Another round of WikiLeaks emails released on Wednesday makes clear the arrogant contempt progressives in the Hillary Clinton campaign have toward traditional Catholics. The emails feature Clinton’s current campaign chairman John Podesta and a left-wing activist discussing a possible “revolution” in the Catholic Church. The activist’s vision for revolution in the Church included what he called a “Catholic Spring,” much like the “Arab Spring” that was supposed to lead to an updated and improved Muslim faith. He expressed an interest in learning more about how to plant “the seeds of the revolution.”
The emails are from February 2012, when a major political controversy erupted over ObamaCare’s “contraception mandate,” which required employers that provide their employees with health insurance to cover contraceptive costs in their plans. This meant religious employers, like Priests for Life and Little Sisters of the Poor, would be forced to provide contraception coverage in a direct attack on their religious liberty.
Via Polizette:
“There needs to be a Catholic Spring, 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,” Sandy Newman, president and founder of the progressive nonprofit Voices for Progress, writes to Podesta in an email titled “opening for a Catholic Spring? just musing.”
“There needs to be a Catholic Spring, 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.”
The emails were leaked in the third round of releases of Podesta’s emails by WikiLeaks.Newman, who is Jewish, admits he does not know much about the Catholic Church and isn’t volunteering personally to subvert Catholic teachings. “Even if the idea isn’t crazy, I don’t qualify to be involved and I have not thought at all about how one would ‘plant the seeds of the revolution,’ or who would plant them.”
In response, Podesta assures Newman to rest easy for he and his progressive pals have already created organizations explicitly designed to infiltrate the Catholic Church with progressive ideology, though he cautions that the time may not be right for full revolution — just yet.
“We created Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good to organize for a moment like this. But I think it lacks the leadership to do so now. Likewise Catholics United. Like most Spring movements, I think this one will have to be bottom up,” Podesta writes.
Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good is a George Soros-funded operation dedicated to galvanizing Catholic and Christian voters to support progressive candidates, causes, and legislation that actually undermine the faith. The group’s philosophies are far left-wing and not consistent with Catholic teaching.
On Monday, WikiLeaks published an email showing Clinton operatives mocking conservative Catholics and sneering at the fact that right-wing media mogul Rupert Murdoch had his kids baptized in Jordan.
“It’s an amazing bastardization of the faith,” John Halpin wrote to Podesta and Jennifer Palmieri, now the communications director of the Clinton campaign. “They must be attracted to the systematic thought and severely backwards gender relations and must be totally unaware of Christian democracy.”
Palmieri seemed to agree: “I imagine they think it is the most socially acceptable politically conservative religion,” she wrote. “Their rich friends wouldn’t understand if they became evangelicals.”
The Trump campaign held a conference call with reporters Wednesday afternoon to discuss the “breathtaking” anti-Catholic bigotry that has been exposed in the Clinton campaign.
Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway said: “For 30 years Hillary Clinton has been hostile to issues that are important to Catholics. Now her staff is caught calling Catholics ‘backwards.’ Everyone involved should be ashamed.”
She added that the insults “shouldn’t go unnoticed or unpunished” and called on Hillary Clinton to fire the staff members that showed religious bigotry.
Former United States Ambassador to the Holy See Jim Nicholson said he was “greatly offended and disappointed” by the comments and said that an apology was in order. He agreed with Conway that Clinton should immediately fire the staffers.
Former Speaker of the House and current Trump surrogate Newt Gingrich said that the emails exposed “the callousness and contempt” with which progressive elites hold Catholics. He noted that for them, the “deplorables” label pertains to people of faith and pointed out that these are the people who will be advising Hillary on her picks for the Supreme Court.
Gingrich, too, called on Hillary to fire the anti-Catholic staffers. “Will she stand by her bigoted and anti-Catholic staff or step in and get rid of them?” he asked.
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