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Anti-Catholicism is religious or political opposition to the Roman Catholic Church, generally of a kind employing mischaracterizations, stereotypes and negative prejudices.
Religious anti-Catholicism
Traditional anti-Catholicism (which originated during the Reformation) is promoted by Protestant Fundamentalists such as Ian Paisley and Jack Chick, while the new secular anti-Catholicism is generally promoted by secular organisations.
According to a report by the Catholic League, the Internet has many anti-Catholic websites. Traditional anti-Catholic works include Charles Chiniquy's 50 Years In The Church of Rome and The Priest,the Woman and the Confessional in which he accuses Catholicism of being pagan. Such sentiments are common among some Protestant fundamentalist Christians, denying as they do that the Catholic Church is a Christian church. Proponents often reference Scripture, such as the Book of Revelation, chapters 17 and 18, which they claim depict the Pope as the Antichrist and the Catholic Church as being the "Whore of Babylon". Proponents of anti-Catholicism also claim that the Mass is an abomination in the eyes of Jesus Christ. Many anti-Catholics also claim that Catholics worship Mary.
One high-profile example of anti-Catholicism is the series of tracts produced by noted anti-Catholic and comic book evangelist Jack Chick, in particular his Alberto series. These tracts accuse the papacy of using the Jesuits to incite revolutions all over the world, and claim that the papacy was the driving force behind Muhammad and helped both Communism and National Socialism come to power. One of the most famous tracts is titled Are Roman Catholics Christians?, in which the reader is told that the Catholic Church's doctrines are against God and inspired by Satan. While these views are not widely held, several Roman Catholic organizations continue to battle anti-Catholic sentiment fed by, or explicitly formed by, such materials. Jack Chick's chief source of Anti-Catholicism is Alberto Rivera who claims that he was a Jesuit and that he infiltrated many Protestant churches.
Other Anti-Catholic works in the religious domain include John Foxe's Book of Martyrs in which he potrays the Church as a persecutor of Protestants. The book also created the English legend of "Bloody Mary" and became a bestseller next to the Bible. During the 19th century, Rebecca Reed's Six months in a Convent sold 200,000 copies in a month within publication in 1835. Reed claimed that she was held captive in an Ursuline convent near Boston. Though the Mother Superior of that convent denied Reed had been a nun, an angry mob burned the convent. Alexander Hislop's The Two Babylons claims that the Catholic Church originated from a Babylonian mystery religion and that its practices are pagan.
Political anti-Catholicism
A tradition of political anti-Catholicism also exists in various Protestant countries, and in particular the English speaking countries. Protestantism was firmly established in England with the accession of Queen Elizabeth I. In 1570, Pope Pius V sought to depose her with the bull Regnans in Excelsis ("Ruling on high"), which purported to declare Elizabeth deposed and to acquit her Roman Catholic subjects of further allegiance to her. This added a political dimension to what was a purely religious conflict, and rendered Elizabeth's subjects who persisted in allegiance to the Catholic Church politically suspect. The failed invasion of England by the Spanish Armada was an attempt by Philip II of Spain to put into effect the Pope's decree, and to enforce a claim he held to the throne of England he held as a result of being the widower of Mary I of England. Later episodes that deepened anti-Catholicism in England include the Gunpowder Plot, in which Guy Fawkes and other Catholic conspirators are alleged to have attempted to blow up the English Parliament while it was in session. Later, the so-called "Popish Plot" involving Titus Oates was in fact a plot by anti-Catholics to make Roman Catholicism seem a renewed political menace by means of a fictitious assassination scheme.
In the context of British traditional values, the beliefs that underlie this sort of anti-Catholicism 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 reliques 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 Catholics constitute an imperium in imperio, a sort of a fifth column of persons who owe a greater allegiance to the Pope than they do to the civil government. Accordingly, a large body of British laws, collectively known as the penal laws, imposed various civil disabilities and legal penalties on recusant Catholics. These laws were gradually repealed over the course of the nineteenth century; however, the law of succession to the British throne continues to bar Catholics, and anyone married to a "papist", from the line of succession.
These accusations have to some extent been exported to the United States, where anti-Catholicism has historically been conspicuous among the beliefs of various nativist organisations from the Know-Nothing Party to the Ku Klux Klan. Within more recent years, suspicion of the political aims and agenda of the Catholic Church have been revived several times. In 1949, Paul Blanshard's book American Freedom and Catholic Power portrayed the 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. These accusations continue to have some currency because of the Catholic hierarchy's alliance with the anti-abortion movement and their periodic threats to use excommunication to compel Catholic elected officials to vote in accordance with the hierarchy's wishes.
Anti-Catholic authors in the secular domain include Avro Manhattan (whose books, The Vatican's Holocaust, The Vatican Billions and Vatican, Washington, Moscow Alliance accuse the Church of engineering wars and trying to rule the world) and Dan Brown, whose best-selling The Da Vinci Code depicts the Catholic Church as an organization determined to hide the truth about Jesus Christ and early Christian feminism.
Historical anti-Catholicism
In part stemming from the religious and political attitudes described above, some historians have put forth interpretations of history which make out the Catholic Church to be a malevolent, or at least harmful, force. In addition, many anti-Catholic stories have become popular folk-myths, frequently exaggerating blame to Catholicism throughout history.
In some cases, minor or rare instances are inflated to the status of official church doctrine. In others, the Catholic Church is singled out for blame for actions also committed by Protestants or other groups.
Some of the tales told by anti-Catholic writers about history include:
- The idea that the Church suppressed a golden age of feminism and liberalism that supposedly existed prior to the establishment of Christianity.
- The idea that the Catholic Church opposed all advances in science and thought. The Church's treatment of Galileo Galilei is frequently singled out; many of the popular tellings of Galileo's persecution are quite inaccurate. Other scientists suppressed in fact or in myth include Roger Bacon, Copernicus, Gregor Mendel etc.
- The idea that the Church was a uniquely repressive institution that was concerned entirely with the acquisition of wealth and power.
- The claim that the Inquisition killed fantastically huge numbers of people in the Middle Ages, either heretics or witches (figures are sometimes quoted in the millions). See Black Legend
- The claim that the crusades were a completely unprovoked attack on Islam, and that the crusaders were particularly venial and brutal compared to their opponents.
- The singling-out of the Catholic Church for persecution of the Jews over history, and the disregarding of periods of religious tolerance and Protestant antisemitism (for instance on the part of Martin Luther).
- Claims that catholicism was allied with movements such as Freemasonry, Fascism and Nazism.
- The claim that the Catholic Church did nothing to stop six million Jews from being murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust.
Anti-catholic pseudohistory tends to appear less and less in reputable academic works in modern times. However it continues to be spread in the popular media, including TV programmes, novels like The Da Vinci Code, and cinema films such as King Arthur, which shows anachronistic monks and inquisitors torturing people in a Roman Britain apparently run by the Pope. The Catholic Church has also been attacked for opposing birth control, abortion, homosexuality and for not ordaining women as priests and bishops.
See also
External links
Anti-Catholic websites
Catholic responses
