George Marlin at The Catholic Thing offers a helpful bullet pointed list of what Catholics can expect in the next four years (and I quote):

• The executive ban on funding abortions in U.S. overseas health agencies will be eliminated.
• The executive order barring federal financing of embryo stem-cell research will be eliminated.
• Culture-of-death judges who believe in a “living Constitution” will be installed at all levels of the federal judiciary.
• Reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine will eliminate radio and television discussions of issues that matter to Catholics.
• FOCA
• A national “gay rights” bill that will confer special status on homosexual men and women will be enacted. This will establish a new federally-protected class based on one’s sexual orientation.
• A national “hate crimes” law will be enacted. This will create a new class of victims who will receive greater attention than victims outside those groups and who suffer similar injuries. Assault on a homosexual person will be a greater crime (with greater penalties) than assault on a heterosexual person.
• Catholic institutions will be harassed. Expect the I.R.S. to go after Catholic dioceses, colleges, think tanks, foundations – and their donors – for promoting their faith in the public square.

He adds:

“Practicing Catholics in the public square must get it through their heads that while the new regime’s rhetoric may be appealing and sound sophisticated, nevertheless, there is an underlying and serious distaste for Catholicism. Catholics will be viewed by these secular humanists as public villains and in their salons, anti-Catholicism will be an even more acceptable prejudice than it already has been.”

These are important things to remember.

It’s also important to remember what Pope Benedict XVI went out of his way to point out by the very name he gave his apostolic visit to the United States. Christ is our hope.

The Register is proposing ways in which that hope is real, and no mere platitude.

— Tom Hoopes