It is one of the many ironies of the United States that a country founded on the revolutionary idea of religious liberty that Catholicism was one religion, among many, discriminated against. The history of religious freedom is a fascinating tale of intolerance and contradiction. A country that was founded on the then radical idea of the separation of Church and State, broke with almost two hundred years of cuius regio, eius religio, the religion of the king was the religion of the people. By enshrining the freedom of religion in the new nation’s founding documents, the revolutionaries ended a norm that has been in place since the Peace of Augsburg in 1555.
Despite the part Catholics played from the outset there was significant opposition to Catholicism and other minority religions from the earliest times. The “Know Nothing’s”, of the 1850s, were a secret group whose platform included limiting immigration from Catholic countries, daily Bible readings in public schools as well as restricting political offices to Protestants. The Know Nothing’s feared the Catholic infiltration of the government and the supposed control of the Catholic politicians by the Pope. The group reached its zenith as a result of the waves of Catholic immigration from Germany and Ireland into the United States. Protestant fundamentalism flourished in the Southern United States and extreme groups like the KKK gained support.
Despite this opposition there was progress for Catholics. Al Smith was elected governor of New York in 1919 and went on to serve a further two terms. Smith was the first Catholic from a major party to run for president in 1928. Smith lost to Herbert Hoover largely due to anti-Catholic sentiment. The cartoon from the Good Citizen, in 1926 is illustrative. When he ran, the usual arguments again resurfaced about Smith’s policies coming directly from Pius XI.
The same arguments were made again in the election of 1960 when John Kennedy ran. On 12 September 1960 Kennedy gave a speech in Houston to a group of assembled Protestant ministers. Kennedy gave a masterful opening warning the group of the dangers of Communist Cuba as well as those hungry, needed medical care and schools. Kennedy went on to say “I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute, where no Catholic prelate would tell the president (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote”. He cleverly added, “Today I may be the victim, but tomorrow it may be you — until the whole fabric of our harmonious society is ripped at a time of great national peril”. He concluded the speech appealing to the crowds patriotism and fairness arguing, “if this election is decided on the basis that 40 million Americans lost their chance of being president on the day they were baptized, then it is the whole nation that will be the loser — in the eyes of Catholics and non-Catholics around the world, in the eyes of history, and in the eyes of our own people”.It would be interesting to see what those Protestant ministers in Houston would say about the South now!
This explosion of Catholicism is seen in the West and, in what was previously the staunchly Protestant South. The Archdiocese of Atlanta has grown six fold since 1990 and the Archdiocese of Los Angeles is the largest in the country, with 5 million members, more than Archdioceses New York and Chicago combined! Ironically, the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston, where Kennedy gave his speech comprises 1.3 million registered people, the archdiocese growing sixfold in three decades. Such was the growth that in 2007 to recognise that “Texas needed a cardinal” the archbishop of Galveston-Houston was given the cardinal’s biretta by Pope Benedict. It was the first time since 1953 that the red hat travelled to a new area of the country, with Los Angeles being honoured by Pius XII.
Catholics are now the largest religious group in the country, numbering almost 70 million and six of the nine Supreme Court justices are Catholic. Indeed, since summer 2010, for the first time in history, the Supreme Court has no Protestant associate justice at all. Yet, amid all this growth, providing schools and hospitals throughout the United States, President Kennedy remains only one of 43 men ever to have been Catholic and hold that nation’s highest executive office.
The Mayflower brought the Puritans from England to the United States because of religious intolerance. Now a Mormon from the very same state has a chance of becoming president of the United States as a direct result of that same tolerance.
