Does Gingrich understand what he said when he said that America

[rfranklin]

1. The founding fathers were not big on organized religion which is why....

they saw fit to keep the government out of religion and vice versa.

And they especially did not like papists!

Because many of the British colonists, such as the Puritans and Congregationalists, were fleeing religious persecution by the Church of England, much of early American religious culture exhibited the more extreme anti-Catholic bias of these Protestant denominations. Monsignor John Tracy Ellis wrote that a "universal anti-Catholic bias was brought to Jamestown in 1607 and vigorously cultivated in all the thirteen colonies from Massachusetts to Georgia."[23] Colonial charters and laws often contained specific proscriptions against Catholics. For example, the second Massachusetts charter of October 7, 1691 decreed "that forever hereafter there shall be liberty of conscience allowed in the worship of God to all Christians, except Papists, inhabiting, or which shall inhabit or be resident within, such Province or Territory."[24]

Monsignor Ellis noted that a common hatred of the Catholic Church could unite Anglican clerics and Puritan ministers despite their differences and conflicts.

Some of America's Founding Fathers held anti-clerical beliefs. For example, in 1788, John Jay urged the New York Legislature to require office-holders to renounce foreign authorities "in all matters ecclesiastical as well as civil.".[25] Thomas Jefferson wrote, "History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government,"[26] and that "In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own."[27]

Some states devised loyalty oaths designed to exclude Catholics from state and local office.[28]


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Catholicism