The Resurgence of Anti-Catholicism: America’s One Enduring Prejudice.

popeAmerican history is replete with instances of massive anti-Catholicism. One fellow suggested that was one of the main factors that brought about our Revolutionary War. The idea that the British parliament passed the Quebec Act that allowed the Catholic Church to remain the official religion of Quebec struck fear in many Americans who thought that was a plan to raise a Catholic army in Canada to invade the colonies.

It continued strong especially in New England. 1834 saw a Protestant mob burn down a Catholic convent in Charlestown. The 1840s saw the war against Catholic Mexico where the treatment by the U.S. Army of the Catholic soldiers, especially the Irish ones, was so demeaning and hostile they deserted the American army and fought on the side of Mexico in a group known as the San Patricios.

The 1850s saw the strong support that was given to the anti-Irish, anti-Catholic, and anti-immigrant Know Nothing Party. It elected a governor in Massachusetts and controlled the House and Senate. It was well on the way to becoming the second strongest party in the country until the slavery issued pushed all others aside.

After that anti-Catholicism was never far from the minds of others. We experienced the several reincarnations of the KKK a group with that mindset. We invaded the Philippines in order to bring Christianity to the poor dark-skinned people of that country who were under the thumb of the Pope. If you want to understand the present day attitude of Filipinos to America study up a little on that war.

The hostile attitude toward Catholics seemed to have diminished significantly during WWII and the aftermath. It even enabled the United States to put into office a Catholic president. The world did not fall in nor did the Pope take over the country as earlier feared. One did get the sense it still existed but in a less overt form. Some suggest it is the only remaining bias in the United States that is acceptable.

The Boston Globe on October 19, 2016, wrote an article that Cardinal O’Malley had gathered a group of clergymen and spoke out against the upcoming petition on the ballot that would legalize marijuana.   It set forth his reasons for opposing it as well as gave the other side’s opinion. It had a comment section that I assumed would be used to discuss the issue that was on the ballot and that people would give their reasons for or against legalization. I wanted to read some of them and most were diatribes against O’Malley and the Church. Here’s a few examples: 

It’s not surprising a church with historical roots in pedophilia and alcoholism would engage in scapegoating to shift blame elsewhere and hide their own misdeeds. And kidnapping Jewish children, let’s not forget that. “;

 “Got a deal for [Catholics]: shut the f up, mind your own business, and I won’t criticize your backwards, controlling beliefs. Otherwise, you’re fair game.”;

 “Go back to the rectory and have some wine.”

 “Cardinal Buffoon alert! Just manage the perverts.”

 “Oh brother !!!! cult leaders who believe in talking snakes and magic sky daddies don’t get a say in secular business !!keep that craziness behind closed doors for their sheeple. Tax the churches if they want to use their weight in politics”  

Others talked about O’Malley being muzzled if he wanted to keep the church’s tax free status; and that he should be concerned with his pedophile priests, and similar topics. I recognize that these folk commenting are doing so in the world of anonymity and probably would not be so bold if they had to identify themselves but it does show their hostility.

I have to believe that others like O’Malley who spoke out on the issue would no be so attacked. Perhaps I am wrong but it is difficult to envision a situation where such vitriol would be directed at another.

 

23 Comments

  1. Foxnews- “Up to five foreign intelligence agencies had access to the private server.”

    Hillary gave away the store.
    It’s time to introduce “treason” to the conversation.

  2. in other news

    November 2, 2016

    New York Police Department (NYPD) detectives have uncovered evidence of a ‘child sex ring’ on Anthony Weiner’s laptop that they say could “put Hillary Clinton away for life”.

    According to NYPD sources, files found on Weiner’s newly found laptop which he shared with his wife Huma Abedin, show evidence of a political pedophile ring operating within Washington, involving members of Congress as well as numerous top Clinton aides and insiders.

    According to reports, a folder on Weiner’s laptop named “life insurance” contains explicit evidence that both Hillary Clinton and Huma Abedin helped run and cover-up a Washington pedophile sex ring.

    Truepundit. dot. com reports:

    NYPD sources said these new emails include evidence linking Clinton herself and associates to:
    • Money laundering
    • Child exploitation
    • Sex crimes with minors (children)
    • Perjury Pay to play through
    • Clinton Foundation
    • Obstruction of justice
    • Other felony crimes
    NYPD detectives and a NYPD Chief, the department’s highest rank under Commissioner, said openly that if the FBI and Justice Department fail to garner timely indictments against Clinton and co- conspirators, NYPD will go public with the damaging emails now in the hands of FBI Director James Comey and many FBI field offices.

    “What’s in the emails is staggering and as a father, it turned my stomach,” the NYPD Chief said. “There is not going to be any Houdini-like escape from what we found. We have copies of everything. We will ship them to Wikileaks or I will personally hold my own press conference if it comes to that.”

    The NYPD Chief said once Comey saw the alarming contents of the emails he was forced to reopen a criminal probe against Clinton.

    “People are going to prison,” he said.

