Maybe using the Catholics will frighten GOP?
04/23/2006
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So Congress is (regrettably) coming back into session, and Google News is beginning to resound to barrages of pro-Amnesty/Immigration-expansion propaganda from the MSM. One particular salvo, found in various versions (for instance here ), follows the line laid out by Rachel Zoll, AP’s “Religion Writer”: Immigration debate a challenge for GOP-Catholic relations Associated Press/The Mercury News Friday April 21 2006:

The national immigration debate is muddying Republican relations with Roman Catholics - coveted swing voters who comprise about one-quarter of the electorate…Church leaders are challenging - and in some cases even vowing to defy - the tougher enforcement proposals by GOP lawmakers….many of these same bishops are accusing GOP lawmakers of lacking compassion for illegal migrants…About 30 percent of the nearly 65 million U.S. Catholics are Hispanic…Catholics in AP-Ipsos polling were more likely than Protestants and white evangelicals to support allowing immigrants to be temporary workers and to oppose making it a serious crime to be in this country without documentation.

VDARE.COM could very easily function entirely on the work of its Catholic writers, highly devout, lapsed, converts and routine/cradle. Quite possibly it could not operate without them. Most volunteered their services after the site started, and all bring passion and dedication. The idea that mass defections from conservative ranks are coming because the Church leadership is offended by immigration skepticism is an effort to panic the credulous (or supply rationalizations to the bought.)

Rachel Zoll, switching smoothly from what one blog described as “full time” involvement in publicizing the Catholic Church’s child abuse problems to presenting it as a decisive moral card in this debate, appears to have a mandate at AP to develop stories congenial to a leftist and secular mind set.

This particular thesis overlooks the long established ability of American Catholics to distinguish between one another on an ethnic basis (did the Irish recognize the Italians?) and their increasing habit of ignoring the wishes of their Bishops on social questions.

A more objective journalist than Rachel Zoll would have taken this into account.

Sadly, it appears many in the current U.S. Catholic hierarchy are not the patriots their predecessors were. But most of their flock will respond as Americans.

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