Poll: US Catholics Greatly Admire Benedict XVI

A poll just published reveals that American Catholics recognize the Holy Father Benedict XVI's positive impact on the Church, the world and their personal lives.

I am very happy that US Catholics do not believe all the media lies about the Catholic Church and the Pope, and that this marginalized, besieged, bashed and discriminated group, whose symbols are constantly degraded and ideas slandered and vilified - as opposed to fairly discussed - maintains a fighting spirit.

From Zenit:

Just a week after Benedict XVI's resignation, a new Knights of Columbus-Marist poll finds that American Catholics give high marks to the Pope Emeritus.

More than three quarters of Catholics (77%) and more than 8 in 10 practicing Catholics (82%) have a very positive or positive impression of Pope Benedict XVI’s years as pope.

American Catholics have very positive views on Pope Benedict’s impact on their lives, the direction of the Church, and the moral direction of the world.

Nearly 7 in 10 Catholics (68 percent) and more than three quarters of practicing Catholics (77 percent) say Pope Benedict had a “very positive” or “positive” impact on their lives. Only 13% of Catholics and 12% of practicing Catholics saw a negative impact.

Additionally, 70 percent of Catholics and 75 percent of practicing Catholics believe he had a “very positive” or “positive” impact on the direction of the Catholic Church. Only about two in 10 said his impact was negative or very negative (21 percent and 19 percent respectively).

About two thirds of Catholics (65 percent) and about 7 in 10 practicing Catholics (69 percent) said he had a “very positive” or “positive” impact on the moral direction of the world. Fewer than a quarter (23 and 22 percent respectively) disagreed and saw his impact as negative or very negative.

Pope Benedict’s use of Twitter was also very popular among Catholics. Two-thirds of Catholics and practicing Catholics (67 percent and 66 percent respectively), said they “liked the idea” of the pope using Twitter to communicate. Only a quarter of each group disagreed (25 percent for Catholics and practicing Catholics).

Overall, nearly 7 in 10 Catholics (69 percent) and three quarters of practicing Catholics (75 percent) have a very favorable or favorable view of Pope Benedict XVI. By contrast, only 16 percent of Catholics (and 14 percent of practicing Catholics) have an unfavorable view.

“The data indicates clearly that American Catholics have a deep respect for Pope Benedict XVI and a great appreciation for his pontificate,” said Knights of Columbus Supreme Knight Carl Anderson. “That so many felt he had a positive impact on their lives, their Church and their world speaks volumes to the good that he was able to do as pope.”

The findings come just days after the Cardinals – gathered in Rome to elect the new pope – sent the Pope Emeritus a note of gratitude for his Petrine ministry and “example of generous pastoral care for the good of the Church and of the world."

The national survey of 2,000 American adults including 515 Catholics was conducted from March 2 through 5. The margin of error for Catholics is +/- 4.3 percentage points.

Sign the Petition to Nominate Ugandan Pastor Umar Mulinde for the Nobel Peace Prize

Uganda's Pastor Umar Mulinde had the incredible courage to convert from Islam to Christianity, and even to become a Christian minister, well knowing the mortal risk he was taking.

Islam prescribes the death penalty for apostates, those who leave Islam.

This is how Islam has conquered peoples and maintained its position: through the sword, waging war against infidels and beheading apostates.

If there were no death penalty for apostasy, there would be no Islam. This is what cleric and prominent leader of the (now the West's ally) Muslim Brotherhood Yusuf al-Qaradawi says, on video: "If they left apostasy (rida) alone, there wouldn’t have been any Islam. Islam would have been finished right after the death of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him)".

Muslims in Uganda, who represent only 13 percent of the population, are agitating for Shariah law to be established in Uganda. Mulinde and his supporters worry that such an action will result in the oppression of women and non-Muslims in Uganda, just as it has in Nigeria.

In his campaign to prevent the introduction of Sharia into Uganda, Pastor Umar helped organize a petition that received more than 36,000 signatures. Mulinde is also a potent supporter of Israel. He filled a stadium with 5,000 supporters of Israel a few years back.

