{"id":657,"date":"2009-05-17T07:59:00","date_gmt":"2009-05-17T07:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/deaconsbench\/2009\/05\/meet-william-donohue-perenially-indignant.html"},"modified":"2009-05-17T07:59:00","modified_gmt":"2009-05-17T07:59:00","slug":"meet-william-donohue-perenially-indignant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2009\/05\/meet-william-donohue-perenially-indignant.html","title":{"rendered":"Meet William Donohue: “Perenially indignant”"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the more colorful and combative characters on the Catholic scene was profiled in the New York Times<\/a> recently: the Catholic League’s Bill Donohue: <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>William A. Donohue, the perennially indignant president of the Catholic League for Civil and Religious Rights, had no sooner finished a conference call with reporters Wednesday, in which he demanded the firing of a new White House aide, when CNN called.<\/p>\n

\u201cCNN wants you to do Rick Sanchez at 3:30 on the Notre Dame thing, and also Bill Cunningham wants you to come on about \u2018Angels and Demons,\u2019 \u201d said his assistant, Susan Fani, in the wood-paneled 34th-floor Midtown Manhattan office from which Mr. Donohue surveys the world \u2014 and more often than not finds it rife with anti-Catholic bias.<\/p>\n

With urgency in his voice, he replied, \u201cNow, I\u2019ve got to see the movie before I can talk about it, but if he wants me to go on about the distortions and lies in Dan Brown\u2019s book and Ron Howard\u2019s hypocrisy,\u201d he said, referring to the author of the book and director of the movie \u201cAngels and Demons,\u201d \u201cI can do that.\u201d He spoke fast, his words bunching up and spilling over their margins like the notations on the overcrowded desk calendar he was scribbling on.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut, wait, so you told the people at \u2018American Morning\u2019 I can do the taping for them? And Bob Schieffer is tomorrow morning at 10.\u201d<\/p>\n

It has been a busy week for Mr. Donohue, a contentious and unofficial enforcer of Roman Catholic sensibilities who can grate on enemies and friends alike with his immense ability to be offended on behalf of his church.<\/p>\n

In the 16 years since he took the reins of the Catholic League \u2014 an organization that claims to have 50,000 paying members nationwide but has no formal connection to the church and no spokesman except Mr. Donohue \u2014 he can recall few moments that have so thoroughly tapped his well of combativeness.<\/p>\n

With the movie \u201cAngels and Demons\u201d opening on Friday, he has been issuing public broadsides and giving interviews on radio and television by the fistful, pounding at what he says are historical distortions about the church\u2019s history in the book\u2019s plot. \u201cThey even have a scene where rats eat a bunch of cardinals,\u201d he said. \u201cCan you imagine any other religion where this would not be viewed as rank religious bias?\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There’s much more at the Times link.<\/p>\n

Meantime, Donohue wasted no time taking issue<\/a> with several items in the Times article, and offering his own corrections to the record. <\/p>\n

PHOTOS:<\/b> by Tim Knox \/ New York Times <\/i><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the more colorful and combative characters on the Catholic scene was profiled in the New York Times recently: the Catholic League’s Bill Donohue: William A. Donohue, the perennially indignant president of the Catholic League for Civil and Religious Rights, had no sooner finished a conference call with reporters Wednesday, in which he demanded…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":365,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-657","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-links-r-us","category-media"],"yoast_head":"\nMeet William Donohue: "Perenially indignant" - The Deacon's Bench<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2009\/05\/meet-william-donohue-perenially-indignant.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Meet William Donohue: "Perenially indignant" - The Deacon's Bench\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"One of the more colorful and combative characters on the Catholic scene was profiled in the New York Times recently: the Catholic League’s Bill Donohue: William A. 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