http://catholicleague.org/2006report/summary2006.html

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Every year there is an issue that absorbs a disproportionate amount of
Catholic League resources, and in 2006 that issue clearly was "The Da Vinci
Code." While many organizations from several faith communities objected to
the film, no group did more to get the word out about the movie's lies than
the Catholic League. It was only fitting, then, that the media would give us
top billing in leading the protest.

When the book by Dan Brown came out in 2003, I told the Catholic League
staff we would do nothing about it. That's because I respect the right of
novelists to take liberties with history. After all, it's done all the time,
and almost everyone knows the difference between a story concocted for
entertainment and an historical account of some past event.

This doesn't mean that we would never object to a novel, but it would have
to be something altogether unusual for us to do so. Brown's The Da Vinci
Code proved to be such a book.

As an author of non-fiction books and articles, I do not have the time to
read novels. But when it was announced that there would be a film version of
the book-released by Sony, directed by Ron Howard and starring Tom Hanks-I
knew that I had to read it. What bothered me more than anything in the text
of the novel was the page at the beginning of the book titled "Facts."
Listed were three "facts" that were demonstrably false and defamatory of the
Catholic Church. This led me to write a letter to Ron Howard on March 18,
2005 asking him to put a disclaimer at the start of the film noting it as
fiction. He never answered me.

A year later, on March 6, 2006, we opened our campaign against the movie in
the pages of the New York Times. We reiterated our appeal for a disclaimer.
Brown, we said, has been trying to have it both ways for years: at times he
says his book "is a work of fiction," and at other times he says it is based
on "historical fact."

Brown's first "fact" alleged that a secret society, the Priory of Sion, kept
alive the story that Jesus and Mary Magdalene married. But in fact, this
tale was exposed as a hoax that was made up in the 1950s by an anti-Semitic
Frenchman (who was sent to prison for fraud). The second "fact" alleged that
a "religious sect" called Opus Dei was an evil organization, when in fact it
is a lay group that calls Catholics to holiness in their daily lives. The
third "fact" was the most malicious: it claimed that the book was based on
historical documents that show how the divinity of Jesus was forged in the
fourth century.

Everyone is free to believe what they want about Catholicism (or any other
religion), and novelists are free to offer conjecture about the past. But no
one has the right to defame another human being, or an institution, and then
lie about his sources. As to the bigoted nature of the book/film, consider
that it was John Calley, the movie's co-producer, who admitted that the film
was "conservatively anti-Catholic." It would be unimaginable to conceive of
a single producer in all of Hollywood who would brag about his association
with a bigoted film, unless, of course, it was a Catholic-bashing flick.

When the movie opened May 19, we were pleased that we had succeeded in
getting our message across-the film is a fable (even "60 Minutes" did a
segment on it and concluded it was a hoax). However, we had no idea that it
would prove to be such an artistic disaster, and that most reviewers would
pan it as a bore. Forced to see it, I branded it "inane." Referring to my
experience attending the movie on opening day, I commented that "at the end
of the film there were three or four people who clapped, and three or four
who hissed. Most just walked out in a zombie-like fashion, eerily mimicking
the characters on the screen."

While we did not succeed in persuading Howard to begin the movie with a
disclaimer, we did succeed in persuading the public that the movie was a
fable. We also scored a number of full-fledged victories in 2006, the most
prominent being our year-end triumph over NBC and pop singer Madonna.

Madonna has a long record of offending Christians, especially Catholics. So
when we learned of her "Confessions" tour, we braced for her latest
onslaught. This time, it was her "Mock Crucifixion" that offended us the
most. To the tune "Live to Tell," she donned a crown of thorns while hanging
from a mirrored cross. It was purely gratuitous, the stunt having nothing to
do with the song. I wound up telling CNN's Paula Zahn that "If she tried it
with some other religion, she may lose more than her shirt." I added, "She
certainly won't bother the Muslims, and I think we all know why that is."

