Anti-Catholicism in the United States dates back to the colonial history of the U.S. Anti-Catholic attitudes were first brought to the Thirteen Colonies of British North America by Protestant settlers from Europe during the British colonization of the Americas. Two types of anti-Catholic rhetoric existed in colonial society and they continued to exist during the following centuries. The first type, derived from the theological heritage of the Protestant Reformation and the European wars of religion (16th–18th century), consisted of the biblical Anti-Christ and the Whore of Babylon variety and it dominated anti-Catholic thought until the late 17th century. The second type was a variety which was partially derived from xenophobic, ethnocentric, nativist, and racist sentiments and distrust of increasing waves of Catholic immigrants, particularly immigrants from Ireland, Italy, Poland, Germany, Austria and Mexico. It usually focused on the pope's control of bishops, priests, and deacons.Joseph G. Mannard. "American Anti-Catholicism and its Literature' Ex Libris vol 4, No. 1 (1981). Pp. 1-9 online
Historians have studied the motivations for American anti-Catholicism. The historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Sr. characterized prejudice against Catholics as "the deepest bias in the history of the American people.", quoting John Higham described anti-Catholicism as "the most luxuriant, tenacious tradition of paranoiac agitation in American history". Joseph G. Mannard says that wars reduced anti-Catholicism: "enough Catholics supported the War for Independence to erase many old myths about the inherently treasonable nature of Catholicism. ... During the Civil War, the heavy enlistments of Irish and Germans into the Union Army helped to dispel notions of immigrant and Catholic disloyalty."Mannard, 1981.
During the 1970s and 1980s, the historic tensions between Evangelical Protestants and Catholics in the United States began to fade. In politics, conservative Catholics and Evangelical Protestants joined forces with the Republican Party and formed the Christian right in order to advocate conservative positions on social and cultural issues, such as opposition to gay marriage and abortion. In 2000, almost half of the members of the Republican coalition were Catholic and a large majority of the Republican coalition's non-Catholic members were White Evangelicals.William M. Shea, The Lion and the Lamb: Evangelicals and Catholics in America (Oxford University Press, 2004)
Origins
American anti-Catholicism was originally derived from the theological heritage of the Protestant Reformation and the European wars of religion (16th–18th century). Because the Reformation was based on an effort to correct what was perceived as the errors and excesses of the Catholic Church, its proponents formed strong positions against the Roman clerical hierarchy in general and the Papacy in particular. These positions were held by most Protestant spokesmen in the Thirteen Colonies, including those from Calvinist, Anglican, and Lutheran traditions. Furthermore, English, Scottish, and Scots-Irish identity to a large extent was based on the opposition to Catholicism. "To be English was to be anti-Catholic", writes Robert Curran.Robert Emmett Curran, Papist Devils: Catholics in British America, 1574–1783 (2014), pp. 201-2.
Many of the English colonists who settled in North America during the 17th and 18th centuries, such as the Puritans and Congregationalists, had themselves fled Europe due to religious persecution by the Church of England, whose doctrines and modes of worship they believed to be firmly rooted in Roman Catholicism. Because of this, much of early American religious culture exhibited the more extreme anti-Catholic bias of these Protestant denominations. John Tracy Ellis wrote that a "universal anti-Catholic bias was brought to Jamestown in 1607 and vigorously cultivated in all the thirteen colonies from Massachusetts to Georgia." Colonial charters and laws contained specific proscriptions against Roman Catholics having any political power. Ellis noted that a common hatred of the Roman Catholic Church could bring together Anglican and Puritan clergy and laity despite their many other disagreements.
In 1642, the English colony of Virginia enacted a law prohibiting the entry of Catholic settlers. Five years later, a similar statute was enacted by the Massachusetts Bay Colony. In 1649, the Act of Toleration was passed in the Province of Maryland, where "blasphemy and the calling of opprobrious religious names" became punishable offenses, but it was repealed in 1654 and thus Catholics were outlawed once again. By 1692, formerly Catholic Maryland overthrew its government, established the Church of England by law, and forced Catholics to pay heavy taxes towards it. They were cut off from all participation in politics and additional laws were introduced that outlawed the Mass, the church's sacraments, and Catholic schools.
Following the passage of the Quebec Act which granted Catholic emancipation and freedom of religion to Catholics in Quebec at the start of the American Revolutionary War, New Yorkers were angry about it, as they feared it would spread Catholicism around British North America, particularly in the Anglican colonies. The Act was termed one of the Intolerable Acts which sparked the American Revolution. American Patriot organizations, as a result, designed the George Rex Flag as a symbol of protest against the act and Catholicism. After the Battle of Lexington, people such as Isaac Low made claims that the King had violated his oath by allowing Catholicism in Quebec.
