(Written
and posted 30 June 2022)
There has been much wailing and gnashing of teeth about the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade. True, it is a triumph of misogyny, especially some of the extreme legislation that has been passed by state legislatures. In Ohio, it is now illegal for a physician to perform an abortion even if the fetus can never survive after birth. This is beyond cruel. In many states now, if you are raped, even by a family member, too bad, you must have the baby that is a constant reminder to the woman of her violation. To get a glimpse of what the future holds, one need only look at the Catholic Church, as this has been their crusade for the better part of fifty years.
I was seven years old when Roe v. Wade happened. One of the nuns at my Catholic school wore a necklace engraved with the date, and when I asked her what it meant, the flat reply was that it was the day the United States allowed babies to be killed, and she prayed every day that it would be overturned. I was only seven; was that really an appropriate thing to say? If you are Catholic, anything that promotes Catholic dogma is an appropriate thing to say. Looking back, there was a lot of programming and indoctrination that occurred. I grew up, went to college, learned how to think for myself, and realized that I had been brainwashed; sadly, most Catholics I know still embrace it, hook, line, and sinker.
Up until recently, Catholics in the United States have been a persecuted minority. Entire political movements, such as the Know-Nothings, developed to keep us Protestant pure. In 1928, Al Smith, the governor of New York, became the first Catholic to be nominated for the Presidency by one of the two major parties, and lost in a landslide to Herbert Hoover, who never held a major elected office, in a landslide. Smith’s Catholicism had a major role in his defeat, as many evangelical Protestants believed that Smith’s loyalty would be to the Vatican before his country. This anti-Catholic bias was still quite stout when Kennedy became the first Catholic elected President. It took sixty more years and the election of Biden to have the second Catholic President.
As someone who went to Catholic schools, I can attest that the Church is not very interested in teaching the faithful about its own history. That is a shame, for a knowledge and understanding of the history of the Church helps provide insight into how the Church successfully achieved its objective, namely the control of the government of the United States. Seven of the nine Supreme Court justices are, or have been, Catholic (Gorsuch converted to Episcopalian, also known as Catholic-lite), Biden is Catholic, Pelosi, the leader of the House of Representatives, is Catholic, and Durbin, the second-in-command in the Senate, is Catholic. Catholics, in a century, went from being outcasts to being in control. No one who understands the history of the Church will find this surprising at all, as the Catholic Church is very good at playing the long game.
For the first three hundred years of its existence the Catholics were the outsiders and routinely persecuted. The first Pope, Peter, was executed, and many of his successors were too. The early church recognized that in order to survive, its membership had to include prominent Roman citizens in order to be part of the establishment and end the persecutions and slayings. As we all know, Paul was a prominent Roman who became Catholic, and through Paul and his proselytizing expanded Catholicism among the Romans, establishing Catholic communities throughout the empire. Over time, as the Catholic population grew, persecutions diminished. Yes, there were occasional emperors who would go back to the persecuting ways to distract a population restless with the overall decline of the quality of life in the empire, but for the most part, as time passed, the Catholics were left alone as they blended in by adopting Roman holidays as feast days. After three hundred years, Constantine happened, and the Catholic Church, and the Roman state, for all practical purposes, become one. The Catholic Church was now in control.
Even after Rome itself fell, the Catholic Church remained in control, as the successor states were all Catholic and sought the blessing of the Pope. It wasn’t until the rise of Islam that the Catholic Church once again found itself on the outside, and once again played the long game. One thing people don’t understand about the Church is that it does not take kindly to having its authority usurped, and it will, no matter how long it takes, come out on top. For seven hundred years, the Church fought to kick the Muslims out of Europe and retake its domains, culminated with the final victory of the Reconquest in 1492.
It wasn’t just the Muslims, but other Christian denominations, too. After the Great Schism, Christiandom was split into two – Catholicism, the western church, loyal to the Pope in Rome, and Orthodoxy, split into numerous patriarchies, with the preeminent Patriarch being in Constantinople. Suddenly, the Eastern Roman Empire was the Byzantine Empire and no longer Catholic, but Orthodox. One of the Crusades sent by the Pope did not go to Jerusalem, but rather Constantinople to reestablish the Byzantine Empire as Roman and Catholic. The current Russian invasion of Ukraine stems from the desire of the Russian Orthodox Church to establish hegemony over a country that has ties to Catholicism, as the Eastern Catholic Church is Ukrainian and much of Ukraine was ruled by the Poles, who are Catholic. Ever since Henry VIII flipped off the Pope because he couldn’t get a divorce, and the subsequent persecution of Catholics by the British Crown, the Catholics have worked to regain what had been theirs. The British Crown certainly understood the threat, with the creation of a Catholic colony in Maryland (named after the Catholic Tudor) as a place for Catholics to go and reduce their numbers and influence in Britain. George III, understanding the power and influence of Catholics in Europe, wisely left Catholic Quebec alone after the French and Indian War, much to the irritation of anti-Catholic Colonials, who used the Quebec Act to justify resistance to the authority of the king. We are seeing the fruits of the long game of the Catholics in Canada and the United Kingdom. In Canada, Quebec wields outsized influence; in the UK, Ireland will very soon be whole and Catholic again, as the Catholics now control Stormont.
Here in the United States, Catholics have been persecuted since the beginning (outside of Maryland, the Catholic colony). Four hundred years. Now one out of four Americans identify as Catholic, and Catholics dominate the highest levels of the government.
What to learn from all of this? Never, ever put the Catholics into a corner. The Catholic Church has been around for two thousand years, and has a lot of practice at winning. If you want to know what the future holds, just ask a Catholic, as we have all been programmed from a very young age. There is a reason why Thomas said that the gay marriage and birth control decisions should be revisited, but not the interracial marriage (beyond the obvious) – the Catholic Church is opposed to gay marriage and birth control, but not interracial marriage. After gay marriage and birth control, don’t be surprised if the next target is divorce, as the Church opposes that, too. After that will be the death penalty, as pro-life means all life, and the Church opposes the taking of any life.
It is ironic that what the Republicans feared the most, Catholics that are more loyal to the church than the state, has now come to pass, and these Catholics happen to be Republican. Welcome to the new order, the Catholic States of America.