These actions did not go unnoticed by the Islamists in Uganda. On Dec. 24, 2011, a group of radical Muslims threw acid on his face and back in an attempt to kill him. The attack left him alive, but horribly disfigured. Upon learning that he survived the attack, his attackers and their supporters sent letters to his church stating that they wish the attack had resulted in his death.

The acid attack was not the first attempt on Mulinde’s life that he’s miraculously survived. He’s been shot at and poisoned...

The ideology that motivated the acid attack he endured on Christmas Eve in 2011 is the same used to justify suicide attacks against Israel during the Second Intifada and the rocket attacks that took place over the past few days. Christians in Uganda are starting to wake up to the fact that many in the West have failed to understand the threat presented by Islamic imperialism.

“What the West is denying they will realize when it has come upon them,” he said.

If somebody deserves a Nobel Peace Prize, it is Pastor Umar Mulinde. Giving it to Barack Hussein Obama has made a mockery of this honour; let us re-establish its true value.

As over 700 people so far, including me, have done, please sign the petition to Nominate Umar Mulinde for the Nobel Peace Prize here.

Melanie Phillips Accepted Media Lies on the Catholic Church

I was very disappointed with Melanie Phillips on the BBC's Question Time the other night (see video above).

Her answer to the question - interestingly coming from a supposed woman with the voice of a man, a man pretending to be a woman hypocritically pointing the finger at the Catholic Church's alleged behaviour of preaching something and doing something else, a bit like a man trying to pass for a woman I suppose - about Scottish Cardinal Keith O'Brien who recently apologized for "sexual conduct" unbefitting a priest and said that he would play no further role in the public life of the Catholic Church.

The so-called Church abuse scandal is a subject which is not within Phillips' expertise. There is nothing about it in her latest book The World Turned Upside Down (Amazon USA), (Amazon UK) , which covers topics of religion, morality and the modern world, of which this issue has recently been a relevant part.

I suppose Melanie Phillips does not write on things she does not know anything, or enough, about. But on Question Time she did not have the luxury of choice. She was put on the spot and she had to give a reply.

But I think that a better answer would have been to profess her ignorance of the subject.

Instead, her ignorance was revealed by the fact that she repeated the media's favourite inanity about the Catholic Church's celibacy being a contributing factor to the problem.

As far back as 2003, lesbian and former feminist activist Tammy Bruce, in her book The Death of Right and Wrong (Amazon USA), (Amazon UK) , condemned the hypocrisy of her ex-colleagues in the feminist movement, who were accusing the Church of being the cause of paedophile behaviour in its clergymen by not permitting them to marry.

Many of these feminists had been working in rape cases, Bruce said, so they knew very well that sexual abstinence is hardly ever a factor in sex crimes.

The typical profile of the sex offender of any kind is a man who is married or has a girlfriend.

The old-fashioned, Freudian view that there is a libido which must find its outlet is discredited. Psychoanalysis is a false, rejected theory. Freudian concepts like "sublimation" are not accepted any more and I was surprised to hear Phillips using it.

If celibacy were indeed a contributing factor, we would see a lower incidence of these sex abuses among other religions' or Christian denominations' clergy who are not bound to celibacy.

But this, despite the media's almost exclusive attention on, not to say obsession with, the Catholic Church's problems with this issue - obsession that included reporting these events on front pages much, much more often than the new developments warranted -, is not the case.

The rates of sexual abuse within the Roman Catholic Church were in the past the same or even lower than those in other Christian churches, in other religions and in other institutions like schools and children’s homes, as shown by a U.S. Department of Education's extensive study. Now, due to the fact the the Catholic Church is the only one who confronted and effectively dealt with this issue, those rates are much lower.

So, the celibacy causal theory is empirically disproved by the evidence.

Tammy Bruce wrote:

In the world as defined by the leaders of the Left Elite:
... Taking vows, claiming to represent God, and then molesting adolescent boys is the fault of “the Church,” not of the reprehensible gay men who betray their vows, their church, and their community.

