Catholic Left Beats McCain with Hagee Stick

Deal Hudson writes at InsideCatholic:

The moment Bill Donohue demanded that Senator John McCain repudiate the anti-Catholicism of Rev. John Hagee, the Democrats began rubbing their hands in anticipation. Between February 28 and March 10, Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, issued eleven press releases.

By the time Donohue announced "this case is closed" the McCain-Hagee story had been referenced every day on cable news and in the print media.

But what satisfied Bill Donohue was not enough for a group called "Catholics United," a middle-to-left organization "dedicated to promoting the message of justice and the common good found at the heart of the Catholic Social Tradition."

For the past year, Catholics United has pushed a number of issues it considers of importance to Catholics, most of them at the expense of Republicans: global warming, torture, children's health care, ending the Iraq War, and now the endorsement of McCain by Texas pastor John Hagee.

A March 7 press release from Catholics United applauded McCain's repudiation of Hagee's anti-Catholicism but called upon him to "reject" Hagee's endorsement outright.

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My Comments:
I'm trying to determine what ties, if any, Catholics United has to Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good. It does appear that the organization's Director of Organizing was also a key organizer of Catholics in Alliance.

You may remember that the Catholics in Alliance organization came out in defense of the Edwards bloggers who had made anti-Catholic statements, and even defended the Edwards campaign decision to stand by the bloggers.

I can't locate anything from Catholics United that condemned the Edwards campaign for standing by its bloggers in a similar fashion as it has the McCain campaign for the Hagee endorsement. In fact, the organization's executive director has sought to minimize the Edwards campaign's culpability, compared to McCain's, with nonsense like this:

Edwards' bloggers were junior staff members with relatively little power in the campaign. Hagee, on the other hand, is an influential megachurch pastor who promises to bring along a key conservative constituency.

So, according to this reasoning, Edwards is less culpable for standing by the campaign's OFFICIAL blog representatives after they made anti-Catholic comments than McCain is for the far-out nutty anti-Catholic views of some guy who endorsed him. I guess it makes sense out in lefty la-la land.