From the "Commies are Evil" file - While we are watching the evil persecution of Christians by Islamofascists, let's not forget the evil persecution of Christians by evil Commmies."

Vietnam sentences Christian bloggers to prison:

The People’s Court in Ho Chi Minh City today passed sentence on three Christian bloggers in a case that has polarized the religious community and drawn international criticism.

Nguyen Van Hai and Marie Ta Phong Tan received sentences of 12 years and 10 years, respectively, with five additional years of house arrest, while Phan Thanh Hai received a four-year sentence and three years of house arrest.

The bloggers were charged with spreading anti-government propaganda under Article 88 of the country’s criminal code. They were founding members of the Free Journalist Club, an organization not recognized as an official body by the government.

State media reports before today’s verdict said Phan Thanh Hai had “pleaded guilty and asked for a lenient sentence,” while the two other defendants “obstinately” denied the charges against them.

The United States embassy in Hanoi was quick to criticize the verdict.

“We are deeply concerned by reports that the Ho Chi Minh City People’s Court convicted and sentenced blogger Dieu Cay [Nguyen Van Hai] to 12 years in prison for peacefully expressing his political views,” the embassy said in a statement today.

“The government’s treatment of Dieu Cay appears to be inconsistent with Vietnam’s obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, as well as the provisions of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights relating to freedom of expression and due process,” the statement added.

It further urged the government to “release Dieu Cay and his fellow bloggers. As President Obama said on World Press Freedom Day, we call upon all governments to take the necessary steps to create societies in which independent journalists can operate freely and without fear.”

Local blogs reported that an estimated 400 security officials blocked access to the court and confiscated cameras and mobile phones from bystanders who attempted to take photos.

Evil Communists being Evil, cont'd.

China cracks down on Catholic Church.

Chinese authorities have closed down the seminaries of the Shanghai diocese, in another apparent retaliatory measure after the newly ordained Bishop Thaddeus Ma Daqin announced his resignation from the government-backed Catholic Patriotic Association.

Shanghai’s Bishop Aloysius Jin Luxian has announced that the two seminaries—a regional and minor seminary—will not open for classes in September as scheduled. The institutions will remain closed “until further notice,” he said. The bishop said that the measure was taken because of “the present situation”—without providing any further explanation.

Bishop Jin is recognized by the government, and the seminaries operate with government approval. However, Chinese authorities were clearly distressed when Bishop Ma, at his July ordination as an auxiliary for the Shanghai diocese, announced his departure from the Patriotic Association. Bishop Ma also conspicuously avoided sharing the Eucharist with a bishop who had been excommunicated after being consecrated without Vatican approval.

Shortly after his episcopal ordination, Bishop Ma was placed under house arrest at the Shanghai seminary, forbidden to wear his episcopal insignia, and prevented from public appearances. Chinese officials are evidently worried that his refusal to cooperate with the Patriotic Association could be contagious.

In a related move, Chinese officials removed Sister Agnes Liu Shujing from her post as superior of the Congregation of Our Lady of the Presentation. She too was accused of failure to cooperate with the Patriotic Association—a group whose existence has been condemned by the Vatican as incompatible with an authentic Catholic understanding of the Church.

Change a couple of votes on the Supreme Court and - hey, presto! - it could be America.

You know, it's always called a "crack-down" when the Pope decides that a Catholic theologian can't claim to be Catholic but this kind of thing is never called a "crack-down."

It's just ignored.

Via Mark Shea, who observes:

Has there ever been a system more relentlessly worthless and evil…

than Communism? Everything it touches, it turns to crap. Everything.

Communists being...

...Communists.

They never change:

Government authorities from a district in the Central Highlands last week compelled ethnic villagers to remove Catholic pictures and items from their chapel and replaced them with images of Ho Chi Minh last weekend.

“After local Catholics finished prayers in the chapel on Sunday morning, local government authorities came and asked them to remove a cross and a Marian picture from the chapel,” a Church source said.

