A conference in Vienna on the persecution of Christians worldwide earlier this month heard that Europe has shown a worrying rise in State-sponsored hostility to freedom of religion.

“Concern for overt persecution should not blind us to more subtle forms of hostility and, yes, of persecution” said Gudrun Kugler, the founder of the “Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination against Christians in Europe” who hosted the conference. While the situation does not compare with the atrocities suffered by Christians in the Middle-East, nonetheless, Ms Kugler said, “We do not wait until someone is shot or killed before addressing a problem.”

Paul Coleman, a lawyer for ADF International which highlights threats to religious freedom worldwide, said that Europe has seen the highest rise in State-sponsored hostility to freedom of religion. He highlighted four areas in particular: speech, conscience, parenting, and worship, where increasingly agents of the State are in effect dictating to religious people “You can’t say that!”, “You can’t think that!”, “You can’t teach that!”, and “You can’t believe that!”

Specifically regarding free speech, he said the situation is “not that different from Malaysia” where new ‘Hate-speech’ laws are in effect a secular update on blasphemy or heresy laws. Several high-ranking Catholic prelates across Europe, for instance, have been investigated for ‘hate speech’ because of remarks they made on same-sex marriage, on Islam, and on pro-life work.

Bishop Stephan Turnovszky, speaking on behalf of Christoph Cardinal Schönborn, Archbishop of Vienna, said the situation of Christians around the world has never been as precarious as it is today. Although there is no organised or systematic persecution of Christians in Europe, he noted that there are frightening trends involving Christian marginalisation, as well as political and media reprisals against those with religious convictions. “There are violent counter-demonstrations at pro-life events in many countries,” he said by way of example. But such acts of intolerance are “hardly criticised by the media.”

Ellen Kryger Fantini, Executive Director of the Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination, said in concluding remarks: “The persecution faced by Christians around the world must be recognised and treated by the international community with the seriousness it deserves. But the pressure faced by Christians in Europe is much more subtle – what Pope Francis has called ‘polite persecution’. If gone unchecked, such incidents can lead to far worse.”

What is happening today to Christians in Europe and elsewhere in the West, calls to mind a recent remark by Polish philosopher, Ryszard Legutko in an interview with religious writer, Rod Dreher.

Legutko, who lived much of his life under communist rule, said: “If the old communists lived long enough to see the world of today, they would be devastated by the contrast between how little they themselves managed to achieve in their anti-religious war and how successful the liberal democrats have been. All the objectives the communists set themselves, and which they pursued with savage brutality, have been achieved by the liberal democrats who, almost without any effort and simply be allowing people to drift along with the flow of modernity, succeeded in converting churches into museums, restaurants, and public buildings, secularising entire societies, making secularism the militant ideology, pushing religion to the sidelines, pressing the clergy into docility, and inspiring mass culture with a strong anti-religious bias in which a priest must either be a liberal challenging the Church or a disgusting villain”.

Truer words never said.