"We have this God. You cannot stop us."
Posted on 08/27/2002 7:30:54 PM PDT by kattracks
WASHINGTON, Aug 27, 2002 (United Press International via COMTEX) -- A nun belonging to Iraq's Christian minority that still speaks a dialect of Aramaic, the language of Jesus, was found beheaded in Baghdad, the U.S.-based Chaldean News Agency reported Tuesday.
CNA blamed "Muslim terrorists" for this murder of Sister Cecilia Hanna, 70. According to this wire service of Iraq's Christian exiles, she "was knifed down savagely and her head was severed from the rest of her body by a group of thugs while she was staying in the Chaldean monastery located in Palestine Street in Baghdad."
When asked about this report, a State Department spokeswoman told United Press International Tuesday, "We are not aware of this case."
Shortly after the start of the U.S. war on terrorism, Albert Yelda, a London-based Iraqi opposition leader, had warned that Iraq's ancient Christian community would be made a whipping boy for this conflict.
Yelda told UPI at the time that Iraq's Christians "no longer dare to wear their traditional crosses. They are being called crusaders. They do not receive food rations. They are being told, 'Ask the Americans to feed you. You have no business being here.'"
In an interview, Bishop Ibrahim N. Ibrahim of the Chaldean Church's Eastern diocese in the U.S. referred UPI to the CNA story Tuesday but denied that Christians in Iraq were being singled out for persecution.
However, CNA now ranks Sister Cecilia Hanna among the long line of martyrs in present-day Iraq, whose Christians are the descendants of one of the oldest known civilizations -- Mesopotamia. Collectively, these Christians are known of Assyrians.
Assyians say they were the first nation to adopt Christianity as state religion in 179 AD, more than 100 years before Armenia, which prides itself with being the first Christianized country. The Assyrians also claim were the ones to have built the first Christian churches and to have been the first to translate the New Testament from Greek into their vernacular, which still resembles the language of Christ.
The Chaldean Church, to which the murdered Sacred Heart of Jesus nun belonged, is in union with the Vatican and has approximately one million members, half of whom still live in Iraq, while the rest is spread around the world, Bishop Ibrahim said.
Another 300,000 to 500,000 Assyrian Christians belong to the venerable Church of the East. This denomination was once condemned as heretical because it followed the teachings of Nestorius, the 5th-century bishop of Constantinople, who taught that the Virgin Mary was not the "theodokos," or mother of God, but simply the mother of Jesus Christ.
Nestorian missionaries were the first the reach Mongolia, China and Japan in the 8th century. However, in the 16th century, a segment of the Nestorian Church recognized the Pope and united with Rome, which persecuted the remaining Nestorians for centuries, especially in India.
"Today, our two churches are very close," Bishop Ibrahim said. While not in full communion, they practice Eucharistic hospitality under certain circumstances. In other words, they commune each other's members if they have no church of their own denomination to go to.
"Our liturgies are very similar," Ibrahim explained. "Assyrian services consist of 99 percent liturgy with lots of incense," Yelda said. The difference is that while the Chaldeans allow icons in their churches, the Nestorian sanctuaries are as stark as synagogues. But for a simple cross above the altar, nothing adorns them.
There are other parallels between the Nestorians and the Jews as well. Nestorians call their priest "rabi" (teacher), and like orthodox Jews they eschew mixed marriages. "We want to preserve a Christian people in our country," Yelda explained.
While Bishop Ibrahim allowed that "Christians like all others suffer from the turmoil in Iraq, but are not targeted for persecution," the Chaldean News Service accused Saddam Hussein's government of appeasing "the rising tide of Muslim fanaticism."
This movement, it said, "has at its final goal not only the murder or the complete subjugation of non-Muslims but all those who do not measure up to its doctrine of terror and hatred."
According to Albert Yelda, Saddam Hussein, too, has set out to destroy the venerable Assyrian culture, "not out of any Muslim convictions but because, like every tyrant, he hates minorities."
Yelda described how Saddam had banned the Assyrians' cultural clubs, where their literary language was kept alive. "Saddam had hundreds of Assyrian villages razed, including recently a 2nd-century church."
Yelda also accused Saddam's son, Uday, of raping and killing an Assyrian woman and then making this act public knowledge.
As for the repression of Iraqi Christians in the name of Islam, Yelda said it ran counter the stated wish of the Prophet Mohammed, who was so impressed by the Assyrians' knowledge of medicine and sciences that he issued a Firman, or letter of protection, for them.
The Firman disappeared without trace over 150 years ago.
By UWE SIEMON-NETTO, UPI Religion Correspondent
Copyright 2002 by United Press International.
