The Old is New Again: Anti-Catholicism in England and the U.S.A.

Again, I was listening to a podcast from a wonderful interview series on BBC 4, "Beyond Belief": three experts join the host, Ernie Rea, to discuss a religious issue. They do so reasonably, without ad hominem attacks, and with conviction--at the least the episodes I've listened to. They don't talk over each other and there's a good give and take without shouting or anger. On this episode from 2010, Father Marcus Holden, Sister Gemma Simmonds, and Francis Davis discussed the upcoming papal visit and the history of English Catholicism. The three guests agree and disagree, but the latter without much acrimony. Each episode also includes a brief interview offering another perspective, and the choice in this episode was to talk to a Catholic convert. One of the questions for the convert was, you do know that you're out of step with much of current society if you really believe what the Church teaches about marriage and family life? Thus implying that the goal of life is to be in step with current culture; the host also noted that if there is any anti-Catholicism it is because of what Catholics believe about marriage and family life (and of course the sexual abuse crisis).

In the same vein, David Carlin writes for The Catholic Thing about "The Old Charge Resurfaces: Catholics Are Un-American", noting that for some, the only good Catholic is a bad Catholic, especially if he or she is a politician or public figure:

In other words, political liberals have no objection to Catholic politicians if the Catholic politicians in question deviate from the Catholic faith in a politically liberal direction. Their membership in the Catholic Church can be overlooked as long as the Catholic politicians are supporters of such splendid liberal causes as abortion rights and same-sex marriage and gender-neutral bathrooms. Thus former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is okay, and so is Vice President Joe Biden.

In fact they are more than just okay. They are positively desirable from a liberal point of view. For by approving of Pelosi, Biden, and their ilk, liberals are able to deny the charge that they are anti-Catholic. They are tolerant. And pluralistic. And open-minded.

But let a genuine Catholic come along (Rick Santorum is a prime recent instance), and liberals show their true colors. The thing they despise about such politicians is that they actually believe in the doctrines, in particular the moral doctrines, of the Catholic Church. They believe that abortion is homicide; that homosexual behavior is unnatural; that same-sex marriage is absurd; and that sex outside of marriage is wrong.

Therefore they are not merely in error, but are despicable from the liberal/progressive point of view, for these Catholic beliefs contradict fundamental articles of the liberal faith. But what political liberals despise is not so much the individual politicians as the religion they represent. In the final accounting, they despise that obnoxious thing, Catholicism.

According to the liberal definition of Americanism, Catholics – that is, Catholics who actually believe in their religion – are not, and cannot be, good Americans. This used to be a charge made openly, but is now made in more indirect fashion. For to be a good American, in the current liberal dispensation, you have to be a believer in moral relativism and sexual freedom.

When Anti-Catholicism was based upon religious beliefs, Protestants objected to Catholic worship, the sacraments, and doctrine--and the fear of disloyalty reinforced by the legacy of the Gunpowder Plot. David Carlin also discusses the history of anti-Catholicism in England and then in the British Colonies and the United States of America in his article. Thus, he concludes: "The old Protestant consensus is gone, and with it the old reflexive anti-Catholicism. But once again, after a lapse of less than a century, and now on shifting grounds, Catholicism is charged with being an un-American religion."

Illustration: one of Thomas Nast's anti-Catholic cartoons, attacking Catholic influence in education. Please note that Nast had been baptized Catholic!

Blessed John Henry Newman on the Sacred Heart of Jesus

I listened to the podcast of the September 13, 2010 episode of Beyond Belief on BBC 4. The commentators, who included Sheridan Gilley, discussed Newman's upcoming beatification and his reputation as an intellectual and a "literary man". Since one of the other commentators was John Cornwell, author of Newman's Unquiet Grave: The Reluctant Saint, he cited Newman's own reply when an admirer called him a saint:

I have nothing of a Saint about me as every one knows, and it is a severe (and salutary) mortification to be thought next door to one. I may have a high view of many things, but it is the consequence of education and of a peculiar cast of intellect—but this is very different from being what I admire. I have no tendency to be a saint—it is a sad thing to say. Saints are not literary men, they do not love the classics, they do not write Tales. I may be well enough in my way, but it is not the ‘high line.’ People ought to feel this, most people do. But those who are at a distance have fee-fa-fum notions about one. It is enough for me to black the saints’ shoes—if St. Philip uses blacking, in heaven.

Edward Short, a great Newman biographer, quoted that letter in an article for The Catholic World Report, and added the comment:

This confirms something Chesterton once said, in that glorious book of his on St. Thomas, “The holy man conceals his holiness; that is the one invariable rule.”

