Every one condemns the violence but no one can stop it. An elderly Christian couple were just martyred/murdered in their home this past Saturday - story here.
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Life goes on while martyrs bleed in witness to the faith - in fidelity to Christ. I can not understand my lukewarmness, my indifference, and my worrying about petty conflicts over the faith... when real Christians are dying.
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May the holy wonder-working bishop, St. Nicholas of Myra intercede for us and most especially, come to the aid of those Christians persecuted by Islam.
St. Nicholas of Myra, pray for us.
Makes all our little American Church squabbles into nothing, eh?
ReplyDeleteNext time someone complains about "persecution" because the priest doesn't like them haranguing him about the lack of traditional music at Mass, or because the Bishop won't agree with them to ban altar girls ... let them think about this.
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ReplyDeleteMercury
ReplyDeleteWhile you are right, that this is what real persecution is about (thank you GW Bush and your war in Iraq allowing this to happen), one of the things which I find on the net is that some people are attacking everyone and then if people respond cry about persecution. One of the things we must also remember about true martyrs (like in Iraq) is that they are people who don't ask for it, not trying to force it upon themselves by provoking others. This is something people need to learn on the net, I feel. So many want a "time of martyrs" but they want to make martyrs, especially others, by having them do crazy things. Why?
Back to Iraq. This is something which many people warned the US about -- and warned many of the people promoting war in Iraq about. No one listened. The martyrs of Iraq come to us at the hands of American money and interest. We need to repent of our own contributions to this problem.
I guess no-one cares because everyone is so bored with Iraq. Bring the topic up in a conversation at work and watch how fast people change the subject. Americans have a short attention span.
ReplyDeleteHenry - very good points, I agree - thanks for mentioning the 'little murders' that happen online - very good insight - I need to repent of that.
ReplyDeleteWhen I posted this last night I recalled how the attacks on Christians had been 'predicted' shortly after the war began, and then especially after the fall of Saddam. As the dates were discussed for the pull-out of troops, the extermination of Christians was indeed forseen.
Paul - I read your comment and I agree. Thanks for commenting.
ReplyDeleteIf the murderers are radical Sunni, they will murder Shia and Christians and if Buddhists came to Baghdad as tourists, they would murder them. Is this martyrdom properly speaking if radical Sunnis murder any religious people who are not radical Sunni. If wicca people moved to Iraq, they would murder them.
ReplyDeleteAs to care....many Christians are doing their foreign alms max and while they are doing their foreign alms max...they see Catholic Haiti get decimated by earthquake and thousands of bodies are bulldozed into pits .....and now again Haiti gets hit by disease.
We simply have no sense of control since catastrophies constantly undo our sense of control and progress. And radical Islam eludes control by its mobile and suicidal and furtive nature.
Henry, nannon - good points. To me the "Iraq War Election" was 2004,and also 2006 to some degree. I voted for Bush as president in 2004 - I had doubts about whether we should have gone in at all in 2003 in the first place, but what was clear to me was that if we WERE already there (we were), and if we had already blown up a bunch of crap and let the cockroaches come of of the woodwork (and we had), then it would have been more wrong to leave than to stay and finish the job. I still feel that way - that once US forces were there and had deposed Hussein, we had the responsibility to get things back as "right" as we could.
ReplyDeleteThat said, I'd be inclined to agree with anyone that the 2003 invasion was not a good idea. I was leery about it at the time, but the evidence has proved that we could have done without it. That said, it is in and of itself good that Hussein is gone. I do not buy the "we did it for wealth and oil" line, because obviously this war has cost a whole lot more than whatever gains could have been made there.
I used to study Arabic and one set of teachers I had were some Iraqi Assyrian Christians (they spoke Aramaic, too!). They were an old couple who had been recently brought to the US to avoid persecution because the husband had been some bottom-rung Ba'ath Party apparatchik. They always said that they were ecstatic that Saddam was gone - and they told our class horror stories almost daily. But they were very concerned that the persecution of Christans would take a dramatic upswing.
ReplyDeleteI think at the root of the problem with our "Global War on Terror" is that we dare not name the enemy. The US is at war with people who really see this as "Islam vs. America" or "Islam vs. the West". This doesn't mean that we nee to see all Muslims as enemies, but to actually say "wait a minute, you think Islam MAY have something to do with this?" and act accordingly. As the Ft. Hood shootings show, and numerous accidentally thwarted terrorist attacks show, as the insanity at airports,etc. show - we will not let ourselves think that. It wold be doubleplusungoodthink to dare recognize that religion MAY have something to do with all this.
That said,the only thing that will ever defeat Islam, the only thing that can ever defeat Islam is the Gospel. No amount of secular humanist "freedom" will ever win them over. They cannot possibly look at American or European culture and say "I want that" (one thing Peter Kreeft was right about in that debate). In most cases, they DID do that and are going back.
Although I do not expect the US Army to put red crosses on their chests and bring the Gospel to foreign lands - unless they recognize hat we are in fact in a war with an Islamic enemy who sees this as "Islam vs. America", a view which many many many people in the Muslim world share - then there is no point in "fighting" terrorism.
what?! martyrs?! When there a new translation coming out?! where is your fidelity to tradition, man?!
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