New York City, N.Y., Oct 17, 2017 / 03:02 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Anti-Christian persecution is “worse than at any time in history” and in many cases genocide and other crimes against humanity “now mean that the Church in core countries and regions faces the possibility of imminent wipe-out,” says a new report from Aid to the Church in Need.
The report, titled “Persecuted and Forgotten?”, covers the years 2015-2017. Its contents are bleak, describing Christianity as “the world’s most oppressed faith community.” Anti-Christian persecution in the worst regions has reached “a new peak” and its impact is “only now beginning to be felt in all its horror.”
“In 12 of the 13 countries reviewed, the situation for Christians was worse in overall terms in the period 2015–17 than within the preceding two years,” said the report’s executive summary, released Oct. 12.
John Pontifex, the report’s editor, commented that “In terms of the numbers of people involved, the gravity of the crimes committed and their impact, it is clear that the persecution of Christians is today worse than at any time in history. Not only are Christians more persecuted than any other faith group, but ever-increasing numbers are experiencing the very worst forms of persecution.”
China, Eritrea, Iraq, Nigeria, North Korea, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Syria were ranked “extreme” in the scale of anti-Christian persecution. Egypt, India, and Iran were rated “high to extreme,” while Turkey was rated “moderate to high.”
The report’s ratings draw from analyses like the Pew Forum’s Social Hostilities Index and Open Door’s World Watch List, in addition to other factors and sources, including fact-finding trips.
In some countries the state is the principal persecutor, while in other countries social groups are culpable, while in still others a combination of both are responsible.
Aid to the Church in Need, an international Catholic pastoral charity, provides emergency and pastoral relief in 140 countries. Its U.S. affiliate published the report.
The report’s foreword was written by Archbishop Issam John Darwish of the Melkite Archdiocese of Zahlé and Furzo, a Lebanese archdiocese near the Syrian border. He recounted the stories of Christian refugees fleeing the six-year-old Syrian civil war.
“Many refugees have told terrible stories of persecution: like the man whose brother, a priest, was kidnapped – and despite the family paying the ransom they killed the priest. They sent his family a box containing his severed wrist, tattooed with a cross, to show he was dead,” the archbishop said.
The Middle East is a major focus for the report.
“Governments in the West and the U.N. failed to offer Christians in countries such as Iraq and Syria the emergency help they needed as genocide got underway,” the report said. “If Christian organizations and other institutions had not filled the gap, the Christian presence could already have disappeared in Iraq and other parts of the Middle East.”
The exodus of Christians from Iraq has been “very severe.” Christians in the country now may number as few as 150,000, a decline from 275,000 in mid-2015. By spring 2017 there were some signs of hope, with the defeat of the Islamic State group and the return of some Christians to their homes on the Nineveh Plains.
However, the departure of Christians from Syria has also threatened the survival of their communities in the country, including historic Christian centers like Aleppo. Syrian Christians there suffer threats of forced conversion and extortion. One Chaldean bishop in the country estimates the Christian population to be at 500,000, down from 1.2 million before the war.
Many Christians in the region fear going to official refugee camps, due to concerns about rape and other violence.
The Islamic State group and other militants have committed genocide in Syria and Iraq. While Islamic State and other groups have been defeated in their major strongholds, many Christian groups are threatened with extinction and would not survive another attack.
In northern Nigeria, the radical Islamist group Boko Haram has engaged in genocide against Christians.
There are reports from North Korea of forced starvation of Christians and forced abortion. Some Christians have been hung on crosses over fire, and others have been crushed by steamrollers. Protestants and Catholics are ranked among those least sympathetic to the state, which limits their access to food, education, and health care. Christianity is linked with American influence, and Christians are executed as spies.
In Sudan, the government’s pursuit of an extremist Islamist agenda led to orders to tear down Christian churches. Christians are arrested for alleged proselytism, and women face fines for wearing “obscene” or immodest dress. The government stripped citizenship rights of people with origins outside Sudan, leading many to leave for their ancestral homelands in South Sudan. Many had lived in their homes for three decades or more.
In January 2017 the U.S. put a six-month waiver on human rights sanctions against Sudan, on condition that the country improve its human rights and religious freedom record.
