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Anti-Catholicism is hostility towards Catholics or opposition to the
Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...
, its
clergy
Clergy are formal leaders within established religions. Their roles and functions vary in different religious traditions, but usually involve presiding over specific rituals and teaching their religion's doctrines and practices. Some of the ter ...
, and/or its adherents. At various points after the
Reformation
The Reformation (alternatively named the Protestant Reformation or the European Reformation) was a major movement within Western Christianity in 16th-century Europe that posed a religious and political challenge to the Catholic Church and in ...
, some majority
Protestant
Protestantism is a branch of Christianity that follows the theological tenets of the Protestant Reformation, a movement that began seeking to reform the Catholic Church from within in the 16th century against what its followers perceived to b ...
states, including
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...
,
Prussia
Prussia, , Old Prussian: ''Prūsa'' or ''Prūsija'' was a German state on the southeast coast of the Baltic Sea. It formed the German Empire under Prussian rule when it united the German states in 1871. It was ''de facto'' dissolved by an ...
,
Scotland
Scotland (, ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a Anglo-Scottish border, border with England to the southeast ...
, and the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
, turned anti-Catholicism, opposition to the
Pope
The pope ( la, papa, from el, πάππας, translit=pappas, 'father'), also known as supreme pontiff ( or ), Roman pontiff () or sovereign pontiff, is the bishop of Rome (or historically the patriarch of Rome), head of the worldwide Cathol ...
(
anti-Papalism
The words Popery (adjective Popish) and Papism (adjective Papist, also used to refer to an individual) are mainly historical pejorative words in the English language for Roman Catholicism, once frequently used by Protestants and Eastern Orthodox ...
), mockery of
Catholic rituals, and opposition to Catholic adherents into major political themes. The anti-Catholic sentiment which resulted from this trend frequently led to
religious discrimination
Religious discrimination is treating a person or group differently because of the particular beliefs which they hold about a religion. This includes instances when adherents of different religions, denominations or non-religions are treated u ...
against Catholic communities and individuals and it occasionally led to the
religious persecution of them (frequently, they were
derogatorily referred to as "
papists
The words Popery (adjective Popish) and Papism (adjective Papist, also used to refer to an individual) are mainly historical pejorative words in the English language for Roman Catholicism, once frequently used by Protestants and Eastern Orthodox ...
" or "
Romanists" in
Anglophone
Speakers of English are also known as Anglophones, and the countries where English is natively spoken by the majority of the population are termed the ''Anglosphere''. Over two billion people speak English , making English the largest language ...
and Protestant countries.) Historian John Wolffe identifies four types of anti-Catholicism: constitutional-national, theological, popular and socio-cultural.
Historically, Catholics who lived in Protestant countries were frequently
suspected of conspiring against the state in furtherance of papal interests. Their support of the alien pope led to allegations that they lacked loyalty to the state. In majority Protestant countries which experienced large scale
immigration
Immigration is the international movement of people to a destination country of which they are not natives or where they do not possess citizenship in order to settle as permanent residents or naturalized citizens. Commuters, tourists, a ...
, such as the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
and
Australia
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...
, suspicion of Catholic immigrants and/or discrimination against them frequently overlapped or was conflated with
nativist,
xenophobic
Xenophobia () is the fear or dislike of anything which is perceived as being foreign or strange. It is an expression of perceived conflict between an in-group and out-group and may manifest in suspicion by the one of the other's activities, a ...
,
ethnocentric
Ethnocentrism in social science and anthropology—as well as in colloquial English discourse—means to apply one's own culture or ethnicity as a frame of reference to judge other cultures, practices, behaviors, beliefs, and people, instead o ...
and/or
racist sentiments (i.e.
anti-Irish sentiment,
anti-Italianism,
Hispanophobia
Hispanophobia (from Latin ''Hispanus'', "Spanish" and Greek φοβία ('' phobia''), "fear") or anti-Spanish sentiment is a fear, distrust, hatred of; aversion to, or discrimination against the Spanish language, Hispanic, Latino and/or S ...
, and
anti-Slavic sentiment
Anti-Slavic sentiment, also known as Slavophobia, a form of racism or xenophobia, refers to various negative attitudes towards Slavic peoples, the most common manifestation is the claim that the inhabitants of Slavic nations are inferior to oth ...
, specifically
anti-Polish sentiment
Polonophobia, also referred to as anti-Polonism, ( pl, Antypolonizm), and anti-Polish sentiment are terms for negative attitudes, prejudices, and actions against Poles as an ethnic group, Poland as their country, and their culture. These incl ...
).
In the
Early modern period, the Catholic Church struggled to maintain its traditional religious and political role in the face of rising secular power in Catholic countries. As a result of these struggles, a hostile attitude towards the considerable political, social, spiritual and religious power of the Pope and the clergy arose in majority Catholic countries in the form of
anti-clericalism. The
Inquisition
The Inquisition was a group of institutions within the Catholic Church whose aim was to combat heresy, conducting trials of suspected heretics. Studies of the records have found that the overwhelming majority of sentences consisted of penances, ...
was a favorite target of attack. After the outbreak of the
French Revolution
The French Revolution ( ) was a period of radical political and societal change in France that began with the Estates General of 1789 and ended with the formation of the French Consulate in coup of 18 Brumaire, November 1799. Many of its ...
in 1789, anti-clerical forces gained strength in some primarily Catholic nations, such as
France
France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its metropolitan area ...
,
Spain
, image_flag = Bandera de España.svg
, image_coat = Escudo de España (mazonado).svg
, national_motto = ''Plus ultra'' (Latin)(English: "Further Beyond")
, national_anthem = (English: "Royal March")
, i ...
,
Mexico
Mexico (Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guatema ...
, and certain regions of
Italy
Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical ...
(especially in
Emilia-Romagna
egl, Emigliàn (man) egl, Emiglièna (woman) rgn, Rumagnòl (man) rgn, Rumagnòla (woman) it, Emiliano (man) it, Emiliana (woman) or it, Romagnolo (man) it, Romagnola (woman)
, population_note =
, population_blank1_title ...
). Certain political parties in these historically Catholic regions subscribed to and propagated an internal form of anti-Catholicism, generally known as anti-clericalism, that expressed a hostile attitude towards the Catholic Church as an establishment and the overwhelming political, social, spiritual and religious power of the Catholic Church, attacking the pope's power to name bishops and criticizing the perceived power of
Catholic international orders such as the
Jesuits
, image = Ihs-logo.svg
, image_size = 175px
, caption = ChristogramOfficial seal of the Jesuits
, abbreviation = SJ
, nickname = Jesuits
, formation =
, founders = ...
.
In primarily Protestant countries
Protestant Reformers, including
John Wycliffe
John Wycliffe (; also spelled Wyclif, Wickliffe, and other variants; 1328 – 31 December 1384) was an English scholastic philosopher, theologian, biblical translator, reformer, Catholic priest, and a seminary professor at the University of ...
,
Martin Luther
Martin Luther (; ; 10 November 1483 – 18 February 1546) was a German priest, theologian, author, hymnwriter, and professor, and Augustinian friar. He is the seminal figure of the Protestant Reformation and the namesake of Lutherani ...
,
Henry VIII,
John Calvin,
Thomas Cranmer
Thomas Cranmer (2 July 1489 – 21 March 1556) was a leader of the English Reformation and Archbishop of Canterbury during the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI and, for a short time, Mary I. He helped build the case for the annulment of Henry ...
,
John Thomas,
John Knox,
Roger Williams,
Cotton Mather, and
John Wesley
John Wesley (; 2 March 1791) was an English people, English cleric, Christian theology, theologian, and Evangelism, evangelist who was a leader of a Christian revival, revival movement within the Church of England known as Methodism. The soci ...
, as well as most
Protestants of the 16th-19th centuries, identified the
Papacy with the Antichrist. The
Centuriators of Magdeburg
The ''Magdeburg Centuries'' is an ecclesiastical history, divided into thirteen ''centuries'', covering thirteen hundred years, ending in 1298; it was first published from 1559 to 1574. It was compiled by several Lutheran scholars in Magdeburg, k ...
, a group of
Lutheran
Lutheranism is one of the largest branches of Protestantism, identifying primarily with the theology of Martin Luther, the 16th-century German monk and Protestant Reformers, reformer whose efforts to reform the theology and practice of the Cathol ...
scholars in
Magdeburg
Magdeburg (; nds, label=Low Saxon, Meideborg ) is the capital and second-largest city of the German state Saxony-Anhalt. The city is situated at the Elbe river.
Otto I, the first Holy Roman Emperor and founder of the Archdiocese of Magdebu ...
which was headed by
Matthias Flacius
Matthias Flacius Illyricus (Latin; hr, Matija Vlačić Ilirik) or Francovich ( hr, Franković) (3 March 1520 – 11 March 1575) was a Lutheran reformer from Istria, present-day Croatia. He was notable as a theologian, sometimes dissenting strong ...
, wrote the 12-volume ''
Magdeburg Centuries
The ''Magdeburg Centuries'' is an ecclesiastical history, divided into thirteen ''centuries'', covering thirteen hundred years, ending in 1298; it was first published from 1559 to 1574. It was compiled by several Lutheran scholars in Magdeburg, kn ...
'' in order to discredit the Papacy and lead other Christians to recognize the Pope as the Antichrist. The fifth round of talks in the
Lutheran–Catholic dialogue notes,
Doctrinal works of literature which were published by the
Lutherans
Lutheranism is one of the largest branches of Protestantism, identifying primarily with the theology of Martin Luther, the 16th-century German monk and reformer whose efforts to reform the theology and practice of the Catholic Church launched ...
, the
Reformed churches
Calvinism (also called the Reformed Tradition, Reformed Protestantism, Reformed Christianity, or simply Reformed) is a major branch of Protestantism that follows the theological tradition and forms of Christian practice set down by John Calv ...
, the
Presbyterians, the
Baptists, the
Anabaptists
Anabaptism (from Neo-Latin , from the Greek : 're-' and 'baptism', german: Täufer, earlier also )Since the middle of the 20th century, the German-speaking world no longer uses the term (translation: "Re-baptizers"), considering it biased. ...
, and the
Methodists contain references to the Pope as the Antichrist, including the
Smalcald Articles
The Smalcald Articles or Schmalkald Articles (german: Schmalkaldische Artikel) are a summary of Lutheran doctrine, written by Martin Luther in 1537 for a meeting of the Schmalkaldic League in preparation for an intended ecumenical Council of the ...
, Article 4 (1537), the ''
Treatise on the Power and Primacy of the Pope
The ''Treatise on the Power and Primacy of the Pope'' (1537) (), ''The Tractate'' for short, is the seventh Lutheran credal document of the Book of Concord. Philip Melanchthon, its author, completed it on February 17, 1537 during the assembly of ...
'' (1537), the
Westminster Confession
The Westminster Confession of Faith is a Reformed confession of faith. Drawn up by the 1646 Westminster Assembly as part of the Westminster Standards to be a confession of the Church of England, it became and remains the " subordinate standard ...
, Article 25.6 (1646), and the
1689 Baptist Confession of Faith, Article 26.4. In 1754,
John Wesley
John Wesley (; 2 March 1791) was an English people, English cleric, Christian theology, theologian, and Evangelism, evangelist who was a leader of a Christian revival, revival movement within the Church of England known as Methodism. The soci ...
published his ''
Explanatory Notes Upon the New Testament
''Explanatory Notes Upon the New Testament'' is a Biblical commentary and translation of the New Testament by English theologian John Wesley. First published in 1755 the work went through five editions in Wesley's lifetime.Scroggs p.415
Developme ...
