Do Catholic's face discrimination in the US?

Great Debates
1

When I was an undergrad, a Poli Sci teacher showed us some KKK handouts that included the “requirements” for membership. One of the requirements was that you couldn’t be Catholic.

There appears to me to be a decidedly anti Catholic bias in the media (even before the altar boy scandle). I have read editorials in our local papers that suggested that you couldn’t be a good Catholic and a good American. They have also suggested that the Church register as a Political Party or PAC.

I don’t believe I ever experienced any discrimination in hiring practices or any other economic situation. This could, of course, because I live in an area where there are lots of Catholics. Not knowing how it is in other parts of the county, I can’t speak for them.

I am interested in hearing peoples thoughts. Does the media have an anti Catholic bias? Do Catholics face discrimination in the US?

2

I see a difference between disliking (or disaproving of) the Catholic Church and discriminating against Catholics. One can dislike a religion (or some aspects of a religion) and still not engage in discrimination vs. individuals who belong to that religion. It isn’t what you think that matters, it’s what you do.

3

Sort of and only on a small, local scale.

The media does not have so much a true anti-Catholic bias as a tendency to treat any large organization as a good target. As a really big organization (that has an international aspect, a national aspect, and hundreds of state and local aspects), the RCC makes an excellent target for all kinds of stories.

Given that the church feels an obligation to speak out on issues of ethics and public policy, that makes it even more of a target (either as an example of interference or as an example of hypocrisy).

In addition, on several areas of public discussion, the RCC is at odds with the direction that public opinion has moved (notably abortion and contraception, but also the death penalty and attitudes toward other public issues), so it is easy to portray the RCC as being “opposed” to “the will of the people.”
I would say that the amount of discrimination that Catholics face, today, is no greater than that faced by any other identifiable group. It clearly happens, on occasion, but it no longer prevents the vast majority of Catholics from getting jobs or promotions or buying houses. (After John Kennedy was elected president, my dad said that some progress had been made, but it was after Cole became the CEO of Gneral Motors and was succeeded by Gerstenberg that my dad figured that Catholics could do anything in this country.)

There has been discrimination. Each of the two parishes where I grew up had to go through an intermediary to buy the land for their churches, because no one in those Michigan towns would sell property to the church (1920s and 1930s). I certainly know people in my lifetime (but not in the last 30 years) who have been denied jobs or promotions because they were Catholic. I can recall the point system for buying houses in which Catholics were rated much lower than their Protestant fellow applicants (although quite a bit higher than Jews). More recently, some Fundie congresscritters directly blocked the appointment of a Catholic priest to the job of congressional chaplain, simply on the basis that he was Catholic. (Having a chaplain may be a violation of the separation of church and state, but it is still discrimination to claim that only the “right” people can attain the job.)

I have also known and worked with people who do not believe that Catholics are good citizens and I have known Catholics who encountered direct discrimination after moving to a few specific regions in the South. (For all I know, the people in those places might discriminate equally against people from the “wrong” Protestant denomination, but I have not done a careful survey to discover that.)

One outfit that is constantly looking for anti-Catholic discrimination, (to the point where they often find it when it does not exist), is the Catholic League. If you go through their web site, you will find a lot of shrill cries where they take offense at things that any intelligent person would either ignore or dismiss as trivial. However, they do, indeed, document some cases of direct anti-Catholic bias in reporting and discrimination in policy.

4

Thanks for a thoughtful reply tomndebb. I have never seen the Baptist Church ridiculed anywhere but Hustler Magazine. Even then, it was more about Jerry the religion.

I remember the scene in Caddy Shack where the bishop invites the caddy to his youth group until he discovers that he is Catholic. Would people have thought it funny if the caddy were a jew?

I think the anti media bias could be because the church is the polar opposite of politically correct.

5

No, they don’t. They just haven’t had the success they’ve had in the past in forcing their beliefs on everyone else. There are plenty of Catholics who feel Roe v. Wade discriminates against them. It’s scary, actually.

Now, that whole child-sex-priest-coverup thing has definitely made the Catholic church look bad. I’m sure there are plenty of good catholic pedophile jokes out there–and rightfully so. But that’s not discrimination. Riducule (especially when warranted) is not discrimination. When catholics have separate bathrooms and water fountains, let me know.

