[Petrosius]

The majority of American Catholics, as demonstrated in repeated public opinion polls, reject the league's arch-conservative views ...

Right-wing Catholic leaders would like to turn the clock back to the days when most American Catholics let their priests and bishops do their thinking for them.

Today, a majority of lay American Catholics have turned a deaf ear to a number of particularly benighted bishops ...

But the church has still not given up trying to force its version of morality on other Americans.

They were given a pass because politicians, too, have been intimidated by the idea that to raise a question about conflict of loyalty is to be "anti-Catholic."

A Catholic wit, looking back on the certitudes of American Catholicism in the fifties, once remarked that "it was the only THE church." Not any more. And never, thankfully, in America.

Oh yes, anti-Catholic bigotry is clearly dead and buried. </sarcasm>

[Alex Murphy]

Oh yes, anti-Catholic bigotry is clearly dead and buried.

As I understand it, the author's point is that a statistical minority of Catholics are social conservatives, therefore it's technically incorrect to claim that any bigotry is anti-Catholic and not anti-conservative Catholic. Likewise, the author would say it's technically incorrect to claim that conservative Catholicism represents all of Catholicism, or even a simple majority (remember the 80S bumper sticker "The Moral Majority is Neither"?)

Of course, this argument is utterly and laughably ironic, because it means this political liberal author is actually arguing in favor of committing bigotry against a statistical minority.