The Coming Christian Persecution (Guest: Thomas D. Williams)

Christians are being persecuted around the world, and that persecution is moving closer and closer to home here in the West. What is driving this movement and what can we do to stop it?

Crisis Point
Crisis Point
The Coming Christian Persecution (Guest: Thomas D. Williams)
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Guest

Dr. Thomas D. Williams is the Rome Bureau Chief for Breitbart and a 2018 visiting research fellow for the Center for Ethics and Culture at the University of Notre Dame. He has written widely on theology, philosophy, ethics, and spirituality. He teaches theology at St. John’s University’s Rome campus and has done extensive media work, including serving as consultant and commentator on faith, ethics, and religion for NBC, CBS, and Sky News in the UK. He is the author of the new book from Crisis Publications, The Coming Christian Persecution: Why Things Are Getting Worse and What You Can Do About It.

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Transcript

Eric Sammons:

Christians are being persecuted around the world and that persecution seems to be moving closer and closer to the West. What is driving this movement and what can we do to stop it? That’s what we’re going to talk about today on Crisis Point. Hello, I’m Eric Sammons, your host and editor-in-chief of Crisis Magazine.

Before I get started, just want to remind people to smash that like button. Subscribe to the channel. Don’t hit to notify bell because you don’t want to get bothered on your phone all the time. Also, you can follow Crisis Magazine @Crisis Mag on the various social media channels, at Twitter, Facebook, MeWe, Gab, GETTR, all the different ones, we’re there so you can keep up with the latest of what’s going on at Crisis and around the world. Okay, so today we have a very special guest, Thomas Williams. He is the author of the new book from Crisis Publications, The Coming Christian Persecution.

Thomas Williams is the, first of all, he is the Rome Bureau chief for Breitbart. He’s a 2018 Visiting Research Fellow for the Center for Ethics and Culture at the University of Notre Dame. He’s written widely on theology, philosophy, ethics, and spirituality. He teaches theology at St. John’s University’s Rome Campus. He’s done extensive media work, including serving as consultant and commentator on faith, ethics and religion for NBC, CBS and Sky News in the UK. And like I already mentioned, he’s the author of the book, the new book, The Coming Christian Persecution from Crisis Publications. Welcome to program, Thomas.

Thomas D. Williams:

Thank you very much, Eric. It’s a privilege to be here.

Eric Sammons:

Thank you. So I think the first question is, is there really a persecution of Christians going on today? I think most Christians in America would live their life fine, so we just assume that’s probably the way it is. We don’t hear much about it. So is there actually a persecution of Christians going on in the world today?

Thomas D. Williams:

Well, honestly, Eric, you couldn’t have asked me a better setup question because that, unfortunately, is a question that everyone asks because the answer isn’t obvious and it should be. This is really part of the paradox of the situation that we’re living in right now because Christian persecution is so widespread, and the numbers are so high. There’s some 360 million people in the world, Christians in the world, who live under a situation of serious to severe persecution. In other words that they actually fear for their lives. They fear physical aggression against their persons on a day-to-day basis.

So we’re not talking about just fear of am I going to be discriminated against? Are people going to look at me funny? Are people that are going to ridicule me? But actual physical violence against my person, 360 million. And of all the people in the world who are persecuted for their faith, three quarters of those, 75% are Christians. But the thing is that we don’t know that. In the West, that doesn’t make the news channels, it doesn’t make CNN, it doesn’t make the broadcast news. We just don’t hear about it, and we don’t realize how constant ongoing this is.

Eric Sammons:

Can you give an example of somewhere where Christians are actually in danger, physical danger? What’s an example of that?

Thomas D. Williams:

Sure. Let’s start with Nigeria. Nigeria is considered by Open Doors, which is a Christian persecution monitoring or watch dog organization. According to them, Nigeria’s the place where you’re most likely to die this year as a Christian because they have deaths in the hundreds every single year simply for the fact of being Christian. And there it’s a question of about 51% of the population of the country is Muslim, but it’s a very aggressive form of Islam, many of whom believe that the country should be completely Muslim and believe that Christians have no right to be in Nigeria. And so you have an ongoing violence against, they’ll sweep into Christian villages, they will interrupt Christian services and slay the priest or presiding pastor. This is something that is happening constantly. In fact, if I can take just one second, I’ll give you a really good example of this.

In March 2019, everybody knew because on the front page of every newspaper that in Christchurch, New Zealand, a crazed maniac had broken into two mosques and shot up a bunch of Muslims, he killed 51 Muslims. It was absolutely horrific. But what you don’t know, because this was everywhere so everybody knew about it, during that same two-week period leading up to that, a 120 Christians were killed in Nigeria and no one ever heard because it did not make its way, not to page one, but to any of the pages of the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Washington Post. It was just absent because it’s considered not to be news or in some way not relevant to people in the West.

Eric Sammons:

So you said 75% of, was it 75% of people who are being persecuted for their religion are Christian. Is that correct?

Thomas D. Williams:

Correct.

