Muslim immigration vs. Catholic immigration in the 19th century

[pampango]

http://www.whatswrongwiththeworld.net/2009/05/the_muslim_immigration_and_www.html


( Anti-Catholic cartoon in Harper's Weekly, 30 September 1871)

Although there are several issues I could raise, there is one in particular that has been gnawing at me. And that is the way that Catholic immigrants, including my maternal great grandmother, Vincenza Domino (d. 1979), were treated and thought of by Protestant America when they began arriving on these shores in the mid-19th century through the early 20th century.

Some of these immigrant groups, which included Irish and Italians, set up their own private religious schools. Many non-Catholic Americans believed well into the 20th-century that Catholic schools indoctrinated their students with superstitions that were inconsistent with the principles of American democracy. Take, for example, these comments by the great Baptist church-state separationist, the Reverend Joseph Martin Dawson (whose entry I authored for the Encyclopedia of American Civil Liberties (Routledge, Taylor & Francis, 2007)):

"The Roman hierarchy is poisoning the Government of our Nation…. The common belief of candidates is that to be elected President; or, except in the South, that to become Governor, Senator, or Representative, one must make a deal with the Roman Catholics. For a candidate to remain true to American principles in Catholic sections of the United States is to commit political suicide, at least in the belief of candidates. (J. M. Dawson, The Battle for America, p .11, as quoted in James M. Dunn, The Ethical Thought of Joseph Martin Dawson (Th.D. Dissertation, Southwester Baptist Theological Seminary, 1966), 235-36)"

What I am afraid may be happening now with the discussion over Muslim immigration on this blog and elsewhere is that some Americans--rightly concerned about how some Muslims practice their faith--may be painting with the same broad brush that was applied by Dawson, Blanshard, and others to my Catholic ancestors. This is not to say that the U. S. should abandon all standards by which it assesses potential immigrants. Rather, it means that such assessments should be conducted with an eye toward particular sorts of practices, regardless of religious affiliation, that are not conducive to American citizenship. For example, it would seem to me perfectly reasonable for the U. S. to legitimately reject for citizenship unambiguously committed Klansmen, Stalinists, jihadists, supporters of racial apartheid, Iranian revolution theocrats, "Christian" reconstructionists, or former KGB agents pining to get back into action. But to exclude all Muslims because some engage in abhorrent practices makes about as much sense as excluding all Christians because a tiny minority are, unfortunately, followers of the theonomist and Holocaust-denier, Rousas John Rushdoony.

Seems that attitudes towards immigrants haven't changed that much, even though immigrants in the 19th century were all "legal". Just the targets of anti-immigrant sentiment change over time.