This article comes from Chiesa.
It is from a few weeks ago, but the perspective is relevant.
----------------------------------------------------
Christians in the Middle East. Crushed between Islam & Israel
ROME, October 19, 2010 – The special synod for the Middle East that has been underway at the Vatican for ten days is shedding light on a segment of the Christian world in dramatic movement, in several directions and with an uncertain future.
The exodus of Christians from those lands is an important part of this movement. But it is not a new phenomenon. During the first half of the twentieth century, the extermination and expulsion from Turkey of the Armenians, and then the Greeks, were of colossal proportions. Today the exodus continues from several places, and in different degrees. The fact is that in comparison with the twelve million faithful of the ancient Eastern Churches who today live between Egypt and Iran, there are now about seven million living elsewhere.
For many decades there have been more Armenians in the diaspora than in their native land. The Maronite Lebanese have dioceses for their emigrants in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Australia. The Syriac Orthodox have an eparchy in Sweden. The Iraqis have created a "Chaldean Town" in the city of Detroit. Most of the Christian emigrants from Bethlehem are going to Chile.
At the same time, however, an inverse movement is also underway in the Middle East. On the Arabian Peninsula alone – according to statements at the synod from the two apostolic vicars of the region, Paul Hinder and Camillo Ballin – three million Catholics have already come from abroad seeking jobs, most of them from the Philippines and India.
The Arab countries of the Gulf "have a great need for manual labor," explained the Syro-Malabar Indian bishop Bosco Puthur, from whose region 430,000 people have departed. But what awaits these emigrants is very bitter, if measured according to religious and civil liberties. The archbishop of Addis Ababa, Berhaneyesus Demerew Souraphiel, said that the thousands of women who leave Ethiopia for the Middle East each year, to work as maids, in order to obtain entry visas "change their Christian names to Muslim names, and dress as Muslims, being indirectly forced to renounce their roots," and in any case go to meet a life of "exploitation and abuse."
In describing the living conditions of Christians in Muslim countries in the Middle East, the bishops used understandably prudent words. With a few exceptions.
One of the most unvarnished was the representative in Jordan for the patriarchate of the Iraqi Chaldeans. He said that there is "a deliberate campaign to drive out the Christians. There are Satanic plans by extremist fundamentalist groups against Christians not only in Iraq, but in all the Middle East."
The Iranian Thomas Meram, archbishop of Urmya of the Chaldeans, did not hesitate to quote the psalm of David: "For you we are massacred every day." And he continued: "Every day Christians hear it said, from the loudspeakers, from the television, from the newspapers, that they are infidels, and for this reason they are treated as second-class citizens."
Entirely the opposite of what was asserted at the assembly that same day, Thursday, October 14, by Iranian ayatollah Seyed Mostafa Mohaghegh Ahmadabadi, a guest of the synod, according to whom "in many Islamic countries, above all in Iran, the Christians live side by side in peace with their Muslim brothers. They enjoy all the legal rights of any other citizen, and exercise their religious practices freely."
But the synod is more than a simple recognition of the living conditions of Christians in the Middle East.
From the debate there have emerged critical judgments on the Catholic Church in those countries, and proposals for change.
DIVIDED CHRISTIANS
A first critical judgment concerns the lack of unity in the Catholic Church in the Middle East.
The five great traditions on which it draws – Alexandrian, Antiochian, Armenian, Chaldean, Byzantine – and the even more numerous rites in which it is structured often produce division, misunderstandings, and isolation, instead of mutual enrichment.
"An ethnic and nationalist Church is against the work of the Holy Spirit," warned the Chaldean Iranian archbishop of Tehran, Ramzi Garmou.
And he had reasons to say so. The Coptic Egyptian bishop of Assiut, Kyrillos William, lashed out in the assembly against his Latin rite confreres, because, by also celebrating their liturgies in Arabic, "they attract our faithful and separate them from our Church."
The Greek-Melkite bishop of Australia, Issam John Darwich, also complained about the "growing intolerance among the Eastern Catholic Churches." And he gave the example of "the sad situation of Lebanon, where every Church seems interested in obtaining political benefits for itself, and more than the other Churches."
