Howie Carr File
NEWS UPDATE
FRIDAY, MAY 5, 2023
Contact: C. J. Doyle
(617) 524-6309
catholicactionleague@gmail.com
www.catholicactionleague.org
HOWIE CARR MOCKS
THE CATHOLIC RELIGION
Boston Herald columnist and talk radio shock jock Howie Carr has mocked the Catholic religion, again.
In a March 31st column criticizing Presidential Climate Envoy John Kerry, Carr compared carbon off-sets to the Catholic practice of granting indulgences to the faithful, where a portion of the temporal punishment of sin is remitted for performing an act of piety or charity.
Carr called indulgences a “religious scam, a clerical grift” that involved “paying off some priest...”
This is not Carr’s first descent into crude anti-Catholicism. He has a long, loathsome and disreputable history of Catholic bashing. As with this recent column, his attacks on the Catholic Faith have been vicious and gratuitous.
On April 8, 1998—Wednesday in Holy Week—in response to a decision by the Red Sox to forgo alcohol sales in Fenway Park because Opening Day would fall on Good Friday, Carr hosted two segments on his radio program in which he invited listeners to comment on selling “Catholic Eucharists for $3.49 a bag,” as a substitute for beer. The result was a half hour of offensive slurs profaning the Blessed Sacrament.
In one particularly vile episode, later in 1998, in a conversation between Carr and his producer Doug Goudie, evidently intended to disparage Arabs, it was asserted that shepherds in the Middle East had bestial relations with the animals in their flocks.
Into this depraved subject the name of Saint Joseph—the Virgin Spouse of the Virgin Mother of God—was introduced. Saint Joseph, the Foster Father of Our Savior, was then misidentified as a shepherd.
Though perceived by many as conservative, Carr has indulged in a malevolent, career-long obsession with vilifying the characters and destroying the reputations of Catholic political figures who have defended the right to life.
The targets of Carr’s venomous calumnies have included Massachusetts Senate President William M. Bulger, Massachusetts House Speaker Thomas F. Finneran, the late State Representative James J. Craven, Jr., and most recently, former Massachusetts Republican State Committee Chairman James J. Lyons, Jr.
Catholic Action League Executive Director C. J. Doyle made the following comment: “Howie Carr’s contempt for the Catholic Faith is manifest, impenitent and longstanding.”
“No one should be deceived by the conservative noises which Howie Carr makes to market himself. Profit and personal animus, rather than conviction, seem to be the driving motivators in his predatory career.”
“Real conservatives, conservative Christians, at least, do not advocate the sterilization of welfare recipients. They do not deride the children of the poor, born to mothers on public assistance, as ‘little bastards.’”
“They do not insult religious leaders, calling them ‘Bulger rump swabs,’ and they do not ridicule the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ in the Holy Eucharist.”
“The Catholic Action League has been warning Massachusetts Catholics and conservatives about Howie Carr since the 1990’s. Carr’s multiple, vindictive, unwarranted and obnoxious attacks on Jim Lyons have accelerated the learning curve in this matter.”
“Like the old Supreme Court definition of obscenity, the toxic media presence of Howie Carr has absolutely no redeeming social value. Conservatives should abandon this un-Christian and uncharitable demagogue, who has demonstrated, treacherously, his unhesitating willingness to betray those who imagined, naively, that he was their ally.”
NEWS RELEASE
SATURDAY, JANUARY 8, 2011
Contact: C. J. Doyle
(617) 524-6309
HOWIE CARR WITHDRAWS AS SPEAKER AT ASSEMBLY FOR LIFE FOLLOWING CAMPAIGN BY CATHOLIC ACTION LEAGUE
Less than three weeks after the Catholic Action League of Massachusetts began a campaign to disinvite him, WRKO talk show host Howie Carr has withdrawn as the keynote speaker at the Annual Assembly for Life. Massachusetts Citizens for Life, which sponsors the event — to be held January 16th at Faneuil Hall — told callers to their office yesterday that Carr had withdrawn “for personal reasons.” Former U. S. Ambassador to the Holy See, Ray Flynn has been scheduled to replace Carr.