Eric Sammons:

Okay. So why is… Now, of course, Christianity is the largest religion in the world, so perhaps that bumps their numbers up, so to speak.

Thomas D. Williams:

Absolutely.

Eric Sammons:

Yeah. But why is it though that Christians, specifically, like in Nigeria and other places, why are they being persecuted? Is it mostly religious, political, or other reasons?

Thomas D. Williams:

Well, it’s a multitude of motives and we can look at several of the biggest ones. One of the largest is radical Islam, without a doubt, and we’ve seen that a lot with the uprise of ISIS, the Islamic State. And in these other cases, all these different offshoots, like in Nigeria there’s Boko Haram, and then there are the Fulani Muslim Raiders in the middle of the country. So Islam is a huge one still worldwide. In fact, if you look at the 10 countries where it’s most dangerous to be a Christian, eight out of those 10 are Muslim-dominated populations, so that shows you kind of how important that particular driver is. Another huge one is atheistic communism. Atheistic communism, for example, in North Korea, it’s illegal to own a Bible. If you’re caught with a Bible, you’ll be thrown into jail. You can be summarily killed and nobody is going to get in trouble for killing a Christian who had a, or if you try to convert someone else or talk to them about Jesus Christ, you set yourself up for the same punishment.

In China, even though there’s a veneer of religious freedom, they like to say that they practice it, Christianity is completely controlled. There’s surveillance in churches. They make sure that preachers abide by a tone and a content that congeals well with their form of Maoist socialism, and if it doesn’t, they will be thrown in jail. There you cannot belong to any offshoot of Christianity that isn’t official, that isn’t approved by the state. Now, they just now, this is brand new news, this is only two weeks old, they’ve introduced a government-run app that every Christian has to have. If you want to go to a Sunday service, you have to register not only on the app, you have to register for every single time now that you want to go to church. So they keep tabs not only where you are, where you’re going, how many times you do it, they know who active Christians are, and there are monitors at the door now of churches to see whether you actually have permission to be at that service or not from the government.

So those are two big ones, atheistic communism and radical Islam. Another one though, that we should really take note of is rising a radical or extreme secularism. And this isn’t the nice secularism of we respect the autonomy of the state, a non-confessional state, which is kind of the good form of secularism, but a much more aggressive form where religion is looked upon as an enemy, where Christians are seen to be bigots because of their morality, following this Bronze Age book, the Bible with all these antiquated notions that have long since been superseded by modernity and reasonable men and women. And so there is a skepticism that borders on aggression in the modern world in the West, in the First World, if you will, because of this sort of radical form of secularism that thinks that religion should be crowded out of the public square.

Eric Sammons:

So real quick about the China app, what is the reason they gave that, I mean, I realize that it’s probably just for persecution’s sake, but what reason did they give for having to register to go to a religious service?

Thomas D. Williams:

Well, they quite openly say that all religion in China has to be synthesized. In other words, it has to be something that is completely conforming to the reigning belief of the Chinese Communist Party. You cannot be preaching things that go against what the state stands for. In other words, the state basically has a religion of its own. It has a natant Chinese religion, kind of like the old Roman Empire in a way, as long as you play nice with us, as long as you recognize our official state religion, which is a totalitarianism, then you’re okay, as long as you go along with that.

That’s why they have the friendly Catholic Church, the patriotic Catholic Church and the underground Catholic Church. The patriotic Catholic Church in China is the one whose bishops all pledge conformity with the communist party. They only preach things that go along with state communism. And the underground church, which is getting harder and harder to be a member of that because even Rome, unfortunately, even the Vatican has kind of distanced itself from those who have always been faithful to the Vatican even in times of very harsh persecution, they’re finding it very hard now because they’re really being ostracized. They are not legal anymore. And if they are caught holding services of any kind, they can be arrested. In fact, there are many in jail because of that today.

Eric Sammons:

Yeah, I want to get back to that in a minute about what the Vatican’s doing about some of this stuff, but I wanted to ask a little bit something you mentioned about radical secularism. I mean, I remember back maybe 20 years ago kind of the rise of the new atheist and you had the Richard Dawkins and the Sam Harris’s that were much more aggressive in their attacks on Christianity, on religious belief in general. But it was still, though, in the sphere of ideas. I mean, Sam Harris wasn’t calling for anybody to be persecuted, nor was Richard Dawkins. And so I want to ask, what is the evolution of how persecution of Christians happens? How does it go from being it’s acceptable to now you’re getting arrested for it? How does that typically occur?

Thomas D. Williams:

Yeah, and so quickly, as you say, this is a very recent phenomenon and it’s gone at such a dizzying pace really. It’s happened, obviously, in our lifetime, not only in our lifetime, in our recent past, but everything starts with ideas. I mean, ideas have consequences. And when you start this becomes the mode at in the academy, so you have universities, any institutions of higher learning, where it’s looked upon as suspicion or a bit of a troglodyte, a bit of an obscurantist if you still adhere to those, now, antiquated beliefs. So it starts with you’re a little bit on the outskirts of bright-thinking people. And it moves from that to be something where you’re looked upon as a little bit of a bigot, a little bit hostile, a little bit someone who’s holding up progress or, nowadays too, I mean, in very recent years we’ve switched on things like gay marriage.

