Information AboutAnti-catholic |
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Anti-Catholicism is opposition to the Roman Catholic Church – its leadership, doctrine, motivations, and actions. Less frequently the term is applied to the Religious Persecution of Catholics. HISTORY The Church's history is rife with conflict, both within the church (and its various factions), as well as with other churchers and secular governments. England and Protestantism Protestantism was firmly established in England with the accession of Queen Elizabeth I . In 1570 , Pope Pius V sought to depose her with the '' Regnans In Excelsis '' ("Ruling on high"), which declared Elizabeth a heretic and purported to release her Catholic subjects from allegiance to her. This added a political dimension to a previously 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 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 . Later episodes that deepened anti-Catholicism in England include the Gunpowder Plot , in which Guy Fawkes and other Catholic conspirators attempted to blow up the English Parliament while it was in session. Later, the " Popish Plot " involving Titus Oates was used by anti-Catholics to make Catholicism seem a renewed political menace by means of a fictitious Assassination scheme. In the context of long-standing attitudes among many British people toward Catholicism, 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 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.
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, a charge very similar to that repeatedly leveled at Jew s. Accordingly, a large body of British laws, collectively known as the Penal Law s, imposed various civil disabilities and legal penalties on Recusant Catholics. These laws were gradually repealed over the course of the Nineteenth Century with laws such as the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829 ; however, the law of Succession To The British Throne continues to bar Catholics, and anyone married to a " Papist ", from the line of succession. British royalty are still considered to have a religious role as head of the Church Of England . United States showing bishops attacking public schools, with connivance of Irish Catholic politicians]] These views were exported to the organisations from the Know-Nothing Party in the 1850s to the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s. The case of the murder of Father James Coyle had more to do with racial issues, but is a prime example of anti-Catholic violence in the US. In 1846 the U.S. went to war with Catholic Mexico, but this did not produce anti-Catholicism. Hinkley explains this by the force of American nationalism, the general tolerance of religion, and the fact that most anti-Catholics were also anti-war. In 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 garner support because of the Catholic hierarchy's alliance with the Right To Life groups and threats to withhold Eucharist from Catholics who vote in favor of actions deemed opposed to Church teaching, such as Abortion , Assisted Suicide or Same-sex Marriage . It bears mention that this is not precisely or Military Dictators . Added to that according to Catholic teaching those in a state of Mortal Sin should not receive the Eucharist , which Catholicism considers a biblical rule that is not specific to any occupation. Eleanor Roosevelt Eleanor Roosevelt 's ambivalence toward American Catholics caused a public fight in 1949 with Francis Cardinal Spellman , the Catholic Archbishop of New York, when in her columns she attacked proposals for federal aid for nonreligious activity (such as bus transportation) for Catholic school students. Spellman pointed out the Supreme Court had recently upheld such provisions, and accused her of anti-Catholicism. Most Democrats rallied behind Roosevelt so Spellman came to Eleanor's Hyde Park home to bury the hatchet. However she never could shake her belief that the Catholic schools were less than 100% democratic and did not deserve federal aid. She seems to have paid attention to the anti-Catholic polemics of people like Paul Blanshard . Privately she said that if Catholics got school aid, "Once that is done they control the schools, or at least a great part of them." Mrs. Roosevelt was never as popular among Catholics as her husband. While he kept the country neutral in the Spanish Civil War , she openly favored the republican Loyalists (who were anticlerical) against General Franco's Nationalists (whom many American Catholics favored). After 1945 she opposed normalizing relations with Franco's Spain. She told Spellman bluntly that "I cannot, however, say that in European countries the control by the Roman