For those of you who support Mr Trump and his anti-Islam rhetoric, his Islamophobia, his calling political opponents jihadists…consider the following.

Anti-Catholic sentiment has a long, well-documented history in the United States, especially from the colonial era through the mid-20th century.

Colonial and early republic era

• Several colonies had laws barring Catholics from holding office or even voting.
• Catholics were often portrayed as owing loyalty to the Pope rather than to any nation or government, making them seem inherently un-American or subversive.

19th century nativism

• Waves of Irish and German Catholic immigration in the mid-1800s triggered a strong backlash. Catholics were stereotyped as poor, drunk, criminal, and loyal to a “foreign prince” (the Pope) rather than the Constitution.
• The Know-Nothing Party (American Party) in the 1850s built its platform partly around fear of Catholic immigrants, claiming they were part of a papal plot to undermine American democracy.
• Convents and Catholic institutions were sometimes targeted by mobs — the burning of the Ursuline Convent in Charlestown, Massachusetts (1834) is one famous example, fueled by lurid (and largely fabricated) rumors about what went on inside.
• Fake “exposé” books claiming to reveal Catholic conspiracies or abuses (like the fabricated “Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk”) were widely popular and inflamed public fear.

Late 19th–early 20th century

• The American Protective Association and later the second Ku Klux Klan (which targeted Catholics and Jews alongside Black Americans) pushed conspiracy theories about Catholics stockpiling weapons in church basements to prepare for a takeover on the Pope’s orders.
• Catholics were frequently excluded from certain jobs, social clubs, and neighborhoods.

20th century

• When Al Smith ran for president in 1928 as the first Catholic major-party nominee, opponents warned that a Catholic president would take orders from Rome, and some claimed that he’d build a tunnel connecting the White House to the Vatican.
• Even in 1960, John F. Kennedy had to directly address these fears in a famous speech to Protestant ministers in Houston, assuring them he believed in separation of church and state and wouldn’t take instructions from the Pope on policy matters.

This is the America we thought we left behind. This was not a great America and now we have a president and many of his followers taking us back to hate, racism and bigotry.