What happened?
Hillary Clinton’s campaign chief John Podesta helped to create groups to press for a “revolution” in the Catholic Church, according to leaked emails from 2012.
In the emails, which WikiLeaks say are from Podesta’s Gmail account, he responded to an email from Barack Obama’s former boss, Sandy Newman, about an “opening for a Catholic Spring”.
Newman suggested that “Catholics themselves demand the end of a Middle Ages dictatorship and the beginning of a little democracy and respect for gender equality in the Catholic Church.” He refers to this as “a revolution”.
Podesta replied: “We created Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good to organise for a moment like this. But I think it lacks the leadership to do so now. Likewise Catholics United. Like most Spring movements, I think this one will have to be bottom-up.”
The two organisations’ links to plans to change the Church have not previously been so clear.
What American Catholics said
much of the debate took place on Twitter, where Catholic writer Thomas Peters tweeted that the revelations showed that Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good (CACG) and other organisations had engaged in “deception”; moreover, Podesta himself had “a very active role”.
Peters pointed out that he and others had been suggesting the organisations were fronts for many years. “CACG never used phrases like ‘Middle Ages dictatorship’ to describe Catholic teaching … in public, that is. Deception was and is key.”
But CACG’s current head, Christopher Hale, said the organisation was purely about the Church’s social mission. “We’ve time and again challenged both Democrats and Republicans – often at some political cost – to be better stewards of the common good. You can question our politics, but don’t ever question the sincerity of our faith or our love of the Catholic Church … The only revolution we care about is bringing Pope Francis’s ‘revolution of tenderness’ to American politics.”
Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia, writing on the website of his diocese, said that two men from one of the groups named, Catholics United, had visited him in 2008.
“Both men were obvious flacks for the Obama campaign and the Democratic Party – creatures of a political machine, not men of the Church.” Their campaigns succeeded, the archbishop said: “Thanks to their work, and activists like them, American Catholics helped to elect an administration that has been the most stubbornly unfriendly to religious believers, institutions, concerns and liberty in generations.”
What the media said
In the Washington Post, Marc Thiessen said the emails confirmed that Clinton’s team were a threat to religious liberty. After all, Clinton herself argued in a 2015 speech that “deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs and structural biases have to be changed.” Thiessen commented: “Religious beliefs have to be changed? This is perhaps the most radical statement against religious liberty ever uttered by someone seeking the presidency.” The emails display the same bigotry, he said: “The hostility to people of faith here is simply breathtaking.”
But New York Times columnist Ross Douthat suggested that the emails were not so much anti-Catholic as part of Catholicism’s own “civil war”.
He tweeted that the story showed “alliances between liberal institutions writ large and the more progressive wing within the Church”. The real news, he said, was “the way Podesta makes the implicit explicit: liberals regard conservative Catholics as prisoners of authoritarianism in need of liberation by enlightened forces”.
In National Review, the philosophy professor CC Pecknold said the emails made him wonder whether progressivism might be “the most powerful religious voice in politics today”. The writers of the emails “don’t see their progressive project as ‘post-Christian’. They see it as a kind of secular form of Christian religion, a form that is the one true champion of progress, equality, democracy and yes, liberation, salvation.” They wanted a grassroots revolution – but the Church “has survived 2,000 years not by receiving truth from below, but by receiving it from above”.
The Catholic Women of the Year lunch will be celebrated on October 28 at the Amba Hotel in central London. The women who will be honoured are Catherine MacMillan, a musician and writer, Sister Jane Louise of the Sisters of Reconciliation, Dr Olive Duddy, a teacher of NFP, and Dr Caroline Farey of the School of the Annunciation.
World Mission Sunday takes place on October 23. It is the day when the Church unites in prayer for its missionary activity and raises money to support the Church’s mission worldwide. There will be a second collection across all parishes.
There will be an annual Blessed Sacrament procession tomorrow, Saturday October 22, in central London. The procession will begin at Westminster Cathedral at 1.30pm and will finish with Benediction at St George’s Cathedral in Southwark. Everyone is welcome. The procession first began in 2011 in thanksgiving for the state visit of Pope Benedict XVI.
This page is available to subscribers. Click here to sign in or get access.
Areas of Catholic Herald business are still recovering post-pandemic.
However, we are reaching out to the Catholic community and readership, that has been so loyal to the Catholic Herald. Please join us on our 135 year mission by supporting us.
We are raising £250,000 to safeguard the Herald as a world-leading voice in Catholic journalism and teaching.
We have been a bold and influential voice in the church since 1888, standing up for traditional Catholic culture and values. Please consider donating.