The Catholic Action League mobilized hundreds of Catholics to contact MCFL and the Archdiocese of Boston (which regularly participates in the event) and demand Carr’s removal. Carr has a long history of vulgar and malicious attacks on the Catholic religion. He has mocked the Eucharist, engaged in vile sexual innuendo regarding the Holy Family, and cast relentless aspersions on the Catholic priesthood. Promoting invidious stereotypes about Hispanics as criminals and illegal aliens, Carr plays Mexican music while reading the names of criminal suspects with Hispanic surnames. Where the pro-life movement tries to demonstrate compassion for poor women in difficult circumstances, Carr derisively refers to the children born out of wedlock to mothers on public assistance as “little bastards,” and has reportedly argued that women on welfare not be allowed to have children.
The Catholic Action League called Carr’s withdrawal “a victory for outraged and long suffering Catholics sick and tired of Carr’s boorish bigotry.”
Catholic Action League Director C. J. Doyle made the following comment: “In a market economy in a secular society, Catholics may not be able to drive bigots like Carr off the airwaves, but we should at least be able to prevent him from being treated as respectable within our own community. In this case, we succeeded in doing so. Having Howie Carr as the keynote speaker at the Assembly for Life would have been an insult to Catholics, an affront to Hispanics and immigrants, and an expression of contempt for unwed mothers and their children.”
“MCFL President Anne Fox ought to apologize for the disgraceful decision to invite Carr in the first place. That decision betrayed an appalling disregard for Carr’s record of blasphemy, sacrilege, nativism and anti-Catholicism. It was also an act of ingratitude to courageous elected officials who have defended the right to life, who have come to the aid of MCFL in perilous times, and who have been unjustly maligned by Howie Carr. The leadership of MCFL ought to be ashamed of itself for this unconscionable and embarrassing choice for keynote speaker.”
DECEMBER 23, 2010
Wanda Franz, Ph.D., President
National Right to Life Committee
512 10th Street, NW
Washington, D.C. 20004
Dear Doctor Franz,
I am writing to you in the hope that you might avert a major national embarrassment for the pro-life movement which is now impending in Boston. Anne Fox, the President of your affiliate organization — Massachusetts Citizens for Life — has, over the objection of her own Board Chairman, who subsequently resigned, invited Howie Carr to serve as the featured speaker at MCFL’s Annual Assembly for Life on January 16th.
Howie Carr is an anti-Catholic, Hispanic-bashing, immigrant-bashing, shock jock on WRKO Radio in Boston, and is a columnist for the Boston Herald. Carr’s career has been characterized by vulgarity, bigotry and demagoguery. He has mocked the Holy Eucharist, made an unspeakably crude sexual reference to the Holy Family, and said vile things about the Pope and the Catholic priesthood. He has promoted invidious stereotypes associating Hispanics with illegal immigration and crime. Carr has repeatedly referred to children born out of wedlock to mothers on public assistance as “little bastards,” and has reportedly argued that women on welfare should not be allowed to have children.
As the pro-life movement has always sought to demonstrate compassion rather than contempt for unwed mothers, Carr’s choice as a speaker is as unfathomable as it is inappropriate. I have enclosed two documents, a December 17th letter to Anne Fox, and a December 21st Catholic Action League News Update which detail our concerns and reveal the problematic nature of Carr’s selection to headline the Assembly for Life.
Any prudent observer can reasonably foresee that Carr’s presence at the Assembly for Life will result in adverse media coverage and comment, and will likely be accompanied by protests and possibly demonstrations by Catholics, Hispanic groups, immigrant groups, Arab-American organizations, and others, including many in the pro-life community. It will also result in acrimonious and enduring divisions among pro-lifers in Massachusetts, and has the potential to cause irreparable harm to what remains of MCFL.
I urge you to do all in your power to prevent a national public relations disaster for the right to life movement, by ensuring that the invitation to Howie Carr is rescinded.
