Religious persecution

Then we wonder why our modern society has ended up in such a mess.

Religious Oppression We should not think that we people of the Church have solved every problem.

St. Porphyrios talks about religious oppression, which many Christians unconsciously force on their children.

This happens, he says, because these same parents are obsessed by their lives and repentance is absent, even if they seem to be perfect and upstanding in all of their religious obligations.

A Christian that truly repents feels joy and not oppression.

It was possible for leftists and many at the political center to believe that the elected Popular Front still actually governed Spain.

These excuses for ignorance of the true situation in Spain and for support of the revolutionary government of Largo Caballero do not, however, apply to the religious persecution.

It was far too extensive and its victims far too numerous to be hidden.

By October 1936, the whole world knew about it.

It was this far-flung and ghastly persecution, described at some length in these pages, that caused faithful, practicing Catholics to become the one substantial element in Western countries, other than the totalitarian German and Italian governments who had reasons of their own for military intervention in Spain, to support the Spanish Nationalists.

The religious persecution was impossible to defend or justify, then or later, though some feeble attempts were made to do so.

Consequently, reporters, writers, and historians of the left talked about the persecution and the martyrdoms as little as possible, then and later.

Yeah, remember that, um, famously, uh, Walter Duranty of The New York Times went to the Soviet Union, knew what happened in Ukraine, and still went back and reported that, um, you know, knew about the Holodomor, and still said, "Oh, everything, uh, the Soviet Union is, is a, is a paradise," and won the Pulitzer Prize.

He's a serial tech entrepreneur, investor, philanthropist, and author who's living the American dream.

At the age of 16, he escaped religious persecution and near-death experiences and immigrated to the U.S. from Iran with his brother and $75 between the two of them.

Just 10 years later, the company he and his brother founded hit a $1.2 billion valuation on Wall Street.

Sounds incredible, right? And it is.

And you certainly have had your share of situations in life where you've had to maintain at least some resemblance of optimism and looking for solutions to be able to move forward.

And so I would love if we could go back in time a bit.

Your new book, Crossing the Desert, which we're going to be talking a bit more about, tells a very compelling and, quite frankly, a heart-wrenching story of your youth, family, religious persecution, just immense pain.

challenges that you faced, but again, always looking for ways to navigate.