The New Anti-Catholicism: The Last Acceptable Prejudice [Hardcover]

Philip Jenkins (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 17, 2003

Anti-Catholicism has a long history in America. And as Philip Jenkins argues in The New Anti-Catholicism, this virulent strain of hatred--once thought dead--is alive and well in our nation, but few people seem to notice, or care.
A statement that is seen as racist, misogynistic, anti-Semitic, or homophobic can haunt a speaker for years, writes Jenkins, but it is still possible to make hostile and vituperative public statements about Roman Catholicism without fear of serious repercussions. Jenkins shines a light on anti-Catholic sentiment in American society and illuminates its causes, looking closely at gay and feminist anti-Catholicism, anti-Catholic rhetoric and imagery in the media, and the anti-Catholicism of the academic world. For newspapers and newsmagazines, for television news and in movies, for major book publishers, the Catholic Church has come to provide a grossly stereotyped public villain. Catholic opinions, doctrines, and individual leaders are frequently the butt of harsh satire. Indeed, the notion that the church is a deadly enemy of women, the idea of Catholic misogyny, is commonly accepted in the news media and in popular culture, says Jenkins. And the recent pedophile priest scandal, he shows, has revived many ancient anti-Catholic stereotypes.
It was said that with the election of John F. Kennedy, anti-Catholicism in America was dead. This provocative new book corrects that illusion, drawing attention to this important issue.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The American media, usually painstaking in their efforts to offend members of no racial, religious or gender category, consistently make one major exception-the Roman Catholic Church. So argues Jenkins, professor of history and religion at Penn State and a prolific author whose titles include Pedophiles and Priests and The New Christendom. Though anti-Catholicism arrived with the Pilgrims, only since the 1960s has it been aided by dissenters within the Catholic Church, primarily those who disagree with the church on sexual matters: birth control, feminism, abortion, homosexuality. Citing copious recent examples of anti-Catholicism in public protests, movies, television, publishing, the arts, the news media and academia, Jenkins concludes that offenses against Catholicism, unlike those against, say, Judaism or Islam, are rarely censored and never considered hate crimes. Similarly, historical offenses by Catholics are treated differently from those against Catholics: "If seizing Christian Syria and Palestine by the Muslim sword was acceptable in the seventh century, why was it so atrocious to try to reclaim them with the Christian lance 400 years later?" Jenkins, an Episcopalian, wants evenhanded treatment for all religions, whether through equal respect or equal openness to attack. Liberal Catholics may contend that vigorous dissent helps keep the hierarchy honest; others might argue that the largest American denomination does not need the protections afforded more vulnerable groups. For Jenkins, however, it's about fairness: "One does not make light of black heroes and martyrs, of AIDS or gay-bashing, yet when dealing with Catholics, no subject is off-limits."
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Fear and hatred of Catholicism have a long pedigree in English North America--land settled, after all, by Protestants more sanguinary than sanguine about their religious freedom. The anti-Catholicism book Jenkins promised in "The Booklist Interview" [BKL O 1 02] first recaps the history of American anti-Catholicism and distinguishes anti-Catholicism from anticlericalism, or distrust and hatred of the clergy, which need be neither anti-Catholic nor anti-Christian. Both right and left have been anti-Catholic at different times. The Know Nothing Party and the Ku Klux Klan attacked Catholicism in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but liberals prosecuting Prohibition, family planning, sex education, legalized abortion, feminism, gay rights, and other progressive causes embraced anti-Catholicism later. Jenkins examines liberal anti-Catholicism in chapters on whether "The Church Hates Women" and "The Church Kills Gays"; the treatment of Catholics and the church by the news media, in the movies, and on TV; the current "pedophile priest" crisis; and dissident Catholic historians' critique of Pope Pius XII's relations with the Third Reich. He always carefully discriminates prejudice from mere tastelessness (e.g., recognizing South Park as deliberately vulgar, not bigoted) and liberal from conservative conceptions of what is antireligious. He concludes with shrewd prognostication about what may cause future flare-ups of this resilient American prejudice. If not as globally portentous as The Next Christendom [BKL Ap 1 02], this book is at least as eye-opening and complacency shaking. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (April 17, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195154800
• ISBN-13: 978-0195154801
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #479,107 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Philip Jenkins is the author of The Lost History of Christianity and has a joint appointment as the Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of the Humanities in history and religious studies at Penn State University and as Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Institute for Studies of Religion at Baylor University. He has published articles and op-ed pieces in The Wall Street Journal, The New Republic, The Atlantic Monthly, The Washington Post, and The Boston Globe and has been a guest on top national radio shows across the country.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

81 of 86 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An unprecedented look into a much ignored problem, May 3, 2003

By 

just bein' Frank (Woodbury, CT) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The New Anti-Catholicism: The Last Acceptable Prejudice (Hardcover)

"The New Anti-Catholicism" is a comprehensive, timely study of modern anti-Catholicism. Drawing on recent events while simultaneously mindful of history, Philip Jenkins makes a solid case that Roman Catholicism is subjected to a disproportionate amount of scrutiny, satire, and scorn in American life. The subject of some ugly anti-Catholic remarks myself, I impulsively bought this book as soon as I learned of its existence. What I found was not the polemical denunciation of anti-Catholic prejudice that I had craved (in order to feel vindicated) but rather a careful, erudite--at times sociological--study of anti-Catholicism which I ultimately found no less fascinating!

