It’s Saint Patrick’s Day! I’m thinking about anti-Catholic prejudice.
Actually, the reason I am thinking about it, really, is that I’ve just read Elizabeth Gaskell’s story The Poor Clare, which has as a major theme that despite the very natural dislike and distrust one would have for papists, there are some extraordinary individuals of merit, even—believe it or not—among those of Irish descent.
As a non-Christian who grew up in the great American Southwest in the 1970s, I wasn’t really aware of anti-Catholic prejudice growing up. I mean, I wasn’t really aware of the differences between Christians—I knew that Mormons were Mormons, and I knew that there were a bunch of different church buildings for the different sects, but as a child I don’t think I really was aware if any of my Christian friends were Protestants of some variety. And while I was aware, at least dimly, of Ireland being divided, I certainly didn’t associate Saint Patrick’s Day with ethnic or religious strife. Mostly I associated it with being pinched, because I am not Irish, never thought at all about the date until I got to school, and rarely wear anything green anyway. It took reading a lot of Victorian literature for me to really get how much animosity the Protestant English really had toward Catholics, and I rarely think about how that worked in my own country.
The thing is, a lot of us Americans born after 1950 aren’t really aware of the extent of anti-Catholic hatred in this country (or other countries). They teach about anti-Semitism in American schools, even if they don’t much teach about it here in our country. They teach about racism, too, both anti-Black and anti-Asian governmental actions. Maybe they learn about the Reformation in high school? But 20th-Century attacks on Catholics from the KKK, not so much. Or, for that matter, 19th-Century anti-Catholic terrorism.
And the odd thing, really, from my point of view, is how little anyone seems to be worried about anti-Catholicism becoming violent again in this country. As a Jewish American, I am aware that I am only provisionally white, only accepted into full citizenship for a generation or two, with the constant understanding that Jews as a group could be made a target for whatever random hatred needs a place to land. I think a lot of people understand on a gut level that anti-Semitism could become violent at any time and in any place. And it’s not, of course, the same thing—we have an openly Catholic President, have many openly Catholic leaders of many kinds including a majority of the Justices on the Supreme Court, and while there are of course stereotypes and assumptions to contend with, nobody seems to be leading any effort to blame Catholics for What Ails Us.
And yet…
The violent prejudice against Central and Latin Americans in this country is generally associated with racial rather than religious bigotry, but there’s no particular reason to assume that religious animosity wouldn’t be added to the mix, is there? The coalitions that form the Right wing at the moment aren’t stable; why would anyone be certain that Catholics will continue be welcome? While of course I hope that never happens, I can as easily imagine Catholics as Jews becoming targets of a fascist movement here, whether that movement achieves power with a political party or focuses on domestic terrorism.
All of which is to say: Saint Patrick’s Day seems, in a bunch of ways, like a gross and crass and commercial corruption of what it might once have been—but that in itself is kind of heartening, isn’t it? Considering, after all, the alternative.
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.