It’s only since 2015 with Obergefell. Even a majority of Americans think this is fine, but Americans change so quickly when the laws change that nowadays, it’s very out of favor to say that gay marriage is not marriage, and yet that is the Orthodox Christian position. And it’s one now where Christians, instead of looking like we’re very mainstream because that’s what everybody believed, you’re all of a sudden this kind of fringe element that is a hater or a homophobe or whatever it might, whatever etiquette, whatever label they’re going to put on you, simply because of your Christian beliefs that people have been believing for a couple of thousand years. But this is something, and then obviously the transgender question, the abortion question has always been a big one. If you’re pro-life that’s somehow suspicious, you’re anti-women, you’re anti-women’s rights, you want to hold women back.

So these are the things that are now often associated with Christianity. And then they bring in other political things. I don’t know anyone, for example, who identifies, self identifies, as a Christian nationalist, and yet apparently we’re all Christian nationalists now. I mean, anybody who says, I believe in Christianity, and I believe this was very important to the Founding Fathers, and I believe that people came to America in the first place for the sake of religious freedom, being able to practice their religion freely. You’re looked upon as, oh, so you’re a Christian nationalist. You want everybody to believe, you want a theocracy and say, no, I really don’t want a theocracy. I would really like just to be able to practice my faith freely and publicly. But unfortunately, that’s becoming more and more a minority position and one that is severely under attack.

Eric Sammons:

Yeah, people kind of forget that in 2008, Barack Obama ran on the idea that marriage is between a man and a woman. I mean, that was part of his thing, and Biden was obviously the Vice President candidate, and now it’s like if you even suggest that, you’re a bigot and you’re to be hated. Now, okay, expanding a bit back again about the worldwide persecution of Christians. We noted at the beginning that a lot of people in the West don’t know about this. Why is it that this information is suppressed? Why is it, for example, that when Muslims are persecuted or killed or whatever, that makes the front pages everywhere, but if Christians are, it’s completely ignored?

Thomas D. Williams:

Well, I think there are several reasons. One is the fact that it’s so rare that a Christian goes and shoots up a mosque. Honestly, frankly, that’s news in kind of the classic sense because it doesn’t happen every day. It’s something that is so rare that it deserves front page billing. Secondly, and in the case of, for example, Muslim hostility toward Christians in a place like Nigeria, if you reported on every single death of a Christian, you would be reporting on it on a weekly basis, sometimes several times a week. So that’s part of it. It’s not news in the sense that it’s just too frequent. A second reason is I think, and we talk about race, a true form of racism is this idea that what happens in Africa, they’re all a bit backward anyway, that doesn’t really matter. That’s not in the modern world.

That’s not something we would do, if they hack each other up with machetes, well, those are vestiges of a primitive tribal sort of lifestyle that allows for that sort of thing. I think that’s one as well. And I think frankly, there’s another which is a little bit more insidious, which is that right now the reigning thought pattern, I think, among the left is we don’t want to give Christians a pass and we don’t want to advance their causes because they stand up against things that we want to push forward our agenda. And so if they’re persecuted somewhere, we’re just going to pretend that didn’t happen. I think there’s a lot of that. I think there’s a lot of just saying, well, we’re not going to talk about Christian martyrs. We’re not going to talk about Christians suffering because that will just make them stronger. That will embolden them here.

Eric Sammons:

Okay. Now, a lot of times when somebody mentions, I know I’ve had this happen to me before where I might mention some type of persecution of Christians here in the United States. For example, they stand up for against transgenderism or against homosexual marriage or something like that, and they lose their job or something like that. And inevitably you’ll get the response, don’t try to act like you’re some martyr, you’re not getting killed or something like that. Can you talk a little bit about the difference levels of persecution, that it’s not all just being killed, but there, you mentioned in the book the white and then the red? Can you talk a little bit about the range of persecution and what we mean when we talk about Christians being persecuted?

Thomas D. Williams:

Absolutely. But I’m going to start with a little anecdote first because the point you brought up right now is really important. This is anecdotal, but if you look at Wikipedia, there’s an actual page entry, an entire entry for Christian persecution complex, and it talks about how Christians often think they’re persecuted when they’re not. And I remember when I first saw that, I thought, wow, that’s a really bold thing to say, a nervy thing to say. Can you imagine putting in a Jewish persecution complex as an entry in Wikipedia or a Muslim persecution complex? You’d be like, hey, this is real. Hey, that’s really, you can’t do that to them, that’s offensive. But with Christians, you get a pass because if somebody says Christians are persecuted, it’s like, oh, you’re just making that up. You’re just a whiner. Why are you saying this? You just want to be like everybody else, so you want to feel persecuted, but you’re really not.

