Do catholic white Americans identify with the nationality of their immediate ancestors more strongly than protestant white Americans, all other things held equal?

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Standard-Outcome9881@reddit

I was raised Catholic, but have been non-religious since grade school and am a white male but the only nationality I "identify" with is generic American. My maternal grandparents came from Eastern Europe early in the 1900s and my paternal grandparents were first generation born in the US via Mexican parents who emigrated. I don't consider myself either of those things and neither are especially relevant to me. I don't know how "protestant white Americans" see themselves in particular so it's difficult for me to compare and answer the question.

Many people in the US describe themselves as "Irish-American" or "German-American" or what have you.

I do not.

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DeanKoontssy@reddit

I think people, including Americans, are more likely to identify with the culture of their ancestors when their ancestors immigrated more recently. Predominately Catholic populations, like Italians, immigrated to the US (in general) more recently than predominately Protestant populations like Germans.

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PerfectlyCalmDude@reddit

This. Also consider the Greek-Americans, which are not known for being Catholic.

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droozer@reddit

There is heightened identity among German Catholics however (see Cincinnati), so OP may have a point

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TinCanSon@reddit

Here in Oregon, the town with the highest concentration of Germans (and an Oktoberfest), Mt. Angel is also home to a monastery.

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vile_hog_42069@reddit

I love Mt Angel. I enjoyed the Glockenspiel on the way home from hiking in the falls

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TinCanSon@reddit

I haven't been in years

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GothHimbo414@reddit

I was about to comment that I've seen people specifically refer to their ancestry as German Catholic. Also seen historical reference to German Catholics in America being talked about very similarly to how people talked about the Irish in that time. The specific stereotypes I remember were that they drank beer on sunday and were politically radical, many of them being anarchists, communists and socialists.

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AnnicetSnow@reddit

There's a lot of German influence still in Texas, and most of the older generation was Lutheran. But of course things like Oktoberfest and recognition of all the Geeman settlers could be more emphasized as a "Texan pride" thing than specifically a personal one. Being 5th and 6th generation Texans is a thing people like to bring up, and that always means German or Mexican. (Or a mix like me.)

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Impressive_Ad8715@reddit

As someone of German Catholic descent in Wisconsin, I agree. There’s a very high level of German identity around here especially among German Catholics

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Mental-Paramedic9790@reddit

I believe there is a Greek Catholic Church.

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jyper@reddit

Note they may not be Greek

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_in_Greece

My understanding is that Greek Catholic is used to refer to some churches under the pope that pray similarly to Eastern Orthodox churches. The biggest one is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_Greek_Catholic_Church with 5 million members mostly in western Ukraine

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melkite_Greek_Catholic_Church in the Levant also has a million members and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_Greek_Catholic_Church also has 300k Greece has 6k members https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_Byzantine_Catholic_Church

I think most Catholics in Greece are Roman Catholic not Greek Catholic

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PerfectlyCalmDude@reddit

Yes, but there is a Greek Orthodox Church which is more famous.

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EffectiveSalamander@reddit

Depends on where you live. In New UIm, Minnesota, they have the "Herman the German" statue built in the late 1800s, and German culture wasn't eliminated there. My grandmother spoke English with a strong German accent and made German food. There was a lot of erasure of things German, but it wasn't as evenly applied.

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eerie_lake_@reddit

I was about to mention MN. My stepmom grew up in the twin cities and is German Catholic, and there was a pretty big community there. There are a few areas in the Midwest and, like Pennsylvania that have a strong German culture, even outside of Amish Country.

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EffectiveSalamander@reddit

The north central US has a lot of German ancestry. Wisconsin is #1 at 37.8%. I think it was easier to shove aside German-American culture in states where there wasn't that much of it to begin with.

German Americans - Wikipedia

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KevrobLurker@reddit

German culture in WI took a hit in WWI. During WWII Gerrman-Americans, aside from some Bundists, were very patriotic.

Since 1981:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Fest

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CorrectShopping9428@reddit

I agree, I am Gen X and in Massachusetts over half my friends were Irish or Italian or often a parent from each and many had at least one grandparent born in either country.

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Flat-Leg-6833@reddit

Don’t forget the (French) Canucks and Portuguese in Mass.

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According-Couple2744@reddit

Yes. I am Baptist, and I only identify as American. I have a comprehensive family tree, and none of my ancestors immigrated after the Revolutionary War. I think many Catholics have ancestors who arrived here in the 1800s and 1900s from Ireland and Italy.

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Difficult_Ad_502@reddit

Louisiana is a bit different, dad’s side came to Louisiana in the 1720s, Germans recruited by the French, who then changed the German names to french. On my mom’s side, Irish and German, came over during the 1840s and 50s, almost all Catholic. German and Irish Catholic Churches are within blocks of each other in the Irish Channel.

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dodgepunchheavy@reddit

Yeah this checks out, my friends parents are second gen Lebanese and he talks about lebanon all the time, i had no idea what my ancestry was until i did a DNA test and did family research and turns out both sides of my family have been in the midwest/canada since the early 1800's

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auntlynnie@reddit

This was my take, as well. 3 of my my grandparents immigrated in the early 1900s from Sweden and Norway (Lutherans), and we identify pretty strongly with them, since we grew up with them and their personal histories. The next generation are a bit removed from it all.

My brother's father-in-law immigrated from Italy, and so his kids tend to associate more with their Italian grandfather than their Scandinavian great-grandparents.

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Flibs-@reddit

I'm pretty sure I hear East Asians refer to their ethnicity more than anyone else and it isn't even close.

Korean American, Chinese Americans, etc.

And if I'm bring honest it's probably because people assume it wrong the most. Also it tends to be taken most offensively. Like calling Koreans Chinese and stuff.

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Seattleman1955@reddit

You probably just live in an area with a lot of Catholics. In my experience, limited, it's Irish and Italians that do that more.

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smcl2k@reddit

Irish and Italians

Both of those immigrant groups were overwhelmingly Catholic.

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Seattleman1955@reddit

I get it but in my area there are a lot of Irish surnames but not many Catholics and not many Italians.