Sincerely,
C. J. Doyle, Executive Director
NEWS UPDATE
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 21, 2010
Contact: C.J. DOYLE (617) 524-6309
CATHOLIC ACTION LEAGUE REJECTS MCFL EXCUSES FOR INVITATION TO HOWIE CARR
The Catholic Action League of Massachusetts today rejected excuses offered by Anne Fox, President of Massachusetts Citizens for Life, for that organization’s invitation to the anti-Catholic, Hispanic-bashing radio shock jock Howie Carr, to be the featured speaker at MCFL’s Annual Assembly for Life on January 16th (scroll down MCFL’s page).
In a late breaking development, the League has learned that the Chairman of the MCFL Board of Directors, long time pro-life activist Henry Luthin, resigned over the weekend.
The following is the reply of Anne Fox to the League’s letter of December 17th (see below):
Dear C. J.,
As I prepared to respond to your email, which requested that we withdraw our invitation to Howie Carr to speak at the Massachusetts Citizens for Life Assembly for Life, I realized that you had sent to your entire list what I assumed was a private email. It surprises me greatly that you would do that without contacting me first. If your goal was to have us withdraw our invitation, it would have been prudent to have contacted me...
You cite examples of statements from the last dozen years which are definitely out of order. I had not been aware of them. I have heard Howie praise the people and the school in his parish as well as The Montrose School. If someone as assiduous as you had been monitoring for the same dozen years, I suspect he would also have a dossier of positive statements.
Massachusetts Citizens for Life is nonsectarian. We, of course, join all pro-life people in admiration and gratitude for the leadership of the Catholic Church which has and is working so hard to restore the Culture of Life and would do nothing to embarrass her.
Howie is anti-abortion. He has been very helpful to us in our work over the past year and a half to publicize the anti-life aspects of Obamacare. We have not asked him to speak as an “entertainer.” We have asked him to speak, because of his political acumen, about the unacknowledged power of the pro-life vote. The general public, politicians, and our own people need to hear that.
C. J., I trust that you will share this email with the people to whom you sent your original email.
Best, Anne
The Catholic Action League characterized Fox’s remarks as “a bizarre attempt to defend the indefensible.”
Catholic Action League Executive Director C. J. Doyle made the following comment: “Evidently, Anne Fox never heard of the old saying that when you are already in a hole, you should stop digging. She actually makes the insipid argument that blasphemy and sacrilege — insulting the Body of Christ and making obscene references about the Foster Father of Our Lord — can be overlooked if there are countervailing considerations. The notion that the vile things Howie Carr has said about the Blessed Sacrament and Saint Joseph are somehow counterbalanced by the financial support he has provided to his daughters’ parochial school is manifestly absurd and intellectually dishonest, as is the pathetic attempt to hide behind the non-sectarian status of MCFL. Serious organizations do not invoke their non-sectarian character to excuse bigotry and hate speech.
“As for the preposterous assertion that we have somehow neglected to mention the allegedly good things Howie Carr has said about the Church, here, Anne Fox descends from argument to comedy. The only things which we have omitted are the new revelations about Howie Carr which we are learning of every day as more people contact us with evidence of his Catholic bashing. If anyone believes that they can bring success to their organization by showcasing someone who has mocked the Second Person of the Holy Trinity and defamed the Head of the Holy Family, then their thinking is that of an atheist rather than a Christian.
“For the record, Howie Carr supports sterilization and contraception, and has a long history of promoting pro-abortion candidates for public office. Where the pro-life movement demonstrates compassion for women in difficult circumstances, the caustic Howie Carr demeans the children born out of wedlock to mothers on public assistance as 'little bastards.’ Do we really wish to project the surly and mean-spirited countenance of Howie Carr as the image of the Massachusetts pro-life movement? Those who rail against immigrants, minorities, and welfare recipients, far from building a culture of life, usually promote sympathy for population control.
“Liberal Catholics malign the pro-life movement by unjustly accusing it of being a political front for the Republican Party. In this case, Anne Fox seems determined to vindicate that claim, even if it means embracing enemies of the Faith as repulsive as Howie Carr. From tailoring candidate questionnaires to make pro-abortion Republicans look 100% pro-life, to providing a platform to a Republican attack dog, it appears that Anne Fox is seeking to reduce the once proud Massachusetts Citizens for Life to an auxiliary of the Massachusetts Republican Party. For the credibility of their own organization, the officers, directors and members of MCFL ought to restrain her from doing so.