In Pakistan, banned fundamentalist cells pose a great threat to Christians, but some charge that the government’s failure to crack down on these groups worsens the problem of violence. On Easter Sunday 2016 as many as 24 Christians were killed in targeted violence in Lahore. A faction of the Pakistan Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack.
In India, persecution has increased since 2014, with the rise of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s right-wing Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party. Like-minded groups frequently accuse Christians of forced conversion, a charge local Christian leaders strongly deny. An India-based Catholic group reported 365 serious anti-Christian atrocities in 2016, with 10 people killed and more than 500 clergy or church leaders attacked for their faith.
Some Christians have faced pressure to convert under threat of force, while others have been forced to take part in Hindu rituals and deny their faith.
In China, church communities face increased hostility. Authorities in some provinces have removed crosses from some churches and destroyed church buildings. In some regions, Christmas trees and greeting cards have been banned.
President Xi Jinping has depicted Christianity as a means of “foreign infiltration” into China and has advocated more state control and targeting of unofficial churches. There are fears that China’s 2016 announcement of categorization of citizens based on political, commercial, social and legal “credit,” will create a system that disadvantages Christians in a way similar to North Korea.
Christians in Egypt suffered a major suicide bombing attack in December 2016 and again on Palm Sunday in April 2017. Dozens were killed and more injured in both attacks, for which the Islamic State group claimed responsibility.
Saudi Arabia has come under criticism from western powers and the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. However, President Donald Trump signed a $110 billion arms deal with the country, a deal which had been held up under the Obama administration due to human rights concerns. The Aid to the Church in Need report said sources in the country are supplying arms and finances to Sunni extremist groups including the Islamic State, known in the region as “Daesh.”
“Given that Islamist groups such as Daesh are likely to be heavily reliant on undeclared external sources for weapons and intelligence, there is an urgent need to step up action to stop all entities collaborating with them,” the report continued. “Persecuted Christians are among the many who stand to be beneficiaries of progress in this area.”
Archbishop Darwish said it is imperative to help persecuted Christians.
“When the Christian families who have turned to us need the very basics for daily life – food, shelter and medical care – how can we refuse to help?” he asked, lamenting a lack of aid from the U.N. and other humanitarian organizations.
He praised Aid to the Church in Need’s efforts to report anti-Christian persecution and aid those persecuted.
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Bishop Powers was at best clumsy in beginning a Chrism Mass and the blessing of the Holy Oils with an Ojibwa religious ceremonial dance. Having the ceremony at the start gives the impression of formal equivalence.
In the Southwest our bishops had a long history of incorporating Native American ritual, singing and drumming at intervals, the Franciscans had implemented that well especially among the Pueblo, but also with the Navajo, Kiowa, Apache and others so that the impression was simply one of recognizing the culture of the participants without any sense of ritual and belief equivalence.
Well said. And yet there still can be a misunderstood “equivalence” in the minds of, say, the poorly informed/formed within the fold, and the sometimes invincibly ignorant. Three points:
FIRST, this, in our time when the synthesis of Faith & Reason was occasioned in the West when Jerusalem met Athens (Greek culture). And, now, when the West is being positioned as more-or-less equivalent with the variety of non-Western natural religions and worse. A pope who handles ambiguously exchanges his staff for a Wiccan Stang at the Youth Synod, accepts a Marxist crucifix gifted in Peru, and celebrates (?) Pachamama in the Vatican Garden, and then for the fertility goddess approves a niche in St. Peter’s Basilica. True, she was later given a lay baptism in the Tiber…
SECOND, so, this type of engagement when evangelization attempts to connect with populations and cultures wherever they might be at the moment. Speak their language, but then total capitulation under Fiducia Supplicans, toward the pandemic of carnal paganism from within the post-Christian West itself. So, yes to cultural expressions if handled well as you report, but in all cases what of true and clear inculturation of the Faith? A Faith which is received (!) and not only an expression?
Too many self-destructive expressions now embedded in an aggregated and bottoms-up Synodality…
THIRD, this, too, from Cardinal Sarah:
“Without silence, the Church does not live up to here calling. I fear that the reform of the liturgy, especially in Africa, is often the occasion for noisy, purely human celebrations that are hardly in keeping with the will of the Son of God as expressed during the Last Supper. It is not a matter of rejecting the joy of the faithful, but there is a time for everything. The liturgy is the place, not for human rejoicing, passions, a profusion of discordant words, but for pure adoration” (“The Power [!] of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise,” Ignatius, 2017, p. 221).
