[ninenot]

While the AtlMonthly has reasonably good stuff, you do understand that the Church is the most convenient whipping-post for both the Left and the hard-Right...

Typically, Catholics don't respond to flagrant and abusive attacks on the Church. We're a pushover. I will condemn in the strongest possible terms (sometimes stronger than that, even) any Churchman who is wrong, and proven so. But I won't sit idly by and watch others do the same w/no evidence, or even logic and common sense.

[liberallarry]

I do understand that the Church is far too often attacked baselessly and unfairly. I didn't mean to do that...if that is what I did.

It's my belief that anti-semitism was a pretty stong current in both Catholic and Orthodox Church teachings during the Middle Ages. Is that wrong?

Recent articles in the Atlantic Monthly re-examined Church policy toward Germany during WWII and Hitler's relationship to the Church. I would prefer to have you read and comment on them rather than (possibly) screwing up things any further than I (might) have.

Personally, I have problems with all three monotheistic faiths. I believe intolerance is built into them. I could be wrong, though. Perhaps intolerance is a human characteristic which monotheism has not very successfully addressed.