Disney’s Disenchanted Kingdom Versus Parental Rights

Courtesy: the Catholic League

A Catholic League documentary film exposes the radical Disney descent into woke politics and child indoctrination and a flagrant disregard for parental rights.

January 18, 2023 by Fr. Gordon MacRae

Beyond These Stone Walls merited two citations in the “In the News” section of the December 2022 issue of Catalyst, the Journal of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights. Seeing this blog cited as a news source among venues like Catholic News Service, Catholic World Report, and Newsmax did little to bolster my New Year’s resolution to foster humility.

Also in that same issue of Catalyst, President Bill Donohue wrote about a documentary film produced by the Catholic League entitled, “Walt’s Disenchanted Kingdom: How Disney is Losing its Way.” In a brief but important article, “Why We Did the Disney Movie,” Bill Donohue laid out a compelling case for its necessity:

“Over the years, beginning in the 1990s, Disney turned against its family-friendly image, making and distributing fare that sharply broke with its moorings. I know this because one of the first big victories I had was in 1995 when I confronted Disney senior officials, ordering them out of the headquarters of the New York Archdiocese where we were located at that time. The occasion was the movie, “Priest,” a diabolical film that featured totally dysfunctional priests, all of whose problems were a function of their priesthood.”

The Catholic-bashing Disney film was distributed by Miramax, a company owned by Harvey Weinstein, now in prison for a series of sexual offenses. Then, according to Dr. Donohue, “Disney/Miramax did one anti-Catholic film after another.”

In March of 2022, Disney released a statement condemning a Florida bill that barred teaching students about sexual and gender identity issues from kindergarten to grade three. Governor Ron DeSantis signed the bill into law recognizing that parental rights are being disregarded when a media company takes on the parental role of sex education, especially when such content targets children ages five to eight. Who could possibly have objected to such a bill?

The Disney franchise did. At first its then-CEO, Bob Chapek, decided to steer clear of the controversy, but then he caved in under a barrage of pressure from Disney’s “woke” employees who dubbed Florida’s effort to protect parental rights as the “don’t say gay” bill. I wrote a multi-faceted post with a segment about this story that many also found shocking. Here are excerpts:

“Disney world has been in the news lately, but not for anything that contributes anything to the common good. In early 2022, following waves of parental anxiety over “woke” trends in education, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed into law a bill restricting schools from teaching about gender identity and sexual orientation from kindergarten to the third grade. In a bizarre twist for a corporation counting on Florida for success, Disney CEO Bob Chapek launched a corporate protest of the law.

“Supporters of the law said it was aimed at asserting more parental control over content in the classroom, a trend that swept the nation after a former Governor of Virginia declared last year that parents should have no say in what is taught in schools. The loudest reaction from parents has been revealed at the voting polls. Some of the most liberal school board members in some of the most liberal Democrat-led cities across the nation have since been voted out of office.”

Disney in La La Land

If you think the Florida law squashes legitimate debate about public policy, it does nothing of the kind. It simply limits classroom indoctrination about sexual and gender identity issues from kindergarten to grade three. This should need no defense. The law also requires that curriculum on these topics in subsequent grades must be age-appropriate. Governor DeSantis defended the new law amid an onslaught of “woke” protests:

“You’ve seen a lot of sloganeering and fake narratives by leftist politicians, by activists, and by corporate media. We will continue to recognize that in the state of Florida, parents have a fundamental role in the education, healthcare and well-being of their children.”

I wrote in another post that the Disney franchise was not always on board with its current woke agenda. Walt Disney himself went to an opposite extreme. One of my favorite movies as a child was the Disney production of Old Yeller which left an entire generation of children and teens in tears around 1960. Disney star, Tommy Kirk played a frontier teen forced to euthanize his beloved dog. Tommy Kirk went on to play the starring role in another Disney box office blockbuster, The Shaggy Dog, and again in Swiss Family Robinson.

On sets, Walt Disney introduced Tommy as “our moneymaker.” Then, at age 21, Kirk was seen holding hands at poolside with another teen boy. Walt Disney personally had him escorted off the set and his career with Disney came to an end. In his 20s, Kirk tried to revive his career with a few unmemorable productions, and then he read the writing on the wall. After recovering from addiction, he ran a small business in obscurity for most of his life and died in his 70s in 2020.

