URGENT PLEA TO HELP ABDUCTED SYRIAN BISHOPS

Please read and act on the following regarding how we can help exert pressure to speed the release of the abducted Syrian archbishops, and then contact your congressman per the instructions below.

US Congress Prepares Letter to Prioritize Release of Abducted Archbishops

via Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America
Charles Ajalat writes on May 13:

The following needs just a minute or two of your time to help obtain the release of the two bishops who were kidnapped three weeks ago in Syria while on a humanitarian mission. One of the bishops is Metropolitan Paul (Yazigi), brother of our Antiochian Patriarch, John X. The other is the Syriac Archbishop Youhanna (Ibrahim). Six prominent members of Congress are already spearheading this effort, and yesterday sent a Dear Colleague letter to their remaining 429 colleagues to join as co-signers of the letter they are sending to the Secretary of State later this week (with a copy to Ambassador Ford), asking the Representatives to commit to their signing by this Friday noon. I have been working with the Congressional Representatives and they have asked me to contact you for needed help.

The letter to the Secretary and the Dear Colleague letter are both attached below. Both simply express the Members concern and ask that the release of these hostages be a priority of our Government.

The sponsors of the kidnapped bishops’ letter (“Sherman letter”) so far include Congressional Representatives Brad Sherman a senior member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee (Los Angeles), Carolyn Maloney (New York, Co-Chair Hellenic Caucus), Gus Bilirakis (Tampa, Co- Chair Hellenic Caucus) John Sarbanes (Baltimore), Trent Franks (Arizona and Chair of the International Religious Freedom Caucus) and Mike Pompeo (Kansas and a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence). God willing, before the deadline for the Congressional Representatives of this Friday to sign, many other prominent members of Congress will be joining them (a number more signed on after the Dear Colleague letter below). I also understand Congressman Darrell Issa, Chairman of the House Oversight Committee and Congressman Justin Amash (Michigan) are going to be signing today.

Each of the 435 Representatives in Congress, however, are besieged with many matters, get numerous such requests with similar short timelines, and there is a serious need to bring the matter to the attention of the Congressional Representatives as many times and by as many people as possible and to encourage them by letting them know their own constituents are concerned about the bishops’ safety .

In that regard, I ask two non-time consuming things of you: 1. encourage your Congressman and members of Congress who are part of the caucuses supporting the letter by a one-sentence phone and e-mail message (all as simply set forth below); and 2. forward this e-mail to as many of your friends as possible asking them to do the same.

With regard to caucuses, if any of you know members of the caucuses supporting the letter, which presently are the International and Religious Freedom Caucus (60 members), and the Hellenic Caucus (119 members, list attached) in addition to contacting your Congressional Representative, please contact as many of the Caucus Members as possible and ask them to sign the Sherman letter. The Hellenic Action Group has also taken up this cause and their support will be very important.

With respect to your Congressional Representative, please immediately call, leave a voice mail and send an e-mail pursuant to the following instructions:

(1) call immediately your Congressional Representative’s Office in Washington D.C. (You can get the phone number by going to contactingthecongress.org and putting in only your zip code).

(2) When the receptionist answers ask for (1) first, the e-mail address of, and (2) then to speak to, the person in charge of Foreign Affairs or Syria for the Congressional Representative’s office and if you reach the aide’s voice mail, leave the following message:

“Please ask my representative to sign before Friday the Sherman letter requesting the release of the two bishops kidnapped in Syria.”

If for any reason the receptionist won’t give you the aide’s e-mail address, use the following for the e-mail address: firstname.lastname@mail.house.gov (using your actual representative’s first name and last name—you may want to ask the receptionist for the correct spelling or check it on the internet) and whether you have the actual e-mail address of the aide or the e-mail address you constructed as above, please send the same e-mail message as the bolded message above.

Thank you for your help on this urgent, time-sensitive matter,

Charles Ajalat

+++

Charles Ajalat's full request in support of the release of the Archbishops, with the text of the letter being prepared for the Secretary of State by the US Congress, can be read here (PDF format).

For a directory to aid in contacting Congress, please see this resource.

