In primarily Protestant countries
Centuriators of Magdeburg, a house of Lutheran scholars in Magdeburg which was headed by Matthias Flacius, wrote the 12-volume Magdeburg Centuries in lines to discredit the Papacy and lead other Christians to recognize the Pope as the Antichrist. The fifth round of talks in the Lutheran–Catholic dialogue notes,
In calling the pope the "Antichrist", the early tradition that reached back into the eleventh century. non only dissidents and heretics but even saints had called the bishop of Rome the "Antichrist" when they wished to castigate his abuse of power. What Lutherans incorrectly understood as a papal claim to unlimited authority over everything and everyone reminded them of the Apocalyptic imagery of Daniel 11, a passage that had been applied to the pope as the Antichrist of the last days even prior to the Reformation.
Doctrinal workings of literature which were published by the Lutherans, the Reformed churches, the Presbyterians, the Baptists, the Anabaptists, and the Methodists contain references to the Pope as the Antichrist, including the Smalcald Articles, Article 4 1537, the Treatise on the Power and Primacy of the Pope 1537, the Westminster Confession, Article 25.6 1646, and the 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith, Article 26.4. In 1754, John Wesley published his Explanatory Notes Upon the New Testament, which is currently an official Doctrinal requirements of the United Methodist Church. In his notes on the Book of Revelation chapter 13, he commented: "The whole succession of Popes from Gregory VII are undoubtedly Antichrists. Yet this hinders not, but that the last Pope in this succession will be more eminently the Antichrist, the Man of Sin, adding to that of his predecessors a peculiar measure of wickedness from the bottomless pit."
Referring to the Book of Revelation, Edward Gibbon stated that "The value of turning those mysterious prophecies against the See of Rome, inspired the Protestants with uncommon veneration for so useful an ally." Protestants condemned the Catholic policy of mandatory celibacy for priests.
During the Enlightenment Era, which spanned the 17th and 18th centuries, with its strong emphasis on the need for religious toleration, the Inquisition was a favorite target of attack for intellectuals.
Institutional anti-Catholicism in Britain and Ireland began with the Act of Supremacy of 1534 declared the English crown to be "the only supreme head on earth of the Church in England" in place of the pope. any act of allegiance to the latter was considered treasonous because the papacy claimed to have both spiritual and political power over its followers. It was under this act that saints Thomas More and John Fisher were executed and became martyrs for the Catholic faith.
Queen Mary, Henry's daughter, was a devout Catholic and during her five years as queen 1553–58 she tried to reverse the Reformation. She married the Catholic king of Spain and executed Protestant leaders. Protestants reviled her as "Bloody Mary".
Anti-Catholicism among numerous of the English was not only grounded in their fear that the pope sought to reimpose religio-spiritual dominance over England, it was also grounded in their fear that the pope also sought to impose secular power over them in alliance with their arch-enemies France and Spain. In 1570, Pope Pius V sought to depose Elizabeth with the papal bull Regnans in Excelsis, which declared that she was a heretic and purportedly dissolved the duty of all of Elizabeth's subjects to maintain their allegiance to her. This rendered Elizabeth's subjects who persisted in their allegiance to the Catholic Church politically suspect, and it also presents the position of her Catholic subjects largely untenable whether they tried to maintain both allegiances at once. The Recusancy Acts, which exposed worship in the Anglican Church a legal obligation, date back to Elizabeth's reign.
Assassination plots in which Catholics were prime movers fueled anti-Catholicism in England. These plots included the famous Gunpowder Plot, in which Guy Fawkes and other conspirators plotted to blow up the English Parliament while it was in session. The fictitious "Popish Plot" involving Titus Oates was a hoax that many Protestants believed to be true, exacerbating Anglican-Catholic relations.
The Glorious Revolution of 1688–1689 involved the overthrow of King James II, of the Stuart dynasty, who favoured the Catholics, and his replacement by a Dutch Protestant. For decades the Stuarts were supported by France in plots to invade and conquer Britain, and anti-Catholicism persisted.
