The following comes from a March 15 Alliance Defending Freedom press release:
Secretary of State John Kerry said Thursday that the United States recognizes the atrocities perpetrated by ISIS/Daesh against Yazidis, Christians, and Shia Muslims as genocide. Alliance Defending Freedom International, which authored an extensive analysis of the issue as part of a report the Knights of Columbus provided to Kerry, says it welcomes this statement as an important first step in stopping the atrocities against Christians and other religious minorities in Syria and Iraq and bringing the perpetrators to justice.
“As a permanent member of the UN Security Council, the United States has an influential role to play in supporting a referral to the International Criminal Court to condemn and prosecute the perpetrators,” Douglas Napier, senior counsel and executive director of ADF International explained. “Once it is recognized that genocide is happening, the 147 countries who are party to the UN Genocide Convention, including the U.S., have an obligation to do all they can to bring the killing of innocent people to an end.”
ISIS deliberately targets religious and ethnic minority groups in the Middle East for destruction. The number of Christians has dropped from 2 million to less than 1 million in Syria, and from 1.4 million to less than 260,000 in Iraq in just a few years. The Yazidis in the region of Kurdistan have been almost entirely wiped out. The atrocities include assassinations of church leaders, torture, mass murders, kidnapping, sexual enslavement and systematic rape of Christian and Yazidi girls and women, and the destruction of churches, monasteries, and cemeteries.
It’s a start from Washington and yes this is tragedy. Now add ABORTION, UTHENASIA, SELF INDUCED SUICIDE, ECT to the list.
Our Leaders in the Church have rightly Condemned this Genocide in the strongest terms.
Yet it continues – and in too many places Grows.
What Must We as Catholics Do?
Must we Fight Force with Force to Stop this Evil?
They sure don’t seem very amenable to Christian Charity or Forgiveness, and the level of atrocity is meant to intimidate – How Should We Respond?
Christian populations especially Catholic believers are the most persecuted people in the world today. In Iraq alone 95% of the Christian populations have either been killed or forced to leave the country. Why is not there the same public outcry in the western media or governments of the world to this massive genocide of Christians the way there is to the Syrian refugee crisis? The reason there is no public outcry to the Christian and Catholic populations of the world is because our governments especially across the western world are trying very hard to get rid of God in all its institutions. This persecution of Christians and Catholics will in the not too distant future take place in the Western world. Our only defense to this…
This is to complete my comment. Our only defense to this persecution is to pray Rosary every single day of the week. I would even encourage all of you to pray all four Rosaries every day. Also pray the Divine Mercy Chaplet every day in this the year of Mercy. Viva Cristo Rey. Long live Christ the King our true Lord God and Saviour’
Wow. John is totally correct. Prayer is the ONLY answer. Pray the Rosary. The political sideshow is a distraction; NONE of that stuff matters any more – REALLY. I was really slow coming around to this. Personally, I’ve got to make up for lost time prayer-wise. Thanks for the reminder, John.
Player is the Greatest – but can use the occasional assist.
SEE WW-2 Story:
Chaplain Forgy’ – was stationed aboard the USS New Orleans, and we were tied up at 1010 dock in Pearl Harbor when we attacked again.
We were having a turbine lifted, and all of our electrical power wasn’t on, and so when we went to lift the ammunition by the hoist, we had to form lines of men — form a bucket brigade — and we began to carry the ammunition up through the quarterdeck into the gurneys, and I stood there and directed some of the boys down the port side and some down the starboard side, and as they were getting a little tired,
I just happened to say, “Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition.”
That’s all there was to it.
Michael McDermont, if this is the same minister I heard about, he ended up shooting a weapon himself to help keep all the men from being massacred, or Chaplain Forgy got the saying from an older story about a minister who said and did such things. It is an American legend, regardless.
“Prayer” – is the Greatest… Regardless if the spoolchucker prints the word wrong.