Ancient Faith Radio has interviewed Charles Ajalat regarding this effort in Congress. Listen here.

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew Assassination Plot in Historical Context

Recently a man was arrested in Turkey in connection with a plot to assassinate Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople.  The alleged plot was set up to slay the Patriarch on the 560th anniversary of the Fall of Constantinople on May 29. You can read a couple of articles covering different aspects of the story at Huffington Post and at Today's Zaman (a Turkish news website).

What I would like to draw attention to, so as to provide some context for this story, is the very real threat to Ecumenical Patriarchs (and indeed to all Christian clergy) over the past several hundred years.

Ever since the Fall of Constantinople to the Muslim armies in 1453, Christians in what is now Turkey have been reduced to second-class citizens (and persecuted nearly to extinction) through the institution of the dhimma, the contract of protection which subjugates Christians to Muslim rule under humiliating, demeaning terms. Under the dhimma, Christians have to pay the exorbitant jizya tax, cannot build new churches, cannot repair existing ones, cannot share their faith outside their church buildings, cannot convert Muslims, etc. One aspect of the dhimma most terrifying is the concept of "collective punishment." If one Christian violates the dhimma contract, Muslims may attack any or all Christians.

As Fr Alexander Schmemann notes in his thorough history of the Orthodox Church, The Historical Road of Eastern Orthodoxy:

[The Church's] postion was very often a terrible one, and it is impossible to describe all the suffering, humiliation, and outright persecution the Church was obliged to undergo in this age, which was dark indeed... According to Islam, Christians were rayah or cattle, the conquered, the unbelievers, and they had no real rights or citizenship... In some places every Christian was slaughtered. Russia alone intervened on their behalf, but this frequently resulted only in a worsening of their position. (Fr Alexander Schmemann, The Historical Road of Eastern Orthodoxy, Chapter 5—The Dark Ages; Christians Under Turkish Rule; Online Edition.)

From the very beginning of Muslim rule over Constantinople and the former Byzantine Empire, the Ecumenical Patriarchate was the chief tool in Islamic control and subjugation of the Christian population. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Christians' plight "worsened perceptibly." To quote Fr Schmemann again:

The rights of the patriarch were gradually reduced to nothing; all that was left to him was the "right" of being responsible for the Christians. In the course of seventy-three years in the eighteenth century, the patriarch was replaced forty-eight times! Some were deposed and reinstalled as many as five times; many were put to torture... Churches were defiled, relics cut to pieces, and the Holy Gifts profaned. Christian pogroms became more and more frequent... Their situation grew worse, especially as national self-consciousness and dreams of freedom arose within the empire. Greeks in Turkey and Constantinople paid for the uprising of 1821 by terrible slaughter. That year was marked by the martyrdom of Patriarch Gregory V. (Ibid.)

Martyrdom of St Patriarch Gregory V

John Sanidopoulos, who runs the MYSTAGOGY blog, documents the Ecumenical Patriarchs killed under the Muslim Turks:

Listed below are the venerable Patriarchs of Constantinople who suffered martyric deaths under the Turks and paved the way towards freedom for the Greek people. 

Cyril Loukaris - The Protomartyr of the Patriarchs, on 27 June 1638 he was strangled and his body was flung into the Bosporus. 

Cyril II Kontaris - Hanged in 1639 

Parthenios I - Poisoned in 1644 

Parthenios II - Strangled in 1651 

Parthenios III - Hanged in 1657 

Gabriel II - Hanged in 1657. He was Patriarch for only 12 days. 

Meletios II - After being tortured brutally with a chain and log, he died of his injuries in 1769. 

Gregory V - Hanged on Holy Pascha in 1821 at the Patriarchal Gate, which remains closed today since that time. His death was the banner of the Greek Revolution. 

Cyril VI - Hanged on 18 April 1821 while in exile in Andrionople. 

Evgenios II - Successor to Gregory V, he was surrendered to the mob, and died from injuries on 22 July 1822.

