What's so funny, Al? (SPNPhotos)

If any political candidate in this year’s elections can be fairly accused of harboring deep-seated prejudice against the Church, it’s Al Franken.

The Minnesota Democrat, who is challenging Republican incumbent Norm Coleman in this year’s U.S. Senate election, has a lengthy history of anti-Catholic diatribes.

For evidence, take a look at this recent article by Katherine Kersten in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, entitled “Vulgar mockery of Christians: Is this what we want in a U.S. senator?” Kersten’s article cites examples of Franken’s anti-Christian and anti-Catholic slurs, most of which are too vulgar to repeat here.

Comments Kersten, “If a 12-year-old kid spouted this stuff in a schoolyard, he’d be hauled to the principal’s office and told to grow up. But in today’s surreal political climate, a guy who lobs insults like these has a shot at one the highest political offices in the land.”

In an Oct. 27 press release, Catholic League president Bill Donohue agreed that “Franken has a long and ugly history of Catholic bashing.”

Said Donohue, “Franken’s diatribes against Catholics are not in jest. As Hillary Clinton said about him last week, he tells ‘truth through jokes.’ And the truth is that when Franken mocks the Body and Blood of Jesus, and jokes about the discovery of ‘the complete skeleton of Jesus Christ still nailed to the cross,’ his mean-spirited digs are designed to be injurious.”

In her Star Tribune column, Kersten suggests that Franken’s hostility toward Christians in general, and Catholics in particular, disqualifies him from holding high political office. That sounds like an accurate assessment to us.

— Tom McFeely