Francis Leads Silent Prayer for World’s Persecuted Christians

Pope Francis greets pilgrims gathered for the Angelus yesterday (CNS)

Pope Francis prayed for Christians suffering persecution around the world as he marked the feast of St Stephen, the Church’s first martyr, today.

Read more at The Catholic Herald >>

An Ironic Ecumenism: The Global War on Christians (Part 2)

If I asked you to name the country that has witnessed the single greatest outburst of anti-Christian violence in recent years, you'd probably guess somewhere like North Korea or an Islamic country such as Egypt.

You'd be wrong. The answer is India. As John L. Allen tells us in his new book, "The Global War on Christians," in 2008, "a series of riots [in the state of Orissa] ended with as many as five hundred Christians killed." Even more shocking than the number of those killed was the way they were killed: "many were hacked to death by machete-wielding Hindu radicals."

By the time the violence ended, "thousands more were injured, and at least fifty thousand were left homeless."

Unlike North Korea or Saudi Arabia, the perpetrators were not government officials but private individuals and groups, acting with the implicit and sometimes explicit approval of local officials.

Thus, after a nun was "raped, marched naked through the streets and beaten," local "police sympathetic to the radicals discouraged the nun from filing a report and declined to arrest her attackers."

Read more at The Christian Post >>

Paying in Blood: The Global War on Christians (Part 1)

Sometime in November, the North Korean regime publicly executed eighty people in seven cities across the country. In each instance, a crowd was forced to watch as ten people, their heads covered with white bags, were tied to stakes and machine gunned to death.

The "crimes" for which these people were put to death were "watching or illegally trafficking South Korean videos, or involvement in prostitution, [or] possessing a Bible."

That's right. Possessing a Bible.

Read more at The Christian Post >>

Cardinal Dolan: Concern for Persecuted Christians, Protecting Religious Freedom, Must Become Greater Priority

Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, Archbishop of New York,
President of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB)

 
Address to the USCCB General Assembly on November 11, 2013.

Just last August, I had the honor of concelebrating the Mass of Dedication for the Cathedral of the Resurrection in Kiev. A particularly moving moment came when Metropolitan Shevchuk asked the Lord's protective hand upon believers suffering persecution for their faith anywhere in the world. That such a heartfelt plea came from a people who had themselves been oppressed for so long made it all the more poignant.

This morning I want to invite us to broaden our horizons, to "think Catholic" about our brothers and sisters in the faith now suffering simply because they sign themselves with the cross, bow their heads at the Holy Name of Jesus, and happily profess the Apostles' Creed.

No One Wants To Admit That There’s A War On Christians

Even western Christians turn a blind eye to the worst persecution of our times

A displaced young woman prays in the makeshift Catholic chapel in Sudan (CNS)

Back in 1997, American author Paul Marshall said that anti-Christian persecution had been “all but totally ignored by the world at large”. To be sure, the situation has changed in the 16 years since Marshall’s classic work Their Blood Cries Out. A cluster of advocacy groups and relief organisations has emerged, and from time to time anti-Christian persecution has drawn coverage in major news outlets such as the Economist, Newsweek and Commentary. On the whole, however, the war on Christians remains the world’s best-kept secret. As recently as 2011, Italian journalist Francesca Paci – who writes for the Italian media market, which probably pays more attention to Christian topics than almost any other culture on earth, given the massive footprint of the Vatican – said about the fate of persecuted Christians in places such as Iraq, Algeria, and India: “We ignore too many things, and even more indefensibly, we pretend not to see too many things.”

In 2011, the Catholic Patriarch of Jerusalem, Fouad Twal, addressed the crisis facing Arab Christianity in the Middle East during a conference in London. He bluntly asked: “Does anybody hear our cry? How many atrocities must we endure before somebody, somewhere, comes to our aid?” Those are questions that deserve answers, and understanding the motives for the silence about the global war on Christians is a good place to begin.

Read more at The Catholic Herald >>

The War On Christians

The global persecution of Christians is the unreported catastrophe of our time

Imagine if correspondents in late 1944 had reported the Battle of the Bulge, but without explaining that it was a turning point in the second world war. Or what if finance reporters had told the story of the AIG meltdown in 2008 without adding that it raised questions about derivatives and sub-prime mortgages that could augur a vast financial implosion?