Because, in part because this ignorance and in part because I think people don’t like to think of this reality the way it is. And getting onto your point though, there are many different forms. And when somebody like Amy Coney Barrett is up for a position on the US District Court and she is grilled and hazed for her religious beliefs, so much so that Dianne Feinstein, Senator Dianne Feinstein will say to her, “The dogma lives loudly in you,” suggesting that she is not qualified to adjudicate in an unbiased manner because of her deeply felt and held religious beliefs. You have a serious problem, that is harassment that really borders on persecution in a very active way, where Catholics or Christians are no longer seen as viable members of life, no seat at the table because, well, we know they’re all going to be bent by their crazy ideas. They’re not going to be able to think clearly, they’re not going to be rational.

That borders on a very serious form of persecution. It is not always bloody. Sometimes it is and sometimes, look what happened recently with the FBI first targeting those who were protesting abortion clinics and rounding them up under RICO laws when they were not, for example, prosecuting those who were bombing and vandalizing pro-life centers and marriage centers. And cycling when the FBI in its memo, which was released and they had to quickly back away from it, targeting those who go to Latin Mass is somehow likely to be plotting against the state, likely to be white supremacists because they like the Latin Mass. I mean, where are we? What country? When all of a sudden we have the FBI wasting its energy and manpower on something that is so targeting a specific religious belief that is deeply Christian. So I mean, this is real. You’re right, we may not have a situation right now where Christians are being rounded up and beheaded or shot in front of a firing squad, but it’s amazing, again, how quickly these things escalate.

Eric Sammons:

Yeah, I think that’s the key point here is when we say that Christians, for example, in the West are being persecuted, we’re not claiming that they’re being killed, but history has shown that you don’t get to the killing stage first. That’s not stage one, that’s the last stage, because first you have to deny them. It’s like you start off by saying that these people aren’t, we can’t have them in government positions, we can’t have them do certain jobs, then all of a sudden we can’t have them working. They have to lose their jobs, they have to lose their livelihood, and it just continues to get greater and greater until it does end up leading often to actual red persecution, bloody persecution. So it’s like, are we not supposed to say anything or we have a complex until we get to that last stage, I mean, just.

Thomas D. Williams:

Right. Well, we’re going to be like the frog boiling in the water. I mean, because at that point it’s too late. At that point, the riots in the streets and Christians being rounded up, it’s too late. That’s what they complained about, and rightly so, in World War Two, that there wasn’t enough resistance early on when Jews were being deported, Jews were having to wear a special mark, I’m Jewish, and things. That was long before the final solution, but the writing was already on the wall. And this is something, I’m not trying to compare them in the sense that we’re not in that place, but this is the way these things escalate. And we’d be foolish to think that things aren’t going to get any worse because every indication is that they’re getting worse by the day.

Eric Sammons:

Right, yeah. You dehumanize the target first for a period of time so that people accept it that these people aren’t really worthy of life or not worthy of the rights other people have. So let’s talk a little bit though more about the West. So there’s this outward extreme persecution in areas like Africa, the Middle East, things like that. What’s it like in Europe as far as compared to America, religious persecution of Christians in Europe? How’s that? What’s the status of that?

Thomas D. Williams:

Well, there are a couple of items here. One, I think that our, believe it or not, in Europe our situation of free speech is actually worse than in the US. And in the US it’s getting worse. But here we’re beyond that where there are certain things you just cannot say. For example, Raco, he only a few years ago was up for a position with the European court and because he’s a noted jurist and just a very smart man, he’d been a professor for many years, and it was known that he was, and this was prior to any sort of gay marriage, but it was known that he was a Christian and a serious Catholic. And he was asked, “What is your personal belief about homosexuality? Is it a sin?” And he very carefully answered and said, “Yes, I believe, as a Christian, as a Catholic, that homosexuality is a sin as there are many sins, many sins that I commit every day.

Sins are all around us. I do, but I would not let that influence, the law is the law and when one is adjudicating the law, one is not trying to recreate the law or legislate from the bench.” And that didn’t matter. That was enough for him to be rejected from that post. So that’s one area. The question of free speech and what you’re allowed to say and what you can’t is very serious. A second one that’s been growing in these last few years is the amount of vandalism of Christian sites and churches, which is actually kind of scary. There are certain periods of the year when in France several churches will be vandalized and profanated and some set on fire in the course of a week. So this is not something that happens once in a blue moon, but with a certain regularity.

The same is true in Germany. In the north of Italy this has become a problem. So it’s something also there that you see a real hostility, which is very clearly religiously motivated because this is against either Christian, sometimes it happens in Christian cemeteries, often Christian churches and also defacing Christian monuments that, and again, that’s just one step away from that being people, buildings are often the first target, and then you get people themselves being attacked.

Eric Sammons:

Who’s doing that? Who’s desecrating the churches?

