Any doubt that anti-Catholic discrimination exists should have been erased recently by the reaction—or lack of it—to the notorious bloggers for John Edwards’s Democratic presidential campaign.
Their virulent, obscene blogs attacking the faithful in general and Catholics in particular generated little reaction. The bigoted bloggers had to resign, but where was the outrage—from the Democratic political community or the news media (not even from Edwards)? Imagine the explosion had the bloggers administered this treatment to African-Americans, Jews, Latinos, homosexuals, feminists or even Muslims.
I am able to compare the different degrees of discrimination in America experienced by a Jew or as a Catholic. I spent the first 67 years of my life as a Jew (though non-observant for the last 54 years) before my baptism as a Christian and my confirmation as a Catholic on May 20, 1998.
At the reception that day celebrating my conversion, my friend Al Hunt noted that my Methodist mother-in-law from Texas had ended a visit to our family in Washington just prior to my conversion. “Poor woman!” said Hunt, an Episcopalian. “First her daughter marries a Jew and then he becomes a Catholic.” In 21st Century America, it was a step down the scale of acceptability.
During my youth, many more doors were closed to Jews than to Catholics—to clubs, to resorts, to neighborhoods. But most have been opened, and anti-Semitism today is simply unacceptable. Not so with anti-Catholic bias. People repeatedly asked me: “Why in the world would you possibly want to be a Catholic?” While most Jews are secular, mass-attending Catholics are viewed by the elites in the media, the academy and in the entertainment world as superstitious plebeians.
One small example: In the recent film Elizabeth (about Queen Elizabeth II), a Catholic priest and emissary from the Pope who is smuggled into England is shown beating to death with his bare hands a young Protestant nobleman. Can you imagine a rabbi treated that way by Hollywood?
