Some of Hillary Clinton’s campaign advisers find themselves in hot water as a result of WikiLeaks’ release of their hacked emails. Communications director Jennifer Palmieri exchanged emails that expose a repugnant anti-Catholic bias. John Halpin, a former colleague of Palmieri’s at the Center for American Progress, commented to her about the decision of News Corp. Executive Chairman Rupert Murdoch and CEO Robert Thomson to raise their children in the Catholic faith. Halpin calls conservative Catholicism “an amazing bastardization of the faith,” and suggests that the reason many leading conservatives are Catholic is, “They must be attracted to the systematic thought and severely backward gender relations and must be totally unaware of Christian democracy.” To which Palmieri responds, “I imagine they think it is the most socially acceptable politically conservative religion. Their rich friends wouldn’t understand if they became evangelicals.”

Halpin then writes back, “Excellent point. They throw around ‘Thomistic’ thought and ‘subsidiarity’ and sound sophisticated because no one knows what the hell they’re talking about.” The reference to “subsidiarity” is to de-centralized governance when dealing with local social problems. It is the basic idea of neighbors helping neighbors rather than admonishing and depending on some faraway state.

House Speaker Paul Ryan, who is himself Catholic, said, “If anything, these statements reveal the Clinton campaign’s hostile attitude toward people of faith in general. All Americans of faith should take a long, hard look at this and decide if these are the values we want to be represented in our next president. If Hillary Clinton continues to employ people with biased and bigoted views, it’s clear where her priorities are.” Indeed, it seems that Hillary’s “basket of deplorables” includes Catholics.

The Clinton campaign’s response was to once again blame the Russians and repeat their claim of Donald Trump being in cahoots with Moscow. The Center for American Progress also decided to “shoot the messenger,” telling the Washington Times, “We will not comment on or authenticate the contents of the WikiLeaks release except to say that this appears to be yet another illicit breach by the Russian government designed to influence the United States election, and we wish to have no part in furthering their mission.” Never mind the religious bigotry. The Russians are coming.