Anti-Catholicism is discrimination, hostility or prejudice directed at Catholics or the Roman Catholic Church.
The term also applies to the religious persecution of Roman Catholics.
In the early Modern period, the Roman Catholic Church struggled to maintain its role in
the face of rising secular power in Europe. As a result of these struggles, there arose a hostile attitude towards the power of
the Pope and the Roman Catholic clergy[citation needed]. This hostility is referred to as "anti-clericalism". To this was added the epochal crisis over its spiritual authority represented by the
Protestant Reformation giving rise to sectarian conflict. In contemporary times anti-Catholicism has assumed various forms, including persecution
of Catholics as religious minorities, assaults by governments upon Catholic faithful, discrimination, and virulent attacks on
clergy and laity.
Origins
Protestant countries
Beginning with Martin Luther Protestants attacked the Pope as representing the power of
the Anti-Christ and the Roman Catholic Church as the Whore
of Babylon prophesised in the Book of Revelations. The identification of the
Papacy as the Anti-Christ was an article of faith for many Protestant denominations:
- Westminster Confession of Faith:
- 25.6. There is no other head of the Church but the Lord Jesus Christ: nor can the Pope of Rome in any sense be head
thereof; but is that Antichrist, that man of sin and son of perdition, that exalts himself in the Church against Christ, and all
that is called God.
- The London Baptist Confession of 1689:
- 26.4. The Lord Jesus Christ is the Head of the church, in whom, by the appointment of the Father, all power for the
calling, institution, order or government of the church, is invested in a supreme and sovereign manner; neither can the Pope of
Rome in any sense be head thereof, but is that antichrist, that man of sin, and son of perdition, that exalteth himself in the
church against Christ.
England
-
Anti-Catholicism in England has its origins with the English Reformation under
Henry VIII. The Act of Supremacy of
1534 declared the English crown to be 'the only supreme head on earth of the
Church in England' in place of the Pope. Any act of allegiance to the latter was considered
treason. It was under this act that saints Thomas More and John Fisher were executed.
Although the Act of Supremacy was repealed in 1554 by Henry's daughter, Queen Mary
I, who was a staunch Roman Catholic, it was reenacted in 1559 under Elizabeth
I.
Anyone who took public or church office was forced to take the Oath of Supremacy,
and there were penalties for violating that oath. Attendance at Anglican services was also made obligatory. Those that refused
were fined as recusants.
In the time of Elizabeth I, the persecution of the Protestants during the reign of her half-sister Queen Mary I was used as anti-Catholic propaganda in the hugely influential Foxe's Book of Martyrs. The Convocation of the English Church ordered in 1571 that copies of the
"Book of Martyrs" should be kept for public inspection in all cathedrals and in the houses of church dignitaries. The book was
also exposed in many parish churches alongside the Holy Bible. The passionate intensity of the style and the vivid and
picturesque dialogues made it very popular among Puritan and Low Church families down to the nineteenth century. The
fantastically partisan church history of the earlier portion of the book, with its grotesque stories of popes and monks
contributed much to anti-Catholic prejudices in England as did the story of the sufferings of those Protestants burnt at the
stake by Mary and the notorious Bishop Bonner.
In 1570, Pope Pius V sought to depose Elizabeth with the papal bull Regnans in Excelsis, which declared her a
heretic and purported to release her Roman Catholic subjects from allegiance to her. This rendered Elizabeth's subjects who
persisted in allegiance to the Roman Catholic Church politically suspect.
The failed invasion of England by the Spanish Armada has been cited as an attempt by
Philip II of Spain to put into effect the Pope's decree, and to enforce a claim to
the throne of England he held as a result of being the widower of Mary I of
England.
Elizabeth's persecution of Roman Catholic Jesuit missionaries led to many executions at Tyburn. Those priests who
suffered there are accounted martyrs by the Roman Catholic church; and, more recently, a convent
has been established nearby to pray for their souls.
Later episodes that deepened anti-Catholicism in England include the Gunpowder Plot,
in which Guy Fawkes and other Roman Catholic conspirators attempted to blow up the English
Parliament while it was in session. The Great Fire of London in 1666 was blamed on
the Roman Catholics and an inscription ascribing it to 'Popish frenzy' was engraved on the Monument to the Great Fire of London, which marked the location where the fire
started (this inscription was only removed in 1831). Later, the "Popish Plot" involving
Titus Oates further exacerbated Anglican-Roman Catholic relations.
