CNA NEWS June 12 Bishop of Baghdad reproaches West for "silence" in response to violence against Christians in Iraq

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Bishop of Baghdad reproaches West for “silence” in response to violence against Christians in Iraq

The Religious Information Service of the Church in Italy reported this week that Auxiliary Bishop of Baghdad Shlemon Warduni scolded the United States and Europe for their “silence” in the face of the escalating violence against the Christian minority in Iraq.

Bishop Warduni pointed to the recent assassination of a Catholic priest, Father Ragheed Aziz Ganni, and three deacons in northern Iraq, carried out a week ago as they were coming out of a church, and to the kidnapping of Father Hani Abdel Ahad, 33, who has not been heard from since the day of his abduction last Wednesday as instances of this silence.

The bishop said that after the killing of Father Ganni, “nobody showed us any solidarity.” “Only the Pope sent a telegram of condolences and raised his voice to make know the tragedy of the Iraqi Christians.”

According to the bishop, “If this had happened in any Islamic population, the Muslim masses would have taken to the streets to protest and demand respect, just as what happened with the satirical comics some time ago.”

“Christians, on the other hand, are doing nothing while here they are being killed, kidnapped, forced to convert to Islam, to pay protection money, hand over their own daughters in order to avoid reprisals, or to flee, abandoning their whole life’s work,” Bishop Wardumi said.
 
Well I hate for this to come out in any bigoted way, but this is exactly why we will lose to the Muslims.

We are in many ways passive sheep just waiting to be slaughtered.
**BAA Baa baaaaa . . . . **

While I don’t call for war, I do want to quote the Catechism of the Catholic Church:Legitimate defense

2263 The legitimate defense of persons and societies is not an exception to the prohibition against the murder of the innocent that constitutes intentional killing. "The act of self-defense can have a double effect: the preservation of one’s own life; and the killing of the aggressor. . . . The one is intended, the other is not."65
2264 Love toward oneself remains a fundamental principle of morality. Therefore it is legitimate to insist on respect for one’s own right to life. Someone who defends his life is not guilty of murder even if he is forced to deal his aggressor a lethal blow:
  • If a man in self-defense uses more than necessary violence, it will be unlawful: whereas if he repels force with moderation, his defense will be lawful. . . . Nor is it necessary for salvation that a man omit the act of moderate self-defense to avoid killing the other man, since one is bound to take more care of one’s own life than of another’s.66
    2265 Legitimate defense can be not only a right but a grave duty for one who is responsible for the lives of others. The defense of the common good requires that an unjust aggressor be rendered unable to cause harm. For this reason, those who legitimately hold authority also have the right to use arms to repel aggressors against the civil community entrusted to their responsibility.
    2266 The efforts of the state to curb the spread of behavior harmful to people’s rights and to the basic rules of civil society correspond to the requirement of safeguarding the common good. Legitimate public authority has the right and duty to inflict punishment proportionate to the gravity of the offense. Punishment has the primary aim of redressing the disorder introduced by the offense. When it is willingly accepted by the guilty party, it assumes the value of expiation. Punishment then, in addition to defending public order and protecting people’s safety, has a medicinal purpose: as far as possible, it must contribute to the correction of the guilty party.67
Avoiding war

2307 The fifth commandment forbids the intentional destruction of human life. Because of the evils and injustices that accompany all war, the Church insistently urges everyone to prayer and to action so that the divine Goodness may free us from the ancient bondage of war.105
2308 All citizens and all governments are obliged to work for the avoidance of war.
However, "as long as the danger of war persists and there is no international authority with the necessary competence and power, governments cannot be denied the right of lawful self-defense, once all peace efforts have failed."106
2309 The strict conditions for legitimate defense by military force require rigorous consideration. The gravity of such a decision makes it subject to rigorous conditions of moral legitimacy. At one and the same time:
- the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain;
  • all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;
  • there must be serious prospects of success;
  • the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated.
    The power of modem means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition.
    These are the traditional elements enumerated in what is called the “just war” doctrine.
    The evaluation of these conditions for moral legitimacy belongs to the prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common good.
 
Bishop Shlemon Warduni:
“Christians, on the other hand, are doing nothing while here they are being killed, kidnapped, forced to convert to Islam, to pay protection money, hand over their own daughters in order to avoid reprisals, or to flee, abandoning their whole life’s work”
Click to expand...
Apparently Muslim, the religion of peace, is pretty active today.

Here is a Reuters Link about Muslim activists killing Buddhist monks, farther down the page it shows an attempted bombing:
  • BANGKOK - Suspected Muslim separatist rebels have killed four Buddhists and wounded eight soldiers in three separate attacks in Thailand’s rebellious south, police said.
  • MANILA - Soldiers defused improvised bombs from a car parked near a town hall in the southern Philippines, a police chief said, raising worries Islamic militants in the country had learned to assemble car bombs.
    And CNN in Lebanon, one of the few mid-east nations with a sizable Christian/Catholic population comes this story:
  • BEIRUT, Lebanon (CNN) — A member of the Lebanese parliament was killed in an explosion Wednesday outside a Beirut military sports club in what hospital sources said was an assassination.
    Lawmaker Walid Eido, known as a foe of Syrian involvement in Lebanon, his son, Khalid, and two of his bodyguards were killed, Lebanese media reports said.
    Last week, a large explosion struck Zouk Mosbeh, a predominantly Christian neighborhood north of Beirut, killing one person and wounding four.
 
Here is the link to the article cited in the first post:
catholicnewsagency.com/new.php?n=9602

Yes, the situation for Iraqi Christians is very bleak. But what can we do except pressure our government to allow more refugees? Perhaps arrange to help people who are displaced? How?
 
