In 2020, Black Lives Matter leader and Protestant Pastor Shaun King put out the closest thing that that movement had to a fatwa. The target of his ire? The Catholic faith.
In frightening echoes of how Irish and other European Catholics were treated by the Ku Klux Klan and other Anglo Protestant groups, King unleashed his frightening tirade on social media, writing:
Yes, I think the statues of the white European they claim is Jesus should also come down.
They are a form of white supremacy.
Always have been.
In the Bible, when the family of Jesus wanted to hide, and blend in, guess where they went?
EGYPT!
Not Denmark.
Tear them down.
In a brave article, Newsweek have pointed out the absurd nature of the BLM movement’s antipathy towards the Catholic faith:
In 2019, before the societal breakdown that happened with the start of the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter riots in the first half of 2020, 37 cases of vandalism or arson on Catholic property were reported to the FBI, according to the National Catholic Register. This was about the same amount as anti-Muslim vandalism (31 cases) but minuscule compared with antisemitic vandalism (684 cases).
All this changed in May 2020, when demonstrators protesting the death of George Floyd went after Catholic churches, such as Our Lady of Mount Lebanon–St. Peter Cathedral in Los Angeles, defacing it with graffiti that said, "Make America pay for its crimes against black lives." They also tore down statues of St. Junípero Serra.
During an orgy of violence in the second week of July, multiple Catholic sites across the country were hit, including an arson-related fire that destroyed much of the interior of the 249-year-old Mission San Gabriel Arcángel in San Gabriel, California. In October, protestors pulled down and defaced a statue of Serra at the nearby Mission San Rafael Arcángel, a move that infuriated San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone, who called for the perpetrators to be punished to deter others from defacing Catholic property.
Commenting on the article, Thomas Reese SJ claims that ‘What we have here is not so much anti-Catholicism as anti-clericalism’, which seems strange given the attacks on statues of Our Lady.
The article then states that abortion is the most common reason for attacks on churches.
It then points out that the current violence against Catholics in the United States is not dissimilar from the treatment of Jews prior to the Holocaust:
Some worry that increased vandalism of a religious group unused to such treatment is the first sign of a society ripping apart at the seams. Before German Jews got shipped off to concentration camps, there was the infamous Kristallnacht on November 9-10, 1938, when Nazi thugs, aided by civilians, destroyed or ransacked some 7,000 Jewish-owned businesses, along with hospitals, schools, homes and synagogues.
Two very important things are then pointed out:
The reluctance of mainstream media to cover the violence
The fact that most violence is taking place in states controlled by the Democratic Party
It compares this situation to France, where Catholics had to attend religious services under armed protection this Christmas, after recent beheadings and attacks on processions.
Christianity is the most persecuted religion in the world, because it is the most true, there is no reason to think that this persecution should be geographically confined.
Arson, Graffiti and More: Vandals Increasingly Target Catholic Churches (newsweek.com)
