Anti-intellectualism is a modern reaction against the modern narrowing of reason to scientific reason. When the ancients and medievals called man a rational animal , they did not mean a computerized camera mounted in an ape. They meant by reason understanding, wisdom, insight, and conscience as well as logical calculation. And because they see that faith is not a matter of reasoning, they conclude that it must be a matter of feeling. Thus I believe comes to mean I feel and creeds simply have no place.
Faith becomes a leap in the dark instead of a leap in the light.
The Catholic ideal is the complete person, with a cool head and a warm heart, a hard head and a soft heart. The intellectual has a hard heart, the anti-intellectual has a soft head. The Church has always had a conservative head and a liberal heart, and the world has never understood her, just as it never understood Christ. Both are sacred. The first bishops, the apostles, formulated the Church's first, shortest, and most important creed, the Apostles' Creed.