Going on fifteen years ago, Dr. Philip Jenkins, a professor of history and religious studies at Penn State, wrote a book titled: The New Anti-Catholicism: The Last Acceptable Prejudice. The thesis was pretty simple, that in an overly sensitive society peopled by special snowflakes who need safe spaces and trigger warnings, you can say most anything you want to about Catholics and Catholicism and no one will care. If you ever needed more proof of just how alive and well this garden variety bigotry is you only need to read this email from a “scholar” at the Orwellian-named Center for American Progress, John Halpin. It is addressed to both Clinton consigliere, John Podesta, and to Hillary Clinton’s communications director, Jennifer Palmieri.

If someone had written an email pointing out that any other religion dominated think tanks or the Supreme Court (SC as the cool kid says) people would be checking them out for a tinfoil hat. Yet Halpin feels completely comfortable in saying it about Catholics as though Antonin Scalia got the secret “conservative Catholic” seat on the Supreme Court by a lottery of some type and not by hard work and brilliance.

What is noticeable is that neither Podesta nor Palmieri registered any surprise or dismay at this scurrilous crap. Palmieri, in fact, agrees with his assessment and even one-ups him:

“I imagine they think it is the most socially acceptable politically conservative religion. Their rich friends wouldn’t understand if they became evangelicals.”

Probably, second only to Halpin’s variety of rabid anti-Catholicism, is the self-hatred of progressives who happen to be Catholic. This even includes the leadership of Catholic universities who ban crucifixes from the classroom and invite speakers who are living lives at odds with the Catholic faith to be speakers… not to mention using the doggerel penned by a former Jesuit priest who left the priesthood to move in with his homosexual lover in hymnals.

Personally, I don’t care what asshats like Halpin think. If you read his writings, and I have gagged my way through them, you’ll see that he views religion as Meals-on-Wheels. That’s fine. That is a cramped and totally false image of Christianity and Catholicism but, hey, he’s the guy who ultimately has to answer for his serial blasphemy, not me.