Bill Donahue is on a rampage--again. The president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights is usually busy blasting "anti-Catholicism," which he defines as the views of anyone who disagrees with his conservative view of the church. Now he's going broader. In "Secular Sabotage," his new book to be released Sept. 2 by FaithWorks, Donahue accuses extremist liberals of "destroying religion and culture in America," as the book's subtitle accuses.
As usual, it's a simplistic story of bad guys trying to destroy good guys. "The radicals of old, namely the Marxists, wanted to tear down society and replace it with something new;" Donahue writes, "today's radicals just want to tear it down - they are nihilists, out to annihilate our social and cultural heritage." The bad guys are, not surprisingly, multiculturalists, Democrats, lawyers, Hollywood, artists and those who believe "anything goes" with regards to sex. The good guys would be conservative Christians and Catholics, whose culture is being destroyed by these "nihilists."
Donahue admits the book is deliberately antagonistic in which no one is spared. In fact, it started as an academic tome on evangelicals and Catholics, which his editor and publisher nixed. "What did they want that would make them happy? They wanted the Bill Donohue they saw on TV: provocative and unyielding. They wanted something hot. I got the message. In no time at all, I changed the entire focus of the book (it would no longer be about Catholics and evangelicals), and made substantial additions and deletions. I told Loretta Barrett, my agent, that the new book was so hot that she had better be wear¬ing gloves when turning the pages," he writes.
So far, being an antagonistic blowhard has gotten Donahue lots of media exposure, including regular stints on "The Colbert Report." Most likely it will work with his book, too. If you can't wait until Sept. 2, an "open access" version is available now.