Thomas D. Williams:

Well, according to, it’s very interesting because, for example, the French government has elected not to publicize motivations for these crimes, which is very strange in an age where we love the idea of hate crimes. They have chosen not to do that, in part because a number of the perpetrators have been Muslim. And as you know, with the huge influx of Muslims over the last seven to 10 years, that is something where there’s a lot of hatred toward Christians among more radicalized Muslims. And when they see Christian churches when they’re not used to seeing us there in their place of origin, there is a sort of hostility shown in a very outward fashion. Other times though, I’d say numerically as far as I can tell, just as high is a really radical form of atheistic secularism. Where, again, the Catholic Church in particular, Christianity in general, are really seen as the enemy of the state, as a force for evil, as a force against progress, trying to bring us back to some horrific imaginary state of the past. And so anything that can be done to put them down is considered okay.

Eric Sammons:

So here in the States, I know after 9/11, of course, and even a little bit before that, there was the thought among many conservative Christians, I would say probably, that radical Islam was the main threat to Christianity and potential persecution of Christianity here in the United States. But really, I kind of, you’re suggesting, it seems to me that it’s probably more radical secularism here in at least United States, it’s probably the bigger threat to Christianity. Would you agree with that or do you think it’s a combination or what?

Thomas D. Williams:

Oh, no, I think in the US, the radical secularism is a far greater threat. Far greater threat. And the worst part about it is, as we’ve seen, that there is the good and bad form of Christianity. So if you’re willing to play nice and you’re willing to not let biblical morality, if you will, at church teaching influence the way you look at public morality, the way you look at laws, the way you look at the way society should be run and governed, then you’re okay. So if you are a liberal enough Catholic where abortion’s okay, gay marriage is okay, where these things are all fine, transgenderism, hey, love is love, and whoever you think you are, whatever you identify, that’s fine. So in other words, if you’re willing to deny some very core anthropological and moral tenets of Christianity, you’re a good Christian. You’re the kind, oh, you’ve got a Rosie in your pocket, Joe Biden, well, good for you.

You’re the kind of Christian we like, and everybody’s going to pat you on the back. Nobody’s going to attack you. Nobody’s going to try to ostracize you because you are playing nice with that form of radical secularism. As soon as that starts coloring the way that not only you think, but the way you vote, the way you speak, the way you try to convince others of your arguments, then you become a danger to the state. You become a danger to the agenda, to the program that some people see as moving forward inexorably and Christianity is in a way the last finger in the dyke, if you will, that is holding back this avalanche that they would like to see happen.

And I think that, again, that is going to get stronger before it gets weaker. There’s no sign of that in any way letting up. And I think also what we’re seeing with the rise of the nones, N-O-N-E-S, these non-affiliated non-religious people in the US, this turning away from religion is just going to make the situation worse as there are more and more atheists and agnostics, those are easily brought over to a very hostile form of atheism that really hates Christianity.

Eric Sammons:

Yeah, I think a religious person is going to be naturally, at least in today’s world, naturally more sympathetic to another religious person, even if it’s not the same religion and so they’re not going to really be happy about another religion being persecuted necessarily. Whereas, like you said, the nones, they don’t have that sympathy, necessarily, for religious people. And it’s kind of like, well, those people are kind of weird anyway and odd. They probably deserved whatever persecution, whatever harassment they get. And I think you’re right. I think that’s… In fact, I have an article coming out at Crisis here pretty soon about the significant increase in the nones in the past 20 years.

I mean, if you look at the charts after year 2000, the number of people who identify, who say they go to a church, a synagogue, or a mosque, they’re a member of it, has just dropped from over 70% to under 50% in just 20 years. And it remained in the 70% ever since they started doing this in the 1930s, and all of a sudden it just started dropping. So I think that’s, and like you said, that kind of sets the table for increasing persecution because you can’t identify with these people if you’re not religious yourself. You just look at religious people as kind of odd and weird.

Thomas D. Williams:

That is a super important point that you bring up, Eric. And where we see this, another way where it’s very evident is the way religious freedom is treated, which was considered America’s first freedom. It’s in the First Amendment. This is something that had pride of place among the Founding Fathers. They believed that this was, I mean, this is the reason America came to be, was the whole idea of religious freedom. It was a freedom apart. It was a right apart.

And nowadays, for example, religious freedom hits up against a baker doesn’t want to bake a cake celebrating a gay marriage, then it’s looked upon, well, no, these are two rights that could collide and none should take precedence. This idea of conscience or religious belief somehow being superior and getting sort of privileged position in the rights of man is no longer readily held onto. And again, it’s atheist and agnostic who are going to be the first ones to say, why should that get any special treatment? That’s why you can have a group like the Satanic Temple say, well, abortion is now our sacrament. We have a religious right. We’d like a religious exemption to be able to have abortions because this is part of our belief system.

