa anarchists invaded the Atlanta Public Safety Training Facility in South River Forest, Georgia, setting fires, destroying construction equipment, and hurling rocks, bricks, fireworks and Molotov cocktails at police officers.
Thirty-five individuals were arrested in connection with the attack. Twenty-three, including Jurgens, were charged with domestic terrorism.
The arson, vandalism, and assaults on police came less than a month after the leak of a memo from the Virginia office of the FBI, targeting traditional Catholics as violent extremists, which cited the Southern Poverty Law Center as its source.
The Soros funded SPLC has now defended Jurgens, claiming that he was acting as a “legal observer” for the National Lawyers Guild. Largely overlooked in this controversy, is the fact that the National Lawyers Guild has long been identified as a front group for the Communist Party, USA.
The House Un-American Activities Committee once described the NLG as the “foremost legal bulwark of the Communist Party,” an assessment shared by U.S. Attorney General Herbert Brownell.
Catholic Action League Executive Director C. J. Doyle made the following comment: “The SPLC has a long, mendacious and disreputable history of demonizing social conservatives and traditional Catholics as extremists who belong to ‘hate groups.’”
“Now we find that one of the SPLC’s attorneys, Thomas Jurgens, participated in a terrorist attack by an actual extremist group—Antifa—which has an extensive record of destructive acts of criminal violence.”
“Moreover, this SPLC official collaborated with Antifa on behalf of another extremist organization—the NLG—which is affiliated with the Communist Party, undoubtedly the most murderous hate group in human history.”
“The SPLC is a lucrative bunco scheme which monetizes left wing paranoia by inciting fear of conservative Christians. As of the end of fiscal 2021, its total assets exceeded $800 million, while its annual income was north of $130 million.”
“Honest observers have long known that the SPLC traded in fear, calumny and bigotry. Now we know that the SPLC has a link to domestic terrorism and Communism.”
“Only journalists devoid of professional ethics and personal integrity could continue to cite the now discredited Southern Poverty Law Center as a credible source on extremism in America.”
FRIDAY, MARCH 3, 2023
Contact: C. J. Doyle
(617) 524-6309
catholicactionleague@gmail.com
www.catholicactionleague.org
A proposed law before the New Hampshire House of Representatives would force Catholic and other pro-life physicians to either perform or make referrals for sterilizations.
House Bill 277—An Act relative to patients’ right to sterilization treatment, would make it unlawful for a Granite State physician to refuse any person who has attained the age of 18, and who requests it, a sterilization, unless they refer the patient to another physician willing to conduct the procedure.
The legislation mandates disciplinary proceedings for doctors who refuse to comply.
Traditionally, surgeons have been unwilling to perform irreversible procedures on healthy young people who have no underlying medical conditions.
The sponsor of the legislation is State Representative Ellen Read (D-Newmarket).
The opposition of the Catholic Church to sterilization is definitive and longstanding. The Catechism of the Catholic Church instructs “Except when performed for strictly therapeutic medical reasons, directly intended amputations, mutilations, and sterilizations performed on innocent persons are against the moral law.”
Papal condemnations of sterilization can be found in the encyclicals, and other teachings, of Popes Pius XI, Pius XII, Paul VI and John Paul II. In Humanae Vitae, Paul VI stated “Equally to be condemned, as the magisterium of the Church has affirmed on many occasions, is direct sterilization, whether of the man or of the woman, whether permanent or temporary.”
In Evangelium Vitae, Saint John Paul II identified sterilization as part of a “conspiracy against life.”
The Ethical and Religious Directives for Health Care Services of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops enjoin “Direct sterilization of either men or women, whether permanent or temporary, is not permitted in a Catholic health care institution.”
For Catholic physicians, participating in an intrinsically immoral act—by making referrals for sterilizations—would constitute formal cooperation with evil.
The Catholic Action League characterized the measure as an “assault on religious liberty, an affront to the freedom of conscience, and a threat to the integrity of Catholic health care in New Hampshire.”
