Damian King said
So, this post is NOT about Bart. Bart has been very professional in his writing and has never expressed anti-Catholic views to my knowledge. 

But in our day and age, there still seems to be a lot of anti-Catholic prejudice, based on stereotypes, bad history and myths. I have noticed this anti-Catholicism more lately, so I was wondering, what are some of the best ways to confront it?   

Dear Damian,
As far as I know, it is not easy to be a Catholic in the US. Of course, the majority rejection of American society towards agnosticism / atheism is much greater.

The most active anti-Catholics are usually Calvinists and evangelical fundamentalists of other denominations (euphemism of schismatic Protestant churches) very conservative.

That anti-Catholicism you speak of is even more pronounced among the Pentecostal evangelicals in Latin America, many of them, if not the majority, converted to Protestantism from Catholic families and traditions.
For many Latin American pastors, the cult of the Virgin Mary is idolatry and a very big sin.

I advise you that when a Protestant denigrates you as a Catholic, remind him that after the Protestant reform, with its heros (Luther, Calvin) obsession with the poverty of his churches – something that does not exist today, especially in the US -, austerity, sobriety, emphasis on congregation worship (i.e., the tradition of simple and easy to sing hymns for all parishioners), its obsession with considering devotion to sacred images as idolatry, ended the church’s patronage in Fine Arts (painting and sculpture), in religious music (after J. S. Bach and Händel – who benefited from the greater tolerance of Anglicanism with religious works of art – Protestantism is a musical desert).

In contrast, the high hierarchies and clergy of the Catholic Church and Catholic monarch and aristocrats continued to sponsor religious artistic creation (Painters: El Greco, Velázquez, Tintoretto, Caravagio, Murillo, Rubens…; almos all Baroque religious sculpture and imagery, which is considered an important part of Counter-reformation; Composers: Palestrina, Vivaldi, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Bruskner…).

godspell said

The notion of anti-Catholic discrimination in modern America is a myth propagated by that fat moron William Donohue of The Catholic League, himself an arch-bigot, who supports Donald Trump and hates our current Pope.  He’s not fighitng prejudice, he’s fostering it.  If you stop to ask what color a Catholic is, you’re not one.    

Dear co-religionist of my ex-Catholicism (although I am still a sociologically Catholic who respects and likes certain traditions and great aesthetic achievements of that Church),

According to my data, the number of adult Catholics in the US is 51 million and decreasing significantly from year to year. (Possibly, if we add non-adult Catholics, that figure of 70 million may be correct).

Although the general opinion about Catholics in American society is quite favorable (** you do not have permission to see this link ** and “Americans Have Net-Positive View of U.S. Catholics
As pope visits, 45% of Americans view Catholics positively, 13% negatively “, ** you do not have permission to see this link **), the truth is that Evangelical Fundamentalists are much anti-Catholic because they claim, proclaim, and vehemently assert that Catholics are not Christian and do not know Jesus Christ, and that the Catholic Church is a pagan, Satanic entity. This is particularly true among Calvinists (called absurdly Neo- Calvinists) and at SBC (The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary [SBTS] in Louisville, Kentucky, with its president Albert Mohler at the top, is a true breeding ground for anti-Catholics.) Will it be for doctrinal, theological reasons, or will it be for envy of being only 16 million affiliates compared to 51 of the Catholic Church?).

That said, you will have to recognize that the US is quite anti-atheist. It is a reality that cannot be denied and that never fails to shock me. A 2015 Gallup survey found that 40% of Americans would not vote an atheist for president, and in polls prior to 2015, that number had reached about 50%. A 2014 study by the University of Minnesota found that 42% of respondents characterized atheists as a group that did “not at all agree with my vision of American society”, and that 44% would not want their child to marry an atheist. The negative attitudes towards atheists were higher than negative attitudes towards African-Americans and homosexuals but lower than the negative attitudes towards Muslims. Many in the U.S. associate atheism with immorality, including criminal behavior, extreme materialism, communism and elitism. The studies also showed that rejection of atheists was related to the respondent’s lack of exposure to diversity, education and political orientations. Atheists and atheist organizations have alleged discrimination against atheists in the military, and recently, with the development of the Army’s Comprehensive Soldier Fitness program, atheists have alleged institutionalized discrimination. In addition, in several child custody court rulings, atheist parents have been discriminated against, either directly or indirectly. As child custody laws in the United States are often based on the subjective opinion of family court judges, atheism has frequently been used to deny custody to non-religious parents on the basis that a parent’s lack of faith displays a lack of morality required to raise to child (!!!). This, in addition to being anti-constitutional, is a clear violation of Human Rights (UN, 1948).

