**Prejudice works in all directions - sadly**. There are Catholics and Protestants who feed on prejudice against other faiths, and we see some of that here on CAF. The worst examples aroound the world today, of course, are Muslims - those extremists who are gungho in asserting that their faith alone is the only fully true faith. Sound like a familiar claim, anyone? Most Muslims are moderates, something too many forget, and they share many beliefs with Christians. For example, they honor Jesus and view Mary as the Virgin Mary, something questioned by many liberal Protestants. They even believe in Adam and Eve, which millions of Christians don't..
**As for Baptists - and other Protestants I know - there rarely is anti-Catholicism in a personal sense**. Anti-Semitism, for example, is directed against individual Jews. I find that Protestant 'anti-Catholicism' (and I hesitate to call it that) is directed at Catholicism as a religion. There are many Protestants who simply feel that Catholicism is erroneous. They focus on five or six main points, among them: the Pope and the hierarchy generally; transubstantiation; what they regard as excessive veneration of Mary and the saints; the power of priests to grant absolution at confession; required celibacy for priests, etc. Many Protestants of the Baptist variety also see the precision ritualism of Catholicism, with its vestments and such, more a reflection of the Greco-Roman world than the teachings of Jesus - sort of a liturgical legalism. They would suggest that Jesus seemed to speak against emphasis upon such elaborate formalism.
**Mainline Protestants (including many Baptists, especially in the north) also favor the ordination of women**. Episcopalians and Methodists - perhaps Lutherans, too? - have women bishops. Protestants split on their attutides when it comes to how to view homosexuality. Mainline Protestants generally permit a wide variation among members when it comes to matters of doctrine and practice.
** Frankly, the sexual scandal involving priests has seriously injured the image of Catholicism**, among Catholics as well as Protestants - here in the US and around the world. Protestant clergy certainly have included predators, also, but in the case of Catholicism it appears that the hierarchy too often ignored or hid the evil. Very few Protestant denominations have such interlocking hierarchies. In the case of Baptists, for example, the congregations hire, fire and oversee their pastors.
**Religious prejudice, like racial and other prejudices, is wrong,** and Christians who harbor prejudices should work to remove them. As my mother would say, "there are good and bad in all races and religions." Oversimplied? Maybe a little, but essentially true. People are people whatever their labels.
**God bless those of goodwill, whatever their creed, color, country or culture**. Religion should serve as a bridge and not as a barrier.
God bless you too and no hard feeling