Posted on 05/23/2014 7:48:40 AM PDT by BlatherNaut
In FrontPage today I discuss the ill winds blowing as Pope Francis prepares to visit “the state of Palestine”:
“The Che Guevara of the Palestinians” is set to visit Palestinian Authority-controlled Judea and Samaria next week, beginning in Bethlehem, and the city of Jesus’s birth is already in high excitement. The bearer of that illustrious title is none other than Pope Francis. According to Israel National News, “Rabbi Sergio Bergman, a member of the Argentinian parliament and close friend of Pope Francis…said that the pope intends to define himself as the ‘Che Guevera of the Palestinians’ and support their ‘struggle and rights’ during his visit.”
If the Pope or anyone around him has expressed a similar intention to speak out about the Muslim persecution of Palestinian Christians, it has not been recorded – in sharp contrast to the abundance of signals that the Pope has sent to Palestinian Authority officials. Fr. Jamal Khader of the Latin patriarchate of Jerusalem explained: “He is taking a helicopter directly from Jordan to Palestine — to Bethlehem. It’s a kind of sign of recognizing Palestine.” In anticipation of his doing just that officially, Palestinian officials have put up posters proclaiming “State of Palestine” and depicting Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, Pope Francis, and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople.
Not only that, but while in Bethlehem, Pope Francis will meet with Abbas; he also plans to celebrate Mass there rather than in Jerusalem, a move that Israel National News says “has been called a show of support for the PA.” He then plans to visit a Palestinian “refugee camp.”
Khader predicted: “Knowing who he is, and his sensitivity for all those who suffer, I am sure that he will say something defending all those who are suffering, including the Palestinians who live under occupation.” Ziyyad Bandak, Abbas’s adviser for Christian affairs, was enthusiastic: “This visit will help us in supporting our struggle to end the longest occupation in history….We welcome this visit and consider it as support for the Palestinian people, and confirmation from the Vatican of the need to end the occupation.”
All this comes after a Church official in Jerusalem criticized Israeli authorities for asking that a sign announcing the Pope’s visit be taken down from a historic site on which such signs are prohibited for preservation reasons. The unnamed official referenced recent Hebrew-language hate graffiti spray-painted on mosques and churches, saying that he and other Church officials “question the fact that the police, instead of taking action against the extremists who paint hate slogans on mosques and churches, choose to remove a sign with a positive message that welcomes the pope in three languages. We hope the police will act with the same determination to prevent the growing incitement and violence against Christians.”
While referring to the graffiti as “incitement and violence against Christians,” however, Church officials have been much more reticent regarding Muslim persecution of Palestinian Christians, even when it has included actual violence. According to Israel National News, “Christian Arab residents of the village of El-Khader in the Bethlehem area were savagely attacked by local Muslims as they celebrated a Christian holiday two weeks ago. A report by CAMERA, an organization which monitors anti-Israel bias in the media, reported that Christians attempting to enter Saint George’s Monastery in the village were intimidated and attacked with rocks and stones.”
Yet about this and other incidents of Muslim persecution of Christians, Pope Francis, as well as Vatican and Church officials, have said little. Last November, Pope Francis decried the plight of “Christians who suffer in a particularly severe way the consequences of tensions and conflicts in many parts of the Middle East.” He added that “Syria, Iraq, Egypt and other areas of the Holy Land sometimes overflow with tears” and declared: “We won’t resign ourselves to a Middle East without Christians who for two thousand years confess the name of Jesus, as full citizens in social, cultural and religious life of the nations to which they belong.”
Neither on that occasion or any other, however, has Pope Francis ever ascribed the suffering of Middle Eastern Christians to anything beyond “the consequences of tensions and conflicts in many parts of the Middle East.” Apparently he believes that if those tensions and conflicts could somehow be resolved, Christians would be able to live freely in the Middle East. After all, he has famously asserted that “authentic Islam and the proper reading of the Koran are opposed to every form of violence,” thereby dismissing the possibility that Christians may be facing persecution from Muslims who are obeying the Qur’anic imperative to fight them “until they pay the jizya with willing submission and feel themselves subdued” (9:29).