The source added that authorities from Kon Thuc hamlet, led by two security officials from Mang Yang district in Gia Lai province, threatened that if villagers did not remove the items from the chapel, their lay leader “would be put in prison.”

Villagers had to carry the cross, Marian picture, altar and tabernacle to the lay leader’s house, the source said.

Authorities then put two pictures of Ho Chi Minh in the places where the cross and Marian picture were.

On the following day, authorities dismantled the bell of the chapel after local Catholics refused to do it. The bell was also taken to the lay leader’s house.

A lay leader said authorities told parishioners that the building was to be used “for village activities, not for worship.”

Jihad Watch.

Syrian rebels order Christians to leave their areas.

An exodus of Christians is taking place in Western Syria: the Christian population has fled the city of Qusayr, near Homs, following an ultimatum issued by the military chief of the armed opposition, Abdel Salam Harba.

This is what local sources told Vatican news agency Fides, pointing out that since the conflict broke out, only a thousand of the city’s ten thousand faithful, were left and they are now being forced to flee immediately. Some of the city’s mosques have issued the message again, announcing from the minarets: “Christians must leave Qusayr within six days, ending Friday.” The ultimatum therefore expired on 8 June and spread fear among the Christian population which had started to regain hope as a result of the presence of the Jesuit Fr. Paolo Dall’Oglio, who stopped off in Qusayr for a week to “pray and fast in the name of peace, right in the midst of conflict.”

The reasons for this ultimatum remain a mystery. Some say it is necessary in order to protect faithful from further suffering; other sources reveal “a continuity in discrimination and selective repression.” Others still claim that Christians have openly expressed their loyalty to the state and this is why the opposition army is chasing them away. Now Christian families in Qusayr have begun their exodus as displaced persons, towards the surrounding valleys and rural areas. Some have taken refuge in parents’ and friends’ homes in Damascus. Very few families have courageously decided to stay behind in their birth city but who knows what fate will meet. Fides sources have reiterated that groups of Salafi Islamic extremists within the armed opposition consider Christians as “infidels”; they confiscate their belongings, carry out mass executions and are ready to declare a “denominational war”.

Persecution of Christians.

John L. Allen takes on "Five Myths about Anti-Christian Persecution."

Anti-Christian persecution doesn't happen only where Christians are in the minority, it's not always about Islam, it is foreseeable when governments and societies begin ramping up traditional anti-Christian tropes, it stems from non-religious motives, and it is not just a "right-wing" issue.

Thus:

Of the 26 who lost their lives in 2011, only one died in a country where Christians are a minority: Polish Salesian Fr. Marek Rybinski, killed in Tunisia in February. All the rest died in countries where Christians are a majority, including several overwhelmingly Catholic nations such as Colombia, Mexico, Burundi, South Sudan and the Philippines.

Colombia, the sixth-largest Catholic country on the planet, was also the world's most dangerous place to be a Catholic pastoral worker in 2011. Six priests and one layman died, adding to a bloody count of 70 priests, two bishops, eight religious and three seminarians killed in Colombia since 1984.

One of the most harrowing new martyrologies of 2011 came out of Mexico, where 92 percent of the population is Catholic. Mary Elizabeth Macías Castro, a leader in the Scalabrinian Lay Movement and a blogger, was beheaded for exposing the activities of a drug cartel; according to the U.S.-based Committee to Protect Journalists, she was the first journalist in the world killed for use of social media.

Anywhere Christians openly profess their faith, take stands against injustice or put themselves in harm's way on account of the Gospel, they are at risk -- whatever the religious demographics of the place happen to be.

