Is America Anti-Catholic?

Alan Cooperman reports in today’s Washington Post that "anti-Catholic attitudes, including a belief that Roman Catholics are not permitted to think for themselves, are common in the United States, according to a survey released today by the Rev. Andrew Greeley, a priest, sociologist and bestselling author."

A rather surprising discovery, one might think.  But what does Greeley see as constituting anti-Catholicism?  Cooperman offers the following examples: "The survey of 550 non-Catholic Americans, conducted in March, found that 73 percent believed that Catholics ‘do what the pope and the bishops tell them to do,’ with 52 percent saying that Catholics ‘really are not permitted to think for themselves.’"

Now, to think that all Catholics "do what the pope and the bishops tell them to do" may be staggeringly naive, but is it necessarily anti-Catholic?  After all, total obedience is exactly what the pope and bishops demand.  If John Paul II heard that 73 percent of American non-Catholics think their Catholic neighbors obey him, he wouldn't think his stateside followers were being prejudiced against; he would think they were getting more credit than they deserve. 

As for the belief that Catholics "are not permitted to think for themselves" – well, of course many Catholics do think for themselves about a whole lot of things, including matters on which the Vatican has pronounced definitively.  In doing so, however, they're violating the official doctrines set forth in the Dogmatic Constitution of the Church, Lumen Gentium:

The entire body of the faithful...cannot err in matters of belief. They manifest this special property by means of the whole peoples' [sic] supernatural discernment in matters of faith when "from the Bishops down to the last of the lay faithful" (8*) they show universal agreement in matters of faith and morals. That discernment in matters of faith is aroused and sustained by the Spirit of truth. It is exercised under the guidance of the sacred teaching authority, in faithful and respectful obedience to which the people of God accepts that which is not just the word of men but truly the word of God. (112) Through it, the people of God adheres unwaveringly to the faith given once and for all to the saints, (113) penetrates it more deeply with right thinking, and applies it more fully in its life.

Or, more briefly and straightforwardly:

The laity should, as all Christians, promptly accept in Christian obedience decisions of their spiritual shepherds, since they are representatives of Christ as well as teachers and rulers in the Church.

Cooperman offers only two additional examples of "anti-Catholicism": "83 percent said that instead of worshiping only God, Catholics also worship Mary and the saints, while 57 percent believed the statues and images in Catholic churches are idols." To consider the second of these first: the simple fact is that according to the theology of many Protestants, from John Calvin onward, having statues and pictures in churches is idol-worship, period; I don't see why Greeley should be surprised by this news.  As for Mary and the saints, most Catholics would of course say they don’t worship them, they venerate them. They pray to them because they see them as mediators between man and God.  To many Protestants, who have a vastly different way of thinking about their relationship to God, it can be understandably hard to distinguish Catholic veneration of saints from worship.  Those Protestants may not be experts in comparative theology, but – again – does this alone make them anti-Catholic?

Besides, let’s face it: much official Catholic dogma does come awfully close to declaring Mary divine. Lumen Gentium speaks of the "union of the mother with the son in the work of salvation" and says that Mary "by her manifold intercession continues to bring us the gifts of eternal salvation." Many traditionalist Catholics seek to have Mary declared "Co-Redeemer" (or "Co-Redemptrix") along with Jesus Christ.  This is not a fringe idea; many cardinals support it.  And it seems to follow quite naturally from the infallibly proclaimed doctrines of Mary’s immaculate conception (proclaimed by Pius IX in 1854) and bodily assumption (Pius XII, 1950), both of which all Catholics are required to affirm on pain of excommunication and eternal punishment.  Read this encyclical (Redemptoris Mater) and you’ll see that according to John Paul II’s own theology, the idea of Mary is so entwined with the idea of Godhead that it is hardly much of a stretch to say that Catholics worship her – or are, in any event, encouraged to do so by the current Vicar of Christ.

To be aware of all this, and to say so, is scarcely anti-Catholic. What may be reflected in the results of Greeley's survey, rather, are two strikingly opposed tendencies within American Protestantism and Catholicism. On the one hand, evangelical Protestants tend to take their own churches’ – and other churches’ – theology very seriously, and  to perceive the authenticity of individual religious identity as being intimately and inextricably bound up with the firm affirmation of specific doctrinal propositions.  American Catholics, by contrast, are often accustomed to distancing themselves from many of the things in which they are expected to believe.  For more than a few of them, it is not uncommon to regard dogma as the province of the remote (and largely out-of-touch) Pope and Curia and College of Cardinals; in the minds of such Catholics, their own identity as full and authentic members of the Church is unshakable and independent of the contents of papal bulls or the particulars of personal belief.

I'm not saying that one of these tendencies is better than the other.  It does, however, seem supremely ironic that today's rigidly dogmatic Catholic Church has bred a generation of American Catholics many of whom, simply in order to be able to function in the real world, have had to learn to put oppressive theological dictates in their place – so much so that the very suggestion that their Church demands their absolute obedience (which of course it does) can be seen as "anti-Catholic"!  And equally ironic is the fact that many American Baptists and other Protestants – heirs of a religious movement that sprung up in fierce reaction to dogmatic authority and in bold assertion of individual conscience – have been taught by legalistic preachers to make a veritable idol of dogma and to view perfect doctrinal orthodoxy as essential to salvation.

To return to where we began: is there extensive anti-Catholicism in the U.S.?  Perhaps, though I'm inclined to doubt it.  In any case, the statistics served up in today's Washington Post don't show anything of the kind. 
 

BRUCEBAWER:COM, May 24, 2002