So, my understanding is that they taught the Bible in public schools back then.

Since Catholics and Protestants have slightly different versions of the Bible, the Catholics asked if it was ok if in their neighborhood schools, would it be ok if their public schools used the Catholic Bible.

The Protestants only considered the Protestant Bible to be the true Bible, and the (slightly different) Bible used by the Catholics was therefore not the Bible.

And so this was characterized as “removing” the Bible from public schools, which really angered everyone who believed that teaching the Bible in public schools was very important.

In this era where people would flip out if you taught the Bible in public school, it’s so nuts that this fight was about which version schools should teach in public schools.

It should also be noted that this was just about two years after the Lombard Street Riots, where the Catholics were actually the aggressors, and were rioting against the Black population. And in that riot, the main Catholic instigators pretty much avoided punishment.

Crazy that in two years, the Catholics were involved in two sets of riots, one where they were the bigots, and another where they were the victims of bigotry. Wild time those 1840s.