Some in the clergy are beginning to understand that the battle between church and state will not end well for those in the church. That is one of the lessons we learn from Nicholas Hahn’s commentary on “Chicago’s Archbishop at the Barricades.” He is talking about the Archbishop of Chicago, Cardinal Francis George.

Cardinal George has never been one to mince words in taking on those who would criticize the Catholic Church’s moral stands on issues like abortion and same-sex marriage. He reminds those who criticize that “the church is no one’s private club.” And he adds that in a few years they would “stand before the same Christ to give an account of their stewardship.”

He has criticized the Obama administration for behaving “as if a right to free contraception were now a constitutional right” that presumes to supersede “the genuinely constitutional right of freedom of religion.” He announced that the church “will simply not cooperate.”

He decried how “this tendency for the government to claim for itself authority over all areas of human experience flows from the secularization of our culture. If God cannot be part of public life, then the state itself plays God.”

Most of all he is concerned about what this intrusion by government could mean to church and state relations. More than once he has made this haunting statement. “I expect to die in bed, my successor will die in prison, and his successor will die a martyr in the public square.”

When we repeated the cardinal’s ominous prediction on radio a week ago, no one disagreed with it. But some suggested that it may happen earlier than what he predicted. It’s a question I suggest you ask your pastor. Does he think his successor will die in prison, and that his successor will die a martyr? If so, ask him what he is doing to prevent that from happening. Standing by and doing nothing is not an option.