"What the Catholic Church in the United States really needs to stiffen its backbone is a good persecution." How often, I wonder, have I heard somebody say something like that? How often have I said something like it myself?
Be careful what you ask for—you may get it. The persecution of religion in America has begun, with the Catholic Church a prime target.
Don't think I'm making the wild-eyed claim that this new persecution either is or ever is likely to become a bloody one resembling the purges of the French and Mexican Revolutions or the Communist war on religion—eruptions of violence in which thousands of clergy, religious, and lay faithful were killed. It won't be a repetition of the Spanish civil war, just 75 years ago, when death squads of the anticlerical left executed the incredible total of 12 bishops, 283 religious women, 4,184 priests, 2,365 religious men, and an unknown number of laity whose only crime was being faithful Catholics.
No, the persecution of religion in the United States won't be like that. It will be a tight-lipped campaign of secularist inspiration in which the coercive power of the state is brought to bear on church-related institutions to act against conscience or go out of business.
We're seeing this in Canada, too, especially in encroachments on Catholic education.
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