Marcel, a campus ministry colleague of mine over at Texas A&M, posted today about the new versions of common Catholic myths and misconceptions. Traditionally, people have argued that Catholics worship Mary and a piece of bread, or made up purgatory, and so on. Now, as Marcel points out, people are far more likely to object to the Church’s position on homosexuality or the priestly sex abuse scandal.
He has a point. He writes, “modern people are more secular in their thinking.” For the most part, that’s true. Catholicism is not seen so much as an affront to the Protestant sensibilities that founded most of the country (but not my home state!) as an affront to the secularism that the most vocal nonreligious people want us to think is ubiquitous. Being religious seems to offend nonreligious people.
The biggest crime here is that all these anti-Catholic myths, even the old ones that still remain, are perpetuated in the name of “tolerance.” The only thing that really seems to be tolerated is accepting everything. There’s no room for the right to dislike anything, and that seems to be a much more serious problem than any other.
This post was submitted to Sunday Snippets: A Catholic Carnival.
June 18th, 2011 10:12 pm
Yes! The problem used to be that Catholics were bad ’cause they weren’t Protestant; now the problem is the Protestants are bad but the Catholics are worse.
June 19th, 2011 12:35 am
Definitely, though the evangelical and fundamentalist Christians get a bad rap, too. Maybe we should bond over the general antagonism toward all of us. ;)
June 19th, 2011 1:17 pm
“Being religious seems to offend nonreligious people.” Bingo.
June 20th, 2011 8:09 am
Happy I fell onto this post-I have many protestant/evangelical friends that would love to convert me. I wish people would spend more time loving Jesus and showing that love verses trying to control where you worship Him.
June 21st, 2011 1:15 pm
Sharon, I think you have a good point, but to many people who aim for the conversion of others, working towards that conversion is how they try to live out their love for Jesus. If you found the cure for cancer, for example, wouldn’t you want to tell everyone you know?