And:

radical Islam is hardly the only source of anti-Christian animus. Christians suffer from a slew of other forces, including:

•Ultra-nationalism (as in Turkey, where extreme nationalists tend to be a greater threat than Islamists)
•Totalitarian states, especially of the Communist variety (China, North Korea)
•Hindu radicalism (Anti-Christian aggression has become routine in some regions of India. This week, Hindu radicals armed with sticks and iron bars attacked 20 Pentecostal Christians in a private home near Bangalore, an assault that left the pastor missing a finger on his left hand. When Christians reported similar assaults two weeks ago, a member of the state's official Commission for Minorities, which is under the control of a nationalist Hindu party, shrugged it off: "If you really knew the teachings of Jesus, Christians should not be complaining," he reportedly said.)
•Buddhist radicalism (as in Sri Lanka, where, contrary to stereotypes of Buddhist tolerance, mobs led by Buddhist monks attacked Christian churches and other targets across the country in 2009)
•Corporate interests (as in Brazil's Amazon region, where Christian activists have been killed for protesting injustices by agri-business conglomerates)
•Organized crime, narco-traffickers, and petty thugs (For instance, the 1993 murder of Mexican Cardinal Juan Jesús Posadas Ocampo, shot 14 times at the Guadalajara airport by gunmen linked to a drug cartel, or the assassination in the same year of Italian Fr. Giuseppe Puglisi, a bitter critic of the Sicilian mafia.)

I am not sure that Allen's definition of "anti-Christian" doesn't suffer from "mission creep" where any act of violence is anti-Christian so long as the victim is in the country on a Christian activity, but the article is worth reading.

The war on Christmas.

Dateline - Lagos, Nigeria:

An explosion ripped through a Catholic church during Christmas Mass near Nigeria's capital Sunday, killing at least 25 people, officials said. A radical Muslim sect waging an increasingly sophisticated sectarian fight claimed the attack and another bombing in the restive city of Jos, as explosions also struck the nation's northeast.

The Christmas Day attacks show the growing national ambition of the sect known as Boko Haram, which is responsible for at least 491 killings this year alone, according to an Associated Press count. The assaults come a year after a series of Christmas Eve bombings in Jos claimed by the militants left at least 32 dead and 74 wounded.

The first explosion on Sunday struck St. Theresa Catholic Church in Madalla, a town in Niger state close to the capital, Abuja, authorities said. Rescue workers recovered at least 25 bodies from the church and officials continued to tally those wounded in various hospitals, said Slaku Luguard, a coordinator with Nigeria's National Emergency Management Agency.

His agency already has acknowledged it didn't have enough ambulances immediately on hand to help the wounded. Luguard also said an angry crowd that gathered at the blast site hampered rescue efforts as they refused to allow workers inside.

"We're trying to calm the situation," Luguard said. "There are some angry people around trying to cause problems."

In Jos, a second explosion struck near a Mountain of Fire and Miracles Church, government spokesman Pam Ayuba said. Ayuba said gunmen later opened fire on police guarding the area, killing one police officer. Two other locally made explosives were found in a nearby building and disarmed, he said.

"The military are here on ground and have taken control over the entire place," Ayuba said.

The city of Jos is located on the dividing line between Nigeria's predominantly Christian south and Muslim north. Thousands have died in communal clashes there over the last decade.

Coptic priest saves Egyptian soldier from Coptic mob...

...the Copts were angered by reason massacres of their fellow Christians.




Footage on the protest:



And the police reaction:



And:

Freedom of conscience - it's not for liberals anymore.

Toleration - the moment between breathing out one orthodoxy and breathing in another.

Mark Shea writes about the directive issued to all military chaplains that they must forthwith marry men to men and women to women as directed by the Revelation of St. Secularism or else:

Leftist Authoritarians Love to Use the Military…

…as a laboratory for social experimentation. Why? Because the military is sworn to obey orders. So while its a dodgy proposition that a leftist authoritarian will get the courts to impose some new experimental regime on free citizens, he can always simply command the military to impose some demented idea on the troops and they *have* to do it cuz it’s orders.

However, even the military has its limits. So the Administration’s most recent attempts to say, “Tolerance is not enough. You. MUST. Approve of gay marriage!” are being met with resistance by the fact that thousands of military chaplains are finding ways to resist the demand that they perform gay “marriage”.

