It is a compliment to a book to say that it should have been longer, which is my main criticism of Father Greeley's [An Ugly Little Secret: Anti-Catholicism in North America].

Both title and subject are very apt, in that anyone who has paid even perfunctory attention to what is going on in America is aware that it has been open season on Catholics for well over a decade. Father Greeley has ample documentation, particularly in terms of newspaper articles of the How-the-Catholic-Church-Oppresses-People-and-Distorts-Their-Psyches type…. Father Greeley's cases are choice; each one has at least another ten standing behind it.

In an age when the molders of "enlightened" opinion are almost obsessively sensitive to signs of discrimination or prejudice, the general response to blatant anti-Catholicism has been, in the inelegant Watergate phrase, "stonewalling." The charge of anti-Catholicism is neither admitted nor denied by those in positions of influence. It...