As far as I know from my friends and fellow scientists, secular humanists, agnostics and atheists from the US, this does not seem to matter much to them intellectually, although I believe that no one likes to be discriminated against for their faith or lack of religious faith. .

godspell said
The U.S. doesn’t care if you go to church or not.  Ronald Reagan didn’t go to church, remember?  Trump sure as hell doesn’t.  (If atheist means not believing in any god other than yourself, Trump is one of you.)

Why do you need to identify as atheist if atheism isn’t a religion, as most atheists here insist it isn’t?

“I have no religious affiliation.”   
Religion isn’t the problem.  Atheism isn’t the problem.  People are the problem.    

Of course I have to admit that you are a funny guy. Even when you are wrong, which is often, your mistakes are funny and original.
But I think that more than mistakes, you are willing to argue for the pure pleasure of doing so.
Again you confuse things. To talk about atheism, it must be said that God is not believed to exist. You yourself are an atheist of 2,999 of the 3,000 that humanity has invented.
I am an atheist of all 3,000, and after, of Trump and myself. I am so skeptical — I believe that what I really am is a skeptical atheist, skeptical of my own atheism —that I think that I really don’t believe in myself. Therefore, what you say that “if atheist means not believing in any god other than yourself”, is a pure boutade.

I don’t understand why you think you have to identify yourself through a religious belief (I don’t identify with my beliefs, opinions, feelings, emotions, etc. I identify with my oneness, with my self). That is no longer used in the increasingly secular Europe. Therefore, I identify with atheism because, among other things, it is not a religion. That is why declaring yourself an atheist goes beyond saying that so American that it is “I have no religious affiliation.” (a “none”). That makes no sense, I repeat, in our highly secularized Europe. It is something like the euphemism that is used in the US of “denominations”, when what is meant is more or less deep schisms in Protestantism. Nowhere else in the West are these terms used: “religious affiliation” and “Christian denominations.”

Maybe as you say, “the U.S. doesn’t care if you go to church or not”. But this data amazes me and confuses me:

Religion Considered Important to 72% of Americans

** you do not have permission to see this link **

This data is comparable to those published by Muslim societies:

Importance of religion in one’s life among Muslims

** you do not have permission to see this link **

Compare this to the situation in Europe:

For instance, half or more adults in Armenia, Bosnia, Georgia, Greece and Romania say religion is very important in their lives, compared with about one-in-ten in France, Spain, Germany, the United Kingdom and several other Western European countries (Holland, Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark, Finland…)

Can we say that US society and Muslim societies are, in respect of religion, clearly pre-modern and counter-Enlightenment? I suspect so.

The problem, more than the people themselves, is tolerance. In all facets of the activity and coexistence of human beings.
And I immediately wonder: should we tolerate the intolerant? 

P.S: As you mentioned to D. Trump, I will tell you that if he dies before me, I intend to pray a Lord’s Prayer and three Hail Marys for God and to the Virgin to take him to heaven, so that he gets bored and goes very cold – in heaven there is no Central heating, I certainly know – for ever and ever, amen.
Besides, that’s how I avoid bumping into him in hell, a warm and fun place to spend eternity.

.  
There are at least seventy million registered Catholics in the U.S.

Meaning there are in fact many more, for reasons I shoud not have to explain.

** you do not have permission to see this link **

Thank you for sharing your information on the number of Catholics in the United States.
The one I have given you can check here:

There are roughly 51 million Catholic adults in the U.S., accounting for about one-fifth of the total U.S. adult population, according to Pew Research Center’s ** you do not have permission to see this link **. That study found that the share of Americans who are Catholic declined from 24% in 2007 to 21% in 2014.

Catholicism has experienced a greater net loss due to religious switching than has any other religious tradition in the U.S. Overall, 13% of all U.S. adults are former Catholics – people who say they were raised in the faith, but now identify as religious “nones,” as Protestants, or with another religion. By contrast, 2% of U.S. adults are converts to Catholicism – people who now identify as Catholic after having been raised in another religion (or no religion). This means that there are 6.5 former Catholics in the U.S. for every convert to the faith.  No other religious group ** you do not have permission to see this link ** has experienced anything close to this ratio of losses to gains via religious switching.

