Dr. Fallon blogs about the Dominican friars Montesinos and de las Casas who spoke out against the Spanish Empire and their enslavement of the native population:
I’m not surprised. Do not expect people to rally around you when you are speaking the truth about their — and your — common human imperfections. No one wants to hear they’re doing the wrong thing. No one wants to think that God is NOT on their side. Montesinos and Las Casas were prophets, as Martin Luther King, Jr. was a prophet, and Oscar Romero was a prophet. And prophets don’t live long. To paraphrase Leo Rosten, conservatives make heroes out of prophets only after they’ve martyred them.