When Jewish folks witness overt anti-Semitism, including and especially in our largest cities and schools, they rightly call it out. But we should all call out anti-Catholic bigotry, which is rampant and, sadly, nothing new.

When John F. Kennedy ran for president in 1960, he famously felt compelled to declare political independence from authorities within his Catholic faith.

His opponents had notoriously suggested that a Catholic president would somehow take instruction from the Vatican on critical issues facing the United States.

As the issue festered through primaries and a tight general election, Kennedy laid it to rest during remarks to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association, explaining, “I am not the Catholic candidate for president. I am the Democratic Party’s candidate for president, who also happens to be a Catholic. I do not speak for my church on public matters, and the church does not speak for me.”

Our second Catholic president hasn’t made a similar declaration. Maybe that’s because America is a more tolerant place than in 1960. But with each passing day, the opposite becomes truer among Democrats, where anti-Catholic bigotry is endemic among party elites who have zero trepidation that Biden will restrain their actions. Far from a papist, the president has too often been a gleeful observer of continuous denigration toward those who adhere to traditional Catholic doctrine.

This bigotry was recently on display in a piteous surrender by the Los Angeles Dodgers.

As they planned for their annual “Pride Night” festivities, the top baseball franchise in a city that is one-third Catholic decided to withdraw a plan to give an award to an odious group whose signature acts are offensive vilification of Catholic teaching on sexual mores.

The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence describe themselves facetiously as a “leading-edge Order of queer and trans nuns.” Their act involves lewd depictions of sacred Catholic rituals that tastelessly mock the church’s precepts on homosexuality.

After leftists threw a tantrum over the disinvitation, the feckless Dodgers reinvited them.

There is a more considerable significance to the Dodgers’ timorous surrender to the powerful LGBT lobby that dominates our culture. The White House declined to comment on the matter, with its hapless press secretary saying she wasn’t “going to get in the middle of who a sports team is going to honor or should honor or should not honor.” What would Karine Jean-Pierre, who is gay, say if a sports team invited a pro-traditional marriage group to receive awards at a ballgame?

Noble Dodger players stood up to their embarrassing franchise’s intolerance and bigotry. A Washington Nationals pitcher joined them


Recall the Barack Obama administration, with Biden as its unofficial Catholic spokesman, harassed the Little Sisters of the Poor, hoping to force them to offer contraceptive services mandated under Obamacare regulation. Earlier this year, a Federal Bureau of Investigation memo sought to investigate “radical traditionalist” Catholics as potential terrorist threats. When Sen. Dianne Feinstein was still cogent, she told Catholic Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett, “The dogma lives loudly in you.” Imagine had this inappropriate attack occurred on a Muslim judicial nominee.

The irony is that “Catholic dogma” has almost no authority over any Americans today. The left wants it to be 1960, but it is not. The Dobbs decision that caused uninformed young women to almost burn down significant cities didn’t impose any religious doctrine; it handed decisions on abortion policy back to the people where it belongs. And far from being right-wing, the Catholic church often speaks as passionately about social justice, immigration, and climate change as sex and marriage.

As progressive politicians, cultural elites, and woke corporations like Major League Baseball hypocritically blather about “inclusivity” and respect for all Americans, why are the 70 million diverse Catholics subject to the jeering of their sacred beliefs?

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Ari Kaufman is a correspondent for several U.S. newspapers and magazines from Minnesota and Ohio to Tennessee and Virginia. He taught school and served as a military historian before beginning his journalism career. He is the author of three books and a frequent guest on radio programs and contributes to Israel National News and here at The Lid. 
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