Anti-clericalism

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Anti-clericalism is a historical movement that opposes religious institutional power and influence, real or alleged,^[1] in all aspects of public and political life, and the involvement of religion in the everyday life of the citizen^{[citation needed]}. It suggests a more active and partisan role than mere laïcité^{[citation needed]}, and has at times been violent, leading to attacks and seizure of church property^{[citation needed]}.

Anti-clericalism in one form or another has existed through most of Christian history, and is considered^{[by whom?]} to be one of the major popular forces underlying the 16th Century Reformation. Some philosophers of the Enlightenment, including Voltaire, attacked the Catholic Church, its leadership and priests claiming moral corruption of many of its clergy.

Contents 1 France 1.1 Revolution 1.2 Third republic 2 Austria (Austro-Hungarian Empire) 3 Italy 4 Latin America 4.1 Mexico 4.1.1 Reform War 4.1.2 Cristero War 4.2 Ecuador 4.3 Colombia 4.4 Argentina 4.5 Venezuela 4.6 Cuba 5 Poland 5.1 Kingdom of Poland 5.2 Second Polish Republic 5.3 People's Republic of Poland 5.4 Third Polish Republic 6 Portugal 7 Spain 7.1 The Red terror 8 Canada 9 United States 10 Certain branches of Freemasonry 11 Communism 12 Anticlericalism in the Islamic world 12.1 Iran 13 See also 14 References

[edit] France

[edit] Revolution

The French Revolution, particularly in its Jacobin period, initiated one of the most violent episodes of anti-clericalism in pre-modern Europe^{[citation needed]}. The church was outlawed^{[citation needed]}, all monasteries destroyed^{[citation needed]}, 30,000 priests were exiled and hundreds more were killed.^[2] As part of a campaign to de-Christianize France in October 1793 the Christian calendar was outlawed, replaced with one reckoning from the date of the Revolution, and then an atheist Cult of Reason was inaugurated, all churches not devoted to that cult being closed.^[3] In 1794, the atheistic cult was replaced with a deistic Cult of the Supreme Being.^[3] When anticlericalism became a clear goal of French revolutionaries, counter-revolutionaries seeking to restore tradition and the Ancien Regime took up arms, particularly in the War in the Vendée.

When Pope Pius VI took sides against the revolution in the First Coalition, Napoleon Bonaparte invaded Italy^{[citation needed]}. The Pope was imprisoned by French troops the following year and died after six weeks of captivity. After a change of heart, Napoleon then re-established the Catholic Church in France with the signing of the Concordat of 1801.^[4] However many anti-clerical policies continued. Wherever Napoleonic armies entered a territory, monasteries were sacked and church schools and charitable institutions were secularized^{[citation needed]}.

[edit] Third republic

The further bout of anti-clericalism occurred in the context of the French Third Republic and its dissensions with the Catholic Church. Prior to the 1905 French law on the Separation of the Churches and the State, the Catholic Church enjoyed preferential treatment from the French State (formally along with the Jewish, Lutheran and Calvinist minority religions, but in practice with much more influence than those). During the 19th century, priests were employed as teachers in public schools, and religion was taught in schools (teachers were also obliged to lead the class to Mass). During 1880, Jules Ferry, Minister of Education, then President of the Council of Ministers, began to expel religious figures from public schools (expelling 5000 on November 29, 1880)^{[citation needed]}. Then, in 1881–1882, his government passed the Jules Ferry laws, establishing free education (1881) and mandatory and lay education (1882), giving the basis of French public education. These laws were a crucial step in the grounding of the Third Republic (1871–1940), dominated until the 16 May 1877 crisis by the Catholic Legitimists who dreamed of a return to the Ancien Régime.

In 1880 and 1882, Benedictine teaching monks were effectively exiled. This was not completed until 1901.^{[5][6][7][8][9]}

The 1905 law on separation of state and church was enacted with strength and vigor by the government of Radical-Socialist Émile Combes, meeting violent protestation by the clergy^{[citation needed]}. Most Catholic schools and educational foundations were closed — except in Alsace-Lorraine which belonged at that time to Germany and which continues to retain today a derogatory status because of that specific history — and many religious orders were dissolved^{[citation needed]}.