** you do not have permission to see this link **

The data you give comes from the American bishops’ count in their Official Catholic Directory 2016. In that same Wikipedia article you can also read:

“According to a more recent Pew Forum report which examined American religiosity in 2014 and compared it to 2007, there were 50.9 million adult Catholics as of 2014 (excluding children under 18), forming about 20.8% of the US population, down from 54.3 million and 23.9% in 2007. Pew also found that the Catholic population is aging, forming a higher percentage of the elderly population than the young, and retention rates are also worse among the young. the faith (as opposed to 32% overall), about half of these to the unaffiliated population and the rest to evangelical, other Protestant faith communities, and non-Christian faith”

The same data I have given before.

The difference is very large: 70 million compared to 51 in the same article! Which figure is closer to reality? With almost certainly the one from Pew Research Institute. The official figures of the Catholic Church do not usually take into account the many born and baptized in the Catholic church who abandon their faith when they reach certain maturity (in the US you have seen that they are 41%!).
I know this because in Spain and throughout Europe with a Catholic majority, the Church counts its members by baptisms and once in that registry of Catholics, only apostasy can erase you from it (do not see how complicated, absurd and bureaucratic it is to apostaize in the Catholic Church). So the official figures of the Catholic Church are very inflated throughout the world.

godspell said

[godspell] You’re exactly like Damian.

Not meant as a compliment to either of you, or an insult–just an observation.

You might as well be the same person.  And yet he’s a Catholic (not a very bright one) and you’re an atheist (no comment).

[F.P.] You must know Damian and me very well to make that judgment, so irrelevant by the way.
It seems that you give too much importance to compliments and insults. Later I tell you something about the difference – very important – that there is between insulting your religion beliefs, your political opinions and insulting you as a believer or supporter of that political ideology.

You yourself have shown me that you don’t know the difference between insulting or scorn or undervalue opinions and doing so with people who have those opinions or beliefs.

Instead of telling Damian that he’s a Catholic (not a very bright one), you should have told the truth: that Damian’s opinions and beliefs about Catholicism are not very bright. He can be a very bright Catholic but in his opinions that you have read in particular, his neurons have crossed and he has been unsuccessful.

But you’ve been right when you didn’t want to comment on my atheism. It is a demonstration of intelligence.

[godspell] Damian wants to believe there’s some plot against Catholics, you want to believe atheists are the ones treated unfairly.

[F.P.] Maybe talking about a plot against Catholics in the US is somewhat exaggerated. But it is true that there is an important anti-Catholicism in many sects (what is usually called euphemistically “denominations”) evangelicals. Renowned evangelical conservative pastors, theologians and apologists – especially Calvinists, there are quite a few – do not refrain from publicizing their clearly anti-Catholic stance. There are many of them very active in social networks.

In the US and in view of the polls and the information that I have given you in a previous comment, you can speak at least of some discrimination against atheists and agnostics. Those are facts, not opinions.

Despite polling showing that nonbelievers make up an increasingly large part of the population there is only one public atheist in all of the state legislatures across the nation. Few politicians have been willing to acknowledge their lack of belief in supreme beings, since such revelations have been considered “political suicide”. If this is not discriminating against atheists, let God come and say so.

** you do not have permission to see this link **
(Like everything that is quoted from Wikipedia, you have to read it with some skepticism. But this article seems well documented and with a lot of credit references).

In Western Europe there is nothing similar.

[gospell] Truthfully, any group might face some prejudices, but there’s no systematic persecution of either group in America.

[F.P.] I don’t doubt it for a moment. One thing is persecution and another prejudice and discrimination by the majority of society, very religious in the US.
Systematic persecution is unconstitutional and unthinkable in the US.

[gospell] Racial persecution, yes–Muslims certainly have some problems (an atheist slaughtered a Muslim family living in his building, remember?)  Anti-semitism is not dead.  Homophobia is still a thing, albeit declining in potency.  (Hitchens was a noted homophobe, not just a religious thing).  And women, in spite of being a majority planetwide, obviously still struggling for equality.

