Located in the foothills of Wyoming's spectacular wind river range, Wyoming Catholic College, an accredited four-year Great Books Institution is built on the

ancient Western tradition of the liberal arts and the freedom of the American West. The college

offers its students an immersion in the primary sources of the classical tradition, the grandeur of the

mountain wilderness, and the spiritual heritage of the Catholic Church. Students experience the

illumination of imagination and intellect through the great books and traditional disciplines,

literature and philosophy, mathematics and theology, science and Latin, and an outdoor program second to none.

The college celebrated an in-person graduation with its seniors last year and welcomed its largest freshman class ever this year. Learn more about the college's

unique space in the world of American higher education at Wyoming Catholic.edu. We have with us Michael

Bridenbach. He teaches history at the Ave Maria University. He's co-editor of the Cambridge

Companion to the First Amendment and Religious Liberty. His new book is

Our Dear Bought Liberty. Catholics and Religious Toleration in Early America. Welcome, Professor

Bridenbach. Thank you very much, Mark. All right. You say that in colonial America, quote,

Catholics were presumed dangerous until proven loyal.

Was the suspicion that strong?

It was.

At least at a theoretical level, as practice in law, they were considered to be dangerous

until proven loyal.

And I think you find this especially in the 1606 O of allegiance in England. This, of course,

was passed directly after the gunpowder plot of 1605, in which Guy Fox and his co-conspirators

attempted to assassinate the king in parliament. And after this episode, which had been later memorialized in England across the British

Commonwealth later on, in burning the Pope and effigy and so on, this had presented

a challenge to the very existence of the king. It was seen as a sectarian act of violence.

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