This is Part of a Disturbing Pattern (that we’re not allowed to talk about)

We all watched in horror as Catholic school children in Minneapolis were gunned down as they prayed at Mass. It was the kind of tragedy that should stop a nation in its tracks. Innocent children gathered for worship, suddenly caught in a storm of violence because of who they are and what they believe. The headlines came and went, the politicians tweeted, and the cameras moved on. But something about this story won't go away, and not just because of the grief of parents and teachers and classmates.

This attack was not an aberration, or even an anomaly. It's part of a pattern. Christians, and Catholics especially, have increasingly become the targets of violence in America at staggering levels. Vandalism, desecration, statues smashed, altars defaced, fires set, parishioners assaulted. It's not isolated. It's not random. It's systematic.

Since May 2020, the summer of George Floyd, CatholicVote has tracked 521 instances of desecration and vandalism on Catholics. If you expand those stats to all Christian churches, in 2024 alone, there were 415 incidents of anti-Christian violence. That represents a 730% increase since 2018. At the same time, this pattern has converged with another troubling pattern. In a pastoral letter written just days before the Annunciation shooting. Bishop Daniel Thomas of Toledo addressed this new trend. Until recently, the number of people experiencing identity-related distress or identifying as transgender was tiny, a fraction of a fraction of a percent.

Today, according to the Centers for Disease Control, one in four American teens self-identify as LGBTQ. And a recent study of urban high school students found that 9.2% self-identify as Transgender or gender diverse. And it wasn't just a theoretical identity crisis. Between 2016 and 2020, the number of transgender-related surgeries in the U.S. tripled, and that included 3,678 irreversible transgender surgeries on adolescents aged 12 to 18. And that brings me to another pattern. The one that ties together Minneapolis, the rise in anti-Christian violence, and gender ideology.

Investigative journalist Andy Ngo and analyst Tyler O'Neill have painstakingly been sounding the alarm on the growing numbers of incidents where all three converge. From Tyler, On January 4, 2024, 17-year-old Dylan Butler killed two and injured six at Perry High School in Perry, Iowa. Butler adopted gender ideology using he-they pronouns in his TikTok profile and identified himself as gender fluid in another post. In November 2023, a grand jury indicted 47-year-old Jason Lee Willey, a man who identifies as a woman, and goes by Alexia, for threatening to injure people across state lines.

He allegedly threatened to rape girls in girls' restrooms, shoot up schools, and bomb churches. Alexia Willey condemned black Christians especially as Christian trash, saying they're no different than the effing white supremacists. He called a church threatening to rape the members' daughters to death. 28-year-old Audrey Elizabeth Hale shot and killed three kids and three adults on March 27, 2023, at the Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee. The ADL refused to call this an act of left-wing terrorism. Hale's notes condemn her parents for forcing Christian friends into her life.

She wrote that effing parents like them, who think of themselves first and their preference of conservative religion, gay, S, make them believe that the child they are given should suffer. 22-year-old Anderson Lee Aldrich killed five and injured 25 at an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado Springs on November 19th. 2022. While he may have falsely claimed a non-binary identity, by the trans movement's rules, he counts as non-binary. On May 7, 2019, 16-year-old Maya Alec McKinney and 19-year-old Devin Erickson opened fire at STEM school Highlands Ranch in Highlands, Colorado, killing one and injuring eight.

McKinney, a female, identifies as male. Erickson had previously posted on Facebook, You know what I hate? All these Christians who hate gays. And the list goes on. Other vandals who identify as transgender attack churches. From Tyler again. In January 2023, 27-year-old Cameron David Storer, who identifies as a woman and uses the name Nicolette Fate, confessed to setting a 117-year-old church on fire in Portland, Oregon. He told police that he heard voices in his head who told him to burn down the church.

In June 2022, 31-year-old Maeve Noda, a woman who identifies as male, vandalized St. Louis Catholic Church in Bellevue, Washington. She smashed two of the church's glass doors and painted women-haters, kid-groomers, we-hate-gay-people, and F-Catholics on the church's walls. And now, we have Minneapolis.

Authorities confirmed that Robin Westman, the man who killed two and injured 18 before taking his own life, was born Robert Westman. Particularly heartbreaking is the fact that Robert was born a Roman Catholic. He was baptized. ...and served at the altar at a Minneapolis parish not far from Annunciation. He even attended the school.

Tyler O'Neill again. None of this means that most people who identify as transgender pose a violent threat, nor that activist groups like the Human Rights Campaign are intentionally inspiring people to commit violence. At the same time, the trans connection matters. It matters because Westman is part of a pattern. The truth is simple. The ideology of transgenderism is rooted in in self-hatred, and the practice of transgender medicine is inherently violent. It tells young men and women, you were born in the wrong body.

It teaches them to destroy what God has given them. In many cases, trans medicine pumps them with hormones, such as steroids and testosterone, that warp the mind and tend towards violence. Statistics show that trans-identified individuals commit violence at a rate disproportionate to their numbers. Yet, instead of asking why, the media runs cover. Which brings me to the trans-industrial complex.

The so-called gender-affirming care industry is a financial goldmine. Transcription by CastingWords In 2022, the gender surgery market in the U.S. was valued at $2.1 billion. By 2030, it is projected to hit $5 billion. The hormone therapy market? Already worth $1.6 billion in 2023, with years of projected growth ahead. This is not compassion. This is exploitation.

Every confused teenager becomes a revenue stream. The younger you can get them hooked on life-saving hormones, drugs, and therapy, the more years you have to capitalize on their misery. Kelsey Reinhart, president of CatholicVote, put it bluntly. Over the last 20 years, the imaginary noun transgender has caved in reality itself, producing a complete break with nature and nature's God. An imaginary noun has created a very real empire of profit and pain. So, what about the politicians? What about their response? The Democratic Party is in trouble with its base.

It just... Just hit a 30-year low in approval. Only 33% of voters still back them. But why is their base abandoning them? Not for being too radical, not for dividing the nation over trans, but for not being extreme enough, for not pushing the LGBT agenda hard enough. So, the politicians who get kickbacks from the trans-industrial complex have chosen to turn up the rhetorical heat to foment an atmosphere of terror for these vulnerable youth. The Human Rights Campaign declared a quote, state of emergency for LGBT Americans in 2023.

As if they are living under siege. When other legislators introduce laws that would protect children from trans surgeries and so-called gender-affirming care, radical transgenderists smear them as transphobic or fascists. Pro-trans journalists describe parental rights movements as, quote, transgender family purges. You can't use this kind of language for years and not expect something to break. So, why the ire directed at Christians? Well, we're not exactly surprised.

Jesus Christ himself told us, the world will hate you because it hated me. History tells us the story. From the Colosseum in Rome to the guillotine of the French Revolution, from the gulags of Soviet Russia to the re-education camps of Mao's China, Christians have been singled out again and again, just as Christ said. In our own day, we see it dressed up in modern clothes. Remember Senator Dianne Feinstein sneering at a Catholic judge, the dogma lives loudly within you? Remember Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer mocking the Eucharist with a Dorito chip?

Remember Kamala Harris celebrating with the anti-Catholic hate group Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence? Why? Christianity is the stronghold of everything they want to destroy. Tradition, family, biology, reality itself. And you know what? That's what we're here for. We are a witness to God's presence in a world where God is absent.

That's the literal translation of martyr, witness. As she faced the coming storm in Hitler's Germany, St. Edith Stein, who died a martyr at Auschwitz, didn't flinch. She embraced the cross because she knew it wasn't a bug in the system. It's a feature of the Catholic faith. In 1938, she wrote, Of course, I know better now what it means to be wedded to the Lord in the sign of the cross. However, one can never comprehend it, because it is a mystery.

And we shouldn't be shocked at this, nor should we call Victim Olympics and take home our trophies. We are being invited instead to participate in a mystery. Christ himself calls us to be a sign of contradiction. Jesus told us we would be persecuted, and so we are.

And what is our attitude towards the first and primal victims of transgenderism, the men and the women and the children caught up in the lie? Well, I think Bishop Thomas said it so well. He said, Just as a good mother loves her children wholeheartedly, so too our Mother the Church loves her children with all her heart.

She speaks words of comfort to them, and tries to relieve as much as possible their heavy burdens. But her guidance would not be truly loving if she failed to speak with utmost honesty, even when that guidance runs contrary to some of the assumptions of our contemporary culture or conflicts with feelings experienced by some who struggle with issues of gender. These are not words of hate, as the Democratic mayor of Minneapolis suggested after the shooting.

These are the words God is speaking to every one of us. So, where does that leave us? It leaves us heartbroken and resolved. I went to mass this Sunday, and I looked up at the stained glass windows. I thought of my own children sitting beside me, how bullets could come through those windows, too.

And I thought of the shooter who, as a child, also gazed at church windows like those. And then I thought of John Paul II. In 2000, he gathered the faithful in the Roman Colosseum to remember the martyrs of the 20th century and to pray for those who are persecuted today for their faith.

He spoke of their witness with a ringing call. Let it be passed on from generation to generation, so that from it there may blossom a profound Christian renewal. Let it be guarded as a treasure of consummate value for the Christians of the new millennium, and let it become the leaven for bringing all Christ's disciples into full communion.

So, let us ask God for the bold hearts of the martyrs, to proclaim the truth in charity, even in the face of what Pope Francis called polite persecution. We cannot be silent while children are indoctrinated, while churches are desecrated, while our brothers and sisters are murdered. To speak and to love and to suffer for Christ is our calling. Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad.

Let us have courage to speak the truth in love, to proclaim for love of God and love of neighbor that the truth sets us free. We have a tremendous opportunity here to be the light of the world.