Interview with Bill Donohue: Catholic League denounces McCain

Glenn Greenwald
Salon.com

As I wrote about earlier today, John McCain yesterday happily received an endorsement from, and then expressed lavish gratitude towards, one of the most hateful and radical evangelical ministers in the country, Pastor John Hagee. As documented in that post, Hagee has a history of making some of the most extreme and twisted statements of any religious figure in the country towards multiple groups of Americans.

Among the many groups which McCain's new associate has targeted for hateful bigotry are Catholics. As a result, The Catholic League today issued a statement -- entitled "McCain Embraces Bigot" -- which pointed out that Hagee

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."

The Catholic League demanded that McCain repudiate Hagee and his endorsement, just as Barack Obama did earlier this week with Louis Farrakhan (despite the fact that Obama, unlike McCain with Hagee, never sought out or accepted Farrakhan's endorsement).

Earlier today, I interviewed the Catholic League's President, Bill Donohue, regarding the profound anti-Catholic bigotry routinely displayed by Hagee and what John McCain's embrace of such a bigoted figure says about the presidential candidate. The entire podcast interview, which lasted roughly 15 minutes, can be heard here.

(Continued here.)