841. "The Church's relationship with the Muslims. 'The plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator, in the first place amongst whom are the Muslims; these profess to hold the faith of Abraham, and together with us they adore the one, merciful God, mankind's judge on the last day.'[LG 16; cf. NA 3.]"
First of all, if one studies a comparison, it is easily determined that the god of Islam and the God of the Bible are NOT both "the one, merciful God." Allah is vastly different from Jehovah. It truly baffles me how the RCC can say this in the catechism. And if doing so is done simply for the sake of peace and unity, one - it is dishonest, and two - how does acceptance of false faith further the gospel? If anything, it indicates to Muslims that "their way" is just fine, and they don't need the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ.
Any thoughts? Thanks.
I don't know which Catholic FReepers you observed, but I haven't observed any who are ignorant of Islam's implementation of its beliefs. For the record, this Catholic is quite aware of what the Muslims are up to.
As an aside, I even know non-FR Catholics who are well aware of reality. I attended a lecture by a Catholic priest who stated, in no uncertain terms, that we are in a spiritual war against Islam whether or not the politicians are willing to admit it.
Oh, I don't know Senator Pardek. Maybe it's because those sweet wrinkled old nuns taught us to read. We read too much and it causes us to think. And thinking is a thing a human being should not do......
.....Explaining American policy regarding Kosovo, Senator Lieberman said: "Both America and KLA do fight for the same principles - democracy - the struggle of the KLA is therefore also the struggle for human rights"....
New York Post, June 19, 1999
By Uri Dan
BELGRADE - Three days after NATO troops refused a mother superior's pleas for protection, Kosovar rebels looted her monastery and raped a young nun, officials said yesterday.
French commandos and members of the French Foreign Legion arrived as the Kosovar Liberation Army guerrillas were leaving the isolated mountain religious community in Devic, about 30 miles northwest of the Kosovo capital of Pristina.
The Post reported Monday how Mother Makariadrove to Pristina on Sunday to plead with arriving British troops for protection for herself, a priest and nine nuns at Devic.
"Please come and save us. You have the guns, all I have is a cross," she told an Irish Guard lieutenant. But she was told that no protection was possible until NATO reinforcements arrived.
Three days later the unguarded medieval monastery was raided by KLA members, French officers confirmed yesterday.
The French gave few details but a spokesman for Serb Orthodox Patriarch Pavle said the guerrillas showed no mercy.
"They desecrated the church, including the altar and icons, and humiliated the nuns," Deacon Luka Novakovic told The Post.
He said a 24-year-old nun was taken to a back room and raped.
The rebels looted the building of anything valuable and fired guns into the air as they left, just as the French arrived Thursday.
"When they saw us, they stopped a while, shouted 'NATO, NATO,' and then beat a hasty retreat," the officer said.
Among the evidence of the attack were the initials "UCK" - which stands for KLA - scratched into a pane of glass over an icon.
"The monastery had been stripped bare," a French officer told CNN. He added that the priest had been beaten...."
September 27, 1999
US Complicity in Timor
While the Indonesian military's thugs continue their rampage in East Timor, most foreign reporters have fled the country. As of September 7, frequent Nation contributor and award-winning journalist Allan Nairn was believed to be the only US reporter still there. Nairn left the besieged UN compound and walked the streets of Dili, where he hid in abandoned houses as he observed troops and militia burning and looting. Nairn has been writing about the troubles there for years. In 1991, after being badly beaten by Indonesian troops while witnessing the massacre of several hundred East Timorese, he was declared a "threat to national security" and banned from the country. He has entered several times illegally since then.....
--The Editors
Dili, East Timor
It is by now clear to most East Timorese and a few Westerners still left here that the militias are a wing of the TNI/ABRI, the Indonesian armed forces. Recently, for example, I was picked up by militiamen who turned out to be working for a uniformed colonel of the National Police. [Editors' note: The Indonesian government has denied any connection between the militias and either the police or the military.] But there is another important political fact that is not known here or in the international community. Although the US government has publicly reprimanded the Indonesian Army for the militias, the US military has, behind the scenes and contrary to Congressional intent, been backing the TNI.
US officials say that this past April, as militia terror escalated, a top US officer was dispatched to give a message to Jakarta. Adm. Dennis Blair, the US Commander in Chief of the Pacific, leader of all US military forces in the Pacific region, was sent to meet with General Wiranto, the Indonesian armed forces commander, on April 8. Blair's mission, as one senior US official told me, was to tell Wiranto that the time had come to shut the militia operation down. The gravity of the meeting was heightened by the fact that two days before, the militias had committed a horrific machete massacre at the Catholic church in Liquica, Timor. YAYASAN HAK, a Timorese human rights group, estimated that many dozens of civilians were murdered. Some of the victims' flesh was reportedly stuck to the walls of the church and a pastor's house. But Admiral Blair, fully briefed on Liquica, quickly made clear at the meeting with Wiranto that he was there to reassure the TNI chief. According to a classified cable on the meeting, circulating at Pacific Command headquarters in Hawaii, Blair, rather than telling Wiranto to shut the militias down, instead offered him a series of promises of new US assistance.
