To persecute is to push down on a weaker group, at least somewhat continuously, in order to weaken or destroy it.
For Catholics, the example that sets the type is the persecution of Christians in ancient Rome. That could be quite severe, although the nature of Roman society and government meant it was mostly sporadic and localized.
The usual penalty for obdurate adherence to Christianity was death. That was cruel, but it reflected the limitations of pre-modern government. There were few public officials. Families and communities organized themselves and ran their own affairs, with the general government mostly carrying out a few specific functions: defense against invasion, maintenance of public order, administration of justice, public works like roads, harbors, and aqueducts, and—of course—collecting taxes.
Under such circumstances, punishments were simple, speedy, and direct: fines, whipping, exile, enslavement, execution. The point was to get the job done. Fines and beatings seemed an insufficient response to Christianity once its seriousness had become evident. That left exile, enslavement, and execution, all of which were used.
The persecution reached its climax under Diocletian, who wanted to reconstitute the empire on a basis that included rededication to the old Roman gods. That left no room for Christianity, and he tried to get rid of it. The effort failed—the Christians were too devoted, and by this time too numerous and well-regarded.
After that failure, the Romans in effect decided that if they couldn’t beat them, they would join them, and the empire became Christian. So the Roman persecutions ended happily. There was enough persecution to keep Christians serious and inspire them with examples of heroism, but not enough actually to eliminate them or even seriously discourage them.
The Roman persecutions had been based on the view that a novel religion that broke with ancestral tradition, worshiped a condemned criminal, held unauthorized private meetings, and rejected public festivals and civic rituals (like emperor worship) was self-evidently a bad thing that ought to be suppressed—especially if its adherents obstinately (Catholics would say faithfully) resisted what was considered correction.
From the Roman point of view, the persecutions, however bad in fact, seemed a normal part of maintaining public order. They thought it was the Christians and not their persecutors who were acting badly.
Something similar is true of persecution in general. People today speak of “hate” and “intolerance,” as if these explained everything. But they reject the classical liberal ideal of neutrality in favor of government efforts to reform social attitudes. It is impossible to do that neutrally, without trying to enforce a view about which ways of life are good and bad. And that means suppressing inconsistent views.
So, for contemporary Western governments, as for social authorities at other times and places, the basic issue is the nature of reality and good social order. If they think Christianity is in line with them, they will support it. If not, they will, in one way or another, try to weaken it to the point of insignificance.
Since Roman times there have, of course, been many persecutions of Christians, some continuing today. But there are complexities. Some, like the old-style communist ones, have been rather like Roman persecutions—only worse, since the intense ideological emphasis and the power of the modern state made them far more continuous and thorough.
Others have been less organized. In Nigeria, thousands of Christians are killed every year for being Christian, but the actions are somewhat random, and it’s terrorist and tribal groups rather than the government who are at work. In other places, Christians are attacked or punished for something connected to Christianity rather than Christianity as such. A believer may be punished for proselytizing, or a priest killed for speaking up against some social or political evil.
Above all, there’s a tendency to make persecutions less violent. That happened in much of the communist world after Stalin. And in the West the comprehensive reach and activity of the modern state, and its growing integration with what were once considered private businesses and institutions—for example, regarding efforts to mold attitudes and understandings—give growing pertinence to the concept of “soft persecution.”
That is a situation in which dissent from the official ideology is formally permitted, but social disapproval, institutional policies, and various legal requirements make life increasingly difficult for those who reject it. In its modern form, it is an expression of the growth of market and bureaucratic arrangements, which have come to form an ever more integrated structure that guides the whole of life and radically weakens informal and inherited social ties.
In such a setting, people find it hard to know who they are apart from career and other formal aspects of social position. That makes them controllable. In addition, they are constantly bathed in messages from educators, employers, advertisers, journalists, entertainers, and so on, inculcating the unique legitimacy of the established order. The result is a system of top-down social control that becomes ever more comprehensive, pervasive, and effective even as punishments become more gentle.
