Why Do They Hate Catholics So Much? - 2 of 3

Why Do They Hate Catholics So Much? – 2 of 3
Tuesday, Dec. 11, 2007

Continued: “Frenzied blasphemies – the mocking of sacred symbols, the association of those symbols with sickest kind of pornography – reveals the depth of the violent hatred because it represents an assault in some ways worse than the desire to do bodily harm. It aims to annihilate the sacred core of the believers very being. It is a mentality in which the actual killing of individuals would be almost an anti-climax.

It is one of the supreme ironies of an age awash in ironies that it is Christians who are now routinely accused of being hateful, of fomenting violence, even as the guardians of public opinion carefully conceal from view the true mentality of the anti-Christians. (Thus the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence are presented merely as a group of merry pranksters who do what they do in order to raise money for charity.)

One of the results of the style of Episcopal leadership which has prevailed in America for three decades is that much, although, not all, of this hatred has been diverted away from the Catholic Church and towards Protestants who can be called Fundamentalists. It is now treated as merely self-evident that the latter are hate-filled and intolerant, while the Catholic Church is assessed in each particular situation, showing promise of change in some areas, intransigent in others. More than one bishop has probably prayed quietly, “Thank God for Pat Robertson. Let them pick on him rather than me.”

How is it possible that ant-Christian bigotry is so strong in a society which is apparently the most religious in the Western world? In part the answer is that the very strength of religion inevitably provokes hatred; where it is weak it is simply ignored. On the other hand Christianity, and perhaps especially the Catholic Church, is also not perceived as truly powerful. Thus religion is hated for its alleged oppressiveness but at the same time is not feared, the classic predicament of those Western monarchies where revolution occurred (England in the 1640’s, France in the 1790’s, Russia in 1917).

The single greatest enemy of a vibrant Christianity in the United States is not its proclaimed opponents but the deep, seemingly ineradicable complacency of its own adherents, by the clergy themselves. Most Americans including some, who are ostensibly orthodox, live by the assumption that one espouses a religion in order to make one’s life richer and more satisfying. The ultimate test is whether, like everything in the culture is supposed to do, it makes the individual “feel good about himself.”

Most professed believers cannot conceive of why it should ever be necessary to make sacrifices for their religion, which is why there is almost total indifference to the fate of persecuted believers during one of the great ages of religious persecution in the history of the world.

Christians are now completely on the defensive in Western society in terms of their beliefs. Public discussion of religion is often casually hostile, and those who profess to believe are often apologetic in the popular sense of the word. As the events at Littleton, Colorado showed, public agencies like schools are tolerant of all kinds of deviant behavior, even as they are increasingly vigilant against the “intrusion” into the public square.”
George H. Kubeck, Posted in the early mornings of Cinops Be Gone.