The new Wikileaks dump from Clinton campaign chief John Podesta’s emails reveals that Podesta created a couple of activist groups for the sake of undermining the Catholic bishops and the Church’s authority.

In the 2011 e-mail chain, a progressive activist named Sanford “Sandy” Newman e-mailed Podesta to suggest collaboration on a way

There needs to be a Catholic Spring, in which Catholics themselves demand the end of a middle ages dictatorship and the beginning of a little democracy and respect for gender equality in the Catholic Church.

Newman, who is Jewish, concedes that he doesn’t know much about the Catholic Church, but he sure does want somebody to undermine the hierarchy:

Even if the idea isn’t crazy, I don’t qualify to be involved and I have not thought at all about how one would ‘plant the seeds of the revolution,’ or who would plant them.”

Not to worry, said Podesta, who is Catholic, and who was at the time head of the Center For American Progress. They have progressive front organizations prepared to act when the time is right:

We created Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good to organize for a moment like this. But I think it lacks the leadership to do so now. Likewise Catholics United. Like most Spring movements, I think this one will have to be bottom up.

Catholic journalist Thomas Peters explains the significance of this revelation:

5/ i’ve been writing about CACG and CatholicsUnited as fronts for the Dem agenda since at least 2010. @CatholicVote too. We were right. — Thomas Peters (@AmericanPapist) October 12, 2016

6/ to repeat, the head of Clinton’s campaign has been organizing to fracture a major religion. Clinton claims to be for all Americans. — Thomas Peters (@AmericanPapist) October 12, 2016

7/ what if Podesta had created organizations to foment “Revolution” among the American Muslim community? Would that be worthy of dismissal? — Thomas Peters (@AmericanPapist) October 12, 2016

8/ CACG was founded in 2005. Podesta email from 2011. That’s at least six years of planning and execution. It was more than a hobby of his. — Thomas Peters (@AmericanPapist) October 12, 2016

9/ how much of his plans to fracture Catholics did Podesta share with Hillary as a campaign strategy? Does she agree with his strategy now? — Thomas Peters (@AmericanPapist) October 12, 2016

10/ remember @HillaryClinton said “deep-seated religious beliefs have to be changed” – @johnpodesta emails show he was doing just that! — Thomas Peters (@AmericanPapist) October 12, 2016

This is chilling and infuriating — though I suppose not surprising. It’s simply that now it’s undeniable. It shows that at the senior level of the Democratic Party’s brain trust, a Clinton political operative — a Catholic! — created front groups specifically to undermine the authority of the Catholic bishops, and to separate the bishops from the people, as well as to secretly undermine Catholic teaching to make it more friendly to the Democratic Party’s agenda. Podesta ought to be excommunicated.

So now we know what’s coming under a Hillary Clinton presidency: a war on the Catholic Church and any other church that stands in the way of progressives in power. At an international conference last year, Hillary Clinton said that the fight for global abortion rights must never end:

Laws have to be backed up with resources and political will. And deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs and structural biases have to be changed. As I have said and as I believe, the advancement of the full participation of women and girls in every aspect of their societies is the great unfinished business of the 21st century and not just for women but for everyone — and not just in far away countries but right here in the United States.

As Peters points out, the Clintonistas have long been conspiring to do exactly that to Catholicism in America. I use the word “conspiring,” because Podesta, in the text of his e-mail, says that “we” created these two Catholic fronts “to organize for a moment like this” — that is, to exploit a perceived weakness in the Catholic church. Here’s more.

It’s clear now that believing Christians are going to have to fight these powerful, deceptive, amoral progressives for the rest of our lives. Dark days ahead. A Catholic friend e-mails to say, “So we knew the KGB infiltrated the Russian Orthodox Church, but who knew the Democrats were sponsoring activists inside the US Catholic Church? Wow.”

For those who say that the Benedict Option is all about walking away from the fight, let me set you straight. These progressives are coming to power very soon, and they are going to come at us subtly (at first) but relentlessly. After November, there won’t be much of a Republican Party left with which to fight them, and even if there were, the Republicans in general are so afraid of being called bigots that they would be next to useless on religious liberty.

Yes, we have to fight the Clintonistas and the Anti-Christian-Industrial Complex politically, in every way we can. But you can’t fight them with something you don’t have. We in the American church (Catholics, Protestants, Orthodox) are weak. The Ben Op is in large part about strengthening us in our convictions and practices, so we can endure whatever they throw at us without losing our faith. What’s more, the Ben Op is about forming networks of small-o orthodox Christians to protect, assist, and sustain each other through what’s coming.

We lost the culture war, and now live in what you might call occupied territory. Now we have to be resistance fighters, and that requires a lot of patient, careful, deliberate work. The old-guard Christian leaders who think the main battlefront is in politics are incapable of leading the kind of resistance we need. They are fighting the last war. We need a Charles de Gaulle. We need a St. Benedict. If we are going to get them, they’re going to have to come from within our own ranks.

Liberals will call this post hysterical and overwrought. Don’t listen to them. These e-mails are a sign of what’s coming. Prepare.

UPDATE: I don’t think some of you get what I’m saying. I have no problem with a political party or political activists organizing to try to appeal to Catholics, or any other religious group. That’s normal. What Podesta confesses to doing here is working quietly to organize people to take advantage of a political moment to spark a revolution within the church. So what if he was not successful at it! The point is, John Podesta and his comrades are the kind of people who think it’s okay to burrow within an American religion and undermine its leadership for the sake of gaining political power.

And as for people who think the conclusion I draw for the future based on this are overwrought, I refer you to the Law of Merited Impossibility: It will never happen, and when it does, you bigots will deserve it.

Haven’t we seen this vindicated often enough these past few years? Don’t be fooled again.

UPDATE.2:Back in 2012, Tim Shipe, a pro-life Democrat running for a seat in the Florida state legislature, wrote this. Excerpt: