By Selwyn Duke
“I expect to die in bed, my successor will die in prison, and his successor will die a martyr in the public square,” said then-archbishop of Chicago Francis George in 2010. Whether his successor, Archbishop Blase Cupich, 74, will die in prison may depend on whether he’s blessed (cursed?) with longevity. What’s for certain, however, is that 13 years after George’s statement, hatred of Christianity and attacks on its adherents have increased. So has tolerance for these dark phenomena and, sometimes, even tacit endorsement of them.
This is not surprising. Among the findings of the recent headline-grabbing Wall Street Journal poll revealing that the importance of “traditional American values” has plummeted among citizens is that just 39 percent of our people now say religious faith is very important to them. Just a bit more than a generation ago, in 1998, this figure was 62 percent. This is significant because secular societies have, as a rule, persecuted the church.
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