'Anti-Catholic record should alarm voters'
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The Harris-Walz campaign is trolling for Catholic voters – even while they attack them – but a former US ambassador to the Holy See is exposing their hypocrisy.
In a blistering essay, Callista Gingrich lambasted the unrelenting attacks of Kamala Harris and her running mate Tim Walz against Catholics and their faith. Together, they "make up the anti-Catholic ticket that would implement policies that are destructive for Catholics and all Americans," she writes.
Gingrich sees a "momentum of Catholic support coalescing around Trump" in battleground states, asserting that more Catholic voters are seeing through "the ruse."
"Kamala Harris represents the most vile anti-Catholic threat of any leading candidate for president in American history. ... [H]er record and her words demonstrate a gross anti-Catholic bias and bigotry." – Brian Burch, president of CatholicVote
The former ambassador let loose a litany of "egregious acts" Harris has leveled against Catholics during the last decade alone. Included among these acts are the following:
In 2014, as California attorney general, Harris filed an amicus brief with the US Supreme Court in the case of Burwell v. Hobby Lobby. She called on the court to force Hobby Lobby to violate its faith or face severe fines if it did not cover contraception costs for employees.
In 2015, again as California attorney general, Harris co-sponsored the Reproductive FACT Act, which ordered medically-licensed pro-life pregnancy centers to display signs advertising free and low-cost abortions in California. She said at the time she was "proud" to have co-sponsored the act undermining the influence of the centers.
During her stint as US Senator for California (2017-2021), Harris introduced and sponsored the Do No Harm Act, a bill designed to gut the longstanding Religious Freedom Restoration Act – one of the most important federal protections for religious Americans. "That First Amendment guarantee should never be used to undermine other Americans' civil rights or subject them to discrimination on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation or gender identity," Harris stated at the time.
During her Senate tenure, Harris also co-sponsored the Equality Act, which sought to enable the government to prosecute faith-based institutions for refusing to hire employees who openly oppose their religious teachings.
In 2018 while serving on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Harris grilled Catholic judicial nominees regarding their affiliation with the Knights of Columbus, a major Catholic fraternal organization and charity named after Christopher Columbus. She vehemently argued that the Knights' traditional pro-life and pro-marriage values constituted grounds to disqualify them from public office.
Under Harris' watch as vice president (2021-present), a weaponized FBI has targeted traditional Catholics, characterizing them as extremists and potential domestic terrorists. According to a press release issued by the House Judiciary Committee and its Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, "... the FBI abused its counterterrorism tools to target Catholic Americans as potential domestic terrorists … and the FBI even proposed developing sources among the Catholic clergy and church leadership."
"Any Catholic that votes for Comrade Kamala Harris should have their head examined." — President Trump
While Harris was executing her anti-Catholic campaign, her presidential running mate, Minnesota governor Tim Walz, was busy weakening religious liberty and the moral fiber of his state.
Gingrich noted that during his tenure as governor, Walz radically expanded abortion access in Minnesota, implementing some of "the most pro-abortion laws in the US." In January 2023, he enthusiastically signed the Protect Reproductive Options Act, which set into state law the "fundamental right to ... obtain an abortion" at all stages of pregnancy for any reason, and prevents local governments from limiting it.
Proud of his record, Gingrich noted, Walz once cynically joked that he was so pro-abortion that former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told him to take it down a notch.
The Minnesota governor, who gained the dubious nickname of 'Tampon Tim' for providing free tampons in all restrooms, including boys', signed an executive order making Minnesota a "sanctuary state" for those seeking transgender medical procedures.
Further corrupting the innocence of children, he helped institutionalize pornography in the school system by signing a bill into law that prevents books that include graphic sexual material aimed at children from being removed from public schools.
Walz's history of radicalism has pushed a growing number of long-time Minnesota residents out of the state. Gingrich cites the case of David Deavel, a theologian who moved his family to Texas in search of "the possibility that the people for whom I cast votes had a snowball's chance in Houston of winning elected office."
"As a Catholic, I cannot but see [Walz's] abortion and transgender extremism, as well as his pushing of divisive cultural policies in schools, as extremely destructive to the common good in Minnesota." — David Deavel, ex-Minnesotan
Gingrich is not the only Catholic leader to call out Harris for her disrespect of Catholics.
On a lighter, but nevertheless significant note, New York cardinal Timothy Dolan last month chided Harris' decision to skip the annual Al Smith charity dinner – the only presidential candidate to do so in the past 40 years.
The annual dinner is named for New York governor Al Smith, the first Catholic presidential candidate to represent a major party, running on the Democratic ticket in 1928.
Cardinal Dolan, who learned of the snub through the media, quipped that the last candidate who refused an invitation to the dinner, Walter Mondale in 1984, lost his election in a massive blowout.
"I don't want to say its cause-and-effect," Dolan said, "[but] Walter Mondale went on to lose 49 states."
Presidential nominee Donald Trump, who will attend the Oct. 17 charity fundraiser, said Harris' decision to skip the dinner reveals her "anti-Catholic" sentiments.
In an online post, he enumerated Harris' anti-Catholic activities this way:
"In addition to the Democrats' Cruel War on The Little Sisters of the Poor, Kamala led the way on the UNCONSCIONABLE and UNCONSTITUTIONAL ATTACKS on The Knights of Columbus that amounted to a RELIGIOUS TEST (Very anti-Catholic!) for Justices on the Supreme Court. Also, who can forget the flagrant, in-your-face 'TRANSGENDER DAY OF VISIBILITY' Kamala and Biden hosted at the White House on Easter Sunday (of all days!)."
"I don't know what she has against our Catholic friends, but it must be a lot, because she certainly hasn't been very nice to them, in fact, Catholics are literally being persecuted by this Administration," he added.
With the anti-Catholic sentiment of Harris-Walz as a backdrop, Trump said in his signature style, "Any Catholic that votes for Comrade Kamala Harris should have their head examined."
Dr. Barbara Toth has a doctorate in rhetoric and composition from Bowling Green State University. She has taught at universities in the US, China and Saudi Arabia. Her work in setting up a writing center at Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahmen University, an all-women's university in Riyadh, has been cited in American journals. Toth has published academic and non-academic articles and poems internationally.
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