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"Whenever I try to raise the topic of persecuted Christians in EU minister's meetings everybody says: 'Peter, better say 'religious minorities'. Well I WANT to say 'persecuted Christians'.." Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Sziijártó at the International Conference on Christian Persecution that took place recently in Budapest and was ignored by the press.
"Finally, on hearing about the persecution of Christians, the greatest mistake Europeans can ever make is to say that this could never happen to them in their own country. Many
people share this delusion, even though Europe has been repeatedly struck by terrorism.
We also know that the western countries of Europe have provided the Islamic State with many soldiers who were born and went to school here in the West. We alsok now that illegal and uncontrolled migration flows have resulted in the arrival in Europe of masses of adherents of radical Islam. Demographic forecasts also indicate that in the not too distant future there will be European countries undergoing rapid change in the religious and cultural composition of their populations. Everything that has happened in Syria and Iraq – or what is happening in Nigeria today – is much closer to us than many people think. We believe that the only thing that can save Europe from this is for it to find its way back to the source of its true values: to Christian identity." Viktor Orban at the same conference. My old friend Melanie McDonagh writes about it here.
Catholic Mass attendance in Great Britain overtook Anglican attendance around the turn of the century. A bigger proportion of the population in Great Britain attends Catholic Mass than in France. But Catholicism in Great Britain is also in steep decline and many Mass goers in England are Poles, Slovaks, Lithuanians and other foreigners, of course. Damian Thompson, until he recently resigned editor of the Catholic Herald, says that by mid-century mosque attendance will overtake church attendance in the UK.
Meanwhile, stranger and stranger things happen in Catholic churches. Catholicism, which, until the present Pope ascended the throne, seemed rock-like and unchanging now seems to change.
Here is a quotation from a letter that Archbishop Vigano wrote yesterday to Alexander Tschugguel. He is the young man, 26, who, during the Amazon Synod, seized several “Pachamama” statues from a church in Rome and threw them into the Tiber. On Saturday he organised a public praying of the rosary outside St Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna, while a concert was held there to mark World Aids Day.
Archbishop Vigano wrote:
"Finally, on hearing about the persecution of Christians, the greatest mistake Europeans can ever make is to say that this could never happen to them in their own country. Many
people share this delusion, even though Europe has been repeatedly struck by terrorism.
We also know that the western countries of Europe have provided the Islamic State with many soldiers who were born and went to school here in the West. We alsok now that illegal and uncontrolled migration flows have resulted in the arrival in Europe of masses of adherents of radical Islam. Demographic forecasts also indicate that in the not too distant future there will be European countries undergoing rapid change in the religious and cultural composition of their populations. Everything that has happened in Syria and Iraq – or what is happening in Nigeria today – is much closer to us than many people think. We believe that the only thing that can save Europe from this is for it to find its way back to the source of its true values: to Christian identity." Viktor Orban at the same conference. My old friend Melanie McDonagh writes about it here.
Catholic Mass attendance in Great Britain overtook Anglican attendance around the turn of the century. A bigger proportion of the population in Great Britain attends Catholic Mass than in France. But Catholicism in Great Britain is also in steep decline and many Mass goers in England are Poles, Slovaks, Lithuanians and other foreigners, of course. Damian Thompson, until he recently resigned editor of the Catholic Herald, says that by mid-century mosque attendance will overtake church attendance in the UK.
Meanwhile, stranger and stranger things happen in Catholic churches. Catholicism, which, until the present Pope ascended the throne, seemed rock-like and unchanging now seems to change.
Here is a quotation from a letter that Archbishop Vigano wrote yesterday to Alexander Tschugguel. He is the young man, 26, who, during the Amazon Synod, seized several “Pachamama” statues from a church in Rome and threw them into the Tiber. On Saturday he organised a public praying of the rosary outside St Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna, while a concert was held there to mark World Aids Day.
Archbishop Vigano wrote:
"Idolatry stifles truth in injustice, it darkens the mind and perverts judgment. Then man, at the mercy of the tyranny of his vile passions and his wandering desires, abandons himself to every form of perversion and impurity, “to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever” (Rom 1:24).
"Once again Vienna, the glorious capital that was able to resist the advance of the Ottoman Horde with the weapons of light and faith, suffers — dismayed and scandalized — yet another homoerotic and blasphemous provocation. Gay activists, transvestites and transsexuals perform on the Cathedra of St. Stephen Cathedra, when instead they should receive from the Catholic Church the proclamation of Christ’s liberating Truth and the gift of his saving Love, freely offered to all those who, from the depths of their wounds and repentance, dare to acknowledge their need for salvation."
Jesus was a 1st century rabbi and accepted I presume the teaching "If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death; their blood is upon them." Jesus said,"For verily I say unto you, till. heaven and earth pass, one jot or one. tittle shall in no wise pass from. the law, till all be fulfilled." Except the Pope has ruled that capital punishment is never justified. Robin Lane Fox's Pagans and Christians (1986) explains how homosexuality and bisexuality were taken or granted in the ancient world, for men, and goes on to say: "As for homosexuality, Paul and the early epistles agreed with the accepted Jewish view that it was a deadly sin that provoked God's wrath. It led to earthquakes and natural disasters, which were evident in the fate of Sodom. The absence of Gospel teaching on the subject did not amount to tacit approval. All orthodox Christians knew that homosexuals went to hell, until a modern minority tried to make them forget it." R L-F is an atheist, by the way.
ReplyDeleteThe decline of the West is closely linked to the decline of Christianity.
ReplyDelete