The beliefs that underlie the sort of strong anti-Catholicism once seen in the United
Kingdom were summarized by William Blackstone in his Commentaries on the Laws of England:
- As to papists, what has been said of the Protestant dissenters would hold equally strong for a general toleration of them;
provided their separation was founded only upon difference of opinion in religion, and their principles did not also extend to a
subversion of the civil government. If once they could be brought to renounce the supremacy of the pope, they might quietly enjoy
their seven sacraments, their purgatory, and auricular confession; their worship of relics and images; nay even their
transubstantiation. But while they acknowledge a foreign power, superior to the sovereignty of the kingdom, they cannot complain
if the laws of that kingdom will not treat them upon the footing of good subjects.
- — Bl. Comm. IV, c.4 ss. iii.2, p. *54
The gravamen of this charge, then, is that Roman Catholics constitute an imperium
in imperio, a sort of fifth column of persons who owe a greater allegiance to
the Pope than they do to the civil government, a charge very similar to that repeatedly leveled against Jews. Accordingly, a large body of British laws, collectively known as the penal
laws, imposed various civil disabilities and legal penalties on recusant Roman
Catholics. These laws were gradually repealed over the course of the nineteenth century with laws such as the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829.
In spite of the Emancipation Act, however, anti-Catholic feeling continued throughout the nineteenth century, primarily as a
response to the influx of Irish immigrants into England during the Great Famine.
The re-establishment of the Roman Catholic ecclesiastical hierarchy in 1850 created a frenzy of anti-Catholic feeling, whipped
up by the newspapers. An effigy of Cardinal Wiseman, the new head of the Catholic
ecclesiastical hierarchy in England, was paraded through the streets and burnt at Bethnal
Green and graffiti proclaiming 'No popery!' was chalked up on walls[1]
Even now, however, a member of the British Royal Family automatically gives up any chance of succeeding to the throne if he or
she joins the Roman Catholic Church or marries a Roman Catholic.[2]
Ireland
-
Ireland's Roman Catholic majority has been subject to persecution from the time of the English Reformation under Henry VIII. This
persecution intensified when the Gaelic clan system was completely destroyed by
the governments of Elizabeth I and her successor, James I. Land was
reappropriated either by the conversion of native Anglo-Irish aristocrats or forceable seizure. Many Catholics were dispossessed
and their lands given to Protestant settlers from Britain, (however it should be noted that the first plantation in Ireland was a
Catholic plantation under Queen Mary I, for more see Plantations of Ireland).
In order to cement the power of the Protestant Ascendancy, political and
land-owning rights were denied to Ireland's Roman Catholics by law, following the English Glorious Revolution and consequent turbulence in Ireland. The Penal Laws, established first in the
1690s, assured Protestant control of political, economic and religious life. The Mass, ordination
and the mere presence of Catholic Bishops were all banned, although some did carry on secretly. Catholic schools were also
banned, as were all voting franchises. Violent persecution also resulted, leading to the torture and execution of many Catholics,
both clergy and laymen. Since then, many have been canonised and beatified by the Vatican, such as Saint Oliver Plunkett, Blessed Dermot O'Hurley, and Blessed
Margaret Ball.
Many of the Penal Laws were repealed in the 1830s, and Catholic Emancipation ensured political representation at Westminster.
However significant hostility remained, especially in the Northern portion of the country where the Catholic population was in a
minority. Anti-Catholic sentiment was a major theme in the history of post-1921 Northern Ireland (see Northern Ireland, Irish Independence, the
Troubles, the Peace Process)
Scotland
-
In the 16th century, the Scottish Reformation resulted in Scotland's conversion
to Calvinism through the Church of Scotland. The
revolution resulted in a powerful hatred of the Roman Church. However, High Anglicism came under intense persecution also after
Charles I attempted to reform the Church of Scotland. However, the attempted reforms caused
chaos as they were seen as being too Catholic- based heavily on sacraments and ritual.
