This summer’s iconoclasts haven’t simply directed their anger and destruction and fire at Founding Fathers and Confederates. They’ve also come after the Catholic Church, including its saints, its churches, and its savior.
Christopher Columbus, who named his flagship the Santa Maria, got tossed in Baltimore Harbor. Protesters in Missouri targeted a statue of St. Louis in the namesake city, and one allegedly assaulted two people praying a rosary. St. Junipero Serra’s statue in Sacramento, California, was spray-painted and torn down, and the Ventura City Council rewarded the vandals by voting to remove the city’s own statues of the saint.
The anger at Columbus, Serra, and St. Louis has political angles to it. Come July, the anti-Catholic violence and vandalism have no such angle. It’s hard not to read it as an outbreak of anti-Catholicism.
At St. Stephen church in Chattanooga, Tennessee, someone beheaded a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
In Boston, someone lit a statue of Mary on fire.
In Florida, a man drove his car into a Catholic church, and then tried to light it on fire, while worshipers were inside.
A venerable mission church in California was burned (this may have been an accident).
In Miami, someone beheaded a statue of Jesus.
Most of this is property destruction and not interpersonal violence, but it shouldn’t be dismissed as mere property damage. If someone is beheading statues of Mary and Jesus, the person is likely doing it to convey a message. And that message is that, in our current cultural revolution, the church is the next target — that they want to take the church down.
So, the culture warriors who cheer on, or at least excuse, the destruction of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson statues should answer: What do you say about the destruction of churches, of statues of Jesus and Mary? Is this part of what you mean when you talk about the oppressed finding a voice and speaking up for justice?
Because if it is, please say so.