If you are a dissident in a way that our rulers care about—for example, someone who pushes a serious alternative to official ideas about good and bad in a way that they fear may gain traction—you are likely to find yourself effectively shut out of public discussion. You may lose access to banking services and find it difficult to get and hold a job. If you are a baker, you may be sued for refusing to produce a cake honoring the purported marriage of two men. If you are a coach, you may lose your job for saying the sexes differ in athletic ability. And if you are employed by a large organization, your employer is likely to train you in correct thought in order to ward off “hostile environment” lawsuits by sexual, cultural, or religious minorities.
But here we have the problem that persecutors always think their actions are justified. The Romans thought they were right to call out and cancel Christians for what they considered antisocial attitudes and practices. So why wouldn’t people today feel the same way? Why wouldn’t they take to heart the Wikipedia article about the “Christian persecution complex,” which says it’s a fantasy provoked by loss of privilege, and ignore complaints?
That’s all the more likely, because the authorities think the persecuting boot is on the other foot. In their view, it is the baker, coach, and “hostile” employees mentioned above who are the persecutors. Christians have always persecuted other people to advance their favored form of society—or so people say, so why listen to them now? Then it was burning heretics; now it is violating the civil rights of sexual minorities by trying to get pornography out of school libraries. In both cases, though, people see the same principle at work.
So, our complaints are not likely to do much good: there is no neutral standard for us to appeal to. What matters is to understand, articulate, and—above all—accept and live by our own position. Then suppressing it will seem more trouble than it is worth. More importantly, if it really does tell us the best way to live, we will get the benefit of that, and demonstrate in our lives the perversity of attempting to suppress it.
Adversity clarifies issues, so the blood of the martyrs has been the seed of the Church. The same may prove true of the struggles of the canceled. If we remain true to what we are, our weakness, compromises, and betrayals will not stand in the way. May God help us rise to the occasion.
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Good point. It is futile to try to get the oppressors to stop oppressing Catholics. It also distracts us from the task before us to live our our Christian vocation in our day to day lives. Even the oppression that emanates from within the Catholic Church by its leaders should be treated similarly. Employing the principle of subsidiarity, we need to find or create small communities of like-minded Catholics to live out the faith we profess. And let’s never forget that we are called to be apart from this world; we are in it but not of it.
Well put brother
I was listening to a podcast this morning. The gentleman being interviewed had his ministry’s events cancelled at several Protestant churches that he’d first assumed taught a biblical perspective on marriage.
The explanation he was given for the cancellations wasn’t that the churches had changed their teachings but that they just didn’t want to deal with protestors. So we’re promised by Christ that we will be persecuted for our faith but then pastors attempt to remove any possibility of that occurring on church property.
Regarding ‘persecution’, perhaps what goes around comes around.
Officials named 27-year-old Travis Ikeguchi as the man who shot and killed mother-of-ten Laura Ann Carleton after making homophobic remarks about a Pride flag hanging outside her store in Cedar Glen on Friday.
Ikeguchi’s final Twitter post>
@TravisIkeguchi
There is only one way to the path of salvation and to have eternal life and that is through Jesus Christ. And yes, the path is narrow.
INCITE:
transitive verb
: to move to action : stir up : spur on : urge on
Thank you. Hate is always trying to cancel Christ by striking His Mystical Body. But this time it is global.