In effect, Lebanon is indeed a country in which Christians enjoy more freedoms than in other countries of the Middle East, but it was also described this way at the synod by one of its Greek-Melkite bishops, Georges Nicholas Haddad:
"Freedom of religion and of conscience remains the privilege of the 18 historically recognized communities (12 Christian, 4 Muslim, one Druze, and one Jewish). Anyone who is not part of these is excluded from any right to the exercise of his liberties. Any attempt characterized by proselytism on the part of one or another community can prompt extreme and sometimes violent reactions. Every conversion is perceived as a heavy blow inflicted on the community of origin of the convert, and constitutes a social rupture."
Muhammad Al-Sammak, an adviser to the Grand Mufti of Lebanon and another Muslim figure invited to speak at the synod, did not say anything much different when he stated – before the assembly – that "the Christian presence in the East is a necessity both for Christians and for Muslims" and – outside of the assembly, in a press conference – that "belief is a matter of conscience, but when changing religion also means changing 'sides', it becomes an act of betrayal of the state, and it must be treated as such."
Against this background, numerous voices have been raised at the synod to call for more unity among the Catholic Churches in the region, and between these and the Orthodox Churches and Protestant confessions.
In particular, a proposal has been made to arrange as soon as possible a common date for the celebration of Easter.
Some have urged dialogue with "enlightened" Muslims, those open to a "critical interpretation of the Qur'an" and to an "interpretation of Islamic laws in their historical context."
MORE POWER FOR THE PATRIARCHS
A second series of proposals concerned pastoral care for the faithful of the Catholic Church of the Middle East who have emigrated abroad, the role of the patriarchs, and their relationship with the see of Rome.
As a rule, the patriarchs and bishops have jurisdiction over their respective territories, not over the faithful who have emigrated to other countries. But in some cases, the latter have become more numerous than the faithful who have remained in their countries. And if they are left without care, they tend to abandon the traditions of their Churches of origin. A number of voices at the synod have therefore requested that the patriarchs and bishops be given authority over the entire flock of their faithful, wherever they may be, at home and abroad.
Together with this request, some have also asked for the freedom to send married priests for the pastoral care of the Eastern faithful in diaspora. In the West, in fact, where the clergy is celibate, the presence of married Eastern priests with pastoral duties is not permitted. But with the number of emigrants increasing, and almost all of the lower clergy of the Eastern Churches being married, it is increasingly difficult for the Eastern patriarchs and bishops to find celibate priests to send abroad for the care of their faithful. Hence the request to remove the ban.
As for the role of the patriarchates, the request has surfaced several times at the synod to "give back" to them the authority that they had in the first centuries of the Church, in relation to the pope. In particular, by giving them more autonomy in appointing local bishops. And also by associating them "ipso facto" with the college that elects the supreme pontiff, "without the necessity of receiving the Latin title of cardinal." In short, by assigning the pope "a new form of the exercise of the primacy inspired by the ecclesial forms of the first millennium," with the role of the patriarchs reinforced. All of this partly for the purpose of bringing the positions of the Catholic Church closer to those of the Eastern Orthodox Churches.
ON MISSION AMONG THE MUSLIMS
A third block of proposals concerned "the need to recover the missionary aspect of the Church." A new and courageous proposal in predominantly Muslim countries, on the part of Churches that for historical reasons and motives of survival have largely closed in on themselves.
Coptic Egyptian bishop Youhannes Zakaria of Luxor said that in spite of the difficulties and the dangers, "our Church must not be afraid or ashamed, it must not hesitate to obey the mandate of Lord, who asks it to continue preaching the Gospel."
And the Chaldean Iranian archbishop of Tehran, Ramzi Garmou, delved even deeper into this need. After saying that "a new missionary impulse" is vital "to knock over the ethnic and nationalist barriers that threaten to asphyxiate and make sterile the Churches of the East," he recalled "the fundamental importance of monastic life for the renewal and reawakening of our Churches."
