in the 60s and 70s.34
For a Protestant to really understand who lives inside that Catholic house, he or she needs to know that it might not really be who it appears to be or who one has been taught that it really is. And for a Catholic to have an understanding of his or her own tradition, in its fullness and complexity, he or she could very well be surprised at what’s really going on over on his/her side of the street!
An honest examination of how Protestants and Catholics view both themselves and each other cannot ignore the fact that there is such a reality as anti-Catholicism and that it has a history that is very sad. Recognizing that Catholics of different ilks interpret this history quite uniquely and differently from each other, does not take away from the fact that anti-Catholicism has been (and to some extent remains) a historical reality. William Shea’s book The Lion and the Lamb: Evangelicals and Catholics in America35 is worth a detailed exploration for those who wish to trace the history and explore the nuances of this phenomenon. This anti-Catholicism is rather pluralistic in itself as it contains a whole mix of political, theological, ethnic and cultural suspicion. As a matter of fact, it is this sense of suspiciousness of the other that we need to examine in order to grasp this phenomenon and its relevance in our current and future context.
Among the many current issues in which discrimination and prejudice has been raised, anti-Catholicism appears to be well down on the list. Most people, other than the most committed members of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights,36 would acknowledge that discrimination against certain ethnic and racial minorities, women, Jews and homosexuals has been more prevalent in the latter twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Some of the more intense anti Muslim sentiment that has appeared in the West would appear to many to make any anti-Catholic sentiment seem fairly mum and passé.
The kind of virulent anti-Catholicism which Shea describes seems to appear only in small and isolated pockets on the contemporary scene. Most mainstream Catholicism appears not to spend time and energy engaging in concerns regarding this issue. Anti abortion homilies are far more common than warnings of anti Catholic sentiment and plotting.
Nevertheless, the vestiges of anti Catholicism have not been completely shed from American culture. As David O’Brien develops so thoroughly in his writings, Catholicism has grappled historically with its perception as a ‘foreign religion’ as the concerns surrounding the 1960 Presidential campaign involving John F. Kennedy made quite clear.37 While the issues that dominated that campaign have seemed to be quite removed from contemporary political parlance, a semblance of suspicion nonetheless remains.
In many social contexts, Catholicism was seen by Protestants as a religion of the working class, often an immigrant one at that. In the small Connecticut mill town where I grew up and its surrounding region, it would not be complete hyperbole to say that it was the Protestants who owned the mills and the Catholics who worked in them. Of course, this simple delineation ignored the reality that many Protestants worked in mills too. Nevertheless, in the history of Protestant-Catholic relations in the United States, one cannot discount the presence of some economic and cultural factors. The tension was not completely about religious tenets, per se. Such, of course, has also been part and parcel of the religious tensions in Northern Ireland!
Protestant suspicion also arose over some of the unique practices that set Catholics apart from their Protestant peers in local neighborhoods and sometimes even in schools. Protestants knew about these mysterious figures usually shrouded in unique clothing and who went by the name of ‘nun.’ Protestant children were aware of the fact that their Catholic friends would avoid meat on Friday and would oftentimes rush off on Saturdays to this ‘strange’ entity called confession. Back in the 1950’s and 1960’s teenagers would tell their Protestant peers that they could not attend certain movies that were ‘condemned’ by the Catholic Church. Parenthetically, one of the earliest battles I ever ‘won’ on a religious issue was when I convinced my mom to let me see an Elvis movie, rated by the Catholic Legion of Decency38 as ‘objectionable in part for all.’
Protestants were also cognizant of the fact that rare was the Catholic whose mother and father were divorced and many was the Catholic family with many a child in it. As contraceptive methods were developed and improved, the disregard in which the Catholic Church held birth control was quite noticeable to members of Protestant faiths. Many Protestants had a hard time understanding Catholic opposition to birth control and even in recent years the difficulties involved in simply purchasing condoms over the counter in states so heavily Catholic. The cumulative effect of all of this was that there developed a certain sense of suspicion about Catholics, a suspicion that must be distinguished from any sense of overt discrimination.
Interestingly enough, the 2012 campaign for the Republican Presidential nomination has been marked by an alliance between conservative Protestants and traditional Catholics, the kind of coalition that simply did not exist decades ago. This coalition emerged in response to the Obama administration’s ruling concerning contraceptives and insurance payments for Catholic workers. Protestantism’s traditional suspicion of the Catholic position on birth control took a back seat to common concerns about both religious liberty and ‘traditional family values.’ In fact, this coalition was first forged in political efforts dating back to the 1980’s as many traditional Catholic Democrats joined forces with conservative Protestants in support of Ronald Reagan.
Remnants of this sense of suspicion remain. I have heard it in conversations with Protestants about Catholics. In fact, one of the gut level concerns that I have heard expressed by some Protestants is that a certain religious practice smacks of being ‘too Catholic.’ In my conversations, my preaching and my teaching on ecumenical issues in my local Protestant congregation, I have made the point many a time that one could not evaluate the value of a certain religious practice by whether or not it is ‘too Catholic,’ but instead by whether it conveys the proper sense of what it means to seek to follow Jesus.
Were I to walk into most New England Congregational churches on a Sunday morning to lead a service of worship and were I to do some combination of what I will list below, I think a few eyebrows would be raised and there would be people out there who would say that I am being ‘too Catholic.’ Let’s look at this imaginary list: I make the sign of the cross, I sprinkle people with water, I light up some incense. In doing Communion, I wear a garment over my alb. I incorporate some chanting of a Latin phrase as part of the service. I offer anointing with oil as part of a healing ritual during worship. In my preaching, I pull out a crucifix to show my congregation, explaining to them the value of reflecting upon Jesus and his passion and suffering, including the use of this representation of his hanging upon a cross.
Now, it is unlikely that in any New England UCC church, that would all happen in the course of sixty Sunday minutes and this listing has an intentional absurdity about it. Yet the fact is that any one of those actions could happen and has happened in many churches that are not even considered ‘high church’ Protestant. We are not talking about Anglo-Catholic Masses or highly liturgical Lutheran services that might even fool some Catholics temporarily into thinking they are in a Catholic church!
Yet, if even SOME of these actions were to take place, is not the central question whether any of these contribute to what it means in our lives as individuals who seek to follow Christ? Using one simple example: In making the sign of the cross on one’s body, what is more important: that one avoid it because it is Catholic or that in so doing, one comes to a deeper appreciation of the meaning of the Triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, in one’s own spiritual life?
I am not suggesting or implying that Protestants should necessarily embrace all religious devotional practices associated with Catholicism. The possibility might exist that a particular practice might either conflict with one’s understanding of her/his faith or in no way enhance her/his spiritual life. Thus each practice should be evaluated on its merits. Personally, I would be happy if all Christians avoided any practice
