Anti-Catholicism

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

From a series of woodcuts (1545) usually referred to as the "Papstspotbilder" or "Papstspottbilder", by Lucas Cranach, commissioned by Martin Luther. "Kissing the Pope’s feet"; 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.

Anti-Catholicism is hostility towards, or opposition to Catholicism, and especially against the Catholic Church, its clergy or its adherents. The term may also apply to the religious persecution of Catholics or to a "religious orientation opposed to Catholicism."

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.

Persecution of early Christians in the Roman Empire

Main article: Persecution of early Christians in the Roman Empire

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. Christianity was legalized in 313 under Constantine's Edict of Milan, and declared the state religion of the Empire in 380.

In Protestant countries

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.

Doctrinal materials of the Lutherans, Reformed churches, Presbyterians, Anabaptists, and Methodists contain references to the Pope as Antichrist, including Smalcald Articles, Article four (1537), Treatise on the Power and Primacy of the Pope (1537), 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."

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 an ally". 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.

Australia

The permanent presence of Catholicism in Australia came with the arrival of the First Fleet of British convict ships at Sydney in 1788. The British 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 in Ireland 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 by the authorities as Anglicans. The first Catholic priests to arrive in the colony 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 of New Holland and set out from Britain for the colony uninvited. 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 was disestablished in the Colony of New South Wales by the Church Act of 1836. Drafted by the Catholic attorney-general John Plunkett, the act established legal equality for Anglicans, Catholics and Presbyterians and was later extended to Methodists.

Under Australia's 1901 Constitution, religious equality was enshrined, but sectarianism in Australia persisted into the 20th Century, flaring during the First World War, again reflecting Ireland's place within the Empire, and the Catholic minority remained subject to discrimination and suspicion. Anti-Catholicism is minimal within modern Australia, although mainly left-wing anti-Catholicism persists in some quarters.

Germany

Main article: Kulturkampf

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 home region of 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.

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.

File:Survivors liberation dachau.jpg

Surviving prisoners at Dachau concentration camp wave on liberation day. Of the 2700 ministers who were ultimately imprisoned there during World War II, over 2600 were Roman Catholic priests, 2000 were ultimately put to death.

The Catholic Church faced repression in Nazi Germany, owing to its position as an alternative authority to Nazism, and owing to sharp ideological differences between Nazism and Catholicism. During the 1920s and 1930s Rise of Nazism, Catholic leaders made a number of forthright attacks on Nazi ideology and the main Christian opposition to Nazism in Germany had come from the Catholic Church. According to Hitler's biographer Alan Bullock, the Nazi leader Adolf Hitler had some regard for the organisational power of Catholicism, but utter contempt for its central teachings, which he said, if taken to their conclusion, "would mean the systematic cultivation of the human failure":

[T]owards [Church] teaching he showed only the sharpest hostility. In Hitler's eyes, Christianity was a religion fit only for slaves; he detested its ethics in particular. Its teaching, he declared, was a rebellion against the natural law of selection by struggle and the survival of the fittest.

Alfred Rosenberg was the original draftsman and spokesman of the Nazi Party program and official ideologist of the Nazi Party. He was a rabid anti-Semite and anti-Catholic. In his "Myth of the Twentieth Century", published in 1930, Rosenberg proposed to replace traditional Christianity with the neo-pagan "myth of the blood":

We now realize that the central supreme values of the Roman and the Protestant Churches, being a negative Christianity, do not respond to our soul, that they hinder the organic powers of the peoples determined by their Nordic race, that they must give way to them, that they will have to be remodeled to conform to a Germanic Christendom. Therein lies the meaning of the present religious search.

— The Myth of the 20th Century, Alfred Rosenberg, 1930.

After obtaining power, the Nazis moved to suppress the Church, in violation of their Concordat with the Vatican. Rosenberg together with Hitler's wartime "deputy", Martin Bormann actively collaborated in the the Nazi program to eliminate Church influence - a program which included the abolition of religious services in schools; the confiscation of religious property; ciculating anti-religious material to soldiers; and the closing of theological faculties. The Nazi Government closed down Catholic publications, dissolved the Catholic Youth League and charged thousands of priests, nuns and lay leaders on trumped up charges. The Gestapo violated the sanctity of the confessional to obtain information. Thousands of members of the German Catholic Centre Party, as well as Catholic clergymen were arrested and sent concentration camps. Church kindergartens were closed, crucifixes were removed from schools, the Catholic press was closed down and Catholic welfare programs were restricted on the basis they assisted the "racially unfit". Over 300 monasteries and other institutions were expropriated by the SS.

