There are a lot of Christians bravely facing death in the Middle East these days.
“We are Prepared to Die Here and Now” said one Iraqi Christian woman to ISIL marauders when they demanded she and her friends convert. Read about it in the Catholic Herald.
Meantime in Syria, a country that is 10% Christian (a hundred years ago like Lebanon, it was over 60% Christian) a Priest and 20 of his church members have been kidnapped, another priest and nuns have gone into hiding, and it is not looking good for them. There are no Christian special forces to go in and rescue the kidnapped ones, nor those being ethnically cleansed.
Then there is this great story of a very brave 28-year-old from Wisconsin who said, “I was sick of just sitting and watching Christians getting slaughtered,” and took off to fight ISIL in Syria. He ran into another American guy doing the same thing and barely had time to get his name before ISIL shelled their position.
“Like many Americans, Jordan Matson is outraged by the brutality of the Islamic State. But unlike virtually every other American, he decided to take the militants head-on.”
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Are we going to allow ethnic cleansing in the Middle East?
“One cannot resign oneself to conceiving the Middle East without Christians,†Vatican ambassadors sent by the Pope said in an official statement. They reminded everyone of the 2,000-year history of Christians inhabiting the Middle East. Two thousand years is a long time to just throw away. Jews have been there even longer, of course.
I really like this giant Detroit billboard, “Save the Iraqi Christians!”
