American Anti-Catholicism

One of the oddities of history that many people forget is that the KKK didn't have just one "archenemy," one singular group of people who attracted all their hatred. No. The KKK had three targets in particular for its hatred. Black people, Jewish people, and Catholics.

There's something sort of jarring about the last one for a lot of people. After all. in the past century, the United States faced down Nazi efforts at extermination and enslavement of peoples across the world, much of it based on race, and took apart the Jim Crow laws that continued to legally enforce segregation across the South of our country. We know that the Jews and our black brothers and sisters have faced a real storm of hatred and persecution, and have needed protection.

But Catholics?

Yes, certainly. When I was covering the papal visit to the United States in 2015, I heard Archbishop Chaput recount the story of the building of Philadelphia's cathedral. He told those listening that the then-archbishop, St. John Neumann, had the strongest workman throw a heavy stone as high as he could. Then the archbishop said, "Build the cathedral's windows 10 feet higher than that."

Given the often virulent anti-Catholicism present in America, that cathedral might well have fallen afoul the passions of a mob, and so the church needed to be built to last.

Bishop Barron gives a survey of that history:

I suspect the reason why this comes as a shock to many people when first a Catholic or honest non-Catholic attempts to bring it up is that somewhere deep in the DNA of our country, there is the black legend of the Church as the endless oppressor, as the perpetual establishment, as the one to both create and enforce a status quo from which, it is supposed, the Church can only benefit.

And of course, if the Church is de facto oppressive--Look at the hierarchy! Look at the male-only priesthood! They even call some of their leaders "patriarchs"!--then de jure, we cannot be oppressed.

Now, that's not to deny that Catholics and even ecclesial institutions have been mistaken, committed grievous sins, or even been guilty of criminality. But it is to point out that in the United States, the Church has always existed under the somewhat uneasy scrutiny of the wider culture and country, rather than being monolithically powerful in the ways imagined by far too many Americans.

For more on all this:

See also:

• The New Anti-Catholicism: The Last Acceptable Prejudice
• Bearing False Witness: Debunking Centuries of Anti-Catholic History