The Godfather Politics provides the source material:

On September 30, 2011, the Pentagon issued a directive to all military chaplains to perform same-sex marriage ceremonies and to make military chapels available for any such private ceremonies.

In response to the Pentagon directive, the Catholic Archdiocese for Military Service issued a statement that no Catholic chaplains serving in the military will perform or participate in any same-sex marriage ceremonies at any military chapels. In conjunction with the Catholic response, members of the Chaplain Alliance for Religious Liberty have issued a statement indicating that they will also not participate in performing same-sex ceremonies.

The Chaplain Alliance for Religious Liberty represents over 2,000 military chaplains. Serving as a military chaplain for 28 years, now retired Col. Ron Crews, executive director of the organization said,

“They made a very strong statement saying that no Catholic chaplains serving in the military will participate in any same-sex ceremonies at any chapels. We appreciate that strong stand. So we just wanted to let the Department of Defense know that it’s not only the Catholic chaplains, but that some 2,000 chaplains who come from evangelical backgrounds are saying our chaplains will not participate in same-sex ceremonies in the military.”

Col. Crews also said that they are petitioning Congress to pass a right of conscience clause to be added to the revised code allowing military chaplains the right of not being forced to conduct or be involved in any activity, such as performing same-sex marriage ceremonies, that goes against their religious beliefs and what they strongly believe the Bible to say about homosexuality.

Religious Persecution - it's not just for Monotheists anymore...

...Buddhists in Myanmar (Burma) persecute Christians.

According to Catholic Culture:

Military forces in Myanmar (Burma) disrupted Mass in Namsan-yang, a village of Kachin State on October 16, shooting at worshippers, beating one, and detaining five for forced labor. After releasing Father Sara Doi Awng, the soldiers burned the parish and a Baptist church.


According to Christian Solidarity Worldwide, the Burmese army has been engaged in a campaign of “rape, forced labor, and killing civilians on a widespread and systematic basis” in Kachin, the nation’s northernmost state. Since 1962, the nation has been ruled by authoritarian military regimes, which expelled missionaries and nationalized Catholic schools and hospitals in the 1960s and abolished constitutional religious freedom protections in the late 1980s. Myanmar has gained a reputation for brutality: in 2005, the United Nation’s International Labor Organization estimated that 800,000 citizens are subjected to forced labor.

According to the US State Department, this atmosphere of repression is particularly unfavorable to non-Buddhists, for “the Ministry of Religious Affairs includes the powerful Department for the Promotion and Propagation of Sasana (Buddhist teaching).” Buddhist prayer and doctrine are part of the curriculum of all state-run elementary schools. The government pressures students to convert to Buddhism and rarely permits non-Buddhists to rise in the civil service. Monitoring church services and controlling the publication of all religious literature, it forbids the translation of the Bible into indigenous languages and at times has censored the Old Testament, citing its violent language. The construction and even the routine maintenance of churches often depend upon the whim of local administrators.

Only 1.2% of Myanmar’s 53.4 million people are Catholic, according to Vatican statistics; in all, 89% are Buddhist, 4% are Christian, and 4% are Muslim.

Clearly, nationalism poisons everything.

Jihad Watch.

Not a Single Christian Church Left in Afghanistan, Says State Department

There is not a single, public Christian church left in Afghanistan, according to the U.S. State Department.


This reflects the state of religious freedom in that country ten years after the United States first invaded it and overthrew its Islamist Taliban regime.

In the intervening decade, U.S. taxpayers have spent $440 billion to support Afghanistan's new government and more than 1,700 U.S. military personnel have died serving in that country.

The last public Christian church in Afghanistan was razed in March 2010, according to the State Department's latest International Religious Freedom Report. The report, which was released last month and covers the period of July 1, 2010 through December 31, 2010, also states that “there were no Christian schools in the country.”

“There is no longer a public Christian church; the courts have not upheld the church's claim to its 99-year lease, and the landowner destroyed the building in March [2010],” reads the State Department report on religious freedom. “[Private] chapels and churches for the international community of various faiths are located on several military bases, PRTs [Provincial Reconstruction Teams], and at the Italian embassy. Some citizens who converted to Christianity as refugees have returned.”

