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Buckle your seatbelts for a wild ride!  Bill Donohue, president and CEO of The Catholic League, joins our podcast to discuss secular attacks on the Catholic Church and Christianity in general.  We begin by talking about how moral virtue is essential in a free society as a means of controlling our unbridled appetites.  Dr. Donohue’s view on this is rooted in a notion of human nature based upon original sin and the non-perfectability of humans.  We contrast this with the vision of the Left, including Marxists and nihilists.  Bill focuses on the latter in his book Secular Sabotage, wherein he documents how this group has attacked Judeo-Christian religion (and the Catholic Church in specific) merely for the sake of challenging America’s status quo.  He provides several examples ranging from Lady Gaga to Andres Serrano to movies such as Priest and Dogma.  Bill’s role in defending Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ is discussed and leads to some speculation as to why Hollywood often makes movies that insult the sensibilities of the vast majority of citizens even though the flop at the box office.  But it is not only nihilists external to Christianity that are responsible for the culture war.  Bill talks about how various groups within the Catholic Church and mainline Protestantism seek to undermine traditional religious values.  We conclude with some observations on whether Christians are responding well to these challenges.  Recorded: April 21, 2011.

RELATED LINKS

The Catholic League’s website.

Secular Sabotage: How Liberals are Destroying Religion and Culture in America, by Bill Donohue.

The Twilight of Liberty: The Legacy of the ACLU, by Bill Donohue.

The New Freedom: Individualism and Collectivism in the Social Lives of Americans, by Bill Donohue.

RELATED PODCASTS

Louis Bolce on the Media and Anti-Fundamentalism.

Jon Shields on the Democratic Virtues and the Christian Right.

 

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