In the Affaire Des Fiches, in France in 1904–1905, it was discovered that the anticlerical War Minister under Émile Combes, General Louis André, was determining promotions based on the French Masonic Grand Orient's huge card index on public officials, detailing which were Catholic and who attended Mass, with a view to preventing their promotions.^[10]

Republicans' anti-clericalism softened after the First World War, as the Catholic right-wing began to accept secularism. However, the theme of private schools in France, which are often Catholic, and whose teachers are paid by the state, remains a sensitive issue in French politics.

[edit] Austria (Austro-Hungarian Empire)

Emperor Joseph II opposed what he called “contemplative” religious institutions — reclusive Catholic institutions that he perceived as doing nothing positive for the community.^[11] His policy towards them are included in what is called Josephinism.

Joseph decreed that Austrian bishops could not communicate directly with the Curia. More than 500 of 1,188 monasteries in Austro-Slav lands (and a hundred more in Hungary) were dissolved, and 60 million florins taken by the state. This wealth was used to create 1,700 new parishes and welfare institutions.^[12]

The education of priests was taken from the Church as well. Joseph established six state-run “General Seminaries.” In 1783, a Marriage Patent treated marriage as a civil contract rather than a religious institution.^[13]

Catholic Historians have claimed that there was an alliance between Joseph and anti-clerical Freemasons.^[14]

[edit] Italy

Anti-clericalism in Italy is connected with reaction against the absolutism of the Papal States, overthrown in 1870. For a long time, the Pope required Catholics not to participate in the public life of the Kingdom of Italy that had invaded the Papal States to complete the unification of Italy, leaving the pope confined in the Vatican. Some politicians that had played important roles in this process, such as Camillo Benso, conte di Cavour, were known to be hostile to the temporal and political power of the Church.

The hostility between the Holy See and the kingdom was finally settled by fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, who sought an agreement with the Church to gain its support: the Lateran Treaty was finalised in 1929.

After World War II, anti-clericalism was embodied by the Italian Communist and Italian Socialist parties, in opposition to the Vatican-endorsed party Christian Democracy.

The revision of the Lateran treaties in the eighties by the Socialist Prime Minister of Italy Bettino Craxi, removed the status of "official religion" of the Catholic Church, but still granted a series of provisions in favour of the Church, such as the eight per thousand law, the teaching of religion in schools, and other privileges.

Recently, the Catholic Church has been taking a more aggressive stance in Italian politics, in particular through Cardinal Camillo Ruini, who often makes his voice heard commenting the political debate and indicating the official line of the Church on various matters. This interventionism has increased with the papacy of Benedict XVI. Anti-clericalism, however, is not the official stance of most parties (with the exception of the Italian Radicals, who, however identify as laicist), as most party leaders consider it an electoral disadvantage to openly contradict the Church: since the demise of the Christian Democracy as a single party, Catholic votes are often swinging between the right and the left wing, and are considered to be decisive to win an election.

[edit] Latin America

Of the population of Latin America, about 71% acknowledge allegiance to the Roman Catholic Church.^[15][16] Consequently, about 43% of the world's Catholics inhabit the ‘Latin’ countries of South, Central and North America.^[16]

The slowness to embrace religious freedom in Latin America is related to its colonial heritage and to its post-colonial history. The Aztec and the Inca both made substantial use of religion to support their authority and power. This pre-existing role of religion in pre-Columbian culture made it relatively easy for the Spanish conquistadors to replace native religious structures with those of a Catholicism that was closely linked to the Spanish throne.^[17]

Anti-clericalism was a common feature of 19th-century liberalism in Latin America. This anti-clericalism was often purportedly based on the idea that the clergy (especially the prelates who ran the administrative offices of the Church) were hindering social progress in areas such as public education and economic development.