In recent times, freedom of religion has declined in Afghanistan, according to the State Department.

“The government’s level of respect for religious freedom in law and in practice declined during the reporting period, particularly for Christian groups and individuals,” reads the State Department report.

“Negative societal opinions and suspicion of Christian activities led to targeting of Christian groups and individuals, including Muslim converts to Christianity," said the report. "The lack of government responsiveness and protection for these groups and individuals contributed to the deterioration of religious freedom.”

Most Christians in the country refuse to “state their beliefs or gather openly to worship,” said the State Department.

More than 1,700 U.S. military personnel have died serving in the decade-old Afghanistan war, according to CNSNews.com’s database of all U.S. casualties in Afghanistan. A September audit released jointly by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction and the State Department’s Office of Inspector General, found that the U.S. government will spend at least $1.7 billion to support the civilian effort from 2009-2011.

According to that report, the $1.7 billion excludes additional security costs, which the report says the State Department priced at about $491 million.


A March 2011 report by the Congressional Research Service showed that overall the United States has spent more than $440 billion in the Afghanistan war. Christian aid from the international community has also gone to aid the Afghan government.

Please advise those post-modernist critics of Western Religion who think that Monotheism is the worst thing that ever happened...

... polytheists can persecute.

From Catholic Culture:

Religious fundamentalists raised a Hindu flag over the site where a ruined Catholic church is being rebuilt in the troubled Kandhamal district of India’s eastern Orissa state.


On October 6, as Hindus celebrated the festival of Dussehra, which marked the victory of good over evil, about 300 fundamentalists marched to the construction site in the town of Bakingia to hoist their flag. A new Catholic church is being raised after the existing building was destroyed in the anti-Christian riots of August 2008. Earlier, Hindu extremists had threatened the Catholics who were working on the construction project.

Part of the Modernist Agenda to Turn Everyone into Criminals...

...because a population that knows it can be sent to jail at the whim of the State is a compliant population.

Canada cracks down on "illegal cultic activities," i.e., saying Mass.

Paula Celani will be in a Montreal courtroom Nov. 1 fighting a fine for attending an illegal Roman Catholic Mass.


Canadians of all religious faiths – and even those who care only about protecting Charter freedoms – should cross their fingers that she wins.

Celani actually showed up to fight the case this week. Alas, three public sector “witnesses” expected to testify against her were no shows so the matter was delayed until the day after Halloween.

“I’m not sure why I’m the one who has to make the effort to come back when they’re the ones who didn’t show up,” Celani said after Tuesday’s brief hearing before Judge Jean-Pierre Bessette. “It doesn’t make sense, but then nothing about this does. It’s ridiculous.”

Ridiculous doesn’t begin to describe it. Frightening is a much better place to start for the events that began with an entirely uneventful gathering of a Catholic group on October 4, 2009. Celani is the one in court only because her signature was on a $700 rental contract for the use of two rooms in a city-owned complex called La Maison du Brasseur in the borough of Lachine, just west of downtown Montreal.

About 100 people belonging to a lay Catholic association used the rooms to watch some inspirational videos and have a potluck lunch together. Oh, and horror of horrors, they sang songs and held a Mass behind closed doors. Then everyone went home. End of story. Or so it seemed.

Except that seven months later, in April 2010, Celani received a $144 ticket for having allowed the Mass to take place.

By so doing, she had broken a bylaw that prohibits “cultic” activity such as “praying, singing religious songs or conducting religious celebrations.” Under the same regulations, interestingly, renters are allowed to serve liquor provided they have the necessary permits. They are forbidden, however, from using propane tanks to cook inside the building. So, you can get hammered in La Maison du Brasseur. You just can’t blow the place up or mention God.