We are living in the second worldwide attempt to cancel Christ. The gnostic philosophies fueling this flood of hate have been building for centuries, and it could go on for centuries. We will need our catacomb businesses and schools to care for ourselves or simply survive. Many will be exiled from the workplace and government. Some will try to blend in by practicing ketman. Eventually, we must all be prepared to pick up our cross to join our Master on Golgotha. There is no other way than His Way. And the Way to Heaven is Heaven (St. Teresa of Ávila)
I once had a bumper sticker which said “I am a fool for Christ, whose fool are you?” 😂 God bless,my friend
Better God’s Fool than the Pope’s Monkey. 🤓
I believe there is a middle ground between Jesus and Nietzsche that has been ignored for far too long. There is a place in this world for Aristotle and the other peripatetic thinkers. There is a place in this world for their teachings, especially Aristotle, on the nature of man, the nature of truth, the good, happiness and the pursuit of the virtues. There is a place for universals, for the logical and rational arguments leading to the Unmoved Mover, and the great and unknown God of the Greeks that St. Paul suggests becomes the nexus for both the pagan and Christian. When the 1960’s tossed out, by mere fiat, the great minds that provided the solid intellectual foundation for Western Civilization, we became unmoored from our own identity and even common sense itself. The void left behind was filled by alternatives that were clearly inferior: Descartes, Kant, Mill, Locke, etc. Perhaps, through a renewed interest in the early Greeks like Aristotle, we can still reach the “modern, secular, man – “a man without a chest” before he completely self-lobotomizes. One thing is certain, the Marxists/Alinskyites are working overtime to kill off the intellect at every level in our public “educational” system. We don’t have much time left…
Thank you, well put. You said it much better than I could. In the last few decades our world, especially the Western part of it, has been accepting and promoting immortality as morality. What was commonly accepted (Biblical ethics) as good is now being labeled as bad, and what was commonly accepted as bad is now inverted as the enlightened good. Thus such behavior as homosexuality, divorce, and promiscuity etc is not only excepted ; but promoted as good. Any dissenting voice is to be silenced and labeled as bigoted. People don’t want to be told they are wrong and they will not tolerate noncompliance to their norms any more than the Roman Empire did or even earlier when Daniel was put in the furnace for noncompliance.
The time is coming for us also (unless there is another great awakening) and we must prepare and educate our children. It will begin with labeling, progress to marginalizing and exclusion and end up in imprisonment and reeducation (if they even bother) and finally end in torture and execution. With modern technology it will be very easy to locate and eradicate us. Hiding will be virtually impossible. Perhaps the end times are truly near. Even so come Lord Jesus! May God have mercy on us all?
I’m not afraid or pessimistic,however, because I know the end of the story! 😇
Adversity is met with fortitude, among the four intellectual virtues justice, prudence, and temperance. Fortitude in remaining faithful can end in martyrdom. A primary ‘seed’ in increasing the faith as alluded to by Kalb. Suffering persecution may elicit from us the exercise of all four virtues in our witness to Christ.
Justice, the major virtue since it incorporates all the virtues. Unlike the others, which are subject to measure, justice has no measure. It is either right or wrong, just or unjust. Although Kalb is correct in noting today complaint against injustice may prove futile, we may study the response of the martyrs. St Justin Martyr did offer public witness to the faith, St Ignatius of Antioch within the Christian community.
Recently Pope Francis commenting during WYD on evangelization offered a critique on proselytizing as compared to spreading the faith by love, respect. Example of this form of witness is found in government settings like the military, the VA. Evangelicals tend to be strident, government demands privacy. Proselytizing in this context assumes an unwanting invasion of one’s right to privacy and freedom of conscience. Although Paul and the other Apostles did proselytize – within their own religious community. That was the difference.
Taking all this into account Francis has a valid point. Added to what the pope recommends are the theological virtues, faith, hope, and charity. Spreading the faith is our mission whatever the circumstances. Silence can be a witness in given circumstances. Above all it’s the integrity of the faith addressed with prudence and love that is warranted.
VIVA CRISTO REY!
Stand firm for Christ and His Church.
(Though today that also means against those who claim to be of Christ and His Church but are actively involved in its destruction.)
A major difference between Roman persecution and modern is this. Roman persecution was directed at Christians, and usually at them only, because they refused to recognise Caesar as Lord, whose power and authority was total. The Christians insisted that Jesus is Lord and that everyone, Caesar included, must serve and obey Him.
Modern persecution involves the enforcement of the ascendancy of homosexualism, or the Sexual Revolution, as a public religion – which in reality is a death cult that insists that sterile sex is better than fertile, that children neither need nor deserve a relationship with their parents, and that any difference between men and women is evidence of injustice. It is an existential threat to any human society, which is why Christendom exterminated the Cathars. The sexual revolutionaries of their day.
Early on Pope Francis had actually recommended hermeneutics. There was another word I can’t remember, I am not trained in these areas. So we can allow that he intuits that people have difficulties. Your indication alternative “ketman” could be too constraining. The situation is about both correction (where necessary) and witness but admittedly one can only do so much. At that point one has to pray more I think.
