David QuinnPersecution of Christians is becoming worse, but does the Church in Ireland care, asks David Quinn
In 1956 Fr Werenfried van Straaten visited Hungary’s Cardinal Jozsef Mindszenty and decided he must do something to help the Church in Hungary which was being massively persecuted under communism, especially as a result of the uprising of that year.
Fr Werenfried was a master organiser and soon had aid pouring into Hungary to help the Church in need there.
Fr Werenfried was, of course, also known as the ‘bacon priest’ and he founded the organisation aptly named ‘Aid to the Church in Need’.
He became known as the ‘bacon priest’ because he made an appeal for food for the millions of people who had been displaced from their homes at the end of World War II, and appealed for bacon in particular knowing it was one of the few foodstuffs still in relatively plentiful supply.
Cardinal Mindszenty and Fr Werenfried were well-matched. The cardinal was a symbol of resistance against communist oppression and had himself been tortured and imprisoned by the communists who took over his country with the help of the Soviet army towards the end of the Second World War.
Fr Werenfried dedicated himself for the rest of his life to providing moral and material support to the Church in need everywhere it could be reached.
Communism
Today, we tend to think the Church is no longer in such great need. Communism has fallen in most parts of the world and if we think of the Church in need we tend to think in terms of material needs.
But the persecution of Christians is not diminishing, it is becoming worse. The difference between the persecution of the past and the present is that we seemed to care much more about it in the past.
The Church in Ireland, for example, championed the cause of Cardinal Mindszenty and every Catholic was aware of the plight of their fellow Christians behind the Iron Curtain.
Today, we seem only vaguely aware of the often extreme persecution being suffered by our fellow Christians in many parts of the world including still communist countries like China and North Korea but also and increasingly in Muslim countries either at the hands of Islamist governments, or Islamist groups, or both.
In Nigeria, for example, the Government is not persecuting Christians but in the Muslim north of the country Christians are being killed and driven from their homes by the fanatical Islamists of the terrorist group, Boko Haram.
Interestingly and tellingly, Boko Haram really only came to international attention when they kidnapped over 200 schoolgirls a few months ago. But they have been killing Christians for years.
In Saudi Arabia on the other hand, Christians are mostly safe from terrorist groups or random acts of violence, but the problem is the Government. There is no religious freedom in Saudi Arabia whatsoever.
In Pakistan, the Government, while Muslim, does not persecute Christians, but they are heavily persecuted all the same because much of Pakistan is lawless.
Irony
A terrible irony is that Christians were usually safer under the military dictatorships of the Arab world so long as they kept their heads down.
But as those dictatorships have fallen, instead of another, more benign form of law and order taking over, there has been anarchy instead and in the anarchic conditions that currently obtain in countries like Libya, Syria and Iraq, a ferocious persecution has been unleashed upon Christians by Islamist groups.
Those groups often attack fellow Muslims as well because their faith is deemed to be not sufficiently zealous or because they belong to the wrong branch of Islam, but without doubt Christians are bearing the brunt of it.
There is not the slightest question that Christianity is currently the most persecuted religion in the world today. Even in India, Christians have found themselves targeted by Hindu militants.
The most high profile persecution of Christians currently taking place is in northern Iraq. The ultra-militant Islamist group, ISIS, has ordered them to convert, pay a huge religious tax, leave or be killed.
The last few thousand Christians left have now fled Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city. What is happening is not dissimilar to what Oliver Cromwell did to the Irish Catholic population in the 17th Century.
Christianity has, of course, been a presence in Iraq longer than it has been here in Ireland. Christianity predates the arrival of Islam by several hundred years.
Mosul encompasses the ancient Biblical site of Ninevah and the reputed burial place of Jonah is there. That has been destroyed by ISIS.
Little of any of this is being given the attention it deserves. Not alone is it absent from the headlines, it has hardly being reported on at all.
But can we blame the media when our own Churches have drawn so little attention to what is happening? The only statement specifically about the situation in Mosul that I have come across from an Irish Church leader was issued by the Church of Ireland Archbishop of Armagh, Dr Richard Clarke.
Meeting
The Cardinal Archbishop of Lyon in France has just spent four days in Iraq meeting Christians there. Our bishops need to do something like that.
They should organise vigils. They should speak about it from the pulpit. They should lobby politicians. They should encourage ordinary Catholics to do the same.
We have to begin to show more solidarity to our persecuted fellow believers.