The New ‘Deplorables’: Clinton Campaign Staffers Trash Conservative Catholics

In a new Wikileaks disclosure, key figures in the Clinton campaign reveal a visceral anti-Catholicism, attacking Rupert Murdoch for raising his children Catholic and calling conservative Catholicism “an amazing bastardization of the faith.”

Tuesday’s release of more than 1,000 hacked emails of John Podesta, chairman of Hillary Clinton’s campaign, includes a 2011 thread called “Conservative Catholicism” between Podesta, Hillary for America Communications Director Jennifer Palmieri, and John Halpin, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress where Podesta served as Chairman of the Board at the time.

In an email message to Podesta and Palmieri, Halpin cites a New Yorker article on media mogul Rupert Murdoch and the fact that he and then-managing editor for the Wall Street Journal, Robert Thompson, were raising their kids Catholic.

“Friggin’ Murdoch baptized his kids in the Jordan where John the Baptist baptized Jesus,” he lamented.

Halpin further complains that 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.”

“It’s an amazing bastardization of the faith,” he continues. “They must be attracted to the systematic thought and severely backward gender relations and must be totally unaware of Catholic democracy.”

In her response, Jennifer Palmieri wrote, “I imagine they think it is the most socially acceptable politically conservative religion. Their rich friends wouldn’t understand if they became evangelicals.”

“They can throw around ‘Thomistic’ thought and ‘subsidiarity’ and sound sophisticated because no one knows what the hell they’re talking about,” she said.

Bill Donahue, founder of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, was quick to decry the “bigoted comments” coming from key members of the Clinton campaign, noting that their “contempt for Catholicism is palpable.”

Donahue called on presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to react swiftly to the revelations, declaring that she “has a moral obligation to sanction Podesta and Palmieri immediately.”

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