Many German clergy were sent to the concentration camps for voicing opposition to the Nazi regime, or in some regions simply because of their faith; these included the pastor of Berlin's Catholic Cathedral Bernhard Lichtenberg the seminarian Karl Leisner. Many Catholic laypeople also paid for their opposition with their life, including the mostly Catholic members of the Munich resistance group White Rose around Hans and Sophie Scholl.

United Kingdom

Main article: Anti-Catholicism in the United Kingdom

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 plotted 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 somewhat. 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. Since then, dialogue has continued through envoys and standing conferences.

Conflict and rivalry between Catholicism and Protestantism is a large part in historical rivalry between predominantly Protestant Great Britain and predominantly Catholic Ireland, especially in Northern Ireland and the Troubles in the late 20th century, with most Irish nationalists being Catholic and most unionists being Protestant.

Residual anti-Catholicism in England is represented by the burning of an effigy of the Catholic conspirator Guy Fawkes at widespread celebrations on Guy Fawkes Night every 5 November. This celebration has, however, largely lost any sectarian connotation though the allied tradition of burning an effigy of the pope on this day continues in some places, most notably in the town of Lewes, Sussex.

United States

Main article: Anti-Catholicism in the United States

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". 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.

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

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 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." 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."

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.". Thomas Jefferson wrote, "History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government," 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."

Some states devised loyalty oaths designed to exclude Catholics from state and local office.

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. 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. For example, the Philadelphia Nativist Riot, Bloody Monday, the Orange Riots in New York City in 1871 and 1872, and the Ku Klux Klan-ridden South discriminated against Catholics. 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.

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.

In 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 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

Brazil has the largest number of Catholics in the world, and as such has not experienced any large anti-Catholicism 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 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

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.

El Salvador

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

France

The Michelade massacre in 1567

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. 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 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. 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.

Mexico

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. 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. It appears that ten states were left without any priests. Other sources, indicate that the persecution was such that by 1935, 17 states were left with no priests at all.

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. 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.

Haiti

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. The senior Duvalier was excommunicated by the Vatican for his blatant anti-clericalism, but it was rescinded as part of the negotiations to renew communications with the Vatican.

Italy

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. 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.

Switzerland

Catholic 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 was the perceived threat resulting from Jesuit advocacy of traditionalist Catholicism to the stability of the state; it followed the Roman Catholics cantons forming an unconstitutional separate alliance leading to civil war. In June 1973, 54.9% of Swiss voters approved removing the ban on the Jesuits (as well as Article 52 which banned monasteries and convents from Switzerland) (See Religion in Switzerland)

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. Hundreds of Martyrs of the Spanish Civil War have been beatified and hundreds more were beatified in October 2007.

Poland

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, 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 Two.

The Roman Catholic Church was even more violently suppressed in Reichsgau Wartheland and the General Government. Churches were closed, with clergy deported, imprisoned, or killed, among them 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 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 monastery in the Bieszczady Mountains. He 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.

Orthodox Christianity

Less widely known has been the anti-Catholicism found in countries where the Orthodox 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.

Non-Christian nations

Sri Lanka

A 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.

In apologetics

Daniel Goldhagen claims that people are labelled falsely as "anti-Catholic" by defenders of the Church to avoid answering legitimate questions and to prevent "a sober scholarly appraisal" of the Church's deeds.

In popular culture

Main article: Anti-Catholicism in literature and media

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.

