--where I lived for a few years. I was not Catholic myself, but my friend was. I got to experience the ugly chants of "mackeral-snapper" (Fish on Friday) and overhear the nasty comments. I didn't get it then, and my parents, not wanting me to become too fixated on it nor get into it with my friend, waved it off as rude behavior, but not limited to any one group. Of course, I wasn't unaware, but I got their intent, so I didn't. I was already aware of some lingering bigotry toward POC, so the comments certainly did not come across as benign. Even in the tiny Midwestern town of my grandparents, where there was a single Catholic church, I always got the impression they looked at their members as "the other," though I never heard hurtful comments toward them.
As I get older, I realize the far more tolerant among the Protestant churches (United Methodist, at least the original before splintering into two groups), and the Unitarian Universalist were likewise viewed poorly by the more extreme doctrinal churches. Even today's quite extreme Southern Baptists, which are at the heart of that inflexibility today, were once more moderate when Jimmy Carter was most active among them.
At any rate, it appears to me that the Protestant majority among the religious in this country is about to light a match if this continues--something I thought for sure the opportunistic abortion issue would have done earlier.
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