I wish so much that this story had not flashed across my computer screen on the very same day in which I posted Rolando's testimony about what has been done to him and John. But here this additional story is, staring all of us in the face. Dan Morris-Young writes,
The pastoral associate of a San Diego parish in the heart of the city's well-known gay-friendly Hillcrest neighborhood has submitted his resignation "out of fear for my family and myself."
In an Oct. 19 email to friends and associates, Aaron Bianco, who submitted his resignation to Bishop Robert McElroy, said he had "endured physical and emotional violence from groups like Church Militant and LifeSite News for the past year and a half." The harassment included slashed tires, death threats, attacks outside Mass, and "hundreds of letters, phone calls and emails."
The harassment increased "to another level" overnight Oct. 14-15, he added, when assailants "broke into the office/rectory" of St. John the Evangelist Parish "and spray-painted 'no fags' on the conference room wall."
The "final straw," he said, was an Oct. 17 internet posting of "pictures my family, including a photo of my deceased mother" and revealing "where I live."
As I think about the Holocaust, or the period of Jim Crow lynchings, or the pogroms throughout Christian history, or the extermination of the native peoples of the Americas, and their dispossession of their land:
I think there really never is a point when people begin to wake up and say, "Enough is enough." I think there's not ever a point when Christian people wake up and say, "What in God's name are we doing? How does crucifying our Savior over and over and over again proclaim his love to the world?"
Americans are showing a monstrous appetite for cruelty right now, and I think we should not underestimate how far that blood lust will go — with few voices being raised against it, with the churches blessing it. As they have done in the past, over and over, when blood lust takes over Christian people and Christian nations….
Read the outright, filthy hate now pouring out on Father James Martin's Twitter feed, after he blew the whistle the organized Catholic hate groups like Lifesite News and Church Militant, who have hounded Aaron Bianco out of his ministry position, harassing him, publishing his home address, placing him and his husband in danger — elicting acts of violent hatred that have included painting homophobic hate slogans on his office walls.
Read the hate pouring out in that Twitter feed, as "Christian" people state that we have an obligation to hate, as they raise insincere, mendacious questions about what constitutes hate, anyway, when all is said and done, and think about this: all those whose lives have been lost in the past as blood lust and self-righteous hatred overtake Christian communities and Christian nations — their names are, for the most part, lost to us. They'll never have justice. They died not ever seeing justice done to them.
And the Christians who have behaved this way again and again over the course of history have just carried right on as if none of this in any way undermines their proclamation of the gospel in subsequent periods of history. They've carried on as if this sordid history just didn't happen, didn't matter, the lives lost due to hatred meaningless, negligible.
And this is just one example among many. There are children held in the equivalent of concentration camps, separated from their parents. We lied about the number of people who died due to Maria in Puerto Rico, and are now shrugging our shoulders about the 1000+ missing after Michael — with the man we elected to office cutting every environmental regulation possible, yanking our nation out of international agreements designed to curb climate change.
People of color are being denied the right to vote now with flagrant racist tactics that hark back to the Jim Crow era. Native Americans have been disenfranchised in North Dakota, with the blessing of the Supremes. It's open season on women and survivors of sexual abuse. Women have been decisively told to get back into their places.
And we just carry on. White Christians carry on as if none of this matters to them or to the gospel message they preach. In fact they are very largely the drivers of this colossal cruelty, which will end where and how?
The screenshot is from the Dan Morris-Young National Catholic Reporter article linked at the head of the posting.