Anti-Catholicism

Anti-Catholicism is hostility towards or opposition to the Catholic Church, its clergy and adherents.

After the Reformation, Protestant states (especially England) made opposition to the Pope and Catholic rituals a major political theme. In the Early modern period, the Catholic Church struggled to maintain its traditional religious and political role in the face of rising secular powers in Europe. As a result of these struggles, there arose a hostile attitude towards the considerable political, social, spiritual and religious power of the Pope and the clergy in the form of anti-clericalism.

In primarily Protestant countries

Many Protestant reformers, including John Wycliffe, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Thomas Cranmer, John Knox, Roger Williams, Cotton Mather, and John Wesley, as well as most Protestants of the 16th-18th centuries, identified the Pope as the Antichrist. The fifth round of talks in the Lutheran–Roman Catholic dialogue notes,

Doctrinal materials of the Lutherans, Reformed churches, Presbyterians, Baptists, Anabaptists, and Methodists contain references to the Pope as Antichrist, including Smalcald Articles, Article four (1537),Treatise on the Power and Primacy of the Pope (1537),Westminster Confession, Article 25.6 (1646), and 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith, Article 26.4. In 1754, John Wesley published his Explanatory Notes Upon the New Testament, which is currently an official Doctrinal Standard of the United Methodist Church. In his notes on Revelation chapter 13, he commented: "The whole succession of Popes from Gregory VII are undoubtedly antichrist. Yet this hinders not, but that the last Pope in this succession will be more eminently the antichrist, the man of sin, adding to that of his predecessors a peculiar degree of wickedness from the bottomless pit."