Gen Z Traded Church For ‘A New Religion,’ Faith Leaders Say thumbnail

Gen Z Traded Church For ‘A New Religion,’ Faith Leaders Say

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By The Daily Caller

  • A recent study found that 48.5% of Gen Z identifies as non-religious, atheist or agnostic, and religious leaders have a lot of thoughts about the reasons behind the decline in faith.
  • Gen Z’s mental health has declined along with their faith, as recent studies found that Gen Z reports the highest level of mental illness and suicidal ideation compared to other generations. 
  • “[I]t’s not that Gen Z isn’t religious, it’s that they picked a new religion,” Joshua Mercer, co-founder of the CatholicVote, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Nearly half of Generation Z does not identify as religious, according to a new study, and religious leaders that spoke to the Daily Caller News Foundation said the trend is not surprising because they have substituted church for “a new religion.”

Data published this week by the Cooperative Election Study found that 48.5% of Gen Z identifies as either agnostic, atheist or nonreligious, a 3% increase from the previous year and another study from last month found that only 31% believe religion is “very important.” While the data did not delve into what has caused the rift between young people and religion, several experts that spoke with the DCNF had similar ideas about what is behind the split.

“[I]t’s not that Gen Z isn’t religious, it’s that they picked a new religion,” Joshua Mercer, co-founder of the CatholicVote, told the DCNF. “They have fervent beliefs and rituals, they have their symbols and sacraments, and they definitely purge their ranks of ‘blasphemers’ or anyone insufficiently dedicated to their faith. Look at how every corporation rushes to embrace the rainbow flag every June and look at how people adorn their social media platforms with symbols to show solidarity with Black Lives Matter, Covid vaccination, Ukraine, or climate change. They are definitely evangelizing, [i]t’s just not Christianity.”

Joseph Backholm, senior fellow for Biblical Worldview and Strategic Engagement at the Family Research Council made similar observations but also pointed out to the DCNF that the withdrawal from the church by younger generations has been happening for a while.

“I think the reality is that those who were identifying as religious were doing so more for cultural reasons than out of theological conviction,” Backholm said. “As the culture becomes more hostile to Christianity, for instance, and it’s not popular, you are seeing people not do so when there is not a social reason because a lot of their identity wasn’t theological in the first place.”

Among older generations, the share who identify as atheist/agnostic/nothing in particular has risen very slightly between 2020 and 2022.

Silent: 0
Boomers: +1
Gen X: +1
Millennials: +1
Gen Z: +3

Overall growth seems to be slowing a bit. Maybe a plateau is happening.

2/6 pic.twitter.com/A4HsObJDxN

— Ryan Burge 📊 (@ryanburge) April 3, 2023

As faith has declined for Gen Z, so has mental health, as recent studies found that Gen Z reports the highest level of mental illness and suicidal ideation compared to other generations. In 2022, a study revealed that 42% of Gen Z reported being diagnosed with a mental illness and 70% said that their mental health has gotten worse since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Joseph Capizzi, executive director at the Institute for Human Ecology, told the DCNF that “loneliness, despair, unhappiness, and declines in worship and belief are connected.”

“This is something people have known for centuries, long before the rise of social science. For instance, Christians have long believed that hope requires more than material progress,” Capizzi said. “Believing in ‘progress’ — which is always ambivalent — cannot be a ground of hope; it will lead to despair. Instead, we must have experiences of great love to give our lives meaning. That can help explain why in an age of unprecedented material affluence we have so much hopelessness.”

Backholm agreed with Capizzi, saying that while mental health is a “complex question” the two things were “absolutely” related. He explained that in recent years the message “follow your heart” has backfired on Gen Z especially because they have “thrown themselves into that effort more zealously than any generation before them.”

“Gen Z has believed that following your heart will make you happy and they are just proving that it does not,” Backholm said.

The solution to the decline, according to Backholm, is to stop trying to “market Jesus” to young people who are actually “craving authenticity” and “purpose.” While Capizzi restated that “belief isn’t going away” but going to a different place and encouraged churches and people of faith to draw Gen Z to faith by giving them the space to encounter the love that they are “seeking.”

“As Pope Francis always reminds us, Christianity is first an encounter with a person, Christ,” Capizzi said. “People have to be drawn to faith by encountering love. Otherwise, our age of despair and loneliness will continue indefinitely.”

AUTHOR

KATE ANDERSON

Contributor.

RELATED ARTICLE: Nearly A Third Of Americans Rank Evangelicals As The Most Unfavorable Religion: POLL

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

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Good Friday and The War for Our Souls

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By Family Research Council

The name of this holiday is always jarring to me.

Good Friday, the day we observe the crucifixion of Jesus, first leaps upon our senses as everything bad. An illegal trial gone wrong; a miscarriage of justice; extreme acts of violence; an innocent man stricken, smitten, and afflicted. Not only that, but there’s also the loss of hope, the triumph and cruelty of the mob, and a people sent into hiding. It’s bad, it’s evil, and it’s everything nefarious rolled into one.

We only know Good Friday as good through the lens of Sunday’s resurrection. That’s why pausing too long on Good Friday is dangerous for our souls. God in his mercy moved the focal point of the fullness of time from Friday to Sunday. If we lag too long on Friday, we miss the movement of resurrection. If it all ends on Friday, our souls are stunted, and Friday is not good. The only hope for our souls lies on Sunday with Friday behind it.

Followers of Jesus remind ourselves of this movement year after year because by it our souls have been saved. And therefore we celebrate Christ’s death — a celebration of mourning that, with resurrection, turns into jubilation. The celebration is continuous because our memories are not. At minimum, we need this yearly reminder of what God has done for us in Christ. We needed it in the years following Jesus’s death, resurrection, and ascension, and we need it in 2023.

Especially in 2023.

There is, of course, nothing new under the sun. Anything novel today has been seen before in one fashion or another. But still, 2023 has its unique challenges for Christians. There is a certain type of war being waged for our souls, and here in America, to say it’s under a microscope would be an understatement. It’s under the floodlights, and it’s by no means subtle.

Back in the 2020 presidential campaign, then-candidate Joe Biden said in his nomination speech at the Democratic National Convention, “This campaign isn’t just about winning votes. It’s about winning the heart, and yes, the soul of America.” Even the Trump campaign picked up on this language, producing a video mocking the rhetoric while asking people to give to their own campaign in order to “save America’s soul.” More recently, President Biden upped the ante on our nation’s soul during his infamous September 2022 speech at Independence Hall in Philadelphia. Backdropped by ominous red lighting, a strangely imposing looking Biden railed:

“I ran for President because I believed we were in a battle for the soul of this nation. I still believe that to be true. I believe the soul is the breath, the life, and the essence of who we are. The soul is what makes us ‘us.’

The soul of America is defined by the sacred proposition that all are created equal in the image of God. That all are entitled to be treated with decency, dignity, and respect. That all deserve justice and a shot at lives of prosperity and consequence. And that democracy — democracy must be defended, for democracy makes all these things possible. Folks, and it’s up to us.”

The president made mention of “soul” eight times in that speech. And he’s continued to use the word gratuitously. In recent days declaring the Transgender Day of Visibility, he proclaimed, “Transgender Americans shape our Nation’s soul.” Make no mistake, while he may have grown up in suburban Pennsylvania, Joe Biden is most definitely a soul man.

Whether or not it’s Biden himself or one of his aides who is behind this overtly theological doctrine of the soul, it’s certainly a teaching at odds with the Bible’s concept of the soul. For Biden, “democracy makes all these things possible.” Contrast that with Paul: “For by him [Christ] all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities — all things were created through him and for him” (Colossians 1:16, ESV).

For Biden, transgender Americans shape our nation’s soul. The Bible’s view of shaping comes from a radically different frame: “For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers” (Romans 8:29, ESV).

We who follow Christ in America must live in Biden’s world, but we must not live as students of his doctrine. We live as expatriates, as citizens of a kingdom that is far away, but that is also already present but not yet fully realized.

On Good Friday, Jesus was crowned by his captors with a garland of thorns. But what was meant as mockery served as a coronation. King Jesus ascended not a throne there in Jerusalem, but a cross. Jesus’s substitutionary death for his people revealed that the battle for souls was far more than a battle for what makes us “us.” As the late John R.W. Stott, in his classic work “The Cross of Christ” observed, “What God in Christ has done through the cross is to rescue us, disclose himself and overcome evil.”

The good news of Good Friday is that this battle — this war — is ultimately one-sided. Victory for souls is won on the cross of Christ and only on the cross of Christ. And we as combatants in this battle must be captured by the cross to have any hope of Sunday’s resurrection. The alternative leaves us stranded on Friday, and that’s anything but good.

AUTHOR

Jared Bridges

Jared Bridges is editor-in-chief of The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2023 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

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Biden’s Coup in Israel

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By Jihad Watch

The puppet masters and puppet regime defeat democracy.

In the early days of March, a small crowd of leftists gathered outside the U.S. consulate in Tel Aviv holding up signs reading, “Biden help!” and “Biden, Blinken, Our democracy is sinking”.

A speaker at the rally appealed to Biden to “save us from ourselves”.

The consulate rally was held under the banner of “Defend Israeli Democracy” which had organized international protests against democratic judicial reform that would have restored checks and balances. International rallies, including one in Berlin which featured women dressed as the ‘handmaids’ from the TV show and signs accusing Israel of “fascism” and being an “apartheid state”, were not speaking to Israelis, but to the international anti-Israel Left.

Clips from the Tel Aviv rally were remixed by another of the interchangeable anti-democracy groups, Yalla Tikva, urging Biden to save Israeli democracy. The operation was as slick with professional videography, editing and branding as it lacked a clear transparent structure.

Protests like these were not so much appealing to Biden as coordinating with the administration.

The anti-democracy rallies by organizations claiming to be fighting for democracy paralleled an unprecedented degree of interference from the Biden administration.

“We don’t want to interfere,” Biden told reporters after Israel had surrendered on reforming the judiciary. “Anyway, we’re not interfering.”

“They cannot continue down this road,” he warned.

On Monday morning, Biden’s ambassador delivered an ultimatum to Netanyahu ordering him to stop the reforms. Later that day, Netanyahu officially announced a pause on judicial reform.

This followed public statements from every Biden administration official, including Secretary of Defense Austin, warning Israel not to proceed and urging the democratically elected government to turn over the process to its political opponent: leftist figurehead Herzog who had served as Marc Rich’s lawyer when negotiating a pardon with the Clinton administration.

Why was the Biden administration so obsessed with internal questions such as who picked Israeli Supreme Court justices and whether they could ever be overruled by the legislature?

While the leftist rioters in the streets clamored that they were fighting for democracy, the Supreme Court is the least democratic institution and the mobs were demanding that it stay that way. None of the American media outlets or politicians accusing the Israeli government of threatening democracy ever got around to explaining why elected officials selecting justices is a good thing in America and a bad thing in Israel. As Ruth Wisse, the greatest living Jewish academic, pointed out in the Wall Street Journal, some of the same advocates of weakening the United States Supreme Court violently denounced efforts to check the power of Israel’s court.

The Israeli Supreme Court is mostly immune to democratic influences like elections, and is not governed by a constitution, but derives its power from claiming unlimited standing to take on any cases it likes. But to trigger this superpower, it needs nonprofit groups to bring cases to it. These nonprofits are primarily funded by foreign interests from George Soros, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund  and the Tides Center to foreign governments in the European Union and America.