Perhaps the state needs "time, place and manner" regulations of this kind in order to prevent the anarchy and chaos and public inconvenience of people praying behind closed doors, maybe, but not its likely.  Whatever the justification this seems like a stupid waste of public resources. It is a sad commentary on the state of the modern State that there were, apparently, no sensible person to stop this idiocy.

It reminds us of the immortal truth spoken by the Prophet Gilbert:

"In short, we do not get good laws to restrain bad people. We get good people to restrain bad laws."

G.K. Chesterton, Thoughts around Koepenick (1915).

This is another example of a "chiasmus" offered by Ward Farnsworth in his most engaging "Farnsworth's Classical English Rhetoric."

Via Mark Shea.

Good question, but is it true and ...

...does it suggest something malevolent.

Why is Rome keeping schtum about Pastor Nadarkhani?

The blogger Archbishop Cranmer has done some excellent work drawing attention to the case of Pastor Nadarkhani, who is to be executed in Iran because he refuses to recant his Christian faith. One doesn’t have to be a martyrologist, or even a Christian, to recognise the Pastor’s courage. Three times he has been asked by the Iranian Supreme Court to renounce Christ, and three times, on pain of death, he has refused. Reports today suggest that the Iranian authorities are on the verge of acquitting Nardakhani, but Cranmer says that “the ‘people who know’ are treating these reports with great caution.”


Cranmer also says he has alerted the Foreign office, Lambeth Palace, and the Vatican about Nadarkhani’s situation. William Hague replied within an hour and the Archbishop of Canterbury expressed “deep concern”, but the Vatican has kept schtum. Cranmer is cross, “Iran views Evangelical Protestants as ‘corrupt and deviant’,” he writes. “Does His Holiness agree?”

Steady on. It’s possible, I suppose, that the Holy See is reluctant to intervene for fear of endangering Catholics in Iran. Or perhaps they are working behind the scenes. But I suspect the Vatican’s silence is more to do with bureaucracy and incompetence. Cranmer tends to think the worst of Rome (the clue is in his name). But he is absolutely right to say that the churches really should be united, clear and loud in response to this outrage, and they should speak out now.

Anyone who has read Pope Benedict XVI's writings knows that Cranmer is nuts.  B16 has gone on record repeatedly to denounce the irrationality and oppression of Islamic extremists.  Likewise, it has been no secret that Catholics are the ones who tend to catch it in the necks in most of the Middle East.

On which point, where is the Protestant denunciation of the many, many attacks on Catholics in the Mid-East?  I assume there are some, and I further assume that all Protestants are opposed to such attacks.  Finally, I assume that they have many other worthwhile things that divert their attention such that they don't have to keep repeating things we know they stand for.

Should the Vatican denounce this situation, if it hasn't already? Absolutely. But notice that the White House got around to denouncing it only last night. 

Bureaucracy is undoubtedly the answer here.

Slouching toward the New Kulturkampf - Part II.

The Obama administration is cracking down on Catholic institutions through the bureaucracy:

The simple fact of the matter is that the Obama administration is threatening the religious liberty of even the most faithful of Catholic institutions. These threats come from not only from HHS; they come from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which claims Belmont Abbey College violated federal nondiscrimination laws by refusing insurance coverage for contraception. They come from the National Labor Relations Board, which has claimed jurisdiction over Catholic colleges’ union negotiations. They come through the Education Department, which issued new regulations forcing states to be more proactive in chartering colleges, thereby tying student aid to a potentially political process that threatens overtly religious colleges. And there is increasing state discrimination against religious institutions with regard to same-sex marriage and contraception.


Catholics nationwide need to stand up and demand that the Obama Administration repeal the new health-care regulations that blatantly violate our religious freedom. The bishops have made it simple at their website here.

Slouching toward the new Kulturkampf.

James V. Schall speculates about the future:

Catholics have little legal future in this country except as a narrow, strictly defined sect. Catholic law schools, lawyers, and politicians have proved mostly ineffective or indeed abettors in the process by which “human rights” are used, step by seemingly logical step, to eliminate Catholics from the public order. Much has already occurred. The “Catholics” who are the prime target are those who hold and live the central teachings of reason and faith. Those who do not, matter little.