Most people would say that journalists had failed to provide the proper context to understand the news. Yet that’s routinely what media outlets do when it comes to outbreaks of anti-Christian persecution around the world, which is why the global war on Christians remains the greatest story never told of the early 21st century.

In recent days, people around the world have been appalled by images of attacks on churches in Pakistan, where 85 people died when two suicide bombers rushed the Anglican All Saints Church in Peshawar, and in Kenya, where an assault on a Catholic church in Wajir left one dead and two injured.

Those atrocities are indeed appalling, but they cannot truly be understood without being seen as small pieces of a much larger narrative. Consider three points about the landscape of anti-Christian persecution today, as shocking as they are generally unknown. According to the International Society for Human Rights, a secular observatory based in Frankfurt, Germany, 80 per cent of all acts of religious discrimination in the world today are directed at Christians. Statistically speaking, that makes Christians by far the most persecuted religious body on the planet.

Read more at The Spectator >>

Vatican Official: Discrimination Against Christians Should Be Opposed Just As Firmly As Anti-Semitism And Islamophobia

(Vatican Radio) The Vatican Secretariat of State issued a tweet on Monday: “Intolerance against Christians, especially in the name of ‘tolerance’, should be condemned publicly.”

The tweet referenced a Statement of the Holy See delivered by Bishop Mario Toso, SDB, at the High Level Conference on Tolerance and Non-discrimination (including Human Rights Youth Education), which took place May 21-22 in Tirana, Albania.

The Conference was held under the auspices of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).

Over 100 Protestant Leaders Announce Opposition to HHS Mandate

From Catholic World News

Despots and heirs of Valerian and Diocletian

Despite their differing views on the morality of contraception, nearly 150 leaders of religious institutions, most of them Protestant, are opposed to the HHS mandate because it creates “two classes of religious organizations: churches—considered sufficiently focused inwardly to merit an exemption and thus full protection from the mandate; and faith-based service organizations—outwardly oriented and given a lesser degree of protection.”

In a letter written under the aegis of the International Religious Freedom Alliance, the signatories state:

It is this two-class system that the administration has embedded in federal law via the February 15, 2012, publication of the final rules providing for an exemption from the mandate for a narrowly defined set of “religious employers” and the related administration publications and statements about a different “accommodation” for non-exempt religious organizations.

And yet both worship-oriented and service-oriented religious organizations are authentically and equally religious organizations. To use Christian terms, we owe God wholehearted and pure worship, to be sure, and yet we know also that “pure religion” is “to look after orphans and widows in their distress” (James 1:27). We deny that it is within the jurisdiction of the federal government to define, in place of religious communities, what constitutes true religion and authentic ministry.

Signatories of the June 11 letter included the presidents of dozens of Protestant colleges and the leaders of the National Association of Evangelicals, the Salvation Army, and World Vision.

Catholic signatories included officials of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities, Aquinas College (Tennessee), Belmont Abbey College, Catholic Distance University, Christendom College, DeSales University, John Paul the Great Catholic University, the College of St. Mary Magdalen, Mount St. Mary’s University, and St. Gregory’s University. 

Additional sources for this story
Some links will take you to other sites, in a new window.

• Full text of letter (International Religious Freedom Alliance)
• Stop Dividing "Worship-Oriented" From "Service-Oriented," Nearly 150 Religious Leaders Tell HHS (RNS)

Obama Regime Purges Religious Freedom Section from Its Human Rights Reports

Clearly the Obama regime does not want to admit that their celebrated "Arab Spring" has resulted in the murder, persecution and displacement of Christians in Africa and the Middle East.  Or perhaps they also recognize the plank in their own eye.

AP Photo

(CNSNews.com) - The U.S. State Department removed the sections covering religious freedom from the Country Reports on Human Rights that it released on May 24, three months past the statutory deadline Congress set for the release of these reports.

The new human rights reports--purged of the sections that discuss the status of religious freedom in each of the countries covered--are also the human rights reports that include the period that covered the Arab Spring and its aftermath.

Persecution Roundup: Bombing in Sudan, Violence in India, Injustice in Saudi Arabia

♦From The Christian Post
By Luiza Oleszczuk

Mourners carry the coffin of slain Christian Fawzi Rahim, 76, during his funeral Mass at St. George Chaldean Church in Baghdad, Iraq, Friday, Dec. 31, 2010.  (Photo: AP Images / Khalid Mohammed)

Several reports of persecution against Christians from around the globe have emerged this week, including an update on violence against Christians in Nigeria, the deadly 2010 bombing of an Iraqi church, attacks against Christians in India and a bombing of a missionary Bible college in Sudan.