How it works is simple enough. A leftist nonprofit funded by a foreign government sets out to stop a policy by a democratically elected government. Even though it is in no way affected by a policy, such as building homes in Judea or cracking down on terrorism, it sues anyway. And even though it lacks any standing, the Supreme Court takes the case anyway and rules for it.

The actual case however was really brought by Soros or the EU or D.C. The Israeli Supreme Court acts as a rubber stamp for rule by foreign governments through leftist groups.

While a lot of the online protest groups conducting anti-democracy rallies were unknown, the larger Israeli rallies were led by the Movement for Quality Government. MQG is a serial plaintiff which repeatedly brings cases to the Supreme Court. In 2020, MQG hired a D.C. law firm to investigate Netanyahu. That same year, MQG began getting money from the State Department.

State Department deputy spokesman Vedant Patel claimed that this was false because MQG “received a modest grant from the State Department that was initiated during the previous administration” meant to promote civics in schools.

“Any notion that we are propping up or supporting these protests or the initiators of them is completely and demonstrably false,” Patel fumed.

But money is fungible and the State Department was well aware that MQG’s primary field of activity was lawfare. The plague of leftist nonprofits funded by foreign governments is an old problem that predates this administration. And touching it is the real red line.

In 2016, there was outrage when the Israeli legislature passed a law requiring nonprofits to disclose foreign funding. Even though the government bureaucracy refused to enforce the law, it nonetheless resulted in MGQ disclosing its funding from the State Department.

The State Department had claimed then that asking nonprofits to reveal foreign funding would “have a chilling effect on the activities that these worthwhile organizations are trying to do”.

Examples of such worthwhile activities had included the State Department funding a previous protest campaign against Netanyahu in 2015 using a “peacebuilding” nonprofit named One Voice.

In 2021, Israel cracked down on six nonprofits tied to terrorist organizations. The State Department warned, “we will be engaging our Israeli partners for more information regarding the basis for the designation. We believe respect for human rights, fundamental freedoms and a strong civil society are critically important to responsible and responsive governance.”

The pattern is not difficult to spot.

The Biden administration, the EU and other leftist foreign governments use nonprofits and the legal system to control Israeli policy. When those tools of control are threatened, they step in.

The Obama and Biden administrations had fumed when Israel began forcing nonprofits to follow the law, but judicial reform was a line in the sand. Had judicial reform passed, democracy would have come to Israel. And a bunch of leftist governments couldn’t have used their puppets to overrule the will of the people. That was why they did everything they could to stop it.

What the media portrayed as organic protests were nothing of the kind. They were often backed and organized by tech companies. Some of those same companies, to protest judicial reform, announced that they were pulling their money out of Israel and sending them to SVB. The collapse of the bank, closely associated with leftist interests in the United States, was only a brief inconvenience since the Biden administration rushed to bail out its depositors.

Israeli startups draw on investments from American companies and investors: many of them close to the Biden administration. The SVB connection, a clearinghouse for woke capital, just spelled out the obvious. The coup against democracy was backed by foreign interests and implemented by the billionaires, who control much of the Israeli media, and leftist activists who are employed by nonprofits funded by foreign governments and foundations.

Political consultants rushed to brand the coup as a “democracy” movement even though there’s nothing less democratic than protecting an undemocratic institution from democratic change.

The Biden administration, which had been in on it all along, pushed for a “compromise” from Marc Rich’s former lawyer that would have kept the Left in power even while denying what it was doing, or that judicial reform was shut down after a Biden ultimatum.

Prime Minister Netanyahu backed down, as he often has, but the confrontation was revealing because the puppet masters were forced to show their hand. American Jews were largely fooled by the media’s propaganda campaign, but Israelis saw all too clearly who the activists and, more importantly, the Supreme Court really works for and whose power it serves.

The Israeli Left has consistently lost elections while clinging to power through undemocratic institutions like the Supreme Court and fake third parties. It’s fighting a war on democracy that it’s bound to lose. The ‘handmaids’ marching in Berlin and the radicals holding up posters accusing Israel of fascism in Hitler’s city have shown Israelis what they really are.

The greatest threat to democracy in Israel has always come from the Left. What was once a domestic oligarchy has evolved into a puppet regime. And the Israeli Zionists have learned that they can expose the puppet masters by pulling on the puppets and seeing who comes for them.

“Biden help!”, “Biden, Blinken, Our democracy is sinking”, “save us from ourselves”.

AUTHOR

DANIEL GREENFIELD

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RELATED VIDEO: This Week In Jihad with David Wood and Robert Spencer

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

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Not Just Nashville: Attacks Against Churches Nearly Tripled in 2023, Report Finds

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By Family Research Council

Last week’s mass murder of six people at a church-run Christian school constitutes 2023’s deadliest act of violence against churches, which have increased nearly three times this year compared to last year, a new report from Family Research Council finds. The number of anti-church attacks in 2022 had already tripled over four years, a previous report found.

In all, assailants attacked churches 69 times in the first three months of 2023, compared with 24 such acts during the same period last year, a 288% increase. The rising tempo of anti-Christian assaults — which includes arsons, bomb threats, vandalism, and sacrilege — has affected places of worship in 29 states. The motives behind such desecration run the gamut from pro-abortion activism or controversies over transgender ideology to apparently senseless acts of destruction.

“American churches are increasingly bearing the brunt of anger and aggression, whether that’s from political or other motivations,” the report’s author — Arielle Del Turco, assistant director of the Center for Religious Liberty at Family Research Council — told The Washington Stand. “This contributes to an environment of hostility toward Christianity.”

The acts of anti-church aggression documented between January and March of this year includes:

  • 53 incidents of vandalism;
  • 10 suspicious fires;
  • Three gun-related incidents; and
  • Three bomb threats — including a pipe bomb recovered outside Philadelphia’s 127-year-old St. Dominic Catholic Church.

“If this rate continues, 2023 will have the highest number of incidents of the six years FRC has tracked,” the report notes. The number of church attacks in 2023 already exceeds “the entirety of 2018, in which we identified only 50 incidents, or 2020, in which we identified 54.”

The month of January 2023 had more church attacks than any single month in the five years FRC has kept records, with 43 such events, according to data furnished to TWS. “This steep increase is a cause for concern,” says the update.

Hostility toward Christian views of hot-button political issues have exploded into violence and vandalism numerous times this year. In January, abortion activists spray painted the words “Women’s Body, Women’s Choice” over a pro-life banner hanging outside St. Stephen Catholic Church in Riverview, Florida.

Last month, transgender activists lashed out at Kentucky legislators who voted against their agenda by defacing an historic church. Vandals spray painted the words “TRANS PWR” on St. Joseph Catholic Church in Louisville, Kentucky, on March 3 — “the day after the Kentucky House of Representatives passed a bill that would protect children from harmful gender-transition procedures,” the report states. Undeterred state legislators enacted the child safety protections over Democratic Governor Andy Beshear’s veto later that month.

Individuals who identify as transgender have focused their rage on Christian facilities as well. In addition to 28-year-old Audrey Hale’s attack on The Covenant School in Nashville, a 27-year-old man who identifies as a woman set the 117-year-old Portland Korean Church building ablaze on January 3. The suspect, whose legal name is Cameron Storer, claimed to hear voices that “threatened to ‘mutilate’ Storer if Storer refused to burn the church down,” the new FRC report states.

Nashville police have yet to release Hale’s “manifesto,” purportedly due to an “ongoing investigation,” but officers have said Hale’s views of the transgender issue may have touched off her violent rampage. Storer apparently suffers from mental illness, which afflicts those who identify as LGBTQ at far higher rates than average, according to the Biden administration.

Sometimes, the same perpetrator strikes multiple times. Police say 40-year-old Peter Sirolli vandalized three Roman Catholic churches in New Jersey on the same morning, including burning a 10-foot-tall cross on the lawn of St. Patrick’s Catholic Church in Woodbury on January 13.

The new FRC update builds on an 84-page report released last December. In the original study, FRC verified 420 acts of hostility against houses of worship between January 2018 and September 2022. The new addition brings the full number of anti-Christian incidents in 2022 up to date. In the original report, FRC calculated 137 intentionally damaging incidents against churches had taken place through last September. The last three months of 2022 brought an additional 54 such acts, bringing the total number of assaults against churches to 191 in 2022.

In all, researchers documented a total of 543 attacks on 517 separate churches between January 2018 and March 2023. Of the 517 separate churches attacked, 26 of the churches were victimized more than once, with three being targeted three times each, according to data furnished to The Washington Stand.

Between 2018 and 2023, American churches have suffered:

  • 442 acts of vandalism;
  • 71 cases of arson;
  • 15 gun-related incidents;
  • 14 bomb threats; and
  • 25 miscellaneous acts of aggression against church facilities

A total of 25 incidents fell into multiple categories, according to FRC researchers.

The worst period of sustained assaults during those 39 months broke out last summer over the unprecedented, and heretofore unsolved, leak of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs ruling last May. After the media reported the Supreme Court would overturn Roe v. Wade and return the issue of abortion to democratic control, pro-abortion activists committed 86 attacks against Christian churches last May (24), June (28), and July (34).

Churches also sustained damage from the “Black Lives Matter” riots, which broke out in the summer of 2020 over the killing of George Floyd. BLM rioters committed 11 acts of church desecration, researchers told TWS.

Despite the quickening pulse of anti-Christian crimes, some of which have been investigated as “hate crimes,” conservatives say the Biden administration has been too lax in its response. In January, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives passed H. Con. Res. 3, which noted that abortion extremists such as Jane’s Revenge had “defaced, vandalized, and caused destruction to over 100 pro-life facilities, groups, and churches” in 2022, yet “the Biden Administration has failed to take action to respond to the radical attacks on pro-life facilities, groups, and churches, or to protect the rights of these organizations.”

The Democrat-controlled Senate has taken no action on the bill.

“American leaders and citizens alike should condemn acts of hostility against churches and affirm the right for all people to attend their houses of worship without feeling targeted or threatened,” Del Turco told TWS.

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE: Loudoun County Bans Teacher from Adding Bible Verse in Email Signature

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2023 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

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The Morning that Changed the World

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By Dr. Rich Swier

Death and mayhem and bad news are nearly all we hear these days, or so it seems. It’s easy to lose hope.

An acquaintance emailed me recently: “I am completely broken by witnessing my beloved America commit suicide right before my eyes; it is painful to watch, as an old man who remembers her when she was still morally sane.”

Is there any good news anywhere? Yes. It is not new news, but it’s a message that can never be proclaimed too often. My acquaintance added: “If I didn’t have an eternal hope that this is not how it ends, I would be in complete despair.”

An “eternal hope”? How can we have such a thing in this world? The answer is “because Jesus walked out of His own tomb 2000 years ago.”

The original Easter morning changed the world. Your birth year is in direct reference to the birth year of Jesus Christ. But we wouldn’t know anything about the itinerant rabbi, Jesus of Nazareth, had He not walked out of His own tomb. He would be a footnote to history.

Meanwhile, the Western world has experienced a crisis of faith for more than a century now. For example, in 1841, an anti-Christian philosopher in Germany, Ludwig Feuerbach, wrote a skeptical book entitled, The Essence of Christianity, in which he said, “Religion is the dream of the human mind.” Amazingly, he argued that the Christian faith was essentially a “false divine mandate for their personal advancement.” (The exact wording here comes from Christian apologist Alister McGrath of Oxford in a paraphrase summarizing Fauerbach.)

