Friday, August 30, 2019
Tuesday, August 27, 2019
PAG-UUSIG SA IGLESIA NOON HANGGANG NGAYON
Ang pag-uusig sa Iglesia ni Cristo sa Gitnang Silangan noong Unang Siglo ay patuloy na nangyayari hanggang sa kasalukuyan. Ang mga kapatid natin sa Gitnang Silangan ay pinangangambahang tuluyan nang mawawala kung hindi natin ipaglaban ang kanilang pag-iral sa gitna ng panggigipit ng relihiyong Islam.
THE EXTINCTION OF CHRISTIANS IN THE MIDDLE EAST
by Giulio Meotti Gatestone Institute
August 18, 2019 at 5:00 am
- "I don't believe in these two words [human rights], there are no human rights. But in Western countries, there are animal rights. In Australia they take care of frogs.... Look upon us as frogs, we'll accept that — just protect us so we can stay in our land." — Metropolitan Nicodemus, the Syriac Orthodox archbishop of Mosul, National Catholic Register.
- "Those people are the same ones who came here many years ago. And we accepted them. We are the original people in this land. We accepted them, we opened the doors for them, and they push us to be minorities in our land, then refugees in our land. And this will be with you if you don't wake up." — Metropolitan Nicodemus.
- "Threats to pandas cause more emotion" than threats to the extinction of the Christians in the Middle East. — Amin Maalouf, French-Lebanese author, Le Temps.
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| Most Christian churches in and around Mosul, Iraq were desecrated or destroyed by ISIS. Pictured: The heavily damaged bell tower of Saint John's Church (Mar Yohanna) in the town of Qaraqosh, near Mosul, on April 16, 2017. (Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images) |
Two years ago, ISIS was defeated in Mosul and its Caliphate crushed. The extremists, however, had succeeded in "cleansing" the Christians. Before the rise of ISIS, there were more than 15,000 Christians there. In July 2019, the Catholic charity, Aid to the Church in Need, disclosed that only about 40 Christians have come back. Not long ago, Mosul had "Christmas celebrations without Christians".
This cultural genocide, thanks to the indifference of Europeans and many Western Christians more worried about not appearing "Islamophobic" than defending their own brothers, sadly worked. Father Ragheed Ganni, for instance, a Catholic priest from Mosul, had just finished celebrating mass in his church when Islamists killed him. In one of his last letters, Ganni wrote: "We are on the verge of collapse". That was in 2007 -- almost ten years before ISIS eradicated the Christians of Mosul. "Has the world 'looked the other way' while Christians are killed?" the Washington Post asked. Definitely.
Traces of a lost Jewish past have also resurfaced in Mosul, where a Jewish community had also lived for thousands of years. Now, 2,000 years later, both Judaism and Christianity have effectively been annihilated there. That life is over. The newspaper La Vie collected the testimony of a Christian, Yousef (the name has been changed), who fled in the night of August 6, 2014, just before ISIS arrived. "It was a real exodus", Yousef said.
"The road was black with people, I did not see either the beginning or the end of this procession. There were children were crying, families dragging small suitcases. Old men were on the shoulders of their sons. People were thirsty, it was very hot. We have lost all that we have built for life and nobody fought for us".
Some communities, such as the tiny Christian pockets in Mosul, are almost certainly lost forever", wrote two American scholars in Foreign Policy.
"We are on the precipice of catastrophe, and unless we act soon, within weeks, the tiny remnants of Christian communities in Iraq may be mostly eradicated by the genocide being committed against Christians in Iraq and Syria".
In Mosul alone, 45 churches were vandalized or destroyed. Not a single one was spared. Today there is only one church open in the city. ISIS apparently also wanted to destroy Christian history there. They targeted the monastery of Saints Behnam and Sarah, founded in the fourth century. The monastery had survived the seventh century Islamic conquest and subsequent invasions, but in 2017, crosses were destroyed, cells were looted, and statues of the Virgin Mary were beheaded. The Iraqi priest, Najeeb Michaeel, who saved 850 manuscripts from the Islamic State, was ordained last January as the new Chaldean Catholic archbishop of Mosul.
ISIS, together with Al Nusra, an offshoot of al-Qaeda in Syria, followed the same pattern, when its militants attacked the Christian town of Maaloula. "They scarred the faces of the saints, of the Christ, they shattered the statues", Father Toufic Eid recently told the Vatican agency, Sir.
"The altars, the iconostases and the baptismal font were torn to pieces. But the thing that struck me most was the burning of baptism registers. It is as if they wanted to erase our faith".
In the cemetery of the church of St. George in Karamlesh, a village east of Mosul, Isis dug up a body and beheaded it, apparently only because it was a Christian.
The fate of Mosul's Christians is the similar to those elsewhere in Iraq. "The International Union for the Conservation of Nature has several categories to define the danger of extinction that various species face today", writes Benedict Kiely, the founder of Nasarean.org, which helps the persecuted Christians of the Middle East.