'', which is currently an official Doctrinal Standard of the
United Methodist Church
The United Methodist Church (UMC) is a worldwide mainline Protestant denomination based in the United States, and a major part of Methodism. In the 19th century, its main predecessor, the Methodist Episcopal Church, was a leader in evangelic ...
. In his notes on the
Book of Revelation
The Book of Revelation is the final book of the New Testament (and consequently the final book of the Christian Bible). Its title is derived from the first word of the Koine Greek text: , meaning "unveiling" or "revelation". The Book of ...
(chapter 13), he commented: "The whole succession of Popes from
Gregory VII are undoubtedly Antichrists. Yet this hinders not, but that the last Pope in this succession will be more eminently the Antichrist, the Man of Sin, adding to that of his predecessors a peculiar degree of wickedness from the bottomless pit."
Referring to the Book of Revelation,
Edward Gibbon
Edward Gibbon (; 8 May 173716 January 1794) was an English historian, writer, and member of parliament. His most important work, '' The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'', published in six volumes between 1776 and 1788, is ...
stated that "The advantage of turning those mysterious prophecies against the
See of Rome
The Holy See ( lat, Sancta Sedes, ; it, Santa Sede ), also called the See of Rome, Petrine See or Apostolic See, is the jurisdiction of the Pope in his role as the bishop of Rome. It includes the apostolic episcopal see of the Diocese of Ro ...
, inspired the Protestants with uncommon veneration for so useful an ally." Protestants condemned the Catholic policy of mandatory
celibacy for priests.
During the
Enlightenment Era
The Age of Enlightenment or the Enlightenment; german: Aufklärung, "Enlightenment"; it, L'Illuminismo, "Enlightenment"; pl, Oświecenie, "Enlightenment"; pt, Iluminismo, "Enlightenment"; es, La Ilustración, "Enlightenment" was an intel ...
, which spanned the 17th and 18th centuries, with its strong emphasis on the need for
religious toleration
Religious toleration may signify "no more than forbearance and the permission given by the adherents of a dominant religion for other religions to exist, even though the latter are looked on with disapproval as inferior, mistaken, or harmful". ...
, the
Inquisition
The Inquisition was a group of institutions within the Catholic Church whose aim was to combat heresy, conducting trials of suspected heretics. Studies of the records have found that the overwhelming majority of sentences consisted of penances, ...
was a favorite target of attack for intellectuals.
British Empire
Great Britain
![Foxe's Book of Martyrs title page](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/48/Foxe%27s_Book_of_Martyrs_title_page.jpg)
Institutional anti-Catholicism in Britain and Ireland began with the
English Reformation under
Henry VIII. The
Act of Supremacy
The Acts of Supremacy are two acts passed by the Parliament of England in the 16th century that established the English monarchs as the head of the Church of England; two similar laws were passed by the Parliament of Ireland establishing the En ...
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 treasonous because the papacy claimed to have both spiritual and political power over its followers. It was under this act that saints
Thomas More
Sir Thomas More (7 February 1478 – 6 July 1535), venerated in the Catholic Church as Saint Thomas More, was an English lawyer, judge, social philosopher, author, statesman, and noted Renaissance humanist. He also served Henry VIII as Lord ...
and
John Fisher
John Fisher (c. 19 October 1469 – 22 June 1535) was an English Catholic bishop, cardinal, and theologian. Fisher was also an academic and Chancellor of the University of Cambridge. He was canonized by Pope Pius XI.
Fisher was executed by o ...
were executed and became martyrs for the Catholic faith.
Queen Mary, Henry's daughter, was a devout Catholic and during her five years as queen (1553–58) she tried to reverse the Reformation. She married the Catholic king of Spain and executed Protestant leaders. Protestants reviled her as "Bloody Mary".
![ProtestantTutor](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2c/ProtestantTutor.png)
Anti-Catholicism among many of the English was not only grounded in their fear that the pope sought to reimpose religio-spiritual authority over England, it was also grounded in their fear that the pope also sought to impose secular power over them in alliance with their arch-enemies France and Spain. In 1570,
Pope Pius V
Pope Pius V ( it, Pio V; 17 January 1504 – 1 May 1572), born Antonio Ghislieri (from 1518 called Michele Ghislieri, O.P.), was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 8 January 1566 to his death in May 1572. He is v ...
sought to depose Elizabeth with the
papal bull ''
Regnans in Excelsis
''Regnans in Excelsis'' ("Reigning on High") is a papal bull that Pope Pius V issued on 25 February 1570. It excommunicated Queen Elizabeth I of England, referring to her as "the pretended Queen of England and the servant of crime", declared h ...
'', which declared that she was a heretic and purportedly dissolved the duty of all of Elizabeth's subjects to maintain their allegiance to her. This rendered Elizabeth's subjects who persisted in their allegiance to the Catholic Church politically suspect, and it also made the position of her Catholic subjects largely untenable if they tried to maintain both allegiances at once. The
Recusancy
Recusancy (from la, recusare, translation=to refuse) was the state of those who remained loyal to the Catholic Church and refused to attend Church of England services after the English Reformation.
The 1558 Recusancy Acts passed in the reign ...
Acts, which made worship in the Anglican Church a legal obligation, date back to Elizabeth's reign.
Assassination plots in which Catholics were prime movers fueled anti-Catholicism in England. These plots included the famous
Gunpowder Plot
The Gunpowder Plot of 1605, in earlier centuries often called the Gunpowder Treason Plot or the Jesuit Treason, was a failed assassination attempt against King James I by a group of provincial English Catholics led by Robert Catesby who sough ...
, in which
Guy Fawkes
Guy Fawkes (; 13 April 1570 – 31 January 1606), also known as Guido Fawkes while fighting for the Spanish, was a member of a group of provincial English Catholics involved in the failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605. He was born and educated ...
and other conspirators plotted to blow up the English Parliament while it was in session. The fictitious "
Popish Plot" involving
Titus Oates
Titus Oates (15 September 1649 – 12/13 July 1705) was an English priest who fabricated the "Popish Plot", a supposed Catholic conspiracy to kill King Charles II.
Early life
Titus Oates was born at Oakham in Rutland. His father Samuel (1610 ...
was a hoax that many Protestants believed to be true, exacerbating Anglican-Catholic relations.
The
Glorious Revolution of 1688–1689 involved the overthrow of King James II, of the Stuart dynasty, who favoured the Catholics, and his replacement by a Dutch Protestant. For decades the Stuarts were supported by France in plots to invade and conquer Britain, and anti-Catholicism persisted.
Gordon Riots 1780
The
Gordon Riots of 1780 was a violent anti-Catholic riot in London against the
Papists Act of 1778. Passed by
Parliament
In modern politics, and history, a parliament is a legislative body of government. Generally, a modern parliament has three functions: representing the electorate, making laws, and overseeing the government via hearings and inquiries. Th ...
, the new law was supposed to reduce official discrimination against
British Catholics.
Lord George Gordon
Lord George Gordon (26 December 1751 – 1 November 1793) was a British politician best known for lending his name to the Gordon Riots of 1780.
An eccentric and flighty personality, he was born into the Scottish nobility and sat in the Hous ...
, head of the Protestant Association, warned that the law would enable Catholics who were serving in the
British Army
The British Army is the principal land warfare force of the United Kingdom, a part of the British Armed Forces along with the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force. , the British Army comprises 79,380 regular full-time personnel, 4,090 Gurk ...
to become a dangerous threat. The protest evolved into
riots and widespread
looting. Local magistrates feared reprisals and as a result, they did not enforce the riot act. The riots were not suppressed until the Army moved in and dispersed the crowds by shooting them, killing hundreds of rioters. The violence lasted from 2 June to 9 June 1780. Public opinion, especially in middle-class and elite circles, repudiated anti-Catholicism and lower-class violence, and it also rallied behind the
government
A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community, generally a state.
In the case of its broad associative definition, government normally consists of legislature, executive, and judiciary. Government is ...
of
Lord North
Frederick North, 2nd Earl of Guilford (13 April 17325 August 1792), better known by his courtesy title Lord North, which he used from 1752 to 1790, was 12th Prime Minister of Great Britain from 1770 to 1782. He led Great Britain through most o ...
. Demands for the establishment of a police force in London were subsequently made.
19th century
Anglo-French conflicts during the
French Revolutionary
The French Revolution ( ) was a period of radical political and societal change in France that began with the Estates General of 1789 and ended with the formation of the French Consulate in November 1799. Many of its ideas are consider ...
and
Napoleonic Wars
The Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815) were a series of major global conflicts pitting the French Empire and its allies, led by Napoleon I, against a fluctuating array of European states formed into various coalitions. It produced a period of Fren ...
, which lasted from 1793 until 1815, saw the rise of anti-Catholicism as an underlying method to unify the Protestant populations of England, Scotland and Wales. Permeating through all
social classes
A social class is a grouping of people into a set of hierarchical social categories, the most common being the upper, middle and lower classes. Membership in a social class can for example be dependent on education, wealth, occupation, inco ...
, antagonism towards Catholicism became firmly enmeshed with British
national identity
National identity is a person's identity or sense of belonging to one or more states or to one or more nations. It is the sense of "a nation as a cohesive whole, as represented by distinctive traditions, culture, and language". National identity ...
. As noted by English historian
Linda Colley
Dame Linda Jane Colley, (born 13 September 1949 in Chester, England) is an expert on British, imperial and global history from 1700. She is Shelby M. C. Davis 1958 Professor of History at Princeton University and a long-term fellow in history at ...
in her seminal work ''Britons: Forging of a Nation 1707–1837'', the "defensive unity brought on by war with a Catholic French '
other
Other often refers to:
* Other (philosophy), a concept in psychology and philosophy
Other or The Other may also refer to:
Film and television
* ''The Other'' (1913 film), a German silent film directed by Max Mack
* ''The Other'' (1930 film), a ...
' helped transform Great Britain from a new and largely artificial polity into a nation with a strong self-image rooted in Protestantism."
Catholics in Ireland gained the right to vote in the 1790s but they were politically inert for another three decades. Finally, they were mobilized by
Daniel O'Connell
Daniel O'Connell (I) ( ga, Dónall Ó Conaill; 6 August 1775 – 15 May 1847), hailed in his time as The Liberator, was the acknowledged political leader of Ireland's Roman Catholic majority in the first half of the 19th century. His mobilizat ...
into majorities in most of the Irish parliamentary districts. They could only elect, but Catholics could not be seated in parliament. The
Catholic emancipation
Catholic emancipation or Catholic relief was a process in the kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland, and later the combined United Kingdom in the late 18th century and early 19th century, that involved reducing and removing many of the restricti ...
issue became a major crisis. Previously anti-Catholic politicians led by the
Duke of Wellington
Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, (1 May 1769 – 14 September 1852) was an Anglo-Irish people, Anglo-Irish soldier and Tories (British political party), Tory statesman who was one of the leading military and political figures of Uni ...
and
Robert Peel reversed themselves to prevent massive violence. All Catholics in Britain were "emancipated" in the
Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829
The Catholic Relief Act 1829, also known as the Catholic Emancipation Act 1829, was passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom in 1829. It was the culmination of the process of Catholic emancipation throughout the United Kingdom of Great Br ...