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KevrobLurker@reddit

Besides Irish Catholic immigrants, the US had a lot of Protestants who came over from Ireland, earlier that the famine of the 1840s. One pattern was those who moved from Scotland, England or Wales to take up land in the Protestant plantations. When, in some cases, planters gave up that project and emigrated to the North American colonies, they provided the proto-United States with the group known as the Scots-Irish aka expatriate Ulster Scots. Include also dissenting Protestants (non CofE) who emigrated directly from Britain. So there is a significant number of Irish in the US who were Protestant before they landed here. Intermarriage and conversions added to those Protestant Irish-Americans.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scotch-Irish_Americans

My forebears were all from Ireland, and we were a Catholic family. I attended Catholic school alongside students of Italian, German, Polish and other European backgrounds. Their parents often had moved from ethnic neighborhoods to the post-WWII housing developments of central Long Island, NY. The Puerto Rican community in town did not enroll at the parish school, either because they couldn't afford the then-modest tuition or preferred the greater facility the public schools may have shown with the Spanish language.

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Seattleman1955@reddit

I came from the Scot Irish group (Protestant) that ended up in N.C.

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KevrobLurker@reddit

This is why old time music in the Appalachians and nearby East Coast areas has many tunes that originated in Scotland & Ireland.

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cyvaquero@reddit

As someone who grew up at the crossroads of PA's coal/steel/farming regions there was a large cross section of Scott/Irish/Italian/Pole/Slav/German immigrant ancestory with Germans being the largest group. Even without knowing the last name you could usually tell those who claimed Irish/Italion/Pole. Scotts and Slavs usually didn't go all in like the other three (flags, tattoos, etc).

I would not say that ancestral pride was caused by Catholicism but rather because of it. Those three groups were targeted by the Know-Nothings and American Party for being immigrants and Catholic throughout the 1800s and into the 1900s, adversity tends to breed unity.

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Capable-Pressure1047@reddit

PA girl here from the Northeast Coal Regions. Evidently the KkK was very active in our small towns during the 1910’s-1920’s with cross burnings and such. Definitely a divide between Catholics of all ethnicities and Protestants- some towns had separate fire companies, undertakers, etc. I’ve heard that organized crime moved into the area at first to protect the Italian immigrant population.

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KevrobLurker@reddit

My South Shore, Long Island parish moved its church building in 1906. Guards had to be set to ward off attacks by old Yankee Protestants who had threatened to burn it.

The Klan of the 1920s was active in Suffolk County.

https://www.nytimes.com/1923/06/22/archives/long-island-sees-biggest-klan-crowd-25000-said-to-be-in-assembly.html

Nothing disgusts me like a Northern, white Catholic who has joined the modern Klan. White bigots are always ready, if not happy, to expand the circle of Whiteness when their numbers run low.

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cyvaquero@reddit

Yeah, same in Centre county. People automatically associate KKK with racism but in Centre county in the early 1900s it was 100% about the Catholics. My gram told me she remembers seeing a cross burning down in our end of Nittany Valley (on the Clinton county line) where there were no black folk - county-wide there were only a handful of PoC.

I never thought about it but you do see a lot the small boroughs with two fire volunteers fire companies, I wonder if that is related.

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Capable-Pressure1047@reddit

When I had to take CRT training for my school system, people , including the instructor thought I was making it up. Didn't fit with their agenda.

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Logical-Ad-7594@reddit

Two fire companies is necessary to have a fully functional fire department. “Engine” companies run hoses and put the fire out, while “Ladder” companies perform search-and-rescue and ventilation. Obviously there is overlap but most towns have both. Oftentimes they’ll share a station though.

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Capable-Pressure1047@reddit

Not in this case. One fire department responded to fires if the property belonged to a Protestant , the other was founded to respond to fires in properties with Catholics. Two full companies in small towns.

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Foreign-Marzipan6216@reddit

And Polish. I come from a family of Polish Catholic immigrants. It’s very ingrained in their culture, at least in the generations ahead of me. Not sure about millennials or younger.

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cruxclaire@reddit

I‘m on the younger end of millennials, had great grandparents from Ireland and Poland, and grew up in Chicago, where that was the case for a ton of people (with relatively large Italian Catholic and Eastern Orthodox populations as well). Since the immigrant groups tended to cluster together in specific neighborhoods and suburbs, and because the Irish and Polish Catholics of Chicago tend(ed) to be religious, it definitely affected my cultural milieu. I think more so for my first gen classmates who spoke Polish as a first language, though.

If you‘re actually raised as an active Catholic, I could also see the sense of specifically Catholic heritage coming from the community parish structure. The average parish is much smaller than a Protestant megachurch and you probably go to the closest one to you rather than picking based on your favorite priest/pastor, so you see neighbors and classmates at church and/or CCD every week and learn the same specific rituals that are common across churches. And then plenty of people still go to Catholic schools as well.

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LunarVolcano@reddit

I’m younger and have 1/4 polish ethnicity. I didn’t even know I was a full 1/4 or how recent the immigration was (great great grandparent) until I looked it up online as an adult. Doesn’t help that my polish grandparent died when I was little so I never got to know him.

Basically, I wouldn’t be surprised if just how polish/italian/etc you are plays a role as well. I think if I was more than just 1/4 I may have known more. My sister’s in laws are 100% italian for example and for the most part their ethnicity is a much bigger deal to them than my family’s are to us. The only polish thing that made it down to my gen was pierogies lol.

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UnofficialCapital1@reddit

Mass Irish and Italian immigration stalled after WW2. Poles have had more immigration waves over the past 80 years to maintain diasporas.

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YoungKeys@reddit

Irish/Italian urban immigrant communities are for the most part an anachronism now too that mostly lives in movies. They’re very much on the large part assimilated now

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Lazy_Willingness_420@reddit

What? Philly, NJ, Long Island all the way up to Boston is basically just Italians and Irish with Polish, German & Greek pockets thrown in there. Now days there are also a lot of Hispanic communities in the cities & rural areas too.

