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Recently two outrageously anti-Catholic outbursts took place in the public forum.
The first was an article in the US News and World Report by syndicated columnist Jamie Stiehm. Ms. Stiehm argued that the Supreme Court was dangerously packed with Catholics, who have, she averred, a terribly difficult time separating church from state and who just can’t refrain from imposing their views on others.
Reaction to justice’s decision
Her meditations were prompted by Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s daring to depart from feminist orthodoxy and to grant some legal breathing space to the Little Sisters of the Poor, who were objecting to the provisions of the HHS mandate.
As even a moment’s thoughtful consideration would reveal, this decision hadn’t a thing to do with the intrusion of the “church” into the state, in fact just the contrary. Moreover, the appeal of American citizens (who happen to be Catholic nuns) and the decision of a justice of the Supreme Court in no way constitute an “imposition” on anyone.
The very irrationality of Stiehm’s argument is precisely what has led many to conclude that her intervention was prompted by a visceral anti-Catholicism which stubbornly persists in our society.
Governor Cuomo’s remarks
The second eruption of anti-Catholicism was even more startling. In the course of a radio interview, Governor Andrew Cuomo blithely declared that anyone who is pro-life on the issue of abortion or opposed to gay marriage is “not welcome” in his state of New York.
The governor did not simply say that such people are wrong-headed or misguided; he didn’t say that they should be opposed politically or that good arguments against their position should be mounted; he said they should be actively excluded from civil society!
As many commentators have pointed out, Governor Cuomo was thereby excluding roughly half of the citizens of the United States and, presumably, his own father Mario Cuomo, who once declared that he was personally opposed to abortion. Again, the very hysterical quality of this statement suggests that an irrational prejudice gave rise to it.
Suspicions of Catholicism
One does not have to search far to find the source of this prejudice deep in the American national consciousness. Many Founding Fathers harbored suspicions of Catholicism from their intellectual formation in both Protestantism and Enlightenment rationalism.
As the waves of immigrants from Ireland, Germany, and southern Europe arrived on American soil in the 19th century, many figures in the political and cultural establishment feared an influx of Catholics would compromise the integrity of American society.
They organized political parties whose platforms were specifically and virulently anti-Catholic. It is startling to realize that this political anti-Catholicism was not the exclusive preserve of extremists. Mainstream figures such as Ulysses Grant and Woodrow Wilson were vehement in their opposition to the Catholic Church.
Many have argued that the election of the Catholic John F. Kennedy to the presidency in 1960 signaled a sea-change in American attitudes toward the Church, but we have to be cautious, for Kennedy represented, more or less, a privatized Catholicism that posed no real threat to the societal status-quo.
Anti-Catholicism and the law
What is particularly troubling today is the manner in which this deep-seated anti-Catholicism is finding expression precisely through that most enduring and powerful of American institutions, namely the law.
The law shapes our identity, protects our rights, and functions as a sanction against those things we find dangerous. Increasingly, Catholics are finding themselves on the wrong side of the law, especially in regard to issues of equality and sexual freedom.
The HHS mandate is predicated upon the assumption that access to contraception, sterilization, and abortifacient drugs is a fundamental right, and therefore to stand against this, as the Church must, puts Catholics athwart the law.
The same is true in regard to gay marriage. To oppose this practice is not only unpopular or impolitic, but, increasingly, contrary to legal statute.
That a governor of a major state calls for the exclusion of pro-lifers and those opposed to gay marriage suggests that the law could be used to harass, restrict, and attack Catholics.
Further, this attitude suggests that there is a short path from the privatization of Catholic moral convictions to the active attempt to eliminate those convictions from the public arena.
I would hope that it is obvious how this aggression against Catholics in the political sphere ought deeply to concern everyone in a supposedly open society. If the legal establishment can use the law to aggress Catholics, it can use it, another day, to aggress anyone else.
Fr. Robert Barron is the founder of the global ministry, Word on Fire, and is the rector/president of Mundelein Seminary near Chicago. He is the creator of the documentary series, Catholicism and Catholicism: The New Evangelization. His documentaries have been awarded an esteemed Christopher Award for excellence. Learn more at www.WordOnFire.org