When it’s contained within the language [liturgical texts in Swahili, Maasai, Navajo] of the populace, and their musical genre, usually drums, religious songs written for the liturgy, melody identified with their culture it has in my experience in Africa, and in the Southwest had positive outcome. Cardinal Sarah is likely criticizing abuses to what Vatican II approved.
So Vigano thinks that there is a Deep State that has much power under the present regime and that threatens Christianity. Hmmm. We have just learned that FBI whistleblower Steve Friend has said that FBI taught Agents that Pro Lifers are more dangerous than Islamic terrorists: “We were shown a video that was produced by the Southern Poverty Law Center” that “ranked people who oppose abortion, pro-life activists, as a greater threat than Islamists.”
There are a lot of confusing and contradictory claims about this entire disturbing affair. To begin with I have seen much online speculation about who “archbishop Vigano” really is which assumes he posts under a pseudonym. Bishop Powers in his complaints against Vigano not only identifies him by name and title but says that he was the papal nuncio who attended his installation as bishop of Superior, Wisconsin in 2016! Bishop Powers then says that such ceremonies were not only practiced then but in every significant church event since! If AB Vigano is correctly identified, then how indeed has he escaped the treatment that befell AB Strickland and Cardinal Burk? Can anyone make sense of this?
Archbishop Vigano was indeed the papal nuncio to the US in 2016, and he does not use a pseudonym. There’s a wikipedia article on him. 2016 was his last year in the office of papal nuncio, as he retired. It would not be surprising either that he witnessed the ceremony and made no objection, or that it has continued every year since, he did not start objecting to practices and personnel choices until years after he retired, and I believe he apologized near the start of that for having held his peace so long.
He has no office to be removed from, so the treatment accorded Bishop Strickland and Cardinal Burke is not possible. Supposedly he has also been physically avoiding contact with any Vatican emissaries, preventing him from being semi-voluntarily carted off to a mental facility, as has happened with some priests, but I don’t think there’s any evidence that anyone would have tried that on him. But then, the only solid evidence possible would presumably be his presence in a mental facility.
Before Archbishop Vigano would be committed to a mental facility, he’d have to get in line. There’s a long list of bishops, Cardinals and Vatican officials who need to have their heads examined because so many of them are deranged. I can’t imagine that all their lunacy can be attributed to moral derangement alone.
Archbishop Vigano has not “escaped the treatment that befell AB Strickland and Cardinal Burk (sic)” as a brief internet search will reveal.
I, for one, have had my fill of the bastardization of the Catholic liturgy at the hands of prelates who are “off the reservation” (pun intended). By the way, Bishop Gumbleton just died.
May Gumby reset in peace.
Praise God for giving Gumby time to reflect and repent.
Thank God for giving us grace to endure.
I would like to know the words which were chanted. Yet I have a problem with women holding feathers gathering around the altar, doing what looks like some non-Christian ritual in the Sanctuary.
I also have a problem with this:
“Powers wrote that it has “long been a tradition in the Diocese of Superior to honor the heritage of our Native Americans before major diocesan celebrations,”
It is a false order of values which becomes more and more widespread in the Western Church. Christianity is the highest = absolute value; the local cultural traditions are secondary. Christianity is the Truth above all so it should not seek “to honor” local traditions. Instead, the local traditions should seek to give what good they have to the Liturgy but only as long as doing so does not violate the Truth expressed in the Liturgy itself. To be clear, I will give an example: being Russian I do not expect the local Roman Catholic Church to invite me to dance before the Mass playing balalaika for the sake of recognizing my culture; being Russian I offer my skills of an iconographer to the local church and paint and embroider which bear an imprint of the Russian culture.
