Silent about a threat that is theirs today as well.
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February 10, 2016 Robert Spencer
ean-Clément Jeanbart, the Melkite Greek Catholic Archbishop
of Aleppo, gave a recent interview with a French reporter, in which he was
highly critical of the mainstream media and even of his fellow bishops for
ignoring the Muslim persecution of Middle Eastern Christians. Archbishop
Jeanbart was turning over a rock, exposing a scandal within the Catholic Church
of catastrophic proportions.
“The European media,” he charged, “have not ceased to
suppress the daily news of those who are suffering in Syria and they have even
justified what is happening in our country by using information without taking
the trouble to verify it.” And as for his brother bishops in France, “the
conference of French bishops should have trusted us, it would have been better
informed. Why are your bishops silent on a threat that is yours today as well?
Because the bishops are like you, raised in political correctness. But Jesus
was never politically correct, he was politically just!”
He reminded them: “The responsibility of a bishop is to teach, to use his
influence to transmit truth. Why are your bishops afraid of speaking? Of course
they would be criticized, but that would give them a chance to defend
themselves, and to defend this truth. You must remember that silence often
means consent.”
Archbishop Jeanbart said that Western governments were
foolish to take in so many Muslim migrants without any possibility of vetting
them for jihadist ties: “The egoism and the interests slavishly defended by
your governments will in the end kill you as well. Open your eyes, didn’t you
see what happened recently in Paris?”
No, they didn’t see it. They didn’t want to see it.
Archbishop Jeanbart is not the first to say this. “Why, we
ask the western world, why not raise one’s voice over so much ferocity and
injustice?” asked Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, the head of the Italian
Bishops Conference (CEI). Syriac Catholic Patriarch Ignatius Ephrem Joseph III
Younan appealed to the West “not to forget the Christians in the
Middle East.” The Melkite Greek Catholic Patriarch Gregory III has also said: “I do not understand why the world does not
raise its voice against such acts of brutality.”
But the Patriarch should have
understood, since he is a major part of the problem. After all, he recently said: “No one defends Islam like Arab Christians.”
It is to defend Islam that Western clerics do not raise their voice against
such acts of brutality. It is to pursue a fruitless and chimerical “dialogue”
that bishops in the U.S. and Europe keep silent about Muslim persecution of
Christians, and enforce that silence upon others. Robert McManus, Roman Catholic Bishop of Worcester,
Massachusetts, said it on February 8, 2013 as he was suppressing a planned
talk at a Catholic conference on that persecution: “Talk about extreme,
militant Islamists and the atrocities that they have perpetrated globally might
undercut the positive achievements that we Catholics have attained in our
inter-religious dialogue with devout Muslims.”
That’s right, it’s all for the sake
of the spurious and self-defeating “dialogue.” For all too many of Archbishop
Jeanbart’s colleagues, including his boss, Patriarch Gregory, and especially
the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, to speak out about this persecution
renders one a continuing danger to the Church and someone they believe has
stepped beyond the bounds of acceptable discourse.
Jeanbart should ask his colleagues
in the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops about why their eyes are so
resolutely closed. He should ask bishops like McManus, Kevin Farrell, Jaime Soto and others why they move
actively to silence and demonize voices that tell the truth about this
persecution. He should ask them why they are so convinced that Islam, at its
core, teaches peace, despite the superabundance of evidence to the contrary in
Islamic texts and the actions of Muslims who read them. He should ask why the
U.S. Catholic bishops tolerated dissent from so many core Catholic dogmas for
decades, but move as ruthlessly as any Grand Inquisitor to suppress dissent
from the idea that Islam is a Religion of Peace, which isn’t even a dogma of
the Church. He should ask them why they are abandoning their Middle Eastern
brethren and keeping their own people ignorant and complacent about the jihad
threat.
Cowards, time-servers, trimmers and
self-deluded wishful thinkers dominate the Church hierarchy today, among both
bishops and priests, and all too many Catholics believe that to say so makes
one disloyal to the Church. Nonsense. Calling these people to account for the
damage they have done and are doing is the highest form of loyalty to the
Church. But they are completely in control, and don’t even deign to engage
those who oppose what they are doing. Well, they have the Church they want now,
and as the years go by, it will become clear to everyone what they have done,
and what unimaginable damage and destruction they have enabled.
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