The End of Anti-Catholicism?

By now you’ve probably heard the story about the knucklehead (or as he has been called in the press, the “junior diplomat”) who thought it would be funny to suggest that Pope Benedict open some abortion clinics and hand out condoms when he visits Britain in September.

The aforementioned knucklehead actually put these thoughts down on paper, in a memo that was subsequently leaked to The Sunday Telegraph newspaper.

“This is clearly a foolish document,” was the official response from Britain’s Foreign Office.

Personally, I enjoyed the response of Rt. Reverend Malcolm McMahon, bishop of Nottingham. He said that the memo showed “appalling manners,” but he also added that it would not cause much fuss for the over four million Catholics in Britain because “they are getting used to bad press.”

What is noteworthy about McMahon’s response is that, rather than raise his voice and spew vitriol -- which would have been understandable -- he implied that this is not very different from a strain of anti-Catholic thought which the Pope’s army has been dealing with in the U.K. and U.S. for centuries.

Or that’s how I would have viewed Rev. McMahon’s comments in the past. But the more we learn about the depth and breadth of the Catholic Church’s sex abuse cover-up scandals, it is harder and harder to call on the anti-Catholic card.

In fact, if certain cardinals and bishops want to take credit for yet another accomplishment, they should know that their mismanagement of these tragedies has now made it hard to distinguish between legitimate criticism of the church and good old fashioned Pope-bashing.

Anti-Catholicism is one of those things people tend to know happened a very long time ago yet ended once John F. Kennedy was elected.

And, true, not many folks in recent decades can claim they lost a job or home simply because they are Roman Catholic. After all, these days you could start of Knights of Columbus chapter amongst members of the Supreme Court alone.

That, however, does not mean a soft intellectual bigotry was not alive and thriving in elite places. On the East Coast, the Irish may have dominated cities such as Boston and New York from City Hall to the police commissioner’s office.

But that meant little to editors at the Boston Globe and New York Times, which have been accused of treating Catholics harshly well into the 21st century.

Even after the election of JFK (not exactly a model Catholic, incidentally), it was not hard to find people on both sides of the debate who would eventually acknowledge that anti-Catholicism was the last acceptable form of bigotry.

And by the way, there’s no need to pile up simply on the WASPs. Irish Catholics themselves did a fine job of looking back in anger and exposing what they saw as hypocrisy and intellectual shortcomings in their own backgrounds.

From James Joyce to Eugene O’Neill, from Mary McCarthy to James T. Farrell, from Maureen Dowd to Jimmy Breslin (pictured above, who wrote a scathing book called "The Church That Forgot Christ"), Irish Catholics have said things that would make even the most notorious 19th century anti-Papist cringe.

None of which changed the fact that from TV to movies to print media, devout Catholics always made for great punch lines and even better punching bags.

And so, it is understandable that some feel the extensive attention given to the latest round of church sex revelations -- which may or may not directly involve the Pope -- have Irish Americans once again crying anti-Catholic.

“I am outraged each time The Times intentionally disparages the Catholic Church, its pope and its bishops,” wrote Richard Kelly of Pittsburgh, in a New York Times article this past Sunday, which, to its credit, soberly analyzed the paper’s coverage of church issues.

The problem now is that powerful church officials may be more guilty of -- at the very least -- a judgment much poorer than any newspaper editor ever could be.

A nasty kind of anti-Catholicism will always be around. Now, though, powerful defenders of the faith have done more to encourage it than discourage it.

(Contact at tomdeignan@earthlink.net or facebook.com/tomdeignan.)

Will History Channel tell the Irish American ‘story’?

This Sunday, April 25, the History Channel is presenting a much-hyped new documentary entitled America: The Story of US. It is being billed as the first comprehensive televised history of America in well over a generation.

Pop over to the History Channel website and you will be greeted with this humble statement: “For the first time in 40 years, an epic television event presents the complete history of America.”

This begs the question: Where are the Irish going to fit into all of this?

You can’t say the producers of America: The Story of US have not devoted adequate time to telling America’s complex story. The series begins with a two hour program this Sunday and will continue to air Sunday evenings until May 30, totaling a whopping 12 hours.

And with that, I can already hear some of you yawning. Which is why the folks over at the History Channel claim that this is not your father’s historical documentary.

The producers are touting its regular use of computer-generated images (CGI), realistic recreations and even high-wattage celebrities commenting on events such as the U.S. Civil War and the voyage of the Mayflower.

