The Christian Martyrs' Last Prayer, by Jean-Léon Gérôme (1883).

From a series of woodcuts (1545) usually referred to as the "Papstspotbilder" or "Papstspottbilder",^[1] by Lucas Cranach, commissioned by Martin Luther.^[2] "Kissing the Pope’s feet";^[3] German peasants respond to a papal bull of Pope Paul III. Caption reads: Don’t frighten us Pope, with your ban, and don’t be such a furious man. Otherwise we shall turn around and show you our rears.^[4][5]

Anti-Catholicism is a generic term for discrimination, hostility or prejudice directed against Catholicism, and especially against the Catholic Church, its clergy or its adherents. The term also applies to the religious persecution of Catholics or to a "religious orientation opposed to Catholicism."^[6]

In the Early Modern period, the Catholic Church struggled to maintain its traditional religious and political role in the face of rising secular powers in Europe. As a result of these struggles, there arose a hostile attitude towards the considerable political, social, spiritual and religious power of the Pope of the day and the clergy in the form of "anti-clericalism". To this was added the epochal crisis over the church's spiritual authority brought about by the Protestant Reformation, giving rise to sectarian conflict and a new wave of anti-Catholicism.

In more recent times, anti-Catholicism has assumed various forms, including the persecution of Catholics as members of a religious minority in some localities, assaults by governments upon them, discrimination, desecration of churches and shrines, and virulent attacks on clergy and laity.

Persecution of early Christians in the Roman Empire[link]

The religious persecution of Christians began during the time of Jesus and continued sporadically and intermittently over a period of about three centuries until the time of Constantine.^[7][8] Christianity was legalized in 313 under Constantine's Edict of Milan,^[9] and declared the state religion of the Empire in 380.^[10]

In Protestant countries[link]

Passional Christi und Antichristi, by Lucas Cranach the Elder, from Luther's 1521 Passionary of the Christ and Antichrist. The Pope as the Antichrist, signing and selling indulgences.

Many Protestant reformers, including Martin Luther, John Calvin, Thomas Cranmer, John Knox, Cotton Mather, and John Wesley, identified the Pope as the Antichrist. The fifth round of talks in the Lutheran-Roman Catholic dialogue notes,

In calling the pope the "antichrist," the early Lutherans stood in a tradition that reached back into the eleventh century. Not only dissidents and heretics but even saints had called the bishop of Rome the "antichrist" when they wished to castigate his abuse of power.^[11]

Doctrinal materials of the Lutherans, Reformed churches, Presbyterians, Anabaptists, and Methodists contain references to the Pope as Antichrist, including Smalcald Articles, Article four (1537),^[12] Treatise on the Power and Primacy of the Pope (1537),^[13] Westminster Confession, Article 25.6 (1646), and 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith, Article 26.4. In 1754, John Wesley published his Explanatory Notes Upon the New Testament, which is currently an official Doctrinal Standard of the United Methodist Church. In his notes on Revelation chapter 13, he commented: "The whole succession of Popes from Gregory VII are undoubtedly antichrist. 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."^[14][15]

Referring to the Book of Revelation, Edward Gibbon stated that "The advantage of turning those mysterious prophecies against the See of Rome, inspired the Protestants with uncommon veneration for so useful as ally".^[16] Protestants also condemned the Catholic policy of mandatory celibacy for priests, and the rituals of fasting and abstinence during Lent, as contradicting the clause stated in 1 Timothy 4:1-5, warning against doctrines that "forbid people to marry and order them to abstain from certain foods, which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and who know the truth." Partly as a result of the condemnation, many non-Catholic churches allow priests to marry and/or view fasting as a choice rather than as an obligation.

United Kingdom[link]

Saint Thomas More

Institutional anti-Catholicism in Britain and Ireland began with the English Reformation under Henry VIII. The Act of Supremacy of 1534 declared the English crown to be 'the only supreme head on earth of the Church in England' in place of the pope. Any act of allegiance to the latter was considered treasonous because the papacy claimed both spiritual and political power over its followers. It was under this act that saints Thomas More and John Fisher were executed and became martyrs to the Catholic faith.

Anti-Catholicism among many of the English was grounded in the fear that the pope sought to reimpose not just religio-spiritual authority over England but also secular power of the country; this was seemingly confirmed by various actions by the Vatican. In 1570, Pope Pius V sought to depose Elizabeth with the papal bull Regnans in Excelsis, which declared her a heretic and purported to dissolve the duty of all Elizabeth's subjects of their allegiance to her. This rendered Elizabeth's subjects who persisted in their allegiance to the Catholic Church politically suspect, and made the position of her Catholic subjects largely untenable if they tried to maintain both allegiances at once.

