Lest We Forget

Two trainloads of KKK members invade a small country town, hoping to terrorize the residents and force them out. But the intended victims turn on their persecutors and manage to fight them off, winning a major battle against the forces of bigotry.

This actual historical event should be an occasion for celebration. And it is, in fact... but not for a national holiday or a spread on the evening news or a PBS series. Because the people who fought the KKK and won were not African-Americans but Catholic immigrants. The place was a town called Lilly, in Cambria County, Pennsylvania (correct -- in the North, not in Alabama or some place like that). And the year was 1924 -- still within living memory of some of the oldest survivors.

This bears pointing out because we have grown to accept the premise that bigotry, and prejudice, and discrimination are, by definition, qualities shown by ignorant white people and directed at people of color. It seems odd that there was ever a time when it was "white against white", based on religion and ethnicity (and recent immigrant status, with which they were highly correlated). And yet, drives of "nativists" against immigrants had been going on for close to 100 years at that point, starting with the Irish in the 1830s. (And anti-Catholic laws had been on the books in many states for a long time before that -- predating the Revolution in some cases.) Then we had the Know-Nothings of the time just before the Civil War, who were against just about anybody but white Protestants. The much more massive waves of immigration in the late 1800s seemed only to inflame feelings, although by the post-World War I era the movements seem to have bifurcated into two main branches, the KKK, i.e. lower-class rural whites (but not all Southerners), and the "eugenicists", who had a field day with classifying people according to racial and ethnic -- "superior" and "inferior" -- types until their programs got a bit of a black eye by being adopted wholesale by the Nazis. But one remnant of eugenics remained, and is alive and well to this day, namely "birth control" or "family planning", which was originally aimed at Catholics who threatened to out-reproduce Protestants the way Moslems are out-reproducing white Europeans in Europe. Family planning, of course, eventually devolved into the abortion "rights" movement, and everybody knows what happened after that.

At this point, most Catholics, with the exception of traditionalists (AKA "Latin Mass" or "pre-Vatican II" Catholics) have bought the family planning arguments hook, line, and sinker from the mainline Protestants (who can't keep their churches filled in areas where everyone else is building new ones). Even blacks have been gathered into the fold, thanks to goverment-funded abortions. About the only American subgroups that persist in having large families besides the traditionalist Catholics are the Mormons and the Hassidic Jews. (Well, there you go -- three cults all in a row. Janet Reno, white courtesy phone!)

Aside from population issues, bigotry against Catholics -- or, more precisely, the Catholic Church -- is still alive and well in the U.S., and I'm not just talking about the zeal with which the MSM jumped on the "pedophile priest" scandals. The Church is seen -- and not without at least some cause -- as standing in direct opposition to all that is genuinely American, which means, historically, things like the "Protestant ethic", "Manifest Destiny", unfettered capitalism, Wilsonian meddling overseas, "separation of church and state", and the gradual secularization of the public square, the law, schools -- even unto the apathy of the current administration as to the validity of Just War Theory. These are issues that have actually been the occasion for open conflict more in the past than in recent times, in many cases. When's the last time the Catholic Church in America came out, as a body, in opposition to a major element of foreign or domestic policy -- aside from birth control and abortion? I'm certainly not old enough to remember, but I'm sure the Church has been much more militant in the past than it is now. It would not have been unheard-of for a president, say, to call in various religious leaders to offer advice on major issues. And that still happens -- particularly if we're talking about Evangelical influence on foreign policy -- but the Catholic Church is left out in the cold. The Pope and the Magisterium remain moral anchors for Catholics -- at least the serious ones -- but can hardly be described as having any influence over world affairs, although Pope John Paul II's involvement with the breakup of the Soviet Empire was a happy exception. And can one imagine a Bishop Sheen today -- appearing on TV, with a highly-rated show, talking about the Church's position on moral questions? And please don't try and tell me that the "pedophile priest" business is responsible for this trend, because it began decades earlier. The Church only has as much moral authority as _non-Catholics_ accept it as having. This is a seeming paradox, but it's quite true -- not that the authority of the Pope and the Magisterium haven't been seriously eroded by the almost total secularization of Western Europe, and the drive in that same direction over here. But who, aside from a remnant of practicing Catholics, turns to the Vatican for moral guidance, advice, assent? How does it even compare to American televangelists, or the head of the Mormon Church, or some mullah in a flea-bitten hovel in Afghanistan? Is it because the Church _has_ no moral authority, or is it because, in exercising its moral authority, it finds itself having to tell "inconvenient truths" so much of the time? A "morality" that conforms to the trends of the time isn't really a morality at all. Morality is, almost by definition, "against" people "doing what comes natural" -- i.e. to their fallen nature and flawed will. It is something that stands apart from that which is "current", "trendy", "groovy", and -- yes -- humanistic and "diverse" and "nonjudgmental". The guy who stands on the corner in a white robe with a sign saying "Repent!" is usually all by himself -- he isn't part of a crowd, and doesn't attract one either. Jesus had his core group of twelve. The "mega-churches" of today have more people than that directing traffic in the parking lot. Morality and popularity just don't go together, somehow -- and when that morality seems to rub the political and social policies and habits of the country the wrong way, it becomes even less popular, and thus -- as I see it -- the growing alienation between the traditional teachings of the Catholic Church and American society. The conflict may have begun in earnest with the Irish "invasion" of the early 1800s, and it may have morphed many times between then and today, but it is still there.