Over at First Things, Robert Royal reflects on the significance of a newly unveiled memorial to Victims of Communism:

We often hear these days about the problems and misdeeds of “organized” religion. We much more rarely hear about the arrogance and downright atrocities of organized irreligion. Yet during the twentieth century, self-proclaimed scientific atheism in the form of communism killed 100 million people. As the old Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky used to say, people consider the Spanish Inquisition a blot on Christian history. And beyond doubt, it is. Yet the Inquisition killed, over three centuries—and after legal proceedings that are not ours, but were not mere show trials either—about as many as the Soviet Union killed on an average day. The high body counts of international communism were and continue to be a huge blot on the history of human rationality.

Unfortunately, according to Royal, few religious leaders showed up, in spite of the fact that the religious were often communism’s first victims:

Most worrisome of all, though, was the absence of all but a few religious leaders. Those present were mostly from former communist nations. Ever since Voltaire’s Ecrasez l’infame, militant atheism has not just been incidentally antireligious. Martyrdom appeared once again in Europe in the French Revolution and continued, on and off, until the last days of communism on the Continent. The easy assumption that faith and secularism are really after the same things and may readily coexist, which took hold in the West in the 1960s, has always been a doubtful proposition. There are forms of secularity that are tolerant and even welcoming of religion, but the more usual form of unbelief is ideologically committed to eliminating belief. Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens may never have at their diposal security forces to round up troublesome believers, but not for lack of conviction that we are “child abusers” and dangerously delusional. Their kind of reason has deeply intolerant impulses. Benedict XVI has rightly pointed out that one consequence of paying attention to modern martyrs may be “the convalescence of reason.”

Religious leaders used to be alert to threats from militant nonbelievers. But in the 1960s, many lost the scent. Indeed, quite a few of them tried to make nice with nasty communist regimes at the time they were still persecuting Jews and Christians. In recent decades, there’s been a noticeable embarrassment among many leaders about having to point out the clear violations of religious rights that continue in communist countries. It’s easy to take up, say, the cause of illegal immigrants in America, harder—in certain circles—to talk about Christians in Cuban or Chinese prisons. It may be a slight stretch, but it seems that anti-anticommunism has survived the heyday of communism itself.

Next time I’m in Washington, D.C., I know which memorial I’ll be visiting first.