Criticizing the Catholic Church is "Terrorism" says Vatican.
A Reuters News Agency report of May 2, 2007, says, "The Vatican's official newspaper accused an Italian comedian on Wednesday of "terrorism" for criticizing the pope and warned his rhetoric could fuel a return to 1970s-style political violence."
(http://www.unknownnews.org/070502-papalcomplaint.html)
It seems a presenter of a televised May Day rock concert, which is sponsored by Italy's labor unions, had launched "vile attacks" on Pope Benedict in front of an "excitable crowd." An editorial in the newspaper says, "This, too, is terrorism. It's terrorism to launch attacks on the Church. It's terrorism to stoke blind and irrational rage against someone who always speaks in the name of love, love for life and love for man."
What a tall claim that the Vatican and the pope always speak "in the name of love, love for life and love for man"!! More than anything else, the primary thing missing in this is the Love For Truth.
In 1999, just before the visit of the late Pope John Paul II to India, Rediff On The Net carried an interview with Dr David Frawley, director of the American Institute of Vedic Studies. Here are some excerpts from that interview which shows how much the Vatican, the Christian Churches, the popes and all other Christian religious leaders speak and behave in the name of love, love for life and love for man.
--- "The bloody history of the Church in America, Africa and Asia is an open book and well known. The Native Americans where I live in the United States still tell stories about how the feet of their people were cut off for refusing to walk to church or their tongues cut off for refusing to recite prayers. The church has claimed that its intolerance is a thing of the past. Yet even if one accepts that it has stopped today, which is debatable, it certainly went on well into this century. That the church was prominent in Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, and never really opposed Hitler or Mussolini, should not be forgotten."
--- "The Church has harmed many Hindu families and Communities and is still willing to do so, by turning people against their native beliefs and customs....... The Goa Inquisition was probably the worst (crime) and involved torture and murder of thousands of Hindus and the destruction of many Hindu temples over a period of several decades. It was done by the same groups that promoted the genocide of Native Americans."
Pope Benedict XVI's Love For Truth shows up in full splendour when he insists that Latin American Indians wanted to become Christian even before European conquerors arrived centuries ago. Addressing a regional conference of bishops in Sao Paulo, Brazil, the pope is reported to have said that pre-Columbian people of Latin America and the Caribbean were seeking Christ without realizing it. "Christ is the savior for whom they were silently longing." (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/custom/religion/sns-ap-pope-indians,1,2129852.story?coll=chi-religion-topheadlines)
The report by VIVIAN SEQUERA, Associated Press Writer, in the Chicago Tribune of May 16, 2007, goes on to add:
-- But Paulo Suess, an adviser to Brazil's Indian Missionary Council, said Monday that the comments fail to account for the fact that Indians were enslaved and killed by the Portuguese and Spanish settlers who forced them to become Catholic. Benedict "is a good theologian, but it seems he missed some history classes," said Suess, whose council is supported by the Roman Catholic Church.
-- Marcio Meira, who is in charge of Brazil's federal Indian Bureau, said Indians were forced to convert to Catholicism as the result of a "colonial process." "As an anthropologist and a historian I feel obliged to say that, yes, in the past 500 years there was an imposition of the Catholic religion on the indigenous people," Meira said.
One has to wonder whether Benedict XVI is capable of understanding the simple TRUTH contained in these comments, or the cutting sarcasm expressed in them.
The Vatican newspaper charges that the Italian presenter in that rock concert had launched "vile attacks" on Pope Benedict, and says, "This, too, is terrorism." My goodness!! What about the "Terrorism" indulged in by all Christian missionaries in India engaged in "vile attacks" against Hindu culture and traditions in their vile venture of converting Hindus to Christianity?
Isn't it the Christians of all hues who have indulged in atrocious terrorist activities all over the world down the centuries since Jesus Christ? Christ, the apostle of love and peace, must be not just turning in His grave but spinning furiously in His grave at the shenanigans indulged in, in His name, by the people carrying His name. And this pope says any criticism of the church or the pope is "terrorism".
