Here's another article, written by Jimmy Aikens from the National Catholic Register, which takes a different slant than the previous one written by 'Mundabor'. While Aikens does agree that the Church has a big job ahead of it in promoting its message, he not agree with Mundabor that anti-Catholicism is rampant.
Your thoughts?
The Last Remaining Prejudice? Not Hardly! | Blogs | NCRegister.com
Your thoughts?
The Last Remaining Prejudice? Not Hardly! | Blogs | NCRegister.com
A couple of observations from my perspective as a priest for the past 27 years:
ReplyDelete-There is anti-Catholicism in our culture, but it is a subset of anti-religious prejudice in general. There is, nowadays, very little anti-Catholicism to be found among practicing members of other churches and other religions.
-Those who are prey to anti-Catholic prejudice are a tiny minority of the population. In my experience, the younger the person, the less prejudice there is. For sixteen years, I taught university students of every background imaginable. The experience was very positive. Those whom I would describe as prejudiced (fewer than ten percent of the students) tended to be biased against all religions. By “biased against”, I mean not simply that they were atheists or agnostics, but that they turned a deaf ear to arguments coming from a perspective other than their own. That trait, and not atheism or agnosticism, constitutes prejudice. And yes, the trait is to be found also among religious people, including Catholics.
People aren't prejudiced against Catholics much, less I believe than in times past.
ReplyDeleteThere is however very little respect for priests and a lot of out and out hatred. Those who haven't had a personal very damaging experience with a Catholic priest often have a friend, family member or loved one who has.
I don't think there's much that can be done about it. There are some very good men who are priests but they are statistically few and must overcome extremely poor hierarchical leadership, starting with the pope and in the end it must be admitted that most priests are human scum. Absolutely irredeemable.
Father Tom, that runs this bog is.