Beginning in the 1820s, a succession of liberal regimes came to power in Latin America.^[18] Some members of these liberal regimes sought to imitate the Spain of the 1830s (and revolutionary France of a half-century earlier) in expropriating the wealth of the Catholic Church, and in imitating the eighteenth-century benevolent despots in restricting or prohibiting the religious orders. As a result, a number of these liberal regimes expropriated Church property and tried to bring education, marriage and burial under secular authority. The confiscation of Church properties and changes in the scope of religious liberties (in general, increasing the rights of non-Catholics and non-observant Catholics, while licensing or prohibiting the orders) generally accompanied secularist, and later, Marxist-leaning, governmental reforms.^[19]

[edit] Mexico

The Mexican Constitution of 1824 had required the Republic to prohibit the exercise of any religion other the Roman Catholic and Apostolic faith.^[20]

[edit] Reform War

Starting in 1855, President Benito Juárez issued decrees nationalizing church property, separating church and state, and suppressing religious orders. Church properties were confiscated and basic civil and political rights were denied to religious orders and the clergy.

[edit] Cristero War

More severe laws called Calles Law during the rule of atheist^[3] Plutarco Elías Calles eventually led to the Cristero War.^[21]

Following the revolution of 1910, the new Mexican Constitution of 1917 contained further anti-clerical provisions. Article 3 called for secular education in the schools and prohibited the Church from engaging in primary education; Article 5 outlawed monastic orders; Article 24 forbade public worship outside the confines of churches; and Article 27 placed restrictions on the right of religious organizations to hold property. Most offensive to Catholics was Article 130, which deprived clergy members of basic political rights. Many of these laws were resisted, leading to the Cristero Rebellion of 1927 – 1929. The suppression of the Church included the closing of many churches and the killing and forced marriage of priests^{[citation needed]}. The persecution was most severe in Tabasco under the atheist",^[22] governor Tomás Garrido Canabal.

The effects of the war on the Church were profound. Between 1926 and 1934 at least 40 priests were killed.^[23] Between 1926 and 1934, over 3,000 priests were exiled or assassinated.^[24][25]

Where there were 4,500 priests serving the people before the rebellion, in 1934 there were only 334 priests licensed by the government to serve fifteen million people, the rest having been eliminated by emigration, expulsion and assassination.^[23][26] It appears that ten states were left without any priests.^[26]

[edit] Ecuador

The tension between civilian and clerical authority dominated Ecuador's history for much of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries^{[citation needed]}. This issue was one of the bases for the lasting dispute between Conservatives, who represented primarily the interests of the Sierra and the church, and the Liberals, who represented those of the Costa and anticlericalism. Tensions came to a head in 1875 when the conservative President Gabriel García Moreno, after being elected to his third term, was allegedly assassinated by anticlerical Freemasons.^[27][28]

[edit] Colombia

Although Colombia enacted anticlerical legislation and its enforcement during more than three decades (1849–84), it soon restored “full liberty and independence from the civil power” to the Catholic Church^{[citation needed]}.

La Violencia refers to an era of civil conflict in various areas of the Colombian countryside between supporters of the Colombian Liberal Party and the Colombian Conservative Party, a conflict which took place roughly from 1948 to 1958.^[29][30]

Across the country, militants attacked churches, convents, and monasteries, killing priests and looking for arms, since the conspiracy theory maintained that the religious had guns, and this despite the fact that not a single serviceable weapon was located in the raids.^[31]

When their party came to power in 1930, anticlerical Liberals pushed for legislation to end Church influence in public schools. These Liberals held that the Church and its intellectual backwardness were responsible for a lack of spiritual and material progress in Colombia. Liberal-controlled local, departmental and national governments ended contracts with religious communities who operated schools in government-owned buildings, and set up secular schools in their place. These actions were sometimes violent, and were met by a strong opposition from clerics, Conservatives, and even a good number of more moderate Liberals.

[edit] Argentina

The original Argentine Constitution of 1853 provided that all Argentine presidents must be Catholic and stated that the duty of the Argentine congress was to convert the Indians to Catholicism. All of these provisions have been eliminated with the exception of the mandate to "sustain" Catholicism.

