America's dark and not-very-distant history of hating Catholics
Progressives and conservatives are in a rare unity welcoming Pope Francis to the US, but anti-Catholicism was rampant before John F Kennedy was president.
The anti-Catholic Native Americans, as they called themselves, provoked a series of riots in Philadelphia in 1844. Photograph: Corbis
Congress and the United Nations rolling out their red carpets, nuns working overtime to bake communion hosts, prison inmates carving a walnut throne , tickets for events snapped up in seconds: America is gearing up for pope-mania.
Pope Francis is expected to be greeted with huge crowds and across-the-board reverence when he tours Washington, New York and Philadelphia during his first visit as pontiff to the United States.
The rapture, however, will not change the awkward and largely forgotten fact that for centuries the US discriminated against Catholics.
The land of immigrants enshrined freedom of religion in the constitution yet spent much of its history despising, harassing and marginalising Catholics.
From the first Puritan settlers to televangelists, leading political, business and religious figures lambasted followers of Rome as theological abominations and traitorous fifth columnists.
When you look back at the true, hidden history of the United States this strand of anti-Catholicism is very powerful, said Kenneth Davis, a prominent historian and commentator .
We want to show this patriotic view that we were this melting pot of religious freedom. Nonsense. People wanted their own religious freedom, not freedom for others. There was a very, very deep hatred of Catholics.
Thomas Nasts anti-Catholic cartoon in Harpers Weekly in 1875. It depicts Roman catholic bishops as crocodiles attacking public schools, with the connivance of Irish catholic politicians. Photograph: Public Domain
Discrimination dwindled in the 20th century, especially after John F Kennedy became the first Catholic president, bequeathing a sort of amnesia, said Davis. Its really astonishing how it has been swept under the rug. Its as if with JFK all the past is forgiven.
That history will seem distant indeed if, as expected, progressives and conservatives seek to co-opt the Pope, the former cheering his denunciations of poverty, inequality and climate change , the latter his espousal of family values .
The political establishment no longer frets about the religion. Joe Biden, the vice-president, is Catholic, as are three Republican presidential candidates: Jeb Bush, Rick Santorum and Bobby Jindal.
Yet historians agree discrimination once thrived. The deepest bias in the history of the American people, according to Arthur Schlesinger. The most luxuriant, tenacious tradition of paranoiac agitation in American history, said John Higham .
Catholics got in an early bit of sectarian homicide in 1556 when Spanish forces slaughtered a colony of French Huguenot Protestants in what is now Florida.
When Pilgrims and Puritans settled in New England half a century later they brought fresh venom from Europes religious conflicts, including the idea that the Pope was the anti-Christ and the whore of Babylon.
At first banned from the colonies, papists were grudgingly allowed entry but with severe civic restrictions, including exclusion from political power. Jews and Quakers also suffered discrimination but were seen as a lesser threat.
Justice Hugo Black surrounded by press in Norfolk, Virginia. Photograph: New York Daily News/NY Daily News via Getty Images
The establishment of a secular republic which separated church and state did not end prejudice.
Lurid myths about Catholic sexual slavery and infanticide spread through pamphlets and books such as Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk , an 1834 supposed memoir about a Canadian convent.
Demagogues in the nativist movement incited fury and fear about the huge numbers of impoverished German and Irish Catholic immigrants, many barely speaking English, who spilled off ships.
Newspapers and Protestant clergymen, including Lyman Beecher, co-founder of the American Temperance Society, swelled the outcry, warning the influx would take jobs, spread disease and crime and plot a coup to install the Pope in power.
In 1844 mobs burnt Catholic churches and hunted down victims, notably in Philadelphia where, coincidentally or not, Francis will wrap up his week-long visit.
Abuse from Protestant officers partly drove hundreds of Irish soldiers to defect from the US army to the Mexican side before and during the 1846-48 war with Mexico. The deserters obtained revenge, for a while, by forming the San Patricio battalion and targeting their former superiors in battle, only to wind up jailed, branded and hanged after Mexico surrendered.
