"Pope Francis concluded his Audience by pointing out two considerations we can take away from these considerations on the Nativity of Jesus: The first is that God reveals Himself not as one who remains on high and dominates the universe, but as one who humbles Himself. This shows us that in order to be like Him, we must not put ourselves above others, but must humble ourselves and serve others. He had strong words for Christians who refuse to humble themselves: "It is an ugly thing," he said, "when you see a Christian who doesn't want to humble himself, who doesn't want to serve, a Christian who struts about everywhere: it's ugly, eh? That is not a Christian: that's a pagan!" [emphasis added]

The New Advent Catholic encyclopedia defines paganism:

Paganism, in the broadest sense includes all religions other than the true one revealed by God, and, in a narrower sense, all except Christianity, Judaism, and Mohammedanism. The term is also used as the equivalent of Polytheism.

A large fraction of the people of the world are pagan by the above definition.  Indeed, there are many pagan religions -- and to be fair, on a good day, even Francis might acknowledge that these religions include many include fine people.  Nevertheless, denouncing as pagans, Christians who behave badly, is an insult to millions of people who are for example, Buddhist, Confucianist, Hindu, or who adhere to Native American religions; not to mention the many people who identify specifically as pagans.  

As glad that many of us are that Francis, among others, are addressing inequality of late, inequality is not merely an economic issue.  Ideological religious supremacy is at war with religious equality under the law and in our culture.  When we say that we value religious pluralism what we mean is that we respect people of all religious traditions and none, and show that via equality in the eyes of the law.  There are Christian Right leaders who aggressively seek to revise history to make fantastic claims about history in an effort to establish their particular religious and political views as having the endorsement of the framers of the Constitution.  The latest outrageous but illuminating example came from Brian Fischer of the American Family Association who claimed that when the framers said "religion" they meant Christianity only. This is baloney, and the historical record shows that the framers were not speaking in code, and that the development of the idea of how to manage religious pluralism and equality under the law was decades in the making and included and embraced Islam.

Religious supremacism is one of the usual consequences of the politicization of conservative religious orthodoxy as we have seen in the United States. Indeed, that is one reasonable way of looking at the war of aggression being waged by the Religious Right, (aka the culture war).

Earlier this year I noted in an essay in The Public Eye magazine, for example, the mutual abhorrence between the Southern Baptists and the Vatican.

While conservative Roman Catholics have long been a vital part of the broad religious/political coalition known as the Christian Right, finding ways to broaden and deepen the coalition of right-wing evangelical Protestants and Catholics has been a difficult and controversial undertaking. A case in point is the famous appearance by Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, on CNN's Larry King Live in 2000. "As an evangelical," Mohler said, "I believe the Roman Church is a false church and it teaches a false gospel. I believe the pope himself holds a false and unbiblical office." Mohler's views are unexceptional in much of evangelical and fundamentalist Protestantism. (More recently, Mohler insisted that the mainline Evangelical Lutheran Church in America is "not a church," because, in 2013, it elected as a bishop a respected, gay professor of theology.)

The abhorrence has been mutual. In 2000, the Vatican issued a proclamation titled Dominus Iesus, which declared that other Christian churches "are not `churches' in the proper sense." The Vatican declared this a "definitive and irrevocable" doctrine of the Church.

Navigating a religiously plural society is a tricky thing. As a country is is one of our defining features -- and we are pretty good at it, even as the Pope is clearly not. Still it is not easy to stay true to our own views, whether religious or non-religious, while respecting the rights of others to hold deeply contrary views. It requires some knowledge, some dedication and a relevant skill set. And we reinvent that knowledge, dedication and skill set in every generation.

Because that is so, it may be there are some things that the leader of an ancient religion on the other side of the world can learn from the ever uppity Americans, many of whom do know a thing or two about how to adhere to both religious freedom and separation of church and state.