Liberal anti-clericalists of the 1880s established a new pattern of church-state relations in which the official constitutional status of the Church was preserved while the state assumed control of many functions formerly the province of the Church. Conservative Catholics, asserting their role as definers of national values and morality, responded in part by joining in the rightist religio-political movement known as Catholic Nationalism which formed successive opposition parties. This began a prolonged period of conflict between church and state that persisted until the 1940s when the Church enjoyed a restoration of its former status under the presidency of Colonel Juan Perón. Perón claimed that Peronism was the "true embodiment of Catholic social teaching" – indeed, more the embodiment of Catholicism than the Catholic Church itself.

In 1954, Peron reversed the fortunes of the church by threatening total disestablishment and retracting critical functions, including the teaching of religious education in public schools^{[citation needed]}. As a result, Argentina saw extensive destruction of churches, denunciations of clergy and confiscation of Catholic schools as Perón attempted to extend state control over national institutions.^[32]

The renewed rupture in church-state relations was completed when Peron was excommunicated. However, in 1955, he was overthrown by a military general who was a leading member of the Catholic Nationalist movement.

In 1983, the civilian president, Raul Alfonsin, attempted to restore a liberal democratic state. Alfonsin's opposition to the church-military alliance, conjoined with his strongly secular emphasis contravening traditional Catholic positions, incited opposition that served to curtail his agenda.

[edit] Venezuela

In Venezuela, the government of Antonio Guzmán Blanco virtually crushed the institutional life of the church, even attempting to legalize the marriage of priests. These anticlerical policies remained in force for decades afterward.

[edit] Cuba

Cuba, under atheist Fidel Castro, succeeded in reducing the Church's ability to work by deporting the archbishop and 150 Spanish priests, discriminating against Catholics in public life and education and refusing to accept them as members of the Communist Party.^[33] The subsequent flight of 300,000 people from the island also helped to diminish the Church there.^[33]

[edit] Poland

[edit] Kingdom of Poland

From the founding of the Polish state in 966 until its dissolution in 1795, anti-clericalism was not common in Poland, mainly because the Catholic clergy, though widely respected by the Polish, had never been dominant. Poland was notable for its religious tolerance, and the people never felt threatened by the Church.

[edit] Second Polish Republic

Anti-clericalism in Poland in the years 1918–1939 was strong in the leftist groups affined to Józef Piłsudski and the Sanacja movement, opposing the far right National Democracy led by Roman Dmowski.

[edit] People's Republic of Poland

It became one of the policies of the Communist People's Republic of Poland. It was nonetheless not a policy that gained any significant public support, as the Catholic Church became one of the publicly recognized and respected centers of the opposition to the government.

[edit] Third Polish Republic

However, when the Polish Communism fell in 1989, the Catholic Church was granted with a lot of privileges. This led to the increase of Anti-clericalism, especially when the government consisted of the people strongly affined to the Polish Church (and one of its most radical groups – Radio Maryja), such as Law and Justice or the League of Polish Families.

[edit] Portugal

A first wave of anti-clericalism occurred in 1834 when under the government of Dom Pedro all convents and monasteries in Portugal were abolished, simultaneously closing some of Portugal's primary educational establishments.

The fall of the Monarchy in the Republican revolution of 1910 led to another wave of anti-clerical activity. Most church property was put under State control, and the church was not allowed to inherit property. The wearing of religious garb and religious instruction in schools were abolished, as well as religious oaths and church taxes.

[edit] Spain

The first instance of anti-clerical violence due to political conflict in 19th century Spain occurred during the First Spanish Civil War (1820–23). During riots in Catalonia, 20 clergymen were killed by members of the liberal movement in retaliation for the Church's siding with absolutist supporters of Ferdinand VII.

In 1836 following the First Carlist War, the new regime abolished the major Spanish Convents and Monasteries.^[34] The Radical Alejandro Lerroux distinguished himself by his inflammatory pieces of opinion.