The growth of the Ku Klux Klan in the early 20th century gave a new impetus to attacks mostly verbal on Catholics. Hugo Black, a KKK member and US senator, gave fiery anti-Catholic speeches before going on to become a defender of civil liberties on the supreme court bench.
Writers and intellectuals had no hesitation bashing the Catholic church. Mark Twain noted he was educated to enmity toward everything that is Catholic.
The burgeoning power of Irish and other immigrant Catholic communities paved Al Smiths election as governor of New York but Lutheran and Baptist opposition helped sink his presidential bid in 1928.
Catholicism remained an obstacle to Kennedys White House run in 1960. Photograph: Sipa Press/Rex Shutterstock
Hostility gradually dwindled, especially during the collective bonding of the second world war, but remained an obstacle to Kennedys White House run in 1960. He tried to neutralise the issue, telling a group of Protestant ministers: I am not the Catholic candidate for president. I am the Democratic partys candidate for president who also happens to be a Catholic. I do not speak for my Church on public matters and the Church does not speak for me.
Kennedys victory, and the Catholic churchs alliance decades later with Protestant evangelicals on social issues, completed the integration into mainstream public life.
Common ground with evangelicals on abortion and same-sex marriage paved the way for Bush, Jindal and Santorum to court a constituency which once would have reviled them. They seem to have forgotten this deep, ugly past that they have, said Davis, the historian.
Sex abuse scandals have in recent years shined a harsh and legitimate spotlight on the church. And the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights , an advocacy group, claims Catholic bashing is a staple of US society. But Davis thinks discrimination is in the past. Its now largely a non-issue.
If some religious fanatics greet Francis with posters calling him the anti-Christ and Babylons whore they will be on the fringe of the fringe. The US, no longer fearful of a papist coup, seems close to a rare unity in wanting to welcome the Pope.
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If I had depended on just what was taught in the elementary and high school I would have never learned of the oppression of the Catholics throughout most of American's history. However, being born and raised Catholic I used to hear stories from my grandfather about the anti-Catholic hate that used to happen. Like many dark parts of our history, it's not generally taught in the average school. These days it seems far away, except that most White Supremacist groups have Catholics on their list of people they hate and want out of "their" country.
BTW. I love how the early haters of Catholics called themselves "Native Americans". Apparently the irony was lost on them.
I think you are right and I also think that Catholicism was the driving force of the initial hatred of the Irish in America. It scared Protestant Americans (some anyway) to the point where they joined the KKK by the hundreds of thousands. At the time the Klan appeal was toward keeping anyone but other Protestants out of the country. The Klan convinced the that if they didn't stop them, then America would become a Catholic nation, answering to the Pope.
Let us simplify. This article does it well. History is not important. Any jumble of gibberish will suffice.
It is true that gay priests have caused a lot of problems for the Church.
The majority of victims were adolescent boys. Not pre-pubescent boys. And of course the perps were male priests.
So would there be a homosexual connection here?
Of course. Somehow avoided. As you avoid it, somehow noticing that there were Catholics involved, but missing the the sexual orientation, in your analysis.
But you do illustrate something else. That there are lots of ways to bash Catholics, and some don't miss an opportunity. They are not here to illuminate. In your case, you just adjust your usual religion hate to fit the topic.
It's true, there are many, many ways to bash Catholics. Unfortunately for them, all those ways are completely legitimate.
Does any of that change the fact that the majority of offenses were committed against adolescent males by gay priests?
In fact, an adolescent male, 13-17, is ONLY separated out and called a "child" using the LEGAL definition... age of consent.
The attraction, however, is not subject to legal definitions in order to be clearly of a homosexual nature.
What you are doing is demonstrating an anti-Catholic bias, where it is ok for you (and many others) to focus on the fact that the gay priests are Catholic, but not ok to notice or say that the gay priests are gay.
It's kind of funny as a response to an article which tries to find (and fails to demonstrate) commonality over 500 years, in "Catholic bashing."