Anybody who knows anything about the birth of the Christian faith knows how insane that assertion is.

“Personal advancement”? Tell that to the early Christians, who experienced unparalleled persecution for their beliefs. Nero had many Christians covered over in tar and pitch and hoisted up by ropes and burned alive—to light his garden parties.

“Personal advancement”? Early Christians were fed to the lions to the amusement of the crowds.

We see beautiful statues in churches around the world dedicated to the twelve apostles. Some people would have us think that the apostles concocted some conspiracy to sell to the world that Jesus is Lord for the sake of their own glory and power.

But the reality is, these men, salt of the earth types, were the first skeptics of Christ’s resurrection. They had to be convinced by His re-appearing to them risen from the dead. Once they were convinced, nothing could stop them from proclaiming Christ crucified and risen from dead, through Whom comes the forgiveness of sins for those who believe.

However, what if they just made up the part about Him rising from the dead? By proclaiming Christ’s resurrection, these disciples faced scourging, torture, and in some cases, crucifixion—the most horrible form of death imaginable.

In the 19th century, when dealing with skeptics of his own age, Scottish theologian Dr. Principal Hill said that if you believe the testimony of the Apostles that Christ rose from the dead, then you can give the most natural account of every part of their conduct, of their conversion, of their steadfastness, of their heroism.

Noted Hill: “But if…you suppose their testimony to be false, inexplicable circumstances of glaring absurdity crowd upon you. You must suppose that twelve men of mean [i.e., average] birth, of no education, living in that humble station which placed ambitious views out of their reach, and far from their thoughts, without any aid from the state, formed the noblest scheme which ever entered into the mind of man, adopted the most daring means of executing that scheme, conducted it with such address as to conceal the imposture under the semblance of simplicity and virtue.”

Hill continues, “You must suppose that men guilty of blasphemy and falsehood, united in an attempt the best contrived, and which has in fact proved the most successful, for making the world virtuous; that they formed this singular enterprise without seeking any advantage to themselves, with an avowed contempt of loss and profit, and with the certain expectation of scorn and persecution; that although conscious of one another’s villainy, none of them ever thought of providing for his own security by disclosing the fraud, but that amidst sufferings the most grievous to flesh and blood they persevered in their conspiracy to cheat the world into piety, honesty, and benevolence.”

Hill concludes, “Truly they who can swallow such suppositions have no title to object to miracles.”

One man and his wife have a reminder at their grave about their hope in Jesus. Chiseled in stone behind the sarcophagi of George and Martha Washington at Mt. Vernon are words based on Jesus’s quote from John 11: “I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.”

We can have hope because Christ is risen indeed.

©2023 Dr. Jerry Newcombe, D.Min. All rights reserved.

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China Installs Stooge Bishop in Snub to Vatican Deal

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By Church Militant

Pro-Commie prelate promises to promote sinicization of Catholicism.

SHANGHAI (ChurchMilitant.com) — The Chinese Communist Party has unilaterally appointed a bishop from its own ranks to the See of Shanghai in violation of its secret concordat with the Vatican.

In his installation ceremony on Tuesday, Bp. Joseph Shen Bin did not mention Pope Francis. Instead, he promised to press ahead with the sinicization of Catholicism and continue the tradition of “patriotism and love” for the Church in Shanghai.

The sudden move to unilaterally install Shen Bin, who is currently bishop of Haimen, has shocked the Vatican, which admitted on its official news website that it had learned of the appointment from media reports.

“The Holy See had been informed a few days ago of the decision of the Chinese authorities” to transfer the bishop from the diocese of Haimen, but it only “learned from the media of the installation this morning,” said Matteo Bruni, director of the Holy See Press Office.

“For the moment, I have nothing to say about the Holy See’s assessment of the matter,” Bruni added.

Asia News reported that Shen Bin was appointed to lead the diocese of Shanghai by the Council of Chinese Bishops, the CCP-sanctioned bishops’ conference, which he himself heads.

In 2017, Shen Bin was elected vice president of the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association. According to Andrew Tsien, former bishop of Hualien, Taiwan, the objectives of the CCPA are “to substitute it for the true Roman Catholic church” and “to eliminate religion in order to achieve a pure materialistic and autocratic society.”

In his 2007 letter to Catholics in China, Pope Benedict XVI declared that the association was “incompatible” with Catholic doctrine.

The bishopric of Shanghai had been vacant for 10 years since the death of Jesuit bishop Aloysius Jin Luxian in April 2013.

The Holy See had asked for Shanghai’s auxiliary bishop, Thaddeus Ma Daqin, to administer the diocese, but Ma Daquin has been under house arrest since 2012 for daring to resign from the CCPA immediately after his episcopal ordination.

On July 7, 2012, Ma Daqin was ordained with the approval of Pope Benedict XVI and the People’s Republic of China. At his episcopal ordination, he announced, “It is inconvenient for me to serve the CCPA post from now on.”

Closed-mindedness is never the way.GabTweet

In Nov. 2022, the Vatican protested the CCP’s appointment of Bp. John Peng Weizhao as auxiliary bishop of Jiangxi — a diocese created by the CCP without Vatican approval, Church Militant reported.

The Holy See Press Office noted the Vatican’s “surprise and regret” at the “installation ceremony” and explained that this event “has not taken place in conformity with the spirit of dialogue that exists between the Vatican parties and the Chinese parties” agreed “in the Provisional Agreement on the Appointment of Bishops of 22 September 2018.

“The Holy See hopes that similar episodes will not be repeated,” the statement added, and it “is awaiting the appropriate communication about the matter from the authorities” and reaffirming “its complete willingness to continue the respectful dialogue concerning all of the matters of common interest.”

Born in 1970 into a Catholic family, Shen Bin studied at the National Seminary in Beijing and was ordained a priest in 1996. With a pontifical mandate and recognition of the political authorities, his episcopal ordination took place in the cathedral of Nantong on April 21, 2010.

In a 2017 interview, Shen Bin insisted that Chinese Catholics had full freedom to “publicly pray for the pope” and “even sing hymns for the pope, which were not in use in China for a long time.”

“We follow his magisterium. In WeChat groups, we publish and share the homilies from Santa Marta every day, the Wednesday’s general papal Audiences (Papal Catechesis), and we report the pope’s words in our own homilies,” Shen Bin said.

The bishop, however, admitted that “it is convenient not to oppose the government, and sometimes we have to (it is convenient to) distinguish between ecclesial matters, matters of faith on one side, and economic and administrative issues, which in itself do not affect the deposition of faith, on another side.”

“The gospel does not ask us to assume the role of antagonists of the constituted authorities. And Jesus says we must be smart as snakes and simple as doves. I believe that now, in China, dialogue and reconciliation are the most important things. Also with the government,” Shen Bin said.

Until recently, Pope Francis repeatedly affirmed that the Vatican–China deal “is good” and fruitful. He added that renewing it twice in 2020 and 2022 was the right thing to do.

In September, Francis defended the secret deal, saying an uneasy dialogue is better than no dialogue at all.

“You can be deceived in dialogue; you can make mistakes, all that, but it is the way. Closed-mindedness is never the way,” the pope told Spanish radio network COPE.

Since the 2018 deal was struck between the Vatican and China, only six new bishops have been appointed.

In July 2021, the Vatican’s secretary of state, Cdl. Pietro Parolin, refused to confirm or deny reports that the gay cruising app Grindr may have been used to blackmail the Holy See into its secret deal with China.

AUTHOR

Jules Gomes

Dr. Jules Gomes, B.A., B.D., M.Th., Ph.D. (Cantab) is Rome Correspondent for Church Militant. He is a journalist, academic and editor of Rebel Priest.

EDITORS NOTE: This Church Militant column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

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Vatican Repudiates Papal Bulls Calling for Resistance to Jihad Violence

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By Jihad Watch

by Jules Gomes, ChurchMilitant.com, April 4, 2023:

VATICAN CITY (ChurchMilitant.com) – The Vatican has abrogated three papal bulls claiming that the documents are offensive to indigenous peoples and “have never been considered expressions of the Catholic faith.”

The bulls Dum Diversas (1452), Romanus Pontifex (1455) and Inter Caetera (1493) contain the basis for the “doctrine of discovery,” which “is not part of the teaching of the Catholic Church,” the Vatican has announced.

Cultural Imperialism

“The Church acknowledges that these papal bulls did not adequately reflect the equal dignity and rights of indigenous peoples,” the dicasteries for Culture and Education and for Promoting Integral Human Development said in a joint statement published Thursday.

The Vatican dicasteries quoted Pope Francis’ words endorsing the repeal of the bulls: “Never again can the Christian community allow itself to be infected by the idea that one culture is superior to others, or that it is legitimate to employ ways of coercing others.”

Since the Magisterium “upholds the respect due to every human being,” the “Catholic Church therefore repudiates those concepts that fail to recognize the inherent human rights of indigenous peoples, including what has become known as the legal and political ‘doctrine of discovery,’” the Vatican statement categorically declared.

The bulls’ contents “were manipulated for political purposes by competing colonial powers in order to justify immoral acts against indigenous peoples that were carried out, at times, without opposition from ecclesiastical authorities,” the statement added.

Modern-day Islamophiles have sought to present these as wars of conquest and colonization.

But top Islamic scholars told Church Militant that the Vatican had annulled the bulls not so much because of their purported relationship to colonialism and slavery but because the documents were offensive to Islam and an obstacle to ongoing dialogue.

Appeasing Islam

“The revocation of these bulls is likely the result of Francis’ ongoing ‘dialogue’ with the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, Ahmed al-Tayeb,” Robert Spencer, Islamic scholar and author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (And the Crusades), told Church Militant.

“That ‘dialogue’ only resumed, after al-Tayeb broke it off during the papacy of Pope Benedict XVI, when Francis agreed not to criticize Islam or speak out against Muslim persecution of Christians. Al-Tayeb, meanwhile, made no similar concessions. The ‘dialogue’ is entirely one-sided,” Spencer noted.

“The public repudiation of these long-forgotten documents is intended to buttress the pope’s efforts to engage Islamic groups in this dialogue, which results only in the issuance of soothing falsehoods and will not prevent a single Christian from Muslim persecution,” Spencer added….

In fact, all three bulls are mentioned together in volume seven of the scholarly series Christian–Muslim Relations: A Bibliographical History — Central and Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa and South America (1500-1600), published in 2015 by the academic publisher Brill.

Enemies of the Cross

“The Dum Diversas of 1452 authorized the king of Portugal to attack, conquer and subdue not only Muslims but also pagans and other unbelievers and to seize their goods and territories, transferring them to his own possession,” the book notes.

In its Latin text, Romanus Pontifex encourages “Catholic kings and princes” to “not only repress the ferocity of the Saracens [Muslims] and the other infidel enemies of the Christians but also conquer their kingdoms and places, even if they exist in very distant and unknown parts from us, for the defense and increase of the Faith.”

The bull Inter Caetera is a historic remnant with no juridical, moral or doctrinal value.

The bull condemns “the perfidious enemies of the Cross, especially the Saracens and all the other infidels” and orders the excommunication of those who send the Muslims “weapons and other things prohibited by the law.”

It authorized King Alfonso of Portugal to “invade, conquer, defeat and subjugate all Saracens and pagans and other enemies of Christ” and to “enslave their persons perpetually” and seize their possessions for profit.