After making an initial protest, we chose not to criticize Madonna
everywhere she went on tour. But when we learned that she was taking her
concert to Rome, on a Sunday no less, we restarted our campaign. It was just
a little too cute performing two miles from the Vatican. Fortunately,
Protestants, Jews and Muslims also protested her act. I said on the "Today"
show that to portray herself as Christ on the Cross was "the functional
equivalent of taking a middle finger and sticking it right in the face of
Christians."

The final straw happened when we learned that NBC-TV planned to air the
entire Madonna concert on Thanksgiving eve. Some Protestant groups called
for the concert to be cancelled. We took a different approach. We told NBC
to go ahead and air the concert, save for the "Mock Crucifixion" part. In
the event our request was not honored, we would launch a boycott, but it
would not be a conventional one.

Brent Bozell, president of the Media Research Center, and I had written a
letter to NBC chief Bob Wright explaining the boycott. We informed him that
only one corporate sponsor would be targeted (a boycott of all sponsors was
unrealistic), and that it would be randomly chosen the day after the concert
aired. That way no sponsor would know in advance to whom we would deliver
our Christmas present. Moreover, several other allied organizations had
pledged to join us in the boycott.

On October 19, NBC issued a statement saying it would cut the "Mock
Crucifixion" segment from the concert. Madonna, who previously said through
her spokeswoman that NBC must decide between airing the entire concert or
nothing at all, accepted the new terms. In other words, we won, NBC lost and
Madonna swallowed her pride and took the money and ran.

The year 2006 also saw the Catholic League widely commenting on the behavior
of Muslims, and media reactions to it. In the first part of the year, the
issue was Muslim protests over Danish cartoons portraying Muhammad. At the
end of the year, the issue was the reaction to the pope's speech at
Regensburg University and his trip to Turkey.

Our reaction to the Danish cartoons controversy was twofold: on the one
hand, we denounced the cartoons as inflammatory, siding with the U.S.,
Britain and the Vatican; on the other hand, we denounced the incredible
duplicity of the media-it chose not to offend Muslims by refusing to show
the cartoons, while continuing to air television shows, movies, cartoons and
commentary that were offensive to Catholics.

The Washington Post chastised the European newspapers for demonstrating
their "hostility" to Muslims. The Los Angeles Times declared that it "must
take great care not to offend," never explaining why it was necessary to
adopt a new strategy-for Muslims, that is. Similarly, the San Francisco
Chronicle said something we never heard before: it announced that "insulting
or hurting certain groups" is wrong (the cartoons posted in the online
edition of the newspaper frequently insult Catholics).

The New York Times managed to top this when it opined that it was wrong to
publish "gratuitous assaults on religious symbols." What made this so
special is that on the same day that Michael Kimmelman wrote a splendid
piece on the controversy (comparing the Catholic League's non-violent
protest of the "Sensation" exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum of Art in 1999 to
the violent Muslim reaction of 2006), the New York Times printed the
offensive Virgin Mary portrait with the elephant dung and porn on it that
was the focal point of our museum protest!

In September, Pope Benedict XVI drew a firestorm of condemnation for
dropping a line about a 14th century Byzantine emperor who called attention
to Muhammad's violence. The pope's address at Regensburg warned of the dire
consequences that follow when faith and reason are uncoupled. Ironically, as
if to prove the pope's point, Muslims in many parts of the world responded
violently to his remarks. Churches were firebombed, the pope was burned in
effigy, calls to kill the pontiff were voiced, and a nun was killed.

Yet in the eyes of so many in the media, the pope-not the terrorists-was to
blame. The Catholic League, along with Jews Against Anti-Christian
Defamation, took out an ad in the Washington Times defending the pope and
criticizing Muslim violence. Dennis Prager said it best when he blasted
those who continue to criticize Pope Pius XII for not speaking out about the
Holocaust (the pope did, but that is another matter) and who were now
criticizing Pope Benedict for "confronting the greatest evil of his time."
He concluded, "maybe it isn't a pope's confronting evil that concerns Pius's
critics, but simply defaming the Church."

