IT was a description of the country that seemed alien and shocking to liberal Scots: a place that was "a hostile environment for Catholics to live''.

 The comments, by the director of communications for the Scottish Catholic media office, Peter Kearney, are now causing more controversy, even among Catholics.

Leading historian Tom Devine – himself a Catholic – told the Sunday Herald that Kearney was promoting a "lingering sense of victimhood".

An admittedly random sample by the Sunday Herald of those attending mass at a Glasgow church failed to reveal many examples of serious contemporary prejudice.

Kearney, though, refuses to back down. In fact, in an article for today's Sunday Herald he compares "residual and at times pernicious anti-Catholicism in Scotland" with the institutional racism identified in the Metropolitan Police in 1999.

And he argues that a lack of anecdotal evidence of prejudice fails to prove it does not exist. If a sample of women found no complaints of sexism, no-one would argue that sexism did not exist, he says.

Kearney's stance has prompted Devine – arguably the foremost authority on modern Scottish history – to say that the communications director "doesn't speak for anyone apart from himself".

The Edinburgh University professor added that Kearney's outlook was "unrepresentative" of the experience of the majority of Scots Catholics, and contradicted data.

"If Scotland is so hostile to Catholics then it's difficult to comprehend why there has been what I would call a silent revolution in the position of people, particularly those from an Irish Catholic background, over the last generation.

"At the census of 2001, for the first time, the people from that background were in a condition of occupational parity with the rest of Scots," said Devine.

"In other words, if you look at their social and occupational profile, they no longer stand out, they're no longer distinctive. They've got the same proportion of middle-class people, the same proportion of working-class people, and that had been a revolution."

Devine said this "revolution" was also evidenced by the tiny number of employment tribunals with a sectarian dimension, a sea change from past decades when some employers would openly refuse to hire Catholics.

Likewise, the number of Catholics holding high-powered positions in Scottish society – including the current and the previous Lord Advocates of Scotland, the Lord President of the Court of Session, and several vice-principals and chancellors of universities – demolished Kearney's claims of prejudice, said Devine.

The historian acknowledged that there were signs of a "Catholic disadvantage" in terms of health and prison statistics – men aged 55-60 of an Irish Catholic background suffer above-average health problems, and 25% of prisoners in Scotland are registered as Catholic, although they account for just 16%-18% of the Scottish population – but that these were outweighed by "social and occupational" equality.

"Let's be fair, nobody's carried out a poll on what they think of Kearney, but there's now a growing amount of anecdotal evidence that he doesn't speak for us," said Devine.

"The thing you have to remember is that if you've got a community that's gone through some of the difficulties that the Irish Catholic community in Scotland has over the last 100-150 years, there's always going to be a lingering sense of victimhood in certain quarters."

Devine's comments follow criticism from other high-profile Catholics. Reverend Paul Morton, of St Bride's Roman Catholic Church in Cambuslang, said Kearney's outlook was "exaggerated and pessimistic".

However, Liz Leydon, editor of the Scottish Catholic Observer, said Kearney had been at the "sharp end" of the media frenzy in the wake of revelations over Cardinal Keith O'Brien's sexual misconduct.

Leydon added: "He speaks with great insight of both his professional knowledge and personal experience of hostility towards Catholics and the Church. What he describes may not be, thankfully, everyone's experience, but it has been his."

Among worshippers leaving Friday mass at St Aloysius Cathedral in Glasgow on Friday, the experiences were mixed.

One woman, who asked not to be named, said there was "a minority" of people who would make derogatory comments about her religion.

She said: "I have felt uncomfortable sometimes. Neighbours might say things like, 'is that you away to rattle your beads?' when they see me going to church. But they're a minority."

Hugh Barr, 82, and his wife, Sarah, 77, from Milton of Campsie, said they did not believe there was any anti-Catholic hostility in Scotland.

"In the past, maybe, but now, never – except around all the Rangers and Celtic nonsense," said Barr.

Sisters Anya Docherty, 66, and Anne Phillips, 71, who live in the southside of Glasgow, said they had experienced hostility when they first moved to Scotland from Ireland in 1956, but said attitudes had changed dramatically.

Docherty said: "I remember my boss at the Inland Revenue saying to me, 'I see you went to Holyrood', which is a Catholic school, and I said 'yes'. Then he said 'you're from County Donegal' and I said that I was. Then he said 'it's just as well you're not black as well'. I would never think twice about being Catholic now. I think there are some Catholics, though, who have a chip on their shoulder and set out expecting discrimination.''

Some, though, think that Kearney has a point. Professor John Haldane, a Catholic commentator and professor of philosophy at St Andrews University, recalled being told by his grandfather that the Pope wore a gown "to cover his cloven hooves" and said his own father converted to Catholicism in secret to avoid a row.

While Haldane added that being Catholic had never had any negative effect on his own life or career, he believed there was still a "residue of hostility" in Scotland which many Catholics preferred to ignore.

He said: "There's an enduring and pervasive sense that Catholicism is something foreign and threatening that we got rid of and we don't want back.

"So if the question is: 'Is there a sense of anti-Catholicism in Scotland?', I'm inclined to say yes. But I think it sometimes doesn't even know it's anti-Catholic. It's 400 years of a rhetoric that sees Catholicism as something alien.

"That rhetoric is not very far away, it's just beneath the surface. It's just moved on from being seen as a threat to Presbyterian values, to a threat to secular liberal values."