The Anti-Catholic Right

I post this mainly out of interest to two of my Catholic friends, one of whom is probably more liberal than I, the other is fairly conservative and/or libertarian, depending.

When I lived in Oklahoma, I was often astounded at some of the anti-Catholic vitrol that came from the "born-again" Christians there; I mean, there are plenty of things wrong with the Catholic Church, but I recall one incident from high school where someone called me a "papist" (a word I thought had slipped from the English language around, say, the third month of the Kennedy administration) and informed me that I was going to hell for worshipping Mary.

Then I read articles like this that explain why W., as a born-again Christian, is a far better person than Kerry, who isn't.

One thing I should mention: evangelical, fundamentalist Protestants have developed a "language" all their own. Through endless Sundays of listening to preachers, well, preach, they have created catch-phrases that, to the average reader, mean nothing, but cause reactions among evangelical readers - much like a dog's mouth watering when you ring a bell (to be fair, all religions do this to some degree or another, but unless you know what to look for, you might miss the evangelical Protestant language in the article). So if you stumble across things you don't quite understand, that's because the author is attempting to key off beliefs his target audience already shares.