As a Catholic, I’ve experienced discrimination, but I’ve also received what I would acknowledge to be special favorable consideration at times precisely because I’m a Catholic. Add priesthood to my Catholicism and you would find a similar mix of noticeable discrimination at times and special consideration at other times.
Generally speaking, it is the context that makes the difference.
Frequently, but by no means always, I’ve experienced discrimination in secular academic circles. Often, but again not always, I’ve been the beneficiary of special treatment and courtesies in a working class, blue-collar context.
In the university environment, or at an intellectual level, the discrimination is typically grounded in skepticism and an unwillingness to accept the compatibility of faith and reason. In the context of on-the-street, down-to-earth daily living, ordinary people tend to have respect for faith in general and ministers of religion in particular, without getting tied up in faith vs. reason arguments.
In all contexts of social interaction with others, regardless of intellectual attainment, social status, or economic well-being, I’ve found that familiarity and friendship breed understanding and respect.
Ignorance is at the root of prejudice. So it is ironic, in my experience, that the manifestation of ignorance that is prejudice against Catholics is more noticeable among the well-educated than it is among simpler people of more modest academic credentials.
As to the underlying question of what's behind the ignorance that produces the discrimination, who knows? In some cases, it will be pride or arrogance; in others, an unspecified fear related to a refusal to change. But who really knows?
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