On July 17th, an Israeli strike on Gaza’s only Catholic parish killed three—including two elderly women—and left many wounded, including the pastor. The next day, Babylon Bee Editor Joel Berry had this to say about the victims: There are “only about 200 professed Catholics still living in Gaza and they all support Hamas.” They “aid and support the terror regime,” he added.
On July 16th, one day before the attack on the church, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee stated this in response to Irish lawmakers trying to hold radical Israeli extremists accountable for nearly destroying a church in the only remaining all-Christian village in the Holy Land: “Did the Irish fall into a vat of Guinness?…Sober up Ireland!”
These aren’t just flippant remarks. They are theological signals, cultural relics, and dangerous political weapons. What unites them is a Protestant-inflected security: mock the Catholic, disclaim the non-white Christian, demonize the immigrant—all while draping the rhetoric in Christian respectability.
Berry’s remarks don’t just amount to a geopolitical argument but a theological one. He claimed “true Christian faith still exists in Gaza, but it’s all underground. Anyone allowed by Hamas to practice openly is allowed to do so only because they aid and support the terror regime.”
In other words, he divided Gaza’s Christians into two categories: the visible, sacramental Church—painted as collaborators with terror—and the “true” underground believers, invisible and therefore morally acceptable.
He [Berry] divided Gaza’s Christians into two categories: the visible, sacramental Church—painted as collaborators with terror—and the “true” underground believers, invisible and therefore morally acceptable.Tweet ThisThis isn’t satire. It’s an erasure. Berry’s words echo centuries-old Protestant suspicion toward Catholicism and Orthodoxy—faith too public; too ritualistic; too embodied in visible, sacramental witness and liturgy to be “real.”
For Berry, the Christians sheltering in Gaza’s church, caring for neighbors and praying in a bombed-out sanctuary, don’t count as disciples. They’re not martyrs; they’re moral liabilities to the tame, civic religion that blends in with (rather than standing as a sign of contradiction to) the princes of this world.
But they are not erased. In the smoldering rubble of St. Porphyrius Orthodox Church and beneath the shell-shattered roof of Holy Family Catholic Church, ancient hymns still rise. The Eucharist is still celebrated. That is the scandal Berry cannot abide: the visibility of a Church that endures not underground but under fire.
Meanwhile, Mike Huckabee reached back into 19th-century nativist archives to belittle Irish Catholics. By asking if Ireland had “fallen into a vat of Guinness” and telling them to “sober up,” Huckabee resurrected the “drunken Irish” trope that once animated Know‑Nothing anti-Catholic cartoons and fueled waves of discrimination.
The Ancient Order of Hibernians condemned Huckabee’s remarks, calling them a revival of “19th-century anti-Irish caricatures.” Yet the ambassador’s comment passed largely unchallenged in American media—because anti-Catholicism still enjoys a cultural hall pass here.
Embedded in Huckabee’s quip is the same Protestant suspicion of Catholicism as in Berry’s post: Catholics are an unserious, simplistic, primitive tribe. Our public faith is at best irrelevant, but it is treacherous when it takes real public action—in which cases we ought to expect a condescending rebuke from our cultural betters.
This rhetorical pattern isn’t confined to Gaza or Ireland. Once, Irish and Italian Catholic immigrants were widely seen as existential threats to American Protestant identity. Today, that role is also assigned not only to the Catholic and Orthodox victims of Israeli violence in the Holy Land and Gaza but to Catholic immigrants from Latin America and Africa.
The language is remarkably unchanged: these Catholics, you will hear, are emotional. Superstitious. Un-American.
And immigrants are painted with the same brush as Gaza’s Catholics—complicit in uncivilized chaos, tolerable only if invisible.
Catholics must not make the mistake of viewing remarks like Huckabee’s and Berry’s as haphazard, unrelated expressions of ignorance. They are reasserting an old theological hierarchy. For civilization to flourish, they believe, whiteness and Protestantism must remain on top, while ancient Catholicism must remain under suspicion.
Racism sparks backlash. Anti-Semitism rightly draws condemnation. But anti-Catholicism? Huckabee jokes, Berry dismisses, few care. This prejudice is so culturally acceptable that it flies under the radar—even among Christians.
This latent bigotry corrodes the universality of the Church. When we allow it, we side with power not the Cross.
It is true: the underground Church in Iran is growing explosively. Their faith is courageous and inspiring. But the visible, embodied faith of Gaza’s Christians is no less heroic.
Priests celebrating the Eucharist amid falling bombs. Nuns sheltering Muslim neighbors. Lay Catholics forming human shields for the elderly. This is Christian witness in its most raw and public form. To erase them because they refuse to go underground is to redefine martyrdom into invisibility—into conformity with the world.
Catholicism claims universality. Her sacraments are for all: Irish, Palestinian, Iranian, and, in a word, “the foreigner.”
G.K. Chesterton reminds us: “If there is anything more absurd than Liberalism it is conservatism. If it is true that the earth belongs to the living, it belongs to the dead whom they have taken into their keeping.”
