Tonight in a special cage match, it’s the Tea Party vs. the Catholic Church: GOP Rep to target Catholic Church tax status.

Republican State Rep. and Tea Party leader Andrew Manuse (R-Derry) told the Catholic League he will be filing legislation in the New Hampshire House to strip the Roman Catholic Church of its tax exempt status because Bishop John McCormack spoke against proposed budget cuts at a recent State House rally, according to Bill Donohue, the President of the Catholic League.

“I am now considering a bill to remove the Church’s tax exempt status in New Hampshire, for you have clearly shown that you no longer want it,” Manuse says in the e-mail. …

“Never in the nearly 18 years I have spent as president of the Catholic League have I seen more totally irresponsible statements issued by the lawmakers in any one state,” said Donohue in a statement. “Why doesn’t Manuse go right ahead with his bill to remove the Church’s tax-exempt status? We’d love to present his e-mail in court.”

This might seem bizarre, but it makes more sense when you realize that Teabaggers are generally much more fundamentalist than Catholics are. They’re more in line with extreme Pentecostalism, and those kinds of fanatics really despise the Catholic Church.