By Darrick Taylor, Crisis Magazine, Sept. 21, 2023
Darrick Taylor earned his PhD in History from the University of Kansas. He lives in Central Florida and teaches at Santa Fe College in Gainesville, FL. He also produces a podcast, Controversies in Church History, dealing with controversial episodes in the history of the Catholic Church.
A number of long-term trends, including the collapse of mainline Protestantism, has led to the death of religious liberty, killed by the very groups who long defended it.
Catholics have rightly been appalled by the spectacle of the FBI investigating “radical traditionalist Catholic groups.” If it were not clear already, this is part of a broader campaign against what the National Security apparatus of the United States sees as “disinformation” and “threats” to the government. This campaign appears to be coordinated with elements of the Biden Administration and possibly with help from former members of the Obama administration as well.
The most striking instances of this are the prosecution of Donald Trump and those involved in the protests of the 2020 presidential election in January of 2021. …