With All Due Respect...
"With all possible respect for the pastor of souls, instead of helping Africa's poor come to Europe, my duty in the government is to first think of the millions of Italian poor."
"Am I wrong?"
"[Undocumented immigrants represent a] tide of delinquents [to be sent packing]."
"I am the least of the good Christians. But I don't think I deserve as much. I am reassured by the fact I receive on a daily basis the support of so many [Italian citizens] women and men of the church."
Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini
"If there are Christians that feel an ease in saying no to reception, the church must ask itself a question."
"This means we have spoken about Jesus -- performed ceremonies and done liturgies -- but we surely haven't created a mentality according to the gospel."
Bishop Nunzio Galantino, secretary general, Italian Bishops' Conference
"[There is a need to] save our own humanity from vulgarity and barbarization [by saving lives], beginning with the most exposed, humiliated and trampled upon."
Statement, Italian Bishops' Conference
"It's really unprecedented that the official voices of the Catholic Church are so squarely opposed."
"That hasn't happened before. The Catholic Church is the opposition, basically."
Massimo Faggioli, Villanova University professor of Catholicism and European politics
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| Pope Francis waves to pilgrims gathered in St Peter's square during his Sunday Angelus prayer |
There was a time when fascism swept Italy in the first quarter of the 20th Century. It was a nationalism supported by the Catholic Church. A Catholic Church that in its holiness deigned not to remonstrate with Benito Mussolini or with his collegial partnership with Nazi Germany. Mussolini may not have been a Nazi, but he certainly was a fascist. And the Catholic Church of the day made no overt effort to publicly distance itself from either Mussolini or to denounce Hitler's vicious anti-Semitism, nor to protest the deadly victimization of Jews.
In a new world order with a new situation where refugees are suddenly embraced and not spurned while their status as refugees is questionable as it has been observed that most are really economic migrants, their search is not for rescue from certain mass death in a genocidal plan to finally rid the world of Jews, political opponents, homosexuals, Roma, and those with physical and mental disabilities, but for opportunities to advance their economic futures as much as to escape oppressive governments and constant tribal conflicts.
There must compassion be directed without hesitation or stint. That the cost is great in the sense that there is a sacrifice of sovereignty and often public security, that there are few expectations the incoming hordes will shed their faith in a religion that holds them responsible for the imperative to jihad -- in missionary work for Islam, and incites them to decry other religions and reject any law but Sharia, bringing with them a culture inimical to integration and to equality among the genders is but a detail to the Vatican.
Its singular and separate state of comfortable isolation will be unchallenged by the influx of 'those in need' of succour. Italy's new stance on rejecting further absorption of migrants and haven-seekers has the opprobrium of parish priests who insist that anti-migrants "cannot call themselves Christian", that the "Italy First" movement is a rejection of Christian values.
In reality, welcoming incalculable hordes of Muslims in very fact is a rejection of Christian values, for the haven claimants do so, and as their numbers increase the fallout will soon be visible and visibly felt in their spurning and contempt for "Christian values".
The anti-immigrant sentiment building across Europe, saturated beyond a hellish nightmare by those claiming haven and drowning the continent in a heritage and culture bred of tribalism and Islamic sectarian violence and a rejection of humanistic values of equality and tolerance and pluralism has offended Pope Francis whose papacy speaks of the humanity and rights of migrants. The reverse appears to be of no concern to this shepherd of god's word, but that the developed world must be prepared to sacrifice its rights and humanity to that of those opposing them.
The move by Catholic countries aside from Italy; Poland and Austria, to no longer open their arms to alien migrants who share little in cultural commonality with their values has jolted the Church into action. Francis asks nations to "decisively and immediately" act in prevention of the "tragedy" of deaths at sea of migrants who decisively and resolutely and immoderately set out to place themselves in situations of potential lethal harm while seeking the level of social services and human welfare absent in their countries of birth.
The resolute action of the Western world in opposing those same conditions ushering in a new world order for themselves is too much to expect of those from Africa and the Middle East.
Italy has seen over 650,000 foreigners arrive at its shores since 2014, uninvited and unappreciated past the first wave of welcome. Viewing Italy's plight its neighbours had no wish to share the burden to process asylum claims. Germany and Austria, Sweden, Norway and the Netherlands opened their hearts and the borders and the swell of burgeoning migrants inevitably overwhelmed the welcome, in the process transforming the welcoming countries in the short view, but nothing as opposed to what will occur in the long run.
But they performed their Christian obligations in fine form.
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| Pope Francis (C) delivers his speech next to Ecumenic Patriarch of the Orthodox Church Bartolomeo I (C-L), Egypt’s Coptic Orthodox Pope Tawadros (Theodoros) II (C-R) and other religous leaders after their meeting at the Pontifical Basilica of St Nicholas in Bari, in the Apulia region in southern Italy, on July 7, 2018. Pope Francis, during the five years of his papacy, has spoken about the humanity and rights of migrants, cautioning about the anti-immigrant sentiment taking hold in parts of the developed world. |
Labels: Catholic Church, Europe, Migrants, Pope Francis, Refugees, Vatican
posted by Pieface @ Monday, July 30, 2018
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