The United States doesn't display
anti-clericalism but rather anti-Catholicism, says a scholar.
Philip Jenkins, professor of history and religion at Pennsylvania State
University, in his book "The New Anti-Catholicism," argues that
attacks against Catholics are allowed in ways that would not be tolerated
against Muslims and Jews.
In an interview today with the Italian newspaper Il Corriere della Sera,
Jenkins, an Episcopalian, said that anti-Catholicism has always been present in
the United States "from the first Protestant immigrants to the Populist
movement and the racist Ku Klux Klan."
Today, however, anti-Catholics "are, above all, intellectuals and
liberals," Jenkins said.
"It is even said that anti-Catholicism is the anti-Semitism of the
educated man," he observed. "Demagogues attack Jews; educated men
attack Catholics. It is a paradox, as the Catholic Church in the United States
calls for social reforms, disarmament, peace, in other words, many of their
causes."
According to the author, the cause of this anti-Catholicism lies in "the
centrality of sexual problems in U.S. society: Catholicism is considered
anti-gay, anti-feminist, etc. The accusations strike home in the
public."
Jenkins said that the issue of priests' abuses has been used to deepen
prejudices.
"Sexual abuses in the Catholic Church are no more frequent than in the
other churches or among schoolteachers," he said.
"Moreover, in very few cases is it about pedophilia, as the victims have
reached or are beyond puberty," he continued. "The abuses are
horrendous; they are crimes that must be punished and eradicated, but they must
not be manipulated."
In regard to U.S. anti-Catholicism, Jenkins believes that its particular
version is anti-papal. "I recall that years ago a Muslim plot was
discovered against [the Pope] and the liberals rejoiced," he said.
"It is not John Paul II's person but the institution -- his successor will
have to face the same hostility."
Jenkins added: "It is difficult for anti-Catholicism to disappear, as it
is difficult for anti-Semitism to disappear. The difference is that the
anti-Semite is denounced in the United States and obliged to keep quiet.
"I'm afraid that anti-Catholicism is so rooted that it represents the
opposite of what the United States wants to be at a given moment. The United
States often changes its mind: If it regards itself as progressive, it presents
Catholicism as conservative, and vice versa."
Yet, Jenkins thinks that Catholicism will grow more in the United States than
in Europe.
In the Old World, he explained, "immigration will be above all Muslim; in
the United States, it will be especially Latin American and Asian. The
appearance of U.S. Catholicism will change; it will be more ethnic. And one of
the greatest changes will affect the Virgin: Now, in America, her figure is
secondary; but it will become central."