Heavily Catholic in the northeast

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garden__gate@reddit

You gotta spend a year living in Boston or New Jersey.

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YoungKeys@reddit

There are a ton of Italians/Irish in NJ/Boston but how common are communities that are almost entirely immigrant Italian/Irish? Those don't really exist like they used to for the Italian/Irish because they're so assimilated now.

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Seattleman1955@reddit

They don't have to exist. That wasn't the question.

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garden__gate@reddit

I’m not going to name it but I grew up in one of these communities in Boston.

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butt_honcho@reddit

Latin Americans as well, which seems to bear the pattern out.

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Unhappy-Fish2554@reddit

By "immediate" ancestors, do you mean parents?

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TexRich001@reddit

Sometimes ethnicity denotes the “type” of Catholicism you’re brought up with. Ie Irish Catholic, Mexican Catholic, Italian Catholic, etc. all the same religion but there are cultural differences. Usually to do with how some saints are celebrated, how some traditions are done- Spanish Catholics tend to wear rosaries whereas others don’t etc etc.

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KevrobLurker@reddit

My home parish had, for years, an Italian mission church within its borders. The parish church served Catholics of any ethnicity, though the priests in charge tended to be Irish. Eventually, the Italian church had saved enough money to erect a new building. The diocese split the parish, with the new parish taking the neighborhoods north of the state highway that had the post-WWII Levittown-style homes. This happened in the 1970s. Once that was up and running, the US RCC's falloff in church attendance began to be felt and nominal Catholics stopped churning out kids. The 9 children in my family was not unheard of in its day. Post-Vatican I, and after Catholics started using birth control, similarly-sized families would be unusual.

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MermaidUnicornKush42@reddit

I'm a third generation American and identify as "Irish-American".

My ancestors fought hard, gave up everything they had, and most of them starved to death so that their children could come here and I could exist. That's no small thing. They deserve to be honored like that.

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Tough_Tangerine7278@reddit

I’m wondering if, if what you’re saying is true, then predominantly Catholic subgroups may be because they tend to be more recent immigrants.

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MakalakaPeaka@reddit

No.

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Fancy-Restaurant4136@reddit

One side of my family descended from swedish immigrants, and we talked about it. They were very protestant.

The other side of my family descended from people who fought in the revolutionary war. They didn't talk about it.

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IneffableOpinion@reddit

Every Irish-Catholic American I have met is super proud of being Irish. They give their kids Gaelic names and send them to Irish dance school. I knew an Irish -Catholic that was super excited my name sounded Irish. They actively seek out other Irish people. They tried to convince me I am Irish and to join their group. It’s actually a Scottish name. I don’t have strong connections to Scotland or Ireland. I just kind of let them think I was Irish since they were so happy about it.

I think OP might be on to something because my Protestant friends don’t really know or care what their ancestry is. We don’t sit around talking about it or celebrating it. Maybe in passing when talking about the family tree, but not enough to host cultural events and stuff. I can’t think of anyone in my church talking about any particular ethnicity.

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RandomPerson_7@reddit

The Catholic religion is heavy on traditions, heritage, and maintaining historical ties to support its authority. Those who opt in to that system would likely be interested in their own historical ties, heritage, and traditions.

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cattopattocatto@reddit

Both sides of my family have been in what is the US for a minute (pre-revolution), but my mom's side is descended from Irish Catholics, and my dad's side is descended from German Protestants. We're all essentially agnostic, but we lovingly trade barbs about the cultures that shaped us: my "Irish Catholic" mother swears up a storm in the kitchen, my "German" (but never "German Protestant," interestingly enough!) father is rigid and stubborn.

My religious upbringing was veeeeery loosely Catholic (I'm an only child, and my mother is staunchly pro-choice), but there are cultural trappings that go along with Catholicism -- like my maternal grandmother feeling relieved that the Pope said that voting for John Kerry was okay (which my grandma was going to do anyway, and I don't have a source for that, because I absolutely don't care what any Pope says). Oh, and the guilt. My mom and I are incapable of apologizing for our cooking or baking, even though we're both pretty good at it.

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TheOfficialKramer@reddit

Yes, catholic Italians are known for this.

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AgeOfReasonEnds31120@reddit

I'm really confused how people pick just one. I'm sure over 90% of us are multiethnic.

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discourse_friendly@reddit

Most white Americans most strongly Identify as American. We also do loosely identify with our ethnicity and extend that a bit onto the country of origin of that ethnicity. seems to be most strong with the Irish and Italians though.

I'm not a protestant , so no clue there.

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Owned_by_cats@reddit

Never, ever identify someone from Warsaw Pact or Yugoslav countries without putting -American after the nationality.

It being 2025, my guess is that most white Catholics have married outside their parents' ethnicity. So which ones to choose?

Those of us who do will usually follow the pattern of claiming the most-abused nationality. So Polish vs French means Polish, but Sicilian vs Polish will one out Sicilian.

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Gold_Telephone_7192@reddit

I think it’s correlation, not causation. White American Catholics are predominantly of Irish or Italian descent, which are two groups that a) immigrated to the US later and b) are very focused on heritage, probably due to that and the fact they came over as a mass migration, so they created immigrant communities that kept their cultural identities stronger.

White American Protestants, on the other hand, are predominantly of English descent, which is a nationality that immigrated to the US much earlier, often before the US existed. So they have less of a cultural identity to their English ancestry since they’ve been here way longer and are much more mixed over time. They often don’t know the specific nationality of their ancestry and consider themselves “American mutts” because of that.

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United-Pitch-645@reddit

Think there is a lot of truth in this. I am Protestant. My ethnic heritage is pretty much pure English. Both my moms side and my dads side trace back to well before the American revolution.

That being said, while I know my family history from a couple of uncles who did all the leg work, I don’t think of myself as “English” in any sense at all. I know it’s my family heritage but my family heritage has been in this country for so long I don’t think of myself as anything other than American.

