To some, being mistakenly identified as a Catholic is the most serious sin in the world. This is one conclusion the Catholic League can reach with ease, what with the evidence that continues to pour into our office.
Every time the Catholic League solicits new members via a direct mail campaign, we get hit with a barrage of anti-Catholic mail. This happened to us again in February. Here’s how it works.
We begin by buying a mailing list from some Catholic publications and organizations. We then mail a letter to those on the list asking them to join the league. Some of the lists are “sloppy,” i.e., they contain numerous errors: the person may be deceased, the name or address may be wrong, the person may not be a Catholic, etc. With regards to the latter group, some who get our mail send it back to us complete with the most vicious anti-Catholic scribblings, pamphlets, tapes and books imaginable. From what we have seen, the pope and Our Blessed Mother are the two most common targets of the bigots.
It’s not just the Catholic League’s office that is being deluged with this stuff, it’s certain communities, especially in suburbia, that are being hit. Things got so bad in a Jewish neighborhood near Trenton, New Jersey that many residents contacted the police: they were being blanketed with really coarse literature blaming the Catholic Church for the Holocaust. The source of the hate mail was, not surprisingly, Chick Publications.
The league was only too happy to inform reporters at the Trenton Times of Chick’s track record. We are grateful to those Jewish men and women who protested this bigotry.
