Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican from Georgia, recently insulted Catholics when she said, “Satan’s controlling the Church.” Bill Donohue quickly called on her to be sanctioned by her colleagues in the House of Representatives.

Below is the text of the letter Donohue sent to Rep. Theodore E. Deutch, Chairman of the House Ethics Committee and Rep. Jackie Walorski, Ranking Member of the Committee; a copy was sent to every member of the Committee.

As president of the nation’s largest Catholic civil rights organization, I am requesting that you levy sanctions against Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene for her virulent anti-Catholicism.

On April 21, Greene was interviewed by Michael Voris, the head of Church Militant. In their discussion about the role of Catholic Charities working with immigrants, Greene said the Catholic Church was run by Satan.

Here is what she said. “I thought we had a separation of church and state, right? No, what it is, is Satan’s controlling the church.”

I asked for an apology and she publicly said there would be none. She responded by saying that her sweeping condemnation of the entire Catholic Church was meant only to apply to the bishops, as if that makes her hate speech acceptable.

Greene has a history of offending African Americans and Jews, so bigotry is something that is apparently baked into her.

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.

Greene responded with boilerplate. She said she wanted Donohue to apologize to her and that he should have had someone from his office contact her before making accusations.

Greene was raised Catholic, left the Church and became an evangelical. She is an embittered ex-Catholic.
News of the clash between her and Donohue was widely picked up by the media. It made the front page of Yahoo! twice in one day.

We are well aware that Greene has a pro-life voting record and that she has been good to veterans, etc. But we cannot, and will not, allow anyone to tell us that the Catholic Church is run by Satan and get away with it. No one gets a pass when they slander the Church. (See p. 3 for more on this issue.)

We live in a time when elites are not content to simply disagree with others: they go for the jugular. The politics of personal destruction has now been extended to the politics of institutional destruction. Whether it is the Catholic Church, or the Supreme Court, that some want to malign, they must be answered with vigor.

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