Over the course of later medieval and early modern history violence against Catholics has broken out, often resulting in
deaths, such as the torture of Saint John Ogilvie and execution of a Jesuit priest.
In the last 150 years, Irish immigration to Scotland increased dramatically and at the beginning of the immigration period
Catholics were treated like second class citizens. However, as time has gone on Scotland has become much more open to other
religions and Catholics have seen the formation of separate schools which still receive council funding. The Orange Order has grown in numbers in recent times however it is attributed to the rivalry between
Rangers and Celtic football clubs as opposed to actual
hatred of Catholicism [3].
Cooperation between The Kirk and the Catholic Church in Scotland has grown greatly
in recent times as both churches are moving to eradicate sectarian violence from football and work together to fight poverty. The
Moderator of the Church of Scotland and Cardinal Patrick O'Brien both attended a
follow up to the G8 summit in May 2007.
Scotland is considered by some to be the historic Catholic heartland of the modern day United Kingdom. [4]
United States
Famous 1876 editorial cartoon by
Thomas Nast showing bishops as
crocodiles attacking public schools, with connivance of Irish Catholic politicians
John Highham described anti-Catholic bigotry as "the most luxuriant, tenacious tradition of paranoiac agitation in American
history".[5] The bigotry which was prominent in the
United Kingdom was exported to the United States.
Two types of anti-Catholic rhetoric existed in colonial society. The first, derived from the heritage of the Protestant
Reformation and the religious wars of the sixteenth century, consisted of the "Anti-Christ" and the "Whore of Babylon" variety
and dominated anti-Catholic thought until the late seventeenth century. The second was a more secular variety which focused on
the supposed intrigue of the Roman Catholics intent on extending medieval despotism worldwide.[6]
Historian Arthur Schlesinger Sr. called anti-Catholicism "the deepest-held
bias in the history of the American people."
The roots of American anti-Catholicism go back to the Reformation, whose ideas
about Rome and the papacy traveled to the New World with the earliest settlers. These settlers
were, of course, predominantly Protestant. A large part of American culture is a legacy of Great Britain, and an enormous part of
its religious culture a legacy of the English Reformation. Monsignor John Tracy Ellis, in his landmark book American Catholicism,
first published in 1956, wrote bluntly that a "universal anti-Catholic bias was brought to Jamestown in 1607 and vigorously
cultivated in all the thirteen colonies from Massachusetts to Georgia." Proscriptions against Catholics were
included in colonial charters and laws, and, as Monsignor Ellis noted wryly, nothing could bring together warring
Anglican ministers and Puritan divines faster than their
common hatred of the church of Rome. Such antipathy continued throughout the 18th century. Indeed, the virtual penal status of
the Catholics in the colonies made even the appointment of bishops unthinkable in the early years of the Republic.
John Jay in 1788 urged the New York legislature to require
officeholders to renounce foreign authorities "in all matters ecclesiastical as well as civil." [1].
Anti-Catholic animus in the United States reached a peak in the nineteenth century when the Protestant population became
alarmed by the influx of Roman Catholic immigrants. The resulting "nativist" movement, which achieved prominence in the 1840s,
was whipped into a frenzy of anti-Catholicism that led to mob violence, the burning of Roman Catholic property, and the killing
of Roman Catholics. This violence was fed by claims that Catholics were destroying the culture of the United States. Irish
Catholic immigrants were blamed for raising the taxes of the country as well as spreading violence and disease. The nativist
movement found expression in a national political movement called the Know-Nothing Party of
the 1850s, which (unsuccessfully) ran former president Millard Fillmore as its
presidential candidate in 1856. Similar sentiment was also manifested in the Ku Klux Klan.
The case of the murder of Father James Coyle, although also motivated by ethnic bigotry, was
a prime example of anti-Catholic violence in the US.
In 1834, lurid tales of sexual slavery and infanticide in convents prompted the burning of an Ursuline convent in Charlestown,
Mass., setting off nearly two decades of violence against Catholics. The resulting anti-Catholic riots (which included the
burning of churches), were largely centered in the major urban centers of the country and led to the creation of the nativist
Know-Nothing Party in 1854, whose platform included a straightforward condemnation of the Catholic Church.