And he continued:
"This form of life that was born in the East, was at the origin of an extraordinary missionary expansion and an admirable witness of our churches during the first centuries. History teaches us that the bishops were chosen among the monks, that is to say men of prayer and with a deep spiritual life, having vast experience in the 'things of God.' Today, unfortunately, the choice of bishops does not obey the same criteria and we can see the results which are unfortunately not always happy ones. The bi-millenary experience of the Church confirms to us that prayer is the soul of the mission, it is thanks to this that all the activities of the church are fruitful and bear many fruits. Also, all those who participated in the reform of the church and gave back its innocent beauty and eternal youth were essentially men and women of prayer. For this reason our Lord invites us to pray without ceasing. With regret and bitterness we see that monasteries of contemplative life, source of abundant grace for the people of God, have almost disappeared in our Eastern Churches. What a great loss! How sad!"
It is easy to glimpse in these words a reflection of the theses of pope Joseph Ratzinger, according to whom the secret of good Church governance – and of its reform – is "thought illuminated by prayer."
ISRAEL A "FOREIGN BODY"?
At a synod dedicated to the Middle East, finally, it was to be expected that there would be an important reference to Israel and to the Jews.
But instead, almost no one has talked about it. The only synod father who dedicated his entire speech to it was, on October 11, the patriarchal vicar of Jerusalem for Hebrew-speaking Catholics, Jesuit Fr. David Neuhaus, who expressed his hope for more communion, in Israel, between Arabic and Hebrew-speaking Catholics.
These latter, as is known, are considered by many of their Arab confreres a foreign body. And the Holy See is not helping them, by declining to appoint a bishop to care for them.
On October 13, one of the guest speakers at the synod was Rabbi David Rosen, an adviser to the Grand Rabbi of Israel. His speech was wide-ranging, very positive, and showed great appreciation for the work of the current pope and of his predecessor.
But after him, no one at the synod has followed up on his words of dialogue between Jews and Christians.
Since the assembly has remained in almost complete silence on the issue, an even bigger impact has been made by a document circulated outside of the synod hall: a document entitled "Kairòs – A moment of truth" and blatantly anti-Israeli in its contents. In it, Israel's occupation of the Territories is called "a sin against God and humanity," and the very foundation of the Jewish state is traced back to a sense of blame on the part of the West because of the Holocaust, the healing of which is held to be behind the occupation of Palestinian land. The document ends with a call to boycott Israel.
The origin of "Kairòs" goes back a number of months. When it was made public for the first time, on December 11, 2009, in Bethlehem, the document bore the signatures of a former Latin rite patriarch of Jerusalem, Michel Sabbah, of Greek Orthodox archbishop Atallah Hanna (a bitter rival of the Greek Orthodox patriarch of Jerusalem, Theophilus III), of the Lutheran bishop of Jerusalem, Munib Younan, and of thirteen other Arab Christian representatives.
Its most active promoter was the Lutheran Younan. He was successful in involving the World Council of Churches, an association of 349 Christian denominations all over the world, with headquarters in Geneva. And in fact, when a message from the secretary general of the WCC, Olav Fykse Tveit was read at the synod, the "Kairòs" document was cited favorably.
But Younan and the other authors of the document also brought pressure, in the days following its publication, on all the leaders of the Christian Churches in Jerusalem, in order to obtain their support.
What they obtained, on December 15, 2009, was a statement of a few lines, without any explicit reference to "Kairòs," which began with these words: "We, the patriarchs and heads of the Christian Churches of Jerusalem, have heard the cry of hope that our children have raised in these difficult times that we are living through in this Holy Land. We support them."
Nothing more. But from then on, the "Kairòs" document has always been distributed with this statement at the top, as if it were a prologue, and with the signatures of all the leaders of the Christian Churches in Jerusalem, including Latin patriarch Fouad Twal and the custodian of the Holy Land, Franciscan Fr. Pierbattista Pizzaballa, as if they were the true signatories of the entire document.