See also

• Bigotry
• AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power
• Anti-Christian sentiment
• Anti-clerical art
• Anti-Irish racism
• Anti-Polonism
• Anti-Italianism
• Religious persecution
• Black Legend
• James Carroll
• Jack Chick
• Chick Publications
• Anjem Choudary
• John Cornwell (writer)
• Count's Feud
• Daniel Goldhagen
• Gordon Riots
• Great Apostasy
• Historicism (Christian eschatology)
• International Christian Concern, a Christian human rights NGO whose mission is to help persecuted Christians world-wide
• Institutional Revolutionary Party
• Klansmen: Guardians of Liberty
• The endarkenment
• Ku Klux Klan in Maine
• The Ku Klux Klan In Prophecy
• Emmett McLoughlin
• Persecutions of the Catholic Church and Pius XII
• Sectarianism in Glasgow
• Ralph Ovadal

• George Templeton Strong
• Vicarius Filii Dei
• Martyrs' Memorial
• Crux Ansata (H.G.Wells book)
• Derogatory terms
  • Mackerel Snapper
  • Recovering Catholic
• Institutionalized politics, within a country
  • Amanda Marcotte
  • American Protective Association, U.S. group in 1890s
  • Know Nothing
  • James G. Blaine
  • Protestant Protective Association, Canadian group in 1890s

• Ulster
  • Ulster loyalism
  • Protestant Unionist Party
  • Tara (Northern Ireland)
  • Ian Paisley

• Other religions
  • Anti-Buddhism
  • Anti-Hinduism
  • Anti-Christianity
  • Anti-Judaism
  • Anti-Protestantism
  • Antisemitism
  • Islamophobia
• Elizabeth: The Golden Age (film)

Further reading

• Anbinder; Tyler Nativism and Slavery: The Northern Know Nothings and the Politics of the 1850s 1992
• Bennett; David H. The Party of Fear: From Nativist Movements to the New Right in American History University of North Carolina Press, 1988
• Billingon, Ray. The Protestant Crusade, 1830–1860 (1938)
• Blanshard; Paul.American Freedom and Catholic Power Beacon Press, 1949
• Thomas M. Brown, "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.
• Steve Bruce, No Pope of Rome: Anti-Catholicism in Modern Scotland (Edinburgh, 1985).
• Elias Chacour: "Blood Brothers. A Palestinian Struggles for Reconciliation in the Middle East" ISBN 978-0-8007-9321-0 with Hazard, David, and Baker III, James A., Secretary (Foreword by) 2nd Expanded ed. 2003. Archbishop of Galilee, born in Kafr Bir'im, the book covers his childhood growing up in the town. (The first six chapters of Blood Brothers can be downloaded http://web.archive.org/web/20051108220240/twelvedaystojerusalem.org/chacour/pdf/BloodBrothers.pdf here (the November 8, 2005 link)].
• Robin Clifton, "Popular Fear of Catholics during the English Revolution", Past and Present, 52 ( 1971), 23-55.
• Cogliano; Francis D. No King, No Popery: Anti-Catholicism in Revolutionary New England Greenwood Press, 1995
• David Brion Davis, "Some Themes of Counter-subversion: An Analysis of Anti-Masonic, Anti-Catholic and Anti-Mormon Literature", Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 47 (1960), 205-224.
• Andrew M. Greeley, 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
• Hinckley, Ted C. "American Anti-catholicism During the Mexican War" Pacific Historical Review 1962 31(2): 121-137. ISSN 0030-8684
• Hostetler; Michael J. "Gov. Al Smith Confronts the Catholic Question: The Rhetorical Legacy of the 1928 Campaign" Communication Quarterly. Volume: 46. Issue: 1. 1998. Page Number: 12+.
• Jenkins, Philip. The New Anti-Catholicism: The Last Acceptable Prejudice (Oxford University Press, New ed. 2004). ISBN 978-0-19-517604-9
• Jensen, Richard. The Winning of the Midwest: Social and Political Conflict, 1888–1896 (1971)
• Jensen, Richard. "'No Irish Need Apply': A Myth of Victimization," Journal of Social History 36.2 (2002) 405-429, with illustrations
• Karl Keating, Catholicism and Fundamentalism—The Attack on "Romanism" by "Bible Christians" (Ignatius Press, 1988). ISBN 978-0-89870-177-7
• Kenny; Stephen. "Prejudice That Rarely Utters Its Name: A Historiographical and Historical Reflection upon North American Anti-Catholicism." American Review of Canadian Studies. Volume: 32. Issue: 4. 2002. pp: 639+.
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