And so, it is unacceptable to insert some pieces of culture into Mass for the sake of “being nice”. In that particular case (on the video) there should be no women in the Sanctuary doing some kind of a ceremony. But the native music could be easily incorporated into Mass if the congregation has natives. Look for example at this short video of the end of the Easter service in the Eastern Orthodox Church in Africa https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VNptIdyVzo
Women there are dancing while singing a hymn, a priest is dancing as well standing in the Sanctuary. The women are not in the sanctuary. I find it great and an excellent conclusion of the Easter Liturgy (I think); if I was there I would join them and dance as well. I am sure no one there thought of “honoring local traditions”, the locals just acted their Christian faith out with the means they used to.
As for the accusations of defamation it is laughable. Since when theological accusations are to be defined as “defamation”? Our Church fathers would be buried under pieces of paper sent from the court.
I will add the following. This shamanic (I think) ceremony, the red dragon in the Vatican for the Chinese New Year, a priest who encourages stupid greetings before Mass, Synod on Synodality, are all the same in essence. They all have the same root: those who push them do not have Christ as the felt center, in the Church and their own world. Instead, they have themselves, “the beloved themselves” at the center and that fact they cover by “for the good of others”. If they push “honoring” local culture at the expense of Christ they are “nice” you see and have the glory which they steal from Christ Who by their actions is denied the glory and also the chance to connect with others (including those who do shamanic ceremonies).
All the above things could be verified and done away over a few minutes. How Christ’ Body and Blood in the Chalice are honored by the shamanic ceremony? What the Author of the Revelation would think about the Red Dragon in the Vatican dancing around the Pope, not so much about the fact but about the zero clue the Pope had about the symbol he was giving to the Church? Where is Jesus Christ in the Synod on Synodality? Would He like to participate in such a thing? What would He say? Would He understand their oblique (to themselves as well) language which is so different from His “yes – yes, no – no”?
The further it goes the less I am able to understand the language those people use. They appear to be in another world. My conversations with them usually goes like this:
– Listen, you cannot have the shamanic dance in the Sanctuary before Mass!
– We are honoring local traditions.
– It is Christ who should be honored by His Church, not the local traditions.
– What?
(silence and bewilderment after the following is usually said)
– You are not nice! You do not think of those people who need to know we honor their traditions!”
– But what about Christ? Should you not think of Him first?
(silence and bewilderment etc.; that can go indefinitely)
Those people defend “other people” only because in “honoring them” they honor themselves. They do not care about bringing “those people” to Christ, they care about bringing them to themselves and being seen as “nice”. Christ to them is someone who spoils their show, the one they must bow to and this is why they push Him away (mostly unconsciously).
We have an old saying, a paradigm of a meaningless conversation: two people saying to each other “There is a red berry tree in my garden” – “I have an uncle in Kiev”; “There is a red berry tree in my garden” – “I have an uncle in Kiev”; “There is a red berry tree in my garden” – “I have an uncle in Kiev” etc., endlessly. (sounds a bit political right now but I am unwilling to change our folklore.) This is what is going on in our Church now. Two camps, one which has Christ as their felt center, another one who have “themselves, the beloved” as their center, with an insatiable desire to be seen as “nice”. The second camp will win on this earth because it is nice to be nice. Those who stick to Christ because they know they will sink without Him looking and will continue looking plain disgusting: “unloving, uncaring, cruel, rigid” and so on.
Thank you Anna. No worries, since nice is not a virtue. Charity seeks the good of the other. God is Good. If we love our neighbor, we share our love of Christ with them, our Good Lord and Savior. Happy Mercy Sunday!
Well, this gives the bishop of Superior the opportunity to aknowledge he was wrong to have this ceremony at Mass, especially Chrism Mass.
I suspect that until now they haven’t touched Archbishop Vigano because he knows too much about too many active and important cardinals, bishops, and priests. It’s all part of the smoke, mirrors, and obfuscation that we’ve had to endure for quite a long time now. That said, I do think that Archbishop Vigano has gone off the rails, though these days staying on the rails is might difficult for any faithful Catholic. Bishop Powers’ protest will likely end there; I’m actually surprised that anyone had the nerve to challenge Vigano at all. In fact, don’t be surprised if Bishop Powers gets himself into some sort of trouble for rattling that cage, and his resignation will be for “health reasons.” Sigh.
So are these ladies with the feathers members of the new CCW? Ridiculous paganism. Bishop should be exorcised.
This is what happens when you fail to do the red and say the black!!!!!!!
