Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Vatican City (Agenzia Fides) - That today persecuted Christianity on many world scenes is not news, is a fact well known and repeatedly confirmed by the little media attention generally given to the issue of Christians (including Catholics) persecuted for the faith.
Attention in these cases, sad to say ever more numerous, focuses on political, social and ethnic reasons, but hardly ever on merely religious ones. To say that Christians are persecuted because of the cross they adore and which they take as an example for life, is not politically correct and above all for some, a fact to hide, to minimise, to be silent about. But why should one minimise the greatness of ordinary men and women of many different countries who suffer for their faith day after day? Why should compromise, concealment, hypocrisy and cowardice be widely exalted rather than the virtue of the courage and consistency of men and women in the remotest corners of the earth who offer daily witness to a decadent west too forgetful of its identity to be able to preserve or live it?
There emerges from daily news reports an explicit will to reduce violence experienced by Christians in Somalia and Kenya, in Nigeria and Congo, in Kurdistan and in India, to facts detached from the value and significance of following Christ even to the cross. Perhaps the media of half the world which control and channel priority information in a grid of importance and explanation, abhor the image of these crowds letting themselves be beaten and robbed of every right, even killed, in order to be faithful to the Cross.
So, with the assistance of eminent sociologists and political scientists, conflicts are reduced to mere local clashes, determined realities: faith in that Christ “who is scandal for the Jews and folly for the Greeks”. That folly of martyrdom is undervalued, or better, occulted, because today it is still, for the society of material opulence and spiritual collapse, both “scandal and folly”. While secularised Europe (in Spain) disfigures its historic and spiritual heritage banning in the name of tolerance Crucifixes in public places, so too Christians are banned from newscasts and newspapers: otherwise they might appear to be the only ones who let themselves be persecuted and this could only upset ecumenical and dialoguing harmony.
The truth is that in a world ruled by the stronger man wins and the absolute priority of matter and corporeity, over soul and spirit, Christianity is rapidly becoming once again, as it was named by Nietzsche, “the religion of the feeble”, the religion of a group of fools. So it is better to drown this 'feeble' religion in dialogue and in conciliation. Unfortunately dialoguing and being conciliating only helps, not to bring salvation, but to understand each other better and unfortunately in the various scenes of the world it is not the Christians who fail to make themselves understood … Christianity, however, is not a religion of dialogue, a cowardly and haughty form of defence from enemies and persecutors: it is the religion of forgiveness and of sacrifice in the name of Christ and today, not only are too few ready to sacrifice themselves for Him, but too few understand the reasons for doing so and defend them. On the other hand, why defend or protect thousands of men and women who follow the “scandal” and the “folly” of Christ? (F.C.) (Agenzia Fides 5/12/2008)