Your opportunistic attempt has nothing to do with the reasons that Puritans were wary of Papists, for example. Just as their issues/ problems would not be the same as those caused by large influxes of immigrants which would be more about numbers, jobs, wages, and culture, than about religion.
Your comment was integral, in that the article really does not demonstrate what it tries to demonstrate, that being commonality in five hundred years of Catholic bashing. It it just more sloppy pseudo-history, working against rather than for comprehension. So your comments actually fit, demonstrating my complaint. NOT related, just as there really isn't any relationship between other incidents of anti-Catholic at various time in American history.
Any person actually interested in history should denounce such articles. They are similar to the ones here on NT which claim to "teach" about the history of Indians in America.
I have been very clear, and repeatedly, about the difference between adolescent male victims, and referring to those, and not to prepubescent boys.
This country was founded on Protestants like Puritans, Calvinist, Quakers, who were escaping religious persecution, not Catholics. They became the establishment here. It was so bad to be a Catholic here during that period, that as a favor to Lord Baltimore, that Maryland was established as a Catholic colony.
I think some of you need to learn your American History.
I believe the majority of the cases of the 5000 or so instances where sexual misconduct was alleged against priests toward minors represented priests with boys over the age of 11 and did not involve "intercourse" , and thus not "rape". The majority of the cases were "consensual" rather than by force, although obviously children cannot give consent to sex.
Sexual abuse against children by catholic priests is/was a drop in the bucket of the total amount of child sexual abuse in the United States . There are more instances of child sexual abuse in one large state , in one year, than there was by Catholic priests throughout the country over the course of 50 years.
Child sexual abuse is the result of access to children by (mostly men) people who have the inclination to molest children. It could be teachers, coaches, clergy, camp instructors, scout leaders, janitors, or brothers fathers, uncles or cousins. 1 in 10 men are supposedly attracted to children sexually, although obviously many never act on it.
In the Church, young boys were readily available, so the pedophiles who were attracted to young boys gravitated toward the Priesthood. A predator goes where his prey is. I doubt that any of the Priests involved could have even performed homosexual acts with an adult gay man. If the Church had had a centuries old tradition of alter girls, instead of alter boys, then the the small number of Pedophile Priests in the Church would have tended to be Pedophiles who are attracted to young girls, instead of boys.
What in the world does that mean ?
Don't worry yourself about it . It's only history ...
Petey please don't inflict your abysmal ignorance into this discussion.
Does any of that change the fact that the majority of offenses were committed against adolescent males by gay priests?
But the Priests were not Gay. They were pedophiles who were attracted to young boys, even young teen boys. Institutions such as the Priesthood (or minister or Scoutmaster) is attractive to a pedophile who is turned on by young boys simply because he would have greater access to them. Plus, until a couple of decades ago, a Priest was one of the most respected men in a community or neighborhood, even by non-Catholics. The same could be said of many professions or of volunteering of pedophiles that might bring them in closer to young boys such as in boys sports or Scouting or gym classes for instance.
The Priests who were exposed by the sex scandals of several types of faiths and the Boy Scouts over the past few years and who molested young boys were not and are not Gay. They were pedophiles attracted to young boys. I doubt if they could even become aroused in an adult Gay relationship, simply because they are not turned on by men. Gay men are turned on by men and not young boys.
Now it is probably true that there are some Priests who are Gay (though celibate), but they are not child molesters. There were no, none, zero Gay Priests, Gay ministers or or Gay Scoutmasters caught up in the scandals in many churches or Boy Scouts. Only pedophiles.
As I said in the different post, if the Catholic Church had a long, long history of using girls for Alter Servers, instead of boys, then the pedophiles who would be attracted to the Priesthood, would be pedophiles who are turned on by young girls and I would venture to say that pedophiles who like young girls would have a very difficult time in a heterosexual relationship with an adult woman.
So would there be a homosexual connection here?
No.
