
US History Encyclopedia: Anti-Catholicism
Bigotry against Roman Catholics, as well as the ideas that have rationalized such bigotry, have long been elements in North American politics and popular culture. Like racism and anti-Semitism, anti-Catholicism is a fluid, international phenomenon buttressed by political, cultural, and intellectual justifications; like them, anti-Catholicism has served as a means of ostracizing a social group to consolidate political and cultural power in other groups. Additionally, just as historians trace the origins of racism to the early modern period, so too anti-Catholicism dates from this period—a legacy of Reformation-era disputes and of the European religious wars prior to 1648. (With origins in the ancient world, anti-Semitism dates much farther back.) A distinguishing mark of anti-Catholicism is that it developed in tandem with the modern papacy, a religio-political institution whose activities were widely perceived as threats to non-Catholic religious and secular authorities. Significantly, since Roman Catholics were the largest U.S. religious denomination after about 1870, anti-Catholicism was thereafter aimed at a religious plurality, not a religious minority, within the national population.
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