AmericanPapist Comments
Amen to this! I am one Protestant who is thoroughly sick of the Catholic-bashing, esp the assumption all priests are pedophiles!
Jokes BY Catholics are another matter. I suppose jokes about Nuns in School are still fair game for anyone, but then, can you REALLY escape that dreaded ruler?
I went to a Baptist High School, talk about ripe for possibilities...
What IS anti-Catholic "bigotry" and what's wrong with it?
If one is religiously convinced that the Catholic Church is a hideous perversion of the Gospel and a damnable imitation of the True Church of Christ, is one a "bigot"? How come?
(I am a full-blooded, papistical, ultramontane Roman Catholic, BTW...)
Jeff, bigotry is intolerance, usually based on race, sexual orientation, or creed. A lot of people truly believe that all Muslims are terrorists because of a few passages in the Koran, and such people are bigots. A lot of people truly believe that homosexuals are the spawn of Satan, and such people are bigots. The people who don't like Catholics or Muslims or Jews or homosexuals usually don't like them not because of something rational but because of fear of what they don't understand. If believing Catholics pervert the true Gospel is rational, then I guess Hitler's belief that Jews were defiling German racial purity and ruining the world economy was rational, too. But we all know that there is no true evidence to validate either supposition. When the only evidence to support your intolerance is perceived rather than real, then you officially become a bigot.
What's wrong with bigotry? Well, it usually leads to discrimination and then to the greater extreme of violence against those you refuse to tolerate. Unfortunately, we've seen it before here in America with blacks being lynched in the South and Matthew Shephard being tied to a fence and killed. Unfortunately, the rest of the world can't say this is an American-only problem. Bigotry begets violence, and for what? Because someone doesn't like how another worships or because someone was born with a different skin tone? The violence eventually wrought by anti-Catholic bigotry or bigotry of any type should never be acceptable.
God bless these Protestants!
Nathan:
Sorry, but I think your explanation is silly.
Of course, people can believe that a human instituion has usurped the place of the divine order of things and pervereted it. My faith tells me this is not true and my reason supports that. But then, I am a Catholic. I don't expect Protestants to agree.
You speak of Muslims: well, Muslims commonly believe that Christianity is a perversion of the truth, that saying Christ is God is a Satanic form of "shirk" or idol-worship and that those who don't believe in Islam will enter hellfire. I know because I spend quite a lot of time during each day talking to them.
"Bigoted"? Nonsense. It's just a religion taking itself seriously. They are wrong. But I don't call them "bigoted" for being Muslims. The assumption behind the term is that no one could possibly believe that another religion is evil in some fundamental way. That is absurd. Of course they can!
Jeff, we'll have to agree to disagree. My best friend is Hindu, and while I believe my faith is the correct one, I don't find his to be inherently evil. I don't find it to be evil at all. Bigotry, I would argue, is a matter of degree: do you disagree with someone or something, or do you hate it? The former is rational, the latter is not. Bigotry is an irrational hatred of something or someone. Is there really a good reason to attack Jews, Protestants, or Catholics because of a different set of beliefs? The cartoon in question is a clear attack on the faith of the justices, which in turn is designed to arouse the centuries-old fear in this nation that this nation might become a satrapy of the Pope. Thus, because the cartoon is attempting to arouse an irrational fear against a particular religion, the creator is a bigot.
I could go on with more examples of bigotry against groups who receive much more of it than we Catholics could ever imagine, but you get the point. Bigotry isn't disagreement over faith or sexual orientation or race. If that were the criteria, the Pope would be a bigot when he discusses theological differences with the Archbishop of Canterbury or with an Imam in Istanbul. Instead, it's an intense distaste for those we disagree with that more often than not devolves into overt animosity and an unwillingness to rationally debate the merits of a topic. The cartoon wasn't a rational contribution to the debate on how judicial decisions are reached (if it were, he would've bothered to mention the judicial philosophies of the five that he managed to conveniently ignore), and the Protestants agreed and called the creator out. Again, I think we'll have to agree to disagree on what bigotry is.
Actually, I can't see how you can be Protestant and not think the Church is in some way or other evil. It's part of Protestantism. Heck, it's part of non-Catholicism, period. After all, the Church claims to be the pillar of truth led by the vicar of Christ, and it makes people worship a piece of bread. And not have sex until marriage, and then you can't use contraception. Etcetera.
I went to a Baptist High School, talk about ripe for possibilities...
Hey, so did I.
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