WASHINGTON, D.C., October 13, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – The beginning of a chorus calling for an apology from the Hillary Clinton campaign for anti-Catholic bigotry was raised Wednesday along with demands for high-level campaign staff to be fired as more WikiLeaks emails displayed a pattern of prejudice toward people of faith.
Republican vice presidential nominee Mike Pence called on the Democratic presidential nominee to retract anti-Catholic statements made by members of her campaign staff revealed in leaked emails and said the Clinton campaign should apologize.
“If only on behalf of her Catholic running mate, Hillary Clinton should denounce those bigoted, anti-Catholic, anti-evangelical remarks and her campaign staff should apologize to people of faith and do it now,” Pence said Wednesday before students at Liberty University.
Pence’s remarks came on the heels of leaked emails showing Jennifer Palmieri, the Clinton campaign director of communications, saying conservative Catholics gravitated toward the faith because “they think it is the most socially acceptable politically conservative religion,” and “Their rich friends wouldn't understand if they became evangelicals.”
The April 2011 email exchange titled “Conservative Catholicism” starts with John Halpin, a senior fellow for the leftist Center for American Progress (CAP), smearing News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch and Wall Street Journal Managing Editor Robert Thompson. Halpin pointed out to Palmieri and John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman, that the two men were raising their kids Catholic.
“Friggin' Murdoch baptized his kids in Jordan where John the Baptist baptized Jesus,” Halpin writes Podesta and Palmieri.
He then goes on to call Catholic beliefs on gender relations “severely backwards” and says conservative Catholics can “throw around” certain Catholic theological terms “and sound sophisticated because no one knows what the hell they're talking about.”
“It's an amazing bastardization of the faith,” Halpin said. “They must be attracted to the systematic thought and severely backwards gender relations and must be totally unaware of Christian democracy.”
Palmieri’s statements on Catholics in the email were in response to Halpin’s on conservative Catholics.
Steven Mosher, who is a member of Trump's Catholic Advisory Committee, believes that the e-mails reveal a pervasive anti-Catholic, indeed, anti-Christian, bias in the Clinton camp. “No one has been fired, or even taken to the woodshed, over comments that mock orthodox Catholics and evangelicals. In fact, it's even worse than mere mockery. The Clintonistas are actively fomenting dissent within the Catholic Church by supporting phony front groups that seek to change Catholic teaching on fundamental doctrines.”
“They regard its views on sex, marriage and other matters as hopelessy 'backwards,' ” Mosher continued, “and call for a 'Catholic Spring,' which is to say a revolution in the Church against its teaching authority. The obvious goal of aligning the Church's views with those of the liberal wing of the contemporary Democrat Party for short-term political gain.”
“This is completely in line with Clinton's own views on the matter. After all, it was Clinton herself who, sounding like Mao Zedong, said that “deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs, and structural biases have to be changed.” She was talking about abortion, but does anyone think that she would stop there? She was, in effect, waving Mao's Little Red Book around and calling for a Cultural Revolution to destroy what's left of America's Judeo-Christian heritage.”
Catholic lobbying group CatholicVote.org (CV) said Palmieri “must resign immediately or be fired.”
“Hillary Clinton has already called half of her opponents’ supporters ‘a basket of deplorables’ and ‘irredeemable,’” CV President Brian Burch said, “and now it comes out that her campaign spokeswoman dismissively questions the sincerity of Catholic Americans’ faith. And there’s no evidence that Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta ever pushed back at these smears against Catholicism.”
“Had Palmieri spoken this way about other groups she would be dismissed,” Burch said. “Does Hillary Clinton respect the faith of Catholic and evangelical Americans?”
Calls for Podesta’s firing came from other Catholic quarters, as additional leaked emails showed Podesta admitting involvement in the founding of George Soros-funded anti-Catholic agitation groups Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good and Catholics United.
“In light of the latest WikiLeaks revelations, she has no choice but to cut all ties with this man,” Catholic League president Bill Donohue said in a statement Wednesday. “The man is hellbent on creating mutiny in the Catholic Church and must therefore be fired.”
Wednesday’s leaked emails showed Podesta admitting to helping dispatch a “progressive” group to infiltrate the Church and also taking an active role in provoking a liberal Catholic revolt against the U.S. Bishops.
“We created Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good to organize for a moment like this,” Podesta writes in the latest leaked email.
The February 2012 email exchange with Center for Progress President Sandy Newman specifically discussed sparking revolt within the U.S. Catholic laity, using the U.S. Bishops’ opposition to the HHS Contraception Mandate.
“There needs to be a Catholic Spring,” Newman writes to 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.”
“Podesta not only endorsed the plan to create a revolution within the Catholic Church —he boasted that he had been working on this for years,” Donohue said.
WikiLeaks has exposed Podesta as the most influential point man running offense for Soros, Donohue continued, and Podesta and Soros have worked together to manipulate public opinion against the Catholic Church.
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