Catholic Church of great areas of land has always led to happiness for the people of those countries." Catholics resented her quiet support of Margaret Sanger and the birth control movement, and her prewar sponsorship of the American Youth Congress in which the Communists had been heavily represented, but Catholic youth groups were not represented. (Lash, ''Eleanor: The Years Alone'' pp 156-65.) Central and South America 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 Duvalier dynasty of Haiti an dictators wanted to weaken or control the Catholic Church by bringing Voudoun "openly into the political process", according to Michel S. LaGuerre in ''Voodoo and Politics in Haiti''. Russian Orthodoxy In the former Soviet Union, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church was persecuted just for its religious role in the community, but at other times the Russian Orthodox Church was manipulated to combat Catholics on the grounds that this was a more "Russian" body. CONTEMPORARY ANTI-CATHOLICISM Philip Jenkins , an Episcopalian historian, in ''The New Anti-Catholicism: The Last Acceptable Prejudice'' (Oxford University Press 2005 ISBN 0195154800) maintains that some people who otherwise avoid offending members of racial, ethnic or gender groups drop their guard regarding religion. Harvard professor Arthur Schlesinger, Sr. characterized prejudice against the Catholic Church as "the deepest bias in the history of the American people." Yale professor Peter Viereck commented that "Catholic baiting is the anti-Semitism of the liberals." Anti-Christian Cult Bob Jones, Sr. held that a biblically informed understanding of the Roman Catholic Church leads one to the conclusion that it is an anti-Christian cult and the Pope is the Antichrist or False Prophet . Pedophilia and the Priesthood Fred Phelps equates Catholic priests to Pederasty and Sodomy in often graphic ways. Sexual and reproductive rights LGBT rights activists have had a stormy relationship to the Catholic Church. In 1989 members of the AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power threw used condoms at a Church altar and desecrated the Eucharist during Mass. Robert Hilfrety's related video on this is called Stop the Church . COMMON THEMES IN POPULAR MEDIA From many and varied anti-Catholic texts and other media ranging from works of classical literature to sensational memoirs to comic books to television shows, several themes stand out. Pagan origins and Satanic associations Alexander Hislop 's '' The Two Babylons '' asserts that the Church originated from a Babylonian Mystery Religion and characterizes its practices as Pagan . Charles Chiniquy 's ''50 Years In The Church of Rome'' and ''The Priest, the Woman and the Confessional'' also criticize Catholicism as pagan. In a chapter of Fyodor Dostoevsky's '' The Brothers Karamazov '' called ''The Grand Inquisitor'', the Church is alleged to have become a servant of Satan. (Interestingly the book is said to be well-liked by Pope Benedict XVI , perhaps because he sees it only as a criticism of the Inquisition.) In '' Notes From Underground '' the main character fantasizes about making the world a better place by eliminating or overthrowing the Pope. Even characters who defend Catholics believe in Jesuit Conspiracies . Idolatry On a Brazilian holiday for ''Our Lady of Aparecida'', in an episode known as the "Kicking Of The Saint" , a bishop of the Pentecostal Universal Church Of The Kingdom Of God repeatedly beat a statue of said patron saint. 884K QuickTime Movie Conspiracy theories A series of Tract s by noted anti-Catholic and comic book Evangelist Jack Chick accuses the papacy of supporting Communism , of using the Jesuits to incite revolutions, and of masterminding the Holocaust . Avro Manhattan 's books, ''The Vatican's Holocaust'', ''The Vatican Billions'' and ''Vatican, Washington, Moscow Alliance'' advanced the view that the Church engineers wars for world domination. Dan Brown 's best-selling '' The Da Vinci Code '' depicts the Catholic Church as determined to hide the truth about Jesus Christ. An article in the National Catholic Register (April 2004) 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". Convent ritual practices Rebecca Reed's ''Six Months in a Convent'' describes her alleged captivity by an Ursuline order near Boston in 1932. 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 exposé, ''Awful Disclosures of the Hotel-Dieu Nunnery'', Maria Monk claims that the convent served as a harem for Catholic Priest s, and that any resulting children were murdered after baptism. SEE ALSO
ADDITIONAL READING
EXTERNAL LINKS Anti-Catholic websites
Catholic responses
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