By 1850 Catholics had become the country’s largest single religious denomination. And between 1860 and 1890 the population of
Catholics in the United States tripled through immigration; by the end of the decade it would reach seven million. This influx,
largely Irish and Italian, which would eventually bring increased political power for the Catholic Church and a greater cultural
presence, led at the same time to a growing fear of the Catholic "menace." The American Protective Association, for example,
formed in Iowa in 1887, sponsored popular countrywide tours of supposed ex-priests and "escaped" nuns, who concocted horrific
tales of mistreatment and abuse.
As the nineteenth century wore on animosity waned, Protestant Americans realized that Roman Catholics were not trying to seize
control of the government. Nonetheless, fears continued into the twentieth century that there was too much "Catholic influence"
on the government, and presidents who met with the pope were criticized.
By the beginning of the 20th century, approximately one-sixth of the population of the United States was Catholic.
Nevertheless, the powerful influence of groups like the Ku Klux Klan and other nativist organizations were typical of
still-potent anti-Catholic sentiments.
During the 20th century, suspicion of the political aims and agenda of the Roman Catholic Church have been revived several
times.
In 1928 the presidential candidacy of Al Smith was greeted with a fresh wave of
anti-Catholic hysteria that contributed to his defeat. (It was widely rumored at the time that with the election of Mr. Smith the
pope would take up residence in the White House and Protestants would find themselves stripped of their citizenship.)
In 1949, Paul Blanshard's book American Freedom and Catholic Power portrayed
the Roman Catholic Church as an anti-democratic force hostile to freedom of speech and
religion, eager to impose itself on the United States by boycott and subterfuge
As Charles R. Morris noted in his recent book American Catholic, the real mainstreaming of the church did not occur until the
1950’s and 1960’s, when educated Catholics—sons and daughters of immigrants—were finally assimilated into the larger culture.
Even so, John F. Kennedy was confronted during his 1960 presidential campaign with old anti-Catholic biases. He eventually
felt compelled to address explicitly concerns of his supposed "allegiance" to the Pope. Many Protestant leaders, such as Norman
Vincent Peale, publicly opposed the candidacy because of Kennedy’s religion. And after the election, survey research by political
scientists found that Kennedy had indeed lost votes because of his religion. Although most historians have argued that Kennedy's
election eliminated anti-Catholic bias as a major factor in American life, it should be noted that, while several Catholics have
been nominated for President, no Catholic has been elected President of the
United States since Kennedy in 1960.
Roman Catholic countries
Anti-clericalism is a historical movement that opposes religious (generally Catholic) institutional power and influence in all aspects of public and political life,
and the involvement of religion in the everyday life of the citizen. It suggests a more active and partisan role than mere
laïcité. The goal of anti-clericalism is sometimes to reduce religion to a purely private
belief-system with no public profile or influence. However, many times it has included outright suppression of all aspects of
faith.
Anti-clericalism has at times been violent, leading to murders and the desacration, destruction and seizure of church
property. Anti-clericalism in one form or another has existed through most of Christian history, and is considered to be one of
the major popular forces underlying the 16th century reformation. Some of the
philosophers of the Enlightenment, including Voltaire, continually attacked the Catholic Church, its leadership and priests claiming moral corruption of
many of its clergy. These assaults in part led to the suppression of the Jesuits, and
played a major part in the wholesale attacks on the very existence of the Church during the French Revolution in the Reign of Terror and the program of
dechristianization. Similar attacks on the
Church occurred in Mexico and in Spain in the
twentieth century.
France's Third Republic was cemented by
anti-clericalism, the desire to secularise the State and social life, faithful to the French
Revolution.[7] In the Affaire Des Fiches, in France in 1904-1905, it was discovered that the militantly anticlerical War Minister under Emile Combes, General
Louis André, was determining promotions based on the French Masonic Grand Orient's huge card index on public officials, detailing which were Catholic
and who attended Mass, with a view to preventing their promotions. [8]
Mexico's Cristero War of 1926-1929 stemmed from Plutarco Elías Calles's denial of priests rights and martyred many Saints of the Cristero War. Events relating to this were famously portrayed in the novel
The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene.
