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What Religious Liberty?
The Incredible Ever-Expanding Dead End
Anti-Cure, Anti-Life
Whose Values in Education?
Toppling Dominos
Anti-Christians don't have to be Hypocrites but Many Volunteer
Intolerant Tolerance
The Emperor's Clothes or a Cheap Tuxedo
The Myth of Hitler's Pope, Part I
The Myth of Hitler's Pope, Part II
Embryonic Stem Cell Research Again
The Madness of Secularism
"Don't Impose Your Religion on Me"
Dictatorship of Relativism
Two Babies at Christmas
Living Will or Death Warrant?
Court Ordered Slow Motion Torture-Death Sentence
Men in Black
A Lot of Hot Air
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"Stay with us, Lord"
Secular-to-English Dictionary
Moral Guidance for Catholics in this Election
Christians Losing America
Stem Cell Wars
Catholic Pro-Abortion Politicians and Communion
Useful Idiots
Who Killed Jesus?
A Primer on Gay Marriage
Whose Side are You on?
Vouchers Revisited
Real and Fake Cloning Bans
Broken Compasses
No Room in the Inn
Killing Fields Revisited
Gay but not Merry
Adam and Steve?
The Battle for the Court
Victimless Crimes
More Salt, Please
The Next Big Fight
When Religion Becomes Evil
Virginity Making a Comeback?
You've Come a Long Way, Baby
The Incarnational Approach
The Many Meanings of ACLU
Things Your Media Never Told You
A Nasty Little Secret
Two Points of View on the Birth of Jesus
You Gotta Kill Them.  How Else Are They Going To Learn?
Perplexing Christmas Questions
How Do You See Christ Today?
Now that there is Another Ewe, will there be Another You?
What is Conscience Anyhow?
Divorce of Love and Life
What Counts as a Mass?
What is a Covenant?
I Wish I had Your Faith
Are there Too Many Decrees of Nullity?
Dutch Treats
Ecumenism
Going from Baby Doe to Granny Doe
Comments of Evangelium Vitae
The Exception Corrupts the Rule
Good Morality or Good Medicine
Generation-X'ers Smart in Every Way But One
A Matter of Good Breeding
Herod and Pontius Pilate at the Polls
Hitler's Pope or Righteous Gentile?
The Unknown God
What exactly is wrong with homosexuality?
Ideology Trumps Science, Reality, and Common Sense
What Exactly is an Indulgence?
Infallibility and Error in the Church
Pilate Asked, "What is Truth?"
The Truth about Families
New Killing Fields
Choice of Language and Language of Choice
A Lexicon for Our Day
Why are there so many bodies?
Marijuana, Medicine or Menace?
Medical Research and Ethics
Meditation
"You Taught me well, Mommie dearest"
Moral Fallout
Neutral on the Wrong Side
"These are the Nineties After All"
Many are Wed but Few are Married
"...Prepare him for additional obligations"
A Useful Lie
A Partridge in a Pear Tree
Religious Persecution in the U.S.?
What Makes a Person a Person?
The Point of a Point of View
Politically Correct, Morally Depraved
Population Controllers out of Control
Practical Dreamers
Social Progress through Immorality
Shall we Do Evil for Goodness Sake?
Reason and Faith
Resurrection Glory
Same Sex Marriages?
Pearl of Great Price
"I used to be schizophrenic, but we're all right now"
Sexual Morality Irrelevant in Judging Public Officials?
Undesirable Side Effects
Some News is Good News
SOSSLQ's, not POSSLQ's
Spoils of Splits
Why Attend Mass Every Sunday?
Is it All Right to Pull the Plug?
An Appeal for Intolerance
Topics Catechetical
A Voting Catechism
A Moral Guide to Voting
Vouchers: Has Their Time Come?
What Child is This?
What did they die of?
You are the Man
You may be a liberal if...
Get Rid of that Worthless Relative
Planned Un-Parenthood
Weighing Pro-Life Issues Prior to Voting

by Monsignor James C. Brunner

Faith Points

The Church has always endured persecution. Authorities in Jerusalem tried to forbid the Apostles to preach about Christ. Mighty Rome tried to kill the new religion by means of torture and killing its adherents. In our own day we witness persecution of the Church. Recently East Timor Catholics were subjected to an organized reign of terror and a full-scale massacre there was averted by intervention of international troops. China tries to control the Church by means of appointments of bishops by the government rather than by the Holy Father. China curtails religious services of Catholics loyal to the Holy See. No one may legally enter India as a missionary and proselytizing is forbidden. In Cuba the Church cannot have schools of its own and churches seized in the revolution of 1959 have not been returned. The worst form of persecution currently is in Sudan where government manipulation of religion has reached barbaric proportions. The Muslim-Arab government tortured two captured priests and threatened them with crucifixion. All these examples are outside the United States. We Americans think, surely with our constitutional guarantees of freedom of religion, things like that could not happen here. Or could they? Can we be confident that we are immune from religious persecution?

