Focus on Faith, a question and an-swer column in The Tidings (Los Angeles Archdiocese) recently (8/29/93) featured an item on “Catholic Haters.” The column is written by Fr. Gregory Coiro, OFM Cap. who works in the Public Affairs Office of the Archdiocese and who just happens to be chaplain of our California chapter.
The question concerned a Tony Alamo flyer which the writer had found on his windshield. He concluded by asking, “Who is this guy and why does he hate the Catholic Church so much?”
Father Coiro proceeded to tell him something of “Pastor” Alamo’s strange background and especially his bizarre claims about and peculiar obsession with the Catholic Church. Alamo claims that the Vatican controls the major news media as well as the FBI, CIA and IRS and that the Jesuits assassinated Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy.
Father Coiro described how he called an Alamo toll-free number and managed to get one of Alamo’s followers to hang up after an exchange in which he asked if the person paid income taxes (“Of course I do.”) to the Church controlled IRS!
Father Coirto concluded his column by calling on his readers to join the Catholic League:
“Every Catholic who cares about the persistance of anti-Catholicism as the most pervasive and socially acceptable prejudice in American society should belong to the Catholic League … I am not only the League’s local chaplain. I’m also a member.”