    Meanwhile, FBI sources said Abedin and Weiner were cooperating with federal agents, who have taken over the non-sexting portions the case from NYPD. The husband-and-wife Clinton insiders are both shopping for separate immunity deals, sources said.

    “If they don’t cooperate they are going to see long sentences,” a federal law enforcement source said.

    NYPD sources said Weiner or Abedin stored all the emails in a massive Microsoft Outlook program on the laptop. The emails implicate other current and former members of Congress and one high-ranking Democratic Senator as having possibly engaged in criminal activity too, sources said.

    Prosecutors in the office of US Attorney Preet Bharara have issued a subpoena for Weiner’s cell phones and travel records, law enforcement sources confirmed. NYPD said it planned to order the same phone and travel records on Clinton and Abedin, however, the FBI said it was in the process of requesting the identical records. Law enforcement sources are particularly interested in cell phone activity and travel to the Bahamas, U.S. Virgin Islands and other locations that sources would not divulge.

    The new emails contain travel documents and itineraries indicating Hillary Clinton, President Bill Clinton, Weiner and multiple members of Congress and other government officials accompanied convicted pedophile billionaire Jeffrey Epstein on his Boeing 727 on multiple occasions to his private island in the U.S Virgin Islands, sources said. Epstein’s island has also been dubbed Orgy Island or Sex Slave Island where Epstein allegedly pimps out underage girls and boys to international dignitaries.

    Both NYPD and FBI sources confirm based on the new emails they now believe Hillary Clinton traveled as Epstein’s guest on at least six occasions, probably more when all the evidence is combed, sources said. Bill Clinton, it has been con

  3. Blaze orange has descended upon our small community of
    570 people here in Vienna Maine as Hunting Season has officially
    begun.

    Brother Elbows Wychulis held service this morning
    around the Green Mountain coffee dispenser
    where the congregants of the Church of George Carlin
    came to have their hunting weapons blessed according
    to the theology of Winchester and Mossberg.
    Brother Elbows was attired in camoflauge green
    vestments sporting a newly coiffured Donald Trump
    with accompanying do-rag.

    Sister Caroline Myss led the chorus in the singing
    of the Clinton Spiritual


    We evolve at the rate of the tribe we are plugged into.”

  4. In the late 40s and 50s, Massachusetts had very active chapters of POAU (Protestants and Other Americans United for Separation of Church and State.) They fought any state aid to parochial schools.

    I recall many POAU members also opposed any Catholic being elected to the US Senate or the Presidency. The Pope was buying a house in Georgetown.

    They’ve since changed their name: http://www.au.org/

    The owners and editors of the Boston Globe probably still believe in the truthfulness of Maria Monk.

    Anti-Catholicism is the safe anti-Semitism.

    But at least back then we could expect something from ‘The Pilot.’ Remember David Goldstein’s columns in that paper?

    • Thank you, Henry.

      From au.org/about:

      “Our Mission

      We are dedicated to preserving the constitutional principle of church-state separation as the only way to ensure religious freedom for all.”

  5. Are those who comment in the Globe bigots? Would any of them denounce a Rabbi or a Mullah for his political position? Doubt it. Thankfully almost no one pays attention to that newspaper. Religious schools have saved the taxpayers billions over the years. No one can prohibit the free exercise of religion in America. Not even the Globe.

  6. Doesn’t the RCAB’s public stance on legalizing marijuana somehow violate the concept of separation of church and state?

    Or does this type of activism have nothing to do with that concept?

    • The imaginary separation of Church and State is based on the Constitution banning the federal government from establishing a church. States had established churches into the 1840s. There was no political separation mandated. The Constitution was never intended to keep the moral authority of churches out of politics. The idea that the church is the only institution that has to be apolitical is absurd in itself. It was essentially a compromise between the Congregational churches of New England and the Episcopal churches of the South.

      In 1948 Lyndon Johnson stole the Senate election in Texas. It was razor close. LBJ blamed the Baptist churches for backing his opponent Coke Stevenson and sought revenge. A few years later he guided a bill through Congress that would deprive churches of their tax exempt status if they overtly supported a candidate. It is to my understanding the only institution so shackled.

      The enforcement of this law is biased. White Christian churches are threatened often. Black churches openly violate the statutes as do other religious bodies, mostly Jewish and Muslim, with impunity. The tax code creates a separation that is statutory not constitutional.

      The law should be repealed. Interestingly Trump has a few times indicated he would support such a repeal. He gets how the system is rigged. This should be a major issue. Media ignore the issue, both the law and the use of it in biased enforcement, because it neuters an important voice for the traditions and values of White Christians.

      No society can long endure if its moral core is strangled. This induced suicide of what America was founded for has been the law for some sixty plus years. It is not in the Constitution. It has been sold to the public by the educational system and the media that is in the hands of those who hate you, hate your ancestors and hate your progeny.

