Good post.
I find those that you call “antagonists” frightening. Frightening like all fanatics of all creeds. Frightening in their certainty, which is, to me at least, based on ignorance passing as knowledge, which they base on interpreting obscure passages from the Bible, and frightening in their hostility, no different, I’m afraid, from the hostility of the Islamists, or Leftists. There is no qualitative difference between the fanatical Marxists I have known, and the fanatical antagonists of Catholicism on these pages, they each just use a different “Bible” to support their “unassailable” dogmas.
The problem with American Christianity is that any fool can and does pick up the Bible and declares himself a theologian, and since this is about their Dear Jesus, you are not allowed to question him. And the loudest ones, the Rev. Wrights, the Bakkers, the Crouches and Harold Campings, as well as the anti-Catholic posters here, do everything in their power to persuade us that they are indeed fools.
The problem is that they have not humbled themselves before the Lord and acknowledged that there are indeed mysteries that the human mind, specifically their human minds, can never completely rationalize or understand. Mysteries demand faith. Those who insist that what they do not understand cannot be true reject faith. The type of faith spoken of in the Gospel of John, where he used the word "pisteuô" nearly 100 times is not merely an ascent of the mind, it is a belief accepted in spite of the pressures of the world and your own reason to the contrary.
Peace be with you