Anti-Catholicism was the driving force behind the Mexican-American War, argues John C. Pinheiro in his gripping new study. The evidence he carefully assembles suggests an even stronger point: that it was the defining attitude undergirding the early Republic and antebellum years.
“Anti-Catholic” in Pinheiro’s thesis is not simply disagreeing with Catholicism theologically, or even attempting to convert Catholics, but a deeper form of fear and contempt. The worldview held that “Catholics were not Christians” and that the Pope was the “anti-Christ.” This extended to a belief that the Roman church actively was attempting to undermine Providentially ordained American republicanism: “Jesuits were leading an immigrant Catholic army into the West as part of a papal-orchestrated takeover of the United States.”
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