However you want to apportion the blame for the fracas on the National Mall featuring Native American activists, provocateurs from a group called the Black Hebrew Israelites, and some boys from Covington Catholic High School, no honest person can deny that the schoolboys were treated unfairly by the press and stone-throwers on social media.

But the outrage and the rush to destroy was not really about the high school kid with the patient smile — or the supposedly racist smirk, as so many chose to interpret it. It was and is an effort to inflict harm on the other side’s institutions. And Catholic schools are a prime target.