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Tim Thomas Causes Stir on Facebook, Declares ‘I Stand With the Catholics in the Fight for Religious Freedom’

When Tim Thomas speaks, everyone seems to listen — but that’s not to say everyone agrees with what they hear.

The Bruins goalie, who skipped out on the team’s visit to see president Barack Obama in the nation’s capital earlier this year, posted the following on his Facebook page at about 1:30 p.m. ET on Wednesday afternoon.

“I Stand with the Catholics in the fight for Religious Freedom,” he wrote.

The netminder also added a quote by Martin Niemöller, whom he he described as a “prominent German anti-Nazi theologian and Lutheran pastor, best known as the author of the poem ‘First they came.’”

“In Germany they came first for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up.”