Walt Disney did not necessarily harbor prejudice. He simply knew that the public face of Disney’s entertainment empire should not also be the face of controversial social issues. So how would Walt Disney respond today to the spectacle that unfolded earlier last year in Florida?

A half century after Tommy Kirk was expelled from Disney, a reader sent me a message in 2022 suggesting that I should watch a made-for-TV Disney Film called “Under Wraps 2.” I did so with reluctance. The plot was both simple and simple-minded. A group of three middle school students discovered a pair of Egyptian mummies in a museum, assisted in bringing them back to life, attended a party with them, and then the movie ended with the kids jubilantly in the front row at a same-sex wedding which had nothing to do with the rest of the ridiculous plot.

It was clearly meant for indoctrination, and its message was also clear. If Corporate Disney could not foster such indoctrination in schools, it would do so on television, the next largest arena where impressionable children gather, often without parental awareness. In Disney’s contemporary films, the kids are portrayed as the only people who know what is going on while adults — especially parents — are portrayed as disconnected and generally clueless.

Tolerance, respect for human rights, and justice for all people are desirable goals for every society, but there is a gaping chasm between such a noble effort and the sweeping woke demands for schools to teach and promote LGBTQ and gender identity issues as a natural, even preferable evolution in human development that contributes to the common good. The “common good” is the most abused and debatable part of this discussion. I once wrote a post on the special handling of presenting this subject as normative. It was an eye-opener for many entitled, “Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and the Homosexual Matrix.”

In its public opposition to a common sense law, Corporate Disney descended into La La Land and is out of touch with the currents of parental rights and responsibilities. Disney’s dive into the culture war should raise alarms for stockholders whose concerns for Disney’s bottom line might dwarf its woke agenda. It should also raise alarms for parents whose children are lured from parental influence by sexual indoctrination made enticing to children by mixing it with heavy doses of glitter and fun.

Courtesy: the Catholic League

Waking up the Woke

Disney Chief Executive Bob Chapek initiated a public dispute with Governor DeSantis over Florida's common sense measure. Mr. Chapek and Disney World were on the wrong side of public policy and parental rights in this. The Walt Disney franchise can only be harmed by this oblivious descent into suppressing parental rights. I predicted such a development in another post, “The ‘Woke’ Have Commenced Our Totalitarian Re-Education .”

Former long term Disney CEO Bob Iger, frustrated at the lack of response to the new Florida bill, tweeted, “If passed, this bill will put vulnerable young LGBTQ people in jeopardy.” Was Mr. Iger referring to LGBTQ kindergarten students? The absurdity of the statement was left dangling. According to an extended article on the Disney debacle in The Wall Street Journal (Disney Endgame Dec. 17-18, 2022) Mr. Iger had embraced Disney’s drift into progressive politics more than his successor. The tweet caused Mr. Chapek to change course and refute the Florida Bill.

The resultant public controversy took a toll on the Disney bottom line. By September 2021, the company had lost 45% of its stock value, but its corporate responsibility to shareholders became subordinate to what the WSJ described as “the company’s support of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender causes.”

In response to all this, Bill Donohue recruited the interest of Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council. Together they sought a meeting with Disney CEO Bob Chapek who ignored them. In the Catholic League documentary, former Disney writers reveal how the modern Disney franchise sexualizes children including “a history of exposing its young actors ... to grooming with gay and transgender messaging.” Disney's latest animated film, “Strange World,” depicts “the first openly gay teen romance in a children's movie.”

Of interest, one of the global moneymakers in the Disney franchise is Disney Shanghai. With close friends in Shanghai, I have photographs of their family outing at this newest and sprawling Disney theme park. Disney is careful not to let the same woke value judgments invade Shanghai because the Chinese Communist Party would not tolerate it. As Bill Donohue points out, Disney will accommodate China while ignoring polls in the U.S. revealing that “seventy-five percent of American voters say that targeting underage minors in a transgender movement has gone too far.”

