A conservative Catholic organization responded to comments that Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) made about the church last week, calling her a “disgrace.”
In an interview with Catholic Militant last week, Greene said that recent efforts by Christian organizations and churches to help resettle undocumented immigrants and refugees in the U.S. are evidence of “Satan controlling the church.”
“The church is not doing its job, and it’s not adhering to the teachings of Christ,” Greene said in the interview.
The president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, Bill Donohue, responded to the Georgia congresswoman’s comments in a statement Wednesday, saying that while Greene had “plenty of opportunities to make rational criticisms” of Christian organizations assisting refugees, “instead she slandered the entire Catholic Church.”
“Satan is controlling the Catholic Church? She needs to apologize to Catholics immediately. She is a disgrace,” Donohue said in the statement.
Donohue also said that the Catholic League is contacting House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) about the incident, warning that he has a “loose cannon on his hands.”
Greene responded to Donohue’s remarks with her own statement Wednesday, writing that she was referring to church leadership and not the Catholic Church as a whole with her comments about Satan.
“I refuse to use kinder, gentler language as Bill Donohue might prefer when I talk about his disgusting and corrupt friends, who have made him rich with the donations from ordinary churchgoing Catholics,” Greene wrote.
Greene, whose controversial online comments have been constant during her time in Congress, was pressed in a tense hearing last week over whether her posts leading up to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol helped spur the day’s events.