My secondary identity more than anything else is a Chicagoan. Whereas one of my best friends is like 4th generation Irish and tells people he is Irish. I’ve always assumed it’s just a recency thing

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cruxclaire@reddit

That sounds plausible to me. My ancestry is mixed Catholic and Protestant, and the Protestant side is split between Germans who probably immigrated around WWI and Anglos who came in like the 1600s-1700s. The German great grandparents didn’t raise my grandmother to be religious, but the Irish and Polish great grandparents raised their children religious and talked enough about the Old Country that my dad and paternal grandparents still brought it up sometimes when I was growing up.

For me, the common Catholicism across the Irish and Polish ancestors affected my upbringing enough to feel some sense of an ethnic identity distinct from that of WASPs. I moved between states twice as a kid so my state and local identities aren’t all that strong, and for me it’s still like American > (sub)urban rather than rural > white/middle class > Chicago + Las Vegas > ethnic identities, where the Catholic ones take precedence. I‘m only “Irish-Polish Catholic” to the extent that it affected my childhood, e.g. going to Church with other “Irish” and “Polish” Catholics in the Chicago burbs and hearing stories from my dad’s side (where anger about the Famine lives on). Like you, I have zero sense of “Englishness.”

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4games1@reddit

The largest population of American Catholics have had family in the USA since before the Revolutionary War. They were here before the USA was a thing and are justifiably pissed when they get told to go home because they are not white. People tend to forget that almost half the USA was a Spanish Colonial asset.

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Impressive_Ad8715@reddit

I agree it’s probably correlation. But something to add based on regionality. In the upper Midwest where I live there is a high amount of ethnic identity even among Protestant groups, as most people around here are not of English or “old stock American” heritage. Most Protestants around here are Scandinavian or German

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hopeful_sindarin@reddit

Im sure you know this, but just adding for those passing:

A lot of those Scandinavian and German descent in the upper Midwest are only 2-3 generations removed. Some less some more. The “great Scandinavian immigration” to the upper Midwest happened approximately 1850-1940. In terms of history, it’s relatively recent. A majority of them clumped together in communities across Minnesota, Wisconsin, North Dakota, etc. Those didn’t necessarily “Americanize” as quickly because they would still speak their native tongue in their schools, churches, workplaces, etc. Those descendants carry on many traditions from their families country of origin which is a big reason they have a higher ethnic identity. My husbands family goes to a church that had a Danish speaking service still up until the 1990s.

Source: this particular portion of history is my job.

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Impressive_Ad8715@reddit

Agreed, and I think Scandinavians tended to immigrate a bit later than a lot of the Germans. But even so, the Germans held on to their culture and language for quite a long time. Most of my German ancestors came to Wisconsin in the 1840s-1850s but my grandparents who were born in the 1930s and were 4th generation Americans still grew up speaking German in the home as children. They lived in a very small rural farming community where everyone was German Catholic though. Obviously the church was never German speaking though since mass was in Latin until 1970 and by then everyone spoke English as their primary language. But my grandpa told me that when he was a kid there were even different dialects of German spoken in specific communities in the area based on what region of Germany the people immigrated from, like he couldn’t understand people from some of the nearby towns very well because their dialect was so different.

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ScrimshawPie@reddit

There is also a huuuuuge component of German-American population that went silent on that after the world wars. Probably mostly Protestant, but a mixed bag.

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On_my_last_spoon@reddit

My family became Dutch! Insisted we were Dutch so much that I believed it for most of my life. Until a distant relative did genealogy research only to discover we’re German! My great aunt still denied it. Which is kinda wild because the German part of the family goes back to 1770 in the US so we’re not even really anywhere close to identifying with German culture.

My husband’s German side immigrated in 1936! So he’s more connected because his grandparents still traveled back and forth when he was a kid. He even had little lederhosen!

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GF_baker_2024@reddit

I suspect that my "Dutch" great-grandfather (immigrated to N. America not long before WWI) was actually "Deutsch." Unfortunately, the older generation who might know for sure is long gone.

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allieggs@reddit

Also, a lot of what foreigners know to be German culture tends to be from Catholic southern Germany

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DeanKoontssy@reddit

This is what I also suspect is the correct answer.

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FunProfessional570@reddit

I’d say it’s probably more geographical and probably you’ll see more folks of Irish, Italian, and Polish extraction even several generations removed hold on to traditions and talk about it. I’ve lived in New England so saw it a lot with Irish and Italian.

I lived near Chicago too and there it was Irish, Italian, and Polish.

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LetsGoGators23@reddit

Anecdotally I think they do. I think it’s primarily a recency of immigration more than anything. I don’t identify with ancestral heritage because in like 8th generation of British/French/German commingling at this point so there was nothing to cling to. No one in my family ever knew a single family member (including my grandparents) who weren’t born here.

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Financeandstuff2012@reddit

It depends. Here in Minnesota I’d say there is pretty strong identity amongst Lutherans as well who are usually either Norwegian/Swedish/German/Finnish. I think recency of immigration is a bigger factor. Most people here are descended from 1880-1900ish immigrants so identity will be stronger amongst Catholics and Lutherans here than it would be amongst Protestants in places like the South where most of them descend from people who have been here far longer.

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xSparkShark@reddit

Off the dome, catholic Americans are a lot more likely to have come over after Protestant Americans. So more recently, thus more likely to be connected to their ancestry.

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Tinkerfan57912@reddit

I think it’s an American thing in general.

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cdb03b@reddit

Yes and No. But religion is not a factor.

What you are noticing are those whose families immigrated more recently. The fewer generations between a person and the generation that immigrated the more strongly that ancestral culture will be within their own life. Many protestant ethnic groups are looking at 4-10 generations between now and point of immigration, for those who are catholic it can be as close as they are the immigrants but will typically be 1-5.

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Turbulent_Bullfrog87@reddit

You’re right; your question doesn’t make sense.

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Winter-Ride6230@reddit

The town I grew up in up defined It’s entire identity around the heritage of the community and it was not a Catholic community. The city i live in now is very Catholic and has strong ethnic ties to Ireland, Italy and other dominant Catholic populations. So on that basis I wouldn’t say I see a difference. I do think, however, there are differences in familial relationships with the Catholic communities having a much stronger emphasis on close extended family relationships. Perhaps that difference might encourage open identification and discussion of one’s ethnic heritage (especially if they live in an area where their ethnic heritage is well represented).

