A March 29 USA Today op-ed warned that Americans are growing “numb” to attacks on places of worship as such incidents increase, emphasizing the need for “righteous anger.”
The piece, written by Ashley McGuire, a senior fellow at The Catholic Association, pointed to recent acts of desecration nationwide. Among them was the Feb. 3 vandalism of Holy Innocent Catholic School in Long Beach, California. She also noted broader violence targeting Catholic communities, such as a deadly August shooting that killed two children during a Catholic school Mass in Minneapolis.
“The only thing worse than these heinous and gross violations of our First Amendment freedoms,” McGuire wrote, “is not caring about them. Just as Americans have become numb to gun violence, we risk becoming numb to attacks on our houses of worship as their rate accelerates.”
She added that such violent acts are no longer shocking to many Americans because they have become increasingly common and urged people to “wake up” and take a more active role by calling for justice.
McGuire cited CatholicVote’s Violence Tracker, noting that there have been more than 500 attacks on Catholic churches since 2020, with 16 already occurring this year.
She also pointed to a separate report finding that more than 400 attacks on Christian churches occurred in 2024 alone, nearly matching the total recorded over the previous five years in an earlier study.
McGuire noted that other religious groups have been targeted, including synagogues, with attacks on Jewish houses of worship up 71.4% in 2023.
“I can remember a time when even one such incident would have shocked the American conscience,” she wrote. “Instead, these repeated incidents of hate, violence and bigotry on America’s most sacred spaces are becoming part of the background noise.”