John Adams attended Vespers on a Sunday afternoon at a Catholic church in Philadelphia one day in 1774. He praised the sermon for teaching civic duty, and enjoyed the music, but ridiculed the rituals engaged in by the parishioners. In 1788, John Jay urged the New York Legislature to require office-holders to renounce the pope and foreign authorities "in all matters ecclesiastical as well as civil," which included both the Catholic and the Anglican churches.Annotation
Once the American Revolution was underway and independence was at hand, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Maryland passed acts of religious toleration in 1776. George Washington, as commander of the army and as president, was a vigorous promoter of tolerance for all religious denominations. He believed religion was an important support for public order, morality and virtue. He often attended services of different denominations. He suppressed anti-Catholic celebrations in the Army.Paul F. Boller, "George Washington and Religious Liberty." William and Mary Quarterly (1960): 486-506. in JSTOR
The Patriots' reliance on Catholic France for military, financial, and diplomatic aid led to a sharp drop in the amount of anti-Catholic rhetoric. Indeed, George III replaced the Pope as the "demon" Patriots fought against. Anti-Catholicism remained strong among Loyalists, some of whom went to Canada after the war while 80% remained in the new nation. By the 1780s, Catholics were extended legal toleration in all of the New England states that previously had been so hostile, and the anti-Catholic tradition of Pope Night was discontinued. "In the midst of war and crisis, New Englanders gave up not only their allegiance to Britain but one of their most dearly held prejudices."Francis Cogliano, No King, No Popery: Anti-Catholicism in Revolutionary New England (1995) pp 154-55, quote p 155.. online
19th century
In 1836, Maria Monk's Awful Disclosures of the Hotel Dieu Nunnery in Montreal was published. It was a great commercial success and it is still being circulated today by such publishers as Jack Chick. It was discovered to be a fabrication shortly after the publication of it.Ray Allen Billington, "Maria Monk and her influence." Catholic Historical Review (1936): 283-296. in JSTOR It was the most prominent of many such pamphlets. Numerous ex-priests and ex-nuns were on the anti-Catholic lecture circuit with lurid tales, always involving heterosexual contacts of adults—priests and nuns with dead babies buried in the basement.Marie Anne Pagliarini, "The pure American woman and the wicked Catholic priest: An analysis of anti-Catholic literature in antebellum America." Religion and American Culture (1999): 97-128. in JSTOR
Immigration Anti-Catholicism reached a peak in the mid nineteenth century when Protestant leaders became alarmed by the heavy influx of Catholic immigrants from Ireland and Germany. Some Protestant ministers said that the Catholic Church was the Whore of Babylon who is mentioned in the Book of Revelation.
During the 1700s and 1800s, many states in the United States allowed male non-citizens to vote. Anti-Irish Catholic sentiment and anti-German Catholic sentiment following the War of 1812 and intensifying again in the 1840s lead many states, particularly in the Northeast, to amend their constitutions to prohibit non-citizens from voting. States that banned non-citizen voting during this time included New Hampshire in 1814, Virginia in 1818, Connecticut in 1819, New Jersey in 1820, Massachusetts in 1822, Vermont in 1828, Pennsylvania in 1838, Delaware in 1831, Tennessee in 1834, Rhode Island in 1842, Illinois in 1848, Ohio and Maryland in 1851, and North Carolina in 1856.
Nativism
In the 1830s and 1840s, prominent Protestant leaders, such as Lyman Beecher and Horace Bushnell, attacked the Catholic Church, not just by accusing it of being theologically unsound, they also accused it of being an enemy of the nation's republicanism. Some scholars view the rhetoric of Beecher and Bushnell as having contributed to anti-Irish and anti-Catholic attitudes.
Beecher's well-known Plea for the West (1835) urged Protestants to exclude Catholics from western settlements. The Catholic Church's official silence on the subject of slavery also garnered the enmity of northern Protestants. Intolerance became more than an attitude on August 11, 1834, when a mob set fire to an Ursuline convent in Charlestown, Massachusetts.
The resulting "nativist" movement, which acquired prominence in the 1840s, was whipped into a frenzy of anti-Catholicism which led to mob violence, the burning of Catholic property, and the killing of Catholics. This violence was fed by claims that Catholics were destroying the culture of the United States. Irish Catholic immigrants were blamed for spreading violence and drunkenness. The nativist movement found its voice in the Know-Nothing Party of the mid-1850s, a short-lived national political movement which (unsuccessfully) ran former president Millard Fillmore as its presidential candidate in 1856.
Nativist, anti-Catholic movements continued with the American Protective Association of the 1890s. This movement began in 1887, in Clinton, Iowa, to discuss the recent electoral defeat of incumbent mayor Arnold Walliker, blamed on the organized efforts of Roman Catholics in the local organized labor movement.Donald L. Kinzer, An Episode in Anti-Catholicism: The American Protective Association. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1964; pp. 36-37. The Association denounced various politicians as Catholic-"controlled", and claimed credit for aiding Republican electoral victories of the period.
Public funding of parochial schools
Catholic schools began in the United States as a matter of religious and ethnic pride and as a way to insulate Catholic youth from the influence of Protestant teachers and contact with non-Catholic students.James W. Sanders, The Education of an Urban Minority (1977), pp. 21, 37–8.
In 1869 the religious issue in New York City escalated when Tammany Hall, with its large Catholic base, sought and obtained $1.5 million in state money for Catholic schools. Thomas Nast's cartoon The American River Ganges (above) shows Catholic bishops, directed by the Vatican, as crocodiles attacking American schoolchildren.