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livelongprospurr@reddit

German Catholic areas include: Bavaria: Historically a strongly Catholic region. Rhineland-Palatinate: Another state with a significant Catholic population. North Rhine-Westphalia: Includes the Rhineland area, which is predominantly Catholic. Baden-Württemberg: Features Catholic strongholds, particularly in the south. Saarland: The only German federal state with a Catholic absolute majority.

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greenandredofmaigheo@reddit

I mean the strongest diasporas (at least here in Chicago & Milwaukee where I have lived) seem to be Irish, Italian, Polish, and Mexican. While that theory fits for those cultures it doesn't examine why France or Spain wouldn't have similar levels of ethnic pride. It certainly could be a factor though

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GF_baker_2024@reddit

Much earlier waves of immigration for the French and Spanish—they were the colonizers. Their legacy is in place names (e.g., Detroit, Los Angeles) and broader culture.

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greenandredofmaigheo@reddit

Absolutely true but still rather odd you'd see such a strong allegiance to France in Quebec but nothing similar in what was the territory from the Louisiana purchase. Even in New Orleans there's not allegiance to France so much as regional creole or Cajun culture.

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Mushrooming247@reddit

You know it’s because WASPs have told us all our lives that we are not real Americans, right?

You know the KKK has also always attacked Catholics along with Black people, right?

Our current president’s father was arrested with the rest of the KKK for beating Catholics in the street of New York City, and if you know that, and look at the zero Catholics that his son hangs out with, a pattern emerges. (They both hate Catholics.)

This anti-Catholic xenophobia is the reason you see Catholic people identifying with the nationalities of their parents and grandparents, we aren’t allowed to just be Americans, specifically by you. (I am assuming from your question that you are Protestant.)

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Low_Computer_6542@reddit

You realize our Vice President is Catholic and hangs out with our President.

Most Americans are proud mutts, but are happy to do a DNA test out of curiosity.

I believe you are just spreading lies trying to cause division. Maybe you should try to find a real hobby.

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Miserable_Key_7552@reddit

I agree. Maybe the commenter above is older and grew up when being an Italian/Irish/Polish-American Roman Catholic was frowned upon in upper class mainline Protestant WASP circles, but I think the last time that was an actual cultural reality outside of niche New England social circles was the mid/latter half of the 20th century as WASPs slowly lost cultural relevance and influence.

I’m saying this as someone who is for all intents and purposes a WASP. I’m pale as a ghost, I have a stereotypical English surname, and I attend an Episcopal Church, which is arguably the church most associated with upper class WASP establishment types out of all the old school Mainline Protestant Churches here in the US.

I’ll admit, whilst there are certainly some members of my parish that 100% fit the expensive wine drinking, tweed jacket generational wealth Episcopalian WASP stereotype, I feel like you actually have to go out of your way to meet these sorts of people, and even if you do, most of them are too far removed from when there was genuine anti-Catholic sentiment to ever be rude or anything because someone is a Roman Catholic.

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flp_ndrox@reddit

Or maybe he's from the South where, "what church do you go to?" is a legit question that means something and Catholic is likely a "wrong answer". And as a Catholic the Scots-Irish are essentially just as WASPy as those folks that summer in Newport RI ("there's two religions: Catholic and non-Catholic").

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Practical-Basil-3494@reddit

There are many areas of the South with a lot of Catholics. New Orleans is the most obvious example.

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Academic-Contest3309@reddit

Christians denominations absolutely discriminate againsy Catholics. That really is a thing. Walk into your local baptist or evangelical church and tell them you are Catholic and report back.

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HereWeGoAgain-1979@reddit

I am not from the USA and I did not know this. I can't say I have ever learnd about this. So while it is sad, I am glad to have learned it now.

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CupBeEmpty@reddit

As the local Catholic apologist I found that a big deal for me is that my family has church records going back generations. My mom’s the genealogist and she’s even gone to Europe and gotten marriage and baptismal records that many Protestants don’t have.

There might be some of the tribal identity because of anti-Catholic bias. Like I know when a lot of my Catholic ancestors came here and am a bit happy about it. I haven’t really experienced any major anti-Catholicism other than stereotypes and some unsavory jokes. My parents however did get some pretty hard bigotry back in the 50s and 60s.

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suztothee@reddit

I’m not sure I know the answer to this. I will say, as someone who was raised in a family full of Catholics, I absolutely know my heritage and am very proud of it. I’m not sure it’s a religious thing though, I have always been interested in where my roots are.

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Unhappy_Performer538@reddit

it's hard to say but the Catholics I know are very in to ancestry . com.

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Stunning-Track8454@reddit

I think white Italian-Americans and Irish-Americans who have a reputation for being loud and obnoxious just happen to be Catholic.

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gothica_obscura@reddit

What about non-religious or atheist Americans? My dad's side of the family is Catholic and Italian/Sicilian. My mom's side is Baptist and mostly Irish. I look more Irish than Italian, but definitely lean heavier on my Italian roots since they have been more of a close knit type of family while my mother's side has pretty much disowned one another for whatever reason.

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lawyerjsd@reddit

Well, it's easier to keep track. My dad's side of the family is from Italy, and we are able to track who came over, when, and whatnot. I can go to the literal home of my great-grandfather in Sicily (it's tiny). My mom's family is goes back maybe 11 generations in the US. So, while there is some connection to an ethnicity, it is related to a German enclave in the US, not to a specific location in Germany.

