I’ve been publicly talking about the Catholic Faith for more than two decades. I’ve done this informally on a one-on-one basis as well as formally at parish and diocesan events. For the longest time I followed the primary rule established among public Catholics:

Above all, be nice.

Of course, the Nice Rule is not presented that way. It’s presented as being “charitable” and respecting each person’s “dignity.” Don’t get me wrong, we absolutely are called to charity, and each person does have dignity. But those were just code words for the actual underlying rule, to be nice. We don’t want anyone thinking Catholics are meanies, after all. We are obsessed, in fact, in how people perceive us, desperate for human respect from our opponents.

This attitude is based on the fundamental shift that occurred in the Church in the 1960’s, when Catholic leaders no longer felt we should proclaim the truth, but instead we should dialogue with error. If we all sit down at the table and hash things out, surely our enemies will come to their senses. But this can only happen if we are nice and polite.

The Nice Rule might have made some sense in the past. Although the culture was already deteriorating, basic Catholic beliefs were still considered socially acceptable and a legitimate option in the marketplace of ideas. Further, in the public mind there were still associations of Catholicism with the Inquisition and burning heretics (the historical veracity of which was irrelevant to the public imagination), so presenting a smiling front was seen as a way to disarm non-Catholics and advance the promulgation of the Faith.

But whether or not that was ever an effective strategy, it no longer makes sense in today’s world. The culture has radically changed in the past two decades, making the Nice Rule a defeatist strategy. Our opponents don’t want to sit at a table with us; they want to crush us. Yet I still see public Catholics continually stress that we must be charitable (read: nice) toward homosexual activists or that we must respect the dignity (read: downplay the insanity) of transgender people. Our opponents don’t want to sit at a table with us; they want to crush us. Tweet This

Today we live in an era where powerful forces—in government, the media, academia, and other elite institutions—are actively working to eradicate our faith and groom our children for depravity. Applying the Nice Rule to these enemies is doomed to failure.

If someone supports a man shaking his bare ass in the face of kids at a Pride Parade, he is not a dialogue partner.

If someone labels Catholics as antisemitic or racist or misogynist or homophobic or transphobic, simply for believing Catholic teaching, he is not someone to debate.

If someone insists there’s nothing wrong with a man leaving his wife and family to find his “true self” as a “woman,” he is not someone to be reasoned with.

Most importantly, if any of these people support using State power to crush dissent from their views (and most of them do), then being nice just hastens the day faithful Catholics are arrested for their beliefs.

So what does this mean in practice? What does it mean to no longer be “nice?” It doesn’t mean we are jerks; but it does mean we stand up directly to evil, regardless of how our enemies may react. To put it simply, we are confrontational.

Let me give a recent example. Last Saturday, I joined a group of 100+ men who prayed the Rosary at the steps of our Cathedral church. This might not sound remarkable, but what made this different is that we did this while the city’s Pride Parade was starting right next to the Cathedral.

We held flags and images of the Sacred Heart and prayed in reparation to the Sacred Heart for the sins of the Pride participants. We asked God to convert the hearts of the unfaithful and have mercy on us all.

Now here’s the thing: I am sure that the Pride participants looked at us as if we were unloving, bigoted “haters.” One yelled out to us “Jesus wasn’t white!”, implying that we were all white supremacists. Our public image wasn’t “nice;” it was inherently confrontational.

I’m sure this is why many Catholics, especially public Catholics, don’t support such efforts as ours. Our event wasn’t advertised in any parish bulletins, and the Archbishop wasn’t endorsing us. Even if these Catholics oppose Pride activities, they don’t want to come across as uncharitable (i.e., not nice). Yet what we were doing was the most charitable thing possible: praying for their souls, proclaiming the true Faith, and directly combating the demonic forces present at the parade.

I saw a similar dynamic in the early 1990’s with the pro-life movement. Many of the respectable pro-life leaders opposed our direct action efforts at abortion clinics—sidewalk counseling, praying, and rescuing. They worried that it gave the pro-life movement a negative image; it was too confrontational. Yet that direct action was responsible for countless lives saved. We didn’t care that we didn’t look nice; we weren’t in it for PR, but for saving babies. Pro-abortion forces were going to hate us no matter what, so there was no sense in restricting our activities in order to get them to like us. 

Let me give another, albeit non-Catholic, example. Recently Tucker Carlson was at an event in Australia in which a liberal reporter started asking him questions that were set up to make Carlson look like a violent racist. 

Carlson masterfully turns the tables, refusing to accept the reporter’s false premises. He confronts her directly, even mocks her. Some might say Carlson was not being “charitable,” but his direct confrontation with her actually was charitable, for it revealed the truth for all to see. Catholics need to be just as confrontational when we are attacked and maligned.

Faithful Catholics today need to realize we have already lost the PR battle: our culture elites hate us and want to destroy us, no matter how nice we might try to sound. In that environment, we need to fight back and directly confront our enemies. We need to be praying at Pride Parades, directly opposing Drag Queen Story Hours, and urging our public libraries to not promote LGBTQ+ books. Yes, we’ll be seen as uncharitable and mean, but that’s our image anyway for simply not agreeing with their evil. So we might as well work against that evil.

We are the Church Militant, and we need to start acting like it again.