Important to keep in mind is the role played not only by the faithful Patriarch Martyrs, but by other clergy and even monastics in the eventual liberation of Greece. Two notable examples of unlikely clerical heroes are St. Kosmas of Aitolia of the late eighteenth century (who greatly encouraged and helped educate the Greek people by traveling to hundreds of villages and cities, founding schools and keeping alive the Orthodox faith until he was martyred by the Turkish Muslims in 1779), and St. Joachim Papoulakis of the early nineteenth century (a monk from Mt Athos, who helped provide food, material support and necessities to the Greek people in aid of the freedom movement).

But the amazing contribution of the “higher clergy,” the bishops, is very important. Again we turn to John Sanidopoulos, who translates a historical summary by political scientist Konstandinos Holevas:

Blood-Stained Cassocks and 1821 

Without the Orthodox clergy the great national campaign of 1821 would not have succeeded. Some propagandists of outdated ideologies deny the role of the Bishops and speak only of the "lower clergy". They are wrong both in terms of terminology and in their historical perspective.

In the Orthodox Church the higher clergy are the Bishops, the Presbyters (priests) and the Deacons. To the lower clergy belong the Subdeacon and the Reader, who are laymen. The French Consul François Pouqueville writes that 100 Patriarchs and Bishops were killed during the Turkish Occupation and the Struggle [of 1821]. Before 1821 there were 80 movements made by Greeks, and most were led by Bishops. Remember that from 1680 to 1700 Eastern Central Greece was free after two Bishops revolted, Hierotheos of Thebes and Philotheos of Salona.

1821 is stained with the blood of Patriarch Gregory V and Patriarch Cyril VI, from Andrionople. Besides Bishop Germanos of Patras, who blessed the banner at Holy Lavra Monastery and in Patras, Isaiah of Salona declared Revolution in Fokida and was sacrificed in Alamana. The Patmian Patriarch of Alexandria, Theophilos Pagkostas, went to Patmos and raised the banner of revolution. From then he never returned to his throne.

Most Bishops of Peloponnesos were imprisoned by the Pasha of Tripoli from the beginning of March 1821, and only two were found alive when the Greeks entered after 6.5 months. Let us not forget this sacrifice of the shepherds.

In Cyprus, Archbishop Kyprianos had joined the Filiki Etairia (Society of Friends). The Turks were informed and on 9 July 1821 there was a great slaughter in Nicosia. Kyprianos together with all the Bishops and Archimandrites were killed together with the elders.

Many other Bishops played a significant role in the Struggle, such as Anthimos of Elos, Theodoritos of Vresthena, Joseph of Androusa, and Neophytos of Talantio (Livadeia). And in the Grand Exodus of Messolonghi, Bishop Joseph of Rogon, aid to Metropolitan Porphyrios of Arta, was sacrificed while blowing the windmill.

All who lived at that time were confessors: Bishops, priests, simple monastics, all proclaimed their "presence". Our [Greek] Freedom is owed primarily to the Blood-stained Cassocks.

Eventually, the Serbs and Bulgarians threw off the Muslim yoke as well. It was this series of humiliating defeats during the nineteenth century, and losses in the Balkan Wars of the early twentieth century, which enraged the Turkish Muslims, who turned on the weakest elements of their Christian population, precipitating their infamous genocide against the Christians of Armenia, Greece, Pontus, and Syria, massacring over 3.6 million men women and children (some dying from starvation, disease and the forced deportations) from 1894 to 1922. Sporadic persecutions against remaining Christians extended well into the 1950s, perhaps the worst example being the Istanbul Pogroms of 1955, which dealt a crushing blow to the Orthodox Christian community in Turkey. The Greek population of Turkey had already been reduced to about 120,000 in 1927 (following the main period of the Orthodox Christian Genocide); by 1978 it had collapsed to only 7,000. According to the Human Rights Watch, by 2006 there were only 2500 Greeks in Turkey.

Icon of the Martyrdom of Serbian Bishop Teodor of Vrsac,
who was skinned alive by Muslim Turks. (late 16th c.) 