Catholic Action League Executive Director C. J. Doyle made the following comment: “Coming at a time when the Biden administration is attempting to coerce pro-life doctors into performing abortions and ‘transgender’ surgeries, this legislation is another chilling example of the increasingly totalitarian character of left-wing politics in America.”
“For so-called progressives, foundational freedoms guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, are now dispensable when they conflict with their woke agenda for ‘reproductive rights.’”
“Contrary to a misleading report in the New Hampshire Union Leader, there is no provision in the text of the bill for a religious exemption.”
“This despotic measure, contrary to natural law, must be opposed, and it must be made clear that, in the unlikely event it secures passage, it will be met with widespread non-compliance, that is to say, civil disobedience.”
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 2023
Contact: C. J. Doyle
(617) 524-6309
catholicactionleague@gmail.com
www.catholicactionleague.org
I. New MA AG Targets Crisis Pregnancy Centers—The new Attorney General of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Andrea Campbell, has joined the disinformation campaign, initiated by NARAL Pro-Choice America, to demonize, restrict and repress pro-life crisis pregnancy centers.
In a February 18th interview with The Boston Globe, Campbell announced that she will target crisis pregnancy centers with civil litigation, resorting to the state’s consumer protection statute prohibiting unfair or deceptive business practices.
Campbell said that she “intends to take the lead nationally on protecting abortion and reproductive rights...” In January, Campbell partnered with the ACLU, other abortion proponents and several white shoe law firms to establish the “Abortion Legal Hotline.”
As a candidate, Campbell promised to “Expose Crisis Pregnancy Centers” and “Create a cross-bureau reproductive justice unit within the Attorney General’s Office,” which would “...develop new ways to hold crisis pregnancy centers accountable...”
While Campbell, Governor Healey, and U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey pursue their campaign against pro-life volunteers trying to aid women in troubled pregnancies, these volunteers and their facilities remain objects of criminal violence by abortion fanatics.
In the last nine months, there have been, at least, a half dozen acts of vandalism perpetrated against pro-life centers in the Bay State, including ones in Easthampton, Revere and Worcester, while an archdiocesan affiliated Boston center had to be evacuated following threats.
Attorney General Campbell has made no statement promising the prosecution of violent offenders seeking to damage private property and impede the exercise of constitutional rights by pro-life citizens.
II. Sununu Insults Pro-Lifers—Echoing Kamala Harris—who defames pro-life Americans as extremists—New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu has told the militantly pro-abortion New York Times “I am a conservative. I’m just not an extremist.”
Sununu is exploring a possible run for the Republican nomination for President in 2024. His remark is seen as an unsubtle jab at his two likely opponents, President Donald Trump and Governor Ron DeSantis, both of whom support the right to life.
Sununu, a baptized Catholic, is a longtime supporter of abortion and contraception, and the taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood. In a 2021 interview, Sununu told NH Today “To be clear, Roe v. Wade needs to stay in place. I’m a big supporter of it. I’m pro-choice.”
III. New Hampshire House Votes To Deny Vouchers To Catholic School Students—On February 23rd, in a close party line vote, a temporary Democratic majority (due to absences) in the New Hampshire House of Representatives, passed HB 430—AN ACT relative to applications for the education freedom accounts program.
This punitive measure, antagonistic to parental rights and religious freedom, would limit access to the Granite State’s successful tuition voucher program—the Educational Freedom Account—to public school students, thus excluding home schooled children and students at private and parochial schools.
This discriminatory legislation, a special interest bill filed on behalf of the American Federation of Teachers-NH, would almost certainly fail a constitutional test before the U.S. Supreme Court, given the high court’s 2022 decision in Carson v. Makin, which struck down an identical measure in Maine.
It may not come to that however. It is unlikely to pass in the state Senate, and it will require a second vote in the House, where Republicans still retain a slender majority.
