Posted on 01/17/2005 10:33:57 AM PST by Pyro7480
During the bottom-of-the-hour news break, it was announced that a Catholic bishop was kidnapped in Mosul.
Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray; and do Thou, O Prince of the Heavenly Host - by the Divine Power of God - cast into hell, satan and all the evil spirits, who roam throughout the world seeking the ruin of souls.
Amen.
The first Crusades, contrary to Leftist popular belief were a defense against Muslim attacks on Catholics in the Holy Land. Close enough on this one for me. Where do I sign up for the new one.
Pray, Hell!! Bring out The Holy Hand-Grenade.
Now THAT would be a sight to see! :)
Nice thought, but there's nobody to "give" it to. Take the Baathists, Sunnis, Shiites and other assorted flat-earthers out of the mix, and all you have left is a tiny minority of the weak and disinterested.
We knew not to go to war for nation building or without a clear exit strategy, but we did it anyway on some bright idea that we were going to somehow bring democracy to the semi-savage Middle East.
Awful story! I remember reading an account of that years ago, and I could scarcely believe it.
I honestly don't know what it's going to take for the West to get more aggressive. I'd be all in favor of the conciliatory approach, which the Pope apparently supports, if Muslims would just accept it as what it is: live and let live. But the Muslim world always regards that as a sign of weakness, which in turn means to them that it is time to attack.
Of course, the fact that they get this from their very scriptures might have something to do with it. In other words, it's hard-wired into their religion, and the only time they are not attacking non-Muslims is when they are too weak to do so. After a lull of a few decades, modern weaponry and lots of oil money has made them feel they are no longer too weak to attack us.
Actually,I have noted that Destro has a lot of facts and presents them well. In fact,I often agree with him. However,he gets to a critical or pivotal point and our paths diverge. He seems to be unalterably committed to the fact that our Church has erred over and over again to the detriment of,and injury to the Orthodox Church.
I,on the other hand,can see that Catholics at times did act in ways that must have offended God and man. But I do not see the Orthodox as having come through the years without fault or stain. If I were to fault the Orthodox it would be more for sins of omission,which can be every bit as deadly as commission.
Maybe at another time Destro could explain more to me since my knowledge is limited. Right now I am going to pray that the Bishop is returned.
With regards the situation with Iraq,I was in agreement with the Pope's cautionary words from the beginning,I believed that what is happening is what he feared and thought would happen. The Pope is a very brilliant and holy man.
Sad news
I know, I often agree with him, too, but sometimes I get irritated by what seems to me like excessive anger against Western Christianity. Oh well.
I think everybody knew that things in Iraq were going to be very difficult (although I suspect they would have gone much better if we had the support of people such as the press, certain European countries, and the Democrat party). I believe it was a worthwhile thing to do, because Saddam was essentially holding the world and his own people hostage; everything depended upon his whim. He was clearly trying to develop massive weapons capacity, and probably managed to get them out of the country in the year of haggling that led up to the war. And I think it was better to take him out before he got even more powerful, because he was really the only leader in the ME who had the modern state structure and capacity to be more than a regional threat.
For better or for worse, there were Catholics involved with his regime, because Christians were his connection with the more advanced, better educated world. Many businesses in Iraq were controlled by Catholics, since Islam seems to have a fatal effect on people's initiative and interest in development.
However, they were very much at the mercy of Saddam's good nature, which as we all know was rather changeable. I am sure that once he decided that his bread was heavily buttered on the side of being the "New Saladin," as he proclaimed himself, the Catholics would have been pretty expendable.
It's not the Pope's job to lead armies to war! I didn't mean he should call for attacks on Muslims or anything like that. I just wish the Pope would speak a little more firmly in defending Christians from Islam, and would encourage the Western powers to make a greater effort to protect them. Right now I feel as if nobody comes to the defense of Christians when they are attacked by Muslims. Instead, we are made to feel as if we have brought it on ourselves and somehow deserve it, simply for existing.
I meant to ping you to #152. Sorry.
... what we are really in is a continuation of a 1400 year old religious war.
What is it going to take for us to do this? As you say, it is a genuine disservice to our people for the leaders to just dance around the real problem, and it can't go on like this forever.
Tragically I think this may be the last of the Christian community in Iraq. It sounds like the Sunni Baathists may be trying to fund their campaign of terror by ransoming Christians. On the other side the loony Shia and Sunni religious crazies are killing and maiming in the name of Islam.
From National Review:
Tens of thousands of Iraq's nearly one million ChaldoAssyrians, as this indigenous cultural and linguistic ethnic group is called under Iraq's Transitional Administrative Law, have fled into exile over the past few months. Their leaders fear that, like the Iraqi Jews — who accounted for a third of Iraq's population until facing relentless persecution in the middle of the last century — they may leave en masse.
Though many Iraqis, particularly moderates, suffer violence, the ChaldoAssyrians, along with the smaller non-Muslim minorities of Sabean Mandeans and Yizidis, may be as a group all but eradicated from Iraq. Their exodus began in earnest in August after the start of a terrorist bombing campaign against their churches. With additional church bombings right before Christmas, hundreds more Christian families escaped in fear to Jordan and Syria.
In the run up to elections, Sunni terrorists and insurgents have targeted the ChaldoAssyrians with particular ferocity, linking them to the West. The main Assyrian Christian news agency AINA.org reported last week that the kidnapping tally for Christians now ranges in the thousands, with ransom payments averaging $100,000 each. One who could not afford the payment, 29-year-old Laith Antar Khanno, was found beheaded in Mosul on December 2, two weeks after his kidnapping. Cold-blooded assassinations of Christians are also on the rise. Prominent Assyrian surgeon and professor Ra'aad Augustine Qoryaqos was shot dead by three terrorists while making his rounds in a Ramadi clinic on December 8. That same week two other Christian businessmen from Baghdad, Fawzi Luqa and Haitham Saka, were abducted from work and murdered.
Both Sunni and Shiite extremists who seek to impose their codes of behavior have been ruthless toward the Christians, throwing acid in the faces of women without the hijab (veil) and gunning down the salesclerks at video and liquor stores. In the north, Kurdish administrators have withheld U.S. reconstruction funds from ChaldoAssyrian areas, and, together with local peshmerga forces, have confiscated some Christian farms and villages. Of the $20 billion that American taxpayers generously provided for the reconstruction of Iraq two years ago, none so far has gone to rebuild ChaldoAssyrian communities. The State Department is distributing these funds exclusively to the Arab- and Kurdish-run governorates — the old Saddam Hussein power structure — who fail to pass on the ChaldoAssyrian share.
Though Iraq's president, prime minister, and Grand Ayatollah Sistani have all denounced the attacks against the Christians, the persecution has not abated. The ChaldoAssyrians have endured much throughout the last century in Iraq, including brutal Arabization and Islamization campaigns. But this current period may see their last stand as a cohesive community.
(snip)
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/shea_rayis200501060730.asp
I was expecting a bit of....*cough*....."incoming".
Ah, Begorah me lad, it would, would it not!
Catch 22 - guess what drove him and his regime to that relationsip? And even then Saddam did not resort to scapegoating native Christians and Jews (people forget Iraq has a large Jewish population - that lived unmolested like the Christians - as long as they did not challenge the rule of Saddam).
How can that be? Constantinople was and is Rome.
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