Jacoby on anti-Catholicism

Last week Michael P. posted an op-ed by Susan Jacoby arguing that religious believers too often mistake disagreement for discrimination.  Jonathan Watson responds here.  On the Washington Post's website, Jacoby has a post exploring a similar theme, but focused more particularly on the "phony issue" of anti-Catholicism.  An excerpt:

The accusation of anti-Catholic discrimination, like the labeling of all critics of Israel as anti-Semitic, is a cover for what is essentially a dispute between conservatives and liberals (both within and outside the Catholic Church). I wouldn't vote for a Catholic like [Bill] Donohue, but then I wouldn't vote for an atheist, a Jew, a Muslim, a Protestant or (what was it?) a believer in "Tibetan Buddhist deities" who shared Donohue's views.

A Catholic wit, looking back on the certitudes of American Catholicism in the fifties, once remarked that "it was the only THE church." Not any more. And never, thankfully, in America. Catholicism, like every other religion, enjoys no immunity from secular criticism in our nation.