For those who know and have read the writings of Fr. Pizzaballa, his adherence to the ideas of "Kairòs" and to the boycott of Israel is simply unthinkable. And yet the Custody of the Holy Land, which he heads, contributed along with other Catholic associations like Pax Christi and with former patriarch of Jerusalem Sabbah to giving publicity to the document on October 19 in a facility owned by the Vatican, a few steps from the synod hall.
Not only that. On October 14, Maronite archbishop Edmond Farhat – former apostolic nuncio and official representative of Vatican politics – spoke at the synod.
And the judgments he expressed confirmed that for the Holy See – although it accepts the objective of two states for Jews and Palestinians – the assumption still applies that the ultimate cause of all of the evils in the Middle East is precisely that "foreign body" which is Israel.
Nuncio Farhat said:
"The Middle Eastern situation today is like a living organ that has been subject to a graft it cannot assimilate and which has no specialists capable of healing it. As a last resource, the Eastern Arab Muslim looked to the Church, believing, as he thinks himself, that it is capable of obtaining justice for him. This is not the case. He is disappointed, he is scared. His confidence has turned into frustration. He has fallen into a deep crisis. The foreign body, not accepted, gnaws at him and impedes him from taking care of his general state and development. The Middle Eastern Muslim, in the great majority of cases, is in crisis. He cannot make justice on his own. He finds any allies neither on the human nor the political level, let alone the scientific level. He is frustrated. He revolts. His frustration has resulted in revolutions, radicalism, wars, terror and the call (da’wat) to return to radical teachings (salafiyyah). Wishing to find justice on his own radicalism turns into violence. He believes there will be more of an echo if he attacks the constituted bodies. The most accessible and fragile is the Church."
If one of the intentions of the Vatican authorities was to "moderate" the intransigent aversion to Israel of the Arab Churches of the Middle East, the words of nuncio Farhat have done the opposite.
________________
The documents of the synod, on the Vatican website:
> Special Assembly for the Middle East, October 10-24, 2010
__________
The web page from which the "Kairòs" document can be downloaded, in thirteen languages:
> "Kairòs – A moment of truth"
__________
A previous article from www.chiesa expressly dedicated to Vatican policy on Israel:
> In Gaza, the Vatican Raises the White Flag (4.1.2009)
__________
English translation by Matthew Sherry, Ballwin, Missouri, U.S.A.
__________
19.10.2010
The exodus of Christians from those lands is an important part of this movement. But it is not a new phenomenon. During the first half of the twentieth century, the extermination and expulsion from Turkey of the Armenians, and then the Greeks, were of colossal proportions. Today the exodus continues from several places, and in different degrees. The fact is that in comparison with the twelve million faithful of the ancient Eastern Churches who today live between Egypt and Iran, there are now about seven million living elsewhere.
For many decades there have been more Armenians in the diaspora than in their native land. The Maronite Lebanese have dioceses for their emigrants in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Australia. The Syriac Orthodox have an eparchy in Sweden. The Iraqis have created a "Chaldean Town" in the city of Detroit. Most of the Christian emigrants from Bethlehem are going to Chile.
At the same time, however, an inverse movement is also underway in the Middle East. On the Arabian Peninsula alone – according to statements at the synod from the two apostolic vicars of the region, Paul Hinder and Camillo Ballin – three million Catholics have already come from abroad seeking jobs, most of them from the Philippines and India.
The Arab countries of the Gulf "have a great need for manual labor," explained the Syro-Malabar Indian bishop Bosco Puthur, from whose region 430,000 people have departed. But what awaits these emigrants is very bitter, if measured according to religious and civil liberties. The archbishop of Addis Ababa, Berhaneyesus Demerew Souraphiel, said that the thousands of women who leave Ethiopia for the Middle East each year, to work as maids, in order to obtain entry visas "change their Christian names to Muslim names, and dress as Muslims, being indirectly forced to renounce their roots," and in any case go to meet a life of "exploitation and abuse."
In describing the living conditions of Christians in Muslim countries in the Middle East, the bishops used understandably prudent words. With a few exceptions.
One of the most unvarnished was the representative in Jordan for the patriarchate of the Iraqi Chaldeans. He said that there is "a deliberate campaign to drive out the Christians. There are Satanic plans by extremist fundamentalist groups against Christians not only in Iraq, but in all the Middle East."
