The Origin and Dishonest Use of Protestant Prejudice Against Catholics.

The Origin of Protestant Prejudice

It is an inherited notion with non-Catholics that Christianity, which was very pure in it’s beginnings, became very corrupt in the middle ages,and is again very pure now in orthodox Protestantism. There arose in the middle ages a tyrannical institution called the Church,that swallowed up Christianity and has not yet disgorged it’s prey.  All was dark and horrible, and worse than paganism; neither God or Christ were known; the Virgin, the Saints, the Pope,images and relics were worshipped instead. The Homilies of the Church of England,an authoritative document in that church at the present day, says that “In the pit of damnable idolatry all the work was,as it were, drowned, and so continued until our age(the sixteenth century), by the space of above eight hundred years,so that laity and clergy,learned and unlearned,all ages,sects and degrees,of men,women and children of whole Christendom —-a most horrible thing to think off – have been at once drowned in abominable idolatry. That was the time of apostasy,when the Pope was the man of sin and the Church the mother of abominations.”

The point is this; I have said that there was in Protestant minds a prejudice about the middle ages,during which came in all the corruptions of the Church,lasting until this day; and you see how and where and when this traditional Protestant prejudice against the Church originated. We have arrived in those authoritative documents at the source of the prejudice,the first link of the chain,the first title deed on which the inheritance rests. At this point of our progress I have an important consideration to put before you, to which I invite your serious attention.

Dishonest Use of Protestant Prejudice. Non-Catholics have been taught what they hold concerning us in the nursery,in the schoolroom,in the lecture class,from the pulpit,from the religious publication,often from the secular newspaper,in society. Private judgment in matters of religion is their principle;in practice they go by tradition;they take their views of the Church on hearsay. Now, tradition has it’s proper use as an initial means of gaining notions about historical or other facts;it is natural and necessary to trust it when it has the proper qualifications. But we ought not,on the score of mere hearsay,to keep our eyes and ears shut against every other evidence,every other means of proof;we ought not be so furiously certain and so energetically positive that we know all about the matter in question,when our only source of information is a partial and partisan tradition. There is not,in such an inherited tradition,sufficient reason to make us absolutely sure,much less to make us angry with those who take a different view of the matter. There was,among a section of the Jewish people,a tradition,not all of divine,but of human origin,that their Messiah was to be a great temporal ruler. On the strength of that tradition they reviled, rejected and crucified their true Messiah, who did not come to them in the guise of temporal greatness. I consider the chief merit of “Ben Hur” to be the bringing out of this contrast between a false tradition and the reality. The source of the anti-Catholic prejudice is the secession of the sixteenth century. Now,I’m not at present inquiring whether in the sixteenth century there were or were not good reasons for that secession,nor consequently whether the traditions then originated and since inherited, by which non-Catholics prejudge the Catholic Church,is or is not well founded. I simply state the fact that we are so prejudged; and, moreover, I assert that,since protestants recognize no teaching body authorized to instruct the in religion,no infallible voice to guide them,they have no rational right to assume their tradition to be sufficiently grounded so as to safely judge and condemn us on that evidence alone, but should make a personal examination of the value of such tradition,and test it in it’s first link,in it’s very source,or judge the Church only by their actual knowledge of it. How many have done this? Ask any Protestant out of the mass why he believes that our religion is untrue, dangerous, absurd;and he will not say, “I have had good actual proofs of it;I know catholic teaching too well to doubt it; I’m well read in history and can vouch for it.” He will most likely say,and,if he is honest,he can only say, “Why the thing is too notorious for proof; everyone knows it;everyone of our books asserts it;it as been so ruled long ago,and there’s an end of it… that they are not constantly plotting to destroy schools and exterminate education;that they would not, is only they had it in their power, bring the whole country under a foreign despotism!” Why, he is perfectly sure of it; it must be true,because all the ministers say so. It is preached in all their churches every Sunday!

(Rev. Thomas O’Gorman, How Catholics Come to be Misunderstood)