Christopher Ferrara demonstrates that Americanism is a religion of Nation, Constitution and Democracy which has regularly taught doctrines antithetical to everything Catholicism cherishes most. So subtle and effective has it been that Catholics have ended not only by not fighting off its unacceptable doctrines, but by actually becoming some of its most fervent adherents and cheerleaders. This was already crystal clear by the end of the nineteenth century in expressions of wild, anti-Catholic superpatriotism at the time of the Spanish-American War.