The Fourth Axis Power in the War on Christianity

In Vermont, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Christine Hallquist has made quite a few controversial tweets about Christians in the past, including one suggesting that Christians propose an equal if not more serious threat to the United States than Radical Islamic Terrorists: “And we worry about Sharia law!  Radicalized Christians are part of the American landscape and we tolerate it.”  Hallquist’s attitude towards Christianity might not hurt her in a liberal state like Vermont, which boasts one of the lowest church attendance rates in the country.

Scott Squires, an Army Chaplain stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, now faces a reprimand for refusing to participate in a marriage retreat where the attendees included a Lesbian couple.  Squires pulled out of overseeing the Strong Bonds marriage retreat, in accordance with Army policy, and gave the role overseeing the retreat to someone else; thereby allowing the Lesbian couple to participate.  However, the Lesbian couple still filed an equal opportunity complaint; putting his job in jeopardy.  Had he conducted the marriage retreat with a same-sex couple present, he would have violated the teachings of the Southern Baptist Convention’s North American Mission Board; the group responsible for sponsoring Squires in the first place.  A 2013 NAMB Memo states that “NAMB endorsed chaplains will not conduct or attend a wedding ceremony for any same sex couple, bless such a union or perform counseling in support of such a union, assist or support paid contractors or volunteers leading same-sex relational events, nor offer any kind of relationship training or retreat, on or off a military installation, that would give the appearance of accepting the homosexual lifestyle or sexual wrongdoing.”  

In Colorado, baker Jack Phillips has found himself in the news once again just two months after the Supreme Court ruled that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission demonstrated hostility towards his religious views when forcing him to pay a fine for refusing to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding.  Autumn Scardina, a publicity-hungry transgender lawyer called the devout Christian baker, who owns Masterpiece Cakeshop, and asked him to bake a cake celebrating her gender transition.  This event happened long after Phillips’ story became public therefore the caller surely knew about Phillips’ deeply held religious beliefs; further enforcing the appearance that liberals simply want to put Christians out of business.  In addition, The Daily Caller reported that Phillips received several additional requests that fly in the face of his religious beliefs and, in some cases, common decency: “T)he bakery received requests for cakes featuring marijuana use, sexually explicit messages, and Satanic symbols. One solicitation submitted by email asked the cake shop to create a three-tiered white cake depicting Satan licking a (sex toy). Phillips believes Scardina made all these requests.” 

When defending religious liberty laws that states like Colorado badly need, Former Senator Rick Santorum pointed out the obvious double standard: “If you’re a print shop and you are a gay man, should you be forced to print ‘God hates fags’ for the Westboro Baptist church because they hold those signs up?”  Liberals would answer that question with a no.  They would probably react the same way in hypothetical scenarios where a member of the Ku Klux Klan asked a black baker to make a cake with a racist message on it, a Neo-Nazi asked a Jewish baker to bake a cake with a swastika on it or someone forced a Muslim restaurant owner to serve pork.  However, the left, which seems to view Christianity as the source of all evil, does not give Christians who believe in traditional marriage and reject the warped new gender ideology embraced by the left the benefit of the doubt.  As former Fox News Contributor Mary Katharine Ham pointed out, “These laws don’t just protect the folks you don’t like, on the left, the left liked religious liberty protections fine until they decided somebody who they don’t like…might use them.”  

Phillips refused to bake the cake, citing his religious beliefs that one cannot “choose” their gender.  The Colorado Civil Rights Commission decided to sue him once again, apparently learning nothing from the 7-2 decision handed down by the Supreme Court earlier this year.  In response, Phillips has decided to sue the state, naming Democratic Governor John Hickenlooper as one of the defendants in the lawsuit.  Phillips’s legal problems may only get worse if Colorado elects Democrat Jared Polis Governor this fall to replace the term-limited Hickenlooper.  Polis, who represents Boulder in the United States House of Representatives, lies far to the left of Hickenlooper; who advocated against the legalization of marijuana and has reportedly considered running on a “unity ticket” with John Kasich, the term-limited Republican Governor of Ohio.  Kasich has become one of the media’s favorite Republicans as a result of his relentless criticism of the Trump administration.

