Catholic Maryland (before it was overthrown, sacked and turned into a veritable dictatorship by a rather extreme group of people) provided the blueprint for the Founding Fathers when they drew up the Constitution.
In large part, the American Progressive movement arose as a way to halt the further Catholicizing and Hebrewization (my made-up word) of America, desiring to yank the hyphen out of hyphenated Americans.
For one hundred years, the bishops’ conference in Washington has been fulfilling the fears of anti-Catholics of the 19th Century. They have been pushing socialized medicine for 100 years, and high income tax rates. They have sided with the Communists in Nicaragua and elsewhere. They have treated pro-abortion Democrats as good Catholics—even committing the MORTAL SIN of giving Communion to them. Now they support NO BORDERS and unlimited invasion by Hispanics and Muslims. They never utter a peep in response to the killing of TWENTY-FIVE Americans each day by illegal aliens.
Great post(s). Thanks, NKP_Vet
HOORAY Bradley J. Birzer.
Fascinating history/collectives/current events BUMP!
2. Protestants, however, were rarely tolerant of even other Protestants:
Calvinists, for example, often hated Baptists as much as they did Catholics. Far from the land of the free that our textbooks usually portray, colonies sought not religious freedom and liberty, but rather religious autonomy. That is, they wanted freedom to worship as they saw fit, but they certainly did not believe that other sects should have the same rights. In this, the first century and a half of American colonization (with only a very few exceptions) were defined by a whole variety of intolerances. Because the frontier was huge, however, such tolerances could be alleviatedat least as long as you were willing to move west, away from the respectable folks. From the 1600s through 1774, America was really a sea of intolerance with islands of tolerance. Your freedom was essentially the freedom to choose which intolerance you liked best.
3. Of the 13 original colonies, only Pennsylvania and Maryland offered anything that we might today recognize as religious toleration. Maryland, for an almost 30-year-long period prior to 1689, might very well have been the most tolerant place in the world when it came to religion. To enforce its religious toleration, however, it traded its freedom of speech. Society protected the diversity of religious communities by forbidding 1) blasphemy against the Holy Trinity; 2) mocking of Mary or any of the saints; and 3) referring to any Christian sect by a derogatory name.
When radicals seized the provincial government in 1689, however, they undid all laws of religious toleration, demanding that every resident of Maryland honor the Church of England as the established Church. The new government of 1689, which lasted until 1774, for all intents and purposes outlawed Roman Catholicism, double-taxing Catholics, forbidding the education of Catholic children, and actually permanently removing children in danger of being raised in a Catholic fashion from their birth parents.
4. When it came to Catholics, most American Protestants could not decide if Catholics were brilliant or indolent.
Supporting brilliance, they saw the Jesuits. Although one might hate a Jesuit, one never underestimated him. Yet, supporting indolenceat least by the lights of the Protestant work ethicFrench men freely married native women. This, to good Englishmen, seemed an abomination. One might partake of such a relationship privately, but never in public.
5. The very first resolutions passed by the first Congressmeeting in the fall of 1774 and calling itself the First Continental Congresswere complaints against British tolerance toward and of Canadian Roman Catholics.
In particular, Americans feared what the British called the Quebec Act, passed in June 1774. John Adams, never pro-Catholic (though he very much liked Charles Carroll of Carrollton), claimed that the Quebec Act was a frightful system, as would have terrified any people, who did not prefer liberty to life. On October 21, 1774, Congress issued the following, its first official pronouncement ever: the Quebec Act was passed by Parliament to place in the hands of power, to reduce the ancient, free Protestant colonies to slavery. Nor, it stated, can we suppress our astonishment that a British parliament should ever consent to establish in that country [Canada] a religion that has deluged your island with blood, and superseded impiety, bigotry, persecution, murder and rebellions through every part of the world.
6. Despite all of the bigotry against Catholics, two of the wealthiest men in America at the time of the signing of the Declaration of Independence were practicing Roman Catholics.