Addressing a new Health and Human Services mandate concerning availability of abortions, contraceptives, and other such items, the Auxiliary Bishop of Washington, Barry Knestout, wrote:

In implementing the new health care reform law, HHS issued a rule that would require private health care plans nationwide to cover contraception and sterilization as “preventive services” for women. The mandate includes abortifacients, which have the capacity to terminate a pregnancy in early weeks. Never before has the federal government required private health plans to include such coverage.

The District of Columbia Human Rights Commission has interfered in the Catholic University of America’s policy of same-sex dorms for college students. This policy is “sex discrimination,” not permitted in the District. These and other governmental initiatives are only the beginning.

Almost everything is now in place for a full-scale legal persecution of the Church, all concocted under the aegis of government protection of “human rights.” The meaning of “rights” the government itself defines in the name of “freedom” and “equality.” It is noble-sounding, but as Plato said: “Entreaties of sovereigns are mixed with compulsion.” This admonition includes democratic sovereigns.

World News Daily (September 17) reports that PayPal investigates Christian Internet sources said to be involved in “hate language” because of their criticism of certain gay activities. Addressing this issue is not affirmation of a “right to speak,” but a subject of state investigation. Certain central teachings of Christianity will be legally prohibited as threats to “human rights.”

A situation analogous to that in China can be foreseen: an “official” break-away church that follows government decrees and an underground church that still maintains the central truths of reason and faith. One suspects that the degree of hatred for the Church is more widespread and deeper than we like to admit. The situation, however, is not so different from what Scripture would have us expect.

Things change almost too rapidly for us to appreciate their scope. With legalized same-sex “marriages,” as they are equivocally called, in which children are adopted, we will have mandates to educate them in Catholic schools as if no problem exists. The children, legally deprived of a mother or a father, will be presented as from “normal” families. Several writers have suggested that parents teaching children that problems exist with homosexual life or adoption will be investigated for “child abuse.”

The child-abuse cases themselves have shown how to undermine the financial stability of the Church. In addition to properly investigating malefactors, legal procedures have permitted lawyers to make enormous wealth from Church funds. Ironically, since most of these abuses were rooted in homosexuality, not pedophilia, the corporate Church on the one side is required to pay for the abuses and on the other is forbidden to say that anything is wrong with this form of life.

Four Catholic bishops have gone missing in China.

According to the Vatican Insider:

Four pastors from the Chinese province of Guangdong who are in communion with the Holy See disappeared in the past few days. They were taken away by police to prepare for the unlawful ordination of Father Huang Bingzhang as bishop, due to take place on July 14th in Shantou.


Nobody knows where the four pastors are being held. According to local sources of AsiaNews, Monsignor Liang Jiansen of Jiangmen, ordained in March 2011, was sobbing last night as representatives of the government dragged him away. Another source says that Monsignor Liao Hongqing of Meizhou, together with Monsignor Yongda of Zhanjiang were taken away yesterday. Monsignor Joseph Junqi of Guangzhou has been missing for days; his believers are praying "constantly for him and some of his priests, that they remain faithful to the principles of the Church at this critical time".

In addition to those in Guangdong, another four bishops, all in communion with the Pope, should be participating in the ordination of Shantou.

In recent days, cartoons have appeared that depict a young man with a T-shirt with the inscription: "To avoid the excommunications, eliminate illicit ordinations". For some believers this is a sign of pain and anger caused by the illicit ordinations in recent months.

Behind the "evangelization" rhetoric is a project for the control of all episcopal ordinations. The ordination of Shantou is proof of this, where the candidate, Father Huang Bingzhang, was elected at a session controlled and manipulated by the Patriotic Association. In addition, the diocese already has a bishop in the person of Monsignor Zhuang Jianjian, secretly ordained with the approval of the Holy See in 2006.

Persecution of Baptists in History.

This is an encyclopedic compilation of the Protestant persecutors of the Baptists.