IV. Bishop Tobin Defends Latin Mass Catholics—The outgoing Bishop of Providence, the Most Reverend Thomas J. Tobin, has become one of the few members of the Catholic episcopate to publicly criticize Pope Francis for his unwarranted and increasingly harsh restrictions directed against Catholics who attend the traditional Latin Mass.
In a tweet on February 21st, Tobin said “The way the Vatican is dealing with the Traditional Latin Mass does not seem to me to be the “style of God.” Pope Francis himself has emphasized that those who are attached to the TLM should be “accompanied, listened to, and given time.”
In his latest Rescript, the Pope has now removed all discretion from local bishops in exempting churches from the papal ban on celebrations of the traditional rite in parishes. This will result in the end of Catholicism’s ancient liturgy in most Catholic venues in Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
The modernist Pope’s demented war, on the one orthodox movement in the Church which exhibits growth, is, sadly, escalating.
FEBRUARY 19, 2023 — Published February 26
The People’ s Forum
Telegram & Gazette
100 Front Street, 5th Floor
Worcester, MA 01608-1440
letters@telegram.com
To the Editor:
Raymond Mariano, in his latest column, professes astonishment that anyone would protest drag queens reading to children in public libraries, (Raymond V. Mariano: Disrupting children’s ‘Drag Queen Story Hour’ is cowardly, 2/17/2023).
According to Mariano, there are far more important issues to be concerned about, like climate change and gun violence.
Perhaps Mariano should follow his own advice. Last year, in May, and again in June, Mariano devoted two entire columns to a controversy over Rainbow flags and BLM banners flown at Nativity School in Worcester.
Imagine all the column inches that could have been devoted to gun violence and climate change had Mariano not wasted so much ink mocking and maligning Worcester Bishop Robert McManus over an internal affair of the Catholic Church.
Sincerely,
C. J. Doyle
Executive Director
Catholic Action League of Massachusetts
PO Box 112
Boston, MA 02131
(617) 524-6309
catholicactionleague@gmail.com
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2023
Contact: C. J. Doyle
(617) 524-6309
catholicactionleague@gmail.com
www.catholicactionleague.org
On February 7th, at the State of the Union Address in the U.S. Capitol in Washington, U.S. Senator Edward J. Markey, (D-MA), wore a pin on his suit jacket, presented to him by the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, which read, in capital letters, ABORTION.
The first letter O in the pin was in the shape of a heart—the universal symbol of love. Any reasonable observer would conclude that the message which Markey wished to convey was his love for abortion.
A pro-life state legislator, Markey was first elected to Congress in 1976 emphasizing his opposition to abortion and forced busing. He remained an opponent of abortion for his first seven years in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Elected to the U.S. Senate in a special election in 2013, Markey has long been a strident advocate for legal and publicly funded abortion, and an inflexible opponent of all restrictions on abortion. He enjoys a 100% rating from both the Planned Parenthood Action Fund and NARAL Pro-Choice America. Both organizations have, repeatedly, endorsed and extolled him.
In 2019, Markey spoke at a press conference in front of the Planned Parenthood abortuary in Boston, where he condemned President Trump’s decision to enforce the Title X prohibition on the use of federal family planning dollars for abortion.
In 2022, Markey joined the pro-abortion campaign to demonize and repress pro-life crisis pregnancy centers.
Markey, a baptized Catholic, is a graduate of four Catholic educational institutions: Immaculate Conception School, Malden Catholic High School, Boston College, and Boston College Law School.
Describing himself as “Jesuit trained,” Markey maintains that his approach to public policy is directly informed by his Catholic Faith: “My basic text for everything I do is the Sermon on the Mount. Blessed are the poor. That’s Medicaid. Blessed are the elderly. That’s Medicare. Blessed are the children. That’s Head Start. Blessed are those in prison. That’s making sure we don’t imprison a whole generation of African-Americans the way we did with the crack cocaine epidemic.”