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Meilingcrusader@reddit

I would say yes to some extent, though I think it's more down to the fact that the families of Catholic White Americans having been here less time. Most arrived somewhere broadly between 1840 and 1920, whereas the Protestant ones tend to have been here before that. Case in point, I have French Canadian ancestry from those whose memories still live: my great grandfather was born in Quebec, and naturalized in the 1930s. I also have English ancestry which dates back to the Mayflower in 1620. Though, I would say this is starting to change. The Catholic Church in America has become substantially less ethnic (at least among White Catholics) as more and more time passes, people get farther away from their ancestral origin, and the rise of political Catholicism as an integral part of the Christian Right in politics is leading to more and more simply identifying as American Catholics. Add to this the growing number of conversions of protestant or irreligious White Americans, many of old stock English or Scottish backgrounds (like VP Vance) and the fact we now have an American Pope, and I think this will keep changing. Generally at least a century removed from the old country, and with Catholics as a quarter of the population with unprecedented visibility and influence in society, it is easier than ever for Catholics to see themselves as normal unhyphenated Americans

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flp_ndrox@reddit

Up until the last 50 years or so ethnic parishes were a thing where in towns where you'd have multiple churches they would be organized along ethnic lines so there would still be some cultural connection often to the old country. Where my dad grew up you had the French church, the German Church, and the newer Irish/Italian church. I used to work in a company town where it was the Irish, German, Polish, Slovak, Italian, and Czech IIRC.

I think another part of it is that a lot of the Catholic immigration into American cities from abroad is relatively recent and wasn't from countries where there was already a preexisting group like the Protestants from the UK, Netherlands, or Dutch. Scandinavian Protestants still also have a lot of ethnic pride and their ancestors similarly mostly came over in the early 20th Century.

But I will say that the anti-Catholic attitudes that have plagued the Anglosphere for over 400 years probably also contributed.

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vingtsun_guy@reddit

I understand what others are saying about the history of more recent immigrations for Catholics versus Protestants. But I'm going to add a factor here, based on personal experience.

I am a practicing Catholic. There does seem to be a certain unwritten hierarchy among places where Catholics come from, based upon how "strong" the connection to the faith is in that country. Some cultural/ethnic backgrounds may hint at a strong Catholic upbringing - i.e. Italy, Ireland, Mexico, Brazil, etc. Whereas some other cultural/ethnic backgrounds may not hold the same "reputation."

This became very visible to me when my son started dating. Parents were very comfortable with allowing me to transport my son and their daughters to the movies, for example. I'm not white - I'm of Irish (mother) and Brazilian (father) heritage, both of which are considered cultures with strong Catholic influence. I head more than once that my son was a good boy with "good Catholic upbringing" and that "it doesn't get more Catholic than an Irish and Brazilian combination."

Take that for what it's worth.

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rawbface@reddit

You're gonna need an academic study for this. Growing up in Jersey I just assumed every Christian was Catholic. It sure seemed that way.

Something you should take into account is that when the US became a country, all of its "citizens" were white Englishmen. So having forged a country out of revolutionary war, they would distance themselves from the nationality of their ancestors.

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flootytootybri@reddit

I mean generally the Catholics haven’t been in America for longer than like three or four generations so we actually know where we came from. Like a lot of people have said the main groups that do probably identify with their ancestry are Irish, Polish, and Italian. I’m Irish and Polish like genetically but I have zero connection to either place so I’d say I’m American…

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planodancer@reddit

The ancestors I don’t know about probably include pretty much all of Europe and the Middle East.

So not much point in obsessing over the 5 nationalities mostly from countries that no longer exist that I actually know about.

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workntohard@reddit

There is also an influence on how insular a community is along with if your family has moved. Many of my cousins, who never spread far from where they grew up, look back to German heritage more than I do who grew up moving around country and internationally.

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Chiomi@reddit

My village was settled in like the 1870s and there are Norwegian flags goddamn everywhere. Our chamber of commerce says ‘velkommen.’ The only Catholic Church in town is a hideous Brutalist building.

I think it depends on the culture and level of assimilation for immigrants in that culture? Like, my dad’s family is firmly Lapsed Irish Catholic. Fish fry Fridays when my dad moved to Wisconsin felt Morally Correct in a way too embarrassing to articulate out loud to Lutherans, my uncle rented an Irish cultural center for his birthday party, but mostly they identify as Americans and with the small town in Pennsylvania that had a lot of family in it.

Also Wisconsin has a lot of German pride - mostly carefully contextualized to the state founding in 1848. Lots of farmers from Germany! Beer! Architecture! Beer! Bratwurst! Notably if you’re not doing weird artisan stuff, the Correct and Best brats are Johnsonville, which company is Wisconsin-based. Beer! Sauerkraut. Deeply embedded cultural Lutheranism, including the Protestant work ethic, potlucks (with core staples like hotdish and casseroles topped with tater tots), and support for labor (including unions). Oktoberfest. We are drunk. Theoretically this is a heritage and nationality thing, even though a lot of the white families have been here upwards of 100 years. But if it’s national pride it’s not alcoholism, or something.

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BigDSuleiman@reddit

My most recent ancestors came here in the early 1900s from Derbyshire, England, but were Catholics. I only identify with that as much as I do because of how recent it is. I wasn't raised Catholic, but my mother was. That being said my heritage is mostly German as is my surname.

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WrongJohnSilver@reddit

If you're talking about Irish Americans and Italian Americans, what you're seeing is the effect of time.

Most Irish and Italian immigration took place in the 19th century, up to the early 20th century. Most Protestant immigration occurred earlier, during the 17th-18th centuries. The closer in time you get to today, the more connection to heritage in the mother country will remain.

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JJR1971@reddit

The top of the social pyramid in the USA used to be dominated by WASPs = "White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestants" while all the other "white ethnics" (Irish, Italian, Poles, Greeks, Jews, et. al.) weren't fully accepted as truly American or even really "white". Whiteness, white supremacy was slowly extended to them, especially when able to demonstrate their reliable anti-black racism to upper-crust WASPs. Catholicism was very much wound up with these ethnic identities and still is BUT there is inter-ethnic Catholic solidarity as well. Better for an Irish guy to marry an Italian or Polish woman or vice versa than a Protestant. The Catholic rituals and rites transcend ethnic boundaries. The shared Catholic culture also tended to be concentrated among the working class historically in the United States. Insular WASP culture was more historically aligned with Northeastern Republicans. Catholicism in the American South is rare EXCEPT in Louisiana where it dominates thanks to the state's Arcadian/Cajun French origins.

