August 27: A New Face for Anti-Catholicism

Welcome to the American Catholic Daily Reader podcast. Today is August 27th, and our story is A New Face for Anti-Catholicism. The Know-Nothings may have stopped running candidates for office in the mid-19th century, but in 1949, anti-Catholicism in America was still alive and well. Protestant preacher turned secularist agitator Paul Blanchard proved as much that year, when, to widespread acclaim, he published the best-selling anti-Catholic screed, American Freedom and Catholic Power. Born in Ohio on August 27, 1892, Blanchard inherited the seeds of his anti-Catholicism from his Methodist grandmother and Protestant pastor father.

Those seeds grew during his years at Harvard Divinity School, where he became a socialist and befriended eugenicist Margaret Sanger. Eventually, apostatizing from Christianity and leaving the Congregationalist church he pastored in Florida, Blanchard moved to New York, where he earned a degree in law. There, his anti-Catholicism came into full flower. Much of Blanchard's original animosity toward the church was rooted in his support for abortion.

Determined to weaken what he saw as the Catholic influence on obstetric practices, Blanchard began writing a series of articles for The Nation that depicted the church as a money-hungry foreign power determined to control the U.S. government. Outraged, New York's archbishop at the time, Francis Cardinal Spellman, called upon Catholics to cancel their subscriptions to the magazine, and demanded, fruitlessly, that the city's public schools stop carrying it as well. When Blanchard published the articles in book form in 1949, the accusations it made against the church were so outlandish that even the New York Times refused to advertise it.

Yet, somehow, a book that claimed Catholics wanted to seize the government, repeal the First Amendment, and make the Pope the President's official superior still earned the praise of John Dewey and Albert Einstein. It also sold 240,000 copies in its first printing. In later years, Blanchard made a successful living as a professional anti-Catholic, including representing the predecessor to Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, Protestants and others united for the separation of church and state.

Blanchard died in 1980. His book went out of print four years later. Our challenge today is to respond to misinformation with patience, clarity, and charitable engagement rather than anger. Consider a misconception or stereotype you've encountered. Respond with facts, patience, and kindness, embodying integrity and truth.

Thank you for listening to the American Catholic Daily Reader podcast. Join us tomorrow, August 28th, for another story of faith and courage in America.