Catholic League: Al Franken's Anti-Catholicism

The truth is that when Franken mocks the Body and Blood of Jesus, and jokes about the discovery of 'the complete skeleton of Jesus Christ still nailed to the cross,' his mean-spirited digs are designed to be injurious."

NEW YORK, NY (Catholic League) - A columnist for Media Matters, Eric Boehlert, posted a piece on October 25 criticizing an article by Katherine Kersten in the Minneapolis Star Tribune that took senatorial hopeful Al Franken to task for promoting anti-Catholicism.

Here is a sampling of Franken's virulent anti-Catholicism:

· He has mocked the Eucharist
· He has ridiculed the crucifixion of Jesus
· He has slandered all priests as molesters
· He has belittled practicing Catholics (e.g., Knights of Columbus)
· He has disparaged the Church's teaching on embryonic stem cell research
· He made crude jokes about a dying woman, Terri Schiavo, and then misrepresented her condition by passing her off as already dead

Catholic League president Bill Donohue commented as follows:

"Franken has a long and ugly history of Catholic bashing, and now his friends at Media Matters are there to bail him out. For example, Franken once called New York Archbishop John Cardinal O'Connor 'an a**hole.' Boehlert concurs saying, 'Trust me, in New York in the 1990s, that was not as provocative a statement as it seems today; O'Connor was an extraordinarily political and, at times, divisive figure.' Boehlert even has the gall to imply that it is anti-Semitic to criticize Franken because the 'comedian' is Jewish!

"Franken's diatribes against Catholics are not in jest. As Hillary Clinton said about him last week, he tells 'truth through jokes.' And the truth is that when Franken mocks the Body and Blood of Jesus, and jokes about the discovery of 'the complete skeleton of Jesus Christ still nailed to the cross,' his mean-spirited digs are designed to be injurious."

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The Catholic League is the nation's largest Catholic civil rights organization. Founded in 1973 by the late Father Virgil C. Blum, S.J., the Catholic League defends the right of Catholics – lay and clergy alike – to participate in American public life without defamation or discrimination. It is led by its' President, William A. Donohue, Ph.D.