It's really too bad that this blog has, in recent months, so strongly embraced the Fox News formula of: pick an enemy, insult the character of said enemy, pick something they said, take it completely out of context, make up a meaning for it, pretend that was what the person meant, make no attempt whatsoever to develop an intelligent, nuanced understanding of the person you are in disagreement with, show no respect for anyone who differs from you in any way, repeat attack.

And the Catholic church was not, at any point in its history, opposed to interracial marriage. Several prominent Roman era black African Church figures were in interracial marriages. The Vatican was, in the 16th through the early 19th century, the only voice in Europe calling out for an end to slavery. If you knew much about the Civil Rights Era, you'd know that Catholic priests and bishops were a major part of the movement for racial equality, that the three popes whose reigns occurred during the era chastised the American presidents (including the Catholic one) for not acting to recognize more fully the dignity of all persons, that many priests were jailed for leading rallies for Civil rights, and Martin Luther King Junior considered the Catholic Church to be one of his most important allies.

To be clear, I'm not a Catholic, so I don't take these sort of things personally. I am, however, an academic, whose career involves an in depth knowledge of these issues. It concerns me greatly to see these kind of ideas coming from the liberal sphere. You might just be one of thousands espousing these same anti-religious thoughts, but you cannot possibly know how harmful it is to the cause of liberalism to continue in these sort of attacks. I watched the liberalism of my day fall apart as the hateful rhetoric of a few ultra liberals caused the American public to turn against us. That's how we got Ronald Reagan. The more hate you heap upon those who disagree with you, the more disagreeable people will find your ideas. You're not going to win anyone over to supporting gay marriage by hating the Catholic Church. Quite the contrary.

That being said, I feel compelled to respond to some inaccurate assertions you have made in your response to me. Having been censored quite a number of times on this blog over the last five years or so, I don't expect this to actually make it to the comments section. But I hope you will listen anyway. If you cared to gain a more thorough understanding of Catholic dogma and Catholic history (try reading pieces by academics writing about their own subject area), you might find a powerful ally (and one with the power of the writings of two thousands years of the West's great philosophers) to your own beliefs. The only three areas where even the most liberal will find disagreement with the Catholic moral doctrine (abortion, contraception, homosexuality) are not areas where official moral doctrine holds that the state must take an active role. The current American Catholic Bishops Council might compel Catholics to vote pro-choice and anti-gay marriage, but this is their interpretation, not a dogmatic belief. Not every incarnation of the American Catholic Bishops Council has taken this view (in the 80's they were mostly concerned with putting an end to Reagonomics, and in the 70's they were mostly concerned with the Vietnam war and lingering Civil Rights issues). It was not until they censored Father/Congressman Robert Drinan (a mentor of mine) in the late 70's that any movement began by the American Bishops to bring a political end to abortion.

I have looked into the actions of the Catholic Church during WWII. I've also been to the monuments in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem that were erected in honor of the Catholic priests and laymen who worked tirelessly to save Jews during WWII (many of whom were killed by the Nazis). The generation of Jews that lived through the Holocaust recognizes the efforts of Pius XII as valiant. The demonization of Pius XII is widely regarded by the academic community as revisionist history. It has also come nearly exclusively from outside the Jewish community. It has about as much valid recognition within academia as absurdities such as the denial of the human role in climate change, or belief in creationism.

As to the Bible, the Catholic Church views the Tanakh in the same light as the majority of the Roman era Jewish scholars; that is, the Old Testament is a didactic allegory. The children of Abraham were chosen by Yahweh as the people he would guide, over the course of thousands of years, through various stages of truth, to reach the final truth (Jesus). Revelation came, out of necessity, in increments. If, in 5000 BC, Yahweh had instructed his people not to kill, not to enslave, to love all, give to the poor, et cetera, they would have gone straight back to the golden calf, and Jesus would have been preaching to the locusts. This isn't some half assed way to rectify supposed contradictions in the Bible, it's a substantive understanding of a pretty complex text, as viewed through the eyes of over two thousand years of the West's greatest academics (who have, admittedly for reasons having more to do with wealth than anything else, mostly been Catholic).

Clearly, just as any two thousand year old corporation whose adherents account for roughly a quarter of the global population, Catholics, and the Catholic Church itself, have done some pretty awful things over the years. It is worth pointing out, however, that many of the more noteworthy of these things, the Inquisition and Crusades in particular, were the actions more of the Germanic Princes than of the Vatican. In these eras, the Papacy was virtually powerless, and many Popes during the Inquisition and Crusades spent at least part of their reigns imprisoned by these Germanic Princes. This is not really material, however. What is material is that these actions are rejected by the doctrine of the church, and always have been. No one talks about Germany as some force of evil in the world anymore (most liberals view central Europe as some sort of liberal paradise), and clearly Germany's crimes in the 20th century are among the worst, if not the worst, ever perpetrated, and are far more recent than the infractions of the Catholic Church. Modern Germany is also fairly unapologetic about the whole thing, blaming much of what happened on the Allies, and has passed many laws in the intermediary period which essentially codify prejudice, not just against non-whites, but against non-German whites. And yet, we get these constant villifications of popes who have apologized for crimes committed centuries before their births?

You might find it useful to examine more fully the concept of bigotry. While I cannot say I know nearly enough about you, or certain other newer bloggers here to say you are at all bigoted, you clearly do espouse beliefs which can easily be viewed as bigoted. Bigotry against the religious is still bigotry, and is an intolerable thing. You can claim to be "just joking" all you like. Racists use the same lame defense. Hatred is never okay.