[edit] The Red terror

The Republican government which came to power in Spain in 1931 was strongly anti-clerical, secularising education, prohibiting religious education in the schools, and expelling the Jesuits from the country. On Pentecost 1932, Pope Pius XI protested against these measures and demanded restitution. He asked the Catholics of Spain to fight with all legal means against the injustices. June 3, 1933 he issued the encyclical Dilectissima Nobis, in which he described the expropriation of all Church buildings, episcopal residences, parish houses, seminaries and monasteries.

By law, they were now property of the Spanish State, to which the Church had to pay rent and taxes in order to continuously use these properties. "Thus the Catholic Church is compelled to pay taxes on what was violently taken from her"^[35] Religious vestments, liturgical instruments, statues, pictures, vases, gems and similar objects necessary for worship were expropriated as well.^[36]

The Civil War in Spain started in 1936, during which thousands of churches were destroyed, thirteen bishops and some 7,000 clergy and religious Spaniards were assassinated.^[37] After that, Catholics largely supported Franco and the Nationalist forces in the Spanish Civil War of 1936 – 1939.

Anti-clerical assaults during what has been termed Spain's Red Terror included sacking and burning monasteries and churches and killing 6,832 priests,^[38] including 13 bishops, 4,184 diocesan priests, 2,365 members of male religious orders, among them 259 Claretians, 226 Franciscans, 204 Piarists, 176 Brothers of Mary, 165 Christian Brothers, 155 Augustinians, 132 Dominicans, and 114 Jesuits.

13 bishops were killed from the dioceses of Sigüenza, Lleida, Cuenca, Barbastro Segorbe, Jaén, Ciudad Real, Almería, Guadix, Barcelona, Teruel and the auxiliary of Tarragona.^[39] Aware of the dangers, they all decided to remain in their cities. I cannot go, only here is my responsibility, whatever may happen, said the Bishop of Cuenca^[39] In addition 4,172 diocesan priests, 2,364 monks and friars, among them 259  Clarentians, 226 Franciscans, 204 Piarists, 176 Brothers of Mary, 165 Christian Brothers, 155 Augustinians, 132 Dominicans, and 114 Jesuits were killed.^[40] In some dioceses, a number of secular priests were killed:

• In Barbastro 123 of 140 priests were killed.^[39] about 88 percent of the secular clergy were murdered, 66 percent
• In Lleida, 270 of 410 priests were killed.^[39] about 62 percent
• In Tortosa, 44 percent of the secular priests were killed.^[38]
• In Toledo 286 of 600 priests priests were killed.^[39]
• In the dioceses of Málaga, Minorca and Segorbe, about half of the priests were killed"^[38][39]
• In Madrid 4,000 priests priests were murdered.

One source records that 283 nuns were killed, some of whom were badly tortured.^[39] There are accounts of Catholic faithful being forced to swallow rosary beads, thrown down mine shafts and priests being forced to dig their own graves before being buried alive.^[40] The Catholic Church has canonized several martyrs of the Spanish Civil War and beatified hundreds more.

[edit] Canada

Anti-clerical waves have been seen in Quebec since 1960. The Quiet Revolution is characterised essentially by an opening toward socialism and the objection to the social model advanced by the church and the clergy^{[citation needed]}.

[edit] United States

Although anti-clericalism is more often spoke of regarding the history or current politics of Latin countries where the Catholic Church was established and the clergy had privileges, Philip Jenkins in his The New Anti-Catholicism: The Last Acceptable Prejudice notes that the U.S., despite the lack of Catholic establishment, has always had anti-clericals.^[41]

Some of America's founding fathers had anti-clerical beliefs. Thomas Jefferson's letters contain the following observations: "History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government,"^[42] and, "In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own."^[43]

[edit] Certain branches of Freemasonry

According to the 1917 Catholic Encyclopedia, Freemasonry was historically viewed by the Catholic Church as a principal source of anti-Clericalism,^[44] – especially in, but not limited to,^[45] historically Catholic countries.

