Since the Protestant Reformation, English Anti-Catholicism has had times of increase and times of decrease in prevalence. The nineteenth century was a time when anti-Catholicism was prominent in many parts of England, and this fact “rests upon three fundamental ideas: that of the Protestant Constitution, that of the Norman Yoke, and that of Providentialism” (3). These three factors led to or bolstered an anti-Catholicism with various motivations: political, theological, economic, etc. From the 1830’s to 1850 or so, at the time when anti-Catholicism was growing, there was a general rise in religious tension, between Protestants and Catholics, between Church of England and Dissenters (in part due to Anglo-Catholicism), and significantly between Dissenters themselves. Furthermore, Irish immigration was on the rise, a fact which created mixed sentiments among proud Englishmen. Responses to Irish immigration and to participation in anti-Catholic movements depended not only upon religious affiliation but also on one’s social standing (in part because different social classes read different popular literature, portraying Roman Catholics and the Irish differently). And to add one more significant factor which Paz gives a good deal of attention: all of the above factors varied by locale, such that a different mix of social standing, religious affiliation, Irish immigration and so on, could lead to different motivations for and manifestations of anti-Catholicism in a particular place. If historians are either “lumpers” or “splitters,” then, at least in this book, Paz is a “splitter,” being careful not to over-generalize the factors behind and characteristics of anti-Catholicism. Indeed, the fact that such generalizations cannot properly be made is the stated thesis of the book (19).

The most significant vehicle of anti-Catholic sentiment were the public meetings and lectures, which were attended for various reasons (conviction, “the thing to do,” social gathering for entertainment, etc.). Generally, at these meetings a petition would be written up, signatures would be gathered and the petition would be sent to either the Queen or the House of Commons, depending on the nature of the petition. These public meetings and lectures in turn necessitated anti-Catholic organizations to fund and organize them, such organizations working with newspapers and other print media to spread their views and announce meetings and petitions. However, these organizations were not of a single kind: some focused on religious objections to Catholicism, while others tried to be more strictly political, vehemently opposing the Maynooth endowment in the mid 1840’s, for instance. Other factors producing tension between organizations were the stances taken toward the Church of England: favoring vs. opposing disestablishment, convictions about the proper use of public funding, etc. These divisive factors, into which played the tensions between Dissenters themselves, mitigated against the uniting force that anti-Catholicism may have otherwise had.

By counting signatures on petitions after the Papal Aggression of 1850-1851, divided by counties, and correlating those figures with the 1851 Religious Census, Paz was able to demonstrate a number of relevant points. First of all, his assertion that anti-Catholicism differed significantly by locale and denominational affiliation is clearly demonstrated. Secondly, the data destroys the notion that the rise of Irish immigration gave rise to vehement anti-Catholicism (the areas of the highest Irish immigration were not the areas of the greatest anti-Catholicism). Anti-Catholicism will have to be explained by other factors. These points lead Paz to explore popular media, particularly literature, in an effort to determine to what extent and for what reasons particular groups were anti-Catholic. Because popular literature can be most easily divided into categories according to which social class reads a particular publication, he adopts the division of “low brow” and “middlebrow” literature. In short, the lower class publications were less sophisticated in their reasons for being anti-Catholic than were the middlebrow publications, but they both were significantly anti-Catholic and cited theological, political, and moral reasons, such as the pervasiveness of sexual perversion among Roman Catholic priests (which made the attacks entertaining, this being the case more so in the lower class literature). The attacks were particularly bad around the time of the Papal Aggression (1850-1851). Anglo-Catholic literature was geared toward the middle-class, which encountered both pro and con pieces on this subject. And somewhat surprisingly and very significantly, Paz found that the Irish are treated with ambivalence; one week they are lambasted and the next week you might find something very nice said about an Irishman. The general sense is that when the problems of the Irish are brought to the fore, it is a problem rooted in Roman Catholicism, not in Irishness, a factor which could be distinguished. Also regarding the Irish, Paz finds in the popular literature of the day no support for the notion that a “scientific racism” against the Irish was promulgated amongst the English.

The Roman Catholics were not innocent victims of anti-Catholicism but also did a fair amount to invoke it and, generally, did not take it lying down. By the mid 1840’s there was a certain strength in resisting anti-Catholic sentiment evident, a fact which provided the basis for the resurgence of Roman Catholic claims at the time of the Papal Aggression in 1850-1851. Prominent spokesmen such as J.H. Newman as well as some organized movements demanded that the Roman Catholics be treated with liberality as Englishmen. There was and is, of course, debate over whether the Roman Catholics were abusing the freedom they already had or were legitimately pushing the envelope on unjustly restricted freedom.

The condition of the Church of England had everything to do with the fact that no unified Protestant anti-Catholic movement could be created and maintained. Some Evangelical Anglicans were anti-Catholic and anti-Anglo-Catholic but defensive about their own Anglicanism, which put them at odds with Dissenters and parts of their own church. Anglo-Catholicism produced great fear among both the Evangelicals within the establishment as well as among Dissenters, many fearing the Anglo-Catholics were political conspirators and not just religious papists. Furthermore, even though there were some romantic dreams of evangelical union, there were many disputes among Dissenters themselves, such that anti-Catholicism never was able to attain a real unifying force. After the 1860’s anti-Catholicism significantly declined and the disinterestedness in religion today has left the movement without significance.

Paz’s book has to be the most tightly argued and detail-oriented book I have read recently. He gives a good deal of attention to the methodological factors involved when using particular sources (e.g. statistical comparisons of the petition signatures to the 1851 religious census, or popular literature as a cultural indicator), and he does not over-generalize. This makes for tiresome reading but also a presentation of history that is probably closer to the actual events. One of the most illuminating aspects was his questioning of the various motivations that may have gone into the anti-Catholicism of the period; what did a person have to gain by being anti-Catholic? There was genuine religious motivation, but there may also have been the sense that attending this public meeting where a petition was written up and signed was “the thing to do.” There may have also been a hypocritical curiosity about the alleged pornography of the Roman Catholics. And money also plays a role in so many human activities: why should my money go to pay for the Anglo-Catholic establishment, or especially for the Maynooth Endowment? Taking advantage of these various motivations may have been certain leaders of organizations or denominational structures, who could appeal to the people to protest, albeit for different root causes. Isn’t this the case behind most mass movements?

My relatively minor criticisms of the book would be two points: (1) He seems to have a personal dislike for the Evangelical Anglicans and Dissenters, which sometimes drifts into unnecessary remarks. (2) He seems to too easily assume that popular literature is indicative of the “popular” mentality of a particular social class. He says that publishers had to cater to the already present leanings of a particular class in order to survive, given that a publication was by no means assured success. The relationship between the media and the popular consciousness, however, is more complex than that. On the other hand, how else could one get at the popular consciousness, if not through magazines, journals, fiction and the like?