The first, an actual signer of the Declaration, was Charles Carroll of Carrollton, a brilliant, patriotic, and republican Marylander. The other was the chief of the Miami Indians, Jean Baptiste Richardville, living near what is now Fort Wayne, Indiana. Controlling an eight-mile portage that connected the Great Lakes to the Ohio River, Richardville shrewdly made a fortune from trading, portaging, and treaty signing. A devout Catholic, his daughters attended Catholic school in Terra Haute, Indiana. He is buried at the cathedral in Fort Wayne.
7. Although few Catholics of any substantial number lived in the colonies at the time of the American Revolution, for all intents and purposes, the Carrolls of MarylandJohn, Charles, and Danielbecame symbols and represented all American Catholics at the time of the founding.
As a participant in the Constitutional Convention, Daniel held much weight, but he would never equal or offer the gravitas that Charles, as a signer of the Declaration, and John, as first archbishop in the United States, did.
8. One of the great mysteries of the time, and something no historian has been able to fully explain, is how many of the anti-Catholic laws and attitudes simply disappeared from local and state governments.
In part, this certainly had to do with the Carrolls and their high standing, and, in equal part, a unifying republican spirit descended upon all who opposed what was regarded as blatant British tyranny. During his two terms as president, George Washingtonwho never had time for bigotries based on accidents of birth or choices of religionspent much of his time in office attempting to unify all American peoples under the common banner of republicanism. His letters to the Catholics of the United States as well as to the Hebrews of Newport remain documents of highest thought and repute, models of how to overcome and dispel bigotry.
9. However much anti-Catholicism decreased during the early days of the Republic, it resurfaced with a wicked vengeance during the so-called Second Great Awakening of 1795-1844.
The worst outbreak came in Charlestown, Massachusetts, in 1834, when a group of meninspired by a sermon delivered by Lyman Beecher titled The Devil and the Pope of Romeburned down an Ursuline nunnery. Additionally, throughout the 1830s stories of supposed Catholic infidelities became legion. Typically, the stories followed two plots. In the most popular, some poor Protestant girl would convert and become a nun, only to find that she had joined a sex cult as a slave. The most infamous of these stories involved a young woman named Maria Monk. The second plot involved priests as quasi-vampires who preyed upon the innocence of married women. Catholic priests eating dinner with a kindly family were depicted as leering at the mother, plotting how to seduce her. Novelists portrayed these priests as deeply charismatic and wielding irresistible sexual powers.
10. Finally, though many Catholics immigrated to America prior to 1846, they never did so in considerable numbers. Even when they migrated in fairly sizable groups they could not compete with the native Protestant population.
Everywhere they lived they formed, at best, an interesting minority. All of this changed in the mid-1840s when famine and Revolution drove Irish and Germans (both Catholic and Lutheran) in huge numbers to the United States. Many of these Catholic immigrants were understandably poor, and the old English animosities against the Irish rose with ferocity. Many in the public sphere began to talk openly about a papal takeover, and even the level-headed of American society feared some kind of Vatican conspiracy to destroy the American republic from within and by her own laws and tolerance. Catholic immigration to the United States remained steady until the 1870s when huge numbers of Southern Europeans, Jews, and eastern Mediterraneans migrated across the Atlantic. In large part, the American Progressive movement arose as a way to halt the further Catholicizing and Hebrewization (my made-up word) of America, desiring to yank the hyphen out of hyphenated Americans.
In this, the progressives failed, though they did so while causing considerable harm to immigrant groups as well as to religious freedom. Since the 1960s, however, the progressives have continued to assault Catholics at nearly every level, especially against Catholic schools and hospitals.
Still, in all of this, we Catholics have hope. No matter how alien Catholics might have been on the eve of the American Revolution, the philosophical principles and theological beliefs of Catholics fit withnot to mention uphold and defendthe natural law and natural rights traditions of the American Founding.
Putting the Pope between God and Man is bad; putting communists between man and God is about the same, no?
Henry DID finally get his son, but that son died early and a WOMAN ruled England. Henry was the big loser after all. A woman STILL "rules" England. Henry must still be rolling in his grave.
Divorced.
Beheaded.
Died.
Divorced.
Beheaded.
Survived.
The "Elizabeth Taylor" of the early 16th century. Although Liz wasn't queen...but she WAS ELIZABETH...Taylor.
A few coinkidinks here. :o)
240 years later and do they YET know any better?
A lot of good comments at the website.