Kashmir - Muslim leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani spoke out Saturday in support of four Christian missionaries after a Sharia court last week issued a decree seeking their expulsion from the state, Christian Today reported. Despite the support, the missionaries were expelled Friday.

Nigeria – Pastor Enoch Adejare Adeboye, who is the General Overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG) in Nigeria, posted a statement on his Facebook page Saturday in which he presumably warns Islamist sect Boko Haram to stop attacking Christians, their homes and churches, or expect to face the consequences. "We are not allowed to burn mosques or kill people of other religious beliefs but [the] Bible says we are allowed [to defend] ourselves/churches/homes," the statement reads.

Nigerian Christians, who have been long targeted by Muslim extremists, especially in the northeast of the country, have reportedly begun to retaliate by occasionally attacking Muslim establishments.

Indonesia – Indonesian Christians held a prayer vigil in Jakarta on Sunday, urging President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to help stop the intimidation practiced by Muslim extremists, Agence France-Presse reported. About 200 people, mostly members of the Taman Yasmin Indonesian Christian Church, prayed and sang hymns outside the state palace.

China – Five priests from an "underground" church were arrested by Chinese authorities without any explanation Monday during a private meeting in a private house, reported UCA news.

Meanwhile, on Thursday, ChinaAid, a human rights organization, released its annual report on acts of persecution reportedly performed by the Chinese communist government on Christians and churches in mainland China in 2011. Among other disquieting statistics indicating an increase in crackdowns on house churches, the report shows a 131.8 percent increase in the number of Christians detained for their religious beliefs in the country.

Also in China, the trial of a longtime political dissident and baptized Christian, Zhu Yufu, took place Tuesday in China, amid allegations that witnesses were restrained form participating in it. Zhu, 59, has previously served seven years in prison (from 1999 to 2006) for his role in founding the China Democratic Party, according to Human Rights in China (HRIC). The Hangzhou Municipal Intermediate People's Court tried him Tuesday for "inciting subversion of state power," according to HRIC, but failed to hand down a verdict, leaving the disident's future still in question.

Pakistan - A judge Monday denied bail to a young Christian man charged with desecrating a Quran under Pakistan's controversial blasphemy laws, despite the lack of evidence, Compass Direct News reported. The 23-year-old was reportedly arrested on Dec. 5 over a shaky allegation from his neighbor that the young man had burned pages of the Quran in order to prepare tea.

Indonesia – An Indonesian church said Monday that one of its members has been unjustly named a suspect by police for allegedly assaulting the local police chief during a melee between authorities and church members in October near Jakarta, reported The Jakarta Globe. The church, which claims numerous acts of persecution from the government, has reportedly had accused the same police chief of using violence to obstruct a religious ceremony.

Sudan - A Bible college in Sudan functioning under Franklin Graham's missionary ministry, Samaritan's Purse, was bombed Wednesday and the ministry alleges the attack was launched by the Sudanese air force, as part of violent clashed between the mostly Islamic government in Khartoum and the mostly Christian, and newly seceded, south.

Algeria - Armed men raided the Protestant Church of Ouargla in eastern Algeria on Wednesday, tearing down the church's gate and damaging the iron crucifix on the church's roof, according to International Christian Concern (ICC). The pastor told ICC that he has been repeatedly threatened and attacked since his ordination in 2007. In the summer of 2009, his wife was beaten and seriously injured by a group of unknown men, and in late 2011, heaps of trash were thrown over the compound walls while an angry mob shouted death threats at the pastor, the minister told the Christian advocacy group. Algerian Christans are often target of attacks from militant Muslims.

Iraq – Three Islamist extremists convicted in the attack on Our Lady of Salvation church in Baghdad that killed over 50 congregants and wounded more than 60 others in Oct. 2010 were sentenced to death by Iraq's highest court Thursday.

Saudi Arabia - The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), a governmental body, called Thursday for the immediate release of 35 Ethiopian Christians who have been detained by Saudi Arabian police since Dec. 15, allegedly for participating in a private religious gathering.

