Posted on 03/14/2007 6:37:02 AM PDT by Alex Murphy
The idea that anti-Catholicism is a significant force in American life today is a complete canard, perpetrated by theologically and politically right-wing Roman Catholics--a minority among the Catholic laity--and aimed at anyone who stands up to the Church's continuing attempts to impose its values on all Americans.
The people who scream "anti-Catholicism" at every opportunity use the same tactics as right-wing Jews who charge that any criticism of Israeli policies is anti-Semitic. And just as the Jewish Right attacks liberal Jews, the Catholic Right attacks liberal Catholics as well as liberal non-Catholics.
The major organization promoting the falsehood that there is significant discrimination against Catholics is the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, whose president, William Donohue, has conned the news media into treating him as a "spokesman" for all American Catholics.
One of the biggest blind spots in much of the press's coverage of religion is that it tends to treat groups like "Catholics" and "evangelicals" as if their members marched in lockstep. In fact, there are liberal Catholics and conservative Catholics, just as there are liberal Protestant evangelicals and conservative fundamentalist evangelicals. Liberal Catholics have much more in common with liberal Protestants than they do with the kind of Catholics whom Donohue's organization claims to represent.
The majority of American Catholics, as demonstrated in repeated public opinion polls, reject the league's arch-conservative views on such matters as the separation of church and state (the league wants as much religious intrusion into government as possible); abortion rights; and stem cell research....
(Excerpt) Read more at newsweek.washingtonpost.com ...
I know of your (occasional) fondness for pinatas :)
The Washington Post and its writers see everything through a set of rose-colored glasses called left-wing politics. "Dissenting Catholics are as Catholic as orthodox Catholics" blah, blah, blah!
"The idea that anti-Catholicism is a significant force in American life today is a complete canard, perpetrated by theologically and politically right-wing Roman Catholics--a minority among the Catholic laity--and aimed at anyone who stands up to the Church's continuing attempts to impose its values on all Americans."
In her misguided, paranoid attempt to dismiss the prevailing anti-Catholic sentiment in America as "non-existent" Jacoby proves herself wrong by showing herself to be anti-Catholic.
God Save the Queen, but the Roman Catholics?
Unfair Discrimination & Fair Criticism
From John Kerry to the Da Vinci Code: Discrimination Reinvented?
John Dominic Crossan!? Good grief!
Oh yes, anti-Catholic bigotry is clearly dead and buried. </sarcasm>
This is an execrable article with blindingly ahistorical non-facts presented as gospel truth:
"There is indeed a long and ugly history of Protestant anti-Catholicism in the United States, dating from the dawn of the republic. Yet even at a time when Catholics still encountered significant social discrimination, the Church was extraordinarily effective at writing its social and sexual agenda into law through state statutes that obstructed access to contraceptives and contraceptive information. These laws were only struck down in the early 1960s."
Ahem... I wish that we Catholics could take credit for laws "obstructing access to contraceptives and contraceptive information." However, we cannot.
For folks who would like to know what actually happened, rather than what Ms. Jacoby fantasizes, they might start by googling "comstock laws."
Send the author back to school for remedial history lessons.
Obviously Susan Jacoby has never read the FR religion forum. I have seen 'Papist' so often here that I honestly didn't know that it was a derogatory term.
When you beat up on a traditional pinata, candy falls out. I suspect that beating up on the WaPo is going to release something significantly less pleasant than candy.
Check the COMMENTS under the article.
Who weighs in (pardon the pun), with his "SUSAN JACOBY IS 100% ON TARGET. I'M A PRIEST" - and then launches into an attack on the Catholic Church as the source of all hurt and pain and evil and corruption?
Why THOMAS DOYLE, of course, Savior of the abused, personal chaplain to SNAP.
Talk about someone who needs to get into some love-hate therapy - and fast!
I wonder if he's turning in his considerable profit from that "apostolate" to his provincial superiors over at OP, Inc?
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.
Where's the Barf Alert?
The Catholic Church has never defined herself according to the beliefs of the statistical majority but rather by adherence to the teachings of the divinely protected Magisterium. What Susan Jacoby is attempting to do is to redefine what it means to be Catholic. This in itself is an act of anti-Catholic bigotry, denying the Church the right to define itself.
In essence she is saying that rejection of those who hold Catholic beliefs does not constitute anti-Catholicism because she and others do not reject Catholic people who do not hold Catholic beliefs. In other words, the only good Catholic is a non-believing Catholic.
I like the more formal Romish Papist. I favor it but it does have a dusty, antiquated feel to it.
I am as serene as all get-out, and plan to stay that way. :)
St. Dominic, pray for us!
St. Thomas Aquinas, pray for us!
Pope St. Pius V, pray for us!
So what is happening? A frontal attack on the Catholic Church?
It's a good thing I read this before breakfast and not after. The left has been working diligently to widen the gap between conservative and liberal Christians as a whole. Unfortunately, it's working. Jacoby's intention is to create more hatred, not to deny that it already exists. What a slime!
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