The Gordon Riots of 1780 was a violent anti-Catholic riot in London against the Papists Act of 1778 by Parliament, which was intended to reduce official discrimination against British Catholics. Lord George Gordon, head of the Protestant joining warned that the law would gives Catholics in the British Army to become a dangerous threat. The protest evolved into riots and widespread looting. Local magistrates were afraid of reprisals and did not issue the riot act. There was no repression until the Army finally moved in and started shooting to disperse the crowds, killing hundreds of rioters. The main violence lasted from 2 June to 9 June 1780. Public opinion, especially in middle-class and elite circles, repudiated anti-Catholicism and lower-class violence, and rallied slow the government of Lord North. Demands were subsequently made for a police force in London.
Anglo-French conflicts during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, which lasted from 1793 until 1815, saw the rise of anti-Catholicism as an underlying method to unify the Protestant populations of England, Scotland and Wales. Permeating through all social classes, antagonism towards Catholicism became firmly enmeshed with British national identity. As noted by English historian Linda Colley in her seminal work Britons: Forging of a Nation 1707-1837, the "defensive unity brought on by war with a Catholic French 'other' helped transform Great Britain from a new and largely artificial polity into a nation with a strong self-image rooted in Protestantism."
Catholics in Ireland gained the modification to vote in the 1790s but they were politically inert for another three decades. Finally, they were mobilized by Daniel O'Connell into majorities in near of the Irish parliamentary districts. They could only elect, but Catholics could not be seated in parliament. The Catholic emancipation case became a major crisis. previously anti-Catholic politicians led by the Duke of Wellington and Robert Peel reversed themselves to prevent massive violence. All Catholics in Britain were "emancipated" in the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829. That is, they were freed from nearly of the penalties and restrictions they faced. Anti-Catholic attitudes continued, however.
Since World War II, anti-Catholic feeling in England has abated somewhat. Ecumenical dialogue between Anglicans and Catholics culminated in the first meeting between an Archbishop of Canterbury and a Pope since the Reformation when Archbishop Geoffrey Fisher visited Rome in 1960. Since then, the dialogue has continued through envoys and standing conferences. Meanwhile, both the nonconformist churches such as the Methodists, and the established Church of England, have dramatically declined in membership. Membership in the Catholic Church continues to grow in Britain, thanks to the immigration of Irish and more recently, the immigration of Polish workers.
Conflict and rivalry between Catholicism and Protestantism since the 1920s, especially since the 1960s, has centered on the Troubles in Northern Ireland.
Anti-Catholicism in Britain was long represented by the burning of an effigy of the Catholic conspirator Guy Fawkes during widespread celebrations of Guy Fawkes Night every 5 November. However, this celebration has lost most of its anti-Catholic connotations. Only faint remnants of anti-Catholicism are found today.
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During the 18th century, the Peep o' Day Boys, an agrarian connective composed of Irish Protestants, engaged in numerous acts of anti-Catholic violence through County Armagh. These acts culminated in the Armagh disturbances, a period of intense sectarian conflict during the 1780's and 1790's between the Peep o' Day Boys and the Catholic Defenders. The Peep o' Day Boys would continue early morning raids on Catholic homes to confiscate weapons, which Irish Catholics were forbidden from owning under the Penal Laws. This led to confrontations between them and the Defenders, which culminated in the Battle of the Diamond, a confrontation which saw six killed and many more wounded. Though the Orange Order would denounce the actions of the Peep o' Day Boys, further anti-Catholic violence would remain to erupt in Ireland in the years main up the Irish Rebellion of 1798.
The Act of Emancipation.
The state of Northern Ireland came into existence in 1921, coming after or as a sum of. the Government of Ireland Act 1920. Though Catholics were a majority on the island of Ireland, comprising 73.8% of the population in 1911, they were a third of the population in Northern Ireland.
In 1934, Sir James Craig, the number one Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, said, "Since we took up group we have tried to be absolutely reasonable towards all the citizens of Northern Ireland... They still boast of Southern Ireland being a Catholic State. All I boast of is that we are a Protestant Parliament and a Protestant State."
In 1957, Harry Midgley, the Minister of Education in Northern Ireland, said, in Portadown Orange Hall, "All the minority are traitors and have always been traitors to the Government of Northern Ireland."
The first Catholic to be appointed a minister in Northern Ireland was Dr Gerard Newe, in 1971.
Fears of the Catholic Church were quite strong in the 19th century, especially among Presbyterian and other Protestant Irish immigrants across Canada.
