POWER TO THE PAPAL!

In the 19th century, and into the 20th, many Americans believed that the Roman Catholic Church was a vast international conspiracy whose chief object was to subvert the American Republic.

Roman Catholics owed allegiance to a foreign potentate believed to be infallible; hence they could never become loyal Americans.

Unspeakable crimes were committed in convents, where the bones of babies fathered by priests and borne by nuns lay buried in shallow graves.

Whenever a baby was baptized in a Catholic Church, the faithful would take up a collection to buy a rifle and 50 rounds of ammo in preparation for the day when they would all rise up and slaughter their Protestant neighbors.

Catholic schools taught nothing but hatred and superstition.

Catholics were bound by canon law, which took precedence over common law, and intended that ultimately it should be binding upon the whole nation.

Catholic churches were built with foreign funds and deliberately intended to tower over Protestant ones, and Catholic processions on saints’ days were a deliberate provocation to nonbelievers.

A Catholic who lied, even under oath, about any of these things was committing no sin, but rather a glorious deed which would count toward his heavenly reward.

Of course it was the hugest of crocks.

But it reminds me of the irrational Islamophobia so prevalent in the US today, which I’m quite sure our descendants will find a shameful blot on the American past.