Subject: A prediction from "c.c.watch" for 1996
From: [email-masked]
Date: Sat, 23 Dec 1995 00:01:00 -0500

SPECIAL 
From: The "c.c.watch" News Service
To: The entire c.c.watch Internet Network
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The letter which follows was sent to USA Today to protest its promotion of
the Christian Coalition's Catholic Alliance. To our knowledge it has not been
printed; we would be quite (pleasantly) surprised if it was. It has been our
ongoing experience that newspapers will not print criticism of Pat Robertson
by name. What else is new? This is why we started "c.c.watch" last March. We
will continue to publish information Americans might not otherwise receive
about Pat Robertson, all of his enterprises and his fellow travelers...and
their effect not only on politics, but on our society.

As 1995 winds down, allow us to make a prediction for 1996: The Catholic
Alliance will be the Achilles' Heel of the Christian Coalition.
Catholics--clergy and lay people--will stand up and say "No!" to the
Christian Coalition and its anti-Pope, Pat Robertson.  Decent Americans
everywhere will wake up and not allow themselves to be used for the promotion
of an intolerant, exclusive and mean-spirited agenda--in the name of
Catholicism, Christianity, "pro-family" values or any other political ploy. 

This is America. And that means Liberty & Justice for All!

Happy Holidays ! 
And a Happy, Healthy, Prosperous and Peaceful 1996!
Paula Xanthopoulou 
Public-Spirited Enterprises
____________________________
To: The Editor of USA Today
Date: December 19, 1995

The guest editorial in your newspaper today by George Weigel ("Catholics,
Protestants Work for Common Agenda") promoted the incredible notion that the
fledgling Catholic Alliance symbolizes collaboration between religious
entities. This is a dangerous misconception. It is the result, moreover, of
the deliberate misappropriation of the terms "Christian" and now "Catholic"
by political organizers.

The Catholic Alliance is a "fully-owned subsidiary" of the Christian
Coalition, a political enterprise founded by televangelist Pat Robertson
--and best described as a special interest group with an intolerant/exclusive
agenda, no social conscience, and a $25 million budget. Its Executive
Director Ralph Reed is a devotee of the late GOP political operative Lee
Atwater. He wants to capture the Catholic "swing vote" and raise more money.
Mr. Reed has gone on record as saying that organizing Catholics is "just
realpolitik." Catholics, he has said, are "waiting to explode, ripe for the
picking."

When the Catholic Alliance held an organizing meeting in Boston on December
9th, local clergy held a press conference in conjunction with The Interfaith
Alliance to decry those efforts. A Catholic priest from Marlborough, MA,
said: "There is nothing Catholic about the Catholic Alliance. Rather it is a
fraudulent group designed to increase the political power of Pat Robertson."
Catholic Bishops Howard J. Hubbard of Albany and  Walter F. Sullivan of
Richmond have already spoken out against this new political ploy. 

Its organizers have cleverly wrapped the Catholic Alliance in a recent papal
encyclical, "Ut Unim Sint (That They May Be One)."  Mr.Weigel neglected to
mention, however, that while Pope John II preaches ecumenism, some prominent
Evangelical Christian leaders were seriously opposed to the unofficial
"Evangelicals and Catholics Together" statement. Pat Robertson may have
signed it, but he clearly has no commitment to tolerance or religious
freedom. Every day on The 700 Club he bashes any religion that gets in the
way of his world-wide, heavily financed and media-driven crusade to save 500
million souls before the year 2000. Today's diatribe was against Muslims.
 
Real cooperation between Catholics and Protestants certainly merits our
attention. But the birth of the so-called Catholic Alliance is not a
religious development or good news for democracy. It's a carefully
calculated, rather outrageous and potentially divisive political maneuver.
Period.

Paula Xanthopoulou
Editor of "c.c.watch"
 
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