"Using a percentage of population decline, the categories range from 'vulnerable species' (a 30-50 per cent decline), to 'critically endangered' (80-90 per cent) and finally to extinction. The Christian population of Iraq has shrunk by 83 per cent, putting it in the category of 'critically endangered'".
Shamefully, the West has been and still seems to be completely indifferent to the fate of Middle Eastern Christians. As the Syriac Orthodox archbishop of Mosul, Metropolitan Nicodemus, put it:
"I don't believe in these two words [human rights], there are no human rights. But in Western countries, there are animal rights. In Australia they take care of frogs.... Look upon us as frogs, we'll accept that — just protect us so we can stay in our land.
"Those people are the same ones who came here many years ago. And we accepted them. We are the original people in this land. We accepted them, we opened the doors for them, and they push us to be minorities in our land, then refugees in our land. And this will be with you if you don't wake up."
"Christianity in Iraq, one of the oldest Churches, if not the oldest Church in the world, is perilously close to extinction", Bashar Warda, Archbishop of Irbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, remarked in London in May. "Those of us who remain must be ready to face martyrdom". Warda went on to accuse Britain's leaders of "political correctness" over the issue for fear of being accused of "Islamophobia." "Will you continue to condone this never-ending, organised persecution against us?" Warda asked. "When the next wave of violence begins to hit us, will anyone on your campuses hold demonstrations and carry signs that say 'We are all Christians?'"
These Christians seem to have gained space on our television screens and newspapers only at the cost of their blood, their disappearance, their suffering. Their tragedy illuminates our moral suicide. As the French-Lebanese writer Amin Maalouf noted: "That is the great paradox: one accuses the Occident of wanting to impose its values, but the real tragedy is its inability to transmit them.... Sometimes we get the impression that Westerners have once and for all appropriated Christianity... and that they say to themselves: We are the Christians, and the rest is only an archaeological remainder destined to disappear. Threats to pandas cause more emotion" than threats to the extinction of the Christians in the Middle East.
Giulio Meotti, Cultural Editor for Il Foglio, is an Italian journalist and author.
Sunday, August 25, 2019
Tunay na Iglesia Lamang ang Inuusig Mula Noong Unang Siglo Hanggang Ngayon
PASUGO Nobyembre 1954, p. 1-2, Kung sino ang inuusig ang tunay na Iglesia ni Cristo!
4 Christians killed by jihadis in Burkina Faso for wearing crucifixes: report
“Hindi kailangang patunayan pa kung hindi tunay na Iglesia, kung ito'y kay Cristo o hindi. Ang pag-uusig na nagaganap sa INK, na siyang katuparan ng pinagpauna ng Panginoon ay siyang malinaw na katunayan na ang INK ay tunay na Iglesia at kay Cristo. Anu-ano ang mga kinathang kasinungalingan na ipinaparatang kay Jesus an nakasisirang puri! Hindi lamang nila sinasabing siya'y may demonyo, kundi pinaparatangang siya'y nauulol (Juan 15:20). Kung siya'y inusig tao man ay uusigin din. Ang pag-uusig sa Ulo at tagos hanggang sa katawan. Siya ang ulo, tayo ang mga sangkap, na siyang Iglesia."
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| Bottles of water are seen in front of Cappuccino restaurant after an attack on the restaurant and the Splendid Hotel in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, January 18, 2016. | |
By Samuel Smith, Christian Post Reporter
A series of deadly militant attacks targeting Christians in the northeast part of Burkina Faso, a once peaceful West African country, has rocked the Christian community.
Earlier this month, the president of the Episcopal Conference of Burkina Faso and Niger, Bishop Laurent Dabiré, told Aid to the Church in Need that Christians are in danger of “elimination” from the country due to the ongoing attacks against their community by Islamic extremists.
His warning comes as Islamic extremist violence across the Sahel region of West Africa has been rising since 2016.
Dabiré detailed a June 27 attack that occurred in the northern Diocese of Ouahigouya, which, according to the papal charity, was the fifth attack against Christians in northeast Burkina Faso since the beginning of 2019.
The June 27 attack happened in the village of Bani during a time when the village’s residents were gathered together.
“The Islamists arrived and forced everybody to lie face down on the ground,” the bishop said. “Then they searched them. Four people were wearing crucifixes. So they killed them because they were Christians.”
Dabiré said that after murdering the Christians who were wearing crucifixes, the extremists told other villagers that they would also be killed if they did not convert to Islam.
According to Aid to the Church in Need, at least 20 Christians have been killed in the five attacks carried out this year targeting Christian communities. Other attacks have occurred in the Dioceses of Dori and Kaya.
In addition to attacks in Burkina Faso, the extremist groups have also carried out massacres in countries like Mali and Niger as over 4 million people have been forced to flee from their homes in recent years.
