In the wake of the Santorum flap, I don’t see how a book could possibly be more timely than, The New Anti-Catholicism: The Last Acceptable Prejudice, by Philip Jenkins. This book comes with strong recommendations on the cover from George Weigel, William Donohue, and NRO’s own Michael Novak. I have not read the entire book yet, but moving into it, I am very impressed and excited. Certainly, Jenkins talks about the larger pattern that we’ve seen in the Santorum controversy–an alliance between media elites and gay activists that denies fair play to traditional Catholics, and effectively devolves into anti-religious prejudice.
Jenkins’s book is a must read. There are chapters on anti-Catholic bigotry by feminists, gay activists, and the national media. Then there’s a special chapter on the outrageous media treatment of the Church scandal. Jenkins is particularly good at exposing media double-standards. A little while back the media puffed up a few mostly unconfirmed incidents into a supposed epidemic of violence against black Churches. But the same media downplayed or refused to condemn a massive, coordinated, and intentional campaign of violence against Catholic Churches by gay activists. This example gives only the barest idea of all the material covered by Jenkins. This is quite a book. (Anyone out there from the Conservative Book Club? This one belongs on the list.)
Between the account of intense bias against conservative Protestants in “Our Secularist Democratic Party,” the powerful account of leftist anti-Catholicism and the rise of leftist anti-Semitism in the wake of 9/11, we can see that the left, for all its claims of tolerance, is actually the font of a new wave of bigotry in this country–bigotry against traditional religion.