Catholic Church in the United Kingdom was not yet a reality, particularly in Ireland, where the Protestant Ascendancy was still in full force. The Treaty of Union of 1707, like the Act of Settlement, had stated that no "Papist" could succeed to the throne. Restrictions on the civil rights of Catholics only began to change with the passing of the Papists Act 1778, which allowed them to own property, inherit land and join the British Army, although even this measure resulted in the backlash of the Gordon Riots of 1780, showing the depth of continuing anti-Catholic feeling. After 1790, a new mood emerged as thousands of
Anti-Catholicism in literature and media the most fertile ground for anti-Catholic writing. Priests, when they appear on television shows, usually appear as pedophiles or idiots, and are rarely seen to be doing their jobs." On a Brazilian holiday for Our Lady of Aparecida, in an episode known as the "Kicking of the Saint", a bishop of the Pentecostal Universal Church of the Kingdom of God repeatedly beat a statue of said patron saint. In October 2006, top Catholic leaders in the state of Minnesota took a rare step in collectively calling on University of Minnesota President Robert Bruininks to reconsider the university's plan to stage