Eric Sammons:

Insane. Okay. I want to shift a little bit to Pope Francis and the Vatican. Obviously, Pope Francis, he’s the head of the Catholic Church and he’s somewhat in one way the moral head of Christianity in the world, but there’s some, I know he has said some things at times about Christian persecution, but I feel like there’s some ways that he’s, I’ll just be blunt, he’s not helping. Let’s talk first about China, the relationship that the Vatican has established with the Patriarch Chinese Church and how that undermines the faithful Catholics there who have been loyal to Rome and above the government. What’s going on there? Why in the world does the Vatican seem to be cozying up to the communists rather than the persecuted Catholics?

Thomas D. Williams:

Well, this is a mystery. This is something that I think has all serious Catholics really up in arms over it. It has been so problematic, and I think that it’s enough, honestly, this one issue to really seriously tarnish his legacy, the way history will look back on him. This is going to be a very serious blot on his record because his desire to reestablish diplomatic ties with Beijing has been so central and so paramount that he’s been willing to overlook horrendous things. And this is true both in Hong Kong and in China. His abandonment of Cardinal Joseph Zen. His refusal to say anything about the persecution of the Uyghur Muslims, which would normally be right up his alley because several times a year he runs through the litany of the injustices in the world and the terrible things that are happening, and yet he tiptoes around these serious issues.

And then we get to the one that’s so big for us as Christians and Catholics, which is really the abandonment, the betrayal, if you will, and this is Joseph Cardinal Zen’s words, the betrayal of the underground church by saying, oh yeah, well, nowadays if you want to become a member of the Patriotic Catholic Association, you can do that. Basically, meaning that the whole rationale that all these faithful Catholics had in the past was to say, no, we can’t, we have to be faithful to Rome. We’re not allowed to do that. The Pope says, oh, go ahead and do that if you want. But they know that that is simply giving into the ideology of the party. They know they’re going to have to abandon a lot of their core Christian beliefs, at least publicly, in order to do that. And they feel completely stabbed in the back over this.

And as far as I can tell, the only real reason that the Pope has been doing this is because he really wants to be that guy that was able to thaw relations, diplomatic relations, and because he always says, if we can just open up dialogue, everything’s going to be fine. But I’ll tell you, since 2018 when that first document was signed allowing the communist party a say in the naming of bishops in China, things have gotten way worse. They haven’t gotten better. And Xi Jinping, I think, is laughing all the way. I think he thinks that the Pope is very weak and he plays them like a ukulele, and he just uses that good nature desire for dialogue and encounter and this culture of encounter to simply say, well, we’re just going to go on our business and we’re going to take total control of these things.

Eric Sammons:

Yeah, I think it is that exaltation of dialogue as the solution to every problem, that if we just talk, sometimes people, they’re going to take advantage of you, and I think that’s exactly what China’s doing at this point to the Vatican. Now, when it comes to Islam, this Pope has obviously been very friendly with Islam. I had a podcast just recently talking about the Abrahamic family house and, of course, the Abu Dhabi Declaration in which he talks very much like Islam and Catholicism are two sides of the same coin essentially. Now, one could argue, and I understand this argument at least, that one of the reasons they do that is they want to promote a peaceful vein of Islam to kind of ostracize the more radical vein.

That if you work with the Muslim leaders who are peaceful, who aren’t trying to kill Christians, then that will make Islam more like that. And that’s the reason why he would do this and why others, I mean, I think that kind of was the thought process behind George W. Bush when they, after 9/11, was like, okay, we’re going to try to talk about Islamic like it’s peaceful, that might then make it peaceful. Would you say that’s a valid argument or do you think he’s missing the boat by not calling out the radical Islamic attacks on Catholics and Christians throughout the world?

Thomas D. Williams:

Well, I think that what you just characterized, I think that is exactly his approach, and I think that you can make a very strong case of why that approach should be followed, at least in part. You obviously do not want to demonize all the members of an enormous religion like Islam, many of whom are very peaceful, many of whom are very devout and honestly who are admirable in the way they live out their faith. And something that we as Christians could take some lessons from, I think, in their fidelity to prayer, their fidelity to certainly of the things like fasting and other external parts of their religion. But on the other hand, you cannot do that and at the same time not call out the abuses. And I think that also you can gently urge the leaders of these more peaceful factions and groups, in Indonesia there’s a big movement of peaceful going on there.

These are great signs, but urge them to stand side by side and shoulder to shoulder with you in calling out these abuses, in calling out these radical forms, saying that is not who we are. That is a misinterpretation of the Quran. This is a misinterpretation of our, at least where we are today, whether historically or not, this is where we are today. And that hasn’t really happened, unfortunately. In fact, so much so that when it’s been brought up to the Pope’s attention, this form of Islamic terrorism, he says, “No.” He said, “There is no Muslim terrorism.” He said, “If you talk about Muslim terrorism,” and I’m quoting him just about exactly here, “If you’re going to talk about Muslim terrorism, you have to talk about Christian terrorism because we do the same thing.” There are fundamentalists who use that same term in that little interview we gave.

