The Vatican initiative to make it easier for Anglicans to join the Catholic Church (which I discussed here) seems to have hit a nerve among the rabid anti-Catholic crowd. First, there was the bizarre diatribe of über-atheist Richard Dawkins in The Washington Post (h/t to Bruce Chapman). Here’s how he starts:
What major institution most deserves the title of greatest force for evil in the world? In a field of stiff competition, the Roman Catholic Church is surely up there among the leaders.
He claims that the Vatican initiative will draw all the misogynists and homophobes still lurking the corridors of Anglicanism. I would not have expected less from Dawkins. But The Washington Post asked him for his opinion—and then duly printed it. Since when is Dawkins an expert on Catholic and Anglican relations?
Then there was this screed by ex-Catholic schoolgirl Maureen Dowd in the New York Times. Nominally a defense of nuns she thinks are unfairly treated, the piece hits so many anti-Catholic stereotypes that New York archbishop Timothy Dolan responded to it on his new blog. Yet, she can’t resist taking a swipe at a Vatican that is “welcoming extreme-right Anglicans into the Catholic Church—the ones who are disgruntled about female priests and openly gay bishops.”
I was pleased to see this significant Vatican initiative to Anglicans get front-page cover stories in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, and figured left-wing Anglicans wouldn’t like it; but I didn’t anticipate such frothing at the mouth from the secularist Left. Why would they care? And yet, for some reason, it’s causing them metaphysical panic. Perhaps the Vatican must really be onto something.