The persecution of Catholics was most severe in the state of Tabasco under the Governor Tomás Garrido Canabal. Under the rule of Garrido many priests were killed, all Churches in the
state were closed and priests were forced to marry or flee at risk of their lives.
François and Jean-Claude Duvalier's
family dictatorship of Haiti wanted to weaken or
control the Roman Catholic Church by bringing Vodou "openly into the political process", according
to Michel S. LaGuerre in Voodoo and Politics in Haiti.
Anti-clericalism in Spain at the start of the Spanish Civil War resulted in the
killing of almost 7,000 clergy, the destruction of hundreds of churches and the persecution of lay people in Spain's
Red Terror. Hundreds of Martyrs of
the Spanish Civil War have been beatified and hundreds more are scheduled for
beatification in October 2007.
Anti-Catholic and anti-clerical sentiments, some spurred by an anti-clerical conspiracy
theory which was ciruculating in Colombia during the mid-twentieth century led to persecution of Catholics and killings,
most specifically of the clergy, during the events known as La Violencia.
Poland
Catholicism in Poland, the religion of the vast majority of the population, was persecuted under the Communist regime from the
1950s. Current Stalinist ideology claimed the Church and religion in general was about to disintegrate. To begin with
Archbishop Wyszyński entered into an agreement with the Communist authorities,
which was signed on 14 February 1950 by the Polish episcopate
and the government. The Agreement regulated the matters of the Church in Poland. However in May of that year, the Sejm breached
the Agreement by passing a law for the confiscation of Church property.
On 12 January 1953, Wyszyński was elevated to the rank of
cardinal by Pius XII as another wave of persecution began in Poland. When the bishops voiced their opposition to state
interference in ecclesiastical appointments, mass trials and the internment of priests began - the cardinal being among the
number of its victims. On 25 September 1953 he was imprisoned
at Grudziądz, and later placed under house arrest in monasteries in Prudnik near Opole and in Komańcza in the Bieszczady
Mountains. He was not released until 26 October 1956.
Pope John Paul II, who was born in Poland as Karol Wojtyla, often cited the
persecution of Polish Catholics in his stance against Communism.
Anti-Catholicism in popular culture
Literature
Anti-Catholic stereotypes are a long-standing feature of Anglo-Saxon literary, sub-literary and even pornographic traditions.
Gothic fiction is particularly rich in this regard with the figure of the lustful priest,
the cruel abbess, the immured nun and the sadistic inquisitor appearing in such works as The Italian by Anne Radcliffe, The Monk by Matthew Lewis, Melmoth the Wanderer by Charles Maturin and
"The Pit and the Pendulum" by Edgar Allan
Poe. [9]
Such gothic fiction may have inspired Rebecca Reed's Six Months in a
Convent which describes her alleged captivity by an Ursuline order near Boston in 1832 [10] [11]Her
claims inspired an angry mob to burn down the convent, and her narrative, released three years later as the rioters were tried,
famously sold 200,000 copies in one month. In another bestselling fraudulent exposé, Awful Disclosures of the Hotel-Dieu
Nunnery, Maria Monk claimed that the convent served as a harem for Roman Catholic
priests, and that any resulting children were murdered after baptism. Col. William Stone, a New
York city newspaper editor, along with a team of Protestant investigators, made inquiry into the claims of Monk, inspecting the
convent in the process. Col. Stone's investigation concluded there was no evidence that Maria Monk "had ever been within the
walls of the cloister".
Reed's book became a best-seller, and Monk or her handlers hoped to cash in on the evident market for anti-Catholic horror
fiction by their offering. The tale of Maria Monk was, in fact, clearly modelled on the gothic novels that were popular in the
early 19th century, a literary genre that had already been used for anti-Catholic sentiments in works such as Matthew Lewis' The
Monk. Monk's story explores the genre-defining elements of a young, innocent woman being trapped in a remote, old, and gloomily
picturesque estate; she learns the dark secrets the place contains, and after harrowing adventures makes her escape. [12] [13]
The anti-Catholic Gothic tradition continued with Charlotte Bronte's
semi-autobiographical novel Villette (1853) which explores the culture clash
between the heroine Lucy’s English Protestantism and the Catholicism of her environment at her school in 'Villette' (aka
Brussels), Belgium, before coming to the magisterial pronouncement that 'God is not with
Rome'.
