Politics

Catholic Organization Warns Members About Tim Kaine’s Radical Roots

Screen Grab NBC

Kerry Picket Political Reporter
Font Size:

Hillary Clinton’s running mate Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine believes the Catholic Church will one day accept same sex marriage and women should have unlimited access to abortion, but some Catholic leaders are telling him his views have no place in the church.

Brian Burch of Catholic Vote sent a memo out to its 500,000 person organization and about 1,000 Catholic leaders nationwide describing Kaine’s embrace of liberation theology during his 1980 trip to Honduras on a supposedly “faith-inspired mission to assist Jesuit missionaries serving peasant farmers.”

Burch also discusses Kaine’s reported bus trip to northern Nicaragua to meet Fr. James Carney, an American-born priest who is known for liberation theology and was exiled from Honduras in 1979 for his radical activities and promotion of Marxist ideology.

“I invite all Christians who read this to get rid of any unfair and un-Christian prejudices you have against armed rebellion, socialism, Marxism and communism,” Carney wrote in his own book.

Burch writes, “Important questions remain about the influence of certain persons and their ideology during Mr. Kaine’s time in Honduras. The experience, according to Kaine, was hugely significant in shaping his religious and political life.” He adds, “But the Marxist-socialist ideology he embraced there complicates the narrative offered to the public of a good will humanitarian missionary trip to Honduras.”

Burch goes on to describe the Catholic Church’s long opposition to liberation theology since Pope John Paul II as well as liberation theology’s connection to the former Soviet Union.

“Catholic voters and all Americans deserve to know the truth about Kaine’s political philosophy and the role that revolutionary Marxist theology played and may continue to play in the shaping of his political views today,” writes Burch.

CatholicVote.org is a national, lay-led movement of activist Catholics organized to educate, organize, and mobilize Catholic voters to advance the social teachings of the Catholic Church in the public square.

Follow Kerry on Twitter