Fun fact, the "Fighting Irish" of Notre Dame University earned that moniker because they were fighting the virulently anti-Catholic KKK.

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On_my_last_spoon@reddit

No? My husband talks about his German and Italian heritage all the time and he’s Presbyterian. I know way more non-Catholics than Catholics and all of them talk about their ethnic heritage in some way

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rrsafety@reddit

I’d say yes. Americans of Italian, Irish, Polish and French Canadian descent are aware of their ancestry in a way that many Scots/English etc are not. just a general observation

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ThePurityPixel@reddit

n is 12 what?

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Appropriate-Food1757@reddit

No

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Remarkable_Inchworm@reddit

Where I live, there's a pretty heavy concentration of people from families that arrived in the last, say 100-150 years.

Irish. Italian. Puerto Rican. Dominican. Eastern European. Greek.

Some of those populations are predominantly Catholic... Irish/Italian/Puerto Rican/Dominican/Polish... probably others I'm not thinking of. So that might be part of it.

There's also a lot of Jewish people/families that immigrated in the same time period.

I could be wrong on this, but I feel like, in Jewish culture, people would generally identify as Jewish first and "nationality of my ancestors" second... while in the Italian/Irish/Puerto Rican/Dominican/Polish Catholic group they'd say country first and religion second.

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capsrock02@reddit

No

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Capable-Pressure1047@reddit

Understood you perfectly- I’d say absolutely yes!

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Offi95@reddit

Most Catholics today only get confirmed because it’ll shut their grandparents/parents up. It’s dropped the moment it’s ok to not care anymore

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OldRaj@reddit

My wife is second generation Polish American Catholic. I’m English/German Protestant and my family has been here for hundreds of years. My family never mentions our heritage probably because of how long we’ve been here. My wife and her siblings bring it up at family events just about every time we get together.

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Porschenut914@reddit

because Irish and Italian immigrants often in the early 1900s lived in specific neighborhoods. Italian immigrants often went back to Italy with their earnings. For many it was much more migratory, then settling in a new country. Thus the culture and language remained more connected to the old world. It was really only the post war suburban housing boom/white flight that started to increase integration.

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CTronix@reddit

Historically speaking Catholics often came to the the use in large sweeping immigrant waves from such places as Ireland and Italy. This combined with the open racism and discrimination they received when they arrived caused them to assume more racial identities tied to their ancestral homes and some of that cultural ID lingers today

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SBingo@reddit

My husband grew up Catholic. I did not. His greatgrandfather was born in Italy and came to the US. I have to go back hundreds of years and many, many generations to find an ancestor who was not born in the US. I identify strongly with my state. My husband also identifies strongly as American, but also has a lot of ties to his Italian identity and grew up with a lot of Italian traditions.

So I don’t feel like it’s so much religion as it is how new they are to the US.

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KR1735@reddit

This is a really interesting question.

Early in American history, Catholics were discriminated against. This got worse when the new immigrants, particularly Irish and Italian, dramatically increased the number of Catholics in America. Now combine anti-Catholic sentiment with anti-immigrant sentiment. A lot of these immigrants already had their own parishes, so then they started educating their kids, too. Now you've got the parochial school system.

When you have a bunch of people who share a common ancestry -- yeah, those people will incorporate that into their identity. Both their community identity and their family identity. Which is something non-Americans miss when they're huffing over Americans hyphenating themselves. There isn't one American experience. Your experience and that of your family is going to differ greatly based on what community your family comes from.

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anclwar@reddit

My Catholic family just identifies as American and Catholic. My Catholic friends just identify as American and Catholic.

The only people I personally know that link ancestry and religion are Greeks that practice Greek Orthodoxy, which is a very specific branch of Christianity rooted in Greek culture.

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oneislandgirl@reddit

I have no direct experience but I have historically heard a lot about the Irish Catholics or Italian Catholics in certain cities. Not sure if it is the same today or not.

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SatisfactionHour1722@reddit

Nope. Midwestern cradle Catholic and never mention it unless asked about my last name (clearly Germanic).

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Bright_Ices@reddit

To add to this: My Lutheran relatives in the Midwest see their Scandinavian heritage as very important to them. It’s important to me too, but I don’t think I ever talked about it at work. I’m not sure they did/do, either, but I always kept a strong separation between my personal life and work life anyway, so it’s impossible to say any of it is definitively related to religion.

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RemonterLeTemps@reddit

In Chicago, the group that identifies most strongly as Catholic are Hispanics, especially Hispanics whose families immigrated in the last 20-30 years. Another group are Haitians.

The other 'traditionally Catholic' ethnicities (Irish, Polish, Italian, etc.) seem to identify by religion much, much less. In fact, many have left the church altogether.

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September___17@reddit

I find the Irish and Scottish Americans to both identify strongly with their ancestors (at least in my area and there are Celtic events held). I wouldn't say it has to do with their religious beliefs, though. My grandma is from Scotland, so I always felt connected to my Scottish heritage.

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ExistentialTabarnak@reddit

I’m white with a Catholic background and identify pretty strongly with my French-Canadian and Italian heritage. They immigrated much more recently than most WASPs, so I think that’s why. Catholics as a group weren’t really accepted on the same level as Protestants until fairly recently. Even JFK had trouble during his campaigns because he was Catholic.

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TheBlazingFire123@reddit

Yes

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SallyAmazeballs@reddit

It's not that Catholics have stronger connections to their ethnic groups, but there are different regional religious practices in Catholicism all over the world. That means Catholics who immigrated here established different churches so they could keep practicing Catholicism in the ways they were used to back home. So, they're not Polish and Catholic, they're Polish-Catholic as a distinct identity/ethnicity with its own unique traditions and practices.

