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The New Anti-Catholicism
By Dwight Longenecker
One of my claims
to fame is that I am a graduate of the fire breathing, fundamentalist
Bob Jones University. This is the college deep in
the Bible belt that gave Ian Paisley his honorary
doctorate and still makes headlines for its anti-Catholic
bigotry. In America, when I say I went to Bob Jones,
people treat me with a certain troubled awe, as if
I’d admitted that I once fought for the Taliban or
had escaped from a Moonie commune.
The anti-Catholicism
at Bob Jones was the old fashioned kind based on
centuries of
mis-information, black propaganda and sincere misunderstanding.
This was the anti-Catholicism in which the pope was
the anti-Christ riding on the back of that great
whore of Babylon—the Catholic Church. It fed on Lorraine
Boettner’s Roman Catholicism, that classic
collection of calumnies, lies and half-truths. As
youths we read the sensational ‘Chick tracts’. These
riveting comic books portrayed the Catholic Church
as a pagan cult complete with crazed priests, murderous
popes and the bodies of illegitimate babies buried
in tunnels under convents. It was juicy stuff. It
was totally paranoid and wacko, but hot and juicy
nonetheless.
In this ecumenical
age such mainstream Protestant bigotry is dying out.
It is also dying
out because more and more Evangelical Christians
are coming to realise that the ‘old old story’ of
God’s love for a dying world and the saving work
of Christ on the cross is now most fully and vigorously
told by the modern Catholic Church. They are coming
to this conclusion since so many of their own churches
are buying into the secular, morally indifferent
agenda of the world around them.
The old-fashioned Protestant anti-Catholicism
is dying out, but in its place a new and equally
virulent form of anti-Catholicism is rising up. A
new book by Philip Jenkins, Distinguished Professor
of History and Religious Studies at Penn State University,
chronicles this new phenomenon in the USA. In The
New Anti Catholicism Jenkins recounts some recent
anti-Catholic incidents that illustrate the point.
He reports how, in New York in 1989 a gay activist
group demonstrated in St Patrick’s Cathedral. They
interrupted mass, forcing the archbishop to abandon
his sermon. They threw condoms around the church
and desecrated the host. In a 1994 ‘gay pride’ march
in New York, the protestors stopped outside St Patrick’s
to yell four letter words and make obscene gestures
toward the church. They were dressed as nuns, cardinals
and priests. Some of them wore nothing at all. In
other parades they have sat on the steps, done satanic
dances, and semi-nude, have simulated gay sex outside
the church during mass.
The radical
homosexualists are not the only ones. In 2000, twenty
ski-masked members of a Feminist Autonomous Collective
interrupted mass in Montreal. They spray painted
slogans on the walls of the church and altar, tried
to overturn the tabernacle, stuck used sanitary napkins
on pictures and walls, threw condoms around the sanctuary
and chanted pro-abortion slogans. These are a few
of the most extreme examples, but Jenkins shows how
the anti-Catholic attitude that fuels the extreme
protests is woven, both subtly and blatantly, throughout
the American media and educational culture.
Jenkins isn’t a Catholic, so in a
recent interview I asked him what motivated him to
write the book. He answered that he had recognised, ‘a
significant social and political phenomenon that
nobody seemed prepared to address, though it has
major political consequences.’
As an expatriate
American, what interested me about the book was whether
or not the new anti-Catholicism
was purely an American phenomenon. Jenkins pointed
out that American anti-Catholicism actually has its
roots in British ideologies of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries. He went on to draw links between
anti-Catholicism in Britain and continental anti-Semitism.
Jenkins commented, ‘In both instances, the imagined
outside enemy subverts accepted standards of decent
behaviour, including through sexual contamination.
He operates clandestinely in order to take over and
destroy the decent Christian society; and he is a
sinister cosmopolitan. English Catholics faced very
much the same charge of divided loyalties that European
Jews would face throughout the twentieth century.
While European Jews were blamed for unleashing the
Black Death by poisoning wells, so English Catholics
were obviously responsible for setting the Great
Fire of London in 1666.’ Jenkins said feelings do
not run so high now simply because religion is not
so important to modern British people. Nevertheless,
he observed, ‘ Britain has a long-lasting hostility
- as the old phrase goes, in Britain, there are two
religions. Catholicism, which is wrong, and all the
others, which don't matter.’
I
pointed out that Britain has strict laws against
racial and religious
hatred and asked whether such laws exist in the USA
and if they are enforced. Jenkins replied, ‘That
is one of the reasons I wrote the book. There is
a huge inconsistency over issues of social tolerance… Nobody
would dare mount art exhibits or show films that
depicted (say) Martin Luther King in a derogatory
or scoffing way, or would make films mocking gay-bashing.
Yet the same sensitivity ends with Catholics. Even
when churches are vandalised or trashed, when they
are the centre of riots and demonstrations, nobody
thinks to apply hate crime laws in the same way if
a mosque was treated in the same fashion…All I want
to see is consistency.’
The main ideological
campaigners behind the new anti-Catholicism are feminist
and homosexualist. The agenda is bigger than simple
homosexuality or feminism, and the issues are more
complex than just equal rights for minority groups,
but inasmuch as these two groups are at the forefront
of the new wave of anti-Catholic prejudice I wondered
what effect it would have on ecumenical relations.
If non-Catholic churches are increasingly dominated
by the feminist and homosexualist campaigners could
we see the anti-Catholic spirit that marks secular
feminism and homosexualism infect church groups as
well?
Jenkins
answered, ‘Most
mainline Protestant churches ordain women, and some,
like the Anglican Church, are ready to ordain gay
clergy and bishops. This distinction has led to some
nasty attacks on the Catholics here, from well-known
figures like Newark's former Episcopal (Anglican)
bishop John Spong. Ecumenism will likely suffer as
the two traditions grow further apart. Having said
that, though, Catholics are probably closer than
they have ever been to evangelicals, who are very
numerous and strong here, since evangelicals respect
the strict Catholic moral teachings, and have formed
close tactical alliances over pro-life issues.’
Jenkins’ book points like the prophet’s
finger, to a possible future. Given the Church of
England’s endorsement of feminism and homosexuality
will we see those now benign elements turn nasty?
As Anglican theological and moral drift continues
will our ecumenical future lie more with the Evangelicals
than with our traditional partners—the Anglicans?
Will feminists and homosexuals gain increasing influence
in the Anglican Church? If they do, will the Anglicans’ patronising
and polite attitude towards Catholics shift into
something not quite so pleasant? They say everything
in America crosses the Atlantic in about five years.
Let’s hope this is one export that is never granted
a license.
Dwight Longenecker
is the author of More
Christianity—a
friendly explanation of the Catholic faith for
Evangelical Christians.
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