January 13, 2014

"Catholics in high places of power have the most trouble, I've noticed, practicing the separation of church and state."

"The pugnacious Catholic Justice, Antonin Scalia, is the most aggressive offender on the Court, but not the only one. Of course, we can't know for sure what Sotomayor was thinking..."

From a U.S. News column titled "The Catholic Supreme Court’s War on Women," by Jamie Stiehm.

The first comment over there says: "I'm honestly shocked that someone with such extreme religious prejudice has a job in journalism. This is something straight out of an 1850's Know Nothing pamphlet."

Here's the Wikipedia article on the Know Nothings, which has this intriguing image from 1854 of "Uncle Sam's youngest son, Citizen Know Nothing."



Imagine conceiving of that guy as the idealized American (in contrast to those terrible immigrants). It makes me wonder about our notions of masculinity over the years. This man seems more like the "pajama boy" sort of guy that gets ridiculed by some folks today. Our notions of masculinity today reflect the infusion of vigor from the Catholic immigrants the Know Nothings were so worried about.

Meanwhile, in the gender wars, according to that U.S. News column, Catholics are portrayed as a threat to womanhood, with womanhood understood in terms of bodily autonomy, and pro-choice women hoping both to hold onto the political support they won for the subsidization of female bodily autonomy and to quash the political victories of those who would burden it.

45 comments:

MadisonMan said...

I always wonder: is something so blatantly over the top just click fishing?

Fen said...

Its not about what you think. Its about competition.

One side wants you to surrender your soul to God, the other wants you to surrender your soul to the State. So its obvious why the State needs to squash Religion at every turn.

Anonymous said...

From Dildos to "the subsidization of female bodily autonomy" in One Morning. Next: Tina Fey's Prosthetic Uterus.

gerry said...

Don't call me fat. That infringes my bodily autonomy.

The National Association for Advancement of Non-Slender People will be in touch.

Fen said...

"undermined the new Affordable Care Act's sensible policy on contraception"

Note the argument by assertion here: "sensible"

As in "common sense gun control", etc.

That the author needs to do that should be your first clue you are reading propaganda.

Anonymous said...

"It makes me wonder about our notions of masculinity over the years. This man seems more like the "pajama boy" sort of guy that gets ridiculed by some folks today."

There is nothing new under the sun. We are back to the future of Know Nothing, see nothing, hear nothing.

Fen said...

"There is nothing new under the sun. We are back to the future - "

Yup. It always amazes me when the Left portrays the Founding Fathers as out of date and out of touch.

Quite the contrary, they studied historical patterns dating back to ancient Greece. "All this has happened before, and will happen again" (unless you paid attention to what happened the first 6 times this bogus idea was floated).

TosaGuy said...

assertions of "sensible" by hothouse political types rarely are.

Fen said...

I wonder how many Winston Smith's we have out there now.

Eric the Fruit Bat said...

This man seems more like the "pajama boy" sort of guy that gets ridiculed by some folks today.

I'm guessing the difference is pajama boy is wearing a onesie while Citizen Know Nothing ties himself one hell of a bad-ass cravat.

SGT Ted said...

The "Know Nothing" guy is portrayed as a Fop, and Dandy. A well dressed ignoramous.

So, yes, Pajama Boy is a perfect comparison.

ron winkleheimer said...

I would think that our notions of masculinity have evolved over time due to the influence of the opening of the West and how it was portrayed in penny novels and eventually movies.

That said, the anti-catholic column was just that, anti-catholic. Not to terribly different than the stuff put out by anti-catholic bigots when JFK was running for president.

pdug said...

If you want to know if mass immigration can change the political control and direction of a region, just ask the Palestinians.

khesanh0802 said...

@Ralph Hayatt

Took the words out of my mouth. Horse puckey then, horse puckey now. The author should be ashamed.
I am having a really hard time with all the gender equality baloney that Ann is posting. She is right to draw attention to it. I just wonder if it's such a cold winter that people have nothing better to think about. Of course it does distract from the horrendous job Obama is doing - perhaps that's part of the purpose.

pdug said...

