Bill Berkowitz for BuzzFlash: More on Marjorie Taylor Greene Declaring the Catholic Church Is Led by Satan
May 5, 2022
By Bill Berkowitz
Not long after a court hearing in Atlanta, Georgia, where Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene claimed she couldn’t “recall” whether or not she called for then President Donald Trump to institute martial law after the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol, she turned her attention to the Catholic Church. Greene recently told Michael Voris of the right-wing Church Militant that, “Satan is controlling the church," the National Catholic Reporter’s Brian Fraga reported.
Greene also told Church Militant that Satan tells women "it's okay" to get an abortion and in exchange promises them "all these dreams that you have in your heart. And that's how Satan sells a sin, and that's how he sells abortion. He tells a woman that all you have to do is you're just going to go to this clinic, just going to get it over with, you know,"
Bill Donohue of the Catholic League For Religious and Civil Rights is a longtime hardline conservative. He has often called out progressives and Democrats for being critical of the Catholic Church. Now, Donohue is focusing his ire on Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. In a statement, Donohue called Greene a “disgrace” and demanded Congress sanction her.
"If the bishops were reading the Bible and truly preaching the word of God to their flock … and not covering up child sex abuse and pedophilia, that would be loving one another, would have the true meaning and not the perversion and the twisted lie that they're making it up to be," Greene said.
"Greene has a history of offending African Americans and Jews, so bigotry is something that is apparently baked into her," Donohue wrote April 28 in a letter he sent to the House Ethics Committee. “The time has come for her to be either reprimanded or censured. Her irresponsible behavior has already caused her to be removed from committee assignments. Accordingly, her burst of anti-Catholicism now demands stronger sanctions against her.”
Fraga pointed out that “In a separate prepared statement, Greene also accused the Catholic bishops of ‘destroying’ the United States by advocating for policies that support migrants and refugees. She repeated a conservative talking point that Catholic organizations profit from government contracts to provide care for migrants.”
"What more can we expect from criminals and abusers living unaccountable lives of luxury funded by the rest of us, draped in fine linens while choirboys are raped," Greene said in her April 27 statement.
Steven Millies, director of the Bernardin Center at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, “told NCR that Greene's comments reminded him of an earlier era of anti-Catholic sentiment in the United States.
I see a moment of political instability not unlike the late 1940s where this last acceptable prejudice becomes something that can be indulged to score points against Catholic bishops, who do have some political power but are on the other side of the partisan divide.
For me, the real takeaway here is that there is no mainstreaming of Catholicism that's enough to eliminate anti-Catholicism. That anti-Catholicism can be deployed by a purported Catholic organization like Church Militant against Catholics and Catholic bishops is a startling new moment, and we've already had plenty of those lately. We're plumbing new depths”
According to NCR’s Fraga, Church Militant is one of a number of far-right conservative Catholic publications. It “often attacks bishops and priests for alleged offenses that include being too tolerant of LGBTQ persons, pro-choice politicians and undocumented migrants. The outlet promoted its interview with Greene with the headline ‘Marjorie for Pope.’"
Greene called Donohue a “loyal lapdog” for the Catholic Bishops. Fraga noted that “Now an evangelical Christian, Greene said she left the Catholic Church as an adult because she would not submit her children's ‘spiritual and physical livelihoods’ to the bishops, who she referred to as ‘monsters.’"
Interestingly, Greene is, as Donohue put it a “disgrace. And Donohue, as Greene characterized him is a “loyal lapdog.” Not sure of the “disgrace” or the “loyal lapdog” will prevail. Stay tuned.
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