. That is, they were freed from most of the penalties and restrictions they faced. Anti-Catholic attitudes continued, however.
Since 1945
Since
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...
, anti-Catholic feeling in England has abated somewhat. Ecumenical dialogue between Anglicans and Catholics culminated in the first meeting between an Archbishop of Canterbury and a Pope since the Reformation when Archbishop
Geoffrey Fisher
Geoffrey Francis Fisher, Baron Fisher of Lambeth, (5 May 1887 – 15 September 1972) was an English Anglican priest, and 99th Archbishop of Canterbury, serving from 1945 to 1961.
From a long line of parish priests, Fisher was educated at Marlb ...
visited Rome in 1960. Since then, the dialogue has continued through envoys and standing conferences. Meanwhile, both the nonconformist churches such as the Methodists, and the established Church of England, have dramatically declined in membership. Membership in the Catholic Church continues to grow in Britain, thanks to the immigration of Irish and more recently, the immigration of Polish workers.
[J.R.H. Moorman (1973) ''A History of the Church in England''. London, A&C Black: 457]
Conflict and rivalry between Catholicism and Protestantism since the 1920s, especially since the 1960s, has centered on
the Troubles
The Troubles ( ga, Na Trioblóidí) were an ethno-nationalist conflict in Northern Ireland that lasted about 30 years from the late 1960s to 1998. Also known internationally as the Northern Ireland conflict, it is sometimes described as an " ...
in
Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland ( ga, Tuaisceart Éireann ; sco, label= Ulster-Scots, Norlin Airlann) is a part of the United Kingdom, situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland, that is variously described as a country, province or region. Nort ...
.
Anti-Catholicism in Britain was long represented by the burning of an effigy of the Catholic conspirator Guy Fawkes during widespread celebrations of
Guy Fawkes Night every 5 November. However, this celebration has lost most of its anti-Catholic connotations. Only faint remnants of anti-Catholicism are found today.
Ireland
![MADDEN(1888) p111 PEEP-OF-DAY BOYS](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2d/MADDEN%281888%29_p111_PEEP-OF-DAY_BOYS.jpg)
As punishment for the
rebellion of 1641, almost all of the lands which were owned by
Irish Catholics were confiscated and
given to Protestant settlers. Under the
Penal Laws, no Irish Catholic could sit in the
Parliament of Ireland
The Parliament of Ireland ( ga, Parlaimint na hÉireann) was the legislature of the Lordship of Ireland, and later the Kingdom of Ireland, from 1297 until 1800. It was modelled on the Parliament of England and from 1537 comprised two cham ...
, even though some 90% of Ireland's population was native Irish Catholic when the first of these bans was introduced in 1691. Tensions between Irish Catholics and Protestants have been blamed for much of "
The Troubles
The Troubles ( ga, Na Trioblóidí) were an ethno-nationalist conflict in Northern Ireland that lasted about 30 years from the late 1960s to 1998. Also known internationally as the Northern Ireland conflict, it is sometimes described as an " ...
", an ethno-nationalist conflict in
Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland ( ga, Tuaisceart Éireann ; sco, label= Ulster-Scots, Norlin Airlann) is a part of the United Kingdom, situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland, that is variously described as a country, province or region. Nort ...
.
During the 18th century, the
Peep o' Day Boys
The Peep o' Day Boys was an agrarian Protestant association in 18th-century Ireland. Originally noted as being an agrarian society around 1779–80, from 1785 it became the Protestant component of the sectarian conflict that emerged in County Arm ...
, an agrarian association composed of Irish Protestants, engaged in numerous acts of anti-Catholic violence through
County Armagh
County Armagh (, named after its county town, Armagh) is one of the six counties of Northern Ireland and one of the traditional thirty-two counties of Ireland. Adjoined to the southern shore of Lough Neagh, the county covers an area of an ...
. These acts culminated in the
Armagh disturbances
The Armagh disturbances was a period of intense sectarian fighting in the 1780s and 1790s between the Ulster Protestant Peep o' Day Boys and the Roman Catholic Defenders, in County Armagh, Kingdom of Ireland, culminating in the Battle of the Dia ...
, a period of intense sectarian conflict during the 1780's and 1790's between the Peep o' Day Boys and the Catholic
Defenders
Defender(s) or The Defender(s) may refer to:
*Defense (military)
*Defense (sports)
**Defender (association football)
Arts and entertainment Film and television
* ''The Defender'' (1989 film), a Canadian documentary
* ''The Defender'' (1994 f ...
. The Peep o' Day Boys would conduct early morning raids on Catholic homes to confiscate weapons, which Irish Catholics were forbidden from owning under the Penal Laws. This led to confrontations between them and the Defenders, which culminated in the
Battle of the Diamond
The Battle of the Diamond was a planned confrontation between the Catholic Defenders and the Protestant Peep o' Day Boys that took place on 21 September 1795 near Loughgall, County Armagh, Ireland. The Peep o' Day Boys were the victors, killin ...
, a confrontation which saw six killed and many more wounded. Though the
Orange Order would denounce the actions of the Peep o' Day Boys, further anti-Catholic violence would continue to erupt in Ireland in the years leading up the
Irish Rebellion of 1798
The Irish Rebellion of 1798 ( ga, Éirí Amach 1798; Ulster-Scots: ''The Hurries'') was a major uprising against British rule in Ireland. The main organising force was the Society of United Irishmen, a republican revolutionary group influenced ...
.
=Laws which restricted the rights of Irish Catholics
=
The
Great Famine of Ireland was exacerbated by the imposition of anti-Catholic laws. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the
penal laws prohibited Irish Catholics from either purchasing or leasing land, from voting, from holding political office, from living either within away from a corporate town, from obtaining an education, from entering a profession, and doing many of the other things which a person needed to do in order to succeed and prosper in society. The laws had largely been reformed by 1793, and in 1829, Irish Catholics could again sit in parliament following the
Act of Emancipation.
Northern Ireland
The state of
Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland ( ga, Tuaisceart Éireann ; sco, label= Ulster-Scots, Norlin Airlann) is a part of the United Kingdom, situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland, that is variously described as a country, province or region. Nort ...
came into existence in 1921, following the
Government of Ireland Act 1920
The Government of Ireland Act 1920 (10 & 11 Geo. 5 c. 67) was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The Act's long title was "An Act to provide for the better government of Ireland"; it is also known as the Fourth Home Rule Bill ...
. Though Catholics were a majority on the island of Ireland, comprising 74% of the population in 1911, they were a third of the population in Northern Ireland.
In 1934,
Sir James Craig
James Craig, 1st Viscount Craigavon PC PC (NI) DL (8 January 1871 – 24 November 1940), was a leading Irish unionist and a key architect of Northern Ireland as a devolved region within the United Kingdom. During the Home Rule Crisis of 1912 ...
, the first
Prime Minister of Northern Ireland
The prime minister of Northern Ireland was the head of the Government of Northern Ireland between 1921 and 1972. No such office was provided for in the Government of Ireland Act 1920; however, the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, as with governo ...
, said, "Since we took up office we have tried to be absolutely fair towards all the citizens of Northern Ireland... They still boast of
Southern Ireland
Southern Ireland, South Ireland or South of Ireland may refer to:
*The southern part of the island of Ireland
*Southern Ireland (1921–1922), a former constituent part of the United Kingdom
*Republic of Ireland, which is sometimes referred to as ...
being a Catholic State. All I boast of is that we are a Protestant Parliament and a Protestant State."
In 1957,
Harry Midgley
Henry Cassidy Midgley, PC (NI), known as Harry Midgley (1893 – 29 April 1957) was a prominent trade-unionist and politician in Northern Ireland. Born to a working-class Protestant family in Tiger's Bay, north Belfast, he followed his father int ...
, the
Minister of Education in Northern Ireland, said, in
Portadown
Portadown () is a town in County Armagh, Northern Ireland. The town sits on the River Bann in the north of the county, about southwest of Belfast. It is in the Armagh City, Banbridge and Craigavon Borough Council area and had a population of a ...
Orange Hall, "All the minority are traitors and have always been traitors to the Government of Northern Ireland."
The first Catholic to be appointed a minister in Northern Ireland was
Dr Gerard Newe, in 1971.
In 1986, at the annual conference of the
Democratic Unionist Party,
MP for Mid Ulster William McCrea interrupted councillor Ethel Smyth when she said she regretted the death of Sean Downes, a 24-year-old Catholic civilian who had been killed by a plastic bullet fired by the
RUC during an anti-internment march in
Andersontown
Andersontown is a populated place on Maryland's Eastern Shore in Caroline County, Maryland, United States. It is situated near the Delaware
Delaware ( ) is a state in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Maryland to i ...
in 1984. McCrea shouted, "No. No. I'll not condemn the death of John Downes
ic No Fenian. Never. No". In Northern Ireland and Scotland, ''Fenian'' is used by some as a derogatory word for Roman Catholics.
Canada
Fears of the Catholic Church were quite strong in the 19th century, especially among
Presbyterian
Presbyterianism is a part of the Reformed tradition within Protestantism that broke from the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland by John Knox, who was a priest at St. Giles Cathedral (Church of Scotland). Presbyterian churches derive their nam ...
and other Protestant Irish immigrants across Canada.
In 1853, the
Gavazzi Riots
The Gavazzi Riots were disturbances created in Quebec and Montreal in June 1853 by mobs which attacked halls in which ex-Catholic monk Alessandro Gavazzi was lecturing.
Overview
During the spring of 1853 Alessandro Gavazzi, an Italian patriot ...
left 10 dead in Quebec in the wake of Catholic Irish protests against anti-Catholic speeches by ex-monk
Alessandro Gavazzi
Alessandro Gavazzi (21 March 18099 January 1889) was an Italian preacher and patriot. He at first became a monk (1825), and attached himself to the Barnabites at Naples, where he afterwards (1829) acted as professor of rhetoric. He left the chur ...
. The most influential newspaper in Canada, ''
The Globe'' of Toronto, was edited by
George Brown George Brown may refer to:
Arts and entertainment
* George Loring Brown (1814–1889), American landscape painter
* George Douglas Brown (1869–1902), Scottish novelist
* George Williams Brown (1894–1963), Canadian historian and editor
* G ...
, a Presbyterian immigrant from Ireland who ridiculed and denounced the Catholic Church,
Jesuits
, image = Ihs-logo.svg
, image_size = 175px
, caption = ChristogramOfficial seal of the Jesuits
, abbreviation = SJ
, nickname = Jesuits
, formation =
, founders = ...
, priests, nunneries, etc. Irish Protestants remained a political force until the 20th century. Many belonged to the
Orange Order,
an anti-Catholic organization with chapters across Canada that was most powerful during the late 19th century.
A key leader was
Dalton McCarthy
Dalton McCarthy (October 10, 1836 – May 11, 1898), or D'Alton McCarthy, was a Canadian lawyer and parliamentarian. He was the leader of the "Orange" or Protestant Irish, and fiercely fought against Irish Catholics as well as the French C ...
(1836–1898), a Protestant who had immigrated from Ireland. In the late 19th century he mobilized the "Orange" or Protestant Irish, and fiercely fought against Irish Catholics as well as the French Catholics. He especially crusaded for the abolition of the French language in Manitoba and Ontario schools.
In response to the
2021 Canadian Indian residential school gravesite discoveries, numerous churches and monuments in Western Canada have been vandalized or burned down.