What percentage of the priests were gay is not really that material, although there is no doubt that some if not most of those that molested boys were.
There is some truth to the claim that boys were more available to priest predators. In those days the kids who assist the priest on the altar were all boys, hence "altar boys". Today both boys and girls play this role. Priests would also be teachers at all boys high schools, but probably not at all girls high schools. Parish priests also do counseling to teens and do some organizing and supervision of teen activities within the parish, which would involve both boys and girls.
About 4% of priests were accused of some child sexual misconduct, although all of those were not shown to be guilty. This is not any higher of a figure than the percentage of the general public that is believed to be potential child molesters.
I'm sure both John & Robert didn't feel forgiven. Murder has a way of sending such messages.
The Jews are subtle fighters and are a resilient people, throughout the millennia. Quakers founded Pennsylvania and the original capital. Eventually, they relinquished power to secular interests.
Possibly a reflection of the qualities of the man, John Paul II was likable too.
America loves to hate, until you fly planes into NY high-rises, then our unity skyrockets and the ethnic hatred shifts. The mantra becomes U..S..A! .. U..S..A! .. U..S..A! .. U..S..A! ..
"abysmal ignorance"
Yes , you do have that . Thanks for making that unnecessarily clear
I'm really not convinced of this at all. The two behaviors are disconnected. I dated a social worker for several years a while back. She had much direct experience with pedophiles through her job. She would never have agreed with the assertion that pedophilia and homosexuality are intertwined. It's possible to be both, but it certainly is not the rule.
And regardless of what the average percentage is of those adults who are in a position to molest kids and do, when your occupation is religion, you shouldn't be allowed to be guaged by secular community statistics. You saught out an occupation that is defined by higher morality. There couldn't be a bigger conflict of interest. The thought of it sickens me even more than a cop doing the same thing.
''What percentage of the priests were gay is not really that material, although there is no doubt that some if not most of those that molested boys were.''
That's a crock of BS LGL....
I am convinced that, as the father of one Gay man and step-father of another, that there really no kind of connection between the two. Gay men like other men, not children or young teens. A pedophile is as different from being a Gay man as night and day, no matter what the gender of the child.
A male attracted to a 16 year old male might indicate being gay.
I don't think that is true. Well, you could say that it would involve domination. But it is not defined by domination. You should know that some people are sexually attracted to children. Wired that way.
According to my reading, "pedophilia" involves prepubescent children. A large parcentage of victims in the RCC were older- past puberty.
Right.
Points not to be missed...
You accept without question all allegations about the RCC in child abuse, as a failure of Catholicism. An article about anti-Catholic bias ... this might be noted as an example, and the example noted as not common to other examples of that bias in history.
You accept NOTHING where allegations of homosexual influences are proposed in those cases.
That there is no demand for logic, rationality, or facts for priests, but absolute proof demanded if "gay" is mentioned, should be a clue here.
Right.
100% correct. Only pedophiles. By definition pedophiles are attracted to young boys and/or girls. Some of them are attracted to young boys and some of them are attracted to young girls. Some both or no preference. All adults who are attracted to children or young teens are pedophiles and the genders of the people who are attracted to children and the genders of the children or young teens they are attracted to is meaningless.
There are no more gay pedophiles then there are straight pedophiles, which is to say none. Neither exists. Men who are attracted to women are Heterosexual (or straight) in the same way that men who are attracted to men are Gay or in the case of females attracted to other females, Lesbians. Some men and women are attracted to both men and women and they are Bi-sexual. However none of them are pedophiles and no pedophile is Gay or Straight or Bi-sexual, no matter the gender they are or the gender of the children or young teens they are attracted to.
For instance. I am a straight man, which means that I am sexually attracted to women and women only. If I were attracted to men, then I would be Gay (my son is Gay and so is his husband
). If I were attracted to men and women, then I would be Bi-sexual. However, if I was sexually attracted to children or young teens, then I would be a pedophile, no matter the gender of the children or young teens that I was attracted to.
See how easy it is?