Sen. John McCain / Rev. John Hagee
Posted on 03/01/2008 6:21:35 AM PST by NYer
.- The endorsement of Senator John McCain by a Catholic-bashing Texas minister won swift rebuke from the president of the Catholic League and a Jewish leader concerned about his “vicious and inflammatory” anti-Catholicism.
Both compared the minister to Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.
On Wednesday Pastor John Hagee endorsed Senator John McCain’s bid to become the Republican presidential candidate in the 2008 election.
Senator McCain responded to the endorsement by calling Hagee “the staunchest leader of our Christian evangelical movement,” praising Hagee’s pro-Israel stance.
President of the Catholic League Bill Donohue harshly criticized the endorsement.
“There are plenty of staunch evangelical leaders who are pro-Israel, but are not anti-Catholic. John Hagee is not one of them,” Donohue said on Thursday. “Indeed, for the past few decades, he has waged an unrelenting war against the Catholic Church. For example, he likes calling it ‘The Great Whore,’ an ‘apostate church,’ the ‘anti-Christ,’ and a ‘false cult system’.”
Donohue said that in Pastor Hagee’s latest book the minister claimed Hitler was a Catholic who murdered Jews while the Catholic Church did nothing. “The sell-out of Catholicism to Hitler began not with the people but with the Vatican itself,” wrote Hagee, according to Bill Donohue.
Donohue criticized the remarks, saying, “For the record, Hitler persecuted the Catholic Church and was automatically excommunicated in 1931—two years before he assumed power—when he acted as best man at Joseph Goebbel’s Protestant wedding. Hitler even bragged about his separation from the Church. As for doing nothing about the Holocaust, Sir Martin Gilbert reminds us that Goebbel denounced Pope Pius XII for his 1942 Christmas message criticizing the Nazis (the New York Times lauded the pope for doing so in an editorial for two years in a row). Much to Hagee’s chagrin, Gilbert also says that Pius XII saved three quarters of the Jews in Rome, and that more Jews were saved proportionately in Catholic countries than Protestant countries.”
Rabbi Irwin Kula, president of the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, echoed Donohue’s criticisms. In a Friday statement, Rabbi Kula said, “Just as Jews and other people of good will have appropriately demanded that Barack Obama unambiguously renounce and reject the endorsement of Minister Louis Farrakhan because of his bigotry and rabid anti-Semitism so Jews and other people of good will should demand that John McCain renounce and reject the endorsement of Pastor John Hagee because of his vicious and inflammatory anti-Catholicism.”
Rabbi Kula said Pastor Hagee’s position on Israel “does not mean he should be given carte blanche to denigrate and malign another religion.” He continued, saying, “Barack Obama showed his integrity when he rejected Minister Farrakhan’s hate whatever the political costs and sensitivities. John McCain is also a man of integrity. He needs to similarly reject Pastor Hagee’s hate whatever the political calculations and consequences.”
In a Friday statement Bill Donohue said Senator McCain’s opponent for the nomination, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, had expressed “disappointment and surprise” that Hagee had not chosen him. Donohue also compared Hagee to Louis Farrakhan, wondering why the candidates were fighting over the endorsement of such a figure.
Donohue also called on McCain to shun Hagee’s endorsement.
“Just this week, McCain repudiated the remarks of talk radio host Bill Cunningham,” Donohue said. “He should now repudiate Hagee’s long record of bashing Catholicism. After all, George W. Bush apologized for speaking at Bob Jones University, and Hagee makes Jones look like a lightweight in the ring of bigotry."
I have no clue what you’re talking about.
Another wise guy ~ you people are just too smart for me. Here, take these knives ~ go outside and play with the big kids, OK. Watch out, they’re sharp!
This is a predominantly European country ~ it applies. It’s one of the fundamentals in our history ~ much like Christianity and Judaism, guns and eating meat every day.
All I can figure is this guy's mother wanted him to be a priest but he liked girls too much.
Like hell.
We should all send his organization twenty bucks each.
In this case it's because he stepped up on the podium and proudly accepted it.
Oh do tell.
Jefferson was wrong in your case.
It's intuitively obvious to the most casual observer that all the money that was wasted in the futile attempt to educate you would have bore more fruit being flushed down a commode.
Oh, stop your hate speech you... you... you big meanie!
Ding ding ding!
Johnny, show the man what he's won!
Hagee is endorsing McCain for two reasons—McCain supports Israel and has a pro-life voting record. Obama and Hillary don’t.
I get the idea that an awful lot of Catholics are too ignorant of normal Protestant religious discussion to be allowed into it. They confound politics with church attendance, ecclesiastical structures with Gospel truth handed down by God, and to top it off are afraid they will be offended (and thereupon tossed into paroxysms of acute shame and rage) by a guy with a mere 15,000 followers when they themselves have hogged about 2,000,000,000 followers ~ and already have front-row center with the MSM on Easter AND Christmas!
Give it up guys ~ you're far from being the minority you want to be, and victim status does not become you.
Give it a rest.
He's on television nationwide, seemingly every day, and he only has 15,000 followers?
Face it, man: he sucks.
That’s your problem. Sometimes they call it “sour grapes syndrome”.
Sour grapes? What? That I want to be a pig-ignorant televised bigot on nationwide TV but can’t get it done so I say I don’t want that?
That’s rich.
Meanwhile, your ridiculous claim about only “15,000 followers” is obliterated.
You and Marion Cotillard appear to have the same problem ~
You don’t have the slightest idea who that woman is do you?
You’re wrong yet again. Does it hurt?
Petronski, I learned years ago to never accept any of your claims about anything. You never back ‘em up, and all the references you give usually flash one of those “not in service” messages.
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