In recent developments, CEO Bob Chapek has been fired by the Disney Board of Directors while former CEO Bob Iger has returned for another stint as Disney CEO. Disney’s stock valuation had taken a major hit. A recent extended article in The Wall Street Journal explores these developments at Disney but hints that its returning CEO leans even further left than Chapek. This does not bode well for navigating the company out of the quagmire of one-sided progressive politics into which it has descended.

Check the Catholic League website for information on the release of “Walt’s Disenchanted Kingdom” and a trailer. The documentary features prominent cultural and media commentators including Director Jason Meath, Dr. Bill Donohue, Tony Perkins, Mercedes Schlapp, Dr. Ben Carson, Miranda Devine, Brent Bozell, David Horowitz, and Washington Times Film Critic, Christian Toto.

I wonder what the late Tommy Kirk might think today about the Disney drift to the opposite extreme of LGBTQ concerns. One need not travel back more than a few decades to find a parade of young actors used, used up and discarded by Corporate Disney. Remember Bobby Driscoll? He found stardom as Jim Hawkins in the 1950s blockbuster Disney production of Treasure Island. Bobby died from drug addiction in his early thirties after spending much of his youth anonymously discarded on skid row.

“What father among you would hand his son a stone if he asks for a fish?” (Matthew 7:10). What parent among you would take a cue from Disney on the education and raising of your child?

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The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights has released its 50-minute documentary film exposing “Walt’s Disenchanted Kingdom: How Disney Is Losing Its Way.” This film is a must-see for anyone concerned about the erosion of parental rights in the woke indoctrination of children. Watch the Catholic League documentary here.

Editor’s Note: The December 2022 issue of the Catholic League Journal, Catalyst also profiles and recommends a new book by Stephen Krason, a member of the Catholic League Board of advisors who teaches political science at Franciscan University. His book gathers a stellar group of scholars who address, Parental Rights in Peril published by Catholic University Press.

Thank you for reading and sharing this important post. You may also like these related posts from Fr. Gordon MacRae at Beyond These Stone Walls:

The “Woke” Have Commenced Our Totalitarian Re-Education

Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and the Homosexual Matrix

After Roe v. Wade, Hope for Life and a Nation’s Soul

The Unspoken Racist Arena of Roe v. Wade

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One of our Patron Saints, Saint Maximilian Kolbe, founded a religious site in his native Poland called Niepokalanowa. The site has a real-time live feed of its Adoration Chapel with Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament. We invite you to spend some some time before the Lord in a place that holds great spiritual meaning for us.

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

As you can see the monstrance for Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament is most unusual. It is an irony that all of you can see it but I cannot. So please remember me while you are there. For an understanding of the theology behind this particular monstrance of the Immaculata, see my post “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”

The Duty of a Priest: Father Frank Pavone and Priests for Life

In a bombshell report, Fr. Frank Pavone of Priests for Life and the most visible pro-life priest in America has been dismissed from the priesthood by Pope Francis.

December 18, 2022 by Fr. Gordon MacRae

Note from Fr. Gordon MacRae: In a bombshell report that I learned of only today it seems that Fr. Frank Pavone, Director of Priests for Life and the most visible pro-life cleric in North America has been dismissed from the clerical state by Pope Francis. At this juncture, the dismissal is both inconceivable and unexplained. Fr. George David Byers wrote of it with some attachments today.

I plan to postpone further comment on this troubling development for pro-life Catholics until there is further clarification from Rome, if ever. Of interest, I wrote this post about Fr. Frank Pavone and his struggles eleven years ago. Much that I described in this post has now come to pass. I have never been more sorrowful for being right. Please pray for Fr. Pavone and Priests for Life.

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For about a year now, Beyond These Stone Walls has had a link to Priests for Life, one of the strongest and most vocal pro-life organizations with oversight from the Catholic Church. So when news began to circulate that Father Frank Pavone, director of Priests for Life since 1993, was “recalled” to his diocese — the Diocese of Amarillo — I paid attention, as did many.