The Iranian Thomas Meram, archbishop of Urmya of the Chaldeans, did not hesitate to quote the psalm of David: "For you we are massacred every day." And he continued: "Every day Christians hear it said, from the loudspeakers, from the television, from the newspapers, that they are infidels, and for this reason they are treated as second-class citizens."
Entirely the opposite of what was asserted at the assembly that same day, Thursday, October 14, by Iranian ayatollah Seyed Mostafa Mohaghegh Ahmadabadi, a guest of the synod, according to whom "in many Islamic countries, above all in Iran, the Christians live side by side in peace with their Muslim brothers. They enjoy all the legal rights of any other citizen, and exercise their religious practices freely."
But the synod is more than a simple recognition of the living conditions of Christians in the Middle East.
From the debate there have emerged critical judgments on the Catholic Church in those countries, and proposals for change.
DIVIDED CHRISTIANS
A first critical judgment concerns the lack of unity in the Catholic Church in the Middle East.
The five great traditions on which it draws – Alexandrian, Antiochian, Armenian, Chaldean, Byzantine – and the even more numerous rites in which it is structured often produce division, misunderstandings, and isolation, instead of mutual enrichment.
"An ethnic and nationalist Church is against the work of the Holy Spirit," warned the Chaldean Iranian archbishop of Tehran, Ramzi Garmou.
And he had reasons to say so. The Coptic Egyptian bishop of Assiut, Kyrillos William, lashed out in the assembly against his Latin rite confreres, because, by also celebrating their liturgies in Arabic, "they attract our faithful and separate them from our Church."
The Greek-Melkite bishop of Australia, Issam John Darwich, also complained about the "growing intolerance among the Eastern Catholic Churches." And he gave the example of "the sad situation of Lebanon, where every Church seems interested in obtaining political benefits for itself, and more than the other Churches."
In effect, Lebanon is indeed a country in which Christians enjoy more freedoms than in other countries of the Middle East, but it was also described this way at the synod by one of its Greek-Melkite bishops, Georges Nicholas Haddad:
"Freedom of religion and of conscience remains the privilege of the 18 historically recognized communities (12 Christian, 4 Muslim, one Druze, and one Jewish). Anyone who is not part of these is excluded from any right to the exercise of his liberties. Any attempt characterized by proselytism on the part of one or another community can prompt extreme and sometimes violent reactions. Every conversion is perceived as a heavy blow inflicted on the community of origin of the convert, and constitutes a social rupture."
Muhammad Al-Sammak, an adviser to the Grand Mufti of Lebanon and another Muslim figure invited to speak at the synod, did not say anything much different when he stated – before the assembly – that "the Christian presence in the East is a necessity both for Christians and for Muslims" and – outside of the assembly, in a press conference – that "belief is a matter of conscience, but when changing religion also means changing 'sides', it becomes an act of betrayal of the state, and it must be treated as such."
Against this background, numerous voices have been raised at the synod to call for more unity among the Catholic Churches in the region, and between these and the Orthodox Churches and Protestant confessions.
In particular, a proposal has been made to arrange as soon as possible a common date for the celebration of Easter.
Some have urged dialogue with "enlightened" Muslims, those open to a "critical interpretation of the Qur'an" and to an "interpretation of Islamic laws in their historical context."
MORE POWER FOR THE PATRIARCHS
A second series of proposals concerned pastoral care for the faithful of the Catholic Church of the Middle East who have emigrated abroad, the role of the patriarchs, and their relationship with the see of Rome.
As a rule, the patriarchs and bishops have jurisdiction over their respective territories, not over the faithful who have emigrated to other countries. But in some cases, the latter have become more numerous than the faithful who have remained in their countries. And if they are left without care, they tend to abandon the traditions of their Churches of origin. A number of voices at the synod have therefore requested that the patriarchs and bishops be given authority over the entire flock of their faithful, wherever they may be, at home and abroad.