It was probably perceived as Leftist and Progressive to be a Know Nothing and oppose papal influence in the USA.

"Protestants alleged that Pope Pius IX had put down the failed liberal Revolutions of 1848 and that he was an opponent of liberty, democracy and Republicanism"

Pius IX's Syllabus of Errors was pretty non-progressive

http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Pius09/p9syll.htm

cubanbob said...

Now if Scalia converted to Islam what would Jamie Stiehm have to say?

Anonymous said...

Seems like only last month that the Church was the Conscience Of A Nation on income inequality. Now it's back to being a passel of interfering God-botherers again.

James Pawlak said...

Why so many Catholics and Jews? Perhaps because both faiths are based on a "higher law" and not on the immediate self-gratification set as a standard by "liberals".

traditionalguy said...

The age old Battle for the control of the minds and hearts of men goes on.

Do you ever wonder why control of our minds and hearts are so coveted?

In Europe the entire 1600s were a control show down time between Reformation communities and the Catholic Kings' Counter Reformation using planned massacres of heretics. That was what triggered many Reformed Scottish, British, French and German emigrants to flee over to The New World. So the Know Nothings knew something: they still had a cultural memory of those days.

They only came to be called Protestants because they protested being systematically murdered.



MayBee said...

Men have to register for the draft.
Women have to get their birth control for free.
Thus is the status in the fight for rights to "control" our own bodies.

YoungHegelian said...

@TradGuy,

They only came to be called Protestants because they protested being systematically murdered.

You know, tradguy, you might do well to actually invest in some history books, as opposed to sectarian screeds.

Could you pleas name one "mass slaughter" of Protestants by Catholics other than the St. Bartholemew's Day Massacre in France?

Compare that with the horrific Protestant on Protestant massacre in Germany under the Peasant Revolt, or what the Protestant Cromwell did to Catholic Ireland, and it ain't even close.

David said...

I would not read very much into that image.

Six years later the nation elected Abraham Lincoln, six feet five inches of gaunt, rawboned muscle, to be President.

n.n said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
n.n said...

If a guy will not contribute to the cost of contraception, then he's probably not that into you.

Do women perceive themselves as commodities? That's the secular perception, but is that what women believe? Or is it simply that they are incapable of self-moderating, responsible behavior? Like children, they demand instant or immediate gratification without consequences.

Elective abortion is a violation of our unalienable human right to life. Its normalization represents a shift of a woman's prerogative to commit murder, to state-sponsored executions through lethal injection or dismemberment of wholly innocent human lives. The normalization of abortion is a violation of human rights on an unprecedented scale.

Why is a population control protocol so important to Democrats? Why, in particular, do they promote evolutionary dysfunction among the poorest and least capable of human society?

pdug said...

EXCEPT the St. Bartholomew's day massacre? Oy.

Tyrone Slothrop said...

Ironically, it took the Catholic Church to raise women from the status of household servants in the first place. Contrast the status of women in "Christian" nations with that in Islamic nations, or indeed any other culture to see where gender equity exists and where it doesn't. The medieval cult of Mary gave rise to chivalry and romantic love, both of which idealized women and set the West on its present course.

traditionalguy said...

Young Hegelian...The Huguenots weren't the only victims of planned killings by the Catholic Church. But I agree that the mentioned single day's massacre of thirty thousand in their beds was special. It aroused strong Protests and fixed a cultural memory that the Catholic Church was a bloody and treacherous religion.

Then the Spanish Armada showed up to invade the bastard Queen's country, arrest and murder the condemned heretic Elizabeth I and root out all Church of England heretical Arch-bishops burning them at the stake at Cambridge like her half sister Mary had done.

But years of persecutions by Jesuits in areas such as today's Netherlands and the Swiss-French border provinces killed more than the 30,000 in one day.

You need to read some history not written by Professors at a University with Loyola in its name.

Anonymous said...

"..They only came to be called Protestants because they protested being systematically murdered..."


Tell that to the Irish.

n.n said...

Tyrone Slothrop:

There is more control and profit derived from secular institutions. An argument for traditional morality and institutions does not lend itself to advancing their replacements.

