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11 - Anti-Catholicism in the United States

from Part II - Catholic Life and Culture

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 May 2021

By
Mark Massa
Edited by
Margaret M. McGuinness  and
Thomas F. Rzeznik
Margaret M. McGuinness
Affiliation:
La Salle University, Philadelphia
Thomas F. Rzeznik
Affiliation:
Seton Hall University, New Jersey
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Summary

The perception of Roman Catholic faith, practice, and polity as being either corrupt, superstitious, undemocratic, or somehow “un-American,” dates back to the arrival of British Protestants in New England in the seventeenth century, and has morphed into newer shapes more recently in social media. It has been labeled “the deepest bias in the history of the American people” by historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.; others have termed it the “anti-Semitism of the intellectuals” and “the last acceptable prejudice.”1

Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Companion to American Catholicism , pp. 197 - 215
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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References

Further Reading

Billington, Ray Allen. The Protestant Crusade, 1800–1860: A Study of the Origins of American Nativism. New York: Macmillan, 1937.Google Scholar
Gabriel, Ralph Henry. The Course of American Democratic Thought: An Intellectual History Since 1815. New York: Ronald Press, 1940.Google Scholar
Greeley, Andrew. An Ugly Little Secret: Anti-Catholicism in North America. Kansas City: Sheed, Andrews & McMeel, 1977.Google Scholar
Handy, Robert. A Christian America: Protestant Hopes and Historical Realities. New York: Oxford University Press, 1971.Google Scholar
Martin, James. “The Last Acceptable Prejudice?” America 182 (March 25, 2000): 9.Google Scholar
Massa, Mark. Anti-Catholicism in America: The Last Acceptable Prejudice. New York: The Crossroad Publishing, 2003.Google Scholar
McGreevy, John. “Thinking on One’s Own: Catholicism in the American Intellectual Imagination, 1928–1960,” Journal of American History 84 (June 1997): 97–131.Google Scholar
Schultz, Nancy Lusignan. Fire and Roses: The Burning of the Charlestown Convent, 1834. New York: Free Press, 2000.Google Scholar

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