Sunday, March 22, 2015

A Few Obscure Things From Tonight's 60 Minutes

I hope you watched it. There was a report on the genocide of Christians in the Middle East. The story largely speaks for itself, but a couple of things struck me that weren't really part of the discussion.


1. These poor people are living as refugees. They basically have nothing. However, their liturgies are still beautiful and spare nothing. Incense, elegant vestments, precious metals for sacred vessels, it's all there. I wonder what those who think we should dispense of such things would say. Well, not really, as I'm pretty certain they would lament how callous our brethren there are towards the poor or how primitive and stupid they are.

2. There was some commentary on the silence among Muslims but not a whole lot of discussion about the rest of the world. As I've said before, there's all sorts of retroactive grief over how nobody acknowledged the Holocaust until it was too late. We're watching a genocide in real time and nobody cares. I get that people in Israel say "Never again" and are worried about existential threats. They should be. The existential threat to Christianity isn't even a threat. It's reality. And it's treated as a fait accompli. The world has accepted the extermination of Christians in the Middle East (and probably Africa too if we're honest). At least Israel has a military to defend itself. When was the last time Christians did?

3. If you left the Faith because your daughter couldn't be an altar girl or because you wanted a place with better music or you just didn't like waking up early on Sunday/praying/whatever, then you should be embarrassed when you hear about the countless martyrs being created all over the world.

It goes without saying: note of these stories while you can. Remember them. They'll go away soon enough. And we'll listen to the hypocrites that lead our nations shed crocodile tears and comment on how tragic it all was. 

Shameful.


2 comments:

Boniface said...

I saw it playing on a television in the party store I went into tonight. The party store is owned by Chaldean Catholics and when the program came on they were like, "Ooh turn this up!" And we all stood around and watched it for a few minutes in the store.

Throwback said...

Is there an actual Chaldean parish around you? I've wanted to go to one ever since Desert Storm. I keep thinking we'll probably see a few more spring up here stateside as more people flee the horrors of their homeland.