The Church remembers the dead. It defends the living. And it refuses to bow to tribal gods of race, nation, or political expediency.
Eric, you are embarrassing yourself and discrediting Ctisis with this stuff. It is sad that warped Islamic ideology and generations of political indoctrination have created evil human beings, but you can’t seem to figure this out because you’re busy fighting “dispensationalism”. Just stop it. You are doing great harm to your cause and confusing your readers.
As my final contribution to this discussion, let the parties speak for themselves:
Jones:
But they are not erased. In the smoldering rubble of St. Porphyrius Orthodox Church and beneath the shell-shattered roof of Holy Family Catholic Church, ancient hymns still rise. The Eucharist is still celebrated. That is the scandal Berry cannot abide: the visibility of a Church that endures not underground but under fire.
Priests celebrating the Eucharist amid falling bombs. Nuns sheltering Muslim neighbors. Lay Catholics forming human shields for the elderly. This is Christian witness in its most raw and public form. To erase them because they refuse to go underground is to redefine martyrdom into invisibility—into conformity with the world.
Israel:
In a statement later on Thursday, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said: “An initial inquiry into reports regarding injured individuals in the Holy Family Church in Gaza City, suggests that fragments from a shell fired during operational activity in the area hit the church mistakenly. The cause of the incident is under review.
“The IDF directs its strikes solely at military targets and makes every feasible effort to mitigate harm to civilians and religious structures, and regrets any unintentional damage caused to them,” the statement added.
“Every innocent life lost is a tragedy. We share the grief of the families and the faithful,” he (Netanyahu) said in a statement.
It’s not difficult to determine who is sincere and who is the dramatist.
When you see an article with the word Gaza in the title, and the author is Jason Jones, you know that it is going to be an anti Israeli article and not an anti Hamas article.
When we run an article by Jason Jones, we know it will be focused on defending the vulnerable, no matter the politics involved.
The problem with this article is precisely that it is political.
Berry wrote:
“true Christian faith still exists in Gaza, but it’s all underground.”
Which Jones described as:
the “true” underground believers, invisible and therefore morally acceptable.
I carry no brief for Berry. I don’t know if his observations are valid or not. However, he did not say that only underground Catholics are morally acceptable.
In fact he wrote the opposite. He wrote that the morally acceptable Catholics are underground.
I won’t get into the tortured road of a drunken Irish joke drawing a parallel between 19th century Irish and Italian immigrants to the current problem with immigants from Latin America. The journey itself is ample evidence of a political opinion piece. And not a well-grounded one at that.
Nowhere in this opinion is there any acknowledgement of the plain, observable fact that Hamas uses civilians as both targets and shields while Israel drops leaflets warning civilians of an impending attack. Nowhere is there an acknowledgement that there are two million Palestinians living in relative peace and prosperity withing Israeli as citizens.
Instead, what we read repeatedly is of “Isralei violence.”
We all have an obligation to defend the vulnerable. The most effective weapon is the truth. That means incorporating, not ignoring, plain observable facts in the analysis of the ongoing violence in Gaza.
With all due respect to the Crisis editor, what we know about a Jason Jones article is that it will not be defending the vulnerable Israelis. It will not be focused on the 1200 Israelis massacred on October 7th, and not on the hostages taken, many of whom were killed, and not on the Israelis bombarded with 8500 rockets in October 2023.
Jason Jones’ organization Vulnerable People Project has helped many vulnerable Jews over the years. How many have you helped?
Ad hominem attackes don’t help the vulnerable. Or anyone else.
We don’t know the facts here. One fact we do know is Ireland is not remotely Catholic anymore. It is the worst result. Ex Catholics are the most vicious persecutors so any mocking of the Emerald Marxist Clown Regime is second only the South Africa. Crisis glossed October 7th, skips over Hamas model terror state for hire, skips over the Rafah gate being closed and the hideous illegality of bottling up civilians supported by all the Arab states, the UN, Europe and two fairy princes of Crisis Sammons and Jones. To them and their not so latent Antisemitism Israel gets what it deserves because Gaza is hapless, a model terror state and I guess now has a few Catholics who have never condemned their government. I am glad to did not exagerate as much as Eric with the term “bombed” which requires planning but “strike” is also a vague term. A tank shell can be a lot of things but waiting for the investigation waste the opportunity to make Hamas’s tactic maximally effective. That is Crisis role in this. Not the elimination of Hamas but the continuation of the slow genocide started in German, rejoin in 1947. Very Stalin……do it slowly….not Hitler style…..
I read your comment waiting for the inevitable “antisemitism!” claim and wasn’t disappointed. It’s a sure sign someone has no argument when he throws that label at anyone who dares to defend the vulnerable against American-supported Israeli attacks.
I, for one, do not believe the Isaelis government is attacking the Church.
We all know what’s going in with the Hamas genocidal warfare and their tactic of using civilians both as targets and as shields. Every Hamas tactic is a war crime.
We also know that innocent civilians are killed in modern wars carried on not on isolated battlefields but in urban centers.
The idea that the Israeli government is targeting Catholics is bizarre and bordering on paranoia.