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American Anti-Catholicism
The Catholic Thing ^ | April 20, 2010 | George J. Marlin

Posted on 03/18/2013 2:35:30 PM PDT by NYer

During Lent and Easter this year, America’s anti-Catholics were out in force spreading misinformation and distortions in the hopes of toppling the pope and crippling the hierarchy of the Church.

The assailants – the usual suspects led by the New York Times – would have people believe that the sex-abuse scandals are widening. This is false. The Church in the United States has become a model for effectively dealing with the crisis. Our bishops implemented programs to protect children almost a decade ago: to train and screen clergy and to impose tough internal reporting regulations regarding suspected abuse.

But we have to remember that, throughout American history, truth has often not much mattered when opportunities have arisen to attack the Church. For over two hundred years, American Catholics have had to fend off assaults based on lies, half-truths, and innuendos from nativists, populists, progressives, eugenicists, reformers, and secular intellectuals. And it’s worth rehearsing some of this history.

In the 1840s, an underground anti-Catholic movement led by back-alley, low-life bigots flared into a full-fledged crusade that came close to leaving major northeastern cities in shambles. In 1843, Philadelphia Catholic churches and homes were torched and sixteen people killed because the ordinary, Bishop Patrick Kendrick, asked that the 5,000 Catholic children in the public school system be permitted to read a Catholic version of the Bible and that anti-Catholic textbooks be removed from the classrooms.

Riots spread to other cities including New York. Archbishop John Hughes warned the mayor, “If a single Catholic Church were burned in New York, the City would become a second Moscow.” The thought of the City looking like the Moscow Napoleon left in ashes in 1812 had the desired effect: nativist forces backed down.

1890s populists, who believeded in the supremacy of Anglo-Saxons, nurtured anti-Catholic sentiment and looked upon Catholic eastern, urban centers as “the enemy’s country. The movement’s leader, William Jennings Bryan, used anti-Catholic code words on the campaign trail and told his agrarian followers he was “tired of hearing about laws for the benefit of men who work in shops.” He declared he was opposed to “dumping of the criminal classes upon our shores” – a/k/a, Catholic immigrants. This anti-Catholic fervor split the Democratic Party culturally and economically for two generations: agrarian-nativist-Protestant versus urban-immigrant-Catholic.

The progressive-reform movement was also fueled by anti-Catholicism. The urban upper crust began a crusade to take back their municipalities from Catholic pols and to reform what the elite believed to be their corrupt ways. As sociologist Andrew Greeley has observed, reform was merely an attempt on the part of native-born Protestants to take back what they had lost to the Irish in a fair fight.”

To stop the vast hordes of Catholic immigrants that populated their cities and controlled the ballot-boxes, the reformers embraced the notions of Social Darwinism to rationalize their Anglo-centrism and promoted the pseudo-science of eugenics which called for disposing of undesirable human beings; individuals, ethnic groups or whole races. This movement which began in the 1890s, would take thirty years to secure a victory. Eugenics expert Daniel J. Kevles asserted that the “movement provided a rationale for the Immigration Act of 1924, which discriminated against immigrants from eastern and southern Europe.”

In 1928, Catholic Alfred E. Smith, the Democratic nominee for President, was accused of forming an alien conspiracy to overthrow Protestant, Anglo-Saxon majority under which the country has achieve its independence and its greatness. Mainline religious leaders denounced Smith from the pulpit and millions of warped, vicious anti-Catholic pamphlets, flyers, and newspapers were written, printed, and distributed by the Ku Klux Klan and other crackpot anti-Catholic organizations across America.

The Church had to cope with similar attacks during the 1960 presidential campaign of John F. Kennedy. An ad hoc group of 150 Protestants led by Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, issued a statement criticizing the Catholic Church and accusing it of being a political, as well as religious, organization [that has] specifically repudiated, on many occasions, the principle sacred to us that every man shall be free to follow the dictates of his conscience in religious matters.

Such events prompted the distinguished historian John Higham, author of Strangers in the Land, to describe anti-Catholicism as “the most luxuriant, tenacious tradition of paranoiac agitation in American history.” Arthur M. Schlesinger, Sr. concurred calling it “the deepest bias in the history of the American people.”