Ketman seems to have its root in Islam and I would rather do something else like meditate the Annunciation or the our Father and such, not abide my own thought.
Why would you ever introduce ketman. I never heard of it until today and now that I know, I would have preferred to hear of it in a different context. Disturbing.
So much goodwill and distinction are shown everywhere even by “Francis skeptics”. And we have to trust God over all of it because that is His will.
“The usual penalty for obdurate adherence to Christianity was death. That was cruel, but it reflected the limitations of pre-modern government.”
It wasn’t cruel. It was either unjust, or both cruel and unjust.
It’s deplorable that often people don’t use the correct words. Cruelty is an evil attitude when punishing. Injustice is evil – i.e. unjust – punishment.
“People today speak of “hate” and “intolerance,” as if these explained everything.”
Maybe the privately-controlled media and ideologues use this language, but the main problem is that it is deceptive, vague, or both. “People” are capable of determination and legal action for fraud or perhaps a new tort.
“But they reject the classical liberal ideal of neutrality in favor of government efforts to reform social attitudes. It is impossible to do that neutrally, without trying to enforce a view about which ways of life are good and bad. And that means suppressing inconsistent views.”
Government neutrality is a myth. You can go back to the beginning of the USA and you will find that some legislatures had behaved illegitimately with regards to divorce. (Divorce meaning severing the marital bond and authorizing re-marriage before the death of one’s “ex” spouse.)
Perhaps historically things were different with regards to actual cases, but a very “First Amendment case” now would be for a husband to deny the alleged authority of a government over his sacramental marriage through the Catholic Church after it purported to grant a divorce.
“In such a setting, people find it hard to know who they are apart from career and other formal aspects of social position. That makes them controllable.”
I disagree with this. What does it mean to “know who you are”?
“In addition, they are constantly bathed in messages from educators, employers, advertisers, journalists, entertainers, and so on, inculcating the unique legitimacy of the established order.”
If their house is “built on sand,” then they will be deceived. But that might be their fault for refusing to look towards the true Catholic Church for guidance.
“The result is a system of top-down social control that becomes ever more comprehensive, pervasive, and effective even as punishments become more gentle.”
Being unjustly discharged from job and being prevented from able to find another isn’t gentle. Technically, both are along the lines of attempted or actual murder.
Immorally locking a person in a jail cell and starving them to death is murder – even if it takes a long time. Just because a person doesn’t use a gun, doesn’t mean that the wrong differs in essence. However, the former is much more subtle.
Causing or being a part of a conspiracy to make a person without debilitating disability “unemployable” will have the effect of causing economic damage to a person. Even if it won’t guarantee starvation – like the above example – it will cause serious issues which ought not to exist.
“But here we have the problem that persecutors always think their actions are justified.”
I suggest a visit to the Sacrament of Penance over this statement. It is at least error. Evil is such that malice is possible. If the word “rationalized” replaced “justified,” then this would be closer to or identical with the truth.
“So why wouldn’t people today feel the same way? Why wouldn’t they take to heart the Wikipedia article about the “Christian persecution complex,” which says it’s a fantasy provoked by loss of privilege, and ignore complaints?”
Human beings are rational animals. It is likely impossible for a person to become “conscience-less.” It certainly is impossible to lose one’s ability to be rational. This isn’t about feeling, but thought.
The Russians may erroneously think that they are justified with their war in Ukraine, but that doesn’t change the fact that that war is capable of objective evaluation in terms of justice.
Just because there are some prisoners who will lie and say that they aren’t guilty, doesn’t mean that others won’t agree that they ought to be punished by prison.
“But here we have the problem that persecutors always think their actions are justified.”
Shane, I agree with your assessment of this point. Although we are to presume that those who err do so in good faith, that presumption is rebuttable. Once rebutted in the particular case, it becomes justified to repress error by forced of the criminal law
Even among serious Catholics there are those who cancel other serious Catholics. The Institute for Religious Life has been publishing a series of articles by cloistered nuns of different Orders who are trying to follow Pope Francis’s teaching in Vultum Dei Quaerere and Cor orans and who are yet ignored by the major Catholic news sites. You can read the articles here: https://cloisteredlife.com/resources