Together with this request, some have also asked for the freedom to send married priests for the pastoral care of the Eastern faithful in diaspora. In the West, in fact, where the clergy is celibate, the presence of married Eastern priests with pastoral duties is not permitted. But with the number of emigrants increasing, and almost all of the lower clergy of the Eastern Churches being married, it is increasingly difficult for the Eastern patriarchs and bishops to find celibate priests to send abroad for the care of their faithful. Hence the request to remove the ban.
As for the role of the patriarchates, the request has surfaced several times at the synod to "give back" to them the authority that they had in the first centuries of the Church, in relation to the pope. In particular, by giving them more autonomy in appointing local bishops. And also by associating them "ipso facto" with the college that elects the supreme pontiff, "without the necessity of receiving the Latin title of cardinal." In short, by assigning the pope "a new form of the exercise of the primacy inspired by the ecclesial forms of the first millennium," with the role of the patriarchs reinforced. All of this partly for the purpose of bringing the positions of the Catholic Church closer to those of the Eastern Orthodox Churches.
ON MISSION AMONG THE MUSLIMS
A third block of proposals concerned "the need to recover the missionary aspect of the Church." A new and courageous proposal in predominantly Muslim countries, on the part of Churches that for historical reasons and motives of survival have largely closed in on themselves.
Coptic Egyptian bishop Youhannes Zakaria of Luxor said that in spite of the difficulties and the dangers, "our Church must not be afraid or ashamed, it must not hesitate to obey the mandate of Lord, who asks it to continue preaching the Gospel."
And the Chaldean Iranian archbishop of Tehran, Ramzi Garmou, delved even deeper into this need. After saying that "a new missionary impulse" is vital "to knock over the ethnic and nationalist barriers that threaten to asphyxiate and make sterile the Churches of the East," he recalled "the fundamental importance of monastic life for the renewal and reawakening of our Churches."
And he continued:
"This form of life that was born in the East, was at the origin of an extraordinary missionary expansion and an admirable witness of our churches during the first centuries. History teaches us that the bishops were chosen among the monks, that is to say men of prayer and with a deep spiritual life, having vast experience in the 'things of God.' Today, unfortunately, the choice of bishops does not obey the same criteria and we can see the results which are unfortunately not always happy ones. The bi-millenary experience of the Church confirms to us that prayer is the soul of the mission, it is thanks to this that all the activities of the church are fruitful and bear many fruits. Also, all those who participated in the reform of the church and gave back its innocent beauty and eternal youth were essentially men and women of prayer. For this reason our Lord invites us to pray without ceasing. With regret and bitterness we see that monasteries of contemplative life, source of abundant grace for the people of God, have almost disappeared in our Eastern Churches. What a great loss! How sad!"
It is easy to glimpse in these words a reflection of the theses of pope Joseph Ratzinger, according to whom the secret of good Church governance – and of its reform – is "thought illuminated by prayer."
ISRAEL A "FOREIGN BODY"?
At a synod dedicated to the Middle East, finally, it was to be expected that there would be an important reference to Israel and to the Jews.
But instead, almost no one has talked about it. The only synod father who dedicated his entire speech to it was, on October 11, the patriarchal vicar of Jerusalem for Hebrew-speaking Catholics, Jesuit Fr. David Neuhaus, who expressed his hope for more communion, in Israel, between Arabic and Hebrew-speaking Catholics.
These latter, as is known, are considered by many of their Arab confreres a foreign body. And the Holy See is not helping them, by declining to appoint a bishop to care for them.
On October 13, one of the guest speakers at the synod was Rabbi David Rosen, an adviser to the Grand Rabbi of Israel. His speech was wide-ranging, very positive, and showed great appreciation for the work of the current pope and of his predecessor.
But after him, no one at the synod has followed up on his words of dialogue between Jews and Christians.
Since the assembly has remained in almost complete silence on the issue, an even bigger impact has been made by a document circulated outside of the synod hall: a document entitled "Kairòs – A moment of truth" and blatantly anti-Israeli in its contents. In it, Israel's occupation of the Territories is called "a sin against God and humanity," and the very foundation of the Jewish state is traced back to a sense of blame on the part of the West because of the Holocaust, the healing of which is held to be behind the occupation of Palestinian land. The document ends with a call to boycott Israel.
