Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jkksz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-22T20:53:28.959Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

When Was Anti-Catholicism? A Response

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 May 2005

TRYSTAN OWAIN HUGHES
Affiliation:
Wycliffe Hall, 54 Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 6PW; e-mail: [email protected]

Abstract

In his critique of my article Paul O'Leary brings his expertise on nineteenth-century Wales to bear on issues I raise. In doing so, he consolidates and complements certain areas of my original thesis. My aim was, after all, to highlight anti-Catholicism in twentieth-century Wales, rather than dismiss hostility a century earlier. In other areas, however, he misinterprets or misrepresents my article, largely because he fails to recognise the subtleties in the character and nature of Welsh anti-Catholicism over the two centuries. During the nineteenth century, there was undoubtedly a deep-seated hatred and fear of Roman Catholicism in Wales. Protestant dissent was, by its very nature and disposition, hostile to Rome. Anti-Catholicism was, therefore, endemic to Wales during this time and my work has never suggested otherwise. However, it is essential that the nuances in the different types of hostility, already touched upon in my initial article, be identified. The clear diversity between the form that anti-Catholicism took in the nineteenth century and the character it took a century later can then be compared and assessed.

Type
Debate
Copyright
2005 Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)