Before commenting on the justice or injustice of what has occurred to date in this matter, however, I must comment on the context. It has become clear to me even from behind these stone walls that not all is as it seems. Generally, a matter such as this would generate some dialogue within the Church, perhaps even in the Catholic media, but that would be the extent of its interest. This matter between Father Frank Pavone and Amarillo Bishop Patrick Zurek, however, has also become fodder for comments in the secular media providing fuel for the speculation and controversy now surrounding Father Pavone.

What exactly is the controversy? Father Frank Pavone has been recalled to his diocese, the Diocese of Amarillo, Texas, by his bishop. Father Pavone has been neither suspended nor disciplined for any cause. A Catholic News Service account included some clarification of this by Msgr. Harold Waldow, Vicar for Clergy in the Diocese of Amarillo:

“Father Frank Pavone, national director of Priests for Life, remains a priest in good standing in the Diocese of Amarillo, Texas. … Msgr. Harold Waldow told CNS that Bishop Patrick J. Zurek only suspended Father Pavone’s ministry outside of the diocese because the well-known pro-life priest is needed for work in Amarillo.”

— Catholic News Service, Sept. 14, 2011

But there remains some taint upon Father Pavone. This matter between a priest and his bishop has become a matter of public dispute, and that itself is a violation of Father Pavone’s rights under Church law. After writing a letter to the nation’s bishops describing his suspension of Father Pavone’s ministry outside his own diocese, the bishop reportedly released the letter publicly. That seems to be what sparked their differences thrusting this matter into a public forum, but without any clear allegation of wrongdoing.

Brian Fraga wrote an informative article about this in Our Sunday Visitor (“Pro-life priest ‘baffled’ by bishop’s shutdown,” OSV, October 2, 2011). He cited the broad support that has emerged for Father Pavone including from the Priests for Life Board of Directors, from the National Pro-Life Council, and other corners. Dr. Alveda King, niece of the late Rev. Martin Luther King and a staunch pro-life advocate, has released a powerfully supportive statement about Father Pavone and Priests for Life.

I have believed from the outset that the hype about all this has little to do with Father Frank Pavone and Bishop Zurek. It has to do with Priests for Life and its vocally Catholic pro-life stance. There is an agenda out there — an agenda with tentacles that have reached deeply into the arena of Catholic life — that would be encouraged by the diminishment or outright destruction of the Church’s pro-life ministry. In this entire matter, it is not only Father Pavone whose reputation is on the line. It is also the Church’s pro-life stance, consistently undermined by those who want compromise with a secular agenda in the culture war.

The demise of Priests for Life would be a great trophy for that agenda. I am no conspiracy theorist, but I can’t help notice that this story is unfolding nationally just as a Presidential Primary is taking shape, and the culture war is gearing up for battle.

Resisting Secular Sabotage

In a chapter entitled “Self-Sabotage: Catholicism” in his book, Secular Sabotage (Faith Words, 2009), Catholic League President Bill Donohue pointed out that dissent in the Church’s pro-life ministry is not as simple as some trendy left-wing Catholics promoting abortion. Very few people of even the remotest Christian persuasion actually promote abortion as a societal good. What Bill Donohue pointed out was something much more subtle. There is a growing consensus among left-wing Catholics that the Church has simply lost the battle for life and should just move on.

Please note here that I do not use the term “left-wing Catholics” in any derogatory sense. I spent much of my life and ministry squarely in that camp. So did Father Richard John Neuhaus and Cardinal Avery Dulles, two exemplary Churchmen to whose memory we have dedicated Beyond These Stone Walls. Their drift to the right is far more a story of their embracing the great adventure of orthodoxy to the Magisterial authority of the Church — an authority that took precedence for them above any trendy political ideology.

My own drift away from the left followed their same example. It marked the official end of my adolescence that the life of the Church took precedence over my own sometimes highly misinformed publicly dissenting points of view.

Part of the agenda among the more radical wing of the Catholic left has been to get about the business of removing any Magisterial authority from our faith experience. The goal is to  carve out a distinctly American Catholic church with identifiably American Catholic values that mirror the now disintegrating American wing of the Church of England, the Episcopal church. But that’s a whole other blog post for some other day — such as next week, perhaps.