Dhimmi Watch.

Christian beheaded by Muslims in northern Iraq.

The decapitated body of a Christian man has been discovered in Kirkuk, northern Iraq, a few days after he was kidnapped.


Ashur Yacob Issa, 29, was abducted late Friday night or early Saturday morning and his mutilated body was discovered Monday morning.

His family had been asked for a ransom but was not able to pay the sum of more than £61,500 (€70,000) the kidnappers demanded.

Speaking to Aid to the Church in Need, the charity for persecuted and other suffering Christians, Archbishop Louis Sako of Kirkuk condemned the killing, and went on to pay tribute to the strength and faith of his community despite the continuing threat of violence.

Archbishop Sako said: “In all these years, I have never heard of a single Christian converting to Islam, despite the many threats.”

Political Correctness and Human Rights.

So, why don't Human Rights concerns matter when the issue is the persecution of Christians by Muslims?

Religious freedom should be at the heart of U.S. diplomacy in the Middle East. Both history and modern scholarship make it clear that highly religious societies cannot attain stable, lasting democracy without religious freedom in full — the set of institutions and habits that guarantee equality under the law for all religious actors and a sustainable balance between religion and state.


This means that achieving the secular benefits of democracy — security, economic opportunity, peace with the neighbors — is highly unlikely without religious freedom. So is the elimination of religious violence and religion-related terrorism.

Of course, religious freedom isn’t a silver bullet. It must be nested in a “bundled commodity” of fundamental freedoms that root democratic governance. Nor is it an absolute right: The very concept of equality for all religious actors entails limits on each.

Which brings us to the president’s speech. As usual, religious freedom made a rhetorical appearance but remained largely irrelevant. For example, Obama demanded for Egyptian Copts “the right to worship,” but not the right to full equality under the law. If democracy is to succeed in the region, minorities must of course be protected from violence and persecution while they worship. But they must also have the right to bring their religious beliefs into the political life of the nation. And Muslim majorities must be able to debate the relationship between Islam and freedom without being subject to imprisonment or death for blasphemy. Nowhere in the broader Middle East does this kind of religious freedom exist. Until it does, U.S. foreign-policy goals are unlikely to be achieved.

The president clearly rejects these and other arguments for a strong U.S. international religious-freedom policy. With over half the administration gone, the U.S. religious-freedom ambassador has just this week taken her position at the State Department, a point not lost on Middle Eastern governments (or, for that matter, U.S. diplomats). An important corrective, however, is on the horizon: Congressman Frank Wolf’s proposed amendments to the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act will, if adopted by Congress, require the State Department to pay greater attention to this vital aspect of American diplomacy.

— Thomas F. Farr is a visiting associate professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and director of the Religious Freedom Project at Georgetown’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs.

The New Discrimination.

England's Catholic Care told that it cannot adhere to its religious convictions in the placement of children for adoption:

After the passage of the Equality Act in the U.K., which prohibited sexual-orientation discrimination in adoption services, Catholic Care sought to retain its policy of placing children with married couples without violating the law. In a series of proceedings, the government’s Charity Commission refused to allow the charity to continue placing children for adoption unless it was willing to place with same-sex couples. The charity appealed to the Charity Tribunal. Just last week, the Charity Tribunal issued its decision.


It denied Catholic Care’s request to continue to provide services in accordance with its religious mission because the tribunal believed the risk of excluding adoptive couples who might not come forward if Catholic Care did not provide adoption services was outweighed by the risk of “reduc[ing] the pool of potential adopters” if it did not place with same-sex couples. The Tribunal also said “the availability of services to same-sex couples from local authorities and/or other adoption agencies” did not justify “the discrimination [Catholic Care] proposed in respect of its own services.” The court concluded that while “religious conviction in the sphere of personal belief is protected in both domestic and European equality law, so that acts of devotion, worship, and prayer (including ceremonies) are exempt from equality obligations” there is an “essential distinction between private acts of worship such as blessings and the provision of a public service such as an adoption agency.”