Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Italian Newspaper - Why No Outrage Over Christian Persecution and Deaths From United Nations?

I thought this was a good piece that the Ratzinger Forum has translated from the Italian Newspaper Corriere della Sera

Killing Christians, from the Sudan to India, raises no outrage, especially not from the UN
by Pierluigi Battista 'Particelle elementari'

How many examples must there be - and what torments endured by Christians persecuted in the world, with nuns burned alive by Hindu extremists - while the Church calls for United Nations intervention to put an end to these sporadic episodes of religious discrimination which Catholics call Christianophobia?

With all the woes that trouble the world, should we really be concerned about Indian villages burned to the ground, of orphanages set on fire, of children chased into the jungle by groups of fanatics armed with knives? Should we pay attention to the reports of Christian persecution in various parts of the world such as recently detailed in Il Giornale?

Does anyone really think the conscience of the world can be touched by reports of Chinese bishops disappearing for opposition to the regime; the 300,000 Christians swallowed into the void of North Korean society; the priests and nuns who have been killed and dozens of missionaries, Catholic and Protestant, who have been killed in ambushes that have bloodied southern Philippines (where a minority of militant Muslims have been waging guerilla war since the 1960s; the killings in Indonesia of Christians whose only offense was to show the Cross? In Saudi Arabia, Christians cannot build churches, risk death if they are found in possession of a Crucifix, are under asphyxiating surveillance by the official vigilante force of so-called religious police, and are accused (and summarily condemned) for so-called 'proselytism'.

Should the religious quiet of the world be bothered by such trifles? And is not whoever asks for rudimentary reciprocity, at the very least, in freedom of worship (free churches and free mosques in free states) carrying on a deleterious campaign that poisons inter-religious relations? In the south of Sudan, Christians killed by slave-taking bands acting in the name of Islam now number at least two million - yes, two million! - and no longer make the news. Not even in Darfur, where the carnage continues, where millions lose their lives because of their religion and race, but where the United Nations 'prudently' continues not to call it genocide.

In Nigeria, Muslim extremists have killed 20,000 Christians and destroyed at least 200 churches, but the international community continues to look on and does not intervene in order not to 'upset' the coexistence among peoples and religions! And it would be absurd - and dangerous for the peace of the world - to even countenance the 'mistaken' notion of Christianophobia!

In Somalia, Sister Leonella, a sixty-year-old nun who had been too daring and 'fanatical' in thinking that a center to care for abandoned and orphaned children would be useful, is murdered at the very gate of that orphanage. Christians are subjected to persecution, reduced to silence, caught in the near-impossibility of keeping symbols of their faith hidden - in Egypt, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Yemen - but we are not supposed to make general statements about them in order not to further inflame the enemies of religious peace. And in order not to further burden the various offices and organisms of the United Nations, already so overworked as not to be bothered with these trifles!

Am I right?

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