Hillary Clinton's campaign communications director and a liberal think-tank fellow mocked conservative Catholicism as an "amazing bastardization of the faith" in a mocking and dismissive email exchange released by WikiLeaks.
Under the subject line "Conservative Catholicism," Center for American Progress fellow John Halpin ridicules News Corp leader Rupert Murdoch and Wall Street Journal managing editor Robert Thomson for being Catholic, reported the Christian Post, which flagged the email chain.
"Ken Auletta's latest piece on Murdoch in the New Yorker starts off with the aside that both Murdoch and Robert Thompson . . . are raising their kids Catholic," Halpin wrote in a 2011 email. "Friggin' Murdoch baptized his kids in Jordan where John the Baptist baptized Jesus.
"Many of the most powerful elements of the conservative movement are all Catholic (many converts) from the SC and think tanks to the media and social groups. It's an amazing bastardization of the faith. They must be attracted to the systematic thought and severely backwards gender relations and must be totally unaware of Christian democracy," he added.
Jennifer Palmieri, now with the Clinton campaign but then reportedly with the Center for American Progress, added in her portion of the conversation she thinks Murdoch, Thomson, and many other conservatives are Catholic because they think it is "the most socially acceptable politically conservative religion."
"Their rich friends wouldn't understand if they became evangelicals," she added.
John Podesta, chairman of Clinton's campaign, was included in the email chain but didn't comment.
Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council, condemned the remarks.
"There are a lot of Americans who literally simply want to live their lives according to their faith, and it's clear that Hillary Clinton and her team hold them in disdain," he said on Tuesday night's "The Kelly File."
"This should be troubling politically for her, not because these evangelicals were going to vote for her, but it shows hostility toward religious freedom, and that's where these evangelicals are right now, uncertain of [Donald] Trump, but they see the hostility" from Clinton.
GOP strategist Karl Rove added the email chain could be troublesome for Clinton.
"Since 1972, Catholics, with one exception, have voted in each and every presidential election with the ultimate winner," he said. "The one exception was 2000 when they voted for Al Gore . . .
"Will this be a political issue? I think it all depends on whether or not politically interested Catholics, and more importantly the Trump campaign, make it an issue."
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