Catholic League president points out anti-Catholic views of candidate’s team

Feb 7, 2007 / 16:02 pm

Bill Donohue, the President of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, yesterday exposed the anti-Catholic backgrounds of two recent campaign staff appointments by U.S. Presidential hopeful, Senator John Edwards.  Donohue called the two hires “anti-Catholic” and “vulgar’ and demanded that they be immediately fired.

The Catholic League chief, who keeps an eye out for anti-Catholicism in the American public forum, pointed out that both Amanda Marcotte, Edwards’ new “Blogmaster” and Melissa McEwan, who will be his new “Netroots Coordinator” have histories of posting offensive comments against the Pope and the Church online.

“John Edwards is a decent man who has had his campaign tarnished by two anti-Catholic vulgar trash-talking bigots,” Donohue said, “He has no choice but to fire them immediately.”

As evidence, Donohue found a post by Marcotte on the Pandagon blogsite from December 26th, 2006, in which she claims that the Catholic stance on life issues is a plan to gain more money.  “The Catholic church is not about to let something like compassion for girls get in the way of using the state as an instrument to force women to bear more tithing Catholics,” Marcotte writes.

And on June 14th, the new Edwards “blogmaster” suggested that if the Blessed Virgin Mary had taken the Plan B, abortion pill after conceiving Jesus, the Church would be forced “to justify (its) misogyny with another ancient mythology.”

As far as McEwan, Donohue lists a string of vulgar quotations the web writer has posted against the Pope and Christian conservatives.  “What don’t you lousy [vulgarity]’s understand about keeping your noses out of our britches, our beds, and our families?” McEwan wrote of Christians on her blogspot.

The AP points out that Edwards put both bloggers on his payroll last week as part of his outreach to liberal voters and activists on the Internet.  In an attempt to gain a voice in the midst of an increasingly popular information field, several political campaigns and liberal organizations have been recruiting well-known bloggers to write for their websites.  The blogs or ‘web-logs’ involve quick journal-style entries of information, which usually include opinions and links to other sites.