Why was being Catholic a bad trait for running for President?
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  Why was being Catholic a bad trait for running for President?
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Author Topic: Why was being Catholic a bad trait for running for President?  (Read 983 times)
Thomas
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« on: August 19, 2017, 08:48:15 AM »

I was watching a video on the 1928 Election and noticed that the Upper South (Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, and North Carolina) of the Democratic Solid South went to Herbert Hoover and I heard one of the reasons that Al Smith lost those states was because he was a Catholic. My question is Why was it a bad trait to be a Catholic running for President? Why was there a fear of a Catholic being President of the United States back then?
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FEMA Camp Administrator
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« Reply #1 on: August 19, 2017, 09:49:42 AM »

Up until the mid-20th century, and perhaps even later, the American identity was not so much "white Christian" as it was "white Protestant Christian". This can be traced all the way back to the Puritans in the 17th century and the bad reaction to the liberties granted to the Catholic Quebecois by the British government in the 18th century. England was a Protestant country by the time it spawned the fathers of the Revolution, and many of the religious minorities were themselves radically moreso. Even for philosophical conservatives, there was a suspicion of the religious hierarchy that could be found in both the Catholic and Orthodox iterations of Christianity, and they equated it with European autocracy--after all, for the past 500 years or perhaps more, Protestant countries have been seen--at least by those identified as such--as more modern; they more easily developed economically and tended to become democratic sooner. In the Gospel of Americanism, Protestantism paved the way for both capitalism and democracy in a way that Papism would have never allowed.

Moreover, ethnic dimensions played easily into this; if you were English, German, or perhaps Danish or Dutch, what did you want to have to do with the Irish, the Italians, or the Poles? As far as you were concerned, these peoples were still gnawing at rocks and basking in illiteracy and ignorance (per what I've read, Protestantism also promoted mass literacy to a greater extent). France is perhaps the only exception to these stereotypes, and they, despite being as Hannah Arendt put it, "the nation state par excellence," became racked with rebellion and instability after 1789.
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Alabama_Indy10
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« Reply #2 on: August 19, 2017, 11:39:42 AM »

People thought Catholics would get their orders from the Vatican and would have to obey them.
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Blue3
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« Reply #3 on: August 19, 2017, 11:46:37 AM »

There was heavy anti-Catholic bias in general for centuries.

Until the time of the Depression/WWII, they were basically associated with "foreigner."
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« Reply #4 on: August 19, 2017, 03:40:47 PM »

"cuz the Pope would run the U.S. from Vatican!"


Let's see this passage from Wikipedia on Sidney Johnston Catts:

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darklordoftech
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« Reply #5 on: August 19, 2017, 10:22:52 PM »

People thought that Catholics were agents of the Pope, alcoholics, criminals, etc. Recall "Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion."
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ufaforwork
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« Reply #6 on: August 20, 2017, 06:54:45 AM »

nice
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Orser67
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« Reply #7 on: August 29, 2017, 04:20:11 PM »

This can be traced all the way back to the Puritans in the 17th century and the bad reaction to the liberties granted to the Catholic Quebecois by the British government in the 18th century. England was a Protestant country by the time it spawned the fathers of the Revolution, and many of the religious minorities were themselves radically moreso.

Agreed. The first colonizers of the United States were either Anglicans who opposed Catholicism or English dissenters, many of whom were even less tolerant of Catholicism. Even in Maryland, which was founded by a Catholic English lord, the Protestants formed a majority of the colonists. England became somewhat more tolerant of Catholics after the Glorious Revolution (so long as they weren't in line to the throne), but the Thirteen Colonies ironically viewed any attempt to require religious toleration in the colonies as a form of tyranny.

This anti-Catholicism remained a huge force in politics until at least the 1920s, when the KKK was almost as anti-Catholic as it was anti-black. Anti-Catholicism finally died down a little after immigration declined in the period between 1924-1965. By the 1980s it wasn't really a factor anymore, and now we have a Catholic majority on the Supreme Court.
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darklordoftech
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« Reply #8 on: August 31, 2017, 07:48:05 PM »
« Edited: August 31, 2017, 07:53:02 PM by darklordoftech »

The Puritans were, above all, definined by their hostility to Catholicism. Their name came from their desire to "purify" Christianity of all "Romanism".
This can be traced all the way back to the Puritans in the 17th century and the bad reaction to the liberties granted to the Catholic Quebecois by the British government in the 18th century. England was a Protestant country by the time it spawned the fathers of the Revolution, and many of the religious minorities were themselves radically moreso.

Agreed. The first colonizers of the United States were either Anglicans who opposed Catholicism or English dissenters, many of whom were even less tolerant of Catholicism. Even in Maryland, which was founded by a Catholic English lord, the Protestants formed a majority of the colonists. England became somewhat more tolerant of Catholics after the Glorious Revolution (so long as they weren't in line to the throne), but the Thirteen Colonies ironically viewed any attempt to require religious toleration in the colonies as a form of tyranny.

This anti-Catholicism remained a huge force in politics until at least the 1920s, when the KKK was almost as anti-Catholic as it was anti-black. Anti-Catholicism finally died down a little after immigration declined in the period between 1924-1965. By the 1980s it wasn't really a factor anymore, and now we have a Catholic majority on the Supreme Court.
The failure of prohibition, Catholics and Prostetants interacting with each other in the military in WWII, the Holocaust's implications about the dangers of religious bigotry, the Cold War (meaning that all Churches now had a common enemy in the form of communism), and JFK's election and assasination combined to end anti-Catholicism. Roe vs. Wade united devout Catholics and Evangelical Protestants around a common enemy: "judicial activism".
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