According to his interviewer, Mike Damiano of Boston Magazine, Markey told him all of this while walking to a Planned Parenthood rally in Washington in 2017.
The Catholic Church has condemned abortion since the first century, when its original catechism, the Didache, taught, in the year 70 AD, “you shall not murder a child by abortion nor kill that which is begotten.”
In 2009, the Holy See reaffirmed the solemn declaration of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, which proclaimed that “abortion and infanticide are abominable crimes.”
Since 1973, at least 64 million unborn children have been killed through surgical and medical abortions in the United States.
Sadly, but unsurprisingly, no Catholic prelate, institution or newspaper in the Commonwealth has denounced Markey for his pin celebrating abortion, nor has the Knights of Columbus, the Ancient Order of Hibernians, or any of the four Catholic schools which Markey attended.
The Catholic Action League of Massachusetts characterized Markey’s decision to disgrace himself by wearing an emblem affirming abortion as “depraved posturing by a vile quisling engaged in a sordid act of public treachery against the Faith of his baptism.”
Catholic Action League Executive Director C.J. Doyle made the following comment: “If there is anything more reprehensible than Markey’s open apostasy, it is the systemic silence of official Catholicism in Massachusetts.”
“The Bay State has one Catholic archdiocese, three dioceses, four diocesan newspapers, two Catholic television stations, a dozen Catholic colleges and universities, hundreds of parishes, and scores of Catholic organizations.”
“The Archdiocese of Boston, alone, has two PR firms and a six figure plus communications director, yet no one can speak out about the scandal of self identified Catholic in Congress displaying a demonic symbol of love for the mass murder of the unborn.”
“Silence equals consent. Since Catholic institutions routinely give awards, honors and platforms to pro-abortion political figures, and say nothing about public betrayals of the Faith by these same office holders, pro-life Catholics are led to an inescapable conclusion.”
“That conclusion is that our religious leaders have quietly conformed to the dominant secular culture, surrendered to the spirit of the times, and abandoned the innocent unborn to pitiless destruction at the hands of moral monsters like Edward Markey.”
“While Markey receives a pass for his odious pandering to the child killing industry, one should remember the fate of Father Daniel Moloney, the former chaplain at MIT, who was asked to resign by Cardinal Sean O’Malley.”
“Unlike Ed Markey, Father Moloney never advocated the killing of an entire class of human beings. His offense was that he once stated, accurately, that George Floyd ‘had not lived a virtuous life.’”
“Punishing those under your authority for telling an unpopular truth, while refusing to confront the powerful for promoting a crime, is the conduct of a coward and bully, not a pastor.”
“Almost the entire institutional infrastructure of American Catholicism has been lost to the pro-life movement. If the right to life is to be vindicated in American society, the Catholic Church must be reformed.”
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 2023
Contact: C. J. Doyle
(617) 524-6309
catholicactionleague@gmail.com
www.catholicactionleague.org
The Catholic Action League of Massachusetts today hailed the decision of the Bay State’s Supreme Judicial Court in Commonwealth v. Peter Ronchi, which reaffirmed the legal personhood of a viable preborn child.
In 2012, Peter Ronchi of Marblehead was convicted for the 2009 murder of his girlfriend, Yuliya Galperina, who was nearly nine months pregnant. The trial judge, treating the unborn child as a second victim, sentenced Ronchi to two consecutive life sentences for two counts of first degree murder.
The judge followed the precedent set by the SJC in the 1984 decision Commonwealth v. Cass, which found that “An offspring of human parents cannot reasonably be considered to be other than a human being, and therefore a person, first within, and then in normal course, outside the womb.”
The court held, therefore, that the “infliction of prenatal injuries resulting in the death of a viable fetus, before or after it is born, is homicide.”
In its ruling yesterday, rejecting Ronchi’s appeal, the SJC went further, stating: “A viable fetus is a human being under the law of homicide. A fetus is viable when there is a reasonable likelihood of the fetus’s sustained survival outside the womb, with or without artificial support.”
