Transatlantic connections: American anti-Catholicism and the first Vatican Council (1869-70)

This article investigates the hostile U.S. reaction to the First Vatican Council (1869-70) and the doctrine of papal infallibility. For opponents of the Church, the Council Fathers could either make peace with the modern age or, by dogmatizing infallibility, reject progressive principles. Throughout the controversy, Americans closely monitored European developments; read translations of European polemics; and rapturously welcomed a former French friar, Charles Jean Marie Loyson (known as Father Hyacinthe), whose act of rebellion against the Vatican seemed to signal a second Reformation. These events evoke a history of anti-Catholicism in the United States that is less parochial and more sensitive to transnational connections.