Email leaks raise questions about Clinton staffers’ respect for practicing Catholics

Publishers Notes: This is a great read.

WASHINGTON, DC – Still reeling from revelations that Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton belittled supporters of her Republican opponent as racist and bigoted “deplorables,” the Clinton campaign today was forced to address allegations that members of Clinton’s inner circle harbor anti-Catholic animus.

The controversy stems from an email dump this week by Wikileaks of conversations between long-time Clinton confidant John Podesta and Clinton aide Jen Palmieri. The emails are highly critical of conservative Catholics and other “ordinary Americans.” Podesta currently serves as chairman of Clinton’s presidential campaign. Palmieri is Clinton’s campaign communications director.

One email thread from 2011 contains the subject line “Conservative Catholicism.” The conversation begins with a message from John Halpin, then a fellow at the Center for American Progress, to Podesta and Palmieri in which Halpin refers to conservative Catholicism as an “amazing bastardization of the faith” and mocks converts to Catholicism as people drawn to the Church’s “severely backwards gender relations.”

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