The court also abandoned the legal doctrine that “murder may be reduced to voluntary manslaughter where there are extenuating circumstances, such as sudden passion based on provocation.” Gasperina had told Ronchi, just prior to her death, the child was not his.
The Catholic Action League called the decision “further, compelling and inescapable evidence that the legal tradition of Western Civilization has always upheld the humanity of the unborn.”
Catholic Action League Executive Director C. J. Doyle made the following comment: “The Commonwealth’s Supreme Court—hardly a bastion of conservative constitutional theory—has stated, once again, that a preborn child is a legal person deserving protection, but qualifies this principle with the modifying adjective ‘viable’.”
“How a relative—viability—can define an absolute—human life—is something which the court declined to explain. Nonetheless, the ruling is a useful reminder that the child in utero is not, as Planned Parenthood tells its victims, a mere clump of cells.”
“Whatever political advantages the advocates of legal abortion enjoy today, they cannot evade thousands of years of legal precedents, religious beliefs, philosophical principles and medical ethics acknowledging the humanity of the child in the womb.”
“Proponents of legal abortion will be dismayed to learn that, in its coverage of the story, The Boston Globe used the phrase ‘unborn child’, while The Salem News referred to ‘the child’.”
In his comment on the case, Essex County District Attorney Paul F. Tucker said: “I’m pleased the Supreme Judicial Court affirmed the defendant’s convictions in the brutal slayings of Yuliya Galperina and her unborn son.”
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 2023
Contact: C. J. Doyle
(617) 524-6309
catholicactionleague@gmail.com
www.catholicactionleague.org
One day after it was leaked to the public, the Federal Bureau of Investigation retracted a memo by its Richmond, Virginia field office, which called for the surveillance of traditional Catholics as prospective allies of “white nationalists,” and “violent extremists.”
The memo, citing the discredited Southern Poverty Law Center, identified nine traditional Catholic organizations—including the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary—as hate groups which it recommended for “assessment,” “threat mitigation,” and “source recruitment.”
The memo also attempted to link, without evidence, the orthodox Catholic news organization, Church Militant, with racial extremists.
Yesterday, the FBI disavowed the memo, saying that it did “not meet the exacting standards of the FBI,” adding that “Upon learning of the document, FBI Headquarters quickly began taking action to remove the document from FBI systems and conduct a review of the basis for the document.”
The Bureau went on to say that it “will never conduct investigative activities or open an investigation based solely on First Amendment protected activity.”
The Catholic Action League hailed the decision as a “victory for the Bill of Rights, the liberty of the Church and the rule of law.”
Catholic Action League Executive Director C. J. Doyle stated: “While the leadership of the FBI did the right thing by quickly withdrawing this un-American document, it remains troubling that some individuals working for the nation’s top law enforcement agency would have such an attenuated commitment to our constitutional freedoms.”
“The pernicious influence of left-wing woke culture is achieving dangerous levels of penetration in mainstream American institutions, and faithful Catholics, committed to Scriptural and natural law morality, will always be among its first objects of persecution.“
As the courageous Anglican champion of Catholic Emancipation, John Philpot Curran, once warned, ‘The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance.’”
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 2023
Contact: C. J. Doyle
(617) 524-6309
catholicactionleague@gmail.com
www.catholicactionleague.org
During an airborne news conference on a flight home from South Sudan on February 5th, Pope Francis called, once again, for the legalization of homosexuality.
In a January 24th interview with Nicole Winfield of the Associated Press, Francis said "Being homosexual isn’t a crime," and characterized legal prohibitions against homosexual behavior as "unjust." He went on to say that the Church must work to overturn such laws and that bishops who opposed their repeal "have to have a process of conversion."
In yesterday’s remarks, Francis reaffirmed his position, saying "To condemn someone like this is a sin," and added "Criminalizing people with homosexual tendencies is an injustice."
The Pope’s comments were quickly endorsed by his Protestant traveling companions, Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury and Ian Greenshields, the Moderator of the Church of Scotland.