Later several accusations fueled strong anti-Catholicism in England including the Gunpowder Plot, in which Guy Fawkes and other Catholic conspirators were accused of planning to blow up the English Parliament while it was in session. The Great Fire of London in 1666 was blamed on the Catholics and an inscription ascribing it to 'Popish frenzy' was engraved on the Monument to the Great Fire of London, which marked the location where the fire started (this inscription was only removed in 1831). The "Popish Plot" involving Titus Oates further exacerbated Anglican-Catholic relations.

Since World War II anti-Catholic feeling in England has abated. Ecumenical dialogue between Anglicans and Catholics culminated in the first meeting of an Archbishop of Canterbury with a Pope since the Reformation when Archbishop Geoffrey Fisher visited Rome in 1960.^[17] Since then, dialogue has continued through envoys and standing conferences.

Residual anti-Catholicism in England is represented by the burning of an effigy of the Catholic conspirator Guy Fawkes at local celebrations on Guy Fawkes Night every 5 November.^[18] This celebration has, however, largely lost any sectarian connotation and the allied tradition of burning an effigy of the Pope on this day has been discontinued, except in the town of Lewes, Sussex.^[19]

United States[link]

Famous 1876 editorial cartoon by Thomas Nast showing bishops as crocodiles attacking public schools, with the connivance of Irish Catholic politicians

John Highham described anti-Catholicism as "the most luxuriant, tenacious tradition of paranoiac agitation in American history".^[20] Anti-Catholicism, which was prominent in the United Kingdom, was exported to the United States. Two types of anti-Catholic rhetoric existed in colonial society. The first, derived from the heritage of the Protestant Reformation and the religious wars of the sixteenth century, consisted of the "Anti-Christ" and the "Whore of Babylon" variety and dominated Anti-Catholic thought until the late seventeenth century. The second was a more secular variety which focused on the supposed intrigue of the Catholics intent on extending medieval despotism worldwide.^[21]

Historian Arthur Schlesinger Sr. has called Anti-Catholicism "the deepest-held bias in the history of the American people."^[22]

American anti-Catholicism has its origins in the Protestant Reformation which generated anti-Catholic propaganda for a various political and dynastic reasons. Because the Protestant Reformation justified itself as an effort to correct what it perceived to be errors and excesses of the Catholic Church, it formed strong positions against the Roman clerical hierarchy and the Papacy in particular. These positions were brought to the New World by British colonists who were predominantly Protestant, and who opposed not only the Catholic Church but also the Anglican Church of England which, due to its perpetuation of some Catholic doctrine and practices, was deemed to be insufficiently "reformed".

Rev. Branford Clarke illustration in Heroes of the Fiery Cross 1928 by Bishop Alma White Published by the Pillar of Fire Church in Zarephath, NJ

Because many of the British colonists, such as the Puritans and 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."^[23] 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."^[24]

Monsignor Ellis noted that a common hatred of the Catholic Church could unite Anglican clerics and Puritan ministers despite their differences and conflicts.

Some of America's Founding Fathers held anti-clerical beliefs. For example, in 1788, John Jay urged the New York Legislature to require office-holders to renounce foreign authorities "in all matters ecclesiastical as well as civil.".^[25] Thomas Jefferson wrote, "History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government,"^[26] and that "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."^[27]

Some states devised loyalty oaths designed to exclude Catholics from state and local office.^[28]

Anti-Catholic animus in the United States reached a peak in the nineteenth century when the Protestant population became alarmed by the influx of Catholic immigrants. Some American Protestants, having an increased interest in prophecies regarding the end of time, claimed that the Catholic Church was the Whore of Babylon in the Book of Revelation.^[29] The resulting "nativist" movement, which achieved prominence in the 1840s, was whipped into a frenzy of anti-Catholicism that led to mob violence, the burning of Catholic property, and the killing of Catholics.^[30] For example, the Philadelphia Nativist Riot, Bloody Monday, the Orange Riots in New York City in 1871 and 1872,^[31] and the Ku Klux Klan-ridden South discriminated against Catholics.^[32] This violence was fed by claims that Catholics were destroying the culture of the United States. The nativist movement found expression in a national political movement called the Know-Nothing Party of the 1850s, which (unsuccessfully) ran former president Millard Fillmore as its presidential candidate in 1856.

The founder of the Know-Nothing movement, Lewis C. Levin, based his political career entirely on anti-Catholicism, and served three terms in the U.S. House of Representatives (1845–1851), after which he campaigned for Fillmore and other "nativist" candidates. 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.^[33]

After 1875 many states passed constitutional provisions, called "Blaine Amendments, forbidding tax money be used to fund parochial schools.^[34][35] 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.^[36]

Germany[link]

The German term Kulturkampf (literally, "culture struggle") refers to German policies in relation to secularity and the influence of the Roman Catholic Church, enacted from 1871 to 1878 by the Chancellor of the German Empire, Otto von Bismarck.

