John Hagee

As far back as 2007, Bill Donohue of the Catholic League had been calling John Hagee a "veteran bigot" for statements he had made about the Catholic Church, calling it, among other things ""The Great Whore," an "apostate church," the "anti-Christ," and a "false cult system."

When John McCain received Hagee's endorsement last year, Donohue was livid and demanded that McCain reject the endorsement, which McCain eventually did. But in the months in between, something odd happened: Hagee and Donohue became friends.

Hagee apologized to Donohue and Donohue was quite pleased with himself with how he had managed to make Hagee grovel:

It’s 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’m not interested in meeting with him until I get what I want, a public statement and apology that’s complete and speaks specifically to these black legends about Catholics-Jewish relations, and the Holocaust in particular. And once that’s accomplished, I’ll be glad to meet with him. Now that’s going to happen on Thursday.

Quite frankly, I didn’t think that I would get something this complete. What I did not want to get was this “If you’ve been offended, I’m sorry.” I wanted something more specific. There’s no substitute for personal interaction, when you have people sitting down with you and explaining how you’ve been hurtful. Now we can bury this hatchet. It’s rather dramatic….

What really got me offended was the idea of “I’m the purist Christian on the block” when he’s talking to Jews—“I’m not out there persecuting the Jews like all these Catholics.” I’m sure we’ve seen the last of that.

But once Donohue had been placated, the two became fast friends and alies.  And now Dan Gilgoff reports that Hagee is working closely with Donohue to expand the scope of his Christians United for Israel:

CUFI has recently stepped up outreach to Catholics. What precipitated that , and how is the effort going so far? What are your goals for that outreach?

Yes, we are reaching out to Catholics. These efforts started last year, during the presidential campaign, when Bill Donahue of the Catholic League claimed that I had slighted the Catholic Church while teaching from the Book of Revelation. He was mistaken on this point. But he and I handled this disagreement the way that Christians should. We met. We had fellowship. We learned from one another. A few months after the controversy, he came to our Washington, D.C., Summit as my guest. When I recognized him during my keynote address, he received a rousing ovation from our CUFI audience. I consider him a friend.

Bill and I decided that we should turn our personal reconciliation into a broader reconciliation. We decided to try to bring Catholics and Protestants together on behalf of Israel. Some of Israel's best friends and strongest defenders are devout Catholics. They should be a part of this movement.

Interestingly, Hagee insists that he and Donohue buried the hatchet after he explained that Donohue was "mistaken" about what he had said about the Catholic Church, whereas Donohue insisted that they did so after Hagee had abjectly apologized for his past statements. 

So which was it?  I'd like to know.

Not that I'll ever find out, mind you, because I am undoubtedly among those whom Hagee insists "believe some of the lies that were told about me during the campaign [who were] probably not my friends to begin with."

• Like Sarah Palin, Florida Gov. Charlie Crist is coming under fire for appointing a justice to the state Supreme Court whom the Religious Right did not support.
• We can all be glad that we didn't make donations to Norm Coleman's re-election campaign.
• Former Congressman and right-wing crank Virgil Goode has filed to re-claim the seat he lost last November.
• John Hagee, Rod Parsley, and others are coming together for GOD TV's "Mammoth Missions Week" which, unfortunately, has nothing to do with mammoths.
• Robert Knight says that efforts to repeal Don't Ask, Don't Tell is "a train wreck waiting to happen."
• Finally, Al Mohler says that there is no human punishment that can fully achieve justice for Bernie Madoff's crimes:

True justice is achieved only by the only one who is truly just and all powerful, whose verdicts are perfect and whose judgments are eternal. Human justice points to the need for a greater justice. The very inadequacy of human courts points to our yearning for a heavenly court.

We yearn for the end of history, when God will bring His creation to a perfect end; when God's redemptive purposes will be known to all; when justice flows like a mighty river. On that day justice will be perfect, and the righteous Judge will be none other than Jesus Christ, who paid the only adequate penalty for sin. On that day, God will judge both the quick and the dead, and his judgment upon the sheep and the goats will be both holy and just

• Cornerstone Christian School, which is connected to John Hagee's Cornerstone Church, is suing after it was dropped from the Texas Association of Private and Parochial Schools' athletic league, saying it is being discriminated against because it is a religious school, while the league counters that it was dropped due to Cornerstone's "ongoing problem with illegal recruiting of foreign students for athletic purposes."
• The American Conservative magazine reports on the state of the anti-choice movement, saying it "has endured for so long precisely because it has failed" and cites offers this anecdote: "Alan Keyes soon leapt to the stage and addressed the audience of about 100 people. He compared Obama to Cain, who killed his brother; to a 'bad tree' in Christ's parables; and to Hitler."
• What do Liberty University professors do when they are not teaching? Search for Noah's Ark, of course. Archaeologist Randall Price is set to travel to Mt. Ararat in Turkey to search for it based on claims by a Kurdish shepherd who says he has seen the ark, and even climbed on top of it, when he was a boy: "They found the spot, Price said, but it now is covered by an estimated 60-foot-deep pile of boulders. Price believes the landslide may have resulted from attacks against Kurdish rebels on the mountain, or perhaps from explosives that were set off to cover up the ark."
• Finally, just let me say that I hope Andy Schlafly starts writing more posts for the Eagle Forum's blog:

Notice how Springsteen skipped his song "Born in the U.S.A." at the Super Bowl?

Bruce Springsteen is a liberal rock star who sang during the halftime of the Super Bowl last night. He has working class appeal.

Springsteen sang nearly all his top hits ... except there was one glaring omission. He did not sing "Born in the U.S.A.," one of his most popular tunes of all.

Wonder why??? The Obama mind controllers would not have been happy if he sang that title! Obama still has not proven that he was born in the U.S.A.

• Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church, formerly the home church of the late D. James Kennedy, has chosen a new pastor to replace its founder: Rev. Tullian Tchividjian, who just so happens to be the grandson of Billy Graham.
• Sen. Orrin Hatch stepped in at the last minute and saved Rob Schenck’s annual National Service for the Pre-born by signing on as an official sponsor so that the event could take place in the US Capitol Visitor Center.
• Sean Hannity has thrown his support to Michael Steele for Republican National Committee Chairman.
• Connecticut Democrats are calling on Sen. Joe Lieberman to apologize for a litany of things, including his support of John Hagee.
• Ralph Reed stayed away from Barack Obama’s Inauguration yesterday, but still couldn’t help but get overwhelmed by the emotions of the day – not because of our historic new president but because “it was a lot more emotional to watch George W. Bush depart the capital than I thought it would be.”
• Finally, Matt Barber is not happy with the new White House’s proclamation of “support for the LGBT community,” seeing it as evidence that “Barack Obama’s administration will likely be the most leftist, divisive and discriminatory in recent memory”:

The gravity of this situation cannot be overstated.  Right out of the shoot, Obama has told the world that he is signing off, without exception, on every demand of the extremist homosexual and transsexual lobbies.  The radical homosexual agenda and religious and free speech liberties cannot occupy the same space.  It’s a zero-sum game.  When 1 - 2 percent of the population is granted special rights based on deviant sexual proclivities and changeable sexual behaviors, to the detriment of everyone else, that’s called tyranny of the minority.  People of faith and those of you with traditional values: hold on to your hats – it’s going to be a bumpy four years.