Does the hostility towards Christianity among the American left come across as a surprise?  It shouldn’t.  An essential part of the liberal battle plan for winning the culture war involves undermining Christianity.  Pat Buchanan explained the reasoning behind the left’s distaste for Christianity his book The Death of the West: “unless and until Chrstianity and Western culture, the immune system of capitalism, were uprooted from the soul of Western Man, Marxism could not take root, and the revolution would be betrayed by the workers in whose name it was to be fought.” The Axis Powers in the War on Christianity include the Courts, the mainstream media, and popular culture.  Unfortunately, the latest developments in the latest Catholic Church sex abuse scandal prove that a fourth Axis Power exists in the War on Christianity: pedophile priests.  

In addition to forever altering the lives of their victims for the worse, the priests in some ways did more to undermine the power and influence of the Catholic Church than any other of the three axis powers ever could have.  A previous sex abuse scandal had rocked the Catholic Church to its core in 2002.  These allegations, the subject of the movie “Spotlight,” ended the career of Boston-based Cardinal Bernard Law, who spent the remainder of his life performing minimal priestly duties at the Vatican, a punishment many people believe did not go far enough.

When the 2002 sex abuse scandal first broke, liberals reacted to the news by suggesting that the Catholic Church should allow priests to get married; effectively blaming the celibacy requirement for the sex abuse scandals. Contrary to liberal belief, abandoning the teachings of the church will not solve the problems associated with the sex abuse scandal.  Maybe they forgot that the clergy abandoning the teachings of the church led them to commit those indefensible acts in the first place.     

Liberals reacted with an almost sadistic glee to the news that report authored by a Pennsylvania grand jury detailed more than 300 priests across six of the state’s eight dioceses had sexually abused more than 1,000 children. Trevor Noah, the host of “The Daily Show,” described the Catholic Church as a “molesting club with an opening prayer.”  The Westboro Baptist Church prefers to use more colorful language when attacking the Catholic Church, accusing Catholic priests of “sucking the semen out of children’s genitals like vampires suck blood from their victims.”

Liberals had previously rejoiced when reality TV star Josh Duggar and 2017 Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore faced allegations of inappropriate behavior.  Considering the fact that Duggar and Moore had based their entire careers on reputations as crusaders for Christ,  the media delighted in their falls from grace; using them as excuses to throw the baby out with the bathwater when it comes to the presence of Judeo-Christian philosophy in everyday life.

The unfortunate circumstances of the sex abuse scandal should remind everyone, especially liberals, of the truth behind Abigail Van Buren’s declaration that “the church is not a museum for saints, but a hospital for sinners.”  Some sinners, especially priests who have engaged in inappropriate conduct with children, need to spend a little time in the intensive care unit.  For the record, the intensive care unit does not include Disney World.  The grand jury report details that the late Edward Ganster, a priest who faced an accusation of sexual misconduct, received positive references from church officials as he sought a job at a theme park that attracts millions of tourists every year; including a large amount of children.  More allegations against Ganster surfaced after he began working at Disney World. In the absence of Bill O’Reilly, I hereby declare the pedophile priests and all those who knew about the inappropriate behavior and simply transferred suspected pedophiles from parish to parish “pinheads of the week.” New York Governor Andrew Cuomo obviously walked away with that honor last week  as a result of his declaration that “America was never that great.”

In response to the grand jury report, which became public last week, Pope Francis authored a letter addressed to the “people of God,” stressing that “no effort must be spared to create a culture able to prevent such situations from happening, but also prevent the possibility of their being covered up and perpetuated.”  To paraphrase a cliché made popular during one of one of the Democrats’ favorite time periods in American history, the Watergate era, the cover-up made the crimes committed and the public’s response to them that much worse.
Historically, the Catholic Church has served as a force for good around the world by defeating Communism and educating millions of children Unfortunately, some members of the clergy have sought to use the power and trust given to them for evil and self-serving purposes.  Abuse of power has become an all too common sight in America, even extending into the once-respected government intelligence agencies. (Think John Brennan and James Clapper, folks.) 

Hopefully, this particular unpleasant chapter in church history will come to an end soon with the threat of the fourth axis power in the War on Christianity significantly, if not completely, vanquished.  Removing the threat of this fourth axis power will allow Catholics and Protestants, Allied Powers in the War on Christianity, to fight back against the three remaining axis powers, who seek to do everything in their power to replace the widely misunderstood doctrine of “separation of church into state” with an “abolition of church from state.”  Only then can the axis powers declare victory in the decades-long War on Christianity.