Pope Nicholas V ends the bull with a warning that no one may “infringe or rashly contradict his decree. … But if anyone does attempt this, let him know that he will incur the indignation of almighty God and His blessed Apostles Peter and Paul.”

In Dum Diversas, Nicholas V commends Alfonso for intending “to subjugate the enemies of Christ, i.e. the Saracens, and bring them back to the faith of Christ with a mighty hand,” noting that “the authority of the Apostolic See supports you in this.”

Dum Diversas ends with a similar proscription:

It is therefore permissible for no man to diminish this page of our concession, reparation, will, indult and decree, or oppose it with rash initiative. If anyone dares to attack her, let him know that he is about to incur the wrath of Almighty God and the blessed Apostles Peter and Paul.

Inter Caetera both “confirmed the terms” of Romanus Pontifex and “specified that the spiritual jurisdiction of the regions conquered was to lie with the Order of Christ, the successors to the Knights Templar in Portugal,” the Brill book explains.

The Holy See confirms that Inter Caetera has already been abrogated.

“These bulls, with their statements about how important it is to resist the efforts of Islam to conquer and subjugate Christians, embarrass Pope Francis and today’s Vatican,” Spencer said, lamenting how the pope “is wholeheartedly committed to the fond and false notion that ‘dialogue’ with Islam will blunt, and possibly even extinguish, the jihad imperative.”

“The recent histories of Nigeria, Iraq and elsewhere show how false and damaging that idea really is,” Spencer warned.

In July 2022, two protestors with a large banner confronted the pontiff during Mass at the Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré Basilica outside Quebec City and asked him to rescind the “doctrine of discovery.”

However, in a statement to the United Nations Ninth Session of the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues in April 2010, the Vatican argued it had abrogated the doctrine as early as 1494.

“The bull Inter Caetera is a historic remnant with no juridical, moral or doctrinal value,” the statement said. “The Holy See confirms that Inter Caetera has already been abrogated and considers it without any legal or doctrinal value.”

EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

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America Had Its ‘First Brush’ with Islam 237 Years Ago

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By Dr. Rich Swier

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” — George Santayana, Spanish philosopher.

A reader sent us a link to the following column by Raymond Ibraham published on March 28, 2023. We republish it for those who have never learned or forgotten history.

Exactly 237 years ago today, on March 28, 1786, two of America’s founding fathers documented the United States’ first exposure to Islamic jihad in a fascinating letter to Congress.

A Diplomatic Exchange in Response to Inexplicable Animosity

One year earlier, in 1785, Muslim pirates from North Africa, or “Barbary,” had captured two American ships, the Maria and Dauphin, and enslaved their crews. In an effort to ransom its enslaved crew and establish peaceful relations, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams — then ambassadors to France and England respectively — met with Tripoli’s ambassador to Britain, Abdul Rahman Adja. Following this diplomatic exchange, the Americans laid out the source of Barbary’s hitherto inexplicable animosity in a letter to Congress:

We took the liberty to make some inquiries concerning the grounds of their [Barbary’s] pretentions to make war upon nations who had done them no injury, and observed that we considered all mankind as our friends who had done us no wrong, nor had given us any provocation.

The ambassador answered us that it was founded on the laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as prisoners, and that every Musselman who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise [dated March 28, 1786].

Abdul had continued by smugly noting that Islam’s “law” offers “as an incentive” more slaves to those who are first to board infidel vessels, and that the power and appearance of the seaborne jihadis — who reportedly always carried three knives, one in each hand and another in their mouths — “so terrified their enemies that very few ever stood against them.”

One can only imagine what the American ambassadors — who years earlier had asserted that all men were “endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights” — thought of their Muslim counterpart’s answer. Suffice to say, because the ransom demanded was over 15 times greater than what Congress had approved, little came of the meeting.

Christian “Infidels” Suffered Beyond Expression

Centuries before preying on the newborn American nation’s vessels, the Barbary States of Muslim North Africa — specifically Tripoli, Algiers, Tunis — had been thriving on the slave trade of Christians abducted from virtually every corner of coastal Europe — going as far as Britain, Ireland, Denmark, and Iceland. These raids were so successful that, “between 1530 and 1780 there were almost certainly a million and quite possibly as many as a million and a quarter white, European Christians enslaved by the Muslims of the Barbary Coast,” to quote historian Robert Davis.

The treatment of these European slaves was exacerbated by the fact that they were Christian “infidels.” As Robert Playfair (b.1828), who served for years as a consul in Barbary, explained, “In almost every case they [European slaves] were hated on account of their religion.” Three centuries earlier, John Foxe (b.1516) had written in his Book of Martyrs that, “In no part of the globe are Christians so hated, or treated with such severity, as at Algiers.”

The punishments these European slaves received for real or imagined offenses beggared description: “If they speak against Mahomet [blasphemy], they must become Mahometans, or be impaled alive,” continued Foxe. “If they profess Christianity again, after having changed to the Mahometan persuasion, they are roasted alive [as apostates], or thrown from the city walls, and caught upon large sharp hooks, on which they hang till they expire.”

As such, when Captain O’Brien of the Dauphin wrote to Jefferson saying that “our sufferings are beyond our expression or your conception,” he was clearly not exaggerating.

The Perpetual, Existential Nature of Islamic Hostility

Back in Congress, some agreed with Jefferson that “it will be more easy to raise ships and men to fight these pirates into reason, than money to bribe them.” General George Washington asked: “In such an enlightened, in such a liberal age, how is it possible that the great maritime powers of Europe should submit to pay an annual tribute to the little piratical States of Barbary? … Would to Heaven we had a navy able to reform those enemies to mankind, or crush them into nonexistence.”

But the majority of Congress agreed with John Adams: “We ought not to fight them at all unless we determine to fight them forever.”

Considering the perpetual, existential nature of Islamic hostility, Adams may have been more right than he knew.

Congress initially decided to emulate the Europeans by placating and paying off the terrorists, though it would take years to raise the demanded ransom. Inevitably, however, hostilities again broke out, leading to the Barbary Wars (1801 to 1805; again in 1815). But by now, the U.S. had built six war vessels.

‘Why Do They Hate Us?’

Thus the United States’ first war — which erupted before it could even elect its first president and intermittently lasted some 30 years — was against Islam; and the latter had initiated hostilities on the same rationale that had been used to initiate hostilities for the preceding 1,200 years.

Though most Americans are now unaware of their nation’s first military conflict, references to it are common. The oldest paean of the U.S. armed forces, “The Marines’ Hymn,” boasts of fighting everywhere for “right and freedom” — including as far as “to the shores of Tripoli.” And the oldest U.S. military monument was made to honor those Americans who fought and died in the Barbary Wars. According to its plaque, “‘Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute’ became the rallying cry for this war.”

The turbaned heads of the vanquished enemy appear at the foot of the eagle-topped column. Needless to say, although the United States’ oldest monument was for decades located inside the Capitol Building, it now rests in the much less conspicuous faculty club of the Naval Academy in Annapolis.

In short, although the question “Why do they hate us?” became immensely popular after 9/11, it was amply answered during America’s founding, including through a little remembered letter written to Congress 237 years ago today.

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Proofs for the Existence of God

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By The Catholic Thing

Randall Smith: It is easy enough to believe in a “god” – a god of power – but a Creator-God of selfless love?  It is, admittedly, “mysterious.”

I have on occasion presented students with the famous proofs for the existence of God. Many students are amazed to find that one can actually approach the question about God with reason and serious thinking and not merely with “feelings” or by sacrificing all rational thought in favor of believing “six impossible things before breakfast every morning,” as the White Queen says to Alice in Wonderland.

Many young adults in American society are essentially fideists; they think that you “just have to take things on faith,” which to their minds means without reason or intelligent thought.  Reading Aquinas, especially his proofs for God’s existence, shows them pretty quickly – and for many, for the first time – that a person can approach theological questions with reason and intellect.

But I also have to report that even students who find these arguments valid do not always find them convincing.  For some, the problem is that they don’t believe in logic. Logic, they assume, is just “word games.”  Or they’ve been taught that logic is a patriarchal power play. But for others, the proofs are not convincing for another reason, and it’s important to understand why.

The problem with the “proofs” is not what they prove, but what they don’t.  Because when my wonderful, bright-eyed students are asking about “God,” they’re not really asking whether there is a Prime Mover or the Source of All Being. What they really want to know is whether anybody cares; whether there is someone who watches out for them and will “be there” if everything else fails; whether there is an ultimate foundation of meaningfulness. And the Prime Mover just doesn’t get them that.

As Aristotle’s notion of the Prime Mover shows, you can have a Prime Mover that does not love you or even ever think about you. The Christian “God,” by contrast, is the Source of the Being of Everything, and not merely another more powerful “thing” or “person” in the world like Zeus or Apollo, but He is also personal and loving, like Zeus and Apollo and unlike Aristotle’s Prime Mover.

The world might be an ordered cosmos, as the ancients thought, but that doesn’t mean it would necessarily have selfless love. The ancients didn’t think so. This is why I tell my students that the question they must ask themselves is not whether they believe in “God” but whether they believe in love.  Because if they can’t believe in selfless, providential love, then they’ll never believe in the Jewish-Christian “God,” because love and providential care are the central characteristics of that “God.”

But here’s the problem: How do you prove love – that it exists and that it’s meaningful and worthwhile – to people who don’t believe in it?

I was sitting at Mass the other day listening to one of those strange Old Testament stories wondering whether a sensible person could really believe all this stuff about God when I happened to see a father making silly faces at his young son.

There is something wonderful about watching parents with their children at Mass.  Mothers and fathers hold their babies and kiss them gently, stroke their hair, and look directly into their eyes with love.  Parents walk their children up to Communion, teach them to kneel respectfully and accept a blessing from the priest, sometimes proudly, sometimes shyly.

It’s love.  Where does that come from?  How does that exist?  It’s real, but it’s mysterious.

And it’s not just in Mass.  There is at least one insight in the movie Love Actually: namely, that when you see people greeting their friends and family at the airport, it makes you realize that love actually does exist; it actually is – all around.  And if you can for a moment become convinced that love does exist, then you might, someday, wonder: How?  Because there doesn’t seem to be any room for it in the universe that modern atheists insist upon.

Indeed, if at any moment the dedicated atheist were to engage in an act of selfless love, then would they not at that moment have “let the cat out of the bag,” so to speak?  Would they not have shown that they too believe that the universe is more than just atoms bumping into one another and that living a full, meaningful life involves more than just will-to-power and preference maximization?

It’s not just Christians who think the basic, most essential, and meaningful force in the universe is love.  Plenty of others do.  It’s just that many of them hold views of the universe that cannot make sense of that love.  Christianity has an account of the world that does.

The odd thing about what we call “the Paschal Mystery” – what makes it “mysterious” – is the claim that the Creator-God loves us so much that He became flesh and died for us and rose from the dead.  If, as Hans Urs von Balthasar has claimed, “love alone is credible,” then how could God reveal Himself to us – not as a different sort of Zeus or a different sort of Prime Mover, but as the God of selfless love – unless by giving Himself fully in selfless love?

Without the events of Holy Week, we might believe in a “god,” but not the God who, as Pope Benedict XVI has written, “created the universe in order to enter into a history of love with humankind.”  And without that love, how would we know, how could we even suspect, that “the universe is not the product of darkness and unreason.”

