Can anyone point me to any actual persecution or mass discrimination of Catholics in the US today?

[amandabeech]

202. The KKK burned a cross in the field across from my maternal grandparents' farm house

in the 1920s. My grandfather slept with a loaded .45 under the pillow for a couple of years afterward.

I'm Protestant, like my father and my maternal grandmother, but most of my relatives on my mother's side are Roman Catholic.

By my Mom's account and her sibling's attitudes, her Roman Catholic family members at the time (who were all of Irish or Scottish descent) seemed to maintain animosity toward the British rather than their neighbors who obviously once belonged to the KKK. The family feelings may be a result of the KKK's fading very quickly with much local embarrassment and unspoken apologies, and the British remaining steadfast and in control of the northern part of the Emerald Isle.

Then WWII came, my family and everyone in the area, Protestant and Roman Catholic, worked to defeat Hitler and Tojo, and the Klan became a forgotten and irrelevant past. My Mom married the non-religious son of a Protestant English immigrant mother and my Mom's youngest sister married a Protestant from western Pennsylvania, and no one cared. They were both nice guys and that's what counted.

My Mom's bachelor brother's funeral was held in a Protestant-owned funeral home and was officiated by a Roman Catholic priest. The priest picked me, a Protestant, to read one of the parts of the Roman Catholic service, instead of one of my Roman Catholic relatives when he saw me spending more time grieving over my uncle's remains and welcoming other mourners than talking just to my relatives. The mourners were Roman Catholic, Christian Reformed and Amish. I hate to say it, but it was obvious that I was more upset than anyone. The priest was more concerned about relationships than religious forms, to his credit, IMHO.

It seems for many people that the past is only truly past when prejudice was last felt in the great-grandparents' generation, though. I wish it were otherwise, but people are people. I say focus on the present.