Pornography has been the vehicle for anti-Catholic sentiments from Denis Diderot's La Religieuse (1798), to
contemporary nunsploitation films.
In a chapter of Fyodor Dostoevsky's The
Brothers Karamazov called The Grand Inquisitor, the Church
convicts a resurrected Jesus Christ of heresy and is portrayed as a servant of Satan. (Interestingly the book is said to be
well-liked by Pope Benedict XVI, former head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, a successor office to the
Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Roman and Universal
Inquisition.)[citation needed] In Notes from
Underground the main character thinks about making the world a better place by eliminating or overthrowing the
Pope.
Dan Brown's best-selling novel The Da Vinci
Code depicts the Roman Catholic Church as determined to hide the truth about Jesus Christ. An article in an April 2004
issue of National Catholic Register maintains that the "The Da Vinci Code claims that Catholicism is a big, bloody,
woman-hating lie created out of pagan cloth by the manipulative Emperor of Rome". An earlier book by Brown Angels and Demons, depicts the Church as involved in an elemental battle with Freemasonry.
Cinema
The Spanish film director Luis Buñuel who was a fierce critic of what he perceived to be
the pretension and hypocrisy of the Roman Catholic Church. Many of his most (in)famous films demonstrate this:
Un chien andalou (1929): A man drags pianos, upon which are piled several priests,
among other things.
L'Âge d'or (1930): A bishop is thrown out a window, and in the final scene one of the
culprits of the 120 days of Sodom by Marquis de Sade is portrayed by an actor dressed in a way that he would be recognized as
Jesus.
Ensayo de un crimen (1955): A man dreams of murdering his wife while she's
praying in bed dressed all in white.
Simon of the Desert (1965): The devil tempts the saint by taking the form
of a naughty, bare-breasted little girl singing and showing off her legs. At the end of the film, the saint abandons his ascetic
life to hang out in a jazz club.
Nazarin (1959): The pious lead character wreaks ruin through his attempts at charity.
Viridiana (1961): A well-meaning young nun tries unsuccessfully to help the poor.
The Milky Way (1969): Two men travel the ancient pilgrimage road to Santiago de Compostela
and meet embodiments of various heresies along the way. One dreams of anarchists shooting the Pope.
Modern Anti-Catholic polemics
As well as standard Protestant polemics which likened Catholicism to the Anti-Christ and the Whore of Babylon other themes of
modern anti-Catholic controversialists included accusations of paganism, idolatry and conspiracy theories which accuse the church
of seeking world domination.
Standard Protestant polemics are represented by such writers as American evangelical author John Dowling, in his best-selling[citation needed] The History of Romanism. In this work he accused the Roman Catholic
church of being 'the bitterest foe of all true churches of Christ--that she possesses no claim to be called a Christian
church--but, with the long line of corrupt and wicked men who have worn her triple crown, that she is ANTI-CHRIST' (John Dowling,
The History of Romanism 2nd edition, 1852, pp. 646-47).
Original cover of Hislop's Anti-Catholic
The Two Babylons
Alexander Hislop's The Two Babylons
(1858) asserted that the Church originated from a Babylonian mystery religion and characterized its practices as pagan.
The renegade priest Charles Chiniquy's 50 Years In The Church of Rome and
The Priest, the Woman and the Confessional (1885) also depicted Roman Catholicism as pagan.
Avro Manhattan's books,Vatican Moscow Alliance (1982), The Vatican
Billions (1983), and The Vatican's Holocaust (1986) advance the view that the Church engineers wars for world
domination.
Hislop's and Chiniquy's nineteenth century polemics and Avro Manhattan's work form part of the basis of a series of
tracts by noted modern anti-Catholic and comic book evangelist Jack Chick who also accuses the papacy of supporting
Communism, of using the Jesuits to incite
revolutions, and of masterminding the Holocaust. According to Chick, the Catholic Church
is the "Whore of Babylon" referred to in the Book
of Revelation, and will bring about a Satanic New World Order before
it is destroyed by Jesus Christ. Chick claims that the Catholic church infiltrates and attempts to destroy or corrupt all other
religions and churches, and that it uses various means including seduction, framing, and murder to silence its critics. Drawing
on the ideas of Alberto Rivera, Chick also claims that the Catholic Church helped to
mould Islam as a tool to lure people away from Christianity in what he calls the Vatican Islam Conspiracy.
