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SALT LAKE CITY -- The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights is the latest to speak out against Texas pastor Robert Jeffress.
Jeffress is getting a lot of press lately for calling Mitt Romney's Mormon faith "a cult," and later condemning Mormonism, Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam as false religions.
The league issued a news release today reminding people that last year Jeffress said the Roman Catholic Church was the outgrowth of a "corruption" called the "Babylonian mystery." It quotes Jeffress as saying, "Much of what you see in the Catholic Church today doesn't come from God's word. It comes from that cult-like pagan religion. Isn't that the genius of Satan?"
Catholic League president Bill Donohue offered these remarks today:
"Where did they find this guy? When theological differences are demonized by the faithful of any religion — never mind by a clergyman — it makes a mockery of their own religion. Rev. Jeffress is a poster boy for hatred, not Christianity."
In other religion news
- A group that monitors church-state issues is asking the IRS to investigate whether Jeffress violated federal law by positing a video clip about his endorsement of Rick Perry on the church's website. According to the Dallas Morning News, federal law allows pastors to personally endorse political candidates but the church itself cannot support a candidate. The group Americans United for the Separation of Church and State accuses Jeffress of "trying to do an end-run around the law," although a disclaimer on the site says Jeffress' support of Perry doesn't imply endorsement from the church.
- Pope Benedict XVI is condemning recent violence in Egypt. He spoke out against what he called attempts to "undermine the peaceful coexistence" among Egyptian communities. Egypt's Coptic Christians, who represent about 10 percent of the 85 million people in the Muslim-majority nation, have long complained that they are second-class citizens in their own country.
- Americans of Hispanic descent trying to trace their family tree could get a boost from data set to go online. MSNBC reports The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will release a digital index of Mexico's 1930 census online at FamilySearch.org and on Ancestry.com. It says the church this year completed the more than three-year-old project to create a searchable digital index of the massive census.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
