I'm Catholic, but I've made it a habit not to castigate those who have honest disagreements with my faith ('course, some people's definition of "castigate" may be different from mine. Hey ho...). Someone who doesn't believe in God can't be expected to buy into the Doctrine, and obey it (I barely manage such). But what repeatedly irritates me is when I'm told that my religion believes things that it doesn't believe, or did things that it didn't do.
Example: the Church "sold out" the Jews during the Holocaust. One could just as easily say that the Democratic Party "sold out" the Jews during the Holocaust, if the failure to prioritize its end above all things is the sole criterion for "selling out." All the evidence against Pius Twelve is circumstantial and speculative, and ignores the evidence that he was the only man in Nazi-dominate Europe to condemn the Nazis, and that he saved as many Jews as he could. None of this information is new, but people prefer to ignore it. It's too useful a cudgel to abandon.
Then there's the Galileo routine. The same people that buy this melodrama think no one thought the world was round before Columbus, and I suspect then to be near cousins of whoever it is that taught so many of this year's freshmen that A.D. stands for "After Death."
But the most recent smack-yourself-on-the-head display was the declaration, by the Times of London, that the Catholic Church no longer believes in the Bible, because it pointed out that not all passages in Scripture are to be taken as literal, scientific, or historical truth. Which the Church has been saying for decades, but never mind. We have a "Saved" script to peddle: if you think Jesus is the Savior of the world, you hate evolution. 'Natch.
Catholic Light has the details (and a link to anyone curious about the Galileo routine).
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