Chapters 2 and 3 (there are ten total) concern the history of American anti-Catholic bigotry. Consisting of largely classic nativist paranoia about anti-Catholicism, the history itself I found to be rather dry. But I stuck with it, and I'm glad I did. Understanding the history of the prejudice, Jenkins demonstrates, is necessary to understand anti-Catholicism as a whole. Indeed, many of the vicious ultraliberal attacks on the Church that we encounter today are strikingly similar to the ultraconservative bigotry of a century ago. The book picks up pace after Chapter 3, however, as Jenkins explores topics like gay and feminist anti-Catholicism, Catholicism and the news media, Catholics in art, Catholics in Movies & TV, the recent sex abuse scandal, and what he calls "Black Legends," distortions of Church history. The chapter on clerical sexual abuse is so engrossing that it is almost worth the price of the book by itself!

Throughout the book, Jenkins explores the definitional aspects of anti-Catholicism in addition to the topical aspects that I listed in the previous paragraph. He explains the difference (however slight) between anti-Catholicism and anti-clericalism. He notes that to spitefully disparage "the institution" of the Catholic Church, as opposed to "the members," is to practice de facto anti-Catholicism since, unlike other religions, the institution is so deeply central to the Roman Catholic faith itself. He also explains that "it is not anti-Catholic simply to assert that the Church's position on a given issue is dead wrong, nor that Bishop X or Cadinal Y is a monster or menace to the public good. ... It is quite a different matter [however] to say that some essential features of [Catholicism] give rise to evil or abuse and that the evil cannot be prevented without fundamentally changing the beliefs or practices of the religion." The author is a realist, not a sensationalist or somebody looking for controversy. Readers will be impressed with Jenkins.

It is important to note that Philip Jenkins himself, a distinguished professor of History and Religious Studies at Pennsylvania State University, is an Episcopalian. Indeed, he has no vested interest in defending Catholicism and doesn't hesitate to criticize the Church when the situation merits. But he calls on America to recognize that harmful anti-Catholic intolerance pervades popular culture in such a manner that would be unimaginable concerning Muslims, Jews, homosexuals, or blacks.

83 of 93 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fair, Thorough, Unbiased, May 17, 2003

By 

robert mcdonald (oshkosh, wi United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The New Anti-Catholicism: The Last Acceptable Prejudice (Hardcover)

This is a really scholarly investigation into the blatant bias against the Catholic Church as promulgated by all forms of media and tolerated by American society. The author,a former Roman Catholic, now an Episcopal teaches religious studies and history at the Pennsylvania State University. Although he has made a decision to remove from his Catholic roots he is none the less very fair in his analysis of the bias which has pervaded the Church for the whole of our country's existence; in fact I believe he may be much more credible because of his independence from the Church.

Philip Jenkins takes many issues including abortion,homosexuality,race,contraception,Church hierachy and papal infallibility and discusses these issues in light of historical perspective. He clearly shows that in an earlier era the "conservatives" of the populace were most threatened by Catholicism and were the most vigorous in trying to suppress it. Now, however, it is clearly the "liberals" who for totally different reasons and for different agendas are vehemently opposed the the Catholic Church.

Dr.Jenkins brings to light issues that have become unpopular to discuss or even intelligently critique due to the transformation of social "norms" that even a generation ago were considered fair game. Even I, an orthodox Roman Catholic, find myself falling for some of these new acceptable prejudices. Dr. Jenkins clearly demonstrates the fallacy of these new biases.

33 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Non-Catholic Professor Examines American Anti-Catholicism, January 2, 2005

By 

J. Rieping "Theophilus" (California, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The New Anti-Catholicism: The Last Acceptable Prejudice (Hardcover)

When my local public library purchased Professor Jenkin's study of anti-Catholicism I was ambivalent. I checked out the book with the intention to skim through it, but soon I began to more deeply read individual chapters, and eventually ended up reading the entire book. Prof. Jenkins (a non-Catholic) presents a solid and balanced portrayal of the radically changing face of American anti-Catholicism, as well as how American Catholics have both combatted and contributed to this anti-Catholicism in the past and present. The superficial similarities and profound differences between modern anti-Catholicism and past prejudice is simultaneously astounding and unsurprising. The only book I know which surpasses this one in presenting the history of American anti-Catholicism is out of print ("John F. Kennedy and American Catholicism"). Coincidentally, that other work was also written by a non-Catholic (a Jewish scholar to be exact). I highly recommend this book to Americans of all backgrounds who wish to understand the story behind American anti-Catholic prejudice today.