Iran - A report has emerged this week about the Iranian Revolutionary Court sentencing a female Iranian Christian convert to two years in prison earlier this month. The official reasons given by the court were reportedly related to the woman betraying Islam, but media reports have clearly suggested that the conviction is an act of state persecution against a Christian.

India - Sajan K George, president of the Global Council of Indian Christians (GCIC), spoke out against violence against Christians Thursday after the number of attacks increased in late January. Acts of violence against Christians reportedly accelerated after Christmas and New Year's. Among recent incidents was an attack on a Pentecostal clergyman by a group of ultra-nationalist Hindu extremists and a desecration of a monumental Christian cemetery, as reported by Asia News.

Sermon of Father Jay Scott Newman - Tyrannical Government Decrees and the Religious Liberty Crisis

Sermon of Reverend Jay Scott Newman
(Audio)

Pastor

St. Mary's Catholic Church

Greenville, South Carolina

February 5, 2012

 

Pat Buchanan: The New Blacklist

Pat Buchanan is a prophet, patriot and hero. The vitriol, character assassination and hate which has been directed at him is proof that he has been an unfailing champion of the good and true.  God does not require that we triumph in this world, only that we be faithful.  Time will vindicate this defender of Christian civilization and God will reward a good and faithful servant.

This blog is pleased to post his columns and we will always proudly regard ourselves as foot soldiers in the Buchanan Brigade.

By Patrick J. Buchanan

My days as a political analyst at MSNBC have come to an end.

After 10 enjoyable years, I am departing, after an incessant clamor from the left that to permit me continued access to the microphones of MSNBC would be an outrage against decency, and dangerous.

The calls for my firing began almost immediately with the Oct. 18 publication of "Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?"

A group called Color of Change, whose mission statement says that it "exists to strengthen Black America's political voice," claimed that my book espouses a "white supremacist ideology." Color of Change took particular umbrage at the title of Chapter 4, "The End of White America."

Catholic Church Rejects Surrender Terms from Obama

It gives us no pleasure that at long last the institutional Church and our coreligionists are finally seeing Obama and his regime as a manifestation of the pure evil that they are ... an evil that can only be overcome with solidarity, resistance and political action that is rooted in prayer and fasting.  There was a reason we chose to post this work from Chopin on Inauguration Day, 2009.  If Obama's war on and persecution of the Catholic Church opens the eyes of fools, and causes the majority of Catholics who voted for Obama to be more discerning and vote more prayerfully in the future, our Church and nation will be far better off.

From NewsWithViews

By Cliff Kincaid

My Catholic priest, Father Larry Swink, delivered a homily on Sunday that I told him would make headlines. In the toughest sermon I have ever heard from a pulpit, he attacked the Obama Administration as evil, even demonic, and warned of religious persecution ahead. What was also newsworthy about the sermon was that he cited The Washington Post in agreement—not on the subject of the Obama Administration being evil, but on the matter of its abridgment of the constitutional right to freedom of religion. 

What is happening is extraordinary and unprecedented. The Catholic Church is in open revolt against the Obama Administration, with Fr. Swink noting from the pulpit that priests across the archdiocese were joining the call on Sunday to rally Catholics to resistance against the U.S. Government. He said we are entering a time of religious persecution and that Catholics and others will have to make a final decision about which side they are on.

Father Barron Comments on the HHS Contraception Mandate

Father Robert Barron says that the Obama administration’s recent ruling on contraception coverage shows that the secular state is seeking to impose its morality on the Church.

Christian Persecution – The Top 50 Countries

The Obama Administration is tying foreign aid to the treatment of homosexuals.  We wonder if the treatment of Christians even comes up in their diplomatic exchanges.  In fact, given recent actions by Secretary Sebelius and the Obama Administration's disregard for individual conscience, we looked for the United States on the following list of the 50 worst persecutors of Christians.

From Cranmer

Open Doors have again done the world a great service with the 2012 publication of their World Watch List. It is compiled from a qualitative questionnaire which covers various aspects of religious freedom in each country. Points are ascribed to permit a quantitative assessment of the liberty or oppression experienced by Christians.

Here are the Top 50 worst persecutors of Christians:

Vatican Official Suggests International Recognition of Persecution Against Christians

From Catholic World News

Archbishop Dominique Mamberti

In an address to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the Vatican’s Secretary for Relations with States suggested that a day be set aside annually to call the world’s attention to the persecution of Christians.

