The penal age: 1645-1763
Evidence of this anti-Catholic attitude can be found in laws passed by colonial legislatures, sermons preached by colonial ministers, and various books and pamphlets published in the colonies or imported from England. (8)
By his dress, manner and spirit, the Puritan was an antithesis of the Catholic gentleman of the age
For example, even though no Catholic was known to have lived in Massachusetts Bay in the first 20 years or more of the colony’s life, this did not deter the Puritan government from enacting an anti-priest law in May of 1647, which threatened with death “all and every Jesuit, seminary priest, missionary or other spiritual or ecclesiastical person made or ordained by any authority, power or jurisdiction, derived, challenged or pretended, from the Pope or See of Rome.” (9)
When Georgia, the thirteenth colony, was brought into being in 1732 by a charter granted by King George II, its guarantee of religious freedom followed the fixed pattern: full religious freedom was promised to all future settlers of the colony “except papists,” that is Catholics. (10)
Even Rhode Island, famous for its supposed policy of religious toleration, inserted an anti-Catholic statute imposing civil restrictions on Catholics in the colony’s first published code of laws in 1719. Not until 1783 was the act revoked. (11)
To have an idea of how this prejudice against Roman Catholics was impressed even among the young, consider these “John Rogers Verses” from the New England Primer: “Abhor that arrant whore of Rome and all her blasphemies; Drink not of her cursed cup; Obey not her decrees.” This age of penal restriction against Catholics in the colonies lasted until after the American Revolution.
Someone recalling a lesson from his Catholic history classes might pose the objection: But what about the exceptions to this rule, that is, the three colonial states of Maryland, New York, and Pennsylvania, where tolerance for Catholics existed in the colonial period? Once again, this impression comes from a very optimistic and liberal writing of History rather than the concrete reality. . . .