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Concept
Anti-Catholicism
Summary
Anti-Catholicism is hostility towards Catholics and/or opposition to the Catholic Church, its clergy, and/or its adherents. At various points after the Reformation, some majority Protestant states, including England, Prussia, Scotland, and the United States, turned anti-Catholicism, opposition to the Pope (anti-Papalism), mockery of Catholic rituals, and opposition to Catholic adherents into major political themes and policies of religious persecution. The anti-Catholic sentiment which resulted from this trend frequently led to religious discrimination against Catholic communities and individuals and it occasionally led to the religious persecution of them (frequently, they were derogatorily referred to as "papists" or "Romanists" in Anglophone and Protestant countries.) Historian John Wolffe identifies four types of anti-Catholicism: constitutional-national, theological, popular and socio-cultural.
Historically, Catholics who lived in Protestant countries were frequently suspected of conspiring against the state in furtherance of papal interests. Their support of the alien pope led to allegations that they lacked loyalty to the state. In majority Protestant countries which experienced large scale immigration, such as the United States and Australia, suspicion of Catholic immigrants and/or discrimination against them frequently overlapped or was conflated with nativist, xenophobic, ethnocentric and/or racist sentiments (e.g. anti-Irish sentiment, anti-Filipino sentiment, anti-Italianism, anti-Spanish sentiment, and anti-Slavic sentiment, specifically anti-Polish sentiment).
In the Early modern period, the Catholic Church struggled to maintain its traditional religious and political role in the face of rising secular power in Catholic countries. As a result of these struggles, a hostile attitude towards the considerable political, social, spiritual and religious power of the Pope and the clergy arose in majority Catholic countries in the form of anti-clericalism. The Inquisition was a favorite target of attack.
Official source
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