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2 comments:
Would you care to cite any evidence that the Catholic Church engaged in forced conversions or had anything whatsoever to do with any alleged “genocide” in Latin America? Lefties make this baseless claim based on this:
http://www.ushmm.org/conscience/analysis/details.php?content=2004-02-26
Insofar as it concerns the Church, the above link has the following:
“There was also a ’subtle kind of cultural genocide’ committed by the Spanish missions which abounded in Mexico, California, Louisiana and elsewhere. Lemkin notes that ‘while most of the Indians may not have been converted by actual force, it may well be assumed that they had little idea of either Christianity or the life and burdens in store for them after baptism’. Once they yielded to the admonitions of the fathers, their fate was sealed, they could no longer escape from the reach of the church, or the mission. The missionaries, for example in a church in San Francisco, gave mass in Latin and Spanish, and made no effort to learn the native tongue.”
Celebrating Mass in Latin and Spanish but not the Indians’ native tongue is “genocide”??? And this is from a far left source and, as such, is I assume the most inculpating evidence that exists against the Church. The brutality of the pre-Christian Indian cultures was, everyone agrees, horrifying — human sacrifices, brutal slavery, mass killings, etc. No wonder the Indians converted so readily when they were told of Christ. Pope Benedict was right.
Where a better case that a serious crime was committed against the native Indians was committed is precisely where the Catholic Church did not predominate: North America. Ever wonder why still today one sees native Americans all over Latin America but not North America? It is because the Americans either killed the Indians or shunted them off to reservations. In Latin America, by contrast, the Church demanded humane treatment of the Indians as She sought to save their precious souls.
Dear Anonymous,
I do appreciate the time and attention you have given to read my post and respond to that. I would request you to consider the following.
During the French Wars of Religion (1562-1598), in three days from August 24, 1572 Catholic forces massacred about 25,000 Protestants. Known as the St. Bartholomew Massacre, "this was the single most bloody and systematic extermination of non-combatants in European history until World War II." After this, "Protestants no longer viewed Catholicism as a misguided church, but as the force of the devil itself. No longer were Protestants fighting for a reformed church, but they suddenly saw themselves fighting for survival against a Catholic church whose cruelty and violence seemed to know no bounds." (http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/REFORM/) "In March, 1562, an army led by the Duke of Guise (Catholic) attacked a Protestant church service at Vassy in the province of Champagne and slaughtered everybody they could get their hands on: men, women, and children—all of whom were unarmed. Thus began the French Wars of Religion which were to last for almost forty years and destroy thousands of innocent lives." (25000 in three days. One has to wonder how many were killed in the 40 years).
Duke of Alba, sent by Philip, the King of Spain, a staunch Catholic, to quell the growth of Protestantism in the Netherlands, "imposed a tribunal, the Council of Troubles, to question and sentence heretics (Protestants). The Dutch called this council the "Council of Blood," for it managed to publically execute thousands of people before Alba was forced from the Netherlands."
In the Thirty Years War, 1618-1648, between Catholic and Protestant forces, primarily in Germany but joined by other countries too, "The sheer amount of casualties and human destruction made this war the most calamitious and disastrous war of European history before the nineteenth century."
These are only samples. I am not touching upon the Crusades or the Inquisitions now. (Maybe I will have to write another article as a sequel, to bring out all the details). However this is adequate for the moment to show how ruthless and vicious the Roman Catholic Church and the Vatican have been all along. So I do not believe I am obligated "to cite any evidence that the Catholic Church engaged in forced conversions or had anything whatsoever to do with any alleged “genocide” in Latin America," as you have asked for. Its history has been such that I can quite believe it when somebody says that's what happened in Latin America. And the two persons whose comments I have quoted in the article are officials associated with the Brazilian Government which is Catholic. So just labeling these charges as from lefties may not hold much water.
Incidentally, you say, "The brutality of the pre-Christian Indian cultures was, everyone agrees, horrifying — human sacrifices, brutal slavery, mass killings, etc. No wonder the Indians converted so readily when they were told of Christ." Are you joking? How do the samples of atrocities I have brought out above gel with this statement of yours? I dare say that the culture and refinement of the natives of the Americas (both North and South) are much superior to the European marauders who destroyed them.
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