It’s time for American Catholic liberals to see and admit that their own views and causes are being hijacked by this radical wing. For them, organizations like Priests for Life are seen as an anachronistic hindrance to social progress. A nice little scandal undermining Priests for Life would be most welcomed in some circles right about now, not least among them some purportedly Catholic circles.

But there isn’t a scandal. Father Frank Pavone has not been accused of anything, though I do worry about his extreme vulnerability. There are agendas at work even in our Church that would be bolstered by the destruction of Father Pavone, his career, and his reputation. That fact must be a part of the equation as Catholics evaluate this story. Father Frank Pavone first was a target long before he was a suspect.

I have a personal example of how this works right here at Beyond These Stone Walls. For over two years now, BTSW has presented the views of a priest claiming to be falsely accused and wrongfully imprisoned. So much of what I have written has been in direct confrontation with the agendas and claims of victim groups like SNAP and Catholic “reform” groups like Voice of the Faithful. Some of my postings about the Catholic League report, “SNAP Exposed” have been confrontational. My three-part series, “When Priests Are Falsely Accused” made a very controversial case for why accusers should be named. Nothing flies in the face of the cult of victimhood like that particular point of view.

But very few people disagreed with me or attacked these statements and positions. At first, I wondered if these controversial posts were even noticed, but then I learned they were widely disseminated. Even the Spanish-language news network, Univision, posted links to “When Priests Are Falsely Accused” on their website, as did National Public Radio and many international secular sites. Very few people disagreed with me or attacked these posts.

The very worst attack — though a rather wimpy one — was a one-line comment from SNAP director, David Clohessy. Commenting on the Spero News version of my BTSW post, “Due Process for Accused Priests?” David Clohessy called me “a dangerous and demented man.” Maybe he didn’t read “Sticks and Stones: My Incendiary Blog Post on Catholic Civil Discourse.”

But in contrast to the lack of any real attacks on Beyond These Stone Walls was a barrage of nasty e-mail attacks when I posted a clearly pro-life article, “The Last Full Measure of Devotion: Civil Rights and the Right to Life” last January. I got clobbered. Some of the messages called me all sorts of names, denounced Beyond These Stone Walls, and denigrated those who assist me as its editors. It was perfectly okay with these people if I remind Catholics that some priests are falsely accused and some Americans are wrongly imprisoned. But how dare I use a Catholic blog to post a reasoned and thoughtful defense of the Catholic Church’s pro-life position and why it should not be compromised?

So that’s it then. I can write that a lot of men and women have committed fraud by falsely accusing Catholic priests of decades-old abuses. I can write that some of our bishops have been unwittingly complicit in this fraud and have left their priests vulnerable by blindly settling virtually every claim. I can even write that some of the purported “victims” are in fact criminals who should have their names and their claims exposed before any real due process and justice can take place. Not many on the left or right had much to say in response to any of that. But when I wrote about why abortion is a basic civil rights issue, some Catholics called me a “predator priest who should be silenced by the Church.” One writer called for prison officials to confiscate my typewriter.

It all reminded me of a troubling conversation I had with a prisoner two years ago. He was a career criminal; a gangster, a thief and a thug, who came to my  door one day. “I have a question,” he said:

“Can you explain to me why all these Catholics can say they are protecting children when they scream about 30 or 40 year old claims of child abuse, but then have nothing to say about the fourteen million American babies sacrificed in abortions in just the last decade?”

It’s a hard question for which I have no answer. But I explained to him that no one in our Church will call him a gangster, a thief, or a thug unless he asks a question like that too loudly.

This was when I really came to admire Father Frank Pavone. I became aware of how visible the target on his back really is. As I wrote two weeks ago at the end of “Thy Brother’s Keeper,” I bow to Father Pavone’s faithful witness to both the truth and to his duty as a priest which is to preserve both his obligations and his rights under Church law. The bottom line is that anyone who thinks his bishop is going to protect his rights has not been paying attention in the last ten years.

Bishops as Prosecutors

I cannot speak to the internal disagreements between Father Frank Pavone and Bishop Patrick Zurek. I know none of the details. But I can speak in a broader sense of the necessity for any priest in the current climate to preserve his rights under Church law. I can only relate some of what transpired with my own bishop in a canonical proceeding to shed light on some of what may be happening behind the scenes in the Diocese of Amarillo.

