Anti-Catholicism became nativist only when Catholics seemed foreign agents.

Evidence

Before the mid-nineteenth century, when the Catholic population was negligible, anti-Catholicism was driven by ideology rather than demographic realities. After three million Catholics from Ireland and Germany immigrated to the United States between 1846 and 1855, Protestant nativism surged. The additional four million Catholic Italians and two million Poles who immigrated to the United States between 1880 and 1920 bolstered the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan. — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 287 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

The Klan also opposed Catholic schools on the grounds that children were being brainwashed to be loyal to the pope before the nation. The Klan sought to amend some state constitutions to require that all children attend only public schools that taught American patriotism through the lens of Protestant values. When this failed, the Klan shifted its opposition to calling for loyalty oaths from teachers, mandating uniform textbooks for parochial and public schools, regulating all school texts through government commissions, granting students time for religious study, and requiring colleges to give credit for religious study only from authorized (Protestant) churches. Ultimately, the Klan sought to relegate Catholics, like Jews, to second-class citizens whose religious practices should be either prohibited or severely curtailed. — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 303 (#exemplifies, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Anti-Catholic and anti-radical nativism shared a cardinal loyalty assumption. — John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of…, 44; Anti-Catholic nativism peaked after mass Catholic immigration, not before it — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim: When Racism Quashes…, 287; Racial nativism supplanted anti-Catholicism because it fit the new immigrant threat — John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of…, 567 (+7 more)

Related

• Anti-Catholic nativism peaked after mass Catholic immigration, not before it (similarity 0.90)
• Anti-Catholic nativists framed parochial schools as threats to national loyalty (similarity 0.85)
• Nativists framed Catholic immigrants as a papal plot to subvert American institutions (similarity 0.83)
• Anti-Catholicism predated and is not identical to racial nativism (similarity 0.83)
• Racial nativism supplanted anti-Catholicism because it fit the new immigrant threat (similarity 0.82)
• Anti-Catholic, anti-radical, and Anglo-Saxon patterns predated later nativist surges (similarity 0.80)
• Anti-Catholic and anti-radical nativism shared a cardinal loyalty assumption. (similarity 0.80)
• Protestant Irish immigrants supplied much of the hardest anti-Catholic nativist organizing. (similarity 0.79)
• Early twentieth-century US nativism racialized Irish Catholics, Eastern European Jews, and Mormons (similarity 0.79)
• A Catholic nomination in 1928 proved nativism’s structural retreat. (similarity 0.79)
• Protestant nativism reinvigorated where Catholicism clashed with American liberty ideals. (similarity 0.79)
• Religious anti-Catholic feeling only becomes nativistic when Catholics seem foreign agents (similarity 0.78)
• A quarter of mid-century Americans believed Catholics plotted to take over America (similarity 0.78)
• Anti-Catholicism in early America was imported from Europe, not locally generated (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Anti-Catholic nativism peaked after mass Catholic immigration, not before it #corroborates (0.95) — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 287
• Anti-Catholic nativists framed parochial schools as threats to national loyalty #exemplifies (0.85) — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 303
• Morse code’s inventor published a book labeling Catholics foreign conspirators #exemplifies (0.85)
• A quarter of mid-century Americans believed Catholics plotted to take over America #exemplifies (0.80) — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 309
• Despite the shared conviction among many Britons and Americans that Islam stood in inherent antagonism to Christianity and the sentiment among some that it should be destroyed, Britons in India… #exemplifies (0.80)
• Racial nativism supplanted anti-Catholicism because it fit the new immigrant threat #qualifies (0.75) — John Higham, Strangers in the Land, 567