Until the mid-19th century, the Catholic Church was still a political power. The Pope's Papal States were supported by France but ceased to exist as an indirect result of the Franco-Prussian War. The Catholic Church still had a strong influence on many parts of life, even in Bismarck's traditionally Prussia, which was mainly Protestant, with the latter having absorbed some of the Catholic regions in Western Germany. In the newly founded German Empire, Bismarck intended to cut Catholics' loyalty with Rome (ultramontanism) and subordinate all Germans to the power of the state, which was officially secular but had close ties with the Protestant Church. Bismarck sought to reduce the political and social influence of the Roman Catholic Church by instituting political control over Church activities.

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 laypeople were imprisoned for helping the priests.^[37]

It is generally accepted amongst historians that the Kulturkampf measures targeted the Catholic Church under Pope Pius IX with discriminatory sanctions. Many historians also point out anti-Polish elements in the policies in other contexts.^{[38][39][40][41][42][43][44]}

In Catholic countries[link]

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 is considered to be one of the major popular forces underlying the 16th century reformation. Some of the philosophers of the Enlightenment, including Voltaire, continually attacked the Catholic Church, both its leadership and priests, claiming that many of its clergy were morally corrupt. These assaults in part led to the suppression of the Jesuits, and played a major part in the wholesale attacks on the very existence of the Church during the French Revolution in the Reign of Terror and the program of dechristianization. Similar attacks on the Church occurred in Mexico and in Spain in the twentieth century.

Brazil[link]

Brazil has the largest number of Catholics in the world,^[45] and as such has not experienced any large anti-Catholicism movements. Even during times in which the Church was experiencing intense conservativeness, such as the Brazilian military dictatorship, anti-Catholicism was not advocated by the left-wing movements (instead, the 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 of the rising 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.

Colombia[link]

Anti-Catholic and anti-clerical sentiments, some spurred by an anti-clerical conspiracy theory which was circulating in Colombia during the mid-twentieth century led to persecution of Catholics and killings, most specifically of the clergy, during the events known as La Violencia.^[46]

El Salvador[link]

During the Salvadoran Civil War, a number of the clergy were murdered, most notable was Archbishop Óscar Romero.

France[link]

During the French Revolution (1789–95) clergy and religious were persecuted and church property was destroyed and confiscated by the new government as part of a process of Dechristianization, the aim of which was the destruction of Catholic practice and of the very faith itself, culminating the imposition of the atheistic Cult of Reason and then the deistic Cult of the Supreme Being.^[47] Persecution led Catholics in the west of France to engage in a counterrevolution, The War in the Vendee, and when the state was victorious it put down the population in what some^[who?] call the first modern genocide. The French invasions of Italy (1796–99) included an assault on Rome and the exile of Pope Pius VI in 1798. Relations improved from 1802 until 1809, when Napoleon invaded the Papal States and imprisoned Pope Pius VII. By 1815 the Papacy supported the growing alliance against Napoleon, and was re-instated as the state church during the conservative 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 camps – liberals against the Church and conservatives supporting it – that largely continued until the Vatican II process in 1962-65.

France's Third Republic (1871–1940) was cemented by anti-clericalism, the desire to secularise the State and social life, faithful to the French Revolution.^[48] The Dreyfus affair again polarised opinion in the 1890s. In the Affaire Des Fiches, in France in 1904–1905, it was discovered that the militantly anticlerical War Minister under Emile Combes, General Louis André, was determining promotions based on the French Masonic Grand Orient's huge card index on public officials, detailing which were Catholic and who attended Mass, with the goal of preventing their promotions.^[49]

Mexico[link]

Following the Revolution of 1860, US-backed President Benito Juárez, issued a decree nationalizing church property, separating church and state, and suppressing religious orders.

Following the revolution of 1910, the new 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 basic political rights.

Mexican President Plutarco Elías Calles's enforcement of previous anti-Catholic 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.^[50] 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 and assassination.^[50][51] It appears that ten states were left without any priests.^[51] Other sources, indicate that the persecution was such that by 1935, 17 states were left with no priests at all.^[52]

Some of the Catholic casualties of this struggle are known as the Saints of the Cristero War.^[50][53] Events relating to this were famously portrayed in the novel The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene.^[54][55] The persecution was most severe in Tabasco under the strident atheist governor Tomás Garrido Canabal. Under the rule of Garrido many priests were killed, all Churches in the state were closed and priests who still survived were forced to marry or flee at risk of losing their lives^{[citation needed]}.

