The Know-Nothing Party Redux

I don’t know about you, but I’m uncomfortable — make that outraged — with a Congressman holding a hearing on Muslim extremism in America who’s on record as saying, “there are too many mosques in America.”

In case you missed it, that’s exactly what Rep. Peter King of New York, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said in a recent interview with Politico. And, he is the very same Congressman who has scheduled a hearing for this Thursday on the radicalization of Islam in this country.

With its exclusive focus on Islam, this hearing is unfair to Muslims in America and throughout the world. And, it will stir up already existing paranoia and bigotry about Muslims, particularly since 9/11, and play right into the hands of extremists, operating falsely under the banner of Islam, to make the case that America’s goal is really not to fight terrorism, but to eradicate Islam.

As an Irish Catholic, King ought to know better what bigotry can do because the same suspicions of Muslims that many Americans harbor today were directed against Catholics, and particularly Irish Catholics in places like New York and Boston, in the 19th century and well into the 20th century.
According to Charles R. Morris in “American Catholic,” the Know-Nothing Party, based strictly on a platform of nativism and anti-Catholicism, became a potent force in American politics in the mid-19th century. In 1854, one hundred and twenty-one congressmen counted themselves among the Know-Nothings.

Those of us of a certain age don’t have to consult the history books to recall experiences of anti-Catholicism in our own lives, with the case of JFK running for President in 1960 as the prime example. People actually believed in those days that people could not be loyal Americans and faithful Catholics, and Kennedy had to go before the Greater Houston Ministerial Association to try to convince an audience of skeptical Protestant ministers that if elected his Catholic faith would not interfere with his duties as President.

In light of the continuing revelations of priestly pedophilia among Catholic clergy, I wonder what Rep. King and millions of my fellow Catholics would feel if a Muslim member of Congress were to call for a hearing on the contributions of Catholics to the rise of pedophilia in America?

Think about it.

Gerald E. Lavey