French language schools in Canada
One of the most controversial issues was public support for Catholic French-language schools. Although the Confederation Agreement of 1867 guaranteed the status of Catholic schools when they were legalized by provincial governments, disputes erupted in numerous provinces, especially in the
Manitoba Schools Question
The Manitoba Schools Question () was a political crisis in the Canadian province of Manitoba that occurred late in the 19th century, attacking publicly-funded separate schools for Roman Catholics and Protestants. The crisis was precipitated by a se ...
in the 1890s and in Ontario in the 1910s. In Ontario,
Regulation 17
Regulation 17 (french: Règlement 17) was a regulation of the Government of Ontario, Canada, designed to limit instruction in French-language Catholic separate schools. The regulation was written by the Ministry of Education and was issued in July ...
was a regulation by the Ontario Ministry of Education that restricted the use of French as a language of instruction to the first two years of schooling. French Canada reacted vehemently and lost, dooming its French-language Catholic schools. This was a central reason for French Canada's distance from the
World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
effort, as its young men refused to enlist.
Protestant elements succeeded in blocking the growth of French-language Catholic public schools. However, the Irish Catholics generally supported the English language position which was advocated by the Protestants.
Newfoundland
Newfoundland long experienced social and political tensions between the large Irish Catholic working-class, on the one hand and the Anglican elite on the other. In the 1850s, the Catholic bishop organized his flock and made them stalwarts of the Liberal party. Nasty rhetoric was the prevailing style elections; bloody riots were common during the 1861 election. The Protestants narrowly elected
Hugh Hoyles
Sir Hugh Hoyles (October 17, 1814 – February 1, 1888) was a politician and lawyer who served as the third premier of the colony of Newfoundland. Hoyles was the first premier of Newfoundland to have been born in the colony, and served from 1 ...
as the Conservative Prime Minister. Hoyles unexpectedly reversed his long record of militant Protestant activism and worked to defuse tensions. He shared patronage and power with the Catholics; all jobs and patronage were split between the various religious bodies on a per capita basis. This 'denominational compromise' was further extended to education when all religious schools were put on the basis which the Catholics had enjoyed since the 1840s. Alone in North America Newfoundland had a state funded system of denominational schools. The compromise worked and politics ceased to be about religion and became concerned with purely political and economic issues.
Australia
The presence of
Catholicism in Australia
The Catholic Church in Australia is part of the worldwide Catholic Church under the spiritual and administrative leadership of the Holy See. From origins as a suppressed, mainly Irish minority in early colonial times, the church has grown ...
came with the 1788 arrival of the
First Fleet of British convict ships at Sydney. The colonial authorities blocked a Catholic clerical presence until 1820, reflecting the legal disabilities of Catholics in Britain. Some of the Irish convicts had been transported to Australia for political crimes or social rebellion and authorities remained suspicious of the minority religion.
Catholic convicts were compelled to attend Church of England services and their children and orphans were raised as Anglicans.
The first Catholic priests to arrive came as convicts following the Irish
1798 Rebellion. In 1803, one Fr Dixon was conditionally emancipated and permitted to celebrate Mass, but following the Irish led
Castle Hill Rebellion of 1804, Dixon's permission was revoked. Fr
Jeremiah Flynn, an Irish
Cistercian, was appointed as
Prefect Apostolic
An apostolic prefect or prefect apostolic is a priest who heads what is known as an apostolic prefecture, a 'pre-diocesan' missionary jurisdiction where the Catholic Church is not yet sufficiently developed to have it made a diocese. Although it ...
of
New Holland and set out uninvited from Britain for the colony. Watched by authorities, Flynn secretly performed priestly duties before being arrested and deported to London. Reaction to the affair in Britain led to two further priests being allowed to travel to the colony in 1820.
The
Church of England
The Church of England (C of E) is the established Christian church in England and the mother church of the international Anglican Communion. It traces its history to the Christian church recorded as existing in the Roman province of Britai ...
was disestablished in the Colony of New South Wales by the ''Church Act of 1836''. Drafted by the Catholic attorney-general
John Plunkett
John Hubert Plunkett (June 1802 – 9 May 1869) was Attorney-General of New South Wales, an appointed member of the Legislative Council 1836–41, 1843–56, 1857–58 and 1861–69. He was also elected as a member of the Legislative As ...
, the act established legal equality for Anglicans, Catholics and Presbyterians and was later extended to Methodists.
By the late 19th century approximately a quarter of the population of Australia were
Irish Australians. Many were descended from the 40,000 Irish Catholics who were transported as convicts to Australia before 1867. The majority consisted of British and Irish Protestants. The Catholics dominated the labour unions and the Labor Party. The growth of school systems in the late 19th century typically involved religious issues, pitting Protestants against Catholics. The issue of independence for Ireland was long a sore point, until the matter was resolved by the
Irish War of Independence.
Limited freedom of belief is protected by
Section 116 of the Constitution of Australia
Section 116 of the Constitution of Australia precludes the Commonwealth of Australia (''i.e.'', the federal parliament) from making laws for establishing any religion, imposing any religious observance, or prohibiting the free exercise of a ...
, but
sectarianism in Australia was prominent (though generally nonviolent) in the 20th century, flaring during the
First World War
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
, again reflecting Ireland's place within the Empire, and the Catholic minority remained subject to discrimination and suspicion. During the First World War, the Irish gave support for the war effort and comprised 20% of the army in France. However, the labour unions and the Irish in particular, strongly opposed conscription, and in alliance with like-minded farmers, defeated it in national plebiscites in
1916 and
1917. The Anglicans in particular talked of Catholic "disloyalty". By the 1920s, Australia had its
first Catholic prime minister.
During the 1950s, the split in the Australian Labor Party between allies and opponents of the Catholic anti-Communist
B.A. Santamaria
Bartholomew Augustine Santamaria, usually known as B. A. Santamaria (14 August 1915 – 25 February 1998), was an Australian Roman Catholic anti-Communist political activist and journalist. He was a guiding influence in the founding of the Demo ...
meant that the party (in Victoria and Queensland more than elsewhere) was effectively divided between pro-Catholic and anti-Catholic elements. As a result of such disunity the ALP was defeated at every single national election between 1955 and 1972. In the late 20th century, the Catholic Church replaced the Anglican Church as the largest single
Christian body in Australia; and it continues to be so in the 21st century, although it still has fewer members than do the various Protestant churches combined.
While older sectarian divides declined, commentators have observed a re-emergence of anti-Catholicism in Australia in recent decades amid rising secularism and broader
anti-Christian
Anti-Christian sentiment or Christophobia constitutes opposition or objections to Christians, the Christian religion, and/or its practices. Anti-Christian sentiment is sometimes referred to as Christophobia or Christianophobia, although these terms ...
movements.
New Zealand
According to
New Zealand
New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...
historian
A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the st ...
Michael King, the situation in New Zealand has never been as clear as in Australia.
Catholics first arrived in New Zealand in 1769, and the Church has had a continuous presence in the country from the time of permanent settlement by
Irish Catholics in the 1820s, with the first Maori converted to Catholicism in the 1830s. The signing of the
Treaty of Waitangi
The Treaty of Waitangi ( mi, Te Tiriti o Waitangi) is a document of central importance to the History of New Zealand, history, to the political constitution of the state, and to the national mythos of New Zealand. It has played a major role in ...
in 1840, which formalised New Zealand's status as a British colony and instigated substantial immigration from
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...
and
Scotland
Scotland (, ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a Anglo-Scottish border, border with England to the southeast ...
, resulted in the country developing a predominantly
Protestant
Protestantism is a branch of Christianity that follows the theological tenets of the Protestant Reformation, a movement that began seeking to reform the Catholic Church from within in the 16th century against what its followers perceived to b ...
religious character. Nonetheless,
French bishop
A bishop is an ordained clergy member who is entrusted with a position of authority and oversight in a religious institution.
In Christianity, bishops are normally responsible for the governance of dioceses. The role or office of bishop is c ...
Jean Baptiste Pompallier was able to negotiate the inclusion of a clause guaranteeing
freedom of religion
Freedom of religion or religious liberty is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or community, in public or private, to manifest religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship, and observance. It also includes the freed ...
in some of the versions of the treaties signed and oral promises during meetings beforehand.
New Zealand has had several Catholic
prime ministers
A prime minister, premier or chief of cabinet is the head of the cabinet and the leader of the ministers in the executive branch of government, often in a parliamentary or semi-presidential system. Under those systems, a prime minister is no ...
, which is indicative of the widespread acceptance of Catholicism within the country;
Jim Bolger
James Brendan Bolger ( ; born 31 May 1935) is a New Zealand retired politician of the National Party who was the 35th prime minister of New Zealand, serving from 1990 to 1997.
Bolger was born to an Irish immigrant family in Ōpunake, Taran ...
, who lead the
Fourth National Government of the 1990s, was the country's fourth Catholic prime minister;
Bill English
Sir Simon William English (born 30 December 1961) is a New Zealand former National Party politician who served as the 39th prime minister of New Zealand from 2016 to 2017 and as the 17th deputy prime minister of New Zealand and minister of f ...
, who lead the
Fifth National Government from 2016 to 2017, was the fifth and most recent. Probably the most notable of New Zealand's Catholic prime ministers was
Michael Joseph Savage
Michael Joseph Savage (23 March 1872 – 27 March 1940) was a New Zealand politician who served as the 23rd prime minister of New Zealand, heading the First Labour Government from 1935 until his death in 1940.
Savage was born in the Colon ...
, an
Australian
Australian(s) may refer to:
Australia
* Australia, a country
* Australians, citizens of the Commonwealth of Australia
** European Australians
** Anglo-Celtic Australians, Australians descended principally from British colonists
** Aboriginal A ...
-born
trade unionist
A trade union (labor union in American English), often simply referred to as a union, is an organization of workers intent on "maintaining or improving the conditions of their employment", ch. I such as attaining better wages and benefits (s ...
and
social reformer
A reform movement or reformism is a type of social movement that aims to bring a social or also a political system closer to the community's ideal. A reform movement is distinguished from more radical social movements such as revolutionary move ...
who instigated numerous progressive policies as leader of the
First Labour Government of the 1930s.
German Empire
![Kladderadatsch 1875 - Zwischen Berlin und Rom](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/81/Kladderadatsch_1875_-_Zwischen_Berlin_und_Rom.png)
Unification into the German Empire in 1871 saw a country with a Protestant majority and large Catholic minority, speaking German or Polish. Anti-Catholicism was common. The powerful German Chancellor
Otto von Bismarcka devout Lutheranforged an alliance with secular liberals in 1871–1878 to launch a
Kulturkampf (literally, "culture struggle") especially in Prussia, the largest state in the new German Empire to destroy the political power of the Catholic Church and the Pope. Catholics were numerous in the South (Bavaria, Baden-Wuerttemberg) and west (Rhineland) and fought back. Bismarck intended to end Catholics' loyalty with Rome (
ultramontanism
Ultramontanism is a clerical political conception within the Catholic Church that places strong emphasis on the prerogatives and powers of the Pope. It contrasts with Gallicanism, the belief that popular civil authority—often represented by th ...
) and subordinate all Germans to the power of his state.
Priests and bishops who resisted the Kulturkampf were arrested or removed from their positions. By the height of anti-Catholic legislation, half of the Prussian bishops were in prison or in exile, a quarter of the parishes had no priest, half the monks and nuns had left Prussia, a third of the monasteries and convents were closed, 1800 parish priests were imprisoned or exiled, and thousands of laymen were imprisoned for helping the priests. There were anti-Polish elements in Greater Poland and Silesia.