The Pope’s earlier comments were hailed by the homosexual lawfare group GLAAD—an organization which opposed the rights of Catholics in Boston’s Saint Patrick’s Day Parade controversy—and by the dissident New Ways Ministry, opponents of Catholic morality which the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops condemned in 2010.
GLAAD CEO Sarah Ellis said the Pontiff’s "historic statement" was "a game changer," while New Ways Director Francis DiBernardo "rejoiced" at the Pope’s remarks.
The anti-Catholic hate group, Dignity USA, which actually hailed the death of Pope Benedict as the "end of a long, painful era for LGBTQIA+ Catholics," pointed out that it was the Vatican in 2010 which led efforts at the UN to oppose the decriminalization of homosexual behavior.
The Catholic Action League called the Pope’s assertions "a major victory for the homosexual movement, which will be presented to public opinion as papal affirmation of same sex relations and the LGBTQ identity."
Catholic Action League Executive Director C. J. Doyle made the following comment: "The scandalous, improvident and un-Catholic remarks of Pope Francis will confuse and mislead the faithful, empower and embolden the opponents of Christian morality, and demoralize and marginalize its defenders."
"These remarks will, in the long term, have significant adverse effects on the struggle to preserve what remains of moral sanity in Western society and to protect the already circumscribed rights of religious believers."
"A key papal ally, Cardinal McElroy of San Diego, has now characterized opposition to the homosexual agenda as ‘demonic’ and rooted in ‘a profound and visceral animus toward members of the L.G.B.T. communities.’"
"What the Pope said not only undermines perennial Catholic moral teaching, but repudiates 1,700 years of Christian legal principles."
"Beginning in the fourth century AD, all Christian legal traditions—Roman Law, Canon Law, English Common Law and the positive laws of Christian states—have, harkening back to Mosaic Law, treated sodomy as a crime against nature, and have, accordingly, prohibited it, and attached penalties to its practice."
“Unlike Francis, the Fathers and Doctors of the Church understood sodomy to be both a sin and a crime. The Angelic Doctor, Saint Thomas Aquinas, quotes Saint Augustine’s statement that ‘Those foul offenses that are against nature should be everywhere and at all times detested and punished...’”
"As recently as 1989, the Achdiocese of Boston and the Massachusetts Catholic Conference opposed legislation to make homosexuals and lesbians a protected class in Bay State civil rights law."
"The callous readiness to jettison centuries of Catholic thought and praxis speaks volumes about the arrogance, recklessness and historical and theological illiteracy that has come to characterize this papacy."
"Although no one should underestimate the immense harm to society caused by the Pontiff’s injudicious remarks, opinions offered to reporters during air travel do not constitute Catholic teaching. The media should resist the temptation to view Catholic principles as mere policies, which the Pope, as CEO, can alter or abandon."
THURSDAY, JANUARY 26, 2023
Contact: C. J. Doyle
(617) 524-6309
catholicactionleague@gmail.com
www.catholicactionleague.org
The newspaper of Boston’s African American community, The Bay State Banner, is reporting that students in the Boston Public Schools experienced 744 incidents of sexual assault in the 2021-2022 school year.
According to the BPS, this figure includes not only sexual violence, but sexual harassment and student on student sexual misconduct.
Increased incidences of physical violence and sexual assault in the public schools are fueling demands by Boston City Councilors to return police officers to the schools.
In comparison, a July, 2003 report by the Attorney General of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts revealed that there were, at least, 789 documented complaints of sexual abuse against priests of the Archdiocese of Boston over a forty year period from 1940 to 2000.
If taken at face value, these figures would indicate that the ratio of sexual abuse in the Boston Public Schools versus that in the Archdiocese of Boston is, approximately, 40 to 1. Moreover, the numbers in the former represent one city, while the latter is comprised of five counties.
The Catholic Action League called the revelations “shocking and astonishing, made all the more so by the absence of a moral panic in the Boston media.”