[F.P.] What you say about a murderous atheist may be true; I do not know. But a tree does not make a forest.
But there are many more mass killings and killings of individuals or families for religious reasons, don’t forget. Think of 9/11, nothing more.

Where do you get that C Hitchens was homophobic?
Please give me evidence.
I personally met Hitchens and he laughed that some Christian evangelicals had said of him, to disqualify his religious opinions (typical fallacy ad hominem), that he was gay.
For your information, Hitchens strongly criticized Orwel for his homophobia and his anti-feminism. However, they had something in common: Hitchens and Orwell believed that to respect the believer without respecting the belief, one must trust that he can change his mind.

[gospell] Catholics should concern themselves with all people who suffer from genuine discrimination, many of whom are fellow Catholics from south of the border.  If you only care about white conservative Catholics, you’re no kind of Catholic at all. 

[F.P.]  They should, but they haven’t.
Think about the persecution suffered by the Catholics of Liberation Theology in Latin America. And how Catholicism is losing many adherents who are becoming evangelical Pentecostals. And it is not because these evangelicals care more than Catholics for the poor and disinherited, who do it even less, but for the tiredness of Latin American Catholicism and the abuse of all kinds – not just sexual – of Catholic cleregy.

But that does not prevent us from recognizing that the Catholic Church is the largest Christian charity organization.

[gospell] Atheists should accept that they can’t claim religious discrimination against atheism if atheism isn’t a religion.  Which it is. “No religion” is just something you put on a census form, that can mean any number of things.  Atheism is an affiliation, and implies that you want all theistic religion to end someday, and be replaced by–well–?????  

That comment that in order to be discriminated against for religious reasons one must have a religion, is, sorry to tell you, not very smart, not to say that you are not even wrong.

The First Amendment of the USA Constitution establish a separation of church and state that prohibited the federal government from making any law “respecting an establishment of religion.” It also prohibits the government from interfering with a person’s religious beliefs or practices. Atheism is not a religion, of course, but it has clear ideas and knowledge about religious non-beliefs. Just as you have to respect beliefs, you have to respect non-beliefs. You, for example, are an atheist with respect to Allah, aren’t you? And no one will have the right in the US to discriminate against you for being an atheist with respect to Allah and so many other gods.

Affiliation is defined as a connection with a political party or religion, or with a larger organization (Oxford Dictionary). It is true that there are organizations of atheists, but the vast majority of atheists in the West do not belong to any association of atheists. For example, the American Atheist Association, which groups all national and local atheist associations, has only about 392,000 associates. There is also the American Humanist Association (atheists + agnostics + skeptics), but the number of members is unknown, although according to all data, they are less than 50,000. That is not incompatible with the fact that the AHA has over 575,000 followers on Facebook and over 42,000 followers on Twitter. So talking about atheist affiliation makes no sense.

Finally, I want to make you see a mistake you often make. You say that atheists attack religions and that is why believers feel offended and even attacked. Something very similar happens in the case of ideologies and political inclinations when someone attacks them and shows their mistakes and lies.

Well, that is a very frequent mistake in the great mass of Christian and Muslim believers. They do not realize that criticizing harshly, debunking a religion and even insulting certain beliefs, does not mean that you insult or despise believers. Your religious beliefs, your political opinions are one thing and you are another. People should not be confused with their beliefs or political affiliations.

You are surely a person with common sense, who thinks critically about many issues of your day-to-day life, that you are smart (I do not doubt it), but who in certain questions of religious faith or political ideology has crossed your neurons and you believe and hold impossible and even stupid ideas and opinions, worthy of being firmly rejected when judged with objectivity, honesty and critical thinking.

Remember: you will always be yourself, but your religious beliefs and political opinions can change.

godspell said
Did you really expect me to read through all that?

I agree with the last part–under any belief system or none, you’d be incapable of self-editing.  🙂  

I have a lot of experience – more than 45 years publishing books, articles and essays – on desktop publishing and self-editing. I’ve even done it by counting words, characters with and without space, etc.
Instead of thanking me for taking great time to illustrate you, to teach you, to show you your mistakes so you don’t make them again, you excuse yourself for not reading because of the length of my answer.
Worse for you, my boy.
You have missed a great opportunity to learn in 15 minutes of careful reading what you have not been able to learn throughout your life as a restless polemicist.