Romanism

This article is about Roman Catholicism. For the scholarly discipline, see Romance studies. For Flemish school of painters, see Romanism (painting).

Romanism was a word used as a derogatory term for Roman Catholicism in the past when anti-Catholicism was more common in the United States and the United Kingdom. The term was frequently used in late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century Republican invectives against the Democrats, as part of the slogan "Rum, rebellion, and Romanism" (referencing the Democratic party's constituency of Southerners and anti-Temperance, frequently Catholic, working-class immigrants). The term and slogan gained particular prominence in the 1928 presidential campaign, in which the Democratic candidate was the outspokenly anti-Prohibition Catholic Governor of New York Al Smith. The term is still used, though rarely, by anti-Catholics.

See also

• Anti-Catholicism
• Papist
• Popery
• Popish Plot

External links

• Is Romanism Christianity? by T.W. Medhurst (from The Fundamentals)
• Romanism and the Reformation by Henry Grattan Guinness
• The Bible and Romanism – the window-dressing continues, by Arthur Noble