Pachamama Powers claims Archbishop Vigano’s comments resulted in a “violation of my right to a good name and reputation.” Nope. He did that all by himself.
Touché
I personally find Native American culture quite interesting, as I do several other cultures. However, I do not believe a church sanctuary prior to Mass is the place for such cultural demonstrations. Its been my understanding that most Indian ceremonies of music and dance like this are calling upon the spirits they believe in to purify, help with sickness, chase away evil, etc. These are not simply musical reviews. A Catholic Church is a place to honor Jesus, period. Its not a Broadway stage. I would have suggested this parish have Mass in the church, followed by a display of Native culture in the church yard outdoors, clearly not part of Mass. This stuff should not be done in the Sanctuary, nor inside the church in any way. Vigano is absolutely correct to be critical of this use of church space , which is an attempt to establish an equivalency between the Native Spirit beliefs and Jesus.This is a slippery slope and should be discouraged. Its entirely possible to respect other cultures while recognizing they are not at all the same as our own.
Well, this has been informative about Archbishop Vigano. It has, however, only reinforced the outrage I first expressed when I added this story to the April 3 news thread. When I finally managed to coax Microsoft’s mentally ill AI into isolating the ceremony on the video it was obvious that it was pagan. There was the shaman with his four female assistants chanting. They wound up the lengthy ceremony by briefly invoking the Earth Mother in English. It for sure wasn’t the Virgin Mary!! Bishop Powers only raised my alert status further when he claimed that this was already a long established practice when he took over in 2016! To put all this in context I need to mention the late Deacon Paul Mullens a full blood native American I am blessed to have had for a friend. He was very active in Indian affairs and devoted to Saint Kateri Tikawitha but never brought native religion into the Catholic Church which he served in many ways. Deacon Paul told me once of something he witnessed on an Indian reservation as a child. He was at Mass with his family when a horrible desecration occurred. Someone from off the reservation took the host out of his mouth, laid it on the altar rail and stabbed it with a knife. The host bled profusely. Someone who has experienced the miraculous can never stop being a believer and could never mix his faith with anything else. People who dedicate their lives to the Church you would think would always be the same way would you not?
JJR, it seems to me that sadly, people are more invested in human secular approval than they are in their status with God. There have been too many high churchmen willing to “go along to get along” where church teaching is concerned to think anything else. We are not generally in the age of martyrs here in the US.Humans are compromised creatures and much too much under the thumb of what I call the “tyranny of “nice”. They will say or do anything to be regarded as “nice” by others. Even if in fact they are anything BUT nice.
Wasn’t sure what to think until I read the comments, especially Anna’s. Thanks, Anna.
Curious to see what, if anything, happens next.
I have lived in the Superior diocese for over 30 years. In that time I have seen many abuses. This would not be the first.
You can’t keep equating culture with Rite. Worse, when you insist and demand that you are right to do so. Neither is culture an adoption of Rite.
In centuries gone by, this was precisely one of the problems faced in correcting the traditional Mass when it had fallen into similar abuse. Common sense.
You must stop distracting from Rite back into culture. Culture can be in the parish get-together or harvest and then more in the local play (LJ, above).
The same type problem develops with “taste” and “presentation” like dances that then have more to do with ubiquitous artistry though made out to be “culture”.
The idea of “inculturation” means witnessing faith to the culture not witnessing the culture in the faith. Adding intrusiveness to the latter is not witness.
Archbishop Vigano more directly condemns the abuse according to the nature of the offense. Bishop Powers has to mature quick and accept it as his correction.
This can not be a defamation since defamation in civil law does not apply here and the matter requires to be addressed and administered from faith and reason.
Apparently the good Archbishop likes to follow the rules, but is he in this case? I wonder. Who is this priest’s superior? What authority do the Archbishop have over him? Is it his place to be making public judgments about this matter? I’m confused. Wouldn’t private, brotherly council be the prescribed (according to scripture) method of dealing with this situation? Just asking.j
“In a duel you don’t count or measure the blows, but strike as you can.”
Pope Saint Pius X
By following the Magisterium ad33-ad1958, Archbishop Vigano is applying to this Modernist Apostate the exactly prescribed treatment.
V is for Vigano