What drove English and American anti-Catholicism? A fear that it threatened freedom

Catholic Herald ^ | November 12, 2013 | DANIEL HANNAN

[Iscool]

WE KNOW. HE KNOWS. That's all we need to sustain us through this battle. Amen.

But they will admit that they don't know and claim no one can know (because they don't know), but yet they say they are the one, true religion...

[Cvengr]

Those who pose the question need to grasp Church History.

The answer is probably most easily traced to the advancement of different Christian denominations over the globe over time.

Same reason we refer to “Latin” America instead of the English or German or French “Colonies”.

The “Plantations” were due to Dutch Reformed plantations of their faith abroad.

The British Empire “Colonized” the New World and with it brought the Church of England (Anglicans).

The Spanish brought the Romanized Catholic Church.

Deists were rather late comers to the game and appealed more to Rationalism than to faith through Christ.

Same difference in Colonists, Settlers, Plantations, Pioneers, and Missionaries, not to mention Shakers, Quakers, and a litany of other belief systems.

[RobbyS]

Black ruled as he did because progressive Democrats such as Eleanor Roosevelt wanted to prevent federal aid to Catholic schools. Catholic colleges were already profiting from the GI Bill, but they wanted to stop the schools from getting federal money.

[RobbyS]

Accidents of history. How different thinsg would have been if the large Spanish colony in the Cape fear area had taken hold. It was a much large effort than that in Jamestown, and if it has survived then the Spanish missions in the Chesapeake arrive would have continued. With a Spanish base in the area, the Raleigh would not have attempted a settlement at Roanoke, and no Virginia settlement in the Chesapeake.

[RegulatorCountry]

Ditto the earlier Huguenot settlement at Ft. Caroline, wiped out by Spanish who eastablished St. Augustine the following year. The history of Florida would have been quite different.

I’m legendarily a descendant of one of those Spanish missionaries on the Chesapeake, by the way, that being the father of Opechancanough, half brother of Powhatan, who in turn raped an English girl and impregnated her during the Second Powhatan War, 1622 I believe. No way to prove such a thing, so it’ll remain just a legend.

[boatbums]

Yep, history is fun. For example, the Roman Catholic Church opposed religious freedom right up to Vatican II (the same Vatican II routinely decried by FR traditionalists and closet sedevacantists), even to the point of censoring Catholic commentators advocating religious freedom and forbidding Catholics from reading Protestant Bibles. So it seems Bellarmine’s treatise fell upon deaf ears within his own church. What’s that old saying about a prophet and his own country?

Thanks for stating this. That Bellarmine was a Roman Catholic and wrote about the ideas he had concerning a just government, and Thomas Jefferson possibly using some of these ideas as inspiration for the founding documents he helped create, does not necessarily make those documents "uniquely Catholic".

[RobbyS]

The history of the settlements along the east coast cannot be separated from the struggles going on after the death of HenrI ii of France in a tournament and the death of Mary I of England, and a few years before of Charles V of Spain. The crucial event was probably the death of Henry II, leaving behind a young heir. If Henri had lived another twenty years, there would have been no religious wars in France.

[boatbums]

I’d be careful about throwing stones from that glass house, if I were you.

[boatbums]

Ironic that it is Catholics that are leading battles in the courts today and not the Bornigans.

Ironic that some Catholics are blind to the fact that they are far from alone in the moral battles being waged in the U.S. courts today. A few of them are:

Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. et al., v. Sebelius

Conestoga Wood Specialties Corporation v. Sebelius

Liberty University v. Lew (formerly Liberty University v. Geithner)

Wheaton College v. Sebelius, U.S. District Court, Washington, D.C.

Colorado Christian University v. Sebelius, U.S. District Court, 10th Circuit, Denver, Colo. (source http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/Stories/2013/September/18/contraception-mandate-challenges.aspx)

[boatbums]

The Roman Catholic Church was undeniably a State Church before there ever was a Protestant State Church, however, and so it is the original State Church.

More like an Empire Church, I'd say. ;o)

[RegulatorCountry]

“State” meaning polity, whether a state within a Republic, a Republic itself, a monarchy, a fascist regime, an empire or any combination thereof. “State Church” meaning an officially sanctioned, established and enforced religion.

[boatbums]

Washington and Jefferson were members of the Episcopal Church, but were probably deists like the majority of the Founding Fathers, who didn’t ascribe to any particular religion. In all their writings they hardly ever refer to Jesus Christ, or God, but instead refer to a Supreme Being, Author of the Universe, Creator, etc. Washington would occasionally say Christian in his writings, but most scholars don’t think he was Christian. They all believed in God, no matter what they called Him.

That kind of revisionist theorizing is probably what has done more to further atheism in the public square than anything else. However, it is NOT the truth about the "majority" of the founding fathers. For an objective view of this topic, see The Founders as Christians.

[boatbums]

Thanks...I was being ironical.

[Pelham]

“But one needs also to remember that in Maryland was a colony established for English Catholics. And it succeeded as a colony and also sought independence from England.”

I think that if you look into Maryland’s history you will find that its Catholic founding was largely gone by 1776.

[Pelham]

“Oh, now. I’m descended from several Protestant groups driven out of France, Alsace-Lorraine, Pfalz, The Palatinate, the Rhineland, Savoy, Moravia and Bohemia, by Catholics.”

I have Huguenot ancestors as well. French Protestants who were driven out by Catholics.

But if NKP wants to point to the Puritans as an especially nasty bunch I’d agree with him. No surprise to find the witch hunts being their doing. James Fenimore Cooper wrote a few books featuring their malign influence back in the 1800s.

[Elsie]

You mean the following text did not explain it; exactly??

[Elsie]

This is what I think of many of these threads.

Does this apply to only one or to BOTH sides of the aisle?

[Elsie]

There just MIGHT be...

Get yer 99 bucks ready and then...

https://www.23andme.com/

[Elsie]

People who live in stone houses shouldn’t throw glass.

[pax_et_bonum]

Had the text explained your first comment “exactly”, I would not have taken the time to ask what you meant.

Are you joking or are you serious?