By Randall Smith, The Catholic Thing - On April 16, 1962, the Monday before Easter, the Catholic Archbishop of New Orleans, Joseph Francis Rummel, excommunicated three local Catholics for defying the authority of the Church and organizing protests against the archbishop’s order that the Catholic schools in the archdiocese be desegregated. The first of the three was Judge Leander Perez, 70, who called on Catholics to withhold donations to the Archdiocese and to boycott Sunday church collections. The second was Jackson G. Ricau, 44, political commentator, segregationist writer...