“At first, they were only active in the frontier region between Mali and Niger,” Dabiré said. “But slowly they have moved into the interior of the country, attacking the army, civil structures, and the people. Today their main target appears to be the Christians and I believe they are trying to trigger an interreligious conflict.”
In April, gunmen killed five Catholic worshipers and their priest while leaving a church service in Silgadji.
In May, four Catholics were killed while transporting a statue of the Virgin Mary during a Marian procession.
In Burkina Faso, Muslims comprise over 60 percent of the population. The Christian population makes up over 20 percent of the population, most of which are Catholics.
Earlier in June, about a dozen gunmen killed at least 19 people in the northern Burkina town of Airbinda.
Dabiré warned that youths from the region have also joined the extremist factions.
“They include youths who have joined the jihadists because they have no money, no work and no prospects, but there are also radicalized elements who are involved in these movements which they see as the expression of their Islamic faith,” he said.
According to the United Nations, as many as 70,000 people fled their homes in a span of two months earlier this year as a result of armed groups burning down schools and killing innocent civilians.
And over 100,000 people have been displaced in Burkina Faso, the U.N. adds, with more than half of them being displaced since the beginning of 2019.
According to the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, a Washington-based think tank, there were 137 violent events with 149 fatalities attributed to Islamic extremist attacks in 2018. Through the midpoint of 2019, the organization reports that there were 191 episodes of violence and 324 fatalities. Those attacks have been primarily carried out by three different groups: the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara, the Macina Liberation Front, and Ansaroul Islam.
“Ansaroul Islam has played an outsized role in the destabilization of northern Burkina Faso,” a July report from the think tank reads. “From 2016 to 2018, just over half of militant Islamist violent events in Burkina Faso were attributed to Ansaroul Islam. These attacks were concentrated in the northern province of Soum and clustered around the provincial capital, Djibo.”
The report states that Ansaroul Islam has carried out a higher percentage of attacks against civilians than any other militant group in the region. In addition to the 100,000 people who've fled their homes, the think-tank notes that the violence has forced 352 schools to close in the Soum province.
However, Ansaroul Islam was only associated with 16 violent attacks and seven deaths by mid-2019, suggesting that the group has played a diminished role in the escalation of violence this year.
“It is also speculated that a number of militants may have split from Ansaroul Islam, joining FLM or ISGS following [leader Ibrahim Malam Dicko] death [in May 2017],” think tank report reads. “Both militant Islamist groups are well known in the region and readily employ social media as well as communication tools.”
As The Washington Post notes, many of the victims of the escalation in extremist violence in Burkina Faso have been Muslims. But attacks targetting Christians represent a shift from indiscriminate killed to trying to divide communities.
Illia Djadi, senior analyst for sub-Saharan Africa at Open Doors International, told the newspaper that the militants appear to be using a “divide and conquer” strategy.
Chrysogone Zougmore, who leads the Burkinabe Movement for Human and Peoples' Rights, told The Washington Post that the extremist attacks targetting Christian communities are “planting seeds of a religious conflict.”
"They want to create hate,” Zougmore explained. “They want to create differences between us."
Follow Samuel Smith on Twitter: @IamSamSmith
Monday, August 19, 2019
Anak ng Diakono at Diakonesa ng INC™ Nagbalik-loob na sa Tunay na Iglesia ni Cristo
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| Photo Credit: Bro. Wendell P. Talibong, SsVP |
Tuesday, August 13, 2019
Sila ang mga tinawag na lingkokd ng Iglesia ni Cristo! Mga manggagawang hindi bayaran!
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| Pope Francis visiting the sick. (Photo Source: Chicago Catholic) |
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| St. Pope John Paul II visiting the sick (Photo Credit: Getty Image) |
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| Pope Benedict XVI blesses sick children. (Photo Credit: Catholic Herald) |
Kaibahan ng Tinawag na Lingkod at ng mga Bayarang Ministro
GANITO ANG TUNAY NA TINAWAG NA PARI TUNAY NA IGLESIA NI CRISTO
Iba ang mga bayarang manggagawa sa tunay na lingkod ng Diyos. Ang pagpapari ay isang TAWAG o BOKASYON. Hindi ito nararamdaman ng tinawag sa paglilingkod. At kapag siya ay tinawag at tumugon, siya ay nangangakong magiging pari ni Cristo at lingkod ng Iglesia nang walang kapalit.
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| Photo Source: African Catholics |
In whatever conditions or situation, they are always ready to do their Master's work. Remember to pray for your Priests always.
Saturday, August 10, 2019
Friday, August 9, 2019
Thursday, August 8, 2019
Wednesday, August 7, 2019
Convert: 'Everthing about the Catholic Church is beautiful.
“As my friends would ask me, ‘George, what did you find in the Catholic Church?’ my answer is always the same: sheer beauty! It’s beautiful. Her saints. Her faith. Her liturgy… Her devotions. Everything about her is beautiful.’ – Deacon George Butterfield
