{"id":608,"date":"2008-05-13T18:25:12","date_gmt":"2008-05-13T18:25:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/godometer\/2008\/05\/bill-donohues-take-on-hagees-a.html"},"modified":"2008-05-13T18:25:12","modified_gmt":"2008-05-13T18:25:12","slug":"bill-donohues-take-on-hagees-a","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/05\/bill-donohues-take-on-hagees-a.html","title":{"rendered":"Bill Donohue’s Take on Hagee’s Apology"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"donahue.jpg\"The case is closed on John Hagee, the Texas evangelist whose endorsement of John McCain set off a national controversy because of allegations that Hagee’s books and sermons contain anti-Catholic rhetoric. Or at least it’s closed according to Bill Donohue. The president of the conservative Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, Donohue led the campaign for McCain to distance himself from Hagee after the endorsement. After receiving a letter of apology and clarification from Hagee, Donohue today said the controversy is officially over<\/a>. God-o-Meter caught up with Donohue by phone shortly after he made the announcement.
\nIn your statement today, you said that Hagee\u2019s apology was born of weeks of meetings with Catholic leaders. Do you have a window into what that process was like?<\/strong>
\nIt\u2019s been going on for weeks. A lot of Catholic activist friends of mine and some evangelicals have been powwowing with [Hagee] in Washington. They asked me to meet with Hagee and I said no several times. I\u2019m not interested in meeting with him until I get what I want, a public statement and apology that\u2019s complete and speaks specifically to these black legends about Catholics-Jewish relations, and the Holocaust in particular. And once that\u2019s accomplished, I\u2019ll be glad to meet with him. Now that\u2019s going to happen on Thursday.
\nQuite frankly, I didn\u2019t think that I would get something this complete. What I did not want to get was this \u201cIf you\u2019ve been offended, I\u2019m sorry.\u201d I wanted something more specific. There\u2019s no substitute for personal interaction, when you have people sitting down with you and explaining how you\u2019ve been hurtful. Now we can bury this hatchet. It\u2019s rather dramatic\u2026.
\nWhat really got me offended was the idea of \u201cI\u2019m the purist Christian on the block\u201d when he\u2019s talking to Jews\u2014\u201cI\u2019m not out there persecuting the Jews like all these Catholics.\u201d I\u2019m sure we\u2019ve seen the last of that.
\nIs Hagee acknowledging that he said anti-Catholic things, or only that he was insensitive toward Catholics and was careless about saying things that could be construed<\/em> as anti-Catholic?<\/strong>
\nIt\u2019s very hard for me to deal with motive and intent. Is the person a real bigot? Unless the person admits to it, I don\u2019t know. I\u2019m not here to judge a pure heart.
\nWhat are you going to say to Hagee when you meet?<\/strong>
\nI want to sit down and talk to him. There\u2019s not going to be any lectures. I got what I needed. I just want to shake his hand and thank him for doing this. I\u2019m hoping now that people in our society who\u2019 have looked on him as telling the truth about the Catholic church\u2019s relations with Jews will hopefully reconsider\u2026.
\nThere\u2019s a residue of anti-Catholicism in part of the evangelical community and when you have the readiness of mind to believe the worst of any group, it becomes easier to swallow the moonshine, so to speak.
\nHow far back does Hagee\u2019s record of making anti-Catholic statements go?<\/strong>
\nI wrote to him in 1997 and he never wrote back. We had somebody from our chapter go to one of his events and he had some video that was casting aspersions (on Catholics) and he never answered me.
\nPeople like Tony Perkins and Richard Land and James Dobson, we obviously have theological differences, but there has always been comity and an amicable relationship. I get involved with them occasionally on policy things, like Justice Sunday, and Hagee is not only not invited, his name is not even mentioned. He\u2019s kind of out of the loop.
\nAre you concerned that all of Hagee\u2019s books and other writings about Catholics are still in circulation? Does he need to renounce all that?<\/strong>
\nIf you were to come by my office, you would see hundreds upon hundreds of books by anti-Catholics\u2014we have a huge library of them. You can\u2019t do anything about his books.
\nThe McCain campaign has caught a lot of grief over its Hagee endorsement. Has the campaign been in touch with you about resolving this issue<\/strong>?
\nThe campaign has not been in touch with me, but intermediaries have been in touch back to the time when this happened.
\nI\u2019m not a virgin. I understand where this is coming from. We\u2019re in the middle of a presidential campaign. He took on enormous pressure because I went after him after he endorsed McCain. So there are all kinds of media now who had never heard of this guy and they\u2019re not putting him in the spotlight. He got rapped all over the place. Could I have gotten this letter eleven years ago? No, he blew me off then.<\/p>\n


\n6<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The case is closed on John Hagee, the Texas evangelist whose endorsement of John McCain set off a national controversy because of allegations that Hagee’s books and sermons contain anti-Catholic rhetoric. Or at least it’s closed according to Bill Donohue. 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