Because, as Benedict writes, “only if it is true that the universe comes from freedom, love, and reason, and that these are the real underlying powers, can we trust one another, go forward into the future, and live as human beings.”

It is easy enough to believe in a “god” – a god of power – but a Creator-God of selfless love?  It is, admittedly, “mysterious.”  But perhaps, in the end, it’s the only thing that can truly make sense of a world with love in it.

You may also enjoy:

Fr. Robert P. Imbelli’s Loving and Knowing God

St. John Paul II’s Conformity with God’s Plan

AUTHOR

Randall Smith

Randall B. Smith is a Professor of Theology at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, Texas. His latest book is From Here to Eternity: Reflections on Death, Immortality, and the Resurrection of the Body.

EDITORS NOTE: This Catholic Thing column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. © 2023 The Catholic Thing. All rights reserved. For reprint rights, write to: info@frinstitute.org. The Catholic Thing is a forum for intelligent Catholic commentary. Opinions expressed by writers are solely their own.

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Fatwa: Islam’s Murder by Fiat

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By Amil Imani

Salman Rushdie is perhaps the most celebrated person with an Islamic bounty on his head.  He has been for decades.  The man was condemned to death by Ayatollah Khomeini, without the least due process, for supposedly insulting Islam’s sanctities in his book The Satanic Verses.  Rushdie has been living a dreadful life for decades, mostly in hiding, hoping to elude the daggers or bullets of far too many zany Islamists who would eagerly carry out the edict of the certifiably crazed Islamic ayatollah.

Shahin Najafi, a Persian musician, and songwriter is not famed like Rushdie, yet he has been sentenced to death by another ayatollah.  Again with no due process, for the “sin” of composing a song deemed by the officious Islamic clergy — in this case, Ayatollah Golpaygani — as an affront to the Shi’ite imams.

How these high priests and Islamic parasites operate makes for nothing short of international religious terrorism.  They consider it their prerogative to pronounce death sentences on anyone, of any nationality, anywhere in the world, who offends their sensibilities.  With their tentacles reaching every corner of the globe, these Islamic Godfathers unleash their lieutenants and soldiers on anyone who dares to in any way challenge their code of murder and mayhem billed as Allah’s sole valid religion for all of humanity.

Shahin may not be famed like Rushdie, but he is still a human being under a fatwa of death.  The man, who now lives in Germany, was an ordinary Persian musician and singer before Iran’s grand Ayatollah Golpayegani issued his fatwa.  Now, Shahin faces death threats after releasing a controversial song containing references to one of the 12 Shi’ites.

Hundreds of thousands of Iranians have watched this controversial clip posted on YouTube.  This issue has divided opinions in a nation where religious people find it offensive and insulting to their beliefs, but many others defend the song, praising it for breaking taboos, especially concerning expressing views about religious personalities.

More ayatollahs are ganging up on the poor artist.  The Islamic Republic of Iran’s semi-official Mehr news agency reports that Ayatollah Naser Makareme Shirazi, a pro-Islamic regime cleric based in the holy city of Qom, with a great deal of influence among Shi’ites, has also issued a fatwa against Najafi by proclaiming, “Any outrage against the infallible imams … and obvious insult against them would make a Muslim an apostate.”  Makarem Shirazi has in the past issued other harsh and absurd religious rulings, such as the one against women attending soccer matches.  He has also issued proscriptions against keeping pets and denied the Holocaust.

The apostasy ruling was issued after a song released by Shahin titled “Naghi.”  Islamist fanatics contend that the song desecrates the tenth Imam of Shi’ites, Imam Naghi.

It is beyond the pale that a self-glorified cleric finds in himself the audacity to issue a death warrant for a human he has never seen, and without even a pretense of a trial.

Apostasy is a capital offense in most Islamic countries, but the execution of the apostate is not common.  Yet it does take place from time to time by frequently buttressing the “crime” of apostasy with additional fabricated charges.  The Islamic Republic of Iran, for instance, often adds the charge of mohareb (one who wars with Allah) to further legitimize its execution of apostates.  A case in point pertains to the treatment of the religious minority Bahá’ís by the Islamic Republic. Several Bahá’ís have been charged as apostates and mohareb and executed, with some secretly buried in unmarked graves.

It is noteworthy that Islam considers the world its ummah and does not bother with national boundaries.  Hence, Islamic clerics feel free to issue fatwas and other adjudications regarding any person, group, or nation anywhere in the world.  Fanatic Muslims anywhere in the world take it upon themselves to carry out fatwas issued by Islamic high divines.  Other high-profile cases — the killing of Theo van Gogh, a Dutch film director, and the recent attack on the Danish cartoonist Kurt Westeraard — are instances of this barbaric, arbitrary practice, which runs counter to the civilized world’s due process and has a serious intimidating impact on the freedom of expression.

Fatwas are religious rulings with wide-ranging and shocking implications.  For one, not long ago, Salih bin Fawzan, a prominent cleric and member of Saudi Arabia’s highest religious council, issued a fatwa proclaiming that there is no minimum age for marriage and that girls can be married even if they are in the cradle.”  Why not?  Didn’t Islam’s founder, Muhammad, marry six-year-old Ayesha?

Islam must be fully exposed for what it is, with its Godfathers de-frocked and punished if they keep issuing fatwas as binding rules for Muslims to obey and implement.

Half-hearted, perfunctory attempts by the civilized world at staying at the hands of these villains and preventing them from issuing rulings by fiat serve only to embolden these perpetrators of hatred and violence.

Free people and nations should not sacrifice their God-given liberty to please the Islamists by muzzling dissenters and even endangering their safety and their lives.

In the final analysis, there is no difference between a Mafia Godfather issuing a death sentence on people who do not toe his line and a turbaned Islamist masquerading as the authorized agent of Allah to run and ruin peoples’ lives by fiat.

The civilized, free people of the world have paid the ultimate price far too many times in the past and are not likely to shirk their responsibility of fighting off the resurgence of the scourge of Islamism — a cult of intolerance and violence that has shed and continues to shed the blood of far too many people.

Let freedom ring.  Let people sing their songs and lead their lives without death threats hanging over their heads.

No oppression of women, minorities, or freedom lovers, and no death sentences by fiat.  Imams and mullahs who engage in these criminal acts must be dragged to the court of law and, after due process, given their due punishments, in the same way, that any criminal is processed by a just and civilized society.

©2023 Amil Imani. All rights reserved.

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My Take on Islam

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By Amil Imani

All of Islam has the potential for ensuring a violent result because it is an inherent quality of the belief. I refuse to call it a religious faith…that would be a far kinder treatment than it actually deserves. It is essentially a death cult…a political/cultural and social ideology based on the violence of the Qur’an…it shares much in common with Nazism and in fact, these two beliefs have a dual history in which they connected almost eighty years ago prior to World War II…their anti-Semitism is a common thread that ties them together and resulted in the Nazi death camps of the Holocaust ..their actions to deny this and turn it around on those who disagree with them is profoundly telling. It remains rather conclusive of Muslims’ identification with extreme liberal/progressive elements of the political class within the United States. Sadly, We are not only fighting the Islamic ideology. We are fighting its co-conspirators, the Democrats.

With each passing day, the death of Western Civilization – specifically, the death of Europe, will not have been a suicide, but a cold-blooded, premeditated murder, carried out by the western ruling oligarchy. This tragedy is happening in the United States. Muslim organizations have been busy working “stealthily” changing America in what is called “Soft Jihad,” or “Cultural Jihad,” or Stealth Jihad” in the United States. Soft Jihad is practiced where the sword of jihad is not advisable, where Muslims are not strong enough to unsheathe their sword, where the true nature of Islam is exposed, and when the public would likely stamp them out.

A critical tool of soft jihad, involves penetration of the American educational system, by use of means such as Da’wa-a religious duty of each Muslim to convert non-Muslims in order to strengthen the Islamic Ummah.

This is alarming. But regrettably, too few Americans are aware of all this.

We see examples of creeping Sharia (the canons of Islamic law) throughout the country and we are doomed if these specific actions are not stopped and our Constitution is not upheld as the law of the land. Adopting parts of Sharia in this country is both a lunatic move and unconstitutional and should be shut down now.

Will Muslims abandon Islam?

Let me be clear, there are many many good people who consider themselves Muslims. And indeed, they are as good as any other good people. Yet, by sticking with Islam, knowingly or unknowingly, they play into the hands of criminal Islamists. So, it is good to do what we can to invite these Cultural Muslims to sever their ties with Islam altogether.

Let me use a metaphor to help in understating this enigma. Islam is a type of dependence-inducing “potion.” In the same way that, let us say, alcohol is. Millions and perhaps billions imbibe alcohol. A great majority of these consumers qualify as moderate and social drinkers. Drinking alcohol may do them some psychological good and may exact some physical health and monetary price. Yet, this vast number finds enough “comfort” to put up with the monetary, health, relationships, and other costs of their drinking. A certain number are heavy drinkers who are severely dependent and reliant on the drug. And there are those who are infrequent drinkers. They may have some wine at Xmas or on their birthday. And finally, there are those who are teetotalers. They never touch the stuff. So, you have a kind of what statisticians call a normal curve in that people distribute themselves along the drinking dimension as a bell-shaped function. Some on one extreme, some on the other, and the great majority between the two extremes.

The same applies to Muslims. Islam is habit-forming. Just like alcohol. How strongly is habit forming? It depends on the person and his circumstances. Is Islam “beneficial” to the person? Apparently yes it is. For some, it is life itself, just like the skid-row alcoholic, to others it means something, and yet to others, it is something to be avoided altogether.

Short answer. In the same way that people need to go through detoxification programs to free themselves from physical dependencies, they also must undergo detoxification programs to wean themselves from Islam.

What to do? Expand the re-education effort greatly by writing in translating into numerous languages, and other Muslim nations’ languages. Radio and television programs are also vital. It is a long process. Yet, the bottom line is that the problem is this blind dependency on Islam that hooks the masses to its greatly enticing promises and provides easy answers for much of humanity’s underclass.

Unfortunately,  it is going to be a slow process. Much slower and much more difficult than we would like it to be. This Islam thing is a long-term deep dependency of many attractions to many. It is going to take a great deal of work and perseverance to free Muslims from its grip. in it. As sad as it is, that’s the way this world is. Far, far from perfect. Not even close. So, that’s my take.

©2023 Amil Imani. All rights reserved.

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No Negotiation with the Islamic Republic of Iran

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By Amil Imani

We no longer have any choice. We can no longer engage in the same old practices to deal with the massive and debilitating threats that humanity faces. We must band together and pool our resources to meet the challenges. Our planet’s problems are no longer local problems that parochial thinking and practices can address successfully. We cannot squander even an ounce of our sorely needed energy in petty squabbles and personal fights.

Unlike anything encountered in recent memory, the formidably complex and unique situation present in today’s world poses an enormous challenge. It defies any conventional solution, and simply resorting to civil disobedience is the equivalent of fighting off a pack of hungry and blood-thirsty wolves with toothpicks!

The Western leaders and, in particular, President Biden, must know that the Islamic Republic-selected president, Ebrahim Raisi, and his ilk are not interested in any substantial negotiation, any compromise, or a live-and-let-live policy. President Biden should reconsider his good faith gesture of opening dialogue with this brutal, inhumane, and illegitimate Islamic government. The Islamic Republic has no respect for the olive branches being extended to it by the Biden administration; it continues with full speed ahead in its quest for nuclear weaponry — and the power to intimidate the region and the entire world.

