A Catholic bishop is slamming the campaign of pro-abortion candidate Hillary Clinton over recent emails from her top campaign staff trashing Catholic voters.
Bishop Thomas Tobin says Hillary Clinton’s radical proportion position is one of the several issues he has problems with the Democratic candidate on but he’s also very concerned about the recently leaked emails from WikiLeaks that show top Clinton staffers calling Catholic voters “severely backwards.”
Tobin said the emails “reveal the existence of a toxic, anti-Catholic prejudice within the Clinton campaign.”
“The messages marginalize faithful Catholics, ridicule Catholic beliefs, and promote ideological division in the Church,” Bishop Tobin wrote. “They call for the ‘end of a middle-ages dictatorship and the beginning of a little democracy and respect for gender equality in the Catholic Church.’ In light of the widespread anti-Christian, anti-Catholic prejudice rampant in our culture today, should we be at all surprised by this vitriol?”
Tobin is also concerned about the pro-abortion position Clinton’s “Catholic” running make Tim Kaine takes.
“It was so sad and disheartening to watch ‘devout Catholic’ Tim Kaine proudly and zealously support abortion on demand during the VP debate last night,” the bishop wrote. “How far he has drifted from his solid Catholic roots; how quickly he has abandoned the ‘Gospel of Life’ that is an essential part of our Catholic Faith.”
Responding to the Catholic bashing, Archbishop Kurtz talked of the importance of freedom of religion, which “ensures the right of faith communities to preserve the integrity of their beliefs and proper self-governance”.
“There have been recent reports that some may have sought to interfere in the internal life of the Church for short-term political gain. If true, this is troubling both for the well-being of faith communities and the good of our country,” he wrote.
“In our faith and our Church, Christ has given us a precious gift. As Catholics, we hold onto our beliefs because they come to us from Jesus, not a consensus forged by contemporary norms. The Gospel is offered for all people for all times. It invites us to love our neighbor and live in peace with one another. For this reason, the truth of Christ is never outdated or inaccessible. The Gospel serves the common good, not political agendas.”
Archbishop Kurtz concluded: “Politicians, their staffs and volunteers should reflect our best aspirations as citizens. Too much of our current political discourse has demeaned women and marginalized people of faith. This must change. True to the best hopes of our founding fathers, we are confident that we can and will do better as a nation.”
Last week, Wikileaks released transcripts of an email exchange entitled “Conservative Catholicism” between Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, campaign spokesperson Jennifer Palmieri, and John Halpin, a staffer at the Clinton allied Center for American Progress.
In the email thread Halpin mocks News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch and Robert Thompson, Managing Editor of Wall Street Journal, for raising their kids Catholic.
Halpin writes about these Catholics: “They must be attracted to the systematic thought and severely backwards gender relations and must be totally unaware of Christian democracy…”
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Clinton spokesperson Palmieri agreed: “I imagine they think it is the most socially acceptable politically conservative religion. Their rich friends wouldn’t understand if they became evangelicals.”
Halpin replied: “Excellent point. They can throw around ‘Thomistic’ thought and ‘subsidiarity’ and sound sophisticated because no one knows what the hell they’re talking about.”
Brian Burch, the head of the pro-life group CathlicVote, is livid and is calling on these top Clinton campaign officials to be fired.
“Aside from their blatant bigotry and ignorance about the philosophy and social teachings of Catholicism, does anyone notice a pattern here?” he asked. “Hillary has already called half of her opponents’ supporters ‘a basket of deplorables’ and ‘irredeemable.’ Now we get a glimpse of what her staff and friends think about Catholics in particular: They mock Catholic converts. They ridicule Catholics for raising their kids Catholic. They call our faith ‘severely backwards.’”
“Make no mistake, had Clinton staff and allies spoken this way about other groups, they would be dismissed. Just imagine if Clinton’s spokesperson was caught calling prominent Muslims or Jewish converts frauds for embracing their faith and mocking them for doing so because it was socially acceptable,” Burch continued. “This morning we called on Jennifer Palmieri to resign immediately from the Clinton campaign.”