The flap over the Danish cartoons not only showed the duplicity of the
media, it showed the hypocrisy of the academy. Most of the student
newspapers on the nation's college campuses choose not to reprint the
cartoons, and when one of them did, a competing newspaper struck back by
attacking Catholics.

The March edition of the Insurgent, a University of Oregon student
newspaper, contained a large graphic cartoon depicting a naked Jesus on the
Cross with an erection; there was also a graphic titled "Resurrection,"
which showed a naked Jesus kissing a naked demon, both sporting erections.
The entire issue was laced with downright insulting fare-there were several
cartoons of Jesus (including Jesus crucified)-all of which were released
during Lent. That this occurred at a state institution made it all the more
disturbing.

This explosion of hate speech was a response to a decision reached by one of
the Insurgent's rivals, the Commentator, to publish the 12 Danish cartoons
that so inflamed the Muslim world. An Insurgent editorial explained that
because the Commentator published depictions of Muhammad so as to "provoke
dialogue," they had a right to trash Christians as a way of provoking
dialogue.

It was the tepid response by university president Dave Frohnmayer that
motivated us to contact every member of the Oregon legislature, the
governor, the state's three Catholic bishops, the president of the Northwest
Commission on Colleges and Universities, and the chancellor of the Oregon
University System. While the damage could not be undone, we were pleased
that concerned students on campus registered their outrage. We were also
delighted that the national media picked up this story, much to the chagrin
of Frohnmayer.

We had another battle in September on the campus of the University of
Virginia when the Cavalier Daily, the student newspaper, printed
anti-Christian cartoons. One showed a drawing of Jesus crucified on a
mathematical graph with the inscription, "Christ on a Cartesian Coordinate
Plane." The other showed the Virgin Mary holding baby Jesus. "Mary.I don't
mean to ruin this special moment," Joseph says, "but how did you get that
bumpy rash?" To which Mary says, "I swear, it was Immaculately Transmitted."

Our protest included mentioning how the same student newspaper had
previously apologized to gays when they were offended. So we demanded equal
treatment. After being bombarded with 2,500 e-mails and 50 phone calls, the
offensive comics were pulled from the website of the student newspaper and a
statement of regret was issued.

We spent a lot of time last year, quite successfully, combating draconian
state laws designed to punish the Catholic Church because of the sexual
abuse scandal that was exposed in 2002. We had no problem with laws that
promised uniform application, but when it was discovered that the Catholic
Church was being singled out, we struck back. For example, when New
Hampshire legislators entertained a bill that would violate the Sacrament of
Reconciliation-as if priests routinely learn of molestation committed by a
church employee in the confessional-we protested its unconstitutionality. We
won.

Colorado was the site of the most tenacious battle in this area. Early in
the year, three bills were considered that would suspend the statute of
limitation for child sexual abuse lawsuits for two years. The bills,
however, applied only to private entities; public schools were purposely
given a pass, even though they have the worst documented record of the
sexual abuse of minors of any institution in the nation. The Catholic League
quickly came to the defense of Colorado's three courageous bishops:
Archbishop Charles Chaput, Bishop Michael Sheridan and Bishop Arthur Tafoya.

We wrote to every member of the Colorado legislature protesting the inequity
of these bills. If all institutions were equally blanketed, we would have no
problem, but by cherry picking the Catholic Church, the lawmakers were
showing their bias. After a struggle, we prevailed and legislation was
introduced that would give no institution a pass. Immediately, the teachers
unions got scared and let their representatives know of their concerns. Thus
did these bills die a slow death.

We were active in the courts, as well. We like to team with the Thomas More
Law Center whenever we can-it's a good tag team. Our most prominent case is
still pending before the courts: we are protesting the prohibition of
cr