YoungHegelian said...

Pduggie,

European history is not exactly replete with examples of those in power being kind to ethnic or religious minorities.

And I will repeat my claim. Here's the death tolls from Wikipedia:

St Barts 5,000 to 30,000.
Peasant War 100,000
Cromwell:
. William Petty estimated (in the Down Survey) that the death toll of the wars in Ireland since 1641 was over 618,000 people, or about 40% of the country's pre-war population. Of these, he estimated that over 400,000 were Catholics, 167,000 killed directly by war or famine, and the remainder by war-related disease.

Basically, in their historically revisionist memories, the Calvinists remained the pompous, self-righteous dicks they were in pretty much everything else.

Brennan said...

Didn't the other 8 justices unanimously concur with Sotomayor on the Little Sisters of Colorado?

And she's also wrong about about Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson wasn't nearly as concerned with state religion and Rome as he was about the 13 colonies that had already adopted a particlar strain of Christianity as a state religion.

YoungHegelian said...

@Tradguy,

But years of persecutions by Jesuits in areas such as today's Netherlands and the Swiss-French border provinces killed more than the 30,000 in one day.

Tradguy, I'm not denying the reality of religious persecution in Europe. I'm denying your assertion that Protestant were just the innocent victims of it. Where in power, they gave as well as they got.

Also, we should discuss sometime just exactly how the Protestant crowns got the noble families to ally to their causes. Didn't they promise them Church property as a bribe to come on board? Did you ever wonder just how that family in Downton Abbey ever got possession of an abbey?

Anonymous said...

Someone's got to be that hackish, maudlin, doctrinal idiot at the end feminist conga line

She may get a talking to at the next Temple meeting

Anonymous said...

The Lord of Swamp Castle speaks for me here.

traditionalguy said...

Young-Hegelian...I agree with you that England's Devine Right Kings once under the supposed authority of a Vicar of Christ in Rome did some nation state building of their own in the 1500s by declaring themselves head of the Church within their Kingdom, confiscating the Church's real estate and selling it cheap to their political allies.

And a hundred years later the Puritan Oliver Cromwell from East Anglia fought like a righteous citizen who righteously said the King was not an absolute tyrant but was subject to the laws of England.

He over did his winning wars when he invaded Ireland from which the French Catholic (Jacobins) and Charles I had planned an invasion of England.

The ancient Cathedral city of Drogheda in County Armagh is where the Borne River leads to the Irish Sea. It was site of a battle where Cromwell gave his no quarter command after the Catholic garrison refused to surrender. (Full disclosure: My ancestors are from Bloody Armagh.)

John Calvin was a very intelligent French lawyer living in exile in Berne Switzerland to save his life. His only crime was to have written so well about scriptural doctrines contained in Paul and Augustine's writings, but hidden away for many years, because they threatened the Catholic world view of salvation by sacraments.

ron winkleheimer said...

"Did you ever wonder just how that family in Downton Abbey ever got possession of an abbey?"

Henry VIII straight out took it from the RC Church and gave it to a supporter cause he wanted a male heir and his first wife was related to the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V who "convinced" Clement VII that granting Henry a divorce would not be something Charles would look favorably on?

Greg Hlatky said...

After he lost the 1928 election, Al Smith, the first Catholic nominee for president, joked that he sent the Pope a one-word telegram: "Unpack."

Matt Sablan said...

It's not really surprising. There's a LOT of hostility towards Catholics. Not as much as the more prevalent hate-isms, but anti-Catholicism is still around.

Illuninati said...

YoungHegelian said...
@TradGuy,

"Could you pleas name one "mass slaughter" of Protestants by Catholics other than the St. Bartholemew's Day Massacre in France?"

I support YH's support of the Catholic church. I don't intend to be critical but I believe he might have overstated his case for the innocence of the Catholic church. All organizations which have existed as long as the Catholic church have dark chapters in their history. The Catholic Croats ran a concentration camp which was primarily for Orthodox Serbs during WWII called the Jasenovac concentration camp in which they murdered between 80,000 and 100,000 civilians mostly Serbs followed by a large number of Jews and Roma.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jasenovac_concentration_camp

One could argue that the Catholic church wasn't responsible because they didn't organize an Ecumenical council to organize this branch of the holocaust, but it is hard to avoid the conclusion that it was a religious pogrom.