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Usuf3690@reddit

I think it seems that way because a lot of American Catholics are descendants of more recent immigrants than say English Americans or other Protestant peoples. My Italian and Polish ancestors came here in the early 20th century, I still have cousins in those countries. Another thing is, I come from Pennsylvania's anthracite coal region. A lot of not most people here are Catholic and in its heyday attracted people from all over Southern and Eastern Europe.A lot of immigrant communities had their own Churches that catered to their ethnicity. For instance the church I grew up in was for Italians, there were churches for Slovaks, and Poles, Germans, Lithuanians etc. All these groups had their own churches and to this day many still identify with that heritage.

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GSilky@reddit

Catholics were a "minority" population for a very long time in American history. The later 19th century started seeing mass Catholic immigration, and those populations were marginalized, creating the same reaction every marginalized population in the USA has.

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Mission_Ambitious@reddit

Grew up in an incredibly German and Catholic area. I definitely have always identified more with the German side, but I’m also not religious at all anymore.

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ScrimshawPie@reddit

I mean, I think it's because waves of immigration from Ireland, Italy, Poland especially were a little newer than some waves of immigrants. And yes, there was a real fear in America that Catholics would be loyal to the Pope instead of the United States. They were discriminated against. Possibly that is why they clung to their heritage a little more closely. That is why it was such a big deal Kennedy was the first Catholic president. There was an actual fear he'd do what the pope suggested. Italian Americans especially changed their names to fit in better, (Tony Bennett, Dean Martin) (other nationalities too of course,

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ToKeepAndToHoldForev@reddit (OP)

Not preachy at all, no worries! I did not word my post well apparently.

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Joseph20102011@reddit

In the coming years, the ethnic white Catholics will be of Hispanic descent, while those of German, Irish, Italian, and Polish Catholic descent will start identifying themselves as plain "American" for census purposes, like their Ulster Irish Protestant and English Protestant American predecessors.

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ToKeepAndToHoldForev@reddit (OP)

Okay I stepped away for 10 minutes and had 15 comments so think I pissed people off with this and I ain't mean to. I'm in Ohio so our protestant population is decidedly not anglo-american, so I'm not sure if the "xyz group immigrated more recently" thing holds any water (... hasn't the US had Irish immigrants for as long as we've had, I don't know, German* ones anyway?) but I agree that I am probably seeing the effects of a lot of catholics being descended from groups more... recently maligned in popular culture, like italians and irish, whilst also historically being maligned for being catholic than any pattern related to religion specifically. I'm not asking if you, specifically, catholic or otherwise, consider yourself Irish.

*I know not all germans are protestant bear the fuck with me here.

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lincolnhawk@reddit

I can see that association bearing out. Historically, I do believe Catholic diaspora communities had stronger segregation indexes in their churches than the protestants, which is just to say they tended towards one dominant ethnicity more so than a protestant congregation.

We’ve been here 400 years so I have elite disconnection from the immigrant experience.

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Think-Departure-5054@reddit

Just random. Me and my husband are not catholic but I find it very fascinating that in German and European. He loves to talk about being Irish

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Positive-Avocado-881@reddit

I think I get what you’re saying? Like hearing someone say they’re “Irish Catholic” is a thing and hearing “I’m Irish Baptist” isn’t. I guess you’re right?

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World_Historian_3889@reddit

I think people are confused (for no apparent reason ) but seems to make sense to me. And to an extent yeah, the proudest ethnic white American's especially in media are Irish Italians poles etc. which has more to do with history and migrational patterns then Catholicism.

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PossibilityOk782@reddit

Im from an Italian catholic family and it does seem like Irish and Italian americans cling to their ancestors country a little more than most other Europeans, not sure if its the catholic element or somthing else but I understand what you mean

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DrBlankslate@reddit

No.

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machuitzil@reddit

Huh. That's a weird one. I'm white, half Catholic half Episcopalian (Catholic-Lite), I never noticed any difference on either side of the family. We have more connection to our Swedish heritage than any other, on the Episcopalian, but it isn't very exaggerated or like, loud if that makes sense.

The Catholic side of my family has a lot of Irish heritage but we don't behave like, I dunno how to phrase this -like the stereotypical Bostonian. My Boston family doesn't go around calling themselves "Irish" either.

So at least in my case, neither. We're "proud" of our heritage, but aren't very vocal about it.

I've got a friend who's kind of an abrasive asshole, and he commonly dismisses it as "well, I'm Irish", and it's like bro, you're from La Jolla. Maybe don't slander an entire culture because youre an asshole, lol.

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MonicaBWQ@reddit

I think people whose ancestors immigrated within the last 2 or 3 generations are more likely to be Catholics and have a closer connection their ethnicity. People whose ancestors immigrated 250-300 years ago are more likely to be Protestant and may not have a strong connection to one ethnicity. That’s obviously a huge generalization and there are many exceptions.

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docfarnsworth@reddit

I think Irish and Italian Americans do and they're Catholic, but I don't think it's a Catholic thing.

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gothiclg@reddit

That kind of stuff really quit happening a long time ago. Nowadays everyone doing DNA tests out of curiosity

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thatsad_guy@reddit

n=12?

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Building_a_life@reddit

In general, immigrants from Ireland and the Catholic regions of southern and eastern Europe arrived more recently than immigrants from Protestant areas of Europe. They were called slur words and discriminated against. This history means their sense of ethnic identity may be stronger than earlier, less reviled, immigrant groups.

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seldom_seen8814@reddit

I have Dutch ancestry but I identify much more with black Americans (or Asian, Latino Americans, etc) than I do with white Dutchmen.

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Opus-the-Penguin@reddit

Are they all different ethnicities with the only common factor being that they're Catholic?

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ToKeepAndToHoldForev@reddit (OP)

Yes

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Sleepygirl57@reddit

I didn’t understand any of that. Especially n=12. What does that mean?

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SunShine365-@reddit

Not where I’m from. They’re Catholics who identify as being US citizens.

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ewheck@reddit

Protestants tend to be from ethnicities that aren't considered "cool" in the US (for lack of a better term), so maybe that would be why. I'm sure the majority of Irish and Italian Americans are Catholic, and those are two of the "cool" ethnicities. I don't think it's tied to religion. I don't think it's common for Polish Americans to talk about their ethnicity even though many of them are also Catholic.

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