Oct 30, 2009  |  By: KEVIN NAFF  | COMMENTS     

IN A LITTLE-noticed piece published on the Washington Post’s web site last week, Catholic League president Bill Donohue took complete leave of rational thought and launched a diatribe against “cultural nihilists.”

He assailed “radical gay activists,” Democrats and basically anyone who believes in separation of church and state.

Here’s just one gem: “The culture war is up for grabs. The good news is that religious conservatives continue to breed like rabbits, while secular saboteurs have shut down: they’re too busy walking their dogs, going to bathhouses and aborting their kids. Time, it seems, is on the side of the angels.”

Conservatives may be breeding like rabbits, but those prodigious offspring aren’t attending Mass. Catholic Mass attendance has been in a freefall since its peak in the late 1950s, according to a national Gallup survey. Gallup reported that, on average, just 40 percent of Catholics in 2003 said they attended Mass within the previous seven days, compared to 74 percent in 1958.

The Catholic Church has lost its way and its appeal in the developed world; its growth is now found in developing countries. Earlier this month, the Catholic Diocese of Wilmington, facing a raft of sex abuse lawsuits, became the seventh diocese to file for bankruptcy protection.

An attorney representing victims of priest sexual abuse there aptly described the cynical move to file for bankruptcy as just the latest attempt by the church to cover up its criminal role in the scandal.

“It’s clearly another dodge … part and parcel of the cover up,” Stephen Neuberger, who represents a whopping 88 alleged victims, told the Washington Post.

As for the bathhouse reference, there are plenty of Catholic priests who know more about bathhouses than I do. How many gay guys like me have been hit on by a Catholic priest at a gay bar?

The rest of Donohue’s screed has to be read to be believed. He epitomizes the dying breed of conservative Christians left behind by a rapidly changing American society that finally moved past Donohue’s brand of divisive hate mongering in the last election.

Donohue calls for religious people of all faiths to unite against the nihilists, misrepresenting his own religion’s rather dim view of other faiths. He references, for example, the Mormon Church, but conveniently omits the fact that Catholics view Mormon beliefs (i.e. worshipping multiple separate entities) as blasphemy. I attended Bible study growing up and studied religion in college and can assure Donohue that the Book of Mormon and the views of Joseph Smith were never given serious or respectful consideration in either setting.

As for his absurd claim that the “gay activists are in charge” of the Democratic Party, I would remind Donohue that there are just three openly gay or lesbian members of Congress.

Donohue has embarrassed himself and his church with his outrageous and baseless paranoid rant.