Thus we see, from the very beginning of Muslim occupation of former Byzantine Christian lands, persecution of not merely lay Christians, but of all the clergy, including the Patriarchs, was standard practice for the Muslim Turks. Brutal and prolonged persecution, pressure and institutionalized discrimination has almost exterminated the Orthodox Christian population from what was once a flourishing Christian civilization. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Muslim Turks mercilessly targeted the weakest of the weak, setting an example that Hitler extolled in his plans for his Third Reich. 

When it comes to Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, the Turks do not by any stretch of the imagination have a “rabble rouser” on their hands. Recently, yes, His All Holiness has taken a vocal stand against converting the great Hagia Sophia museum into a mosque.* He has also been persistent in asking for the Turkish government to return the Halki Seminary to the Patriarchate and allow it to reopen. The seminary, closed by the Turks in 1971, was the only indigenous Orthodox seminary in Turkey. Orthodox clergy since then must pursue theological studies overseas, yet bishops must meet ridiculously stringent requirements of Turkish citizenship in order to serve at the Phanar, the seat of the Patriarchate. +Bartholomew has also stood valiantly against suggestions by the Turks that the title "Ecumenical" be removed from his office. 

And that’s not all. The ancient thread of crude and dangerous persecution from the Ottoman days is strong as ever in modern, moderate Turkey. As journalist Nicholas Gage pointedly observed back in 2008:

The Ecumenical Patriarchate, which was established in the fourth century and once possessed holdings as vast as those of the Vatican, has been reduced to a small, besieged enclave in a decaying corner of Istanbul called the Phanar, or Lighthouse. Almost all of its property has been seized by successive Turkish governments, its schools have been closed and its prelates are taunted by extremists who demonstrate almost daily outside the Patriarchate, calling for its ouster from Turkey. 

The ecumenical patriarch, Bartholomew I, is often jeered and threatened when he ventures outside his walled enclave. He is periodically burned in effigy by Turkish chauvinists and Muslim fanatics. Government bureaucrats take pleasure in harassing him, summoning him to their offices to question and berate him about irrelevant issues, blocking his efforts to make repairs in the few buildings still under his control, and issuing veiled threats about what he says and does when he travels abroad.

In my book, Facing Islam, I express my concerns over some of His Holiness' statements, notably in his book, Encountering the Mystery, where he writes of a “dialogue of loving truth” with Islam, and of Orthodoxy having for centuries “coexisted peacefully” with Islam, and where he also projects the chimera of an “interfaith commitment... still felt and lived by Greeks [and] Turks” as an example for all to follow.**

Elsewhere in his book, he goes even further, calling for the tearing down of “the wall of separation between East and West, between Muslims and Christians, between all religions of the world,” and writing warmly, “One who achieves the state of inner peace in relation to God is a true Muslim.”***

Such unfortunate effusions obscure the Truth of Christianity, giving the impression that +Bartholomew leans towards some sort of syncretic, relativistic creed, embracing the equal validity of all religions and especially of Islam and Christianity. 

Yet we must understand such assurances in context, as being carefully crafted to pacify both the hostile government under whose thumb His All Holiness struggles to lead his flock, as well as the sea of easily agitated Muslims who surround the tiny island of Orthodoxy in Istanbul. No doubt +Bartholomew’s concern is to avert Muslim aggression not so much against himself, but against the dwindling Christian population of Turkey, which has endured nearly six centuries of relentless persecution and pressure from their Islamic masters. Sounding a falsely irenic tone is too often a sad necessity for those oppressed under Islamic rule. 

While we may be heartened by the brave resolve and serene faith of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew in the face of such overwhelming odds, if Muslim history is any indication, he may yet earn his heavenly crown in a far more abrupt fashion than his longsuffering, patient endurance of trials. May it not be so, and may God grant His All Holiness many years! And may we even see the conversion of Hagia Sophia back into a Christian church!

* Originally the grandest church in Christendom, the basilica of Hagia Sophia (“Holy Wisdom”) was built by the Emperor Justinian and dedicated in 537, but was converted to a mosque in 1453 after the Muslim conquest of the city; earlier Hagia Sophia basilicas in Constantinople dated back to the fourth century. This building was a Christian church for over 900 years before the Great City fell.
** Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, Encountering the Mystery, Doubleday, 2008, pp xxxvii, 196, 174.
*** Ibid., 205, 209.

