Customer Reviews

American Freedom and Catholic Power

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Paul Blanshard was never an "anti-Catholic bigot." On the contrary, he was one of America's foremost advocates of true religious liberty maintained through strict separation of church and state! His writings only opposed the reactionary pre-Vatican 2 policies of the Roman Catholic hierarchy of his day. He never attacked Catholics as human beings or loyal Americans in any of his books.

In fact, his writings today are still timely when we are facing the same threats from the evangelical, fundamentalist Protestant Religious Right, which seeks to destroy separation of church and state through the current Bush administration's so-called "faith-based initiative." The Religious Right's current playbook is almost identical to the Catholic hierarchy Paul Blanshard so roundly criticized in his day.

With the acquiescence of all too many politicians in both parties, the Religious Right is eating away at our religious freedom through its incremental and cynical manipulation of the First Amendment by insisting that tax support for "faith-based" education and social services guarantee their free excercise of religion. This stands religious freedom on its head! Public funds are for secular education and social services only! Private funds are for religious schools and faith based social services. AMERICA, WAKE UP! If Paul Blanshard were alive today, he would be screaming out at the top of his lungs at what is happening in our country today.

I picked this up without knowing anything about the book or the author. The tone set in the opening chapters led me to believe that this would be a fair discussion of the relationship between American Society and the Roman Catholic Church. The copious source notes indicate show the extent of the author's research into the subject matter, and an unbiased presentation of the facts would have been quite useful as a basis for discussion and debate. Unfortunately, the author describes his finding in an extremely cynical fashion, and makes his opinions of the goals of the Church hierarchy quite plain, which detracts from the books impact. Had the author simply presented the facts, and allowed the reader to reach his or her own conclusions, this book would have been an important tool in assessing the role of the Church in America.

Published in 1949, there is much about this book that is out of date. The reforms of the Second Vatican Council in the 1960's has greatly changed the Catholic Church, though the author's points regarding medicine and sex remain largely valid. American society has changed as well, with the cultural upheaval of the 1960's and tremendous changes in technology. Finally, the world has changed...facism and communism have both largely disappeared, and the Church's influence in Europe had waned considerably.

This book represents an attack by the author on Church policies from a half-century ago, and in that sense it has lost its relevance. To the extent that religious conservatives are still trying to co-opt public policy, there are still point in here to ponder.

If any twentieth century book deserves the monniker "Epoch-changing," Blanshard's 1949 certainly does. Although it is a classic of anti-Catholic bigotry, American Freedom is distinguished from other screeds by an extensive set of footnotes and better than average research.

Blanshard is a master of the political spin. It is clear that he is, like many WASPs, terrified by the expanding Catholic minorities in the U.S.

As Mike Jones has documented in John Cardinal Krol and the Cultural Revolution, the Blanshard book helped stimulate a coordinated effort to nip Catholic power. First, an effort began to break up the Catholic neighborhoods in the major Eastern cities, thus diluting their power base in the legislatures. Second, the foundations funded research into a "Catholic contraceptive," which became the birth-control pill.

The book tries to look objective, but after fifty years even the most strident anti-Catholic will admit that the language and presentation are offensive. It is ironic that a nation that ended WWII with such animosity toward anti-Semitism continues to promote anti-Catholicism.

Paul Blanshard's "American Freedom and Catholic Power became" was a Book of the Month Club recommendation and a 1949-1950 Best Seller due to its simple but biased message; "The Catholic problem is still with us." Unfortunately, Paul's study of loyal followers of the Pope and the menace they posed to American culture was nothing new: the Know-Nothings, the American Protective Association, and even the Klan had been saying essentially the same thing for well over a century. As such, this book has historical value as a candid view of religious paranoia vis-a-vis Catholic immigration -- beyond that, it's waste-bin filler.

I live in CE, a state of Brazil and I like to read books.
About twenty years ago, I tried to read this trash-book.This book is so bad, that I didn't ended it.

A trash-book is a bigoted book?This book is bigoted.
A trash-book is a false book?This book is false.
A trash-book is an outdated book?This book is outdated.
A trash-book is a biased book?This book is 100% biased.

In late 1940 and at beggining of 1950 decade, this book was a best-seller in USA.With the advance of the time, not even the author could believe, in these bogus claims.
The author itself, Paul Blanshard,at that time was a protestant preacher and claimed to be a freedom's champion, became later a communist and of course an atheist too.
The core's idea of this book is that, Catholic Church is the biggest menace to USA's freedom.
Well, what happened more than 50 years later?The opposite.
Every USA's foe is also, a Pope's foe.
See to example: Iran's president, North Korea's strong man, Fidel Castro,etc. are all non-catholics and also foe of catholicism and USA.
This book is bigoted, bogus, ridiculous and outdated.
Even if you are a bigoted anti-catholic person, there's better options to read, than this trash-book.