Msgr. Charles Pope has said it out loud here:

http://www.ncregister.com/blog/msgr-pope/a-dangerous-post-on-the-recent-terrorist-attacks

He calls it a “dangerous post” and I’m sure it is, not so much because I’d expect an assassin to show up with a high-powered rifle—though that’s a possibility, I guess—but because I expect him to be shouted down by people accusing him of intellectual, theological, and/or moral wrong-headedness.

I’ve thought of it. I’m sure others have thought of it. No one would say it. The plague of jihadist terrorism may have been permitted by God as a punishment for our depraved apostasy. The face wrapped in black cloth and belonging to a man (or woman or even a child) wielding a machete or an automatic weapon or a suicide vest—those images we’ve seen too many times now to continue to ignore—may be the face of an avenging angel.

What makes this enemy different is its religious origin. It’s not a political or economic ideology, it’s not nationalism (on the contrary, it’s stateless). It’s willing to die for its god, and moreover, it’s not a god unknown to Christianity or to Judaism. We know this god well. It’s an ancient acquaintance. There’s nothing new here except one thing: its uprising, its manifestation into modern history, into our time. Indeed, those secular/agnostic/atheistic politicians who set policy might do well to read a little history, rather than study the economics of oil-driven modern industrialism, or the socialist theories which undergird their immigration laws, etc.  Even better, they might read the book of Genesis and note that Abraham had two sons, not one.

I would have expected this to come from a fundamentalist evangelical pulpit, not a Catholic priest. But here it is. It may be that it is in fact being preached here and there by fundamentalist Protestants—I don’t know—but I would hazard a guess it’s something many people have thought, if not spoken aloud, until now.