Too often in our culture, accusations of bigotry — of being anti-Catholic, anti-black, anti-gay, what have you — are themselves presented with so much hatred and venom that they raise the suspicion that the accuser himself is bigoted, harboring an unhealthy and disproportionate animus against his targets. Father James Martin of America magazine has done a blog post that provides an excellent example of how to raise the issue in a serious and charitable way. He discusses a New Yorker humor piece by Paul Rudnick:

Pondering a possible screenplay using nuns, Rudnick muses that they can be “dictatorial, sexually repressed and scary.” A grumpy elderly nun at a convent gift store looks like a “bat” or a “long fossilized chimp.” “‘I hate this!’ the chimp yipped,” he writes about the elderly woman. . . . Rudnick admits that the prioress of Regina Laudis, which he visits to do a full two days’ research, is “kind and helpful,” but most of the article depicts the nuns — scratch that, all nuns — as at best cartoonish, at worst absurd.

And he quite reasonably asks:

It’s a humor piece, but come on. Does anyone think that any other religious group or class would be subjected to the same treatment? Can you imagine someone writing, for example, “Rabbis can be dictatorial, sexually repressed and scary”? How about comparing a Muslim woman to a “bat” or a “chimp”? . . . No way.

Martin is careful not to demonize Rudnick, which makes his conclusion all the more persuasive:

Mr. Rudnick is a talented and funny writer. His books and screenplays are usually delightful. I’m sure he’s a decent and caring guy, and I’m sure he meant no harm with his piece. But to mock, belittle and, let’s face it, reduce to less than human a class of people for a derisive laugh — no matter what your religious beliefs are or aren’t — should be named for what it is: bigotry.

(Disclosure: I have met Father Martin and think he’s a charming and intelligent person. I have never met Paul Rudnick, but he was a Yale suitemate of a friend of mine, and I thought his movie Jeffrey was pretty funny.)