The President of Belmont Abbey College President said he would close the college before submitting to the HHS mandate that would require them to provide coverage for contraceptives and sterilization procedures, according to Campus Notes.

Now that’s a Catholic college! Wow. President Bill Thierfelder gets some major CMR kudos for that. Now, let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. As he said, there’s many stops to go before even considering something like that. But just that willingness to stand for something should inspire us.

But it’s clear that one of the goals of leftism is to drive the Catholic Church out of the public sphere.

What would happen though if they succeeded and the Catholic Church stopped being so darn Catholic and did things like help people.

I compiled a small list last year at the National Catholic Register of things that would happen if the Church stopped doing what the Church does.

Almost 7,000 schools would close in the United States alone. Already under-performing public schools suffering from overcrowding would likely collapse under the weight of about 2.6 million children showing up at the door expecting a free education. You think test scores are low now? Wait until 2.6 million more kids show up.

Over 200 Catholic colleges and universities with over 600,000 students would suddenly be without a school, leaving supply diminished and demand unchanged thus skyrocketing the already exorbitant cost of college.

The over 200 Catholic residential homes for children, or orphanages, which serve 50,000 children in a given year would be gone. The children would be shuttled into already crammed government programs or lost completely.

The over 84 million people who receive care at any of about 600 Catholic hospitals every year would be forced to seek help elsewhere, clogging up hospitals. The more than 15 million emergency room visits per year to Catholic hospitals would be headed to other hospitals already suffering from financial losses of emergency rooms. Emergency vehicles would also have increased travel times, driving up fatality rates.

The Catholic health care network, which also includes over 400 health care centers and over 1,500 specialized homes, would shut down. Many assisted living facilities, adult day care and senior housing would be gone.

Many crisis pregnancy centers would vanish, leaving women without options or help when they need it most.

Many homes for pregnant women or abused women would disappear, forcing women to the streets or a return to a perhaps abusive relationship from which they sought escape.

Nearly 70% of U.S. dioceses sponsor housing or housing-related services. That would stop, and homeless numbers would rise.

Over 135 national and hundreds more local Catholic lay organizations that serve the Church and provide services in communities throughout the United States like the Knights of Columbus and the Society of St. Vincent de Paul would disappear. To get an idea, in a given year, the K of C donated $139,711,619 to charity and volunteered 64,039,706 hours. All of that would be gone. The Society of St. Vincent de Paul has about 120,000 members serving 15 million people per year, which include 646,820 home visits, 360,596 hospital visits, 361,420 aged daycare visits, 159,257 prison visits, and $392 million in total expenditures and volunteer services. All gone.

The Catholic Church and organizations supported by the Catholic Church are the largest care providers of HIV and AIDS in the world. All of that would be gone.

The Catholic Campaign for Human Development, which has granted hundreds of millions to thousands of community-based, self-help projects initiated and led by people living in poverty, would cease all grants, leading to the destruction of programs aimed to help the poor.

Catholic Relief Services spends millions to help provide clean water, improve agriculture, and educate the young in countries with little access to any of it. But that too would all be gone along with programs that deliver mosquito nets to prevent malaria in Africa, without which thousands more would likely die needlessly of malaria.

Catholic Charities—which alone is the fourth largest charity in the United States, above the Red Cross and the Salvation Army, and consists of 1,400 agencies that run soup kitchens, temporary shelters, child care, and refugee resettlement all around the country and provides help for 6.5 million people, regardless of religious, social, or economic backgrounds—would be gone.

That’s not even close to a complete list. The Catholic Church is THE most charitable organization in the world. Bar none.

Yet still, the Church is viewed as the enemy of leftists in many cases and therefore must be wiped out. But the leftists are smart. They’re not going to attempt to wipe the Church out so much as make it non distinctive from the rest of the world. Assimilate it. Secularize it. Leave it as a shell.

And it’s that which Belmont Abbey College is standing up to. God bless them. It’s a fight worth fighting.

For more info check out Campus Notes.