ABSTRACT
"Anti-Catholicism has always been the pornography of the Puritan", noticed Richard Hofstadter in his famous essay "The Paranoid Style in American Politics". This observation, made in the 1960s, draws upon centuries-old tradition of casting Catholics in the role of sexual perverts, not only in American politics but also in British politics and culture. This chapter dedicates to the Victorian novel and its depictions of Catholic sexuality, which, as the novelists often suggested, was either stifled and warped or rampant, but either way it transgressed the boundaries delineated by the Protestant family ideal. It also discusses Victorian gender roles and the ways in which Catholicism was allegedly undermining them. The Confessional Unmasked appeared in Henry Spencer Ashbee's second volume of Bibliography of Prohibited Books, where Ashbee gives the detailed description of the whole trial, quoting extensively from the book's raciest sections, for instance those dealing with sanctioned and prohibited sex positions.