[ ] The Catholics refused to comply; they strengthened their Centre Party.
Pius IX died in 1878 and was replaced by more conciliatory
Pope Leo XIII
Pope Leo XIII ( it, Leone XIII; born Vincenzo Gioacchino Raffaele Luigi Pecci; 2 March 1810 – 20 July 1903) was the head of the Catholic Church from 20 February 1878 to his death in July 1903. Living until the age of 93, he was the second-old ...
who negotiated away most of the anti-Catholic laws beginning in 1880. Bismark himself broke with the anti-Catholic Liberals and worked with the Catholic Centre Party to fight Socialism. Pope Leo officially declared the end of the Kulturkampf on 23 May 1887.
Nazi Germany
The Catholic Church faced repression in
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...
(1933–1945).
Hitler
Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Nazi Germany, Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his death in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the le ...
despised the Church even though he had been brought up in a Catholic home. The long-term aim of many Nazis was the de-Christianization of Germany and the establishment of a form of
Germanic paganism
Germanic paganism or Germanic religion refers to the traditional, culturally significant religion of the Germanic peoples. With a chronological range of at least one thousand years in an area covering Scandinavia, the British Isles, modern Germ ...
which would replace Christianity.
[Sharkey]
Word for Word/The Case Against the Nazis; How Hitler's Forces Planned To Destroy German Christianity
New York Times, 13 January 2002[Bendersky, Joseph W.]
A concise history of Nazi Germany
p. 147, Rowman & Littlefield, 2007: "Consequently, it was Hitler’s long range goal to eliminate the churches once he had consolidated control over his European empire." however
Richard J. Evans
Sir Richard John Evans (born 29 September 1947) is a British historian of 19th- and 20th-century Europe with a focus on Germany. He is the author of eighteen books, including his three-volume ''The Third Reich Trilogy'' (2003–2008). Evans was ...
writes that Hitler believed that in the long run National Socialism and religion would not be able to co-exist, stressing repeatedly that Nazism was a secular ideology, founded on modern science: "Science, he declared, would easily destroy the last remaining vestiges of superstition". Germany could not tolerate the intervention of foreign influences such as the Pope and "Priests, he said, were 'black bugs', 'abortions in black cassocks.
Nazi ideology
Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Na ...
desired the subordination of the Church to the State and could not accept an autonomous establishment, whose legitimacy did not spring from the government. From the beginning, the Catholic Church faced general persecution, regimentation and oppression. Aggressive anti-Church radicals like Alfred Rosenberg and Martin Bormann saw the conflict with the Churches as a priority concern, and anti-Church and anti-clerical sentiments were strong among grassroots party activists.
[Ian Kershaw; Hitler a Biography; 2008 Edn; WW Norton & Company; London; pp. 381–382.
] To many Nazis, Catholics were suspected of insufficient patriotism, or even of disloyalty to the Fatherland, and of serving the interests of "sinister alien forces".
Adolf Hitler had some regard for the organisational power of Catholicism, but towards its teachings he showed nothing but the sharpest hostility, calling them "the systematic cultivation of the human failure": To Hitler, Christianity was a religion that was only fit for slaves and he detested its ethics. Alan Bullock wrote: "Its teaching, he declared, was a rebellion against the Struggle for existence, natural law of selection by struggle and the survival of the fittest". For political reasons, Hitler was prepared to restrain his anti-clericalism, seeing danger in strengthening the Church by persecuting it, but he intended to wage a show-down against it after the war.
[Bullock, Alan, Alan Bullock. ''Hitler: A Study in Tyranny''; HarperPerennial Edition 1991; p. 219.] Joseph Goebbels, the Minister for Propaganda, led the Nazi persecution of the Catholic clergy and wrote that there was "an insoluble opposition between the Christian and a heroic-German world view".
Hitler's chosen deputy, Martin Bormann, was a rigid guardian of Nazi orthodoxy and saw Christianity and Nazism as "incompatible", as did the official Nazi philosopher, Alfred Rosenberg, who wrote in ''Myth of the Twentieth Century'' (1930) that the Catholic Church were among the chief enemies of the Germans.
[Encyclopædia Britannica Online: ''Fascism - Identification with Christianity''; 2013. Web. 14 April 2013] In 1934, the ''Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Sanctum Officium'' put Rosenberg's book on the ''Index Librorum Prohibitorum'' (forbidden books list of the Church) for scorning and rejecting "all dogmas of the Catholic Church, indeed the very fundamentals of the Christian religion".
The Nazis claimed that they had jurisdiction over all collective and social activities and based on their claim, they infiltrated all collective and social institutions, interfered in all of the activities which they performed, and banned them if they did not become Nazified, including Catholic schools, youth groups, workers' clubs and cultural societies. Hitler moved quickly to eliminate Political Catholicism, rounding up members of the Catholic aligned Bavarian People's Party and Catholic Centre Party, which ceased to exist in early July 1933. Vice Chancellor Papen meanwhile, amid continuing molestation of Catholic clergy and organisations, negotiated a Reich concordat with the Holy See, which prohibited clergy from participating in politics. Hitler then proceeded to close all Catholic institutions whose functions were not strictly religious:
Almost immediately after agreeing the Concordat, the Nazis promulgated their sterilization law, an offensive policy in the eyes of the Catholic Church and moved to dissolve the Catholic Youth League. Clergy, nuns and lay leaders began to be targeted, leading to thousands of arrests over the ensuing years, often on trumped up charges of currency smuggling or "immorality".
[William L. Shirer; The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich; Secker & Warburg; London; 1960; pp. 234–235.] In Hitler's Night of the Long Knives purge, Erich Klausener, the head of Catholic Action, was assassinated.
[Ian Kershaw; Hitler a Biography; 2008 Edn; WW Norton & Company; London; p. 315] Adalbert Probst, national director of the Catholic Youth Sports Association, Fritz Gerlich, editor of Munich's Catholic weekly and Edgar Jung, one of the authors of the Marburg speech, were among the other Catholic opposition figures killed in the purge.
By 1937, the Church hierarchy in Germany, which had initially attempted to co-operate with the new government, had become highly disillusioned. In March, Pope Pius XI issued the ''Mit brennender Sorge'' encyclicalaccusing the Nazis of violations of the Concordat, and of sowing the "tares of suspicion, discord, hatred, calumny, of secret and open fundamental hostility to Christ and His Church". The Pope noted on the horizon the "threatening storm clouds" of religious wars of extermination over Germany.
The Nazis responded with, an intensification of the Kirchenkampf, Church Struggle.
There were mass arrests of clergy and Church presses were expropriated. Goebbels renewed the regime's crackdown and propaganda against Catholics. By 1939 all Catholic denominational schools had been disbanded or converted to public facilities. By 1941, all Church press had been banned.
Later Catholic protests included the 22 March 1942 pastoral letter by the German bishops on "The Struggle against Christianity and the Church". About 30 per cent of Catholic priests were disciplined by police during the Nazi era. In effort to counter the strength and influence of spiritual resistance, the security services monitored Catholic clergy very closelyinstructing that agents monitor every diocese, that the bishops' reports to the Vatican should be obtained and that bishops' activities be discovered and reported. Priests were frequently denounced, arrested, or sent to concentration campsmany to the dedicated Priest Barracks of Dachau Concentration Camp, clergy barracks at Dachau. Of a total of 2,720 clergy imprisoned at Dachau, some 2,579 (or 95%) were Catholic.
[Paul Berben; ''Dachau: The Official History 1933–1945''; Norfolk Press; London; 1975; ; pp. 276–277] Nazi policy towards the Church was at its most severe in the territories it annexed to Greater Germany, where the Nazis set about systematically dismantling the Churcharresting its leaders, exiling its clergymen, closing its churches, monasteries and convents. Many clergymen were murdered.
Netherlands
The independence of the Netherlands from Spanish Holland, Spanish rule led to the formation of a majority Protestant country in which the dominant form of Protestantism was Calvinism. In Amsterdam, Catholic priests were driven out of the city
and following the Dutch takeover, all Catholic churches were converted into Protestant churches.
Amsterdam's relationship with the Catholic Church was not normalized until the 20th century.
Nordic countries
Norway
After the Kingdom of Norway (1814)#Treaty of Kiel, dissolution of Denmark-Norway in 1814, the new Norwegian Constitution of 1814, did not grant religious freedom, as it stated that both Jews and Jesuits were denied entrance to the Kingdom of Norway. It also stated that attendance in a
Lutheran
Lutheranism is one of the largest branches of Protestantism, identifying primarily with the theology of Martin Luther, the 16th-century German monk and Protestant Reformers, reformer whose efforts to reform the theology and practice of the Cathol ...
church was compulsory, effectively banning Catholics. The ban on Catholicism was lifted in 1842 in Norway, 1842, and the ban on Jews was lifted in 1851 in Norway, 1851. At first, there were multiple restrictions on the practice of Catholicism by Norwegians and only foreign citizens were freely allowed to practice it. The first post-reformation parish was founded in 1843 in Norway, 1843, Catholics were only allowed to celebrate Mass in this one parish. In 1845 in Norway, 1845 most of the restrictions on the practice of non-Lutheran Christianity were lifted, and Catholics were now allowed to freely practice their religion, but Monasticism and the Jesuits were not allowed in the country until 1897 in Norway, 1897 and 1956 in Norway, 1956 respectively.
Swedish Empire
During the period of great power in Sweden, conversions to Catholicism were punished with fines or imprisonment and in exceptional cases, death. Sweden during the Thirty Years War saw itself as the protector of Protestantism in all of Europe against the pope. The Linköping Bloodbath of 20 March 1600 saw several prominent Catholic nobles beheaded by order of King Charles IX of Sweden. The executions were partially motivated by the Polish invasion of Sweden and a threat of a potential Catholic takeover under Polish king Sigismund III Vasa, who planned to reconvert Sweden back to Catholicism. The Battle of Stångebro prevented Sigismund from conquering and reconverting Sweden. Catholic nobles were put in a majority of leading positions by Sigismund In the Swedish government without the approval of the Swedish people or parliament. The conspiracy provoked new laws preventing Catholics from holding leading government positions in the Swedish government. Due to the Austrian emperor winning a lot of great victories before Sweden joined. The war and Swedish successes cemented Protestantism's continued survival in the Holy Roman Empire and the following anti-Catholicism ingrained in the religion.
Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden was known as the "Lion from the North". He did prevent the pillaging of Catholic villages of Swedish troops by proclaiming Protestant moral superiority in 1631, while Catholic armies were plundering Saxony. He did not wear any armour during the Battle of Rain against the Catholics and proclaimed he was divinely chosen by God to lead the Protestants to glory, and so felt he needed no protection in battle.
Russian Orthodox populations had the right to practice their faith since their incorporation in 1617 after the Ingrian War and never faced similar persecution. Even after Eastern Orthodoxy was legalized, there remained an extreme anti-Catholic sentiment in Sweden which was widely supported by German nobility and German Protestants in Swedish territories.
Only in 1781 did Catholics have the right to worship once again in Sweden, the latest of all major religions except Judaism that was legalized in the same era, even though Judaism had already been in practice tolerated since Charles XII of Sweden brought Muslim and Jewish advisors with him from the Ottoman Empire. While Protestant Swedes could not join any other religious organization until 1873, still, in 1849, Catholic converts were punished with imprisonment. Conversion to Catholicism was punished with fines or imprisonment even after the reform. Catholics could not become a minister of the Swedish government or work as teachers or nurses in Sweden until 1951.
