Papal Infallibility

A hundred and fifty years ago, the First Vatican Council gave formal definition to the dogma of Papal Infallibility. While the idea of Papal Infallibility had a long history of support within the Catholic Church, such as from St. Francis de Sales in the 1500s, declaring it an official dogma

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Thomas Nast Anti-Catholic Cartoons

In the last blog post, Nast’s anti-Irish cartoons were examined, revealing beliefs that the Irish were inferior and unable to handle American liberty. This made the Irish a threat to the United States and thus a focus of Nast’s criticism. Connected to this anti-Irish sentiment was also a strong Anti-Catholic

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Thomas Nast Anti-Irish Cartoons

Among the recently digitized images added to our online collection are a number of drawings by cartoonist Thomas Nast. In 1846 at the age of six, Nast immigrated with his mother to the United States and by age 15 he had begun drawing for Frank Leslie’s Illustrated News.[1] He joined

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Anti-Catholicism in Jacksonian Philadelphia

Anti-Catholicism was present in America since its founding though, by the early 19th century it had become “largely rhetorical.” The influx of Catholic immigrants, however, as well as the increasingly aggressive and authoritarian stance of the papacy, which became more outspoken in its denunciations of modernism and liberalism, established a

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