In fact, one of the first talking heads to appear in The History of US is none other than noted historian Donald Trump!

Other notables who will comment include actor Michael Douglas, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Colin Powell.

Celebrities and CGI are all well and good. There’s obviously nothing wrong with packaging educational material in a dramatic or entertaining way.

But this does not bode well for getting a strong sense of how important and complex the Irish role in building America has been.

Sure, we’ll probably get some strong segments on the horrors of the Great

Hunger. This may even lead to some revelations about the strong streak of anti-Catholicism in 19th century America.

But will the thriving Democratic political machines built by so many Irish immigrants and their children be discussed? And if not, why?

Is it because they were often corrupt? And therefore, “bad guys” in the minds of producers who are leaning towards a kind of black-and-white version of American history?

Machines, of course, often dabbled in criminal mischief. But they also helped a generation of destitute immigrants -- and not just Irish -- get a foothold in America. They also helped elevate the likes of Al Smith and John F. Kennedy to the national stage.

All of which makes it highly doubtful other pivotal but disturbing moments of Irish American history will be dealt with in any depth. Think of the horrific Draft Riots of 1863, when immigrants, yes, tortured African Americans, but also vented their rage at the upper classes who rigged the system so that the rich could buy their way out of military service?

This is important not simply because this was a crucial moment in the U.S. Civil War (the Draft Riots took place the very same month as the Battle of Gettysburg), but also set a tone for the kind of racial, political and ethnic tensions which would explode in American cities for decades to come.

By the time America: The Story of US gets to the 1960s, it will surely spend some time with JFK and the trauma which followed his assassination. Not only was it a shocking moment, but it also seemed to be a harbinger for the chaos which was to come in the late 1960s.

But if the producers of this show did their homework, they should really devote some time to the aforementioned Alfred Emanuel Smith, who paved the way for JFK, by running for president in 1928 at a deeply anti-Catholic time.

Smith, a child of the Lower East Side, is a vivid symbol not only for the Irish experience in America but also American history itself.

Former outsiders make their way inside, but very slowly. This is not a matter of focusing disproportionately on the Irish, or, for that matter, focusing on only negative things.

It is simply a matter of presenting a full portrait. Let’s see if Donald Trump can handle that.

(Contact at tomdeignan@earthlink.net or facebook.com/tomdeignan.)

Are the Irish still white?

This past St. Patrick’s Day, TV viewers were treated to a strange sight on The Colbert Report, Comedy Central’s late night satire show.

Host Stephen Colbert, who never misses an opportunity to remind viewers of his Irish roots, was interviewing a very professorial African American woman. Or at least she appeared to be African American.

But when Colbert noted, with mock seriousness, that he doesn’t “see race,” he asked her if she was, indeed, African American.

“I don’t know,” Colbert’s guest said. “I have a Ph.D. Am I white?”

From there the interview got even stranger. Colbert ranted and raved about Cromwell and Northern Ireland and how the Scotch-Irish “do not have one ounce of Irish blood.”

In the end, Colbert and his guest arm wrestled.

The reason for all of this silly banter was that Colbert’s guest, Princeton professor Nell Irvin Painter, has written a new book called The History of White

People. An important portion of the book explores the painful process of Irish assimilation into the American mainstream in the wake of the Irish Famine.

"What really surprised me at first was the level of hatred that people I thought of as white directed at other people I thought of as white," Painter said in a recently published interview.

"So the amount of hatred directed toward the Irish immigrants in the middle of the 19th century, I -- coming out of straight U.S. history -- I thought of those Irish people as people who beat up other people.

“That's a dumb way of saying it, but that's how poor Irish people figure into the general history of the U.S."

Give Painter credit for her honesty. The basic argument she is making is that race is basically a fake category. Religion is a choice you make based on faith or birth.

Ethnicity generally refers to the nation you hail from. But race?

Well, sure, by now we believe it is based on skin color. But that, Painter argues, is superficial.

In fact, the Irish and their famously white skin were, for a very long time, not allowed to enter the exclusive white club in America.

Blacks, of course, were lowest on the racial ladder. Then Jews, Italians and Slavs began coming over in larger numbers and they faced their own discrimination.

Painter’s book could very well have been called “How the Irish Became White.”

There’s just one problem with that. A book with that exact title was published well over a decade ago.

It begs the question -- who knew the Irish were still “thought of as white”?