“Meanwhile, the Catholic Action League will begin to call local and national attention to the scandal of having an anti-Catholic, anti-Hispanic, anti-immigrant, anti-life speaker at a pro-life event.”
DECEMBER 17, 2010
Anne Fox, President
Massachusetts Citizens For Life
The Schrafft Center
529 Main Street
Charlestown, MA 02129
Dear Anne,
We were astonished to learn that Howie Carr will be featured at MCFL’s Annual Assembly For Life on January 16th. Carr is a notorious Catholic-basher with a long record of vicious and gratuitous attacks on the Catholic Religion.
On April 8, 1998 — Wednesday in Holy Week — in response to a decision by the Red Sox to forgo alcohol sales in Fenway Park because Opening Day would fall on Good Friday, Carr hosted a segment on his program in which he invited listeners to comment on selling “Catholic Eucharists for $3.49 a bag” as a substitute for beer. The result was a half hour of offensive slurs profaning the Blessed Sacrament.
In one particularly vile episode later in 1998, in a conversation between Carr and his producer Doug Goudie evidently intended to disparage Arabs, it was asserted that shepherds in the Middle East had unnatural relations with the animals in their flocks. Into this depraved subject the name of Saint Joseph — the Virgin Spouse of the Virgin Mother of God — was introduced. Saint Joseph was then misidentified as a shepherd.
In an interview with Malachy McCourt, Carr laughed and snickered over McCourt’s assertion that the late Francis Cardinal Spellman was not only a homosexual but a pedophile. Carr went on to recount a story alleging that an episcopal ring was found by police in a homosexual brothel, implying that the ring belonged to Spellman.
In January, 2002, Carr hosted a segment in which he asked his listeners, “Are you ashamed to be a Catholic?” during which he boasted that he never went to Mass. All throughout the molestation crisis of 2002, Carr contemptuously referred to the Cardinal Archbishop of Boston as “Bernie Law,” and on November 29th of that year the Boston Herald published a column by Carr in which he described the Cardinal as “a Bulger bum kisser.”
Hispanic Catholics, with their large families and culture of life, are the future of the Church and the Pro-Life movement in America. Howie Carr however, is not only an anti-Catholic but a crude nativist. One of the recurring themes of his program is the attempt to link illegal immigrants to crime. A particularly offensive gimmick is his habit of playing Mexican music while reading the names of criminal suspects with Hispanic surnames. This hostility to Hispanics and immigrants places Cardinal O’Malley, or whoever represents him from the Archdiocese of Boston, in the embarrassing position of sharing a stage with someone who boorishly castigates some of the neediest members of his flock.
In a Catholic community which has a significant number of Eastern Rite Catholics of Lebanese and Syrian descent (the Melkite Cathedral is in West Roxbury) it is unimaginable that MCFL would actually provide a platform to a rabble rousing shock jock who has described Arabs in the past as “towelheads.”
Inviting Howie Carr to address the Assembly for Life is an act of monumental ingratitude to elected officials who defended the right to life and came to the aid of MCFL in difficult times. Men such as William Bulger, Ray Flynn, Thomas Finneran, and the late Jim Craven have been the victims of vulgar insults, venomous denunciations, and malevolent diatribes by this spiteful demagogue.
A larger issue here is why an organization with a predominantly Christian membership would want to showcase a public figure whose life and career embody such a cynical negation of Christian values. Howie Carr is infamous for his uncharitableness of speech, his lack of compassion, and his sneering contempt for the objects of his scorn. He preys upon the vulnerable, exploits the misfortunes of others, incites rancor and envy, and has grown rich by his indifference to the Eighth Commandment. He mocks the Church, derides the poor, maligns men who have more integrity than he does, and has ridiculed the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ in the Holy Eucharist.
Inviting such a miserable creature to address an organization dedicated to the sanctity and dignity of human life is an affront to the Christian religion and everything the Pro-Life movement professes to uphold.
We urge you to reconsider this improvident decision and cancel the invitation to this inappropriate choice for a speaker.
Sincerely,
Daniel T. Flatley
Chairman Emeritus
C. J. Doyle
Executive Director
The Catholic Action League of Massachusetts