In the twenty-first century, practicing Catholics in the public square are learning that while those who oppose the Church may appear more sophisticated or scientific, the level of hatred for Catholicism may not have changed much from previous eras. Catholics are still viewed by the secular humanists as public villains and in their salons, anti-Catholicism is, as Daniel Patrick Moynihan put it, still an acceptable prejudice.

Today’s anti-Catholicism is driven by smug secularists who want radical autonomy – and therefore frown upon Catholic values and despise authority. They want to destroy the Church because, unlike the mainline Protestant sects, it refuses to give in to the modernists’ views on abortion, celibacy, contraception, divorce, stem-cell research, and same-sex marriage.

But don’t despair. We have it on good authority that even the gates of hell shall not prevail against the Church.

 



TOPICS: Catholic; History; Religion & Culture; Religion & Politics
KEYWORDS: catholic
George J. Marlin is an editor of The Quotable Fulton Sheen(Doubleday Image).

1 posted on 03/18/2013 2:35:30 PM PDT by NYer
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To: netmilsmom; thefrankbaum; Tax-chick; GregB; saradippity; Berlin_Freeper; Litany; SumProVita; ...

Yes .. this article was originally published in 2010. Since then, the battle lines have grown tighter. I am posting this as a timely reminder of past history and what we can expect as the bishops hold the line on Catholic moral issues.


2 posted on 03/18/2013 2:37:17 PM PDT by NYer (Beware the man of a single book - St. Thomas Aquinas)
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To: NYer

Thank you, NYer. With the seemingly limitless disinformation that continues to be spread regarding Catholicism and Catholics, corrections and accurate accountings of history cannot be repeated too often.


3 posted on 03/18/2013 2:42:39 PM PDT by trisham (Zen is not easy. It takes effort to attain nothingness. And then what do you have? Bupkis.)
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To: NYer

I find American Catholic anti-Catholicism to be popular.


4 posted on 03/18/2013 3:08:27 PM PDT by Nomedeplume
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To: NYer

I was 12 when I read “Father Smith Instructs Jackson”, which was required Catholic instruction as my mom wanted to sing in their local choir. I still refer it when some odd quirk leads me back, and...then I’m lost in it again.

Now though, I’m an American Judeo-Christian: One God, Torah believing, moshiach accepting through Jesus, on who’s divinity I’m yet agnostic, though I don’t believe America could have been founded without the example of Christ.

‘God save the Foundation.’


5 posted on 03/18/2013 4:30:08 PM PDT by onedoug
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To: NYer
...the usual suspects...
...nativists, populists, progressives, eugenicists, reformers, and secular intellectuals...
...an underground anti-Catholic movement led by back-alley, low-life bigots...

...Archbishop John Hughes warned the mayor, “If a single Catholic Church were burned in New York, the City would become a second Moscow”...
...1890s populists, who believed in the supremacy of Anglo-Saxons...
...anti-Catholic code words....
...agrarian followers...
...agrarian-nativist-Protestant versus urban-immigrant-Catholic...
...the urban upper crust...
...the elite...
...“reform was merely an attempt on the part of native-born Protestants to take back what they had lost to the Irish in a fair fight”...
...Anglo-centrism...
...In 1928, Catholic Alfred E. Smith, the Democratic nominee for President, was accused of forming an “alien conspiracy to overthrow Protestant, Anglo-Saxon majority under which the country has achieve its independence and its greatness”...
...warped, vicious anti-Catholic pamphlets, flyers, and newspapers...
...other crackpot anti-Catholic organizations...
...anti-Catholicism as “the most luxuriant, tenacious tradition of paranoiac agitation in American history.” Arthur M. Schlesinger, Sr. concurred calling it “the deepest bias in the history of the American people”...

...while those who oppose the Church may appear more sophisticated or scientific, the level of hatred for Catholicism may not have changed much from previous eras...
...anti-Catholicism is, as Daniel Patrick Moynihan put it, still an acceptable prejudice.

Wow - it's like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton all rolled up into one!

6 posted on 03/18/2013 4:51:25 PM PDT by Alex Murphy ("If you are not firm in faith, you will not be firm at all" - Isaiah 7:9)
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To: Nomedeplume

I agree, anti-Catholics gnawing from within are more of a threat than external haters cursing us as `Mary-worshippers’.