Haiti[link]

François and Jean-Claude Duvalier's family dictatorship of Haiti wanted to weaken the control of the Catholic Church so as to ensure loyalty to their regimes.^{[citation needed]} The senior Duvalier was excommunicated^[when?] by the Vatican for his blatant anti-clericalism, but it was rescinded as part of the negotiations to renew communications with the Vatican.^{[when?][citation needed]} The Catholic Church, particularly in the form of Jean Bertrand Aristide was instrumental in overthrowing the younger Duvalier.^{[citation needed]}

Italy[link]

In 1860 through 1870, the new Italian government, under the Savoy Monarchy, outlawed all the religious orders, male and female, including the Franciscans, the Dominicans and the Jesuits, closed down their monasteries and confiscated their property, and imprisoned or banished bishops who opposed this.^[56][57] In 1870 when the troops of Victor Emmanuel of Savoy rammed their way into Rome, proclaiming it the capital of Italy, they also took over the "Quirinale", the residence of the Pope, which since then has been the residence of the Italian lay rulers.

Spain[link]

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.^[58] Hundreds of Martyrs of the Spanish Civil War have been beatified and hundreds more were beatified in October 2007.^[59][60]

Poland[link]

Catholicism in Poland, the religion of the vast majority of the population, was severely persecuted during World War II, 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. Among them was Saint Maximillian Kolbe. In 1999, 108 Polish Catholic victims of the invasion of Poland, including 3 bishops, 52 priests, 26 monks, 3 seminarians, 8 nuns and 9 lay people, were beatified by Pope John Paul II as the 108 Martyrs of World War Two.

The Roman Catholic Church was even more violently suppressed in Reichsgau Wartheland and the General Government.^[61] Churches were closed, with clergy deported, imprisoned, or killed,^[61] among them Maximilian Kolbe, a Pole of German descent. Between 1939 and 1945, 2,935 members^[62] of the Polish clergy (18%^[63]) 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 Communist regime from the 1950s. Current Stalinist ideology claimed that the Church and religion in general were about to disintegrate. To begin with, Archbishop Wyszyński entered into an agreement with the Communist authorities, which was signed on 14 February 1950 by the Polish episcopate and the government. The Agreement regulated the matters of the Church in Poland. However, in May of that year, the Sejm breached the Agreement by passing a law for the confiscation of Church property.

On 12 January 1953, Wyszyński was elevated to the rank of cardinal by Pius XII as another wave of persecution began in Poland. When the bishops voiced their opposition to state interference in ecclesiastical appointments, mass trials and the internment of priests began - the cardinal being 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 in the Bieszczady Mountains. He was not released until 26 October 1956.

Pope John Paul II, who was born in Poland as Karol Wojtyla, often cited the persecution of Polish Catholics in his stance against Communism.

Eastern Christianity[link]

This section requires expansion.

Less widely known in the West has been the anti-Catholicism found in countries where the Eastern Christian Churches have prevailed historically. This form of anti-Catholicism has its roots in the Great Schism between the Western and Eastern Church in 1054, and the Sack of Constantinople by Catholic forces from Western Europe, though unsupported by the pope, during the Fourth Crusade in 1204. About the sack Pope John Paul II gave a public apology during his visit in Greece in 2001, an historically Orthodox country, (Greeks are considered the cultural heirs of the Byzantine Empire). He was the first pope to visit Greece in 1291 years.^[64]

Sri Lanka[link]

A Buddhist-influenced government took over 600 parish schools in 1960 without compensation and secularized.^[65] Attempts were made by future governments to restore some autonomy.

Sudan[link]

In the Islamic state of Sudan, many Catholics were killed in pogroms before and during the Second Sudanese Civil War.^{[citation needed]}

In apologetics[link]

Daniel Goldhagen recognises that there has been much ill-will and genuine bigotry directed towards Catholics and the Catholic Church and that it is never right to criticize untruthfully a person only on the basis of being Catholic even when they make innocent mistakes. While opposed to anti-Catholicism, he believes that people are labelled falsely as "anti-Catholic" by defenders of the Church to silence them rather to avoid answering legitimate questions truthfully. He believes that in these cases anti-Catholic charges are designed to prevent "a sober scholarly appraisal" of the Church's deeds.^[66]

In popular culture[link]

Anti-Catholic stereotypes are a long-standing feature of English literature, popular fiction, and even 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 by Ann Radcliffe, The Monk by Matthew Lewis, Melmoth the Wanderer by Charles Maturin and "The Pit and the Pendulum" by Edgar Allan Poe.^[67]

See also[link]

Notes and references[link]

Further reading[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Anti-Catholicism