United States
John Higham (historian), John Higham described anti-Catholicism as "the most luxuriant, tenacious tradition of paranoiac agitation in History of the United States, American history."
* Jenkins, Philip. ''The New Anti-Catholicism: The Last Acceptable Prejudice'' (Oxford University Press, New ed. 2004). British anti-Catholicism was exported to the United States. Two types of anti-Catholic rhetoric existed in colonial society. The first, which was derived from the heritage of the Reformation, Protestant Reformation and the French Wars of Religion, religious wars of the sixteenth century, consisted of the "Anti-Christ" and the "Whore of Babylon" variety and it dominated Anti-Catholic thought until the late seventeenth century. The second was a more secular variety which focused on the supposed intrigue of the Catholics and accused them of plotting to extend Despot (court title), medieval despotism worldwide.
Historian Arthur Schlesinger Sr. has called anti-Catholicism "the deepest-held bias in the history of the American people".
Historian 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."
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Colonial era
American anti-Catholicism has its origins in the Protestant Reformation which generated anti-Catholic propaganda for various political and dynastic reasons. Because the Protestant Reformation justified itself as an effort to correct what it perceived were the errors and the excesses of the Catholic Church, it formed strong positions against the Catholic bishops and the Papacy in particular. These positions were brought to New England by English colonists who were predominantly Puritans. They opposed not only the Catholic Church but also the Church of England which, due to its perpetuation of some Catholic doctrines and practices, was deemed insufficiently "reformed". Furthermore, English and Scottish identity to a large extent was based on opposition to Catholicism. "To be English was to be anti-Catholic," writes Robert Curran.
Because many of the British colonists, such as the Puritans and Congregational church, Congregationalists, were fleeing religious persecution by the Church of England, much of early American religious culture exhibited the more extreme anti-Catholic bias of these Protestant denominations. Monsignor 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 often contained specific proscriptions against Catholics. For example, the second Massachusetts charter of October 7, 1691, decreed "that forever hereafter there shall be liberty of conscience allowed in the worship of God to all Christians, except Papists, inhabiting, or which shall inhabit or be resident within, such Province or Territory". Historians have only identified one Catholic who lived in colonial BostonAnn Glover. She was hanged as a witch in 1688, four years before the much more famous Salem witch trials, witchcraft trials in nearby Salem.
Monsignor Ellis noted that a common hatred of the Catholic Church could unite Anglican clerics and Puritan ministers despite their differences and conflicts. One of the Intolerable Acts passed by the British Parliament that helped fuel the American Revolution was the Quebec Act of 1774, which granted freedom of worship to Roman Catholics in Canada.
New nation
The patriot reliance on Catholic France for military, financial and diplomatic aid led to a sharp drop in anti-Catholic rhetoric. Indeed, the king replaced the pope as the demon patriots had to fight against. Anti-Catholicism remained strong among loyalists, some of whom went to Canada after the war while most 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. "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."
George Washington was a vigorous promoter of tolerance for all religious denominations as commander of the army (1775–1783) where he suppressed anti-Catholic celebrations in the Army and appealed to French Catholics in Canada to join the American Revolution; a few hundred of them did. Likewise he guaranteed a high degree of freedom of religion as president (1789–1797), when he often attended services of different denominations. The military alliance with Catholic France in 1778 changed attitudes radically in Boston. Local leaders enthusiastically welcomed French naval and military officers, realizing the alliance was critical to winning independence. The Catholic chaplain of the French army reported in 1781 that he was continually receiving "new civilities" from the best families in Boston; he also noted that "the people in general retain their own prejudices." By 1790, about 500 Catholics in Boston formed the first Catholic Church there.
Fear of the pope agitated some of America's Founding Fathers of the United States, Founding Fathers. For example, in 1788, John Jay urged the New York Legislature to prohibit Catholics from holding office. The legislature refused, but did pass a law designed to reach the same goal by requiring all office-holders to renounce foreign authorities "in all matters ecclesiastical as well as civil". Thomas Jefferson, looking at the Catholic Church in France, wrote, "History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government", and "In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own."
1840s–1850s
Anti-Catholic fears reached a peak in the nineteenth century when the Protestant population became alarmed by the influx of Catholic immigrants. Some Protestant ministers preached the belief that the Catholic Church is the Whore of Babylon which is described in the Book of Revelation
The Book of Revelation is the final book of the New Testament (and consequently the final book of the Christian Bible). Its title is derived from the first word of the Koine Greek text: , meaning "unveiling" or "revelation". The Book of ...
. The resulting "nativist" movement, which achieved prominence in the 1840s, was whipped into a frenzy of anti-Catholicism that led to mob violence, most notably the Philadelphia Nativist Riot of 1844. Historian David Montgomery (historian), David Montgomery argues that the Irish Catholic Democrats in Philadelphia had successfully appealed to the upper-class Whig leadership. The Whigs wanted to split the Democratic coalition, so they approved Bishop Kendrick's request that Catholic children be allowed to use their own Bible. That approval outraged the evangelical Protestant leadership, which rallied its support in Philadelphia and nationwide. Montgomery states:
:The school controversy, however, had united 94 leading clergymen of the city in a common pledge to strengthen Protestant education and "awaken the attention of the community to the dangers which... threaten these United States from the assaults of Romanism." The American Tract Society took up the battle cry and launched a national crusade to save the nation from the "spiritual despotism" of Rome. The whole Protestant edifice of churches, Bible societies, temperance societies, and missionary agencies was thus interposed against Catholic electoral maneuvers ... at the very moment when those maneuvers were enjoying some success.
The nativist movement found expression in a national political movement called the "American" or Know-Nothing Party of 1854–56. It had considerable success in local and state elections in 1854–55 by emphasizing nativism and warning against Catholics and immigrants. It nominated former president Millard Fillmore as its presidential candidate in 1856 United States presidential election, the 1856 election. However, Fillmore was not anti-Catholic or nativist; his campaign concentrated almost entirely on national unity. Historian Tyler Anbinder says, "The American party had dropped nativism from its agenda." Fillmore won 22% of the national popular vote.
In the Orange Riots in New York City in 1871 and 1872, Irish Catholics violently attacked Irish Protestants, who carried orange banners.
Anti-Catholicism among American Jews further intensified in the 1850s during the international controversy over the Edgardo Mortara case, when a baptized Jewish boy in the Papal States was removed from his family and refused to return to them.
After 1875 many states passed constitutional provisions, called "Blaine Amendments", forbidding tax money be used to fund parochial schools. In 2002, the United States Supreme Court partially vitiated these amendments, when they ruled that vouchers were constitutional if tax dollars followed a child to a school even if the school were religious.
A favorite rhetorical device in the 1870s was using the code words for Catholicism: “superstition, ambition and ignorance”. President Ulysses Grant in a major speech to veterans in October 1875 warned that America again faced an enemy: religious schools. Grant saw another civil war in the "near future": it would not be between North and South, but will be between "patriotism and intelligence on the one side and superstition, ambition and ignorance on the other." According to historian Charles W. Calhoun, "at various points in his life, Grant had bristled privately at what he considered religious communicants' thralldom to a domineering clergy, but he did not specifically mention Catholicism in his speech. Still, Catholic journals decried the president's seeming exploitation of religious bigotry." In his December 1875 Annual Message to Congress, Grant urged taxation on "vast amounts of untaxed church property" which Professor John McGreevey says was "a transparently anti-Catholic measure since only the Catholic Church owned vast amounts of propertyin schools, orphanages, and charitable institutions". Grant told Congress such legislation would protect American citizens from tyranny "whether directed by the demagogue or by priestcraft."
20th and 21st centuries
Anti-Catholicism played a major role in the defeat of Al Smith, the Democratic nominee for president in 1928. Smith did very well in Catholic precincts, but he did poorly in the South, as well as among the Lutheranism, Lutherans of the North. His candidacy was also hampered by his close ties to the notorious Tammany Hall political machine in New York City and his strong opposition to Prohibition in the United States, prohibition. His cause was uphill in any case, because he faced a popular Republican leadership in a year of peace and unprecedented prosperity.
The passage of the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, 18th Amendment in 1919, a culmination of a half-century of anti-liquor agitation, also fueled anti-Catholic sentiment. Prohibition enjoyed strong support among dry pietistic Protestants, and equally strong opposition by wet Catholics, Episcopal Church (United States), Episcopalians, and German Lutherans. The drys focused their distrust on the Catholics who showed little popular support for the enforcement of prohibition laws, and when the Great Depression began in 1929, there was increasing sentiment that the government needed the tax revenue which the repeal of Prohibition would bring.
Over 10 million Protestant soldiers who served in World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...
came into close contact with Catholic soldiers; they got along well and, after the war, they played a central role in spreading a greater level of ethnic and religious tolerance for Catholics among other white Americans. Although anti-Catholic sentiment declined in the U.S. in the 1960s, particularly after John F. Kennedy became the first Catholic U.S. president, traces of it persist in both the media and popular culture. In March, 2000, the Catholic League (US), Catholic League criticized Slate (magazine), ''Slate'' magazine and journalist Jack Shafer for a piece the League described as taking "delight in justifying anti-Catholicism." Attacks on persons and property have also continued to occur. The summer of 2020 saw a wave of anti-Catholic acts which ranged from the vandalization of churches and cathedrals; to the destruction and often the decapitation of statues, particularly statues of Junípero Serra, St Junipero Serra, Mary, mother of Jesus, Mary, and Jesus; Illinois, and Florida. Many of these acts are tied to other political movements, most notably the QAnon movement, though other far right groups have also espoused anti-Catholic sentiment. One popular conspiracy is that the three stars on the DC flag stand for London, the Vatican and Washington. Another far right conspiracy claims the pope was arrested for sexual abuse.
In primarily 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 anticlericalism 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.
Anticlericalism has at times been violent, leading to murders and the desecration, destruction and seizure of Church property. Anticlericalism in one form or another has existed throughout most of Christian history, and it is considered to be one of the major popular forces underlying the 16th century reformation. Some of the philosophers of the Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment, including Voltaire, continually attacked the Catholic Church, both its leadership and its priests, claiming that many of its clergy were morally corrupt. These assaults in part led to the suppression of the Jesuits
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, and played a major part in the wholesale attacks on the very existence of the Church during the French Revolution
The French Revolution ( ) was a period of radical political and societal change in France that began with the Estates General of 1789 and ended with the formation of the French Consulate in coup of 18 Brumaire, November 1799. Many of its ...
in the Reign of Terror and the program of Dechristianisation of France during the French Revolution, dechristianization. Similar attacks on the Church occurred in Cristero War, Mexico and Portugal since their 1910 revolutions and in Red Terror (Spain), Spain during the twentieth century.
Argentina
In 1954, Argentina saw extensive destruction of churches, denunciations of clergy and confiscation of Catholic schools as Juan Perón attempted to extend state control over national institutions such as the Catholic Church in Argentina.[Norman, ''The Roman Catholic Church an Illustrated History'' (2007), pp. 167–168]
Austria
Holy Roman Empire
Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor, Joseph II (emperor 1765–1790) opposed what he called "contemplative" religious institutionsreclusive Catholic institutions that he perceived as doing nothing positive for the community. Although Joseph II was himself a Catholic, he also believed in firm state control of ecclesiastical matters outside of the strictly religious sphere and decreed that Austrian bishops could not communicate directly with the Roman Curia. His policies are included in what is called Josephinism, that promoted the subjection of the Catholic Church in the Habsburg lands to service for the state.