The best predictor of the future is the past. The religious fanatic mullahs’ record is one of deception, dissimulation, treachery, violence, and much more. These Quran-trained and directed agents of a wrathful Allah can never be trusted. They are master schemers. They have been in the business of scheming for centuries. They have perfected the art of deception, double talk, double-dealing, and treachery.

The Western world must rid itself of the “happy talk” as we tranquilize ourselves by reasoning that these doddering old-world religious fools may be mischievous but could never do real harm. Oh, sure, they might be arming some Iraqi Shiites, killing a few. U.S. soldiers, provide a little support for Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas terrorists in Palestine, building several bases in South America and Africa, murdering Iranian people, and calling for the eradication of Israel—but they have no global destructive capacity. After all, we pacify ourselves that we’re not exactly talking about criminal masterminds like Hitler, or are we?

I do not claim to have all the answers but have a fair idea of where to begin. It is high time to realize that we are not dealing with the same social factors or even the same people of three decades ago. We need to collaborate on this effort and invite others who can contribute to this cause without placing personal fame and secondary gains ahead of the ultimate goal of re-educating, rebuilding, and liberating Iran.

What we should envision is a secular Iran that will allow the seeds of our ancient wisdom and goodness to grow and flourish again through our art, music, poetry, and social dynamics. The U.S. has, in secular Iranians, its best friends in the entire Islamic world. It is imperative for the U.S. to help these Iranians to dislodge the vicious doomsday Mullahs, not as an act of altruism, but as a prudent measure of enlightened self-interest.

“The negotiators who apply the above principles can reach an agreement—but they may not. Even the above guidelines are no guarantee of productive contacts. As noted, both Americans and Iranians too often arrive at the negotiating table burdened with preconceptions, grievances, ignorance, resentment, and the opinion—based on a special reading of history—that the other side is deceptive, infinitely crafty, and will, in the end, reveal its true nature in hostility, treachery, and lies. The first thing to do is to define carefully.”

Freedom may suffer retreats periodically and tyranny may advance occasionally. Yet, free people everywhere will meet any challenge and pay any price to safeguard the precious treasure of freedom for themselves and the finest bequeath they can leave for the next generation.

©Amil Imani. All rights reserved.

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Islam is the Enemy of Freedom

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By Amil Imani

A great irony of the age is that the seemingly most diehard proponents of freedom— the useful idiots of our time—are the most dangerous unwitting accomplices of liberty’s enemy—Islam. Keep in mind that the very name “Islam” is a derivation of “taslim,” the Arabic word for “surrender,” surrender to the will and dictates of Allah as revealed by Muhammad and recorded in the Quran.
This non-negotiable surrender to Islam requires the individual as well as the society to disenfranchise themselves of many of the fundamental and deeply cherished human rights.
Below is a brief presentation of what this surrender to Islam entails and why it is imperative that all freedom-loving people arise and defeat the menace of Islamofascism.

Amendment I of the Bill of Rights enshrines some of the most cherished ideals of freedom-loving people:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Islam considers itself the three branches of government. It enacts laws as it sees fit, adjudicates laws, and executes as it deems. Islam is anathema to the provisions of the First Amendment and much more.

  • Islam proclaims itself as the only legitimate religion for the entire world, grudgingly granting minor recognition to Judaism and Christianity from whom it has liberally plagiarized many of its dogma. Jews and Christians are allowed to live under the rule of Islam as dhimmis and must pay a special religious tax of jizya. Buddhists, Hindus, Zoroastrians, Baha’is, members of other religions, agnostics, or atheists are not even allowed to live practicing their beliefs or disbelief.
  • Islam actively suppresses and even prohibits the practice of other religions, including those of the “people of the book,” Jews, and Christians. There is not a single church or synagogue in the cradle of Islam, Saudi Arabia, while thousands of mosques dot the tolerating and welcoming non-Moslem lands. Islamic countries that allow for Jewish and Christian places of worship subject these “people of the book” to numberless subtle and not-so-subtle forms of persecution. Moslems in non-Moslem lands proselytize relentlessly and convert others while any Moslem who leaves Islam is judged as apostate and automatically condemned to death.
  • Freedom of speech is just about non-existent in Islam. The word is Allah’s, and his chosen divines such as Ayatollahs and Imams are the only ones who are to make pronouncements squarely based on Allah’s word, the Quran. Any expression in the least deviance from the Quran, the Hadith, and the edicts of Islamic high divines is heresy and severely punishable. Hence, the stifling of free expression is the major mechanism by which the Islamic clergy retain power and prevent constructive change in Islamic societies.
  • Freedom of the press is completely alien to Islam since a free press tends to express matters as it sees them, rather than as it is stated in the Quran. To Islam, the Quran is the press and the only press. There is no need for critical reporting, no need to present ideas that may conflict with the Quran, and no place for criticism of anything Islamic. The stranglehold of Islam on the individual and society is complete.
  • Peaceful assembly of the people is not allowed. The backward oppressive Islamic societies inflict great hardship on the citizenry and any assembly of the victims presents a threat to the suffocating rule. Islamic governments routinely prevent peaceful assemblies from taking place. Failing to do so, they unleash their hired thugs, the police, and even the military against any assemblage no matter how peaceful and how legitimate is its grievance. The Islamic Republic of Iran which is vying with Saudi Arabia as the leader of true Islamic rule, routinely attacks any and all gatherings of its people, arrests them, imprisons them without due process, tortures them, and even executes them in secret dungeons. Journalists, academics, unionists, students, teachers, and women’s rights groups who dare to petition the government for redress are labeled subversive and are severely punished.
  • Maltreatment of religious minorities and non-religious is criminal indeed. In the Islamic Republic of Iran, for instance, the government has launched a systematic program of genocide against its largest religious minority—the Baha’is. The government is gathering a comprehensive list of Baha’is, their occupations, locations, properties, and the like—actions reminiscent of the Nazis. The government is banning Baha’i students from post-high-school education unless they recant their religion, deprive them of engaging in numerous forms of occupations and trades, deny them from holding worship gatherings, razing their holy places, and much more. The Islamic Republic of Iran is not satisfied with its cruel treatment of the living Baha’is and has launched a war on their dead by bulldozing Baha’i cemeteries in several cities. This is the rule of fundamental Islamism that is awaiting the complacent and snoozing world.
  • Oppression of women, in general, is tragic indeed. Men are allowed to have as many as four wives simultaneously and as many concubines as they wish or can afford. Men can easily divorce their wives and automatically have custody of the children if they so decide. Women have subservient status to men in all areas of the law. Equality under the law has no meaning in Islam. Just one example of the dreadful way of treating women in Islam is a case of a Saudi woman who was gang-raped. The Islamic court convicted the woman to a prison term and lashes for having committed the “sin” of riding in a car with a male who was not her relative. This is a standard form of Islamic Shariah justice—a savage heritage of barbarism that ruled the Arabian Peninsula some centuries ago.
  • Islam has a solution for every “problem.” It deals with homosexuals, for instance, by hanging them en mass and gloating about it, even though homosexuality is just as prevalent in Islamic lands as anywhere else. Recently an Ayatollah made a ruling on homosexuals. He said that they should be tortured before they are hanged. In Islam, the rulings of high-ranking clergy constitute the law and are binding.
  • Not only Islam does not allow freedom of assembly and the press, but it is also intrusively restrictive in every aspect of a person’s life. The way women should dress, the haircut of men, the music people are allowed, movies to watch, television programs to view, and even parties in the privacy of their homes are subject to the ridiculous monitoring of moral police. Islam is hell-bent on outward morality and puritanical conduct while it is rotten to the core just below the pretentious surface.
  • Islam segregates by gender many public places and events such as beaches, sporting venues, public transportation, and even building elevators. Families are often prevented from attending a sporting event together or swimming together at a beach.
  • Egypt, the crown of the Arab-Islam world, demands that citizens declare Islam or only one of the two other religions, Jewish and Christianity, as their religion in order to receive government-issued identity cards. ID cards are required for jobs, healthcare, education, a marriage license, and a host of other things. If you are an agnostic, an atheist, a Buddhist, a Hindu, or a Baha’i, you are forced to perjure yourself to receive the indispensable ID card. In a real sense, Islam the pretender of high moral ground compels people to lie in order to receive what is their birthright as citizens.

I have been sounding the alarm about Islam’s imminent deadly threat for a number of years. The Islamic treasury flush with oil extortion money together with the help of useful idiots is having the upper hand in this battle of survival for freedom. The slaveholder Islam has been transformed into a more virulent form of Islamofascism; it is an inveterate unrelenting enemy of freedom. We need to act now and stem the tide of this deadly threat. Tomorrow may be too late. Freedom is too precious to abandon through complacency, acts of political correctness, or outright cowardice.

©Amil Imani. All rights reserved.

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Real Men are Irreplaceable

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By The Catholic Thing

Elizabeth A. Mitchell: The role of real men on the front lines of the culture war is irreplaceable because the battle is for the soul of humanity.

My father was a boy during the London Blitz.  My grandfather recounts how one day he drove into London to find his office building in rubble.  No files, no reports, no nothing of what was so important just the day before.  My grandmother served as black-out warden for their neighborhood, an hour outside of London.  She recalls how from the end of their road they could see the London skyline burning.  Planes returning to the airbase near their home would pass overhead, and shrapnel, bombs, and long nights spent under the stairs, or in their Anderson shelter, were routine.

In those days of the dogged fight for Western civilization, heroes walked among us.  Soldiers, airmen, seamen, reconnaissance operatives, and brash world leaders with resolve for the fight.

Today, we are in a different kind of battle.  We are in a battle for the soul of humanity itself, and the battle is taking place one household at a time, one neighborhood at a time, one human being at a time.  We are in a fight to retain truth, objective reality, selflessness, and the enduring human spirit.

And, in this battle, acts of greatness must be noticed, affirmed, and encouraged.  Why?  Because the younger generation is watching us.  They are watching us to understand how they should define themselves.  They will be as great as the example we give to them; they will follow the model we set for them.  And they will hope to see us asking them for their very best.

Take my two neighbors, Bob and Brendan.  Bob is a baby boomer, the unelected mayor of our block.  If it snows, Bob is first out with his plow.  He does not define his task as finished when he reaches the end of his own driveway.  A good father and a good neighbor, he does not see life in terms of property lines, but in terms of families helping one another.

Brendan is a successful Millennial, able to work from home or go to the office, able to define a great deal of his reality.  And in the generational transition from Bob to Brendan, the example of Bob is paramount.  Just this morning, we had a magnificent snow day.  No school, no obligations, and plenty of heavy, wet white.  I ventured out with my trusty shovel, and who should come plowing up the driveway?  Brendan.  With his awesome, new Craftsman snowplow.  “It was a wedding present,” he proclaimed proudly.  “I am glad to be able to use it.”

While the evening news is telling us that the new generation of men don women’s swimsuits and win medals at female sporting events, the real men are out snowplowing.

Just last Sunday, on my way home from Mass in a depressed downtown area, where the most beautiful churches in many cities are located, I hit a pothole.  The PSI on my front right tire fell to 1, then 0.  Indecisive, I called my brother, a priest at the seminary, who offered to come and assess the situation.  Just then, I heard shouting.  Freddy, a man standing at the curbside bus shelter, was flagging me down.

