The gradual compromise of principles. The slow, sneaking stifling of integrity. The earnest desire for dialogue—to get along. To agree to disagree. To keep one’s beliefs to one’s self in the interests of peaceful coexistence.

Then the other shoe drops: blood is spilt and men are in chains on trumped up charges. And the ones who betrayed them are their former friends and colleagues.

The brouhaha of Notre Dame’s commencement has provoked a maelstrom of activity and debate on Catholic blogs and periodicals—as well it should. I do not intend to repeat what has already been ably said (by Ralph McInerny, George Weigel, and many others), but the sensationalized media showcasing of images of priests being taken into custody strikes a certain chord, and evokes a certain historical comparison.

The years immediately preceding Henry VIII’s break from Rome were both tense and perplexing for many Catholics. There were many bothersome signs, many new discomforts, and many moments when well-intentioned men—particularly the clergy—remained silent. The “Reformation Parliament” was troubling, and the Dissolution of the Monasteries was very distressing. Still, it was easier not to recognize in this former Fidei Defensor any real threat. Silence was more expedient, more prudent, more safe. As the years passed and the situation became direr, the increasingly anemic clergy squirmed under the Henrician thumb, but said nothing.

Then the other shoe dropped, and dropped, and dropped again, each time with a heavier thud, brashly sounding a death knell. Men and women who would not compromise were fined, disenfranchised, thrown into prison, tortured, and often executed. Henry’s anti-Papal fervor waxed to a frenzy in his daughter, Elizabeth, but she added a new and distinctly Tudor spice—a mastery of propaganda. No one would die for their faith, she declared (with a haughty sniff in the memory of her predecessor and half-sister, “Bloody Mary”, who of all the Tudors was not so adept at public relations). Only traitors would suffer. So it was that the Catholic martyrs would die attesting to their innocence of the charge of treason, declaring the true cause of their execution, and praying for the Machiavellian monarch who had ordered it. Moreover, Elizabeth insisted, torture would be illegal, except when absolutely necessary—“It would be idle to speculate,” comments a Tyburn historian dryly, “as to the amount of alleviation the reflection that torture was illegal may have brought to [Saint Robert] Southwell, for instance, who was racked … several times.”

In the same way, these images of Notre Dame arrests—like so much else—are being stifled by the media or profoundly misrepresented. Anyone who would do such a thing is castigated as an agitator, an extremist, a rebel, an unbalanced nut who should probably be in a (governmentally-controlled) institution. (Perhaps we should be grateful that the story has been reported at all—almost no one other than Ralph McInerny is talking about the other commencement ceremony that took place on the Notre Dame campus last Sunday.) What is rarely mentioned is the fact that those photographed arrests were on the order of Notre Dame, and were made for the grievous offense of “trespass”. It isn’t quite “treason”, but for the moment I suppose it will do.

Realization is breaking across the Catholic world, particularly in the United States—realization that we are not simply quibbling over syntax, that our beliefs are worth dying for, and that the blood of unborn martyrs already flows freely enough to drown the nation. There are many choices to be made, but the right path is clear: to uphold the truths of our faith without compromise, however the media or history may paint us.

With all of this in mind, I make this response to a friend who defended Obama’s basic, smooth-tongued argument—Can’t we all just get along?  Let’s all just agree to disagree:

No.