Dale_M said:
Here is the link to the article cited in the first post:
catholicnewsagency.com/new.php?n=9602

Yes, the situation for Iraqi Christians is very bleak. But what can we do except pressure our government to allow more refugees? Perhaps arrange to help people who are displaced? How?
Click to expand...
Seems to me that to allow more refugees would be the wrong thing, it would empty Iraq of all the Christians. Who would be left to evangelize for us?

Further, it would show the Muslims that they can be totally intolerant of other faiths. It would show them they win.

Iraq has (had) a long standing tradition of housing and tolerating a small but active Catholic community. If I remember correctly it was about 5% of the population.

I have always thought it was wrong to invade Iraq. But now that we are there we need to stay and fix it. Based on what I see, we may need to send in A LOT MORE of our troops to lock that place down and institute marshal law. It may be the only way to make it safe while it rebuilds. The terrorists are doing a fine job of keeping the economy and the infrastructure in the stone age. Unless we can actually help to build hope, with a safe climate, jobs, roads, water and electricity then there is no hope for peace. The more I see of it, the more I think we need to increase our troop strength by 25-to-50% and then teach them how to live in a free society. . . or set up another dictatorship that keeps them under its thumb.

But Iraq is broken, we broke it, and we have to fix it.
 
According to the CNA News

the Christians are on the constant threats and attacks against them
in addition to being subjected to threats,killings,and protection payments.
In Iraq the Christians has reached the point that the future of the Church is in danger.
 
Athanasiy said:
According to the CNA News

the Christians are on the constant threats and attacks against them
in addition to being subjected to threats,killings,and protection payments.
In Iraq the Christians has reached the point that the future of the Church is in danger.
Click to expand...
Kind of calls into question Bush’s decision to invade in the first place. Am I allowed to be so blunt?!
 
You know, I haven’t exactly spoken out either but the silence is appalling.
 
rien said:
Kind of calls into question Bush’s decision to invade in the first place. Am I allowed to be so blunt?!
Click to expand...
I said it too. But we are there now. Anyone who thinks we can simply pull out is simply not being realistic. Pulling out will result in massive turmoil. We would see at the very least
  • A civil war between Shia and Sunni on a scale that would leave hundreds of thousands dead.
  • Iran and Syria would likely end up controlling large parts of Iraq, through puppet government officials.
  • The Kurds breaking off into an autonomous region, doing that would also cause turmoil in neighboring Turkey, a possible civil war in that nation, at least in the southern region of that nation.
  • As Turkey has NATO alliances with the US, we are bound by international law to aid Turkey so we’d simply have to re-deploy our troops there.
 
melensdad said:
I said it too. But we are there now. Anyone who thinks we can simply pull out is simply not being realistic. Pulling out will result in massive turmoil. We would see at the very least
  • A civil war between Shia and Sunni on a scale that would leave hundreds of thousands dead.
  • Iran and Syria would likely end up controlling large parts of Iraq, through puppet government officials.
  • The Kurds breaking off into an autonomous region, doing that would also cause turmoil in neighboring Turkey, a possible civil war in that nation, at least in the southern region of that nation.
  • As Turkey has NATO alliances with the US, we are bound by international law to aid Turkey so we’d simply have to re-deploy our troops there.
Click to expand...
 
As my late mother would say" Oh what a evil web you weave when first you practice to deceive"
The events in Irag now were very precidictable,
See my post of Sept 2004.
Minorities always pay the highest price.
Christainity in the East is in grave danger of extintion.
and Western Europe is Next
When are we going to identfy the enemy and put a plan in place to defeat that enemy.
 
Christians were in Iraq before Muslims. They should be allowed to practice their religion.

But silence is certainly what we have seen. The title of the post references CNA News. I haven’t seen any of this persecution of Christians reported on any of the regular or cable news channels. It seems to be a non-issue with the press.
 
Again the shocking news from the CNA :

Priest says Christians in Iraq are dying out

Rome, June 21 (CNA).-The procurator of the Chaldean Patriarchate before the Holy See, Father Philip Najim, warned that the terrorist attacks, kidnappings and forced conversions are making the Church in Iraq disappear, as extremists have turned Christians into “sacrificial lambs.”
“Closed churches, car bombs, forced conversions, kidnappings: in Iraq Christians are dying. The Church is disappearing because of persecutions, threats and violence from extremists who leave no other option: convert or flee,” Father Najim said during a Mass for the repose of the soul of Father Ragheed Aziz Ganni, who was killed on June 3 in Mosul together with three subdeacons.
Father Najim said the kidnapping of priests has become more common and the faithful are being forced to pay “taxes” if they want to remain in their homes or maintain their faith. Such problems have led many Christians to immigrate to other countries as their only alternative, “renouncing their own roots, leaving behind their own homeland.”
Christians have become the “sacrificial lambs” that must be eliminated, he continued. Extremists prevent them from freely professing their faith, they impose the Muslim veil on women and they remove crosses from churches.
In this sense, he said Father Ganni was “a martyr of this blood-stained Chaldean Church which Benedict XVI calls the Church of the living martyrs.”
“His martyrdom should be a new dawn for the life and future peace of Iraq, leaving room for Christian hope,” Father Najim said. “We need the Holy See to encourage the Church in Iraq and all Christians to seek unity,” he stressed.
The Mass for Father Ganni was celebrated in the chapel of the Irish Pontifical College, where the martyred priest lived for five years. Among those present were Cardinal Ignace Moussa Daoud, the former prefect of the Congregation for Eastern Churches; Msgr. Mikhail Jamil, procurator of the Patriarchate of the Syrians of Antioquia before the Holy See; and Cardinal Desmond Connell, Archbishop Emeritus of Dublin.
 
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