Austro-Hungary
Georg Ritter von Schönerer (1842–1921) was an Austrians, Austrian landowner and politician of Austro-Hungary. He was a major opponent of political Catholicism and the founder of the movement ''Away from Rome!'', aimed the conversion of all the Catholic German language, German-speaking population of Austria to Lutheranism, or, in some cases, to the Old Catholic Churches.
Brazil
Brazil has the largest number of Catholics in the world,[IBGE – Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística (Brazilian Institute for Geography and Statistics). ''Religion in Brazil – 2000 Census''](_blank)
Retrieved 2009-01-06. and as a result, it has not experienced any large anti-Catholic movements.
During the Nineteenth Century, the Religious Question was the name given to the crisis when Freemasons in the Brazilian government imprisoned two Catholic bishops for enforcing the Church's prohibition against Freemasonry.
Even during times in which the Church was experiencing intense conservatism, such as the era of the Brazilian military dictatorship, anti-Catholicism was not advocated by the left-wing movements (instead, Liberation theology gained force). However, with the growing number of Protestants (especially Neo-Pentecostals) in the country, anti-Catholicism has gained strength. A pivotal moment during the rise of anti-Catholicism was the kicking of the saint episode in 1995. However, owing to the protests of the Catholic majority, the perpetrator was transferred to South Africa for the duration of the controversy.
During the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil, drug dealers took advantage of the pandemic to unite five slums in Rio de Janeiro (state), Rio de Janeiro imposing evangelical Protestantism on the area and attacking Catholics (and also members of Umbanda).
Colombia
Anti-Catholic and anti-clerical sentiments, some of which were spurred by an anti-clerical conspiracy theory which was circulating in Colombia during the mid-twentieth century, led to the persecution and killing of Catholics, most specifically, the persecution and killing of members of the Catholic clergy, during the events which are known as La Violencia.
Cuba
Cuba, under the rule of the Atheism, atheist Fidel Castro, succeeded in reducing the ability of the Catholic Church to work by deporting one archbishop and 150 Spanish priests, by discriminating against Catholics in public life and education and refusing to accept them as members of the Communist Party of Cuba, Communist Party. The subsequent flight of 300,000 Cubans from the island also helped to diminish the Church there.[Chadwick, ''A History of Christianity'' (1995), p. 266]
France
During the French Revolution
The French Revolution ( ) was a period of radical political and societal change in France that began with the Estates General of 1789 and ended with the formation of the French Consulate in coup of 18 Brumaire, November 1799. Many of its ...
(1789–95), the clergy and the laity were persecuted and Church property was confiscated and destroyed by the new government as part of a process of ''Dechristianization'', the aims of which were the destruction of Catholic practices and the destruction of the very faith itself, culminating in the imposition of the Atheism, atheistic Cult of Reason followed by the imposition of the Deism, deistic Cult of the Supreme Being.[Tallet, Fran]
Religion, Society and Politics in France Since 1789
pp. 1–2, 1991 Continuum International Publishing The persecution led Catholics who lived in the west of France to wage a counterrevolution, the War in the Vendée, and when the state was victorious, it killed tens of thousands of Catholics. A few historians have called the killings a genocide. However, most historians believe that the killings constituted a brutal crackdown against political enemies rather than a genocide. The French invasions of Italy (1796–99) included an assault on Rome and the exile of Pope Pius VI in 1798.
Relations improved in 1802 when Napoleon came to terms with the Pope in the Concordat of 1801. It allowed the Church to operate but did not give back the lands; it proved satisfactory for a century. By 1815 the Papacy supported the growing alliance against Napoleon, and was re-instated as the State Church during the conservative Bourbon Restoration in France, Bourbon Restoration of 1815–30. The brief French Revolution of 1848 again opposed the Church, but the Second French Empire (1851–71) gave it full support. The history of 1789–1871 had established two campsthe left against the Church and the right supporting itthat largely continued until the Vatican II process in 1962–65.
France's French Third Republic, Third Republic (1871–1940) was cemented by anti-clericalism, the desire to secularise the State and social life, faithful to the French Revolution. This was the position of the radicals and socialists. in 1902 Émile Combes became Minister of the Interior, and the main energy of the government was devoted to an anti-clerical agenda.["Emile Combes who boasted of taking office for the sole purpose of destroying the religious orders. He closed thousands of what were not then called 'faith schools']
Bigots united
in the Guardian, 9 October 2005 The parties of the Left, Socialists and Radicals, united upon this question in the ''Bloc republicain'', supported Combes in his application of the law of 1901 on the religious associations, and voted the new bill on the congregations (1904). By 1904, through his efforts, nearly 10,000 religious schools had been closed and thousands of priests and nuns left France rather than be persecuted. Under his guidance parliament moved toward the 1905 French law on the separation of Church and State, which ended the Napoleonic arrangement of 1801.
In the Affaire Des Fiches, in France in 1904–1905, it was discovered that the militantly anticlerical War Minister under Combes, General Louis André, was determining promotions based on the French Anticlericalism and Freemasonry, Masonic Grand Orient's huge card index on public officials, detailing which were Catholic and who attended Mass, with the goal of preventing their promotions. Exposure almost caused the government to fall; instead Combes retired.
Italy
In the Napoleonic era, anti-clericalism was a powerful political force. From 1860 through 1870, the new Italian government, under the House of Savoy, outlawed all religious orders, both male and female, including the Franciscans, the Dominican Order, Dominicans and the Jesuits
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, caption = ChristogramOfficial seal of the Jesuits
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, closed down their monasteries and confiscated their property, and imprisoned or banished bishops who opposed this (see Kulturkampf). Capture of Rome, Italy took over Rome in 1870 when it lost its French protection; the Pope declared himself a prisoner in the Vatican. Relations were finally normalized in 1929 with the Lateran Treaty.
Mexico
Following the Reform War, President Benito Juárez issued a decree nationalizing Church properties, separating Church and State, and suppressing religious orders.
In the wake of the Mexican Revolution, the Constitution of Mexico, Mexican Constitution of 1917 contained further anti-clerical provisions. Article 3 called for secular education in the schools and prohibited the Church from engaging in primary education; Article 5 outlawed monastic orders; Article 24 forbade public worship outside the confines of churches; and Article 27 placed restrictions on the right of religious organizations to hold property. Article 130 deprived clergy members of political rights.
Mexican President Plutarco Elías Calles's strict enforcement of previous anti-clerical legislation denying priests' rights, enacted as the Calles Law, prompted the Mexican Episcopate to suspend all Catholic worship in Mexico from August 1, 1926, and sparked the bloody Cristero War of 1926–1929 in which some 50,000 peasants took up arms against the government. Their slogan was "¡Viva Cristo Rey!" (Long live Christ the King!).
The effects of the war on the Church were profound. Between 1926 and 1934 at least 40 priests were killed.[Van Hove, Bria]
Blood-Drenched Altars
Faith & Reason 1994 Where there were 4,500 priests serving the people before the rebellion, in 1934 there were only 334 priests licensed by the government to serve fifteen million people, the rest having been eliminated by emigration, expulsion, assassination or not obtaining licenses.[Scheina, Robert L]
''Latin America's Wars: The Age of the Caudillo, 1791–1899''
p. 33 (2003
Brassey's) It appears that ten states were left without any priests. Other sources indicate that the persecution was such that, by 1935, 17 states had no registered priests.
Some of the Catholic casualties of this struggle are known as the Saints of the Cristero War. Events relating to this were famously portrayed in the novel ''The Power and the Glory'' by Graham Greene.
Poland
''For the situation in Russian Poland, see Anticatholicism#Russian Empire, Anticatholicism in Russian Empire''
Catholicism in Poland, the religion of the vast majority of the population, was severely persecuted during World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...
, following the Nazi invasion of the country and its subsequent annexation into Germany. Over 3 million Catholics of Polish descent were murdered during the Invasion of Poland, including 3 bishops, 52 priests, 26 monks, 3 seminarians, 8 nuns and 9 lay people, later beatified in 1999 by Pope John Paul II as the 108 Martyrs of World War II.
The Roman Catholic Church was even more violently suppressed in Reichsgau Wartheland and the General Government.[John S. Conway, "The Nazi Persecution of the Churches, 1933–1945", Regent College Publishing, 1997] Churches were closed, and clergy were deported, imprisoned, or killed, among them was Maximilian Kolbe, a Pole of German descent. Between 1939 and 1945, 2,935 members of the Polish clergy (18%) were killed in concentration camps. In the city of Chełmno, for example, 48% of the Catholic clergy were killed.
Catholicism continued to be persecuted under the People's Republic of Poland, Communist regime from the 1950s. Contemporary Stalinism, Stalinist ideology claimed that the Church and religion in general were about to disintegrate. Initially, Stefan Wyszyński, 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 beganthe cardinal being one 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 Monastery in the Bieszczady Mountains. He was released on 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.
Spain
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 (Spain), Red Terror. Hundreds of Martyrs of the Spanish Civil War have been beatified and hundreds more in October 2007.
In mixed Catholic-Protestant countries
Switzerland
The Jesuits (Societas Jesu) were banned from all activities in either clerical or pedagogical functions by Article 51 of the Swiss constitution in 1848. The reason for the ban was the perceived threat to the stability of the state resulting from Jesuit advocacy of traditional Catholicism; it followed the Roman Catholic cantons forming an unconstitutional ''separate alliance'' leading to Sonderbund War, civil war. In June 1973, 55% of Swiss voters approved removing the ban on the Jesuits (as well as Article 52 which banned monasteries and convents from Switzerland). (See '' Kulturkampf'' and ''Religion in Switzerland'')
In primarily Orthodox countries
Byzantine Empire
In the East–West Schism of 1054 the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church broke their full communion with each other because of Eastern Orthodox – Roman Catholic ecclesiastical differences, Ecclesiastical differences, Theological differences between the Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church, Theological, and Liturgical disputes.
In April 1182, the Eastern Orthodox population of the Byzantine Empire committed a large-scale massacre against the Catholic population of Constantinople, this massacre is known as the Massacre of the Latins and it further worsened relations and increased enmity between Eastern Orthodoxy and Catholicism.
Russian Empire
During Russian rule, Catholics, primarily Poles and Lithuanians, suffered great persecution not only because of their ethnic-national background, but also for religious reasons. Especially after the uprisings of November Uprising, 1831 and January Uprising, 1863, and within the process of Russification (understanding that there is a strong link between religion and nationality), the tsarist authorities were anxious to promote the conversion of these peoples to the official faith, intervening in public education in those regions (an Russian Orthodox Church, Orthodox religious education was compulsory) and censoring the actions of the Catholic Church. In particular, attention was focused on the public actions of the Church, such as masses or funerals, because they could serve as the focus of protests against the occupation. Many priests were imprisoned or deported because of their activities in defense of their religion and ethnicity. In the late nineteenth century, however, there was a progressive relaxation of the control of Catholic institutions by the Russian authorities.
