Anti-Catholicism is prejudice or discrimination against Catholics, including opposition to the Catholic Church, its clergy, the authority of the pope, and its adherents. Four categories of anti-Catholicism exist: political, involving concerns about Catholics' loyalty to the state; theological, rooted in disagreement with Catholic doctrines; popular, including fears and accusations that Catholics are heretics or potential traitors; and sociocultural, based on claims that the Church fosters or enables forms of immorality.John Wolffe, "A Comparative Historical Categorisation of Anti-Catholicism." Journal of Religious History 39.2 (2015): 182–202.
Following the Reformation, a number of majority-Protestant states, including England, Northern Ireland, Prussia and Germany, Scotland, and the United States, at various times incorporated anti-Catholic rhetoric and policies, including opposition to the authority of Catholic clergy (anti-clericalism) and papal authority (anti-papalism), criticism or mockery of Catholic rituals, and religious discrimination and persecution against Catholics.
Several populist movements had anti-Catholic sentiment as a significant component, including segments of Ulster loyalists in Northern Ireland during the Troubles and the second Ku Klux Klan. During the Troubles, some loyalist groups saw perceived links between Catholic communities and apparent Irish republican activity, and Catholics participated in the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association. The second Ku Klux Klan, led by Imperial Wizard Hiram Wesley Evans, wanted Protestantism to rule supreme and portrayed Catholicism as a threat to the social and political order, with Evans declaring that "Rome shall not rule America."
Historically, Catholics in predominantly Protestant countries were frequently suspected of conspiring and harboring political loyalties to the papacy over loyalty to the state. In majority-Protestant countries that experienced large scale immigration, such as the United States and Australia, suspicion of Catholic immigrants and discrimination against them often overlapped with, or was conflated with, nativist, xenophobic, ethnocentric, and racist sentiments. In the early modern period, anti-clerical governments sought to limit the Catholic Church, including contesting or restricting the pope's authority to appoint bishops, confiscating property, expelling Catholic religious orders, banning forms of Classical Christian education, and establishing state-controlled school systems.John W. O'Malley SJ, The Jesuits: A History from Ignatius to the Present (2017).
In primarily Protestant countries
Protestant Reformers, including Martin Luther, John Calvin, John Wycliffe, Henry VIII, Thomas Cranmer, John Thomas, Ellen G. White, John Knox, Charles Taze Russell, Isaac Newton, Roger Williams, Cotton Mather, and John Wesley, along with many other Protestants from the 16th to the 19th centuries, interpreted the Papacy as fulfilling the biblical figure of the Antichrist. The Centuriators of Magdeburg, a group of Lutheran scholars based in Magdeburg and led by Matthias Flacius, produced the twelve-volume Magdeburg Centuries with the aim of challenging papal authority and encouraging other Christians to regard the pope as the Antichrist. The fifth round of talks in the Lutheran–Catholic dialogue notes,
Doctrinal works produced by several Protestant traditions, including Lutheran, Reformed, Presbyterian, Baptist, Anabaptist, and Methodist churches, contain references identifying the Pope as the Antichrist. Examples include the Smalcald Articles, Article 4 (1537), the Treatise on the Power and Primacy of the Pope (1537),Treatise on the Power and Primacy of the Pope in the Triglot translation of the Book of Concord the Westminster Confession, Article 25.6 (1646), and the 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith, Article 26.4. In 1754, John Wesley published his Explanatory Notes Upon the New Testament, which is now recognized as an official doctrinal standard of the United Methodist Church. In his commentary on Revelation 13, Wesley wrote that "the whole succession of Popes from Gregory VII are undoubtedly Antichrists," while also suggesting that a future pope might be regarded as "more eminently the Antichrist" by exhibiting a "peculiar degree of wickedness from the bottomless pit." at the Library of Congress (May 8, 2009).
Edward Gibbon, commenting on Protestant interpretations of the Book of Revelation, observed that "the advantage of turning those mysterious prophecies against the See of Rome, inspired the Protestants with uncommon veneration for so useful an ally."Edward Gibbon (1994 edition, edited by David Womersley), The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Penguin Books: Vol. 1, 469. Many Protestants also criticized the Catholic discipline of mandatory clerical celibacy, often citing Timothy 4:1 and 4:3, which describe a future time in which some would "forbid people to marry and order them to abstain from certain foods" that "God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth." In contrast, Catholic teaching presents clerical celibacy as a "sign of new life dedicated to the Lord and to the affairs of the Lord," understood as serving both spiritual and pastoral purposes. Catholic sources further note that Jesus Christ did not marry, that an unmarried priest may find it easier to devote himself fully to pastoral responsibilities, and that celibacy is intended to support a life oriented towards service to others for the purposes of "their salvation and to their sanctification."
