This has been generating a lot of attention and discussion over the last 24 hours. Details:
A newly exposed email exchange shows Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, Clinton campaign communications director Jen Palmieri, and Center for American Progress fellow John Halpin sharing their views on how they believe Catholicism is “backwards.” Released by WikiLeaks as part of the alleged cache of “Podesta emails,” the email chain, titled “Conservative Catholicism,” begins with Halpin sending an email to Podesta and Palmieri chastising News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch and Wall Street Journal managing editor Robert Thomson for being Catholic. Halpin notes: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.
Many of the most powerful elements of the conservative movement are all Catholic (many converts) from the SC and think tanks to the media and social groups.
Halpin goes on to call conservatives who are Catholic an “amazing bastardization of the faith.” He asserts conservatives “must be attracted” to Catholicism for its “severely backwards gender relations”: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.
Some reaction:
The Catholic League, an anti-defamation organization, blasted the Clinton campaign for the exchange.
“These anti-Catholic remarks are bad enough but it makes one wonder what else Clinton’s chiefs and others associated with the campaign are saying about Catholics and Catholicism,” the group said in a statement.
A politically conservative group called Catholic Vote, which claims 500,000 members, is demanding Palmieri resign.
“Everyone has a unique faith journey, and it’s just insulting to make blanket statements maligning people’s motives for converting to another faith tradition,” Brian Burch, the group’s president, said in a statement. “Had Palmieri spoken this way about other groups she would dismissed. Catholics will be watching Hillary Clinton to see whether she thinks our religious faith should be respected, or whether it’s fair game to mock us.”
The Clinton campaign has not returned a request for comment, but Democratic officials have sought to cast doubt on the authenticity of the hacked emails by arguing they were obtained by Russians.
And today we celebrate...