Archbishop Dominique Mamberti told an OSCE meeting in Vilnius, Lithuania, that an International Day calling attention to the persecution of Christians would be “an important sign that governments are willing to deal with this serious issue.” The archbishop hinted that governments have not shown the necessary seriousness to date, reminding the OSCE delegates that violence against Christians is commonplace.

The Coming Church-State Wars

By Patrick J. Buchanan

Appearing the other night on the Catholic network EWTN, I was asked by Raymond Arroyo what should be done about Muslim students at Catholic University demanding that the school provide them with prayer rooms, from which crucifixes and all other Catholic symbols that they found offensive had been removed.

After a nanosecond I replied, “Kick ‘em out!”

Let them go to George Washington, the university on the other side of town.

Dozens of Churches Closed or Demolished in Indonesia

From Catholic World News

Over 50 Christian churches have been shut down or demolished in Indonesia since January 2010, according to the Jakarta Christian Communication Forum. In most cases, the closing of churches has followed protests by Islamic fundamentalists.

3% of the nation’s 228.5 million people are Catholics, according to Vatican statistics. 6% are Protestant, and 86% are Muslim.

Source(s): these links will take you to other sites, in a new window.

• Churches shut down or demolished: the subtle pressures on Indonesian Christians (Fides) 

Christianity the Last Bastion Against European Secularist ‘Totalitarianism’: Austrian Think Tank

From LifeSiteNews

By Hilary White

EU president Herman Von Rompuy

An Austrian think tank and non-governmental organization is warning that freedom of religious expression is “at risk” in Europe from secularist intolerance on the left. While Islamic extremists continue assaults on Christian communities in Egypt, Iraq, Pakistan and around the Middle East and Asia, restrictions on public expressions of religious belief by Christians are growing in Western Europe, the cradle of Christendom. 

 

“You cannot compare injustices here with the situation in, for example, North Korea, India or Pakistan,” observed Gudrun Kugler, a lawyer and director of the Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination Against Christians in Europe. “The Christians who are there in spite of fierce persecution are our great models.”  

Nevertheless, in Europe Christianity is hated because it is “the last obstacle to a new vision of secularity which is so politically correct that it verges on totalitarianism,” she said.

“Christians are increasingly marginalized and are appearing more often in courts over matters related to faith. So I think that we are heading for a bloodless persecution.”

Top Ten Anti-Christian Events in 2010

Defend Christians.Org, a ministry of the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission, has just released its annual top ten list of anti-Christian acts in America for 2010. The surprising list is selected through an online poll of Christians and people of good will who are part of Defend Christians.Org.

"The poll results demonstrate a double standard is being applied against Christians and their faith, values and liberty," said Dr. Gary Cass, Chairman and CEO. "If these same types of actions were taken against other groups one would call it bigoted. We are exposing the shameful behavior of bashing Christ and biblical values for what it is, "Christophobia;" the irrational fear and hatred of Christ and His Word."

"Every year the list of attacks grows as godless secular values are inflaming the minds of many against Almighty God, Jesus Christ and Christianity. Most of the attacks are merely rhetorical. Increasingly they are becoming codified into policies that encroach on Christian's academic freedom and liberty of conscience. Freedom of speech is denied to Christians while they are slandered by radical organizations. In extreme cases the hatred boils over into violence," says Rev. Cass.

The 2010 Top Ten List include...

1. The Employment Non-Discrimination Act; a proposed federal bill that would force ministries, including churches, to hire people who oppose their beliefs or who live in open defiance of their values.

3. Julea Ward and Jennifer Keeton are two Christian students expelled from their respective Master's programs in counseling at two different universities because they wouldn't deny their faith and affirm the validity of the homosexual lifestyle.

5. Christians are denied their civil rights and falsely arrested for disorderly conduct at an annual Arab festival in Dearborn, Michigan for peacefully sharing the gospel. This happened the previous year, too. The Christians were acquitted both times of all charges.

9. The Southern Poverty Law Center, a liberal ACLU-like organization, has continued to label many mainstream Christian organizations that promote traditional marriage as "hate groups" and "anti-gay" in lists that include violent racists groups.

For the complete list visit www.DefendChristians.org.