      Some of the old Protestant loathing of Catholicism remains. But really both are in the same boat today, except for the elites. The 1% if threatened will try to revive the old animosity which abated as people like my Roman Catholic father married my Free Will Baptist mother. Ronaldus Magnus pulled together the ethnic Catholics and working class Protestants. Hopefully Trump will do the same before our country is wrenched from us irretrievably.

      • Thanks very much, tadzio, for your enlightening response!

      • tadzio,

        Great insight.

        Our man has hope yet.
        The scale is tipping ever so slowly but tipping nonetheless…. the last few days have been encouraging.

      • tadzio,

        Please see below my response to Henry Barth. Au.org sees it as “a constitutional principle.”

      • Tadzio:

        Give me your twist on the division between church and state and atheism in the public space. Usuli Muslims have problems with this division, and, don’t recognize the concept of public space. Do white Christians of your persuasion cherish the thought of a theocratic state, as well? Calvin did. Embrace him, and, contemplate all the freedoms of the Genevan Republic. Not a cut, I’m interested in your thoughts.

        • Nutshell – easygoing. Have no problem universal access to public space. No selective banning. We are coming into the Christmas season when we will be informed that a creche is a verboten ‘religious’ symbol while a menorah is an acceptable ‘cultural’ symbol. Am not a fan of BS and intensely dislike lying hairsplitters who aim to belittle, marginalize and eventually genocide my culture.

          • Tadzio:

            Let’s take the argument up a notch, or, two. Here’s what Karl Marx has to say about the public space:

            “Man emancipates himself politically from religion by banishing it from the sphere of public law to that of private law. Religion is no longer the spirit of the state, in which man behaves – although in a limited way, in a particular form, and in a particular sphere – as a species-being, in community with other men. Religion has become the spirit of civil society, of the sphere of egoism, of bellum omnium contra omnes. It is no longer the essence of community, but the essence of difference. It has become the expression of man’s separation from his community, from himself and from other men – as it was originally. It is only the abstract avowal of specific perversity, private whimsy, and arbitrariness. The endless fragmentation of religion in North America, for example, gives it even externally the form of a purely individual affair. It has been thrust among the multitude of private interests and ejected from the community as such. But one should be under no illusion about the limits of political emancipation. The division of the human being into a public man and a private man, the displacement of religion from the state into civil society, this is not a stage of political emancipation but its completion; this emancipation, therefore, neither abolished the real religiousness of man, nor strives to do so.”

            The Marx-Engels Reader, second edition Ed. Robert C. Tucker (NY: W.W. Norton 1975) p. 325.

            If you are quoting Professor Duke and/or other alt-right scholars, please make reference to their specific works so it can be better understood where your ideas originate. Be sure and make a close read of the passage above. It will be rewarding. When you condemn Marx in the future, you’ll be able to say, you’ve actually read him.

          • The title of the Marx essay I quoted in my last e-mail is “On the Jewish Question” It was first published in 1843. Read the whole thing on the INTERNET.

  7. Religion always fears consciousness. Expanding the human mind is a threat to religion’s hold on thought. The Uelema (Muslim religious authorities) also condemn the use of hashisha, believing it draws a obscuring veil between Allah and his creatures. Odd though, considering that smoking weed resins has been part of Mideastern, and, South Asia life, for a couple millennium.
    There’ll never be a pro-pot Pope. Paco Dos’ liberalism doesn’t extend to marijuana use. Back at the close of the last century, J2P2 decried the habit with the same energy that he condemned Communism. The Cardinal is just being a good soldier of the Church.

    • Khalid: Are there any country with majority Muslim population where cannabis in any form is legal?

      • Henry:

        I don’t believe there are any Muslim majority nations that have legalized the use or propagation of marijuana, but, I’m not certain. Laws against weed smoking are selectively applied in Muslim nations. In Lebanon, hashisha and afiun farmers with political connections never get busted. It’s the same in Morocco. Despite the raging civil war, or, maybe, because of it, Syria has become a major producer. As far as ganga use goes, the crime isn’t so much in the doing, as it is, in the doing of it publicly. Setting a bad example is more damning than the original sin. There’s a saying in Arab culture, “The day is the day, and, the night is the night.”
        The American G can’t interfere in local matters without hurting the revenue streams of many US Mideast Allies. Morocco and Lebanon are particularly sensitive. All the legalization efforts in the US, and, Europe, have hurt the price of hashisha produced in the Bekaa and the Rif Mts. Morocco is a large country with a big economy that can handle problems in any single sector. Lebanon is not as lucky. As the price of hashisha falls, the temptation to grow afiun becomes greater. A dunum of afiun costs less to produce, and, garners far more than a hashisha crop, which, requires hefty preliminary investments in irrigation and fertilizer. The officials taking bribes to overlook everything don’t care where the money comes from.

        • Can hardly wait until Concord farmers are growing Catha (Qat) – if they aren’t already.

          • Can’t do it. Too north. Won’t grow.

            Anyway it’s really bad for your teeth, worse than beetle, coca, and, tobacco chaw. Your chiclets start dropping out about six months after you begin chewing it.