Richard Dawkins in his latest best-selling book The God Delusion (2006) asserts that a Catholic upbringing promotes guilt-trips referring (on page
167) to the "semi-permanent state of morbid guilt suffered by a Roman Catholic possessed of normal human frailty and less than
normal intelligence" . Discussing the consequences of clerical sexual abuse in Ireland, he further suggests that "horrible as
sexual abuse no doubt was, the damage was arguably less than the long-term psychological damage inflicted by bringing the child
up Catholic in the first place" (p317).
Anti-Catholic Satire and Humor
-
The Catholic church has been a target for satire and humor, from the time of the Reformation to the present day. Such satire
and humor ranges from mild burlesque to vicious attacks. Catholic clergy and lay organizations such as the Catholic League monitor for particularly offensive and derogatory incidences and voice their
objections and protests.
Sexuality
Accusations of deviant sexuality have provided a rich field for anti-Catholic polemicists since the time of the
Reformation.
Under Henry VIII lurid tales of sexual deviancy by monks and nuns were part of
the justification for the Dissolution of the Monasteries.
In the twentieth century the Nazi government denounced the Catholic Church as "awash with sex fiends" (the Nazi Churches
minister claimed 7,000 clergy had been convicted of sex crimes between 1933 and 1937 while "the true figure seems to have been
170, of whom many had left the religious life prior to their offences.")[14] These accusations were part of a campaign by some members of the Nazi
party, including Joseph Goebbels, to reduce the influence of the Roman Catholic
Church in Nazi Germany during the second half of the 1930s.[15]
Lately sexual abuse by representatives of the Catholic church has been highlighted in such films as The Magdalene Sisters (2002). However the veracity of the bestselling Kathy's Story by Kathy O'Beirne which details physical and sexual abuse
suffered in a Magdalene laundry in Ireland has been questioned in a new book entitled
Kathy's Real Story by Hermann Kelly. In this book it is alleged that false allegations against the priesthood are being
fueled by a government compensation scheme for victims [2].
Philip Jenkins, an Episcopalian and Professor of History and Religious Studies at Penn State University, published the
1996 book Pedophiles and Priests: Anatomy of a Contemporary Crisis in which he claims that
the Catholic Church is being unfairly singled out by a secular media which he claims fails to highlight similar sexual scandals
in other religious groups, such as the Anglican Communion, various Protestant churches, and the Jewish and Islamic communities. He also claims that the Catholic Church may have a lower incidence of molesting
priests than Churches that allow married clergy because statistically child molestation generally occurs within families but
Catholic priests do not have families. He also claims that the term "pedophile priests" widely used in the media, implies a
distinctly higher rate of child molesters within the Roman Catholic priesthood when in reality the incidence is lower than most
other segments of society".[16]
The Charol Shakeshaft report, commisioned by the US Department of
Education in 2002, contends that "the physical sexual abuse of students in schools is likely more than 100 times the abuse
by priests."[17]
Anti-Catholicism today
United States
Philip Jenkins, an Episcopalian historian, in The New Anti-Catholicism: The Last
Acceptable Prejudice (Oxford University Press 2005 ISBN 0-19-515480-0) maintains that some people who otherwise avoid
offending members of racial, religious, ethnic or gender groups have no reservations about venting their hatred of Catholics.
Earlier in the twentieth century, Harvard professor Arthur M. Schlesinger,
Sr. characterized prejudice against the Catholics as "the deepest bias in the history of the American people"[18] and Yale professor Peter
Viereck once commented that "Catholic baiting is the anti-Semitism of the liberals." [19]
A May 12, 2006, Gallup
states that 30% of Americans have an unfavourable view of the Roman Catholic faith with 57% having a favourable view. This is a
higher unfavourability rate than in 2000, but considerably better than in 2002. While Protestants and Roman Catholics themselves
had a majority with a favourable v
