Excellent (if old) article in Zenit here on how the media grossly exaggerates Catholic clerical sexual misconduct. Sadly, part of Catholic life today is constantly reading outrageous, knee-jerk comments against priests. Whenever a priest is in the news--even for being murdered during a break-in--someone just has to mention sex crimes in the combox.
It's a sad fact that some people just enjoy despising Catholics. In the UK, this was once because we were seen as foreign and freedom-hating. Back when Protestants still went to church in large numbers, they apparently thought we were planning the overthrow of religious freedom. However, the thought certainly occurred to us that error had no rights, so maybe--before 1962--they were right about that.
Then there is the fact that the majority of Catholics (including me) in the UK since 1820 are Irish or descended from the Irish (unless we've been outstripped by the Poles). My family got sneered at by a neighbour during our sojourn at Cambridge University in the 1970s when he saw us leaving church. However, this was at the height of the IRA bombings, so no doubt he was sorely tried.
Today we are less likely to be despised for belonging to another tribe, as long as we are "in recovery". The weird question "But you're recovering, right?", which I heard occasionally in Canada gets uttered in the UK, too. Believing Catholics are still among the wrong-thinking even though the form of majority "right-thinking" has changed. I suppose we are still seen as being "against freedom" or even "against science" despite our constant references to human biology. Unlike those who wish to redefine marriage, sex, manhood and womanhood, we don't think reason is overthrown by the will.
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