Melkite Greek Catholic Archbishop to West: “Why are your bishops silent on a threat that is yours today as well?”FEBRUARY 6, 2016 BY DEACON ROBERT SPENCER
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2016/02/m...-on-a-threat-that-is-yours-today-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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“The last Christians in Aleppo,” Gallia Watch, February 5, 2016 (
http://galliawatch.blogspot.com/2016/02/the-last-christians-in-aleppo.html ):
Of all the horrors we’ve witnessed from our comfortable homes over the past year nothing hurts more than the attempted annihilation of Christians of the Near East, along with buildings, churches, sacred ruins, precious relics of the past that have been utterly destroyed by the ISIS conquerors. The suffering these people have endured and are enduring is recorded at numerous websites but the world has remained deaf, dumb and blind until recently when with one eye open it had no choice but to acknowledge the specific targeting of Christians. By that time it was too late. Carnage, decapitations, torture, eradication of an entire civilization – who cared so long as Muslims weren’t offended?…
Charlotte d’Ornellas, a reporter for Boulevard Voltaire, reports an interview given by the Melkite Greek Catholic archbishop of Aleppo, Jean-Clément Jeanbart, whose heart was heavy from the suffering of Christians but also from the indifference of the Western media….
“The European media 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,” he hurled at them, condemning notably the press agencies created during the war, controlled by the opposition army, such as the Syrian Observatory of human rights, a major source for western media.
“You must understand that between the Islamic State and the Syrian government, our choice is obvious. You can condemn the regime for certain things, but you have never tried to be objective,” he accused.
When asked if he had been able to explain his position to the French authorities, bishop Jeanbart said he had tried, and was told he had to be “less critical”.
For him, the West has not ceased to cover up the misdeeds of the opposition army, all the while condemning the Syrian government and its president.
“Bashar al-Assad has many defects, but you have to realize he has many good points as well,” he explained. “Schools are free, hospitals too, mosques and churches pay no taxes, what government in the region does things like that, be honest? Remember too that if we prefer today to support the government, it’s because we fear the installation of a sunni theocracy that would deprive us of the right to live on our own lands.”
“Yes, I tried to say all that to the French authorities, but what can you expect from a Laurent Fabius who thinks he’s God the Father by deciding who deserves to live on this Earth or not?” he finally answered, visibly weary. (Laurent Fabius had declared that Bashar al-Assad “did not deserve to be on the Earth”.)
“Is it possible that France – that I love and that educated me thanks to the religious communities established in Syria – has changed so much? Is it possible that its interests and its love of money have prevailed over the values it once defended?” declared the archbishop bitterly.
Asked about the position of French bishops, the Pakistani bishop who was also present did not want to respond. So bishop Jeanbart took the mike again.
“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!”
“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.”
The archbishop also criticized the migration policies of the Western countries.
“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?“…
