Bill Press: Celibate Catholic Bishops Wage War on Women, They've 'Got This Anti-Woman Thing Built Into Them'

March 18th, 2012 7:47 AM

On Friday's Bill Press radio show, the former Catholic seminarian ripped into his own church again. He says the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops are "outrageous and wrong" to join the Republicans in their "War on Women."

"Boy, this has me really burned up," he began. "There is a war on women going on. It’s a war on women that’s being conducted by Republicans in the House, you expect that. By Republicans in the Senate, you expect that. But, it’s also being led by the Catholic bishops of this country, which is outrageous and which is wrong. Well you might say of course the Catholic Bishops are part of the war on women, you know they won’t allow women to become priests in the Catholic Church. They won’t allow Priests to get married because there’s something wrong with living with a woman, or having sex with a woman. I mean they’ve got this anti-woman thing built into them."

Press could not believe the USCCB would declare this defining religious-liberty issue -- forcing Catholic institutions to violate their own institutional conscience and completely subsidize artificial birth control -- their number one policy priority.

"Their number one priority is birth control. That’s what they said. Their number one priority is overturning the Obama administration policy that birth control should be included in every health insurance plan and women should be able to get it without co-pay. Fighting that is their number one priority. The most significant item says Sister Mary Ann Walsh who is the spokesperson for the bishops and by the way she says ‘this is our full court press.'"

Then Press turned whimsical, just for a moment, since they use "full court Press" as a slogan on his his show.  "Oh my God, the fact that they use that! Don’t they know we have that copyrighted? Let’s sue the bastards! How dare they call it the full court press -- but how dare they make this their number one priority!"

At least Press didn't go to the Taliban references, but it wouldn't be hard to push him there. He has certainly put Rick Santorum there. In a recent column objecting to Santorum for opposing John F. Kennedy's ideas on leaving religion out of politics, Press wrote:

Santorum is, at heart, a religious zealot: a religious extremist, who wants the laws of the land to be bound by the tenets of his faith. Sound familiar? It should. Because it’s the same kind of dangerous, religious extremism we’ve learned to fear in the Middle East. The only difference between Santorum and the Taliban’s view of religion’s role in government is the type of faith they would impose on others.

Yes, we must beware of Islamist extremists. But we should beware of Christian extremists, as well.