6

I have never personally felt any discrimination, not in the form of not getting a job or something like that. But I also believe the RCC is treated by the media in a manner the press would never treat another religious affiliation.

I believe there is a certain license to bash Catholics–a sort of understanding that this is politically correct. Read Kalt’s heartfelt affection for the RCC to get a taste of what I mean. After all, it’s the Catholic Church. I mean, come on, of course they deserve derision. So long as Catholics don’t have separate restrooms, anti-Catholic comments can’t possibly be considered bigoted contempt. You can just check the archives of this board if you want to find additional examples.

And I believed this bias existed before the recent scandal. IMHO.

7

The Canons of the Catholic Church have encouraged and abetted exclusionary attitudes from protestants here in Alabama for many years. This is not particularly surprising inasmuch as the Church has saw fit to excommunicate its own card-carring members who choose to marry outside what they consider the only true faith.

And it didn’t help much for the Pope to pontificate that we protestants have only a Chinaman’s chance of going to heaven. (Well, he did until resently.)

But still, as a foot-washing, snake-handling, brimstone-flinging Baptist with a fundamental outlook, I haven’t seen any institutionalized discrimination of any Catholic here in Alabama in fifty years. But I have seen some Catholics look down on tralior park rednecks.

These days in Alabama, by in large, we discriminate only against unsavory individuals regardless of race, creeds or origins.

Only those with a need for pretense, discriminate otherwise.

8

The Klan has always discriminated against Catholics - I’ve seen KKK modified to read “Kikes, Koons and Katholics.” Why? I’d say look back to the time of the Klan’s founding and popularity and it’ll take care of itself. The Irish started coming over in droves during the potato famines mid-19th century. The Irish don’t face widespread discrimination today, but when they were a newer immigrant group, they did. Happens to every new immigrant group as far as I can tell. And the Irish were usually Catholic.

I remember seeing a political cartoon in high school addressing the issue. It appeared to show bunches of alligators crawling onto a beach. Actually, they were bishops in mitres.
As for today? That bigotry persists in some places, but overall I’d say Catholics are doing fine.
A lot of people take shots at the Church, though, myself definitely included. Why? Well, frankly they ask for it. They come across as an anachronism. They took a long time to admit the Earth was round, that the Earth goes around the sun, that evolution was real, and so on. And they’re still going strong at it: the Church opposes abortion, contraceptives, gay rights - and indeed gay existence ;), and a host of other issues that most people support. I think it leaves some people with the impression that they’re just not on the same (round) planet. :wink:
While some Catholics take it personally, hating on the Church isn’t the same as actually hating Catholics.

9

Wrong, wrong, and wrong, and so on.

Aside from a couple of odd bishops, the RCC has never claimed that the earth was flat.

Galileo’s trial did not result in a declaration that the earth did not go about the sun, only that Galileo had overstepped his bounds in his attacks on the pope and some other clergy. (The trial was no shining moment for the church, but there was no effort to suppress the scientific evidence. On the other hand, Copernicus had to seek shelter with the RCC to protect him from several Protestants who wanted to try him for proposing his mathematical explanation of heliocentrism.)

The RCC was one of the earliest Christian denominations to recognize Darwin’s theory as a legitimate scientific explanation of the origin of species. In fact, the RCC accepted the possibility that his theory was correct even before Mendelian genetics and the efforts of Dobzhansky established it to the satisfaction of the secular scientific community.

10

I remember seeing a political cartoon in high school addressing the issue. ~ Marley 23

Bless your heart. How old are you Markley, 23 ?

**The RCC was one of the earliest Christian denominations to recognize Darwin’s theory as a legitimate scientific explanation of the origin of species. ** ~ tomndebb

What, I wonder, is the “RCC”?

11

I’m not Catholic so you can probably take what I say with a grain of salt, but I don’t think that particular scene is anti-Catholic. If anything, it’s the Protestant bishop who comes off badly because he’s exposed as a hypocrite and a bigot. The caddy’s only fault is that he naively thinks anybody who’s a bishop must be Catholic.