But our new Holy Father is now delivering some major smackdown to liberal disregarders of Catholic doctrine.

Nancy Pelosi is soon going to march up to the Communion rail & be met by a hand over the ciborium and a shaking priestly head.

She’ll growl, “You’re audited, sucker!”


7 posted on 03/18/2013 5:03:42 PM PDT by elcid1970 ("The Second Amendment is more important than Islam.")
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Comment #8 Removed by Moderator

To: NYer; wideawake
1890s populists, who believeded in the supremacy of Anglo-Saxons, nurtured anti-Catholic sentiment and looked upon Catholic eastern, urban centers as “the enemy’s country.”

Ironically, today's conservatives (including Catholics) regard eastern, urban centers as "the enemy's country." Coincidence?

The movement’s leader, William Jennings Bryan, used anti-Catholic code words on the campaign trail and told his agrarian followers he was “tired of hearing about laws for the benefit of men who work in shops.” He declared he was opposed to “dumping of the criminal classes upon our shores” – a/k/a, Catholic immigrants. This anti-Catholic fervor split the Democratic Party culturally and economically for two generations: agrarian-nativist-Protestant versus urban-immigrant-Catholic.

I have never before in my life heard William Jennings Bryan accused of anti-Catholicism. The "code word" accusation sounds identical to the "dog whistle" accusations of today's liberals. I hope the author has some actual proof that this was veiled anti-Catholicism on Bryan's part. I suspect it instead represents urban American Catholicism's antipathy to rural agrarian America (traditionally Protestant due to historical circumstances) and maybe even disdain for Bryan's position on evolution. If so, it's a sick form of bigotry to see anti-Catholicism in every area outside large cities and every objection to G-dless cosmogony.

I see Catholics are trying to remind the liberals and Dems that they were originally "urban left wing immigrants" too.

In 1928, Catholic Alfred E. Smith, the Democratic nominee for President, was accused of forming an “alien conspiracy to overthrow Protestant, Anglo-Saxon majority under which the country has achieve its independence and its greatness.”

Change "Protestant" to "chrstian" and "Anglo-Saxon" to "European" and you've got Catholic Pat Buchanan's latest speech. How hypocritical to condemn the "bigots" whose lead one is following.

9 posted on 03/18/2013 5:25:45 PM PDT by Zionist Conspirator (Ki-hagoy vehamamlakhah 'asher lo'-ya`avdukh yove'du; vehagoyim charov yecheravu!)
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To: Zionist Conspirator
"If so, it's a sick form of bigotry to see anti-Catholicism in every area outside large cities and every objection to G-dless cosmogony."

Last time I heard that sort of garbage was from a guy who missed the good times he'd had in a Turkish prison.

10 posted on 03/18/2013 7:43:17 PM PDT by Rashputin (Jesus Christ doesn't evacuate His troops, He leads them to victory.)
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To: Zionist Conspirator

Bryan’s running mate on the Populist ticket, Thomas E. Watson, was very definitely anti-Catholic. Bryan also opposed a resolution condemning the KKK at the 1924 Dem convention.


11 posted on 03/18/2013 7:56:33 PM PDT by Campion ("Social justice" begins in the womb)
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To: NYer

http://blog.beliefnet.com/stevenwaldman/2008/04/how-anticatholicism-helped-fue.html

...Only three of the 13 colonies allowed Catholics to vote. All new England colonies except Rhode island and the Carolinas prohibited Catholics form holding office; Virginia would have priests arrested for entering the colony; Catholic schools were banned in all states except Pennsylvania.

During the lead up to revolution, rebels seeking to stoke hatred of Great Britain routinely equated the practices of the Church of England with that of the Catholic Church. In the late 1760s and early 1770s, colonists celebrated anti-Pope Days, an anti-Catholic festival derived from the English Guy Fawkes day (named for a Catholic who attempted to assassinated King James I). “Orations, cartoons, and public hangings of effigies depicted royal ministers as in league alternately with the pope and the devil,” writes historian Ruth Bloch.

Roger Sherman and other members of Continental Congress wanted to prohibit Catholics from serving in the Continental Army...


12 posted on 03/18/2013 8:00:51 PM PDT by jjotto ("Ya could look it up!")
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