Picking On the Big Kid

The biggest and richest kid on the block is a whiner if he complains that he is being mocked. Conventional playground wisdom extended to the theater of civilization applies that protocol to the Catholic Church. But in modern Western European history, and in most of the American experience, Catholics were decidedly not the most influential part of the social spectrum: In the 19th century, the coffin of Pope Pius IX was nearly hurled into the Tiber, and the New York Times recorded his death in a few paragraphs on an inside page. After being kidnapped by Napoleon, Pius VI died virtually bankrupt—and at the end of World War I money was borrowed to pay for the funeral of Benedict XV.

The Catholic Church has not always been the biggest or richest kid on the block, but she has been on the block longer than anyone, and she prefers not to whine. (Of course, were the Catholics now enslaved in Sudan or tortured in China to whine, they would be ignored by CNN and the Boston Globe anyway.) This new book on anti-Catholicism as a

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About the Author

Fr. George W. Rutler

The biggest and richest kid on the block is a whiner if he complains that he is being mocked. Conventional playground wisdom extended to the theater of civilization applies that protocol to the Catholic Church. But in modern Western European history, and in most of the American experience, Catholics were decidedly not the most influential part of the social spectrum: In the 19th century, the coffin of Pope Pius IX was nearly hurled into the Tiber, and the New York Times recorded his death in a few paragraphs on an inside page. After being kidnapped by Napoleon, Pius VI died virtually bankrupt—and at the end of World War I money was borrowed to pay for the funeral of Benedict XV.

The Catholic Church has not always been the biggest or richest kid on the block, but she has been on the block longer than anyone, and she prefers not to whine. (Of course, were the Catholics now enslaved in Sudan or tortured in China to whine, they would be ignored by CNN and the Boston Globe anyway.) This new book on anti-Catholicism as a