Yes I have. But I would characterize fundamentalist types who bash Catholics as a tiny minority, not “everybody”. I think you worded that post poorly.
I was being very flippant, and clearly did end up garbling my meaning as a result, so I agree with you there. Sorry about that.
I might note too that I tried to point out that this is most prevalent in certain areas – there are places in this country where being Catholic is a very, very weird thing at best. They may be in the minority overall but there are certainly places where that minority is a majority. It also doesn’t take hardcore fire-and-brimstone types – a lot of Protestants object to Catholicism (that’s the point, right?) and some of them translate that into not liking Catholics. Mostly that comes across as class snobbery though; where I’m from Catholics traditionally are likely to be working class, immigrants or their recent descendants, etc, so “Catholic” ends up being synonymous with “white trash” for some folks in a way that really doesn’t have anything to do with the religion except that it’s seen as exotic. But it’s not like people are hanging nooses in Catholics’ front yards or anything.
Where are you from-- the 1850s? 
Your location says NYC. I didn’t think anything was considered exotic in NYC.
I think they call it a “confessional.”
I’m from Syracuse originally. In NYC you pretty much have to turn neon pink and sprout tentacles to seem strange, and even then you just have to hold out a small piece of paper and you become invisible again, it’s true.
I know it sounds antique, but kids pick up these things from their parents and pass them down. I’m only 28, and I vividly recall not being allowed to go in a certain neighbor kid’s yard because my family was Catholic, and how the non-Catholic kids would say stuff like we were Satan worshipers and so on that they clearly picked up at home.
Obviously a lot of that is just people finding any old thing to pick on, not evidence of any real bias, but sometimes even adults could get nasty. There’s a lot of real derision toward Catholic birth control practices, for example, and my family (with a mere five kids, small by Church standards) was often subjected to nasty looks and barbed comments about it. And, I can’t stress this is enough, we didn’t give a damn. None of us felt traumatized or oppressed. We thought we were better than them, too, and then we grew up to understand how silly it all was. I’m surprised whenever I encounter a cradle Catholic who has real vitriol on this subject. I know an awful lot of 'em, being as both sides of my (belligerent and numerous) family is Catholic, and I’ve never heard anyone complain about the bashing in a serious way except online. I have heard of people feeling like outcasts in small towns or whatnot, but that’s an experience universal to any faith in the right circumstances.
Wow. I’m older than you, and I remember hearing about this sort of thing in stories my mom would tell me about when she was growing up in a small town in western Maryland. I’m amazed that their town is ahead of anywhere outside the Third World culturally…
That might explain it. Class prejudice is very much still with us, and is much more socially acceptable than other kinds of prejudice. I suspect this is because in America we’re supposed to have class mobility, so it must somehow be your own fault if you’re lower class.
The kids you hung out with don’t sound any too high-class to me, either. I learned about Catholic ideas on birth control from my parents, and we didn’t agree with them. But us kids had better manners than to go saying that around our Catholic friends.
I grew up mostly in New England, but my family did spend some time in the South during the 60s. We were Catholic, and I never once experienced any kind of social stigmatization. We went to the Catholic school during the day, then played with our Protestant neighbors in the afternoon. Our parents were all friends. It wasn’t an issue at all.
Hah! that made me laugh out loud! 
Were you (and Anne Neville too) working class, or middle class or what? I’m suspecting this may be at the very heart of the matter after all. I grew up in a neighborhood which was once classified as the twelfth poorest area in the nation, so that may be influencing my experience a lot.
Let me guess – are they Irish?
Middle class.
In your earlier post, what did you mean by “polite society”? It’s hard to imagine any scenario where people would gasp at hearing someone say Blacks are lazy or Jews are tightwads, but then say: Well, Catholics are child molesters. You seem to be mixing up different groups of people. I’m finding it hard to believe that these working class, Catholic-hating protestants just love Blacks and Jews.
It was kind of a rhetorical question… I was trying to be a smartass. 
My point is, Catholicism gets mocked in the media; our culture; within art; in many ways… there’s clearly a low tolerance for the catholic religion by many people/groups.
If other religions were mocked and ridiculed like catholicism has been in our culture, there would probably be hell to pay.
Oh no, are you going to make me post cites to prove my point now? 
Yeh, well, sometimes they ask for it.
"“Shanghai” every aspect of our culture’? Which culture? And by “shanghai” do you mean “co-opt”, or “steal”?
Just confused here.
I was middle class. My mom was too, but she was a kid in the 40s.
I think he means “make cheaply out cloned electronic components and plastic”.
Yeah. Nobody makes fun of Islam, that’s for sure.
Well I don’t make fun of Islam… and most people won’t because there would be hell to pay… look what happened to some artists in Denmark for drawing Mohammed… there was some kind of death warrant put out for them by some extremists, and the world-wide rioting was out of conrol. And the artists weren’t even mocking Islam!
Eh, liberal multiculturalism can go spit. The Roman Empire shanghai’d the Christian religion for thousands of years. That is the history of the Catholic church. Individual Catholics are nice enough but the church deserves the criticism it gets. That’s not to say nothing good has come from the church, but Jesus’s Kingdom is ‘Not of this world’. Sacerdotalism is ridiculous. Catholicism is half-pagan, and always will be.
And I don’t make fun of Islam either, by and large. But I think it’s far more acceptable to mock Muslims than Catholics. There’s anti-Catholic bigotry, sure, but I think there are a lot more people out there who call Muslims towelheads and camelfuckers and so on. It doesn’t get printed in the newspaper, but so what?