Former Yugoslavia
During World War II in Yugoslavia, the Chetniks killed an estimated 18,000-32,000 Croats, who were mostly Roman Catholic. The terror tactics against the Croats were, to at least an extent, a reaction to the Genocide of Serbs in the Independent State of Croatia, terror carried out by the Ustaše against Serbs. Along with mass murder, the Ustashe conducted religious persecution of Serbs that included a policy of forced conversion from Eastern Orthodoxy to Roman Catholicism, often with the Catholic clergy involvement with the Ustaše, participation of local Catholic priests. However, the largest Chetnik massacres took place in eastern Bosnia where they preceded any significant Ustashe operations. Croats (and Muslims) living in areas intended to be part of Greater Serbia were to be cleansed of non-Serbs regardless, in accordance with Mihailović's directive of 20 December 1941. About 300 villages and small towns were destroyed, along with a large number of mosques and Catholic churches. 52 Priesthood in the Catholic Church, Catholic priests were killed by Chetniks throughout the war. A number of Catholic nuns were also raped and killed, including the Blessed Martyrs of Drina, killing of several nuns from Goražde in December 1941.
During the Croatian War of Independence, war in Croatia, the ICTY determined that ethnic Croats were persecuted on political, racial and religious grounds, as part of a general campaign of killings and forced-removals of Croat civilians. This included the deliberate destruction of religious buildings and monuments. Approximately 450 Catholic churches were destroyed or severely damaged, with another 250 suffering lesser damages. In addition, approximately 151 rectories, 31 monasteries, and 57 cemeteries were destroyed or severely damaged. While another 269 religious buildings were destroyed during the Bosnian War.
Ukraine
In the separatist region known as the Donetsk People's Republic, the government has declared that the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate is the state religion, and Protestant churches have been occupied by paramilitaries. Jehovah's Witnesses have lost their property, and their Kingdom Halls have been occupied by rebels in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. Roman Catholic, Greek Catholic, Ukrainian Orthodox, and Protestant clergy have been kidnapped by groups such as the Russian Orthodox Army, and they have also been accused of opposing Russian Orthodox values. Human Rights Watch says that the bodies of several members of the Church of the Transfiguration were found in a mass grave in 2014.
Non-Christian nations
Bangladesh
On 3 June 2001, nine people were killed by a 2001 Gopalganj Roman Catholic church bombing, bomb explosion at a Roman Catholic church in the Gopalganj District.
Burkina Faso
On May 12, 2019, six Catholics including a priest were killed by gunmen who rode on motorcycles and stormed a church in Dablo during a Sunday morning mass. A day later, on May 13, 2019, four people were killed and a statue of the Virgin Mary was destroyed by armed men in an attack on Catholic parishioners during a religious procession in the remote village of Zimtenga.
China
The Daoguang Emperor modified an existing law, making the spread of Catholicism punishable by death.
During the Boxer Rebellion, Catholic missionaries and their families were murdered by Boxer rebels. During the 1905 Tibetan Rebellion, Tibetan rebels murdered Catholics and Tibetan converts.
Since the founding of the People's Republic of China, all religions including Catholicism only operate Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association, under state control. However, many Catholics do not accept State control of the Church and as a result, they worship clandestinely.[U.S Department of State]
International Religious Freedom Report 2010: China
17 Nov 2010. There has been some rapprochement between the Chinese government and the Vatican.
Christianity in China, Chinese Christians have reportedly been persecuted in both official and unsanctioned churches. In 2018, the Associated Press reported that China's paramount leader Xi Jinping "is waging the most severe systematic suppression of Christianity in the country since religious freedom was written into the Chinese constitution in 1982", which has involved "destroying crosses, burning bibles, shutting churches and ordering followers to sign papers renouncing their faith".
Japan
On 5 February 1597 Twenty-six Martyrs of Japan, a group of twenty-six Catholics were killed on the orders of Toyotomi Hideyoshi.
During the Tokugawa Shogunate, Catholic Church in Japan, Japanese Catholics were suppressed, leading to Shimabara Rebellion, an armed rebellion during the 1630s. After the rebellion was crushed, Catholicism was further suppressed and many Japanese Catholics Kakure Kirishitan, went underground. Catholicism was not openly restored to Japan until the Oura Church, 1850s.
North Korea
South Korea
Catholic priests and nuns have been arrested and harassed for protesting against the construction of the Jeju Naval Base controversy, Jeju Island Naval Base.
Sri Lanka
Government actions
In Sri Lanka, A Buddhism, Buddhist-influenced government took over 600 parish schools in 1960 without compensation and secularized them. Attempts were made by future governments to restore some autonomy.
Anti-Catholic violence
Since 2000, in a context of rising violence against Religion in Sri Lanka, religious minorities, i.e. Christians, Muslims and Hindus, multiple attacks on Catholic churches occurred. For instance, in 2009, a mob of 1,000 smashed the interior of a church in the town of Crooswatta, assaulting parishioners with clubs, swords and stones, forcing several of them to be treated in hospitals. In 2013, vandals smashed a statue of the Virgin Mary as well as a tabernacle, and they also tried to burn the Eucharist at a church in Angulana, near Colombo.
The term "anti-Catholic Catholic" has come to be applied to Catholics who are perceived to view the Catholic Church with animosity. Traditionalist Catholic, Traditionalist or conservative Catholics frequently use it as a descriptive term for Modernism in the Catholic Church, modernist or liberal Catholics, especially those modernist or liberal Catholics who seek to reform Church doctrine, make secularist critiques of the Catholic Church, or place secular principles above Church teachings. Those who take issue with the Catholic theology of sexuality are especially prone to be given this label.
Suppression of the Jesuits
Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo, 1st Marquis of Pombal, Prime Minister Pombal of Portugal was aggressively hostile to the Society of Jesus, Jesuit order because it reported to an Italian powerthe Popeand it also tried to operate independently rather than operate under the control of the government. In Portugal as well as in much of Catholic Europe, he waged a full-scale war against the Jesuits. The Jesuit order was suppressed in the Portuguese Empire (1759), France
France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its metropolitan area ...
(1764), the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, Two Sicilies, Malta, Parma, the Spanish Empire (1767), and Austrian Empire, Austria and Kingdom of Hungary, Hungary (1782). The Pope himself suppressed the order everywhere in 1773, but it survived in Russian Empire, Russia and Prussia. The suppression of the Jesuits was a major blow to Catholic education across Europe, with nearly 1000 secondary schools and seminaries were shut down. Their lands, buildings, and endowments were confiscated; their teachers were scattered. Although Jesuit education had become old fashioned in Poland and other areas, it was the main educational support network for Catholic intellectuals, senior clergy, and prominent families. Governments unsuccessfully attempted to replace all of those schools, but there were far too few non-clerical teachers who were suitable.
The Jesuit order was restored by the pope in 1814 and it flourished in terms of rebuilding schools and educational institutions but it never regained its enormous political power. The suppression of the Jesuits has been described as "an unmitigated disaster for Catholicism." The political weakness of the once-powerful institution was on public display for more ridicule and bullying. The Church lost its best educational system, its best missionary system, and its most innovative thinkers. Intellectually, it would take two centuries for the Church to fully recover.
In popular culture
Anti-Catholic stereotypes are a long-standing feature of English literature, Genre fiction, popular fiction, and pornography. Gothic fiction is particularly rich in this regard. Lustful priests, cruel abbesses, immured nuns, and sadistic inquisitors appear in such works as ''The Italian (Radcliffe novel), The Italian'' by Ann Radcliffe, ''The Monk'' by Matthew Lewis (writer), Matthew Lewis, ''Melmoth the Wanderer'' by Charles Maturin and "The Pit and the Pendulum" by Edgar Allan Poe.[Patrick R O'Malley (2006) ''Catholicism, sexual deviance, and Victorian Gothic culture''. Cambridge University Press]
See also
*Anti-Papalism
*Black Legend (Spain), Black Legend
*Catholic revival
*History of Christianity
**History of the Catholic Church
**History of the Eastern Orthodox Church
**History of Protestantism
*Protestant Revolutionary Propaganda
*The Great Apostasy
*Persecution of Christians
*Persecution of Christians by Christians
*Sectarian violence among Christians
References
Sources
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Further reading
* Anbinder, Tyler. ''Nativism and Slavery: The Northern Know Nothings and the Politics of the 1850s'' 1992; in U.S.
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* Bennett, David H. ''The Party of Fear: From Nativist Movements to the New Right in American History'' University of North Carolina Press, 1988
* Blanshard, Paul. ''American Freedom and Catholic Power'' Beacon Press, 1949; famous attack on Catholicism
* Brown, Thomas M. "The Image of the Beast: Anti-Papal Rhetoric in Colonial America", in Richard O. Curry and Thomas M. Brown, eds., ''Conspiracy: The Fear of Subversion in American History'' (1972), 1–20.
* Bruce, Steve. ''No Pope of Rome: Anti-Catholicism in Modern Scotland'' (Edinburgh, 1985).
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* Cogliano, Francis D. ''No King, No Popery: Anti-Catholicism in Revolutionary New England'' Greenwood Press, 1995
* Cruz, Joel Morales. ''The Mexican Reformation: Catholic Pluralism, Enlightenment Religion, and the Iglesia de Jesus Movement in Benito Juarez's Mexico (1859–72)'' (Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2011).
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* Greeley, Andrew M. ''An Ugly Little Secret: Anti-Catholicism in North America'' 1977.
* Henry, David. "Senator John F. Kennedy Encounters the Religious Question: I Am Not the Catholic Candidate for President." in ''Contemporary American Public Discourse'' Ed. H. R. Ryan. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press, Inc., 1992. 177–193.
* Higham; John. ''Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860–1925'' 1955
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* Hostetler; Michael J. "Gov. Al Smith Confronts the Catholic Question: The Rhetorical Legacy of the 1928 Campaign," ''Communication Quarterly'' (1998) 46#1 pp 12+.
* Jensen, Richard. ''The Winning of the Midwest: Social and Political Conflict, 1888–1896'' (1971)
* Joskowicz, Ari. ''The Modernity of Others: Jewish Anti-Catholicism in Germany and France'' (Stanford University Press; 2013) 376 pages; how Jewish intellectuals defined themselves as modern against the anti-modern positions of the Catholic Church
* Latourette, Kenneth Scott. ''Christianity in a Revolutionary Age'' (5 vol 1969), covers 1790s to 1960; comprehensive global history
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* Keating, Karl. ''Catholicism and FundamentalismThe Attack on "Romanism" by "Bible Christians"'' (Ignatius Press, 1988).
* Lehner, Ulrich and Michael Printy, eds. ''A Companion to the Catholic Enlightenment in Europe'' (2010)
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* Moore; Leonard J. ''Citizen Klansmen: The Ku Klux Klan in Indiana, 1921–1928'' University of North Carolina Press, 1991
* Mourret, Fernand. ''History Of The Catholic Church'' (8 vol, 1931) comprehensive history to 1878. country by country
online free
by French Catholic priest; see vols. 6-7-8.
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* Thiemann, Ronald F. ''Religion in Public Life'' Georgetown University Press, 1996.
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* Wolffe, John, ed., ''Protestant-Catholic Conflict from the Reformation to the Twenty-first Century'' (Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2013)
Table of contents
* Wolffe, John. "A Comparative Historical Categorisation of Anti‐Catholicism." ''Journal of Religious History'' 39.2 (2015): 182–202
online free
External links
Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination Against Christians in Europe
{{Authority control
Anti-Catholicism,
Anti-Catholic organizations
Anti-Christian sentiment
Anti-clericalism
Catholic studies
Christianity and other religions
Criticism of the Catholic Church
Persecution of Catholics
Relations between Christian denominations