There are Christian fundamentalists and there are Islamic fundamentalists, and they’re just the same. But the fact of the matter is, which he seems to ignore the historical reality right now, is that nobody’s going around shooting people and saying, praise be Jesus Christ. And yet we have many people taking machetes to people and saying, Allahu Akbar, God is great, Allah is great. And this is a mantra used to commit violence as believed by them to be actually fulfilling the will of God in that sort of anti-Christian violence. So that needs to be denounced in no uncertain terms. It needs to be recognized for what it is. It’s not just like Christianity, and I’m sorry, these are very different things. And that’s not to, again, demonize all our Muslims by a long shot, but there is a certain type of Islam that is very dangerous and very problematic for the world.

Eric Sammons:

Yeah, I mean, dialogue has to be in the truth, and so you have to acknowledge realities. And the reality is that Islamic fundamentalism blows up buildings, kills people, whereas your Christian fundamentalism might be some backwards people in the deep south or something like that who aren’t probably harming anybody. There’s a big difference between the two. Now, okay, so the question becomes how do we respond? I brought this up before we started recording, last night I was teaching my high school catechism class or parish, and somehow the topic of persecution came up and some of the kids were asking, what is the proper Catholic response to persecution? Do you flee? Do fight back? Do you accept it willingly? I mean, what exactly should we do? Let’s talk about in the West, because that’s where most of our audience is, what should we do about this coming Christian persecution?

Thomas D. Williams:

Well, I think that in our history we have to draw lessons from our history as a believing community. I think there are several virtues that need to coexist in the Christian and they compliment one another. They’re sometimes intention with one another, but they compliment one another. One is courage. Courage is not the most popular of the virtues today, but one being willing to face dangerous, threatening situations and to stand up for the truth and for what is right, even knowing that that may have fallout that is very negative for me. So that’s part of it. A second part of it is even something that St. Paul talks about in rejoicing. You looked at the apostles who were flogged by the Sanhedrin and went away giving thanks to God that they’d been found worthy to suffer something for the name.

So there’s a certain joy in experiencing something that unites us to Christ who is the first to suffer the passion and death, and we make up for what is lacking in the church, that suffering of Christ. But another very important one is to stand up for the truth and stand up for religious liberty and religious freedom. And this is something we’re not demanding privileges for Christians. We’re saying human dignity demands that people be allowed to live out their faith in private and in public, and that they not be coerced into doing things that they know to be morally evil. And this is something that we have to stand up for. Absolutely stand shoulder to shoulder with our brothers and sisters and say, this is wrong to do this.

And sometimes it demands the courage also of standing up and defending. If some robber, a thief comes into your house, or some murderer comes into your house and wants to attack your wife and your children, you stand up and you try to defend them, and there is that in the church as well. There’s a difference between what we accept as persecution our own selves and persecution against the church and the community of believers that we’re also called to stand up for. I’m always taken by the fact people always say, well, Jesus said, turn the other cheek. And I say, this is true, and that is a part of Catholic and Christian teaching, but it’s also true that when He was arrested, the first thing that happened, they slapped Him on the cheek and He said, what did I say that was wrong? If I didn’t say anything that was untrue, why do you slap me? He immediately countered that with, instead of giving the other cheek, He said, why are you smacking me if what I said was the truth?

So I think we need all these different virtues to coexist in us. We need to pray to have the strength to face whatever will come as Jesus told us to do, pray for our persecuted brothers and sisters to learn about them. We need to have the patience to be long-suffering and to be able to bear with the difficulties and the cross that is present in our lives, but also the courage to stand up to it. And honestly the forthrightness to speak the truth in season and out of season and to call out the evils that are committed to God’s Christians as well.

Eric Sammons:

Where would you put then the virtue, and it is a virtue that people don’t like to call it a virtue, but virtue of prudence? So let’s give the example, a Catholic dad. He’s got, let’s just say, seven kids. He’s working a job. The mom’s staying home, homeschooling the kids, whatever. And so he’s the sole breadwinner for the family, supporting his family. He’s working a job at some Fortune 500 company and they start shoving down, let’s say, gay marriage or transgenderism, and he has to attend seminars about how boys can be girls and things like that.

Well, if he speaks up, he knows there’s a chance he’s going to lose his job and he can’t support his family. And I hear this from people, and this is really happening today in America, and I’m sure other places. And so there’s the call to courage, which I agree with and I’m totally with you, but where does prudence lie? Should these people always speak up? I mean, what do they do? Because if nobody speaks up, then what’s going to end up happening is we’re going to be on the path to full scale persecution where losing your job is the least of your worries, but at the same time, he has a responsibility to his family that God has given him to support them. So where does that all lie?

Thomas D. Williams:

Yeah. Well, Eric, that’s a great question. That’s the reason prudence exists as a virtue. If everything were black and white where you had a rule that says, whenever you’re in this situation, do this, prudence wouldn’t really matter, right? Because prudence is all about weighing and balancing all those different factors that you bring up. And obviously this is a decision that needs to be made between husband and wife in the first place, looking at the reality of the situation. A very important Catholic principle that comes into play and that is the idea of cooperation in evil. Up to what point, if I go along with this, am I actually in some way committing evil by sharing in the evil of another? Or am I simply suffering from an evil that another is imposing on me? Up to what point do I have an obligation in this instance to stand up and say something?

