S.F. Archbishop Decries America’s ‘Sordid History of Anti-Catholicism’

San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone laments that the United States has done a better job overcoming racism than coming to terms with its long history of anti-Catholicism.

In a June 1 op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, Archbishop Cordileone writes that Catholics are “under attack” in America, noting that at least 260 attacks on church property have occurred across 43 states and the District of Columbia since May 2020.

Universally ignored is America’s “long, deep and sordid history of anti-Catholicism,” the archbishop observes, a phenomenon that continues to this day. He cites numerous recent incidents “from arson to spray-painting, beheading and toppling statues, to defacing gravestones with swastikas and anti-Catholic messages.”

Despite the magnitude of the problem, arrests in these cases, and especially prosecutions, have been “extremely rare,” Cordileone adds.

Of particular note is the unwillingness to treat these aggressions with the seriousness they deserve, he suggests.

One recent example is the case of the five vandals stormed the property of California’s Mission San Rafael in 2020 “carrying paint, tools and rope with the intention of desecrating and destroying a beloved statue of St. Junípero Serra.”

The perpetrators were charged with felony vandalism at the time, but last month, the Marin County district attorney’s office inexplicably decided to reduce the charges to a misdemeanor.

“Catholics believe in contrition, but we also believe in justice. This is neither,” the archbishop states. “These five committed a felony, which was witnessed, recorded and widely publicized.”

He argues that a felony charge “is the least reparation that can be made to Catholics in the Bay Area who are deeply disturbed by this attack” and yet the district attorney has instead “given the signal that attacks on our houses of worship and sacred images may continue without serious legal consequence.”

“History teaches that when we don’t treat religiously or racially motivated crime seriously, we will see more and worse aggression,” he writes, noting how transgender activists have recently “threatened heinous violence against Christian ‘transphobes’ who don’t subscribe to their ideology.”

The Los Angeles Dodgers’ decision to give a “community hero” award to the anti-Catholic Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence is “the latest example of mainstreaming derision of the Catholic faith,” redolent of the worst years of the notoriously anti-Catholic Know Nothings, he warns.

Thomas D. Williams is Breitbart Rome Bureau Chief and the author of The Coming Christian Persecution.