Father Pavone came under recent attack in some circles because his bishop scheduled a personal meeting which Father Pavone declined to attend. There were some people — some very well intentioned — who saw in this some shades of culpability on the part of Father Pavone, using it to cast suspicion on his own transparency and desire to cooperate with his bishop.

It is likely, however, that Bishop Zurek has declined to allow a meeting to take place with Father Pavone’s Canonical Advocate present. I do not know this for certain, but I have read that Father Pavone’s Canonical Advocate has requested mediation in this matter between Father Pavone and his bishop. It was apparently on the advice of the Advocate that Father Pavone declined to meet without his Advocate or a mediator present. Both Father Pavone and his Canonical Advocate, Father David Deibel, J.D., J.C.L. have come under some public fire for this.

Church Law insists that any priest in a canonical forum has a right to advocacy. I stand by what I wrote in “Thy Brother’s Keeper’:

“I bow also to Father Pavone’s resolve to protect his rights under the higher authority of the law of the Church, for the [Dallas] Charter makes one thing clear now: Some bishops will neither protect nor respect those rights.”

I speak from experience. Throughout the last decade of attempting to defend myself before both a court of law and a court of public opinion, I have also had to simultaneously defend myself against a one-sided effort by my bishop to bring about a canonical dismissal from the priesthood with no defense whatsoever offered by me. Throughout this process, my bishop has steadfastly refused to meet or even converse with my Canonical Advocate regarding the matter of preserving my rights under Church law.

Far worse, when my bishop learned that I am seeking an opportunity to bring forward a new appeal of my conviction, my bishop hired his own lawyers to conduct a secret evaluation of my trial to present in Rome and circumvent my own efforts to defend myself. He has repeatedly refused to share with me or my Canonical Advocate the findings of that secret assessment.

My bishop has acted throughout in the role of a prosecutor, but it’s even worse than that.  In America, prosecutors are required to turn over to the defense the nature of charges and any evidence that supports them.  When I tried to assert my rights under Church law in this matter, my bishop responded with silence and has remained silent ever since.

I believe I could safely say that every organization formed on behalf of priests to assist in protecting their rights under Canon Law would now state that no priest in even a hint of an adversarial circumstance with his bishop should ever agree to a one-on-one meeting without his Canonical Advocate present. It would not only be foolish, it could be destructive. It would be akin to a prosecutor demanding to meet privately with a defendant without his lawyer present.

As the priesthood crisis became critical in 2002, Cardinal Avery Dulles gave bishops and priests a clear reminder of their rights and obligations under Church law.  His fine article, “The Rights of Accused Priests” is reprinted under “Articles” on Beyond These Stone Walls. Given these rights and obligations, I admire that Father Pavone is determined to resolve this matter in unity with his bishop. No bishop can in justice order him or any priest to set aside his rights under Church law.

Complicating my own comments on this matter is the fact that Father Frank Pavone and I have the same Canonical Advocate in the person of Father David L. Deibel, J.D., J.C.L. who has broad training and experience in both civil and Church law. He, of course, has not discussed the Father Pavone matter with me at all. He is an accomplished professional motivated by the law and an impeccable set of ethics.

But Father Deibel has come under some highly unjust fire because of his advocacy for me. Some have used this to try to impugn his reputation and undermine Father Pavone’s own canonical defense. In truth, Father David Deibel was the sole Church official to appear at my trial and sentencing over seventeen years ago. He traveled from California at his own expense to do this. At the time I was sentenced by Judge Arthur Brennan to 67 years in prison, Father David Deibel was one of only two people in that courtroom with the moral courage and personal integrity to speak the truth, despite knowing that there was a price to pay for it. Father David Deibel was one of the heroes in my case, and the extent to which this is true will very soon be placed into public view. There is a lot more to come in this regard, and it is indeed coming.

Meanwhile, the Church owes Father Frank Pavone the right of defense — and respect, support, and encouragement for his tireless voice on behalf of those who have been denied one. Click here for Father Frank Pavone updates.