Santorum: Mainline Protestant Churches Are in the Grip of Satan

[MADem]

33. Oh, sure, I don't disagree with that at all...

I'm referring not to 'actual hygiene,' here, but more to the relationship between the moneyed brahmins of Boston and other large northeastern cities, and the often slum-dwelling poor and slightly better housed working class masses who served them. When the Catholics (Irish and Italians, mostly, as well as Poles and other ethnicities) took political power as their numbers reached critical mass, the balance changed, and those rough fellows started wearing nicer outfits and making decisions, which didn't always sit well with the people who had held the power previously.

I was in Philadelphia a little more than a year ago, and took the tours again--very enjoyable. They were doing more construction across the street in the area where the bell is housed; I imagine that has come along since I was last there.

Odd fact--in Philadelphia, the one Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence was prevented by law from holding political office or voting, solely as a consequence of his religion--kind of funny, since he was from the Catholic state of MD:

Charles Carroll of Carrollton (1737-1832) was the most illustrious and best-known of the Carrolls. He was the only signer whose property — Carrollton — was mentioned in the Declaration of Independence. Carrollton was the 10,000-acre estate in Frederick County, Maryland, that Charles Carroll's father had given him on his return to America from his education in Europe.

At the time he signed the Declaration, it was against the law for a Catholic to hold public office or to vote. Although Maryland was founded by and for Catholics in 1634, in 1649 and, later, in 1689 after the Glorious Revolution placed severe restrictions on Catholics in England, the laws were changed in Maryland, and Catholicism was repressed.

Catholics could no longer hold office, exercise the franchise, educate their children in their faith, or worship in public. With the Declaration of Independence, all this bias and restriction ended. ...

http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/history/us/ah0016.html