Bill Donohue comments on the latest development in the Podesta-Wikileaks scandal:
Hillary Clinton’s anti-Catholic campaign chairman, John Podesta, and her anti-Catholic communications director, Jennifer Palmieri, both claim Catholic status. Some are defending them from the accusation that they are anti-Catholic, arguing that Catholics cannot be anti-Catholic.
Now we have John Halpin, Podesta’s left-wing associate, expressing umbrage at the mere suggestion that he, a Catholic, is anti-Catholic.
Invoking one’s religious credentials to deflect charges of bigotry is a failed strategy. Bigotry is defined by one’s words and deeds, having nothing to do with the demographic characteristics of the bigot.
In an email Halpin sent to Podesta and Palmieri, Halpin criticized Fox News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch, and Wall Street Journal managing editor Robert Thomson, for raising their children Catholic. “Friggin’ Murdoch baptized his kids in Jordan where John the Baptist baptized Jesus,” he said. “It’s an amazing bastardization of the faith. They must be attracted to the systematic thought and severely backwards gender relations and must be totally unaware of Christian democracy,” he added.
After making these incredibly disparaging remarks, Halpin justifies his bigotry by trotting out his Catholic credentials. “I’m Catholic. My parents are Catholic. I went to a Catholic university. My kids were baptized by their Jesuit uncle and went to Catholic school when they were young.”
How pathetic. Halpin is to be excused for his rank anti-Catholic remarks because he calls himself a Catholic! Has he ever heard the term “self-hating Catholic” or “self-hating Jew”? Instead of owning up to his bigotry, he takes cover under his Catholic tent. It doesn’t wash.
Halpin is a small fry. The big fish is Podesta, the one who brags how he has orchestrated a “revolution” within the Catholic Church. He is not a Clinton volunteer or low-ranking staff member—he is the architect of her campaign.
Hillary Clinton’s right-hand man is an admitted saboteur seeking to create mutiny in the Catholic Church, and she does nothing about it. She’s the real problem. The only way she can get this monkey off her back is to fire Podesta immediately.
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