According to the cable, which was drafted by Col. Joseph Daves, US military attache; in Jakarta, Admiral Blair "told the armed forces chief that he looks forward to the time when [the army will] resume its proper role as a leader in the region. He invited General Wiranto to come to Hawaii as his guest in conjunction with the next round of bilateral defense discussions in the July-August '99 time frame. He said Pacific command is prepared to support a subject matter expert exchange for doctrinal development. He expects that approval will be granted to send a small team to provide technical assistance to police and...selected TNI personnel on crowd control measures."
Admiral Blair at no point told Wiranto to stop the militia operation, going the other way by inviting him to be his personal guest in Hawaii. Blair told Wiranto that the United States would initiate this new riot-control training for the Indonesian armed forces. This was quite significant, because it would be the first new US training program for the Indonesian military since 1992. Although State Department officials had been assured in writing that only police and no soldiers would be part of this training, Blair told Wiranto that, yes, soldiers could be included. So although Blair was sent in with the mission of telling Wiranto to shut the militias down, he did the opposite.
Indonesian officers I spoke to said Wiranto was delighted by the meeting. They took this as a green light to proceed with the militia operation......"
(I don't think this is a Protestant/Catholic thing. It's more of a thinking thing. Or the earnest search for the Civilizations that are really clashing in this round of the Clash of Civilizations.
"We have this God. You cannot stop us."
I think to err on the side of spiritual warfare ignores two things:
(1) the militance we see at present is primarily communist radicalisation of Islam effected in large part thanks to the arrogance of the West and their falling hook, link and sinker for the sucker punch that was Israel.
(2) that we have far more in common with Peaceful, faithful Muslims than we do many of our own where issues of human life, marriage and family are concerned. It was a real blow to the Church -- she was seen as weak, conspiratorial, stupid, what have you -- when she pulled out of her partnership with Uncle Sam to engage in ostpolitick with communist nations.
Who better than the Church to recognize the Spiritual Warfare being waged almost exclusively for souls (particularly in the West) once the great purges and slaughters waned?
Yet she reached out to those people (and had a tremendous effect, I believe, having seen the fruits of faith blooming again after 80 years of militant atheist rule) because she realized the greater danger was coming from the West who -- as has been born out -- was preparing to wage world revolution by proxy. Not only moving the United States proper left but imposing its Culture of Death on the globe and conditioning folks to demand its precepts -- from abortion to euthanasia -- as "rights".
If we're going to talk spiritual warfare, let's not forget the Church is focused also squarely on the United States. Our population control, our rabid individualism, our "saving graces of western materialism" ... the way any objective observer had to conclude we were in league (to great extent) not only with the Chicoms we appeased, nourished and with whom we sought to "co-exist" but also the Soviets whose drug offensives and gramscian-marxist assault from within (at the break points that were academia, the media and government agencies and most-favored Interlock foundations and thinktanks) seemed to have the protection of the most powerful in the west.
Simply put, I'm not prepared to demonize Muslims en masse or ascribe to the heresy of Islam any powers it's actually assumed thanks only to the radicalizing by militant atheists from the East whose job was made infinitely easier by our assuming Israel's battles and our arrogant imposition of our "western values" (or lack thereof) on others.
patent
Curiously enough, during Gulf War I, no mosques were touched -- while hundreds of churches got bombed. The Christian community in Iraq has, I've heard, been reasonably decently treated. For the longest time, the PM of Iraq was a Christian; this isn't the casein any other muslim-majority nations that I'm aware of.
Good point. I agree and I venture to guess that the priest I mentioned would also agree. My previous post was in response to Senator Pardek's inaccurate assupmtion that "silence" on the part of Catholics was due to ignorance or denial of the motives of some "Muslims."
I'll be sure to ping him next time I'm posting Belloc on the subject of Mohammedans ... even if I'm also inclined to post the thoughts of someone like Peter Kreeft as well despite my not always agreeing with his particular ecumenism or tolerance where Catholicism and Islam are concerned.
As Scripture tells us so, Jesus is the Son of Mary, thus Mary is the Mother of Jesus. Again, Scripture tells us that Jesus is God, Mary is the Mother of God, your failure to comprehend or outright rejection of Scripture notwithstanding. The syllogism is quite simple.
At what point do we consider them to be 'animals' . . . and NOT 'people' ???
Translation, please.
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