What’s more, when Pope Benedict XVI spoke out in January 2011 against the jihad bombing of the Coptic cathedral in Alexandria, Egypt, Al-Azhar University in Cairo, the world’s most prestigious Sunni Muslim institution, reacted angrily, breaking off dialogue with the Vatican and accusing the Pope of interference in internal Egyptian affairs. In a statement, Al-Azhar denounced the pontiff’s “repeated negative references to Islam and his claims that Muslims persecute those living among them in the Middle East.” When Pope Francis succeeded Benedict, Al-Azhar and other Muslim authorities expressed hopes that he would repair relations between Muslims and Christians by not repeating the mistakes of his predecessor — including speaking out about the Muslim persecution of Christians.
Francis complied, affirming his “respect” for Islam and apparently accepting al-Azhar’s stipulation that “casting Islam in a negative light is ‘a red line’ that must not be crossed.” He has not, in any case, crossed it, even to decry the actions of Muslims to harass, victimize and persecute Christians because of Qur’anic declarations that they are accursed of Allah for saying Jesus is the Son of God (9:30); are unbelievers for affirming the divinity of Christ (5:17; 5:72); and must be warred against and subjugated (9:29).
And so during his trip that the Palestinians are awaiting with such excitement, it is likely that he will have little, if anything, to say about how core beliefs held by the Palestinians he is celebrating are used to justify the oppression of their Christian brethren. It is even less likely that he will note that Christians in Israel enjoy greater rights and freedoms than their brethren in any Muslim country. We may only hope that whatever the “Che Guevara of the Palestinians” says in Bethlehem or elsewhere in the Palestinian Authority, that it will not be capable of being exploited, by those persecutors of Christians he seems determined to ignore, to justify their actions and perpetuate that persecution.
There is no logical fallacy, and they most assuredly are self-evidently true, when you affirm the Divinty of Jesus Christ. It is not affirming the consequent, but mere hindsight.
"Fundamentalist Protestants, whose only "chrstendom" is Biblical Israel and for whom historical chrstianity is "the great apostasy," have a very different position from yours."
Okay...And?
Time to wake up from the cathedral dreams and face the reality that your church is not the one Christ built. His Church is built on Him alone, not church traditions, not saints, not Mary, not celibacy, not priests and certainly not fallible and corrupt popes.
Once you accept the Truth, everything about Israel and her enemies starts to make sense.
I have been holding off, but today I officially start praying for a new Pope.
Staying put where I am.
Besides, like it or not, WE ARE ALL CHRISTIANS, united by our COMMON BAPTISM. We are all in it together.
Give me a break. Go bash Catholicism, Mary, the saints, etc., somewhere else.
We just have a lousy, stupid Pope. It’s happened before.
It’s easy for you to have a “perfect” church, since yours exists only in your imagination.
Arthur:
Man, I could not have said that better.
Paul sure seemed to feel a different way, didn't he?
You will say then, “Branches were broken off that I might be grafted in.” [...] For if you were cut out of the olive tree which is wild by nature, and were grafted contrary to nature into a cultivated olive tree, how much more will these, who are natural branches, be grafted into their own olive tree? (Ro 11:19,24)
Very forbearing of you to have held off this long.
I thought this website provided a reasonable explanation behind the pre-Vatican II Catholicism’s relationship with Zionism.
http://www.dcdave.com/article4/031206.html
“I thought this website provided a reasonable explanation behind the pre-Vatican II Catholicism’s relationship with Zionism.”
I didn’t find it reasonable at all.
“FR Catholics’ heads are exploding today”
Everything you “know” is wrong.
“Anyways, she is the biggest lib I’ve ever known. She not only supports things like abortion but belongs to some of the biggest left wing groups out there. Not only that, she is the mean spirited.”
A liberal-anything is always a liberal first and the “anything” a distant second.
