Editor’s Note: According to PJ Media, members of Antifa are planning to attack monuments dedicated to Christopher Columbus on Columbus Day. We feel that this was inevitable due to the lack of media-based condemnation of previous assaults on Columbus monuments and the media’s unwillingness to refute anti-Catholic lies that are being used to justify this violence.

Anti-Catholic bigotry existed in the United States since the first day of this great nation. Although Freedom of Religion was protected in the Bill of Rights, many have turned to violence or political action to harass Catholics and the Roman Catholic Church.

Sometimes the behavior is passive, often disguised as supporting the fake “Separation of Church and State,” but it it too regularly manifests as violence. Organizations including the Klu Klux Klan began as anti-Catholic groups, targeting Irish and Italian immigrants for harassment and attacks until even today.

But now, violent anarchist groups prone to terrorist activities, including “Antifa” and “Black Lives Matter,” have used chaos and misinformation surrounding Confederate Monuments to destroy Catholic monuments.

In Baltimore, the Christopher Columbus monument, the first of its kind, was destroyed by a thug wielding a sledgehammer as others supported and cheered him on. They claimed that Columbus was a “genocidal terrorist” and posted a sign saying, “The future is racial and economic justice.”

False claims that Columbus embraced slavery, genocide, or other horrible acts were rooted in the same books that falsely claimed the Roman Catholic Church believed that the world was flat. Although long debunked, the radical fringe continues to reproduce the claim without proof.

Christopher Columbus was long seen as a rally point for the mission of American Catholics and the Knights of Columbus. Instead of a monument to terror or racism, it was a monument to the acts of charity that the Catholic faithful have committed.

Similarly, violent extremists vandalized a statue of Saint Junípero Serra in California, falsely leveling the same charges against him. No serious historian believes that Saint Serra did anything awful to any group of people. To the contrary, he worked tirelessly to help educate various Native American tribes, ensuring that they had the literacy and training necessary to overcome severe poverty.

Like Columbus, Saint Serra was slandered and libeled by those who hate religion in general or Catholicism in particular. Their greatest crime was to have faith.

The current war on monuments has nothing to do with the reality but is a war on truth itself. Violent extremists on the Left have been active within the United States in various forms, from the KKK to the current BLM, but their central focus has always been on anarchist and spreading hate. The United States enshrines certain principles that support and protect freedom, but those who are violent and hateful cannot stand to allow others to be free.

The media has mostly been quiet or promoting a hypocritical view on hate. Instead of discussing history or facts, they encourage the violent and destruction anarchists without reason. But you cannot condemn hate or violence among your enemy alone. Any condemnation that does not include all forms of hate and violence equally is no condemnation at all. Violence and hate is not suddenly acceptable because it doesn’t affect you or your supporters.

All of the violent extremists are not part of the United States, and to pretend otherwise ignores the foundation of this country. The media, and the people, must turn against all of the violence and also stand up against those who continue to perpetuate the lies that encourage this violence.

That includes opposing any who support the war on the Freedom of Religion. The great Cardinal James Gibbon wrote:

“For myself, as a citizen of the United States, and without closing my eyes to our shortcomings as a nation, I say, with a deep sense of pride and gratitude, that I belong to a country where the civil government holds over us the aegis of its protection, without interfering with us in the legitimate exercise of our sublime mission as ministers of the Gospel of Christ. Our country has liberty without license, and authority without despotism.” (We explained his writing on the necessity of the Freedom of Religion here).

It is time that the politicians and the media stop with their false, hypocritical condemnations and use their power and influence to stop all hate, including the lies about great Catholics that have encouraged and facilitated the destruction of their monuments. It is time for the politicians and the media to shut down those who falsely claim there is a “Separation of Church and State” because that is just a lie used to justify attacks on the Freedom of Religion.