Some members of the Clinton campaign take a very dim view of “conservative Catholicism” (otherwise known as “Catholicism”) a newly exposed email exchange revealed. In hacked emails released this week by WikiLeaks as part of the “Podesta emails” cache, Clinton campaign communications director Jen Palmieri and Center for American Progress fellow John Halpin shared their deep thoughts on the “backwards” religion.
The email chain from March of 2011 is titled “Conservative Catholicism” and begins with Halpin sending an email to Podesta and Palmieri ridiculing News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch and Wall Street Journal managing editor Robert Thomson for being Catholic.
“Ken Auletta’s latest piece on Murdoch in the New Yorker starts off with the aside that both Murdoch and Robert Thompson, managing editor of the WSJ, are raising their kids Catholic. Friggin’ Murdoch baptized his kids in Jordan where John the Baptist baptized Jesus,” sneered Halpin. “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.”
Palmieri, who was with the Center for American Progress at the time, wrote back, “I imagine they think it is the most socially acceptable politically conservative religion. Their rich friends wouldn’t understand if they became evangelicals.”
Amateur theologian 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.”
Some of the most powerful and intellectual voices in the conservative movement happen to be Catholic, including members of the Supreme Court, think tanks, the media, and members of congress. Conservative Catholics accept church teaching on five non-negotiable life issues (abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem cell research, human cloning and homosexual marriage) which leads them to count out the Democrat party at election time. The fact that political operatives in Hillary Clinton’s orbit have little understanding or respect for Catholicism should come as no surprise, however.
Hillary Clinton herself showed an astounding ignorance of the Catholic faith when she visited Mexico City as secretary of state in March of 2009.
She was taken to see one of the most recognizable religious icons in the American hemisphere — the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe inside the Basilica de Guadalupe. As she laid flowers at the shrine, she looked up at the image of Our Lady on Juan Diego’s cloak and asked the priest, Monsignor Diego Monroy Ponce, “Who painted it?” — which is tantamount to asking who painted the image of Jesus on the Shroud of Turin. The kindly priest — who until that very moment had probably never been asked that question — answered simply, “God.”
Donald Trump touched on the anti-Catholic WikiLeaks emails during his speech in Panama City, Florida, Tuesday night.
“Not only have the Clinton’s ripped off Haiti, her emails show members of the Clinton team attacking Catholics!” Trump said to a crowd of over 11,000 people. “It’s just the latest evidence of the hatred the Clinton campaign has — really for everyday Americans.”
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