And usually Catholic teaching would basically say you don’t, I mean, there’s not a hard fast rule where you should have said something there necessarily. There is a prudential space and there are other ways to go about it, whether it’s just talking with some of your fellow employees behind the scenes and saying, I felt a little bit uncomfortable in there, or isn’t this this because there are going to be other people of like mind there that also need the support of a fellow believer, someone who finds that this is an overbearing imposition, something that the company should not be doing.

So I think you could definitely argue both sides there. Some might feel called to a very overt witness in that instance and be willing to suffer whatever it takes. Others would say, at this moment my first obligation is to my family and I’m not actually committing evil by doing this. And so for the moment, I’m just going to have to grit my teeth and see what I can make up for in my apostolic ventures elsewhere in my life and in other things to bring the message of Christ forward, where at this moment I have to just hold my peace.

Eric Sammons:

Yeah, actually a story, this happened recently, a friend of mine, a Christian, works at a large Fortune 500 company, went to one of the typical meetings you have to go to, and the speaker got up and it was, I can’t remember, it was something work related the talk was, but the speaker got up and the first thing he said was like, something about I am gay, I am a gay man, and he wanted to make sure everybody, I want everybody to know I’m a gay man and then had nothing to do with the purpose of anything. This is a corporate thing. And so my friend who is Christian, he was obviously upset by this. And so he did end up, he emailed the man afterwards and said, I really felt that was inappropriate and had nothing to do with this, and why did you do this type of thing?

The guy actually apologized to him and he said, you’re right, I shouldn’t have done that. And I was like, wow. So I think sometimes the reaction we get isn’t exactly what we expect. Who knows why the person decided, the man decided to declare that at the beginning. Maybe he was pressured to, maybe he had just seen some gay activists tell somebody, you’ll always have to do this or whatever. But he said, yeah, he ended up deciding, he ended up apologizing, it wasn’t appropriate to do that. So I do think we can kind of assume, I mean, we were joking about the Christian persecution complex, but I do think sometimes we do tend to think the reaction’s always going to be persecution, and sometimes it might actually be we change hearts and people do come around and say that you’re right in this situation. So we have to take that into consideration as well.

Thomas D. Williams:

That’s an excellent point, and I think that it’s a super important point because we’re not called to look upon our fellow citizens as the enemy. I mean, this is not meant to set up a confrontational relationship whereby everyone, we’re always in this warfare. That’s not the way we’re meant to live. Sometimes warfare is imposed on us, but as St. Paul says, really the battle is happening at the level of the principalities and powers. This is something against, it’s a spiritual war, and it’s not that my brother, or my co-citizen, or my neighbor is my enemy. There are ideas that are very problematic and there is a warfare going on that is spiritual, but it doesn’t make these other people who are souls that Christ intends for them to be saved and to be in heaven together with us. They’re there to be saved. They’re not there to be fought only for the sake of fighting another human being.

Eric Sammons:

Right. We’re on a rescue mission more than we are trying to battle against them. They’re not our enemies. The evil one is our enemy. I think we’re going to wrap it up here. I just want to encourage people, The Coming Christian Persecution: Why Things Are Getting Worse and How to Prepare for What Is to Come, by Thomas Williams, Crisis Publications. I’ll have a link to, you can buy it directly from our website. And so I really encourage you to pick up this book. Is there anything else you want to leave us with, Thomas, about what we should do, as Christians, to face this coming Christian persecution?

Thomas D. Williams:

Well, I think that, at least for me spiritually, I think the time of Lent in which we’re in the midst of right now is just a time to remember some of those hard passages of the gospel that are the cross is present and one of the forms the cross takes is some persecution in our lives. And I think that that is meant to mold us into better disciples, mold us into better Christians. So as much as we fight against this and lament that it exists, at the same time Jesus also uses those tools to make us into that more perfect image of Himself. So I think there’s a very positive side to be taken from this, especially during Lent and especially the persecution that we feel in our own personal lives, not so much what we’re seeing overseas or wherever else it might be happening, but those little things that, those little pins and jabs, that hurt us and hurt our pride, those are great opportunities.

Eric Sammons:

Amen. Amen. Where can people find out, other than the book, where can people find out about other things, because you’re very involved with a lot of stuff, so other things that you’re up to?

Thomas D. Williams:

Well, maybe. All right, so I have a website, www.thomasdwilliams.com, is a pretty easy place. I have a Twitter handle @tdwilliamsrome, so I’m Rome-based, as you mentioned, and that should pretty much do it.

Eric Sammons:

Great. And I’ll put links to that in the description so people can find out all the stuff that you’re up to. I really appreciate you coming on the program today, Thomas.

Thomas D. Williams:

Thanks so much, Eric. It’s a tough topic, but I’m really glad we were able to talk about it.

Eric Sammons:

Amen. Amen. Okay, everybody, until next time, God love you.

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