“Mam!” he shouted, waving his arms like an airplane ground controller.  “Mam!  You can’t drive that car!”  I pulled to the curb and rolled down my window.  He shouted at me again that I could not drive my vehicle.  So, stuck between the reality of my distress and the fear of trusting a stranger in an unfamiliar area, I took a deep breath and followed Freddy’s instructions.

Like a guardian angel straight from Central Casting, Freddy took care of everything.  Joined at this point by his friend, Anthony, who also appeared out of nowhere, the two men taught me where to place the jack on my car frame, removed my flat tire, put on the spare, and sternly warned me how to make it safely home.  My brother joined them, and the three chatted and exchanged tire analysis and time and effort.  Freddy, it turns out, grew up in Mississippi and learned mechanics in his father’s machine shed.  Anthony stood guard and imparted wisdom.

Freddy and Anthony.  My brother.  Real men.

While the evening news is telling us that the men in the inner city are proving their manhood by lighting dumpsters on fire and expressing rage through violence, the real men are out helping others, unseen by the cameras.

The world, the culture, the nation: these are not collective, faceless entities.  They are made up of individuals.  The qualities and values of our world, our culture, and our nation, individually, comprise the whole.

In the years leading up to the Nazi persecution, St. Edith Stein, who died in Auschwitz, wrote about the menacing and intentional shift of her society from a community to an association.  While a community comes together as subjects for a shared meaningful relationship, an association interrelates as objects for a transactional purpose.

The danger, which lurks in the dark societal redefinition of the Third Reich, is the replacement of communities with associations.  When our view of other human beings becomes de-personalized and merely transactional, the humanity of the whole is lost.

And so, our real men matter a great deal.  As they led a generation to defend Western civilization, so now they can lead a generation in what it means to be a male.  To serve, to protect, to sacrifice, and to ennoble the human condition, are all critical contributions of our best men.

The battle depends upon each one of us.  And the role of our men on the front lines of that battle is irreplaceable.  The fight for our civilization is a battle for the soul of humanity.  One human being at a time.

You may also enjoy:

Michael Pakaluk’s On Sacrifice

Dr. Mitchell’s Martyred ‘In Odium Fidei’

AUTHOR

Elizabeth A. Mitchell

Dr. Elizabeth A. Mitchell, S.C.D., received her doctorate in Institutional Social Communications from the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome where she worked as a translator for the Holy See Press Office and L’Osservatore Romano. She is the Dean of Students for Trinity Academy, a private K-12 Catholic independent school in Wisconsin, and serves as an Advisor for the St. Gianna and Pietro Molla International Center for Family and Life and is Theological Advisor for Nasarean.org, a mission advocating on behalf of persecuted Christians in the Middle East.

EDITORS NOTE: This The Catholic Thing column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. © 2023 The Catholic Thing. All rights reserved. For reprint rights, write to: info@frinstitute.org. The Catholic Thing is a forum for intelligent Catholic commentary. Opinions expressed by writers are solely their own.

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To Future Generations of Americans

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By Amil Imani

“Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.” — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

This commentary aims to address the future generation.

The time to keep silent has passed and the time to speak the truth has begun. As I write this commentary to you today, I am perplexed and frightened to think about what it may be like when you are born. My mind is filled with uncertainty about the future and my soul is filled with the pain and agony of the unknown.

Today, America and European countries are being physically and culturally invaded. When you are born, it won’t even look the same. Our elected officials no longer work for us. Both political parties in the U.S. have failed us as well as European socialism. The U.S. Congress and the Supreme Court are just formalities. It is as though they work against us and our law enforcement agencies appear to have been compromised.

Our government is heavily influenced by globalists, or as they now call it: The New World Order (NWO). We have nearly 60 million illegal aliens living here in the U.S.

Additionally, we have allowed Muslims from the four corners of the world to pour in without considering you and our future. Wherever Islam goes, so goes its ethos. These Muslims are the descendants of the same Islamic butchers who conquered half of the world 1400 years ago with the sword of Islam. These are the same creatures that plundered and burned every country they entered, killing their men, and raping and taking their women while selling them as slaves in the Arabian Desert.

We are witnessing the exact brutalities, savagery and barbarism, mass shootings, and beheadings ever since these leeches entered the Western world in the millions. It is ironic how history keeps repeating itself.

I am telling you this story, partly because it is timely and partly because it is good to know history’s lessons. America and Europe did not have to turn out as they have. Truth and provocative ideas ought to be welcomed in our society. Yet, with provocative ideas and opinions, one must be ready to embrace death. As we have witnessed, Islamic zealots do not tolerate opinions contrary to theirs. Euripides said many years ago, “A slave is he who cannot speak his thoughts.”

However, death is the last thing on my mind. Actions are needed to correct past mistakes and that starts with you. You, the unborn, must know what is happening in your country and world and what has led us to where we are today. You must know this and do everything in your power to save your country from fading away.

So, this is a message to you and future generations: We cannot allow the same ruthless Islamic zealots who have murdered hundreds of millions of innocents to impose an Islamic revolution on our society, to control and reinterpret our history. Also, we cannot allow the guardians of the status quo to define and control our future.

You must strongly adhere to the wisdom of Jesus Christ, who was a messenger of peace, life, and eternal love. A great threat facing free people is the recently energized petrodollar from Islamic countries which embarks on a campaign of recruiting more people under its dark banner. Millions of a disenfranchised underclass in the non-Islamic world, and millions more mentally under-developed may flock to Islam, deluded by its empty promises.

I believe all human beings are privileged to have liberty and life. Prejudiced, medieval-like actions must and should be eliminated in the 21st Century. The pinnacle of cruelty must and should be obliterated in our new era.

Human beings are obliged to look forward to a brighter and more enlightening future and work hard to bring prosperity, not only to this generation but for generations to come. That applies to all of us.

America was founded on aspirations of liberty, freedom, and justice for all. You now must keep it going.

What inspired me to write this commentary was the mere fact that all forms of life start with struggle. We all know that the city of Rome was not built in one day. Similarly, people’s liberty and freedom were not given to them simply because some ruler felt sorry for the masses. They were secured with many bloody revolutions, an inch at a time. That’s how most countries have achieved their liberty and freedom.

Ronald Reagan said: “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.”

In the monumental task of dealing with Islam and its variations, every individual, group, and government must combine their resources and energies to prevail. We must urge all people to resist Islam’s encroachment and not be deceived by its sanitized version presented in non-Islamic lands. The destiny of civilized life hangs in the balance. Shirking of this responsibility would be an unpardonable act of every enlightened human being and organization that values human liberty and dignity.

©Amil Imani. All rights reserved.

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The Rise Of The Islamocrats

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By Amil Imani

Muslims are embraced by the left as a natural ally, as illegal aliens and blacks have been for decades.  More than 90 Muslims, nearly all of them Democrats, are running for public office across the country this year.  Many are young and politically inexperienced, and most are long shots.

According to the Pew report, fully two thirds of U.S. Muslims identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party (66%).  Far fewer say they are Republican or lean Republican (13%), while one in five say they prefer another party or are politically independent and do not lean toward either major party.  Muslim Americans’ partisan composition is little changed over the last decade, and they remain much more strongly Democratic than the public as a whole.

Well, our leftist politicians, hungry for votes and devoted to the practice of political correctness, bend over backwards to accede to Islamists’ demands.  At the same time, Muslims will ally with leftist politicians, who will gladly cede some of their power to this group of enforcers so conservative politicians and Christians who advocate self-defense and sane social policies are kept out of office.  Money that was once used to build mosques will now be used to buy politicians.

Progressives have been rallying behind jihadist Linda Sarsour, an American-born Arab native, who was calling to wage jihad, a terrorist threat against the president of the United States and the White House staff.  In reality, Sarsour has declared jihad (holy war) on the United States government and its people.  That’s the kind of people the current Democrat Party is cheering for.

The Democrats have shown by both words and actions that they despise the U.S. Constitution.  When it comes to the support of Muslims, they will not hesitate to hold the Bill of Rights over anyone who dares to accuse Islam and Muslims of wrongdoing.  While crime and threats skyrocket, Islamized citizens will ignore the wrongdoing.  They will look the other way for fear of retribution, honor killings, and punishments from those who uphold the Islamic requirement to seek revenge on anyone who dishonors or disagrees with Islam.

Regrettably, a large segment of the population goes along with these nonsensical euphemisms depicting Islam.  It is less threatening to believe that only a hijacked small segment of Islam is radical or politically driven and that the main body of Islam is indeed moderate and apolitical.

Our liberal professors and universities claim that Islam is inherently good; the majority of Muslims are good; and only a small minority has hijacked the good faith of Muhammad by engaging in acts of intolerance, hatred, and violence.  I agree: it is not uncommon to observe Muslims, anywhere in the world, who are indeed exemplary in many ways.  They are kind, generous, and much more.  But these are cultural Muslims who are, in effect, only part Muslim.  The question is, why is it that the good Islam is not ruling in the world and the bad Islam is engulfing it in fire?

Most Americans are bewildered as to why Democrats back Islamic ideology; honor their holidays and customs; and promote them as the religion of peace, knowing that Islam is not a religion of peace.  In fact, it is an ideology of war.  The answer is quite simple: the Democratic Party stands with anyone who hates America and the Republican party.  History has proven that once Muslims have the majority, they institute sharia law and adopt their own legal system.  A government within a government.

Sharia is Islamic law – the disciplines and principles that govern the behavior of a Muslim individual toward himself and his family, neighbors, community, city, nation, and the Muslim polity as a whole, the Ummah.  Similarly, sharia governs the interactions among communities, groups, and social and economic organizations.  Sharia establishes the criteria by which all social actions are classified, categorized, and administered within the overall governance of the state.

We are on a precarious path to lose our freedom and the American values we cherish.  The Democratic Party is no longer the Party of Kennedy.  It has become the greatest threat to our national security and our survival as a nation.

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Personal Statement: I have merged with the Center for the Study of Political Islam International

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By Bill Warner

This column is different than ones I have published before in that it is a personal statement.

I have been on the frontlines of the defense against Political Islam for almost 20 years. It has been my pleasure during this time to meet, to know and to work with some of the most wonderful people in the world – people who love their countries, their civilization and who are incredibly courageous.

In 2014, I was approached by Milan Podlipny from the Czech Republic. He had been following my work and proposed establishing the Center for the Study of Political Islam International (CSPII), which would be a global educational non-profit organization.

We partnered and Milan’s determination and talent, along with the hard work of many dedicated individuals resulted in a successful volunteer organization. Currently, CSPII has an expanding all-volunteer team of more than 25 nationalities with branches in 12 countries around the world.

Our members have presented lectures and workshops to media, government agencies, academia, and the general public, educating them on the political doctrine of Islam. I am very proud of this organization and what its volunteers have accomplished.

Now, I’m turning my attention to working more closely with the administration of CSPII. My website, www.politicalislam.com has merged with the international site, www.cspii.org in an on-going effort by our members to clarify and update the material and methods which I presented over the years. Please check it out.

CSPII will periodically publish national newsletters and strategic analyses on important international events. Watch for the Political Islam in North America Newsletter in your email box.

Thank you all so much for your support through the years. If you would to like to become more involved in our efforts, go here.

Bill Warner

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New York Had 72 Antisemitic Assaults, Florida Had 1

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By Jihad Watch

New York had 580 antisemitic incidents making it the highest in the country.

In news from the Florida Sun-Sentinel.

