Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on President Biden’s appointment of John Podesta:
Never before in American history has there been a president of the United States who has worked harder to oppose Catholic teachings on marriage, the family, abortion, school choice, conscience rights, and the wellbeing of children (e.g., transgenderism) than President Joe Biden. Now he has added to his legacy by appointing a man to a senior position in his administration who is a confessed enemy of the Catholic Church, John Podesta.
On the Friday afternoon before Labor Day weekend, Biden appointed Podesta to oversee his climate policies. Podesta started in the job on September 6.
Podesta served as chief of staff to President Bill Clinton and was chairman of Hillary Clinton’s failed presidential bid in 2016. He founded the far-left Center for American Progress, and has now come out of retirement to man this new post.
Podesta is not merely someone who disagrees with the Catholic Church’s teachings on many issues—he has actively sought to subvert it. We know this because of the Wikileaks revelations made public in 2016.
In 2012, Sandy Newman, founder of the left-wing group, Voices for Progress, asked Podesta for advice on how best to “plant the seeds of the revolution.” The revolution he sought was to sunder the Catholic Church.
“There needs to be a Catholic Spring,” Newman told Podesta, “in which Catholics themselves demand the end of a middle ages dictatorship and the beginning of a little democracy and respect for gender equality in the Catholic Church.” (The reference to a “Catholic Spring” in the Church was an allusion to the “Arab Spring” freedom movements in the Middle East.)
Podesta’s reply was priceless. “We created Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good to organize for a moment like this.” He added, “Likewise Catholics United. Like most Spring movements, I think this one will have to be bottom up.”
The Catholic League fought Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good and Catholics United, both funded by George Soros, tooth and nail for years, exposing them as the fraud that Podesta admitted they were. From the get-go they were nothing but Catholic front groups for those who wanted to take down the Catholic Church from within.
In 2010, Catholics in Alliance closed its doors and ceased to exist, though it gave the appearance of hanging on. In 2013, the IRS revoked its tax-exempt status for failing to file a 990 form for three consecutive years. It was the final nail in the coffin for this dummy Catholic letterhead.
Catholics United hung on for a few more years, and finally went under after the Wikileaks emails went public indicting Podesta and others who conspired with him against the Catholic Church. Podesta, along with Hillary Clinton communications director, Jennifer Palmieri, both claimed that they could not be anti-Catholic because they identified as Catholic.
Here is what I said on October 17, 2016, about that line of defense. “Bigotry is determined by what is said and done,” I said at the time, “and does not turn on biographical data. For example, putting a swastika on a synagogue is no less anti-Semitic if done by a Jew. Similarly, making anti-Catholic statements, or engaging in anti-Catholic conduct, is no less anti-Catholic if done by a Catholic.”
It was also revealed that both Podesta and Palmieri ridiculed News Corps CEO Rupert Murdoch, and Wall Street Journal managing editor Robert Thomson, for raising their children Catholic.
Biden has to know about Podesta’s anti-Catholic record, but it matters not a whit. Nor does it matter to the media. Yet if a Republican president hired a man who deliberately set out to undermine Islam, he would never get away with it.
This latest chapter in Biden’s antipathy for Catholicism makes mince meat out of his professed “devout” Catholic status.
Contact White House Secretary: Karine.Jean-Pierre@who.eop.gov
