This article by Bill Donohue was originally published by Newsmax on April 29, 2015.
“Why Doesn’t the left Advocate for Persecuted Christians?” That is the question recently raised by Lucia Annunziata in the Italian edition of the Huffington Post (click here for the piece by Andrea Gagliarducci on her article).
Annunziata is a courageous woman — it takes guts for an atheist journalist to call out her friends on the left. She hammered them for their deadly silence on Christian persecution: “I ask myself where is the left, with a capital L?” She notes that its reticence is occurring “in front of the most terrible of crimes against the weakest — the massacres of Christians whose blood is shed in many parts of the world.”
The Italian leftist doesn’t mince words. “Why have I not received any petition to sign, though I receive many of varied kinds? Why has no one promoted, if not a public protest, a sit-in, or a meeting? I hear no slogans for persecuted Christians, nor do I get documents or petitions on the issue.”
Though she is wrong to praise the left for their “defense of the weakest” (e.g., they lead the fight to kill the unborn) she is right to say that “with few exceptions, never does the left express pain or horror for the men and women who die because of their faith.”
The answer to Annunziata’s question is straightforward: The left doesn’t care about Christian persecution because it doesn’t care about Christians. This is an understatement: it would be more accurate to say it has an animus against Christianity.
Why the hostility? Sexuality, pure and simple. It wants a no-holds-barred libertine understanding of sexuality. As such, it rightly identifies Christianity, especially Catholicism, as a bulwark to its advancement. Ironically, it is the West’s rejection of Catholicism’s sexual ethics, which prizes restraint, that is responsible for AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases.
Christians are getting it at home as well as abroad. While Muslim barbarians are murdering Christians abroad, without any push back from the left, left-wing Christian bashers at home are justifying anti-Christian bigotry. Consider the rants of Jeffrey Tayler, who writes for Salon.
Tayler’s most recent article on this subject is a congratulatory statement made on behalf of his hero, Bill Maher. If bigotry were against the law, Maher would have been jailed long ago. Tayler likes Maher’s brand of anti-Catholic humor, which is why he wants more of it. Earlier this year he implored readers to “offend religion more.”
It is one thing to be a proud bigot, quite another to be an historical dunce. Anyone who thinks that the world’s first totalitarians, namely, the architects of the French Revolution, are responsible for freedom of speech and rule of law is badly educated. If it weren’t for the Catholic Church, which gave us the world’s first universities and the world’s first successful opposition to tyranny, haters such as Tayler wouldn’t enjoy the protections they do.
Conservatism, as championed by Edmund Burke, believes in a small role for government; and Christianity, as championed by Catholicism, believes in natural law and natural rights. Both of these ideas are as anathema to the left as they are to totalitarianism.
That is why Hitler chose to govern the National Socialist Party; he ruled from the left. Moreover, from their crusades against Christianity in the 20th century — led by Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot — to their current tolerance for Islamist terrorism — the left has never been the friend of liberty. Just the opposite.
What motivates left-wing totalitarianism, as I point out in my new book, “The Catholic Advantage: Why Health, Happiness, and Heaven Await the Faithful,” is utopianism. The left rejects nature, and nature’s God, as well as Original Sin, which is why it is so confident about reconstructing human nature and setting everything right.
But in reality there is no such thing as heaven on earth. In fact, when the left gets control, it delivers nothing but poverty and genocide. To be idealistic is admirable; to be utopian is dangerous.
We are lucky to have Lucia Annunziata’s voice heard. Too bad she is a freak among the left.
Dr. William Donohue is the president of and CEO of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, the nation’s largest Catholic civil rights organization. The publisher of the Catholic League journal, Catalyst, Bill is a former Bradley Resident Scholar at the Heritage Foundation and served for two decades on the board of directors of the National Association of Scholars. The author of six books, two on the ACLU, and the winner of several teaching awards and many awards from the Catholic community, Donohue has appeared on thousands of television and radio shows speaking on civil liberties and social issues. Read more reports from Bill Donohue — Click Here Now.