That said, the Catholic church has to be judged on the entirety of its contribution to humanity. Overall it has made immense contributions to human wellbeing and welfare. That is much more than can be said about its leftist critics whose movement has already murdered millions of people and has nothing to show for it except suffering and poverty.

Mitch H. said...

It was probably perceived as Leftist and Progressive to be a Know Nothing and oppose papal influence in the USA.

Pretty much, the Whigs of the 1830s and 1840s contained a strongly anti-papist, evangelical tendency or faction in their Northern incarnation. Theodore Frelinghuysen was a notable banner-carrier for this faction, and his presence on the 1844 Whig ticket may have made the difference due to his having antagonized the Southern and Catholic votes. And yes, the Whigs were essentially antebellum Progs, insofar as you can make a historical continuum between the Progs and American political thought. (IE, they were statist-minded, sanctimonious, interventionist, popular among the Puritan cultural regions, anti-free-trade, and convinced they were the wave of the future.)

When the Whigs went to pieces, most of the party cycled through the Know-Nothings before that party/conspiracy went to pieces, and after *that* many of those eventually joined up with the Free-Soilers and radical immigrants (notably led by exiled participants in the failed 1848 revolutions) to form the Republican Party. Which was less conservative and more interventionist for most of its first seventy-five years of existence than the Democratic Party. It took Prohibition to seriously shred the ties between progressive politics and the Republican Party. Well, that and the FDR era.

furious_a said...

OLD AND BUSTED: Sonya Sotomayor = Wise Latina.
NEW HOTNESS: Sonya Sotomayor = Stealth Papist.

furious_a said...

Why so many Catholics and Jews?

The Jews control the money and the Catholics control City Hall (Irish Cops and Fire, Italians Sanitation and Bldg Inspection, trading off the Mayor's Office).

Anonymous said...

It makes me wonder about our notions of masculinity over the years. This man seems more like the "pajama boy" sort of guy that gets ridiculed by some folks today. Our notions of masculinity today reflect the infusion of vigor from the Catholic immigrants the Know Nothings were so worried about.

What an utterly bullshit comment, Althouse. I'm surprised no one's called you on it.

The "notions" of masculinity held by early- and mid-nineteenth century non-immigrant Americans, Know-Nothing or otherwise, had absolutely no kinship to modern Pajama Boy. Catholic immigrants brought that heretofore missing element of masculine vigor to a nation of effete metrosexuals? Good grief.

a psychiatrist who learned from veterans said...

Great history lesson. I didn't realize how much death Cromwell caused in Ireland.

@ traditional guy. Which side f the conflict was your family on?

traditionalguy said...

@psychiatrist who learned from veterans...

My ancestors were not with Cromwell in 1647, but they were were Scots-Irish Ulstermen named Sterritt originally from Ayrshire, Scotland.

The Ulstermen came down into Armagh along with William of Orange ( husband of Queen Mary)and his recently arrived European Dutch troops to defeat the recently deposed King James II ( brother of the restored Charles II) and a mixture of Royalist troops, French troops and Irish Catholic militia allies finally completed battle of the Glorious Revolution. The final battle was not a siege of Drogheda this time but a true battle at a river ford outside Drogheda a few miles up the River Boyne ( not Bourn)from Drogheda.

It had taken 40 years from Cromwell's first Puritan Parliamentary' Army's victories (with Scottish Presbyterian help) to completely defeat of the Stuart monarchy and its Catholic conspiracies once and for all.

Which is what WHIGS were...the supporters of partially elected Parliament's power to overrule bad Kings. It had started at Magna Charta in July, 1215 and ended with James II's fleeing Ireland and Scots-Irish Ulstermen warriors at the Battle of the Boyne in July, 1690. So after 475 years it became a Whig Parliament that dissolved the King and not a King that dissolved the Parliament.