Christ's Resurrection Must Change Us

Here is a strong word for us as we continue to walk in the Light of Christ's Resurrection. I've emphasized two paragraphs below which drive home the message of Fr Alexei Uminsky, a very important message for our times...

Accepting Christ Along With His Wounds

Archpriest Alexei Uminsky   May 12th, 2013

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit!

Christ is Risen!

We have gotten used to meeting one another with the main greeting in our lives: “Christ is Risen!” But what is the meaning of the Resurrection for each one of us? Obviously, it is the center of our Christian confession, because the essence of our faith lies in the fact that Christ is risen. All of church doctrine and Holy Tradition speaks of this. The Apostle Paul says that if Christ is not risen, then we are the most miserable people on earth, because then our faith is entirely meaningless.

For people who live outside the Church – and there are many such people in our country [Russia] – the most important day is New Year’s. Something happens on New Year’s Eve: the New Year arrives and perhaps brings something new with it… But for us the New Year is Pascha. This is indeed the beginning of a new year, a foretaste of the life of the age to come. For us, this day is the fulfillment of our Lenten labors, of our repentance, and of whatever we should have corrected and changed.

The joy and light of this day can long fill every one of us with the truly vital forces we so lack. Suddenly everything falls into place. Life has seemingly not changed – the same things happen – but suddenly everything becomes so clear, understandable, and easy. Certain problems that we had not known how to resolve, and had tortured us, suddenly stop worrying us so much. We still do not know how to resolve them, but for some reason we suddenly calm down. There are things that are unsolvable, and remain unsolvable, but in these days God’s presence in our life completely covers all the insolvability, despondency, and dead ends of our life.

But this is not yet all. This is not the most important thing that Christ’s luminous Resurrection shows us. Something should happen to us in these days that would make this known not only to ourselves, but to those around us. The tidings that Christ is risen cannot concern ourselves only. They cannot be only our little private matter, a joy for our parish or even our Church only. This is something bigger, something global. If Christ is risen, then our life should change on its own – and not only our life. Of course, our life should change first of all, but from every Great Lent, from every Pascha, our life should change so much that it affects someone, touches someone, truly surprise someone, enlightening him and compelling him to turn in our direction. The fruits of our labor and our great joy should extend to the world.

Here is today’s Gospel of Christ (JN 20:19-31): He comes to His disciples, as He came to us, and shows Himself to them in the fullness of His divine-human Resurrection, which they did not know before His Resurrection. He sits down with them, drinks wine, and eats fish and bread, showing them that He is not a spirit, but truly the God-Man, Who possesses eternal life. The joy of the Resurrection so grips the disciples that they are indeed ready to share it with others.

Thomas, who had not been with them, arrives. They say: “Christ is Risen!” And for some reason he does not believe… For some reason the word that Christ is risen does not mean anything to Thomas, who had known Christ as well as the other Apostles…

But we recall that not long ago, just a week before, these very same Apostles fled from Christ’s Cross and did not follow Him to the end. Nonetheless, Christ comes to them. He comforts them and gives them the Holy Spirit and the power to remit sins. They receive the signs of their priesthood, the first signs of true apostleship.

Then nothing happens. The Apostle Thomas will not believe what the Apostles are saying “until I myself make sure and see.” Indeed, if Christ is risen, then why are you sitting in the upper room behind closed doors, hiding for fear of the Jews? Why has nothing happened to you? Why are you still the same? Why, if Christ is risen, have you not become different?

We often perceive Christ’s Resurrection as something only joyful. Everything bad has gone away and only the good remains. Yes, joy. Yes, happiness. Yes, good cheer. Christ is Risen! Look at how good everything is! Does that mean that nothing terrible has happened?

But Thomas remembers. He knows how terrible this world is, how this world crucified Christ, how this world is also ready to crucify anyone else who follows Christ. The Apostles also remember this, which is why they are sitting behind closed doors. 

