North Atlantic Anti-Catholicism in the Nineteenth Century: A Comparative Overview

Wolffe, John

doi:10.1163/9789401209632_004

Cited by 2 publications

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“…Competition intensified around mid-century, with the triumphalist pronouncements of Catholic prelates such as Cardinal Wiseman in England and Archbishop Hughes in America, and the contest for the souls of the post-Famine Irish peasantry between a revived ultramontane Catholic Church and the evangelical Irish Church Missions to Roman Catholics. 33 Second, especially in Britain, an upsurge of interest in the contemporary application of biblical prophecy fuelled theological anti-Catholicism because influential interpreters such as George Stanley Faber (1773-1854), James Hatley Frere (1779-1866), and Edward Bishop Elliott (1793-1875) readily identified the Roman Catholic Church and the papacy with the forces of evil and apostasy foretold in Scripture. 34 Such views were popularised by preachers such as Edward Irving in the 1820s and John Cumming in the 1840s and 1850s.…”

Section: Theological Anti-catholicismmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Comparative Historical Categorisation of Anti‐Catholicism

Wolffe¹

2014

Journal of Religious History

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The history of anti-Catholicism is a subject that readily lends itself to elephantine metaphors. Like large animals browsing in the African bush, anti-Catholic attitudes were prominent in a wide variety of societies, but could seem placid and unthreatening until roused into sudden fury, as for example in the Gordon Riots in London in 1780, in the Philadelphia Riots of 1844, and in the defiance of the signatories of the Ulster Covenant of 1912. AntiCatholicism needs sometimes to be recognized as 'the elephant in the room' of other historical problems such as the motivations of revolutionaries in nineteenth-century Europe, the unfolding of British or American imperialism, responses to Nazi Germany, and changing attitudes to gender, sexual and family relations. Scholarly analysis of this 'elephant' moreover is prone sometimes to resemble the efforts of the proverbial Indian blind men to visualise a real elephant by each feeling differing parts of its anatomy. All perceive a part of the truth, but none can grasp the whole, and unrecognised and unexplored differences of approach and understanding lead to unresolved divergences of analysis and interpretation.This article seeks to contribute to clarification of the consequent confusions by outlining in a broad comparative framework four different varieties of anti-Catholicism, all of which have rich and complex and in some respects distinct, histories of their own. These categories are not abstract theoretical ones, but are grounded in empirical historical research, which is used both to exemplify them and to illustrate their changing dynamics across time.Boundaries between them were fluid and might indeed be conceptualized in a variety of alternative ways. Nevertheless it is argued that these four categories are representative of perceptible differences of emphasis, personnel and organization and hence constitute a useful tool for developing nuanced historical analysis. The article will in turn consider first, constitutional-national; second, theological; third, socio-cultural, and finally, popular anti-1 Catholicism and conclude with a consideration of cross-cutting issues and alternative formulations. Material for the article is drawn primarily from majority Protestant countries, especially Great Britain and the United States. Some of the attitudes discussed had affinities with the concerns of anti-clericals in predominantly Catholic states, although here antagonism was naturally specifically directed against the institutional church, rather than against Catholics as a whole.2 Indeed, as we shall see, in some strands of anti-Catholic discourse, a parallel distinction between Catholics as individuals and Roman Catholicism as an institution was also apparent. Constitutional-national anti-CatholicismCentral to this form of anti-Catholicism was a perception of the Catholic Church as an extraterritorial power aiming to achieve worldwide political supremacy, both as an end in itself, and as a means to the achievement of its ultimate religious ends. Such ambitions were som...

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Section: Theological Anti-catholicismmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Comparative Historical Categorisation of Anti‐Catholicism

Wolffe¹

2014

Journal of Religious History

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“…9 As John Wolffe has argued elsewhere, this attention to anti-Catholicism as constitutive of national identity, whilst producing many innovative studies, has tended to overshadow its transnational dimension. 10 Historians have only begun to investigate the dynamic networks of exchange and circulation linking opponents of the church in the modern era. John Wolffe has pioneered this approach.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Introduction

Verhoeven¹

2014

Journal of Religious History

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North Atlantic Anti-Catholicism in the Nineteenth Century: A Comparative Overview

Cited by 2 publications

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A Comparative Historical Categorisation of Anti‐Catholicism

A Comparative Historical Categorisation of Anti‐Catholicism

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