SUMMARY POINTS
There are anti-Semitic sites on the Internet and sites that engage in other forms of racism. That has been well documented. Virtually ignored, however, is the abundance of anti-Catholicism that exists on the Internet.
The pervasiveness of anti-Catholicism on the Internet reflects how deeply entrenched, obsessive and normative this prejudice is within contemporary culture. If the Internet is our most contemporary means of communication and information gathering, then anti-Catholicism is entering the new Millenium in a powerful fashion.
The post-Reformation period of the mid 16th and 17th Seventeenth centuries saw a wealth of anti-Catholic published material that would establish the foundation for anti-Catholic historical and cultural assumptions that are now moving to the Internet.
In recent years, with the advent of cable television and a change in the culture of movie making, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of anti-Catholic imagery and rhetoric in popular media. The short-lived television program That’s Life on ABC and movies such as Dogma and Quills evidenced a new willingness to engage in anti-Catholicism in entertainment aimed at a general audience.
By its nature, the Internet is unregulated. It is the dumping ground for the effluvia of Western culture. There is no editing for truth, objectivity, reliability or responsibility on the Internet. With its millions of websites, personal home pages and search portals, it is impossible to monitor or respond in any consistent fashion to its content.
Traditional anti-Catholicism – fundamentalist attacks on the Church as the scriptural "whore of Babylon" – bubbles just below the surface in many areas of our society. This traditional anti-Catholicism created many of the myths of anti-Catholicism that linger within the culture: the Church as solely interested in power; Catholicism as an "alien" religion in America; Catholicism as the enemy of separation of Church and State (as well as the public school system); the Catholic Church as oppressor.
The nature of the Internet leads to a generally more coarse standard even with so-called mainstream Internet sites. Profanity, obscenity and nudity are commonplace while they remain less so in newspapers that are still viewed as "family reading." Of course, that bar has been lowered in recent years in newspapers but it is a standard far higher than "legitimate" sites on the Internet.
Traditional anti-Catholicism laid the foundation for the common secular anti-Catholicism of contemporary culture. Stripped of its theological foundation, it portrays the Church as a medieval relic, the enemy of science and individual freedom. Born in the pseudo-scientism of the 19th Century – with its mix of nationalism, racism and class warfare – it focused on the Church as the enemy of modern thought and progress. Developed during the eugenics, birth control and pro-abortion crusades of the 20th century, it reached its contemporary culmination in various theories of sexual liberation. It is widespread in contemporary thought and sees anti-Catholicism not as a prejudice, but as a tool to be utilized to denigrate Church teaching in the public arena.
The number of sophomoric sites spewing anti-Catholicism and generally anti-Christian views is legion. Run either as one-man shows on personal websites or organized more professionally for profit, these sites are generally witless attempts at satire.
In mind-numbing detail are a host of traditional anti-Catholic cites. From rural churches and personal websites, to sites for fundamentalist publishing houses, the traditional anti-Catholicism that was said to have died with the election of John F. Kennedy in 1960 thrives on the Internet. A major website is for the Jack Chick Company. Chick does not bother to engage in honest dialogue, or honest argument, over Catholic beliefs. The Chick website, like so many others, peddles bombastic charges against the Church as knowingly teaching false doctrine and purposely sending souls to hell.
Much of the anti-Catholicism on the traditionalist Internet sites is not, for the most part, an attempt to theologically engage Catholicism, a perfectly legitimate and sadly necessary discussion in a divided Christianity. This is simply old-time anti-Catholic nativism that has a primary form of argument that refers to Catholicism as a conscious, knowing Satanic plot to undermine Scripture. Such leaves little room for healthy and honest exchanges.
An army of individual pastors and their local churches have put up sites dedicated to tradition anti-Catholicism. One of the most loathsome is from Pastor Fred Phelps’ Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas. Phelps has made a name for himself for decidedly homophobic hate speech. Its Internet address is godhatesfags.org. Phelps refers to the Catholic Church as a "fag" church and claims that a third of Catholic priests are actively homosexual, seducing young boys and women.
There are numerous websites by alleged ex-Catholics that engage in evangelization aimed specifically at Catholics. Most use anti-Catholicism as their primary means of attack. Very few rely on a positive presentation of a faith to which they hope to convert Catholics. For the most part, they simply – very simply – attack Catholic beliefs, present a distorted view of Catholic practices, and re-write history from an anti-Catholic perspective.
The common thread running through these "conversion" sites is the viciousness of the attacks on Catholic beliefs and practices. These sites present an image of Catholic beliefs as essentially pagan. They constantly portray the Catholic priesthood as corrupted by sexual deviancy and the Church as a conscious effort to deceive people in order to oppress them.
Anti-Catholicism also finds its way into the Internet’s crazy world of militia groups and radical right-wing zealots. Though much time is spent on these pages with anti-Semitism and racism, Catholicism shares in their vicious attacks.
There are websites from traditionalist Catholic groups that often borrow the language and approach of traditional anti-Catholic sites. Some of these sites represent followers of the late Archbishop Lefebvre and are formally schismatic. Their primary aim is to attack the Church today as being heretical and the Mass as celebrated contrary to traditional Catholic teaching. Their attacks on the Church and its members are vehement, and often raise accusations of "Masonic conspiracies" or satanic infiltration.
From the ex-Catholic left, the attacks on the Internet are mostly from a secular perspective, and usually driven by pro-abortion or a gay agenda. Sites for "recovering Catholics" simply assume that any thinking person will have left the Church, and offer advice often centered on a supposed sexual liberation.
Anti-Catholicism remains an effective tool of America’s elite. In that sense, it is allowed to persist because it remains acceptable. The anti-Catholic bigotry of a Jack Chick is easy to condemn. But anti-Catholicism is not confined solely to those fringes on the Internet. There are any number of strictly secular websites with particular secular agendas that routinely engage in anti-Catholic rhetoric.
He says the same or similar about most Protestant fundamentalists. He is, in short, a "fag" obsessed screwball with no followers outside his immedaite family.
He is perhaps interesting as an example of a pathology, but he's not part of any anti-Catholic trend. For that, look at liberals in major cities.
Of all things, the television show The X-Files actually drew some attention to this in one episode. The episode in question had Hollywood making a movie about the exploits of the shows heros, Special Agents Mulder and Scully. Through the show's history, our intrepid FBI agents frequently ran into trouble due to the shadowy schemes of a chain-smoking government agent. In the "Hollywood version," the government agent, since liberals love those guys, was transformed into a chain-smoking Roman Catholic Cardinal, since liberals hate those guys.
I really got a laugh out of The X-Files scewering Hollywood on that poing.