Catholic Action League Executive Director C. J. Doyle made the following comment: “The molestation of minors by homosexual priests was an abominable crime. The anemically inadequate response by those in authority in the Church was a scandal, an injustice, a betrayal, and a gross dereliction of duty.”
“The Church ought to be held to a higher standard than secular society. Nonetheless, the current revelations underscore the brazen double standard and the audacious hypocrisy of Boston’s media and political elites.”
“When it comes to sexual abuse in the public schools, there are no front page headlines, demands for resignations, or calls for prosecutions and government investigations. There is no daily drum beat of articles, editorials, columns, and op-ed pieces. There are no lead stories in television news coverage or drive time discussions on talk radio.”
“The Boston Globe actually downplayed the story, suggesting that the numbers were ‘murky.’”
“No one should believe that the media campaign against the Catholic Church twenty years ago was motivated by a desire to protect children. The Globe believes that 64 million dead children from abortion aren’t enough.”
“For the Globe and the rest of the Boston media, coverage of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church always had just one purpose—discrediting, neutralizing and destroying the public influence of an institution they regarded as a political, cultural and ideological enemy. Minimal Boston media attention to appalling figures of sexual abuse in the public schools confirms that reality, once again.”
TUESDAY, JANUARY 24, 2023
Contact: C. J. Doyle
(617) 524-6309
catholicactionleague@gmail.com
On January 8th, a letter to the editor from the Catholic Action League of Massachusetts, responding to uninformed criticisms of the legacy of Pope Benedict XVI, was published, unedited and in its entirety, by the Boston Sunday Herald.
On January 1st, New Hampshire’s Rochester Voice carried the League’s comments mourning the death of Pope Benedict.
The January print edition of the Boston Broadside published the League’s News Release on the undercounting of anti-Catholic incidents in the FBI’s annual report on hate crimes in the United States. The Broadside also printed a League Press Statement on proposed legislation—House Bill 662—which would ensure that public school students in the Commonwealth were taught about the development of the child in utero.
The Fatima Center has now posted on its website a video of League Executive Director C. J. Doyle’s talk on the New England and eugenicist origins of the anti-life movement in American law, politics, jurisprudence and public policy.
The talk, delivered at the Fatima Center Conference in Manchester, New Hampshire, is entitled Fatima Foretold Attacks on the Faith:The New England Model. It can also be seen on YouTube and on Rumble.
JANUARY 6, 2023 — Published on January 8th.
Letters
Boston Herald
100 Grossman Drive, 4th Floor
Braintree, Massachusetts 02184
letterstoeditor@bostonherald.com
To the Editor,
Gary Franks’ ill timed, one sided and uninformed column on Pope Benedict was a mixture of factual errors, unwarranted conclusions and irrelevant assertions, (Franks: Pope’s passing sparks reflections on scandals & fallout, 1/6/2023).
Franks made the preposterous claim that Cardinal Ratzinger was responsible for disciplining clerical offenders for 25 years before becoming Pope. Ratzinger’s authority over sexual abuses cases in the Church extended for just four years, from 2001 to 2005.
He actually sought that responsibility because he believed bishops were not doing enough to remove perverts from the priesthood. Many objective observers credit then Cardinal Ratzinger with revolutionary initiatives which resulted in the first effective action by the Vatican to combat clerical sexual abuse.
As Cardinal and as Pope, Benedict had 848 molesting priests defrocked. Among them was the previously untouchable Reverend Marcial Maciel of the Legionaries of Christ. Benedict was also the first Pope to meet with sexual abuse victims.
There are many culprits in the scandal of sexual abuse in the Church. Benedict XVI is not one of them.
Sincerely,
C. J. Doyle
Executive Director
Catholic Action League of Massachusetts
PO Box 112
Boston, MA 02131
(617) 524-6309
catholicactionleague@gmail.com
Attention: Sandra Kent, Editorial Page Editor
