Monday 23 September 2013

Pope Francis: Will no other major Christian voice join him in condemning Islamist violence ?

Yesterday, on his weekly radio show, Canada's indefatigable freedom-fighter, Tarek Fatah, lamented that no Christian voices are even standing up for the forgotten Christians of Pakistan. To para-phrase Tarek: "what would a Sunday morning be without some Muslims blowing up a church". Well, amongst major voices, he did get one wrong: the Pope did speak up. Did your bishop ? - if not, shame on him. And he had more than enough time; after all, 178 Christians were slaughtered in another Islamist attack just last week in Nigeria. Your bishop spoke up on that one, didn't he?

Why are Christian leaders silent? Do they not want to "offend" Islam? Perhaps they don't care about what happened because those who died were brown and poor? And where are all those "social justice" churches? Where is the United Church on all of this? Or, the various eccentric Gaza boat storming "peace flotilla Christians". We probably can't expect much from these. but we certainly should expect much, much more from our bishops! Shame on those of them who are silent and will remain silent. 

(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis on Sunday condemned a blast at a church in Pakistan that killed at least 78 people as an act of "hatred and war".
In unprepared remarks at the end of a one-day trip to the city of Cagliari on the Italian island of Sardinia, the Pope said :"Today, in Pakistan, because of a wrong choice, a decisionof hatred, of war, there was an attack in which over 70 people died. This choice cannot stand. It serves nothing. Only the path of peace can build a better world."
Pope Francis then prayed with the crowd for the victims.

2 comments:

TH2 said...

Sorry, I'm confused:

Did not Pope Francis say: "People who judge and criticize others are hypocrites and cowards who are unable to face their own defects".

"Who am I to judge?"... Who am I to condemn?

Barona said...

I was reading the passages on slander, anger etc. by St. Francis de Sales this a.m. The pope's sermon is a nice fit to that