In Today’s America, Catholicism Is the Most Persecuted Religion

Harrison Butker is a devout Catholic, a loving husband and father, a three-time Super Bowl champion, and widely regarded as one of the greatest kickers in NFL history. As of this past Saturday, he’s also a vicious misogynist — at least, if you take the media at their word. Per the BBC:

Kansas City Chiefs star Harrison Butker has faced criticism for attacking abortion rights and telling women graduates that one of their most important roles in life is “homemaker”.

The three-time Super Bowl winner’s comments were among a number of views he gave during a 20-minute commencement speech at Benedictine College, Kansas.

The Chiefs have not commented and the NFL said it was a “personal” matter.

However, more than 100,000 people signed a petition for his dismissal.

In his speech on May 11, the three-times Super Bowl winner addressed women graduates in the crowd, telling them they had been told “the most diabolical lies”.

“Some of you may go on to lead successful careers in the world. But I would venture to guess that the majority of you are most excited about your marriage and the children you will bring into this world,” he said.

Paul Kengor has already written a commendable defense of Butker’s entirely defensible (and praiseworthy) speech here at The American Spectator. I want to briefly weigh in on a secondary debate that emerged in the wake of the backlash — sparked, at least in part, by this post from the American Conservative’s Bradley Devlin:

Please tell me one other religion in the United States that currently faces more blatant and open persecution than Catholicism…

It’s not Judaism, it’s not Islam, it’s not Hinduism, it’s not ‘cafeteria’ Christianity…

You can’t name one. https://t.co/1vonFcJNep

— Bradley Devlin (@bradleydevlin) May 16, 2024

This is obviously and unambiguously correct — and there’s a body of evidence well above and beyond the explicitly anti-Catholic fervor that met Butker in response to his speech. As Brad pointed out elsewhere, Catholics are without a doubt the single most frequent and substantial religious target of the American security state — and the federal government more broadly. The FBI has tracked, targeted, and even infiltrated the churches of traditionalist Catholics, which the agency deemed as potential violent extremists. The “DOJ,” as Brad noted, “has particularly targeted pro-life Catholics for FACE Act prosecution, but refuses to prosecute FACE Act crimes against Catholics.” Catholic charities have been targeted by federal progressive mandates and dragged into the court system to defend their conscience rights. Even Catholic hospitals have been subjected to increasingly brazen persecution at the hands of the bureaucratic state. (RELATED: Kansas City Chiefs’ Harrison Butker Gives the Best Commencement Speech of 2024)

But all this stems from a much more pervasive, targeted anti-Catholic disposition among America’s ruling class. It’s often expressed casually, in passing — such as Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s infamous “the dogma lives loudly” comment about Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett or the rampant and specifically anti-Catholic resentment visible in the leaked emails of Hillary Clinton’s inner circle. But it manifests in material attacks, too: When Roe v. Wade was overturned, left-wing vandalists immediately set about attacking Catholic churches. It was the Catholics — and specifically the Catholics — that they viewed as the wellspring of right-wing evil.

All that was on display this week amid the Butker debacle. Within a matter of hours, the outrage on the left shifted from what Butker said, as a distinctive set of statements, to the broader insidious influence of the Catholic Church. On The View, a host accused Butker of “practicing” an “extremist” and “cult-like” sect of Catholicism, comparable to “some religious in the Middle East.” (Butker attends the Traditional Latin Mass). CNN columnist Jill Filipovic reminded her followers that while Butker “deserves all the criticism he’s getting,” the NFL player “also gave this speech at a Catholic school that very much institutionalizes and teaches its students these same misogynist, homophobic values.” She advised them to “worry more about these schools than a single graduation speech.” (“They are the most repressive educational institutions in America,” she added.)

There is simply no other religious faith that receives anything akin to this level of open, public hatred — or material state persecution — in modern America. So, it was bewildering when conservatives, of all people, took umbrage at Brad’s statement:

I’m just kind of thinking there aren’t any Christian students who can’t go to college right now because they are being harassed and threatened. But I know a lot of Jewish students in that boat. https://t.co/HZd0AZAwBD

— Erick Erickson (@EWErickson) May 16, 2024

The implication here — that Jews are more persecuted, as a religious cohort, than Catholics in America — is ridiculous. As a brief thought-experiment, think about any of the instances of anti-Catholic bigotry I cited above, and replace “Catholics” with “Jews”: The FBI monitors and infiltrates Orthodox Jewish synagogues due to suspicions that they might be violent extremists. Jewish Supreme Court picks are explicitly interrogated about the nature and fervency of their religious faith, with both U.S. senators and their allies in the media raising concerns that said faith might be disqualifying. High-level political staffers describe Judaism as a “middle ages dictatorship” — the words Clinton allies used to describe Catholicism in their leaked emails. Everyone — not least Republicans — would be screaming bloody murder.

It is remarkable to listen to conservatives and Republicans adopt the “safetyism” rhetoric that they spent the past decade mocking, as it pertains to campus anti-Semitism. In response to the campus uprisings, Republicans have scrambled to, among other things, pass brazenly unconstitutional speech-curbing bills to “fight anti-Semitism.” Catholics, on the other hand, have never been afforded that sort of catered legislation — even in the wake of a spate of genuinely violent anti-Catholic attacks over the past few years. That, in and of itself, should tell you all you need to know.

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