The origin of "Kairòs" goes back a number of months. When it was made public for the first time, on December 11, 2009, in Bethlehem, the document bore the signatures of a former Latin rite patriarch of Jerusalem, Michel Sabbah, of Greek Orthodox archbishop Atallah Hanna (a bitter rival of the Greek Orthodox patriarch of Jerusalem, Theophilus III), of the Lutheran bishop of Jerusalem, Munib Younan, and of thirteen other Arab Christian representatives.
Its most active promoter was the Lutheran Younan. He was successful in involving the World Council of Churches, an association of 349 Christian denominations all over the world, with headquarters in Geneva. And in fact, when a message from the secretary general of the WCC, Olav Fykse Tveit was read at the synod, the "Kairòs" document was cited favorably.
But Younan and the other authors of the document also brought pressure, in the days following its publication, on all the leaders of the Christian Churches in Jerusalem, in order to obtain their support.
What they obtained, on December 15, 2009, was a statement of a few lines, without any explicit reference to "Kairòs," which began with these words: "We, the patriarchs and heads of the Christian Churches of Jerusalem, have heard the cry of hope that our children have raised in these difficult times that we are living through in this Holy Land. We support them."
Nothing more. But from then on, the "Kairòs" document has always been distributed with this statement at the top, as if it were a prologue, and with the signatures of all the leaders of the Christian Churches in Jerusalem, including Latin patriarch Fouad Twal and the custodian of the Holy Land, Franciscan Fr. Pierbattista Pizzaballa, as if they were the true signatories of the entire document.
For those who know and have read the writings of Fr. Pizzaballa, his adherence to the ideas of "Kairòs" and to the boycott of Israel is simply unthinkable. And yet the Custody of the Holy Land, which he heads, contributed along with other Catholic associations like Pax Christi and with former patriarch of Jerusalem Sabbah to giving publicity to the document on October 19 in a facility owned by the Vatican, a few steps from the synod hall.
Not only that. On October 14, Maronite archbishop Edmond Farhat – former apostolic nuncio and official representative of Vatican politics – spoke at the synod.
And the judgments he expressed confirmed that for the Holy See – although it accepts the objective of two states for Jews and Palestinians – the assumption still applies that the ultimate cause of all of the evils in the Middle East is precisely that "foreign body" which is Israel.
Nuncio Farhat said:
"The Middle Eastern situation today is like a living organ that has been subject to a graft it cannot assimilate and which has no specialists capable of healing it. As a last resource, the Eastern Arab Muslim looked to the Church, believing, as he thinks himself, that it is capable of obtaining justice for him. This is not the case. He is disappointed, he is scared. His confidence has turned into frustration. He has fallen into a deep crisis. The foreign body, not accepted, gnaws at him and impedes him from taking care of his general state and development. The Middle Eastern Muslim, in the great majority of cases, is in crisis. He cannot make justice on his own. He finds any allies neither on the human nor the political level, let alone the scientific level. He is frustrated. He revolts. His frustration has resulted in revolutions, radicalism, wars, terror and the call (da’wat) to return to radical teachings (salafiyyah). Wishing to find justice on his own radicalism turns into violence. He believes there will be more of an echo if he attacks the constituted bodies. The most accessible and fragile is the Church."
If one of the intentions of the Vatican authorities was to "moderate" the intransigent aversion to Israel of the Arab Churches of the Middle East, the words of nuncio Farhat have done the opposite.
________________
The documents of the synod, on the Vatican website:
> Special Assembly for the Middle East, October 10-24, 2010
__________
The web page from which the "Kairòs" document can be downloaded, in thirteen languages:
> "Kairòs – A moment of truth"
__________
A previous article from www.chiesa expressly dedicated to Vatican policy on Israel:
> In Gaza, the Vatican Raises the White Flag (4.1.2009)
__________
English translation by Matthew Sherry, Ballwin, Missouri, U.S.A.
__________
19.10.2010
