Catholic League

Catholic League may refer to:

Sports

Catholic League (German)

The German Catholic League (German: Katholische Liga) was initially a loose confederation of Roman Catholic German states formed on July 10, 1609 to counteract the Protestant Union (formed 1608), whereby the participating states concluded an alliance "for the defence of the Catholic religion and peace within the Empire." Modelled loosely on the more intransigent ultra-Catholic French Catholic League (1576), the German Catholic league initially acted politically to negotiate issues with the slightly older Protestant Union.

Nevertheless, the league's founding, as had the founding of the Protestant Union, further exacerbated long standing tensions between the Protestant reformers and the members of the Catholic Church which thereafter began to get worse with ever more frequent episodes of civil disobedience, repression, and retaliations that would eventually ignite into the first phase of the Thirty Years' War roughly a decade later with the act of rebellion and calculated insult known as the Second Defenestration of Prague on 23 May 1618.

Catholic League (U.S.)

The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, often shortened to the Catholic League, is an American Catholic anti-defamation and civil rights organization. The Catholic League states that it "defends the right of Catholics – lay and clergy alike – to participate in American public life without defamation or discrimination." The Catholic League states that it is "motivated by the letter and the spirit of the First Amendment ...to safeguard both the religious freedom rights and the free speech rights of Catholics whenever and wherever they are threatened." According to the Encyclopedia of American Religion and Politics, the League "is regarded by many as the preeminent organization representing the views of American lay Catholics."

Founded in 1973 by Jesuit priest Virgil Blum, the Catholic League was formed to counter discrimination against Catholics in the U.S. government and in popular culture. The low-profile group initiated public education campaigns and some lawsuits. In 1993 the group became much more aggressive with a new president, former sociology professor William A. Donohue, who also increased its size to become the largest Catholic advocacy organization in America. The Catholic League is known for press releases about what it views as anti-Catholic and anti-Christian themes in mass media.