First they came for...

The Execution of Blessed Miguel Pro

The recent attack on religious freedom reminded me of this famous quotation from Martin Niemöller:

First they came for the communists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn't speak out because I was Protestant.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.

This current battle is not about contraception. It's about religious freedom. If we stand (sit) by and let the Obama administration impose its will, what will be next? Priests being banned from preaching on faith and morals? You might think that's a far stretch, but it has already happened in Sweden.

Father Robert Barron makes this point in yesterday's National Review:

The secularist state wants Catholicism off the public stage and relegated to a private realm where it cannot interfere with secularism’s totalitarian agenda. I realize that in using that particular term, I’m dropping a rhetorical bomb, but I am not doing so casually. A more tolerant liberalism allows, not only for freedom of worship, but also for real freedom of religion, which is to say, the expression of religious values in the public square and the free play of religious ideas in the public conversation. Most of our founding fathers advocated just this type of liberalism. But there is another modality of secularism — sadly on display in the current administration — that is actively aggressive toward religion, precisely because it sees religion as its primary rival in the public arena.

We live in times for men and women of action and prayer. More precisely "these world crises are crises of saints" (St. Josemaria, The Way #301).

Viva Cristo Rey!