..Limbaugh read from a Washington Post blog post that reported Fluke had been interested in contraceptive coverage even before she enrolled at Georgetown. Because of this, Limbaugh declared, “She’s a plant — an anti-Catholic plant from the get-go on this.” …
---...that Babe Ruth was a staunch Smith supporter. You think it would work in his favor, but the Babe would show up at events wearing only his undershirt with a mug of beer in one hand. If people opposed his viewpoint, Ruth would simply say, “The hell with you,” and be done with them....Image:http://www.liveauctioneers.com/item/10322953
How things change. To many, it was scandalous that Kennedy was a Catholic, and thereby unfit for public office. Now Catholicism has been embedded, led on a leash into the fold of the conservative canon and often reactionary ideologies. The religious left is dead and their anti-capitalist critique transformed in succeeding generations by those aligned with free markets and corporate power and towards the narrow vision that religion is limited to salvation and life after death.What used to be termed “religious socialism” is near extinct in the body politic. The thesis laid out by Martin Buber stated that, “religion without socialism is like a spirit without a body and socialism without god is like a body without a soul.”
---to Herbert Hoover, whose victory represents, in the view of some American historians, “the last major victory of the country over the city, of the old American over the new”: to this Clark replies that Smith lost essentially because he was not born in the United States. In the course of this violent campaign, James Cannon, a Methodist bishop, called Smith “bigoted” and typical of “the Irish Roman Catholic hierarchy of New York City,” declaring that Smith’s goal was to bring to power “the kind of dirty people that you find today on the sidewalks of New York.” Clark summarizes the political atmosphere of the time: The implication for the older Bryanites was that these men –wet, Catholic, urban, and fabu-lously wealthy– were about to take over the party and the White House and deliver both to Jews and Catholics who were determined to overwhelm the traditions of the Protestant Re-public.--- Read More:http://sociocritique.fr/spip.php?article41 image:http://www.alsmithfoundation.org/thestatesman.html
At the time of the 1928 election, the Holland Tunnel in New York was just being completed and a photo circulated of Al Smith at the tunnel. Republicans told everyone that the Catholic Smith had commissioned a secret tunnel 3,500 miles long, from the Holland Tunnel to the Vatican in Rome, and that the Pope would dictate all presidential matters if Smith was elected….During the 1928 presidential election, Jones actively campaigned against Democrat Al Smith, a Roman Catholic from New York. The book says Jones portrayed Smith as the candidate of “foreigners,” a reference to the many Roman Catholics immigrating from Europe at the time.
“`If Democrat Al Smith is elected,”‘ the book quotes Jones as saying, “`the gates to immigration will be thrown open. I had rather see a saloon on every corner … than to see foreigners elect their candidate.”‘Read More:http://www.rickross.com/reference/kkk/kkk20.html
ADDENDUM:
I do see, however, that Jim Howard has published the Catholics United statement at his ShowMeBlog. The Catholics United statement makes the following observation that I think is critically important for anyone seeking to measure the U.S. Catholic bishops’ commitment to pro-life values by their politically manufactured contraceptive guidelines controversy to keep in mind:
Catholics United understands that contraception use is a sensitive issue for the Catholic Church, but it is hard to stomach this level of outrage when the bishops have been relatively silent on so many pressing issues of our day. Where was the public outcry over our nation’s past use of torture or our involvement in unjust wars? Why aren’t the bishops reading letters at Mass about the moral scandal of unemployment and poverty in America?
To my mind, this important statement dovetails nicely with what John Gehring said several days ago at the Faith in Public Life Action blog. Ge
g examines Rick Santorum’s commitment to Catholic values (including pro-life values) and finds that commitment significantly lacking, as judged by Santorum’s public and easily accessed statements about various issues. He notes that on issues ranging from torture to war to immigration, climate change, the widening gap between rich and poor, and workers’ rights, Santorum promotes positions that directly conflict with Catholic magisterial teaching.
And isn’t it remarkable that as the U.S. Catholic bishops and their “pro-life” Catholic Democratic centrist allies go on the warpath against Mr. Obama with claims that he contributes to the culture of death, they’re totally silent about Mr. Santorum? A fellow Catholic. Whose pro-life record on issue after issue could not be more dismal and more directly in opposition to Catholic values.Read More:http://bilgrimage.blogspot.com/2012/02/mr-santorum-us-catholic-bishops-and-pro.html
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and this quote: allow me to point out that Prohibition would never have happened but for an enormous and vocal group of Protestant Evangelicals, who outright hated Catholics, as well as anyone who was not of Anglo-Saxon descent.
This is not a pleasant thing to say, of course, but then many truths in history are unpleasant. The documentary clearly shows how a real loathing and mistrust of Catholic immigrants, not only for their religious practices but also because their attitudes towards the use of alcohol, completely took hold of the white Protestant Low-Church wing of the National psyche. If you were a fervent Baptist in 1898 America and saw your new German or Italian neighbors celebrating the First Communion of their child in the front parlor, with a big family party full of strange music and plenty of beer and wine, you probably felt as though the world was coming to an end – or that at the very least that the arrival of the Antichrist was getting closer.
As time went on following the implementation of Prohibition, things did not improve. For example, the anti-Catholic, racist Protestant Evangelist Bob Jones, Sr., founder of the university which bears his name, told the Associated Press during the Presidential Campaign of 1928: “I would rather see a saloon on every corner than a Catholic in the White House. I would rather see a n—— as president.” This was in response to the Presidential campaign of former New York Governor Al Smith, a Catholic and an outspoken challenger of Prohibition. A great irony of history, as Mr. Burns points out in the film, is that one of Governor Smith’s most vocal opponents, a prominent U.S. government prosecutor of Prohibition scofflaws who spoke at a convention of Protestant ministers and, as described in the film, appeared to be calling for religious warfare against Catholics, eventually became disillusioned with Prohibition and converted to Catholicism herself. Read More:http://blogofthecourtier.com/2011/10/05/review-prohibition/
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