Insight Scoop | The Ignatius Press Blog: He's surprised. But why?

Insight Scoop The Ignatius Press Blog: He's surprised. But why?: http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/16146070

Greg Kandra spent nearly 25 years working for CBS News and is now an editor for "Couric & Co.," the CBS News blog. Kandra is Catholic and will soon be ordained a permanent deacon. In a blog entry titled "The Last Acceptable Prejudice," Kandra comments on the John Edwards' Catholic-Bashing Bloggers Fiasco:

But the episode has drawn attention to an issue that strikes close to my own
life – and the lives of about 60 million other Americans. It involves a
particularly insidious form of bigotry, and the nagging suspicion that there is
one remaining permissible prejudice in America. It is anti-Catholicism.

I say this as a person who has spent a quarter of a century working in network
news, and as a man who, in three months, will become an ordained member of the
Catholic clergy. (On May 19th I’ll be ordained a permanent deacon.) Straddling
these two worlds, I’ve seen my share of controversies, scandals and public
outcries over the Church and how it is treated by both the public and the media.
But the Edwards debacle is something I never quite anticipated.

I would not have believed that a candidate for President (and a previous candidate for Vice President) would have hired a writer, Melissa McEwan, who had described
President Bush’s supporters as a “wingnut Christofacist base.” I did not think a
person of Edwards seriousness and experience would condone welcoming onto his
payroll a second writer, Amanda Marcotte, who wrote on her blog “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.”

This is also the writer who wrote: “What if Mary had taken Plan B after the Lord filled her with his hot, white, sticky Holy Spirit? You’d have to justify your misogyny
with another ancient mythology.” (And then there’s this pearl of wisdom: One thing I vow here and now–you motherf*** who want to ban birth control will never sleep. I will f*** without making children day in and out and you will know it and you won’t be able to stop it. Toss and turn, you mean, jealous motherf****. I’m not going to be “punished” with babies. Which makes all your efforts a failure. Some non-procreating women escaped. So give up now. You’ll never catch all of us. Give up now.”)

I certainly would not have imagined that a serious candidate for President would
have kept on his payroll people who write things so blatantly, outrageously
hateful towards a particular religion.