Okay, so I’m dabbling in some Colbert-level absurdity here myself. Painter’s book is much broader in scope than How the Irish Became White by Noel Ignatiev.

Painter’s book goes all the way back to the Greeks. And sure, as Painter and others argue, if you think about it, race is kind of a hard thing to define, especially in a place such as America, where all kinds of different people intermarry.

And yet, something is missing here. Painter, like Noel Ignatiev before her, acknowledges that the Irish initially had a horrible time in America.

But you get the sense that once they were finally allowed into the country club, they didn’t just become white. That’s all they became.

Irish American novelist Peter Quinn dealt with these issues admirably in a 1996 essay entitled “How the Irish Stayed Irish.”

If the Irish essentially became cozy WASPS as the 19th century wore on, how on Earth can you explain this group’s century-long obsession with liberating the nation they left behind?

How do you explain their construction of what amounts to a separate Irish Catholic nation in America, where you grow up in vast cities such as New York or Boston, and yet, from the cradle to the grave, define yourself mainly by the people and particularities of your parish.

Then again, Painter’s index for The History of White People shows she read Ignatiev’s book, but not Quinn’s essay.

Oh well. At least it’s a partial history.


(Tom Deignan will be discussing “20 Books Every Irish American Should Read” at the mid-Manhattan branch library, 455 Fifth Avenue, April 17 at 2:30 p.m., and at the Riverdale, Bronx branch library on April 22 at 6 p.m. Contact

tomdeignan@earthlink.net or facebook.com/tomdeignan.)

George Will is wrong on immigration

Americans are now diligently filling out their census forms, a once every decade tradition which causes nervousness among immigrants.

Many -- documented or undocumented -- are leery of filling out paperwork, lest authorities use the census information to arrest anyone not born in the United States.

Already, the Alliance for Legal Immigration, and other anti-immigrant groups, have been accused of supporting the use of census data to target newcomers.

In short, convincing immigrants to participate in the census is already challenge. So imagine what it would be like 20 or 30 years down the road if prominent columnist and pundit George Will, as well as a growing number of activists, get their way.

“A simple reform,” the famously bow-tied and bespectacled Will wrote in a recent Washington Post column, “would drain some scalding steam from the immigration arguments that may soon again be roiling to a boil.”

Will, citing a provocative article in the Texas Review of Law and Politics, wants to review the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. This grants American citizenship to every child born within the borders of the United States, even if their parents are undocumented.

“To end the practice of ‘birthright citizenship,’” Will writes, “all that is required is to correct the misinterpretation of that amendment's first sentence … from these words has flowed the practice of conferring citizenship on children born here to illegal immigrants.”

The 14th Amendment begins, "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside."

Will argues that these words, written in the late 1860s, actually had nothing to do with immigration.

“The authors … could not have intended birthright citizenship for illegal immigrants because in 1868 there were and never had been any illegal immigrants because no law ever had restricted immigration,” Will writes.

It is true that the federal government did not technically begin regulating immigration until the 1870s. But based on this, Will goes on to make a very questionable leap.

“If those who wrote and ratified the 14th Amendment had imagined laws restricting immigration -- and had anticipated huge waves of illegal immigration -- is it reasonable to presume they would have wanted to provide the reward of citizenship to the children of the violators of those laws? Surely not.”

The trouble is, America actually had undergone a massive immigration wave in the 1840s. The Famine Irish (as well as millions of Germans) came to the U.S. (many crossing the border from Canada) and changed that nature of American life in far more comprehensive ways than current immigrants.

The impact of 19th century immigration was plainly evident to the likes of the anti-Catholic Know Nothing Party as well as pro-immigrant Tammany Hall.

How could Will believe the authors of the 14th Amendment could not possibly have “anticipated huge waves of illegal immigration?”

Meanwhile, though an 1875 Supreme Court case (Henderson vs. the Mayor of the City of New York) transferred immigration regulation from states to the federal government, that does not mean the feds had not dabbled in anti-immigrant policy.

The notorious Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 were aimed at the French as well as their revolution-minded Irish Catholic supporters. If President John Adams figured out how to use the federal government to target immigrants, how come the authors of the 14th Amendment could not have some six decades later?

If George Will’s history is off, it’s because he’s not interested in the past.

He wants to cut immigration right now because, as he sees it, immigrants continue to flock to America solely for the generous social welfare benefits. (Such as health care, right?)

