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Tuesday, October 24, 2023

Offsite Post: ‘The Christian Persecutions No One Will Talk About’

 

Pres. Biden is at it again – requesting tens of billions of dollars (that we don’t have) to spend in support of the wars engaged in by our ‘close allies’ the Ukraine and Israel.  But what if those countries weren’t really that friendly towards the US and the things we hold dear?  Would that change people’s minds about supporting them?

Let’s have a look at the Ukraine first.  We mentioned before some of the ways that the Zelensky government is persecuting Christians there.  Now the national legislature is taking it to another level:  It is nearing the passage of a bill that would completely outlaw the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, the largest church in the country.  It was no close vote in the first round, either – 267 For, 5 Against (a second round is required before final passage):


Without clearly defining the concept of this “affiliation,” the mentioned bill empowers the State Service of Ukraine for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience, led by a person who is hostile towards the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, to judge in each particular case. This body, guided by criteria unknown to anyone, will conduct a so-called religious study, based on the conclusion of which a judicial decision will be made. One doesn't need to be a lawyer to understand that the proposed scheme opens the door to all sorts of abuses…

 

Initiators and supporters of the adoption of this bill in Ukraine—senior government officials, deputies of the Verkhovna Rada, radical politicians, and public figures—do not hide that the bill is directed against the largest religious community in Ukraine and aims to eliminate the Ukrainian Orthodox Church as a centralized structure, as well as all its dioceses, parishes, and monasteries individually…

 

The adoption of this bill was preceded by a whole set of measures directed against the canonical Church in Ukraine: a slanderous anti-Church campaign in the national media, seizures of churches with the use of gross violence against clergy and believers, initiation of numerous fictitious criminal cases, pressure on the episcopate by special services, attempts to seize the cradle of Russian monasticism—the Holy Dormition-Kiev Caves Lavra, and other major monasteries with the forced eviction of their residents, as well as a wave of forced closures by local authorities of churches of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, a ban on its services, the seizure of land plots occupied by its monasteries, churches, and shrines.

There is also the Ukrainian Legislature’s proposal to legalize pornography, Zelensky’s push to legalize same-sex ‘marriage’, as well as his public support for legalizing prostitution and gambling and for making abortion a free service for any woman (the latter three are mentioned in this article).  Such things will only make life for Christians much more difficult than they are at present in the Ukraine.

Does this kind of behavior warrant large-scale financial and moral backing from the peoples of the States and their federal government?

Things haven’t been much better in Israel for Christians.  The Jerusalem Post reported,


So far in 2023, there have been dozens of attacks by extremist Jews on Christians or Christian sites, ranging from the merely unpleasant to vandalism and assault. “Definitely there has been an increase—in the last year, a very high increase—in all types of violence, spitting, attacks on sites, provocations,” Farid Jubran, general counsel of the Catholic Church's Custody of the Holy Land, told The Media Line. Jubran said the recently created Religious Freedom Data Center lists 20 incidents in July alone, and that he knew of incidents that were not reported, either because the victims were unaware of the center's hotline or because they had grown accustomed to such incidents and did not bother reporting them. In January this year, almost 30 graves at a Protestant cemetery on Mount Zion in Jerusalem were vandalized. Two Orthodox Jewish teenagers, one aged 18 and the other 14, were arrested based on surveillance camera footage. Since then, in Jerusalem alone, further incidents have included: A mob of at least a dozen Orthodox Jews overturning tables and throwing chairs at the Taboon Armenian restaurant; a Jewish American tourist toppling a statue of Jesus at the Church of the Flagellation; two Jewish men attacking a bishop and two priests during Mass at the Church of Gethsemane; two Jewish passersby pepper-spraying a young man outside the Armenian convent; and a window in the Cenacle or Upper Room on Mount Zion, where Jesus and the apostles are believed to have held the Last Supper, being smashed by a Jewish man.

Readers can also watch a parade of Orthodox Jews spitting at Christians carrying a Cross in Jerusalem.

But one of the worst incidents happened on Friday, 20 Oct., when an Israeli bomb hit the ancient St. Porphyrios Orthodox Church in Gaza:


The Holy Orthodox Order of St. George the Great Martyr reports:

 

We have just received confirmation from multiple sources in Gaza that Saint Porphyrios Orthodox Church has been bombed today. Archbishop Alexios appears to have been located and is alive, but we don’t know if he is injured. We have no word on the condition of any other of the more than 500 people being housed at the church and monastery, including the person who has been our source for most of our information.

 

The bombs hit the two church halls where the refugees, including children and babies, were sleeping. Presently, survivors are searching the rubble for other casualties. Our source at the scene says that they estimate that 150-200 people are dead, and that number is expected to rise as more people are found in the wreckage.

Sadly, this isn’t the first time Israel has bombed something that many in the US would consider highly valuable.  Dr. Paul Craig Roberts sheds light on the mostly unheard of Israeli attack on the USS Liberty in an essay of his, which includes a timely warning on allowing any country to unduly influence US foreign policy:

 . . .

The rest is at https://identitydixie.com/2023/10/24/the-christian-persecutions-no-one-will-talk-about/.

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Thanks to the folks at Katehon for publishing an essay originally carried by The Hayride on the Gaza war:

https://katehon.com/en/article/bad-theology-leads-bad-foreign-policy

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Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!

Anathema to the Union!

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