The Family Research Council had already been designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center in 2010. In late 2012, a petition was created at the White House’s online system to have the Catholic Church labeled as a hate group. The petition came on the heels of the Pope’s address to Vatican administrators in which he denounced gay marriage as a threat to Western civilization. The petition claims the Pope used “hateful language and discriminatory remarks” implying “that gay families are sub-human.” Closer to the truth, the objection was that the clergy viewed gays themselves as subhuman. Closer still, the reaction was to the hatred itself. Meanwhile, Bishop Bernard Fellay, head of the traditionalist Society of St. Pius X, was being criticized for having claimed that Jewish leaders are “enemies of the Church.” Here again, hatred is salient. Rather than being a “gay issue,” the hatred of Catholic traditionalist clergy is toward modernity itself, which the traditionalists assume is secularist in nature. The modern phenomenon of religious fundamentalism (including in evangelical Christianity) belies this assumption.
The hatred is really directed to those holding a very different ideological stance. Since the clergy dominating the Vatican as of 2012 was traditionalist in ideological orientation, it is natural to conclude that ideological differences pertain to modernists. Interestingly, even evangelical Christianity is marginalized, though not hated, within the Catholic Church. Both hatred and dismissiveness are easily manifested in the traditionalists’ demeanor toward those holding a very different opinion even on non-religious matters. This goes far beyond gay rights, feminism and the Jews.
The core of the pathology is in the very intensity of the hatred, the blind spot of which is furnished by the incredible allowance for hypocrisy. God is rationalized as essentially traditionalist, ideologically. That ideology is distinct from faith means that the traditionalist dominant coalition at the Vatican had gone off its terra firma onto alien fauna without any recognition of so doing. This over-reach by religious functionaries, plus the intensity of their hatred toward those with whom they disagree, is the issue. Put another way, hatred in the name of religion is a seething poison. Ironically, it can contaminate the very thing that religious purport to love.
For more, see “Bernard Fellay, Head of Traditionalist Catholic Sect”: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/07/bernard-fellay-jews-enemies-of-the-church-radical-catholic-sect_n_2425711.html
“Catholic Hate Group?” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/07/catholic-hate-group-activists-mobilize-around-white-house-online-petition-system_n_2427266.html
Insight 