As for whether people would’ve thought the scene was funny if the caddy were Jewish, I think it would’ve played the same. In fact, in the movie, one of the reasons Rodney Dangerfield’s character is frequently disparaged by the country club WASPs is because he is Jewish.

Regarding whether Catholics face discrimination the U.S., I can’t speak for the entire country but, from where I live now (the Pacific Northwest), I have not heard of anybody who was denied a job, a promotion, education, or housing because he was Catholic. (For one thing, it’s illegal under city, county, state, and federal law.) However, this was not the case before religious discrimination was outlawed and the election of JFK in 1960. As for anti-Catholic media bias today, I think one has to distinguish between criticism of the institution itself for its positions on various issues (e.g., the recent War in Iraq, birth control/abortion, homosexuality, etc.) or its gross negligence in dealing with the problem of sexual abuse by priests and the specific targeting of individual Catholics because they are Catholic.

12

Roman Catholic Church
(It’s the subject of the thread.)

13

Does the word “trial” jump out to anyone else in that sentence? They did threaten him with, if memory serves, burning at the stake. And they actually got Giordano Bruno.

MARLEY, and 20. The textbook was twice that. This is important why? You think a lot of papers run cartoons like that these days? My point is that Catholics faced plenty of bigotry. I was talking about the early part of the last century at the time. Hope that didn’t come across as a personal insult. :stuck_out_tongue: :wally

14

Well, I grew up Catholic (not presently active in the Church) and I’ve always felt perfectly mainstream. The rare occasions when it’s been an issue have involved someone trying to prosletyze me, never anyone in a position of power (like a cop or an employer).

Much of this country’s history has been built around anti-Catholic biases; the Know-Nothing Party pandered to public dislike of Irish Catholic immigrants in the mid 19th Century, and various Temperence and Prohibition movements have been aimed specifically at Catholics and the use of wine in communion. Al Smith, the first serious contender for the Presidency who was Catholic, was widely assumed to have his first loyalty to the Pope and not the Constitution. But all this happened long before I was born and I don’t feel particularly affected by it.

15

Depends on what “rights” you happen to think they have. We don’t really care that gays exist, but we do not think they should engage in homoexual activity. Come to think of it, heterosex is considered less ure than devoting oneself to God. Catholocism is a transcendant and sometimes ascetic religion. However, you know, homosexual-oriented priests are not uncommon, and this is quite fine. If all Catholic homosexuals entered the clergy and kept their vows, I would not expect to find it to be a bad thing in the eyes of God.

That’s true. But the RCC changed its mind pretty quickly, and was one of the first religioins to do so.

16

**

<snip>

Well…and those “Chinamen” characters. :dubious:

17

Well, Milum might come back later to address the issue when he doesn’t have his friend Jack Daniels with him. Then again, he might not.

18

OK, how does this differ from the “hate the sin, love the sinner” position (with respect to homosexuality) that people have been pillorying on these boards since the Santorum story broke?

19

Well, back in the 1960s, it was still common for country clubs and similar elite groups in the South to deny membership to Catholics. And, if you listen to some fundamentalist preachers, you’ll still hear an occasional anti-Catholic slur.

But as a Catholic, have I ever experienced anything worth calling discrimination? No, not really. Certainly, I run into people with anti-Catholic attitudes (more commonly from the secular Left than from the fundamentalist Right), but I’ve never been denied a job, a home, or service at a restaurant because of my faith. So, I’d have to be a real crybaby to claim discrimination.

At most, I have to endure an occasional rant about the evils of my church. Big deal!

20

Certainly not in Chicago and - if I understand correctly - New York.

Growing up Catholic in Chicago in the 60s-70s, there was no question what religion you were, only which parish. I knew one Jewish family in my grade school. There were 2 lutheran churches in the neighborhood (defined broadly). That’s it.

Chicago is home of DePaul and Loyola Universities (and countless smaller schools), with Marquette just to the north in Milwaukee, and a too damn many Notre Dame fans. There was a yearly football championship between the Public league and Catholic league football teams. (IIRC, in the 20s or so, that was one of the largest crowds ever for a football game - over 100G in Soldier Field.)

My buddy is quite active in his Methodist church. Every year they have a prayer vigil or somesuch for the “embattled church.” An amusing example of self-delusional false victimization in the mind of this long-time atheist.