I don’t even know if it’s a good thing or a bad thing that they remain in the Church. I do wish that no liberals were in charge of anything anywhere, because they always try to remake things in line with their ideology, which is of and from Satan.
Why do you right wing Catholics and palaeocons get so excited about anti-Zionist Orthodox Jews? Do you think they're opposed to some imaginary plot to rule the world? They are not. They are very much in favor of the real Mashiach HaMelekh ruling Israel and the entire human race from Jerusalem. Their objection to Zionism is for one reason and one reason only: Zionism is a secular nineteenth century European nationalist movement no different than Irish Republicanism or the Armenian Dashnaks or the Italian risorgimento or the various Slavic nationalisms under Austria and the Ottomans. That's all it ever was, and that's why they oppose it. They are opposed to a "secular Jewish state" (a contradiction in terms) that is governed according to Western secular "democratic" means. They are Theocrats in the truest sense of the word, and to them "secular Jewish nationalism" is an abomination and an impossibility--somewhat on the order of a square circle.
It may interest you to know that I myself am opposed to secular Jewish nationalism and a secular Jewish state, and I regard the Fundamentalist Protestant assumption that the state founded in '48 is the "messianic state" as the ultimate in naivete. This is because I believe in an Israel under the Davidic King and ruled entirely by Halakhah, much as moslem pseudo-"theocracies" are. This was never in the minds of the vast majority of the founders of Zionism or Zionists at any time. The goal of secular Zionism has always been what Rabbi Me'ir Kahana' (zt"l; Hy"d) called "a Hebrew speaking Portugal."
Those "anti-Zionist Orthodox Jews" cannot wait for Mashiach to arrive and govern the entire world--and for that matter, neither can I. There is no "Zionist plot" to crown the "antichrist" as king of the world nor are "anti-Zionist Orthodox Jews" going to protect you from Mashiach when he gets here. They're not "good Jews" who are so very sorry that the big bad Zionists are plotting to rule the world. And the big bad Zionists, whatever you have been told, have never had any such goal in mind. Of course, if you define "Zionism" to include "international banking" and flooding America with Third Worlders (moslems?) nothing I say is going to get through to you.
Just please cut the "anti-Zionist Jews are good Jews because they're against the false Jewish 'messiah'" schtick. Because they're much more for the worldwide messianic reign than any secular Zionist could even possibly be.
Not on my radar screen. Ditto pro-Zionists or any belief system which rejects Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. I have never personally encountered anti-semitism or disparagement of other faiths in traditional Catholic circles. Our focus is on Our Lord and his Holy Will.
“Not on my radar screen. Ditto pro-Zionists or any belief system which rejects Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. I have never personally encountered anti-semitism or disparagement of other faiths in traditional Catholic circles. Our focus is on Our Lord and his Holy Will.”
Truth well expressed. Good job.
Wow. I’m not “excited” about the anti-Zionist Jews at all. They still are not Catholic. I do think it is interesting, however, that they go against the mainstream, Jewish thought regarding the return to a Jewish State. Apparently my question struck a nerve. I just wanted to know your opinion, that’s all.
Reasonable in the sense that it didn’t come off as anti-Semitic. Unless of course we want to say that Pope Pius X was anti-Semitic.
Thanks for the link.
From your link: “Regardless of the prudence of this decision, the Vatican has consistently remained critical of Israel’s repressive policies towards Palestinians (both Muslim and Christian). This is an absolutely necessary measure, because the Church, as the ultimate moral authority on earth, must maintain its moral credibility”
Spencer’s article illuminates the lack of consistency in the Pope’s approach to this issue. While critical of Israeli treatment of Palestinians, he falsely asserts that the Koran opposes violence and seems disinclined to forcefully address the plight of Christians and Jews in the Middle East (and throughout the world) who are beset by Palestinian and Muslim violence.
“Unless of course we want to say that Pope Pius X was anti-Semitic.”
No, I don’t. He was too intelligent and wise not to realize that the Jews who shouted “Give us Barrabas” were only a tiny fraction of the entire population of Jews.
I mean, how many could there have been crammed into such a small area?
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