The 2009 Diocesan Summer Institute was launched last Friday with a burst of energy from the head of the nation’s largest Catholic civil rights organization.

“He is the Eveready Bunny working on nuclear power — he just never stops,” said Father Douglas Grandon, associate director of the diocesan Office of Catechetics, as he introduced Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights.

Donohue, the Institute’s first keynote speaker, gave a talk titled “Secular Sabotage: How Liberals Are Destroying Religion and Culture in America.”

That is also the title of a new book by Donohue due out this September. Delivered in his characteristic lively and unrelenting style, his talk summarized the book’s themes.

As head of the Catholic League, Donohue is also publisher of Catalyst, a monthly journal that documents the league’s responses to anti-Catholicism and threats to the civil rights of Catholics in America. His keynote included several personal anecdotes from his work with the Catholic League.

“I don’t want to be alarmist,” he began, “but we’re in trouble. We’re in deep trouble in America. The edifice of our country is crumbling underneath us.”

Donohue highlighted assaults on American Christianity and culture that originate from influential people in higher education, entertainment and the arts, nonprofit organizations, local, state and federal governments, and even within religious groups.

Many people holding key positions in society are not only not believers, but are actively hostile to Christianity, Donohue observed.

“Religion has always been the heart of every society, and in our society the religion is Christianity,” Donohue said.

Within Christianity, the Catholic Church is “the big plum,” he said. Consequently, it is inevitable that those who are hostile to Christianity will attack Catholicism.