The Left’s denizens of moral relativism are targeting Catholic Churches. Some claim this is a recent development. History teaches otherwise.
Per Catholic Vote:
“Since 2020, there have been at least 140 attacks against Catholic churches in the United States, including thefts of sacred tabernacles, fires which severely damaged historic churches, spray-painting and graffiti, windows smashed, and statues destroyed (often with heads cut off). Crucially, while some of the attacks have included thefts, most have only involved property destruction, indicating that the motive is not primarily material gain.”
While the commencement of these anti-Catholic attacks pre-date the leak of a draft Supreme Court opinion that would overturn Roe vs. Wade, presently Catholic Vote has also been compelled to compile a rapidly expanding list of the “more than 20 pregnancy resource centers and offices of pro-life groups…attacked since a draft Supreme Court opinion overturning Roe v. Wade was leaked in early May.” Further, “pro-abortion domestic terrorists have claimed responsibility – and are promising more attacks in a ‘summer of rage.’”
Thus, the temptation is to ascribe the motivation for these attacks to the Left’s virulent support for abortion. The nearly nude protester interrupting a mass at St. Veronica’s Parish in Eastpointe, Michigan, wasn’t screaming “Keep abortion safe, legal, and rare!” She was screaming: “Overturn Roe? Hell, no! Abortion without apology!”
Yet such is the manifestation of the Left’s far deeper motive.
The French philosophe Jean Jacques Rousseau is the font of the Left’s intellectual cesspool. Amongst his anti-Enlightenment screeds was the necessity of an elite establishing a “civil religion.” This civil religion would be those ideas that a people must hold above all others, including their own religious views (if still allowed to possess them). Those recalcitrant citizens who refused to sacrifice their freedom of conscience on the altar of the state would ultimately be “forced to be free” – usually done with the help of the guillotine.
Thus Fr. James V. Schall’s warning: “The modern idea that the only ‘Truth’ we ourselves make is a narrow view that quickly cuts us off from what is…No one will seek the highest if he believes that there is no truth, that nothing is his fault, and that the government will guarantee his wants.” In consequence, the Catholic Church must remain an unerodable rock amidst the virulent tide of moral relativism.
It can be no surprise then, that from the French Revolution to the present, the Left has had a particular animus against the Catholic Church. (While people are far more familiar with the Right’s anti-Semitism, the Left has also long held an animus against Judaism, and it is presently intensifying.) Why? Built upon eternal truths granted to us by God – including the imperfectability of human nature – the Catholic Church and all religions that oppose moral relativism and secularism constitute existential threat to the Left’s coercively imposed “civil religion.”
In 2005, Pope Benedict the XVI, then writing as a Cardinal, delineated the boundaries of the intellectual and spiritual battle space:
“Today, having a clear faith based on the Creed of the [Catholic] Church is often labeled as fundamentalism. Whereas relativism, that is, letting oneself be ‘tossed here and there, carried about by every wind of doctrine’, seems the only attitude that can cope with modern times. We are building a dictatorship of relativism that does not recognize anything as definitive and whose ultimate goal consists solely of one's own ego and desires.”
In consequence, the Catholic Church and pro-life organizations that stand in opposition to the Left’s dictatorship of relativism and its abominable diktats are targeted for attack. The corporate media, a bastion of the Left, remains muted, at best, in the wake of these bigoted acts.
Some may wonder why the bigoted Left has not decried the fact that President Biden and U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) state they are “devout Catholics.” But rather than refute the point, they prove the point: both Mr. Biden and Ms. Pelosi have subordinated the dictates of their Catholic faith to the civil religion of the Left, most notably in the instance of abortion. They are walking advertisements for how to bow before the civil religion – and to be rewarded for doing so.
G.K. Chesterton observed how “the danger of loss of faith in God is not that one will then believe in nothing, but that one will believe in anything” – including a Leftist civil religion that subordinates the word of God to the whims of man.
Nevertheless, given how public attention and concern have recently forced the hand of Mr. Biden’s Department of Justice, specifically the F.B.I., to investigate, perhaps these Leftist criminal acts of violence and political intimidation may no longer plague Catholics, pro-life supporters, and all who abide the law in our nation.
A Human Events contributor, the Hon. Thaddeus G. McCotter (M.C., Ret.) represented Michigan’s 11th Congressional district from 2003-2012, and served as Chair of the Republican House Policy Committee. Not a lobbyist, he is a frequent public speaker and moderator for public policy seminars; and a Monday co-host of the "John Batchelor Radio Show," among sundry media appearances.
