Catholic Persecution, Muslim Acceptance

Fri, 03 Sep 2010 00:01:00 -0400

The debate surrounding the New York Mosque, complicated by sensitivity and proximity to a place many Americans consider hallowed ground, echoes over three centuries of prejudice against Catholics. American Muslims should not have to wait so long for acceptance.

The prejudice began early. Catholics in Maryland”where Jesuits who arrived with the first settlers in 1634 established parish communities”enjoyed greater freedom to practice their religion than did Catholics in other colonies, yet still encountered obstacles from additional taxation to restrictive oaths. Their clergy were often inhibited by legislation such as the 1704 “Act to prevent the Growth of Popery Within this Province” that explicitly forbids the Jesuits from proselytizing, although legislation approved three years later allowed private worship. Nine of the original thirteen colonies established some form of Protestantism as the state religion.

Persecution became more overt as more Catholics immigrated to this country in the nineteenth century. And often violent, as in the burning of the convent in Charleston, Massachusetts, by a Protestant mob in 1834, the so-called nativist riots in Philadelphia and New York in the 1840s, the Know-Nothing movement and the terrors it created everywhere in the 1840s and 1850s, the awful work of Bloody Monday in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1855. Institutional expressions of bigotry like the American Protective Association grew through the nineteenth century, and peaked with the Ku Klux Klan in the early twentieth century.

At the time of the First World War, many Catholics had emigrated from countries America was fighting, and this, coupled with their connection to Rome, made them easy targets. Catholics signed up for the military in droves, while the bishops created the National Catholic War Council (NCWC) to support the war effort in general and Catholic troops in particular, but that did not help much in reducing anti-Catholic bigotry.

Even the 1928 presidential nomination of Al Smith, a Catholic Democrat who was then governor of New York, did not quell it. Mainstream Protestants were leery of Vatican control, and post-election folklore had Smith sending a one-word telegram to the Pope: “Unpack.”

For all of their internal differences, several factors united immigrant Catholics from the beginning, not the least of which was their Catholic identity. Newly arrived in America, many unskilled or semi-skilled, most speaking a different language, all social, economic, political and religious outsiders in a society dominated by Protestant money and power, their Catholicism constituted an important part of their identity and a source of solidarity.

At the same time, they were eager to confirm that they were really American. This meant overcoming suspicions that their first loyalty might be to Rome, perceived by many Americans as a foreign power that could undermine Catholics’ commitment to their adopted homeland. At every opportunity they demonstrated their loyalty to America.

The bishops were equally anxious to demonstrate their loyalty. They expressed this clearly at the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore in 1884: “We think we can claim to be acquainted with the laws, institutions and spirit of the Catholic Church, and with the laws, institutions, and spirit of our country,” they declared,

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Catholic Persecution, Muslim Acceptance