A little more than 'Old Testament' spitefulness
The church has echoed that spitefulness down the ages, from the Crusades to the modern day causes it has espoused ans supported.
Some of religion's worst enemies come from within the church - rapist clergymen, supporters of dictators and torturers, hypocritical self-declared "Christians" who fail to display a shred of Christian values - particularly love and tolerance.
Thye tend to be the ones who complain the loudest about 'persecution' when they are often the worst of persecutors and they do so loudly declaring their 'Christianity'.
Look to thyself - as the scriptures say
Beliefs, when privately and freely held, are a personal matter; when they are forced on generation after generation, at an age preceding rational thought, they become poisonously dangerous - brainwashing on an international scale.
It is time the church as a body was totally divorced from the State - politically, educationally..... and in every other way
We have a nonsensical situation here in Ireland where a group of somewhat unchristian but extremely wealthy nuns are being given the right to run one of the country's most important maternity hospitals - amid loud howls of protest from Christian Irish people who see the conflicts and conflicts of such a situation.
Hopefully, it it yet another case of the Church shooting itself in the foot - it really can't have manyt feet left.
Jim Carroll