Even if that analysis were true, denying citizenship to the children of illegal immigrants would not prevent them from coming here in the first place. It would only further expand the American ethnic underclass.

When that happens, good luck running a census every 10 years.

(Tom Deignan will be discussing “20 Books Every Irish American Should Read” at the mid-Manhattan branch library, 455 Fifth Avenue, April 17, and at the Riverdale, Bronx branch library on April 22. Contact tomdeignan@earthlink.net or facebook.com/tomdeignan.)

Irish gangsters are back in vogue in 2010

Later this year, we will receive two more heaping platefuls of Irish gangsterism. In September, Martin Scorsese presents a new HBO mini-series called "Boardwalk Empire," about the creation of gambling mecca Atlantic City, featuring numerous Irish underworld characters.

Also, "The Irishman" is expected to hit the big screen in late 2010. Starring Christopher Walken, the film explores the rise and fall of Cleveland killer Danny Greene, the Celtic-obsessed gangster who challenged Cleveland’s high-level Italian American mob.

But if your appetite for Irish crime lords is such that your can’t wait, stroll over to St. Mark’s Place on the Lower East Side where the Museum of the American Gangster is about to open. Located in a former speak-easy, the museum is currently conducting preview tours.

When renovations are completed in the coming weeks, viewers will be able to explore the entire facility, where it is said Frank Sinatra (no stranger to the underworld) once worked as a singing waiter.

The museum is the brainchild of native New Yorker and gang historian Eric Ferrara as well as Lorcan Otway, whose family has managed the museum building for decades.

The Museum of the American Gangster is not the only site dedicated to studying unsavory figures such as Meyer Lansky, Al Capone and Donegal native Vincent “Mad Dog” Coll. Next year, the long-planned Mob Museum is set to open in Las Vegas.

Of course, any museum dedicated to the American underworld would have to dedicate significant space to the role the Irish played.

Several of the Museum of the American Gangster’s consultants have explored some of the darkest corners of the Irish American underworld.

First there’s Patrick Downey, who has written about New York crime in the early 20th century when gangsters like “Mad Dog” Coll and Owney “the Killer” Madden reigned.

Downey is currently writing a book about Jack “Legs” Diamond (pictured above), the Philadelphia-born criminal whose parents were born in Ireland.

Also contributing to the museum is Rose Keefe, who has written at length about Chicago Irish gangster Deanie O’Banion.

Given that the museum building once housed a speakeasy, it makes sense that one of the museum’s first exhibits focuses on the prohibition era of 1919-1931 and the broader “history of alcohol trafficking in the United States.”

According to the museum’s founders, some $2 million in prohibition-era artifacts were discovered hidden in the building’s maze of secret rooms.

Prohibition, of course, was America’s ill-fated noble experiment to outlaw alcohol. The Irish played a central role in this era, though not for reasons one would think, given the stereotypes about the Irish and drink.

In fact, it was those very stereotypes that fanned the flames of prohibition.

Those who supported banning booze were not just opposed to alcohol. They believed they were doing what was best for the decadent, lawless ethnics who ran cities such as New York, Boston and Chicago.

Since the Irish (who were the dominant big city political group in most cities) could not take care of themselves, the thinking went, right thinking rural Protestants would outlaw booze for their own good.

It is no surprise that, when Al Smith ran for president in 1928, he was not only slammed for being a low-class child of the lower East Side as well as a slavish devotee to the pope in Rome. He was also a dreaded “wet,” meaning he supported lifting the ban on alcohol.

“What else would you expect?” many people argued. It was just another reason one of “them” should never be allowed into the White House.

The Museum of the American Gangster also looks closely at lesser known Irish American criminals such as John Lonergan and his son Richard “Pegleg” Lonergan, who led Brooklyn’s White Hand Gang, and was killed by Al Capone.

Hopefully, down the road, the museum will also explore the stubborn endurance of Irish organized crime and its link to politics, from the Westies and “goodfella” Jimmy Conway in New York right up to Boston’s “Whitey” Bulger, who, to this day, stands next to the likes of Osama bin Laden on the FBI’s Most Wanted list.

(Tom Deignan will be discussing “Twenty Books Every Irish American Should Read” at the mid-Manhattan branch library, 455 Fifth Avenue, April 17 and at the Riverdale, Bronx branch library on April 22. Contact tomdeignan@earthlink.net or facebook.com/tomdeignan.)