Our testimony about Christ means nothing to the world because nothing has happened to us; because, knowing the truth that Christ is risen, we continue to live according to the laws and elements of this world and to fear with the fear of this world, relying on this world’s foundations rather than on Christ. Then our testimony about Christ will not be taken seriously as a truth that we cherish, since along with this truth we also have other equally immutable truths on which we actually base our lives. And these truths testify to who we are.

For the sake of Thomas, Christ again comes to the disciples and tells him: “Put your fingers in My wounds.” Then Thomas sees the truth of the Resurrection in his own personal experience. Christ and His disciples show the ultimate meaning of His Resurrection: Christ is risen, but His wounds remain. Christ is risen, but His hands are pierced. Christ is risen, but there is a gaping wound in His side. Again He speaks these words to them: “Go, I send you.”

Where is He sending His disciples? To what is He sending His disciples? He is sending them on the very same path of the cross. He is sending them to follow Him. He is sending them to attain the same Resurrection, the same Pascha – and in the same way He did, through Golgotha. So if we, like the Apostle Thomas, accept Christ’s wounds along with His Resurrection; if we accept this pierced side with joy, then, I think, our word about Christ’s Resurrection, our word about life in Christ, will immediately take on both truth and power.

The Lord shows the Apostle Thomas His perforated hands and His pierced side, and we can no longer think that nothing has happened. We know that Christ is risen and we believe that He will never leave us. But the path onto which He is sending us is the same path by which a disciple follows His Teacher to the end. We know from the Acts of the Holy Apostles and the history of our Church what this apostolic path is, and we know how the Apostles proclaimed Christ by their life, their death, and their resurrection. Amen.

Source: Pravmir.com

Raymond Ibrahim's New Book: Crucified Again

Raymond Ibrahim is one of the most significant voices warning of the threat of Islam, as he understands and convincingly shows the historical continuity of Islam's 1400 year war against Christians, as well as the new phase we are living through of this relentless persecution. I plan to do a review of his new book, but wanted to quickly share this interview.

This is a phenomenal interview, filled with numerous examples of Raymond's main premise, and excellent questions and comments by host Gary Lane of CBN.


Crucified Again: Exposing Islam's New War on Christianity
Order from Amazon here. Also available in Kindle edition.

Boston Herald Editorial on the Benghazi Cover-Up

Benghazi lies exposed

Saturday, May 11, 2013

Author(s): 

Boston Herald editorial staff

Surely there has never been a bigger bunch of liars than the crew currently occupying the White House and the now-departed secretary of state.

The steady drip, drip, drip of the Benghazi scandal is now a torrent — one that cries out for a special congressional Select Committee to put it all together email by email, revelation by revelation and lie by lie.

Yesterday ABC News reported on 12 versions of those now infamous talking points — the ones that we now know began with the real story and ended in the highly sanitized pre-election version dished out to the public on five Sunday morning talk shows by U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice.

For eight months the lies have continued.

On Nov. 28, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said, “Those talking points originated from the intelligence community. They reflect the IC’s best assessments of what they thought had happened. The White House and the State Department have made clear that the single adjustment that was made to those talking points by either of those two institutions were changing the word ‘consulate’ to ‘diplomatic facility’ because ‘consulate’ was inaccurate.”

That was an outright lie.

What was excised from those original talking points drafted by the intelligence community were all references to al-Qaeda and its affiliate in the region Ansar al-Sharia — which Libya’s top officials pinpointed as the source of the attack the very night the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans were killed.

The CIA version of the talking points mentioned both al-Qaeda and Ansar al-Sharia and a host of earlier warnings about their level of activity in Libya that created a dangerous situation for U.S. personnel.

All of those references disappeared after an email to officials at the White House and the intelligence agencies, from State Department spokesman Victoria Nuland who said such information “could be abused by members [of Congress] to beat up the State Department for not paying attention to warnings, so why would we want to feed that either?”

Why indeed. Just because it happens to be the truth — even if the truth reflects badly on her boss, Hillary Clinton.

There surely must be a special place in hell reserved for those who cried crocodile tears at the death of our ambassador after doing nothing to help keep him safe and everything to cover up the true nature of the attack.

Source.