Anti-Catholicism Chic by Ben Johnson

"Rabbi Michael Lerner and other members of the chic cultural Left have denounced a papal decree on the grounds that it might lead to prayer.

Last week, Pope Benedict XVI issued the letter Summorum Pontificum, which allows for wider use of the Latin Mass. In response, Lerner and The Washington Post unleashed a torrent of hatred, ignorance, and religious bigotry unmatched in recent times (John Edwards’ campaign bloggers.aside).

The most widespread, bilious retort was Susan Jacoby’s screed in yesterday’s faith section of The Washington Post website. Jacoby began by assaulting “the retrograde nature of this pope.” She declaimed his act as “an arrogant step backward” secretly undertaken to encourage the belief that Jews are Christ-killers. After assaulting the Pope as misogynistic and obscurantist, she assaulted Catholicism itself: “[T]he chief effect of the vernacular [Mass] was to interrupt the Sunday-morning naps of Catholics.” Jacoby virtually spat her conclusion: “No one should pay the slightest attention to any pronouncements from this pathetic representative of a credulous, conformist past that preceded the Renaissance, the Protestant Reformation, the Enlightenment and the separation of church and state in the West.”"

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