Some thoughtful people are beginning to argue that it is — and it’s not hard to see their point, when you scan the list of popular movies and books. Author Phillip Jenkins has even argued it is “the last acceptable prejudice.”

And now, Melanie McDonagh takes to the pages of the New Statesman in Britain to explore this phenomenon:

It is worth asking in passing whether Jews could now be depicted with the same idiom as is now being deployed against Catholics. You don’t have to think particularly hard to conjure up the Semitic equivalent of the crazed popish assassin, the Jesuit plotter, the Vatican conspiracy against the nation state, do you? But while the stereotype of the Jew is dead, that of the Catholic Church as a force for evil has been given a new, and rather disagreeable, lease on life.

She has more to say on the subject, and it’s worth reading.