During the Enlightenment era, which spanned the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and emphasized the importance of religious toleration, the Inquisition became a frequent subject of criticism among intellectuals. It was cited as "the most prominent symbol of Catholic religious prosecution."
British Empire Great Britain
Institutional anti-Catholicism in Britain and Ireland developed during the English Reformation under Henry VIII and the Scottish Reformation under John Knox. The Act of Supremacy of 1534 declared the English crown to be "the only supreme head on earth of the Church in England" in place of the pope. Act of allegiances to the papacy were treated as treasonous because the papacy claimed both spiritual and political power over its followers. Under this legislation, Thomas More and John Fisher were executed, and they were later regarded by Catholics as martyrs for their faith.
Mary I, Henry's VIII's daughter, was a committed Catholic. During her reign from 1553 to 1558, she sought to reverse the Reformation, including through her marriage the Catholic king of Spain, Philip II, which was intended to strengthen England's alliance with the Habsburgs, a prominent European Catholic dynasty. Moreover, her government also executed several Protestant leaders. Many Protestants later referred to her as "Bloody Mary".David M. Loades, The Reign of Mary Tudor: Politics, Government and Religion in England, 1553–58 (1991)
Anti-Catholicism among many English and Scottish Protestants was rooted not only in concerns that the pope sought to reassert religious authority over England and Scotland, but also in fears that he might extend secular influence through alliances with France and Spain, both of which were regarded as political adversaries. In 1570, Pope Pius V issued the papal bull Regnans in Excelsis, which declared Elizabeth I a heretic and stated that her subjects were no longer bound to maintain allegiance to her. This declaration rendered subjects who sought to remain loyal to both Elizabeth and the Catholic Church politically suspect and placed Catholic subjects in a difficult position if they attempted to uphold both allegiances simultaneously. The Religion Act 1580 made it a crime of high treason to declare allegiance to a power outside the queen, including any foreign authority. This act was later repealed by section one of the Roman Catholics Act 1844, a measure that some Protestant bishops criticized as "establishing the supremacy of the Pope in the United Kingdom."
Assassination plots in which Catholics played prominent roles contributed to the growth of anti-Catholic sentiment in England. These included the Gunpowder Plot, in which Guy Fawkes and other conspirators attempted to blow up the English Parliament while it was in session. The so-called "Popish Plot," promoted by Titus Oates, was a fabricated conspiracy that that many Protestants nonetheless accepted as genuine, further straining relations between Anglicans and Catholics.
The Glorious Revolution of 1688 to 1689 resulted in the overthrow of King James II of the Stuart dynasty, who was perceived as favoring Catholic interests, and his replacement by a Dutch Protestant ruler. For several decades, the Stuarts received support by France in efforts to regain the throne, and anti-Catholic sentiment continued during this period.Colin Haydon, Anti-Catholicism in eighteenth-century England, c. 1714–80: A political and social study (Manchester University Press, 1993)
Gordon Riots 1780
The Gordon Riots of 1780 were a series of violent anti-Catholic disturbances in London that arose in response to the Papists Act 1778, which had been enacted by Parliament to reduce some of the legal restrictions imposed on British Catholics by earlier penal laws. Lord George Gordon, leader of the Protestant Association, argued that the act would allow Catholics to serve more freely in the British Army and might encourage disloyalty or treason, and he helped organize a large protest against the legislation. The protest escalated into several days of riots and widespread looting, including attacks on targets such as Catholic chapels, Newgate Prison, and the Bank of England, in what would become some of the most destructive riots in London's history. Local authorities were initially hesitant to intervene decisively, but the disturbances were eventually suppressed only after the army was deployed, resulting in significant loss of life, with contemporary estimates suggesting that several hundred people were killed. The violence, which lasted from 2 June to 9 June 1780, led many members of the middle and upper classes to repudiate both anti-Catholic and popular violence, and it strengthened support for the government of Lord North; in the longer term, the riots also contributed to arguments in favor of creating a more formal, organized system of policing in London.Dorothy Marshall, Eighteenth Century England (1974) pp. 469–472
19th century
Anglo-French conflicts during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, which occurred between 1793 and 1815, contributed to the expansion of anti-Catholic sentiment as part of broader efforts to strengthen support among Protestant populations in England, Scotland, and Wales. Hostility toward Catholicism circulated across social classes and became increasingly intertwined with emerging forms of British national identity. Historian Linda Colley argues in Britons: Forging of a Nation 1707–1837 that the "defensive unity brought on by war with a Catholic French 'other' helped transform Great Britain from a new and largely artificial polity into a nation with a strong self-image rooted in Protestantism."Marjule Anne Drury, "Anti-Catholicism in Germany, Britain, and the United States: A Review and Critique of Recent Scholarship" Church History (2001) 70#1