As **TLD ** said, it was actually the other way round. Catholics were generally further down the heap than Protestants. The colonies were settled by the English, who were generally Protestant. So Protestantism came to be associated with the “ruling class”.
I attended Catholic schools all through my schooling career. Quite expensive ones too. In primary school the nuns were quick to jump on any aspirated haitchs. We were to be proud Catholics certainly, but we were also expected to not sound “working class”.
I’m not sure who you’re talking about here, but LA county consistently votes blue. San Diego is relatively conservative, for California, but the young populations of the city proper are often as liberal as anywhere else. East County is a WHOLE nother story–some cities in SD county, like Lakeside and Santee, are the kinds of places where Jews, kids who get abortions, and outed high schoolers wake up to find dead cats and burning crosses on their lawns. I have friends who’ve had this happen to them.
Religion brings with it self-righteousness almost by definition, as its proponents feel that they are exercising a higher moral code than those around them.
From what I can tell, a coast/inland divide is more telling. It certainly is in the US. You’re probably thinking “but what about the Carolinas/Florida/southern Virginia?”–forget about those and think of the San Francisco stereotype versus the Oklahoma City stereotype.
Even within coastal states you see stereotypes like this. Within San Diego County the stereotype is that the city folk–who by definition live 20 minutes or less from the Pacific–are snobby, cultured, amoral, atheistic dope-smokers; coastal North County is even snobbier and more cosmopolitan (the kind of people who enroll their kids in Hebrew school and the youth group at the synagogue–oh yeah, I forgot to mention that they’re supposedly all Jewish, especially in Del Mar); East County is the inbred, highly Protestant hick center, and the place where the KKK still thrives. (Unfortunately, the last part is true. Most of my black friends would never set foot in Santee or Lakeside, and I can’t blame them.)
The interesting thing about San Diego stereotypes is that the Catholic vs. Protestant divide takes on new meaning, because the Catholic population here is overwhelmingly Hispanic, Filipino or Vietnamese, whereas the Protestant population is overwhelmingly white. So the usual racial stereotypes take on religious overtones as well.
Sorry, I know this and didn’t explain myself - I was wondering if the fairly newish ‘proud to be of convict descent’ or ‘proud to be of working-class descent’ (and hence Catholic) has meant the inverted type snobbery.
Except that, in this case, it’s generally the non-Catholics who are sending their children to Catholic schools who boast about it. So it’s nothing to do with a “self-righteous sense of higher morality”, as you describe it. It’s a much more secular “look what we can afford to do” sort of thing.
My guess is no. The pride in convict descent evident only over the last twenty or thirty years is one thing, but I think sending your kids to Catholics schools is motivated entirely differently. It’s a much more practical and social thing. I’d say Cunctator’s post between your post and this one, even though it wasn’t specifically addressed to this question, actually answers it quite well.