[edit] Communism

Part of a series of articles on 20th Century Persecutions of the Catholic Church

Mexico Cristero War · Iniquis Afflictisque Acerba Animi · Firmissimam Constantiamque Saints · José Sánchez del Río Persecution in Mexico · Miguel Pro Spain 498 Spanish Martyrs Red Terror (Spain) · Dilectissima Nobis Martyrs of the Spanish Civil War Martyrs of Daimiel Bartolome Blanco Marquez Innocencio of Mary Immaculate Germany Mit brennender Sorge · Alfred Delp Alois Grimm · Rupert Mayer Bernhard Lichtenberg · Max Josef Metzger Karl Leisner · Maximilian Kolbe Erich Klausener China Persecution in China · Ad Sinarum Gentem Cupimus Imprimis · Ad Apostolorum Principis Ignatius Kung Pin-Mei · Beda Chang Dominic Tang Vietnam François-Xavier Nguyễn Văn Thuận Poland Stefan Wyszyński 108 Martyrs of World War Two · Policies Poloniae Annalibus · Gloriosam Reginam Invicti Athletae · Jerzy Popiełuszko Eastern Europe Jozsef Mindszenty · Eugene Bossilkov Severian Baranyk · Josef Beran Zynoviy Kovalyk · Aloysius Stepinac Meminisse Juvat · Anni Sacri Sára Salkaházi · Walter Ciszek Pietro Leoni · Theodore Romzha Nicaragua Bismark Carballo · Miguel Obando y Bravo El Salvador Maura Clarke · Ignacio Ellacuría Ita Ford · Rutilio Grande Dorothy Kazel · Ignacio Martín-Baró Segundo Montes · Óscar Romero · Jean Donovan General Persecution of Christians Church persecutions 1939-1958 Vatican and Eastern Europe Vatican USSR policies Eastern Catholic persecutions Terrible Triangle Conspiracy of Silence

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Most Communist governments have been officially anti-clerical, abolishing religious holidays, teaching atheism in schools, closing monasteries, church social and educational institutions and many churches.^[46] In the Soviet Union, anti-clericalism was expressed through the state; in the first five years alone after the Bolshevik revolution, 28 bishops and 1,200 priests were executed.^[47]

[edit] Anticlericalism in the Islamic world

[edit] Iran

As of the late 1990s and early 2000s anticlericalism was reported to be significant in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Demonstrators have used slogans such as "The clerics live like kings while we live in poverty!" One report claims "Working-class Iranian lamented clerical wealth in the face of their own poverty," and "stories about Swiss bank accounts of leading clerics circulated on Tehran's rumor mill."^[48]

Iran, although an Islamic state, imbued with religion and religious symbolism, is an increasingly anti-clerical country. In a sense it resembles some Roman Catholic countries where religion is taken for granted, without public display, and with ambiguous feelings towards the clergy. Iranians tend to mock their mullahs, making mild jokes about them ...^[49]

The sentiment there differs from Western anticlericalism in that it is/was associated not with irreligious beliefs but with dissatisfaction with theocratic rule there, the perceived misrule of Islamic clerics (particularly economic dissatisfaction) who rule under the principle of velayat-e faqih.

It is, however, associated with a decline in religious observance. According to The Economist, Iranian clergy have complained that more than 70% of the population do not perform their daily prayers and that less than 2% attend Friday prayers.^[49]

[edit] See also

• Age of Enlightenment
• Agnosticism
• Antitheism
• Atheism
• Clericalism
• Cristero War
• Dechristianisation of France during the French Revolution
• Denis Diderot
• Freedom of thought
• Freethought
• Inquisition
• John Dewey
• Laïcité
• La Violencia
• Red Terror (Spain)
• Reign of Terror
• Relations between the Catholic Church and the State
• Secularism
• Secular state
• Separation of church and state
• Theocracy
• Thomas Jefferson
• Thomas Paine
• Voltaire

[edit] References

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 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Herbermann, Charles, ed (1913). Catholic Encyclopedia. Robert Appleton Company.