Team Jindal fights back

The Louisiana GOP has a magnificent fisking of the Louisiana Democrats' scurrilous attack on Bobby Jindal's religious beliefs and writings. Well done! Excerpt:

First, to the lies. Based on an article called “How Catholicism is Different” – note the sensitivity of that word different – that Bobby Jindal wrote as a young man explaining the importance of his faith’s traditions, the ad accuses him of referring to Protestant religions as “scandalous,” “depraved,” “selfish,” and “heretical.” Each claim is a lie, so let’s take them one at a time.

The article does not refer to Protestant religions as “scandalous.” The exact phrase used mentions a “scandalous series of divisions and new denominations” in the history of Christianity. Perhaps the Louisiana Democratic Party attack artists don’t understand how adjectives work, but lack of grammar would be a better failing than the lack of honesty this mischaracterization represents. Clearly the author was expressing a sentiment shared by Christians of every denomination the world over: regret over the worsening fracture and division of the world’s faith community through the centuries.

Next, it is Calvin himself – a founder of a Protestant denomination – who Jindal quoted as saying all Christians have “utterly depraved” minds and “selfish desires.” For the Louisiana Democratic Party to depict this as a direct quote by Jindal, and as one directed at Protestants as opposed to describing the fallen condition of all “individual Christians” (the exact quote), shows that maybe some minds are purposefully more “utterly depraved” than others.