Antisemitic incidents surge in Florida, growing more than nationwide. – Sun Sentinel

Those South Florida incidents, from the early weeks of 2022, were at the beginning of a surge that produced the highest annual number of antisemitic incidents ever recorded in Florida and nationwide in the Anti-Defamation League’s annual Audit of Antisemitic Incidents. ADL has compiled and verified assaults, harassment and vandalism since 1979.

It was worse in Florida than in the U.S. overall, the third year in a row that the state’s increase outpaced the national increase, Sarah Emmons, ADL’s Florida regional director, said in a video presentation on the report.

While it’s a good idea to be concerned about antisemitism, Florida’s high is still less than half of New York’s.

In 2022, New York had 580 antisemitic incidents, making it the highest in the country.

This is a 39% increase from 2021, when 416 incidents were reported, and more than double from a decade ago.

The ADL says that incidents in New York alone accounted for 15.7% of all documented antisemitic incidents in the United States in 2022.

New York does have a much higher Jewish population (although Florida is quickly gaining). But the antisemitic incidents in New York are also much more likely to be violent while in Florida they’re just hateful writings.

And Florida’s increase isn’t even that much of an outlier as the story tries to imply.

The number of antisemitic incidents increased 41.5% in Florida to 269 last year compared to the year before. Florida’s total was more than triple the 76 recorded in 2018.

Nationally, the report showed a 36.1% increase in antisemitic incidents to a total of 3,697 — an average of 10 a day. The U.S. total was almost double the 1,879 recorded four years earlier.

36% vs. 41% outpaces the national average but not by that much.

Using the ADL’s numbers (I haven’t checked them, but just for the sake of argument) New York had 72 assaults, California had 13, Massachusets had 4, and Florida had 1.

I suspect these numbers are incomplete because antisemitic incident databases tend to draw heavily on minor incidents that will be reported (a swastika leaflet) involving more secular and wealthier areas while ignoring more violent incidents involving poorer and more religious areas. But they still do paint a picture.

During the pandemic, New York’s governor, the media and its elites spent much of it harassing and blaming Orthodox Jews for the outbreak. Florida went a very different way. The ADL doesn’t want to talk about that.

AUTHOR

DANIEL GREENFIELD

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

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VIDEO: Ex-Jesuit ‘Alberto Rivera’ Discusses The Infiltration Of The Jesuits by Communists

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By Dr. Rich Swier

BACKGROUND:

Alberto Magno Romero Rivera (1935 – 1997). Alberto was an anti-Catholic religious activist who was the source of many of fundamentalist Christian author Jack Chick’s stories about the Vatican. Chick promised to promote Alberto’s claims even after he died. Rivera claimed to have been a Jesuit before becoming a Fundamentalist Protestant, and many of the stories Chick published about Rivera involve Jesuit conspiracies.

According to Rivera: After education at a Catholic Seminary, he was sent to destroy various Protestant organizations and discredit Protestant leaders, but became disillusioned upon finding that the Vatican was behind Freemasonry and that its reverence of the Virgin Mary was contradicted by the Bible. In 1965, at an Ecumenical Conference in a Guatemalan stadium, he denounced the Catholic Church to an audience of 50,000 people. The Jesuits then sent him to a top-secret Sanatorium in Spain to make him recant his faith. Here he was tortured and given drugs until he nearly died, eventually being put into an IRON LONG because his lungs had broken down from the abuse. Nearly at death, he asked Jesus to forgive him and was miraculously healed. A senior Jesuit attempted to persuade Rivera to return to Catholicism, but instead was himself persuaded to give Rivera the passport and papers he needed to escape Spain. Afterwards he flew to London and rescued his sister María, a nun, after she nearly died in a convent.

According to Rivera, Jesuits are responsible for the creation of communism, Islam, and Nazism, and causing the World Wars, recession, the Jonestown Massacre, and the assassinations of Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy; he further claims that the Catholic Church wants to spread Homosexuality and abortion, that the Charismatic Movement is a front for the Catholic Church, that the Popes are antichrists, that the Catholic Church is the Whore of Babylon, and that Muhammad was used by the Catholic Church to create Islam and destroy the Jews and other groups of Christians.

Alberto was killed in his own congregation by people He knew. These people disguised themselves as saints of the Most High and played the role of saints, with the purpose to kill and destroy “Bible believing.”

Throughout Christendom, Protestantism was menaced by formidable foes. The first triumphs of the reformation past, Rome summoned new forces, hoping to accomplish its destruction. At this time the ORDER OF THE JESUITS was created, the most cruel, unscrupulous, and powerful of all the champions of popery. Cut off from earthly ties and human interest, dead to the claims of natural affection, reason and conscience wholly silence, they knew no rule, no tie, but that of their order, and no duty but to extend its power. The gospel of the Savior had enabled its adherents to meet danger and endured suffering, undismayed by cold, hunger, toil, and poverty, to uphold the banner of truth in face of the rack, the dungeon, and the stake. To combat these forces, Jesuitism inspired it followers with a fanaticism that enabled them to endure like dangers, and to oppose to the power of truth all the weapons of deception. There was no crime too great for them to commit, no deception too base for them to practice, no disguise too difficult for them to assume. Vowed to perpetual poverty and humility, it was their studied aim to secure wealth and power, to be devoted to the overthrow of Protestantism, and the re-establishment of the papal supremacy.

More information:

The Most Powerful Man In The World? The “Black” Pope

The Missing Moderate Muslims thumbnail

The Missing Moderate Muslims

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By Amil Imani

I keep hoping that the purported peace-loving moderate Muslims are indeed the great majority who would prove me right by demonstrating their peacefulness and moderation in action. Thus far, only a faint murmur of equivocation is all that I hear from these people.

“I am already against the next war”, read the bumper sticker on a car ahead of me. I long to tell the driver: the next war is already here; Islamists are waging it in every corner of the globe and the “moderate Muslims” are either actively supporting them, placing the blame on the West, or simply looking the other way. This war aims to wipe out everything that free people cherish, including the right of expressing their sentiments. Banishing war has been the perennial dream of mankind’s best, while its worst has been frustrating its realization. To renounce war unilaterally and unconditionally is surrender and death.

Humanity has suffered horrific wars in the past. Yet, the present multi-form and multi-front war waged by Islamists has the potential of inflicting more suffering and destroying more lives than any before it. Ruthless Islamic forces are advancing rapidly in their conquests while those of freedom are acquiescing and retreating. Before long, Islamism is poised to achieve its Allah-mandated goal of cleansing the earth of all non-Muslims. Any and all means and weapons are to be enlisted in the service of this final holy war that aims to establish the Islamic Ummah.

But Islam is a religion of peace and the great majority of Muslims are not a party to any plans and actions of the radicals, so claim academic pundits, leftist journalists, and hired Islamic apologists. The incantation of these “authorities” is the lullaby that puts the people into a sleep of complacency. For an average free human busy with all manners of demands on his time and resources, would hardly want to worry about the threat of Islamism when those he believes are “in the know” emphatically claim that there is nothing to worry about. Some of these advocates of Islam go further by accusing those who sound the alarm as racists, bigots, hatemongers, and much more.

But where are all the peace-loving moderate Muslims that supposedly are in the great majority? The Muslims who are neither jihadists themselves, nor do they support them? I and others, time and again, have been calling upon them to stand up and show the world that they oppose the fanatical Islamists. It is small comfort even if the vast majority of Muslims are not fanatic radicals when they do nothing to demonstrate their position. It is instructive to recall that it is invariably a minority, and more often than not a very small minority, that launches a campaign of death and destruction.

Perhaps it is wishful thinking on the part of the non-Muslims to believe that one can be a Muslim moderate, given that Islam is radical at its very core. To be moderate Muslim demands that the person explicitly renounce much of the violent, exclusionary, and radical teachings of the Quran. By so doing, the individual who issues his own death warrant in Islamic countries is condemned as apostate if he lives in a non-Islamic land and may even earn a fatwa on his head.

It is deadly, in any confrontation, to assess the adversary through one’s own mental template, because the two templates can be vastly different from each other. People in the West are accustomed to relativistic rather than absolutistic thinking. To Westerners, just about all matters range from black to white with an array of gray shades between the two poles. To Muslims, by contrast, nearly everything is in black and white and with virtually no shades of gray. The former type of thinking is typical of more mature minds, while the latter is that of young children and the less enlightened.

This absolutist thinking is enshrined in the Quran itself. When the starting point for a Muslim is the explicit fanatical words of Allah in the Quran, then the faithful are left with no choice other than literally obeying its dictates or even taking it to the next level of fanaticism. Good Muslims, for instance, do not shake hands with women, even though the Quran does not explicitly forbid it. Although the Quran stipulates that men are rulers over women, good Muslim men take it upon themselves to rule women not much better than they treat their domesticated animals.

All extreme systems operate outside of the constraints of checks and balances and according to the principle of a negative feedback loop. That is, once it starts, the extreme becomes more and more extreme until self-destructs and takes the larger system down with it. Cancer is a case in point. It begins with only a few cells. Left unchecked, the few cells continue expanding and stop only with the death of the host.

Fanatical Islam may indeed be a minority. Yet it is deadly cancer that has metastasized throughout the body of the world. Urgent confrontation of this advancing disease is imperative to stave it off.

Dozens of Islamist shooting wars of lesser and greater bloodletting are presently raging in the world, aided and abetted by the “moderate Muslim” majority. The so-called moderate Muslims, even if they exist, are complicit in the crimes of the radicals either by providing them with funds, logistics, and new recruits or by simply failing to actively confront and unequivocally renounce them.

As is the case with cancer cells, it is the malignant minority that is death-bearing.

In Germany in the 1930s, for instance, very few people were Nazis and most Germans dismissed them as a bunch of hot-headed fools. Before long, the hot-headed few cowed in the dismissive masses and as a result, millions lost their lives.

The tentacles of the Islamist hydra have deeply penetrated the world. The Egyptian-based Muslim Brotherhood poses a clear threat in Egypt with its large block of representatives in the parliament, but also wages its deadly campaign through its hundreds of well-established and functioning branches all over the world.

The Wahhabis finance thousands of madrassahs throughout the world where young boys are brainwashed into becoming fanatical foot soldiers for the Petrodollar-flush Saudis and other emirs of the Persian Gulf.

The end-of-the-world believers of the bomb-aspiring Iran’s Khomeinism are busy establishing the Shia hegemony in an arc extending from the Gulf of Oman to the Mediterranean Sea.

Al Qaeda and dozens of its like-minded jihadists relentlessly carry their barbaric campaigns in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kashmir, the Philippines, the former Soviet Union republics, the Russian Federation, Somalia, North Africa, and parts of Europe, as well as other lands.

I keep hoping that the purported peace-loving moderate Muslims are indeed the great majority who would prove me right by demonstrating their peacefulness and moderation in action. Thus far, only a faint murmur of equivocation is all that I hear from these people.

Are “moderate Muslims” an illusion? The only viable alternative for peaceful people of Islamic background, therefore, is to leave the bondage of violent Islam altogether and join ranks with humanity’s free.

The selected puppet president Ahmadinejad boasts that Iran’s mullahs’ nuclear train has no reverse gear and lacks brakes. He should harbor no illusions. The non-Islamist masses of Iranians will not docilely submit to the mullahs’ maniacal plans. It is the unmatched force of freedom that has no reverse gear and it is the force fully capable and determined to bring the mullahs’ train to a screeching halt before it is armed with the Armageddon nuclear weapons they so doggedly pursue.

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