For all of Newman's intellectual brilliance and his literary genius, however, when we read his prayers and devotions, we find them to be simple, devout, and pious. Remember his advice on being perfect; St. Therese of Lisieux would agree with him, I think: 

IT is the saying of holy men that, if we wish to be perfect, we have nothing more to do than to perform the ordinary duties of the day well. A short road to perfection—short, not because easy, but because pertinent and intelligible. There are no short ways to perfection, but there are sure ones. . . .

We must bear in mind what is meant by perfection. It does not mean any extraordinary service, anything out of the way, or especially heroic—not all have the opportunity of heroic acts, of sufferings—but it means what the word perfection ordinarily means. By perfect we mean that which has no flaw in it, that which is complete, that which is consistent, that which is sound—we mean the opposite to imperfect. As we know well what imperfection in {286} religious service means, we know by the contrast what is meant by perfection.

He, then, is perfect who does the work of the day perfectly, and we need not go beyond this to seek for perfection. You need not go out of the round of the day.

I insist on this because I think it will simplify our views, and fix our exertions on a definite aim. If you ask me what you are to do in order to be perfect, I say, first—Do not lie in bed beyond the due time of rising; give your first thoughts to God; make a good visit to the Blessed Sacrament; say the Angelus devoutly; eat and drink to God’s glory; say the Rosary well; be recollected; keep out bad thoughts; make your evening meditation well; examine yourself daily; go to bed in good time, and you are already perfect.

And thus, when he writes about the Sacred Heart of Jesus, he demonstrates the same simplicity and personal devotion to the Person of Jesus: His Paschal Mystery and His Real Presence in the Eucharist, and the hope that Jesus will be present in him and anyone who prays this prayer.

O SACRED Heart of Jesus, I adore Thee in the oneness of the Personality of the Second Person of the Holy Trinity. Whatever belongs to the Person of Jesus, belongs therefore to God, and is to be worshipped with that one and the same worship which we pay to Jesus. He did not take on Him His human nature, as something distinct and separate from Himself, but as simply, absolutely, eternally His, so as to be included by us in the very thought of Him. I worship Thee, O Heart of Jesus, as being Jesus Himself, as being that Eternal Word in human nature which He took wholly and lives in wholly, and therefore in Thee. Thou art the Heart of the Most High made man. In worshipping Thee, I worship my Incarnate God, Emmanuel. I worship Thee, as bearing a part in that Passion which is my life, for Thou didst burst and break, through agony, in the garden of Gethsemani, and Thy precious contents trickled out, through the veins and pores of the skin, upon the earth. And again, Thou hadst been drained all but dry upon the Cross; and then, after death, Thou wast pierced by the lance, and gavest out the small remains of that inestimable treasure, which is our redemption.

My God, my Saviour, I adore Thy Sacred Heart, for that heart is the seat and source of all Thy {413} tenderest human affections for us sinners. It is the instrument and organ of Thy love. It did beat for us. It yearned over us. It ached for us, and for our salvation. It was on fire through zeal, that the glory of God might be manifested in and by us. It is the channel through which has come to us all Thy overflowing human affection, all Thy Divine Charity towards us. All Thy incomprehensible compassion for us, as God and Man, as our Creator and our Redeemer and Judge, has come to us, and comes, in one inseparably mingled stream, through that Sacred Heart. O most Sacred symbol and Sacrament of Love, divine and human, in its fulness, Thou didst save me by Thy divine strength, and Thy human affection, and then at length by that wonder-working blood, wherewith Thou didst overflow.

O most Sacred, most loving Heart of Jesus, Thou art concealed in the Holy Eucharist, and Thou beatest for us still. Now as then Thou savest, Desiderio desideravi—"With desire I have desired." I worship Thee then with all my best love and awe, with my fervent affection, with my most subdued, most resolved will. O my God, when Thou dost condescend to suffer me to receive Thee, to eat and drink Thee, and Thou for a while takest up Thy abode within me, O make my heart beat with Thy Heart. Purify it of all that is earthly, all that is proud and sensual, all that is hard and cruel, of all perversity, of all disorder, of all deadness. So fill it with Thee, that neither the events of the day nor the circumstances of the time may have power to ruffle it, but that in Thy love and Thy fear it may have peace.

As Newman wrote in one of his Discourses: "No one can be a Catholic without a simple faith."

Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us.

Image credit: By Carolus - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, used under license.