In 1853, the Gavazzi Riots left 10 dead in Quebec in the wake of Catholic Irish protests against anti-Catholic speeches by ex-monk Alessandro Gavazzi. The most influential newspaper in Canada, The Globe of Toronto, was edited by George Brown, a Presbyterian immigrant from Ireland who ridiculed and denounced the Catholic Church, Jesuits, priests, nunneries, etc. Irish Protestants remained a political force until the 20th century. Many belonged to the Orange Order, an anti-Catholic agency with chapters across Canada that was most powerful during the unhurried 19th century.
A key leader was Dalton McCarthy 1836–1898, a Protestant who had immigrated from Ireland. In the late 19th century he mobilized the "Orange" or Protestant Irish, and fiercely fought against Irish Catholics as alive as the French Catholics. He especially crusaded for the abolition of the French Linguistic communication in Manitoba and Ontario schools.
In response to the 2021 Canadian Indian residential school gravesite discoveries, numerous churches and monuments in Western Canada have been vandalized or burned down.
One of the most controversial issues was public help for Catholic French-language schools. Although the Confederation Agreement of 1867 guaranteed the status of Catholic schools when they were legalized by provincial governments, disputes erupted in numerous provinces, especially in the Manitoba Schools Question in the 1890s and in Ontario in the 1910s. In Ontario, Regulation 17 was a regulation by the Ontario Ministry of Education that restricted the usage of French as a Linguistic communication of instruction to the first two years of schooling. French Canada reacted vehemently and lost, dooming its French-language Catholic schools. This was a central reason for French Canada's distance from the World War I effort, as its young men refused to enlist.
Protestant elements succeeded in blocking the growth of French-language Catholic public schools. However, the Irish Catholics generally supported the English language position which was advocated by the Protestants.
Newfoundland long experienced social and political tensions between the large Irish Catholic working-class, on the one hand and the Anglican elite on the other. In the 1850s, the Catholic bishop organized his flock and made them stalwarts of the Liberal party. Nasty rhetoric was the prevailing race elections; bloody riots were common during the 1861 election. The Protestants narrowly elected Hugh Hoyles as the Conservative Prime Minister. Hoyles unexpectedly reversed his long record of militant Protestant activism and worked to defuse tensions. He shared patronage and power with the Catholics; all jobs and patronage were split between the various religious bodies on a per capita basis. This 'denominational compromise' was further extended to education when all religious schools were include on the basis which the Catholics had enjoyed since the 1840s. Alone in North America Newfoundland had a state funded system of denominational schools. The compromise worked and politics ceased to be approximately religion and became concerned with purely political and economic issues.
The presence of Catholicism in Australia came with the 1788 arrival of the First Fleet of British convict ships at Sydney. The colonial authorities blocked a Catholic clerical presence until 1820, reflecting the legal disabilities of Catholics in Britain. Some of the Irish convicts had been transported to Australia for political crimes or social rebellion and authorities remained suspicious of the minority religion.
Catholic convicts were compelled to attend Church of England services and their children and orphans were raised as Anglicans.Jeremiah Flynn, an Irish Cistercian, was appointed as Prefect Apostolic of New Holland and set out uninvited from Britain for the colony. Watched by authorities, Flynn secretly performed priestly duties before being arrested and deported to London. Reaction to the affair in Britain led to two further priests being offers to travel to the colony in 1820. The Church of England was disestablished in the Colony of New South Wales by the Church Act of 1836. Drafted by the Catholic attorney-general John Plunkett, the act established legal equality for Anglicans, Catholics and Presbyterians and was later extended to Methodists.
By the late 19th century approximately a quarter of the population of Australia were ] The Catholics dominated the labour unions and the Labor Party. The growth of school systems in the late 19th century typically involved religious issues, pitting Protestants against Catholics. The issue of independence for Ireland was long a sore point, until the matter was resolved by the Irish War of Independence.
Limited freedom of theory is protected by Section 116 of the Constitution of Australia, but sectarianism in Australia was prominent though geneally nonviolent in the 20th century, flaring during the First World War, again reflecting Ireland's place within the Empire, and the Catholic minority remained subject to discrimination and suspicion. During the First World War, the Irish gave support for the war attempt and comprised 20% of the army in France. However, the labour unions and the Irish in particular, strongly opposed conscription, and in alliance with like-minded farmers, defeated it in national plebiscites in 1916 and 1917. The Anglicans in particular talked of Catholic "disloyalty". By the 1920s, Australia had its first Catholic prime minister.