In every case of persecution those in power try to eliminate a minority that is an obstacle to the implementation of its worldview or policies. Thus Rome persecuted the Church because Christians refused to bend the knee to the emperor as a god. Emperor worship was considered a necessary tool for uniting the disparate peoples of the empire. Anyone who deviated from this was a threat to the unity of the empire and therefore an enemy to be eliminated. Christians of East Timor had to be eliminated because they voted for freedom from the central Indonesian government. They had a right to do this because East Timor was taken over by force by the Indonesian government. The government feared that hundreds of other islands in the national chain would likewise want to defect and so the Christians had to be taught a lesson. Besides, the prevailing religion of the government was Muslim with no love for Christianity. China must control the Catholic Church in its midst because the Church has condemned Communism as a form of government and for its suppression of religious and human rights.

In our nation we are not a threat to the government but we are a threat to the value system of many and therefore need to be controlled and, should that prove to be impossible in the future, to be eliminated. The Church is an obstacle, a burr in the side of those who refuse to believe that the commandments are still relevant and that there are universal moral absolutes. There are things that one must avoid under any and all circumstances. That does not sit well with those who dislike the commandments and find them restrictions for carrying out their policies. One of these policies is abortion. Catholics and many other Christians oppose it. We are a threat to abortionists because they fear that we may return the laws of the land to prohibiting it once again. That would deprive them of the irresponsible sex that is protected by the so-called right to abortion. Christians are a threat to those who refuse to confine sex within the confines of a marriage between one man and one woman. The Church is a latent threat for those who prefer easy sex and easy divorce. Christians are an obstacle to homosexuals and their sympathizers who want to see homosexuality given the respect now given to marriage as well as economic benefits many firms extend to heterosexual couples.

There are several tactics employed by those who consider the Church an obstacle to minimize its influence. One is to marginalize and demonize the Church. (It is ironic that persons who largely do not believe in demons demonize us.) We are part of the religious right, wackos, religious nuts, kooks, loonies, ignoramuses, and fanatics. Namecalling of that sort applied to Jews of whatever persuasion, blacks, or almost any other ethnic group would be denounced as beyond the pale and would earn the well-deserved appellation of bigot. In the case of Christians, however, this sort of bashing is perfectly acceptable and the perpetrators do not even recognize it as bigotry. It also saves them from the task of debating moral issues with persons who by definition belong to the lunatic fringe. Committing them to a mental institution where they cannot hurt themselves or others might be more appropriate.

Another tactic is to equate traditional morality with hate. Opposition to abortion in their eyes is nothing more than an attempt to deprive women of equality. Opposition to full sexual freedom is taken as an emblem of hate. When Christians say they hate the sin and not the sinner this, claim opponents of Christian morality, begets hate motivated violence against the homosexual community. Apparently the only way Christians can avoid being guilty of such hatred is to drop all their teachings on objective morality and particularly any moral absolutes as they apply to the sins de jour.

A third tactic is to try to cleanse the alleged Christian hatred of abortionists, free sex advocates, and homosexuals is by means of laws. Christian bashers have not been very successful in using the democratic process to bring about laws to control Christian attitudes toward the immorality that they espouse, but they have achieved some triumphs by short-circuiting the legislative process and utilizing the judiciary. Thus the Supreme Court’s outlawing of laws forbidding abortion was a successful end run around non-pliant legislatures that previously voted against liberalization of abortion laws. Those promoting the acceptance of homosexual behavior are using the same tactic in the case of a Boy Scout leader who is an open and avowed homosexual and for this reason was removed from the Boy Scouts. His case is before the Supreme Court now. One would like to think that the Constitution protects the right of free association and that organizations should not be subject to having their policies and values dictated by government. Should the Supreme Court of the United States decide against the Boy Scouts of America it will have tremendous repercussions for all private organizations in the country. Will Catholic schools have to accept teachers who are known homosexuals or be guilty of discrimination? Will federal funds be withheld from Catholic schools, for example, federal lunch program assistance, should they refuse to place known homosexuals on their teaching staffs?

It is not too far a reach to imagine that elimination of unwelcome ideas may someday extend to the elimination of those who possess them. The Church will always be an obstacle to the spirit of the world because it does not belong to this world. Jesus himself said that people would listen to his followers as much as they listened to him. Persecution is painful, but Jesus who was persecuted tells us to have courage because he has overcome the world.