Books, Arts & Manners: Church of Silence

Stolen Church: Martyrdom in Communist Rumania By Fr. Alexander Ratiu and Fr. William Virtue Our Sunday Visitor, 192 pp., $4.95

Conservatives are often accused of overreaction against Communism, but the charge typically comes from people who have had their freedom too easily to appreciate it deeply. 1 have often seen this charge made from the editorial perches of the New York Times, but 1 have never heard it from the lips of any soul who has actually lived under Communism. The refugees I have talked to (and anyone who gets out is likely to qualify as a refugee) generally seem to despair of communicating their experience even to a sympathetic listener. Time and again 1 find that I have not comprehended. 1 want to understand what they have been through; and 1 can’t.

JS

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Joseph Sobran

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Religious Persecution

Soviet Union

Human Rights

Stolen Church: Martyrdom in Communist Rumania By Fr. Alexander Ratiu and Fr. William Virtue Our Sunday Visitor, 192 pp., $4.95

Conservatives are often accused of overreaction against Communism, but the charge typically comes from people who have had their freedom too easily to appreciate it deeply. 1 have often seen this charge made from the editorial perches of the New York Times, but 1 have never heard it from the lips of any soul who has actually lived under Communism. The refugees I have talked to (and anyone who gets out is likely to qualify as a refugee) generally seem to despair of communicating their experience even to a sympathetic listener. Time and again 1 find that I have not comprehended. 1 want to understand what they have been through; and 1 can’t.