Ross Douthat in a Twitter essay yesterday (21 tweets) said in one tweet. Tweet’s listed here
That’s what there is to see here: Not anti-Catholic “bigotry” (an overused word), but a window into how the Catholic civil war is fought.
This is something that resonated with me as I was already thinking about how anti-Catholic was being overused. Not agreeing with Catholics is not anti-Catholic. No more than not agreeing with atheists or Protestants makes you anti-atheist or anti-Protestant in the pejorative way of reflexive bigotry. They are bigots in the classic sense of “prejudiced person who is intolerant of any opinions differing from his own”. There is pretty much zero-striving towards understanding the arguments of those you disagree with. But there is a lot of that going around. This is not to deny true the existence of true anti-Catholicism.
No they are just fine with Catholics who reject the Magisterium like Biden/Kaine/Kerry. It is Catholics who actually believe and follow the faith they have trouble with on most issues. This is why they shift the terminology of “Religious Freedom” to “Freedom of Worship”.
In C.C. Pecknold’s fine article on The Progressives’ Plot to Change Catholicism he references:
In some ways, the Investiture Controversies of the 12th and 13th centuries never ended. Kings continue to want to bring the Church under their control.
There will always be efforts to bring the Church under control. The Chinese government has their Patriotic churches and John Podesta and others create astroturf groups to project their secular values as the faith of the Church. This is doomed to fail as it historically has always failed. Catholics keep trying to bring the Church under control.
If the Church is merely a human institution as the Church’s critics maintain then it makes perfect sense to try to subvert it to your own message. It is not anti-Catholic to do so, it is just mistaken as to the reality of Christ’s church.
