was because alot of the protestations of Catholics are intertwined with ethnic identity. The Irish and the Italians often see attacks on Catholicism as attacks on their ethnic groups. That's a holdover from the days when Catholic and particularly Irish persecution was very real from WASPs and Protestatnts (that basically ended when Kennedy got elected President.) I never hear Mexican Catholics, as an example, get up in arms about any of this kind of stuff - it's mainly the white ethnic Catholics that do.