Last Friday, I traveled to Los Angeles to join Californians outside Dodger Stadium in a historic protest and prayer rally over the Dodgers’ decision to honor the anti-Catholic hate group, the “Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.”
There are many images in my mind from that day, but one stands out as the epitome of what this entire battle has been about.
A Hispanic family had brought a laundry cart upon which they placed a framed image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, a piece of art which symbolizes a particular devotion to Christ. They had carefully arranged flowers on top and in front of it, and behind it they draped a red cloth.
I snapped one blurry photo as I walked by. Looking at it brings me to tears. This family reverently took this image – which clearly occupies a place of honor in their home – and went to the trouble of bringing it to Dodger Stadium and creating a makeshift altar for it out of a laundry cart. This family cherishes their faith and its symbols and traditions which have been handed down to them over the course of 2,000 years … symbols and traditions which are being degraded and desecrated by a hate group which has the backing of the mighty Los Angeles Dodgers.
But they did not bring the image to Dodger Stadium to express their fury, though they were surely angry at what this group is doing to their faith. Instead, when I saw them, the mother and teenage daughter were on their knees praying the rosary along with the crowd.
They had every right to spew vitriol against the men who mock their faith. But instead they chose to do what Jesus taught: to pray for those who persecute us.
This family’s profound witness cuts to the heart of what our campaign against the Dodgers has been about since the beginning – ordinary Catholics standing up for their faith, and prayerfully defending it from those who so callously mock, defile, and pervert it.
My organization, CatholicVote, is a scrappy band of fewer than 50 employees which has been leading the charge, but this fight came to us from the bottom up. We first learned of the award because a supporter of ours emailed us to say he was a lifelong Dodgers fan and was disturbed to see the award announced in an email from the team.
Once we broke the story, pushback from Catholics and people of all faiths began immediately. A few days later, the Dodgers disinvited the hate group.
Coming under pressure from a small band of extremists, however, the “Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence” were re-invited.
So we announced a million-dollar ad campaign to educate Dodgers fans across California and the country about what exactly this treasured, all-American institution now stands for. But we chose our words carefully: in our announcement, we said we would raise a million dollars, not that we would spend a million dollars – because we didn’t have that kind of money to spend. We had no idea what we would actually raise.
Within days, we saw tens of thousands of individuals making small gifts – nearly all of them under $100 – and we smashed our fundraising goal. For a non-profit of our size, the scale of the support was staggering. Every dollar went towards putting a message against anti-Catholic bigotry on the air.
On the day of the “Pride Night,” we were similarly amazed at the massive presence of Catholics who showed up to prayerfully protest the Dodgers’ anti-Catholic bigotry. From the podium during my brief speech, I looked at the faces of a truly diverse crowd of people gathered in prayer even as they were being shamed by the billion-dollar corporation just up on the hill: abuelos and abuelas, twenty-somethings and teenagers, priests, and real nuns. The message of the day was prayer and reparation for the acts of hatred against our God and our faith. Some people held signs saying, “They know not what they do.” Most of the crowd held rosaries which they prayed together for the men who commit sacrilege against our religion. To be sure, people were fired up. But I didn’t hear a word of hatred. The event was peaceful from start to finish.
The thousands of people gathered in Los Angeles last week represented millions of people across the country who have been hurt by what the Dodgers did. Under the banner of diversity, the Dodgers showed contempt for the people of the most racially diverse religious group in the world.
Our million-dollar campaign is a warning shot to woke corporations everywhere: If you insult and degrade Christians, we will stand up.
But we’ll also pray for you. It’s what Catholics do.
Tommy Valentine is director of the Catholic Accountability Project at CatholicVote. You can follow Catholic Vote on Twitter: @CatholicVote
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.