This is in clear letters, by a woman who is herself homosexual, exactly the point of the whole "Catholic Church sex abuse": the perpetrators were not acting like Catholic priests, they were acting like homosexuals.

The whole debate over this has been turned upside down not to offend homosexual sensitivities. Nobody cares about Catholic sensitivies, so that was fine.

Reality has been turned outside down, and it is odd how Melanie Phillips' latest book not only has the title "The World Turned Upside Down", but also deals with the many cases in which the Leftist ideology which dominates the West overturns reality, exactly like in this case concerning the Church.

What shocked me was how Phillips passively believed and repeated all the nonsense peddled by the media on this subject.

After having denounced media reporting on Israel and its conflict with the Palestinians which grossly distorts reality, Phillips more than anyone should know from first-hand experience (being a Jew with a passion for Israel) that the media portraying of highly politically sensitive issues cannot be trusted.

The mainstream media are politically overwhelmingly on the Left and, in the way they are prejudiced against Israel, they are also, and even more, prejudiced against the Catholic Church.

How could she have missed that? I believe that, if someone, in repeating the media distortions and even outright lies, had treated Israel as badly as she did the Catholic Church the other night, she would have accused this someone of Jew-hatred and anti-Semitism.

Eastleigh By-Election: 55% Voted for Anti-Gay-Marriage Candidates

The results of the Eastleigh by-election in Southern England have been remarkable in many respects.

Not only the right-wing UK Independence Party triumphed with the best performance in a British Parliament election in all its history, coming a close second to the winners of what was for them a safe seat, the Liberal Democrats, and pushing the not-so-conservative Conservative Party into third place.

But also, 55% of all votes went to candidates who oppose same-sex marriage:

Most Eastleigh voters backed pro-marriage candidates

The Eastleigh by-election was one of the most significant for years, and 55% of all votes cast went to candidates who think marriage should remain as it is.

Numerous people have been blaming the Conservative Party’s third place behind the Lib Dems and UKIP on David Cameron’s push to redefine marriage.

Sign the Petition to the UN for the Recognition of a World Day against Christianophobia

Christians are today by far the most persecuted religious group. The number of Christians killed each year for their faith is so high that it calculates to one Christian martyr's life being taken every five minutes.

This must be stopped. The UN would let down its mission if it did not do what is in its power to stop this abominable form of discrimination and this genocide.

The 2nd of March 2011 is the day when Muslim extremists in Pakistan assassinated Shahbaz Bhatti, the Roman Catholic man who was Pakistan's first Minister for Minorities Affairs.

They killed him for his work to abolish the country's blasphemy law which has been used to persecute Christians and other faith minorities.

March 2nd has now been proposed as the Annual World Day against Christianophobia, with a petition to the United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon for the recognition of a World Day against “Christianophobia”.

At this moment 2272 have already signed it, including me.

You can sign it here:

Let’s promote March 2nd as the Annual World Day against Christianophobia!

This is the petition:

Dear Secretary General!

Present-day persecution of Christians attracted world attention after the cold-blooded killing of 58 worshippers by radical Islamist gunmen inside Our Lady of Salvation Syriac Catholic Cathedral in Baghdad (Iraq), in October 2010, and the bombing during a New Year’s Eve service of the coptic al-Qiddissin Church, in Alexandria (Egypt), leaving 23 people dead and another 97 injured.

Perhaps even more worrying was the March 2nd murder of Mr. Shahbaz Bhatti, Pakistan’s Federal Minister of Minorities in broad daylight in Islamabad, since he was martyred precisely for his opposition to the «blasphemy laws» which are used as a legal instrument to persecute non-Muslims.

Direct killing, however, is not the only form of “christianophobia.” Current persecution of Christians also includes vandalism against churches and discrimination and harassment of individuals, particularly in the West, under the form of unjust representation in the media, unfair treatment by employers, disrespect for the right to conscientious objection, disregard for the right of parents to be the primary educators of their children, etc…

This reality makes the recognition of a World Day Against Christianophobia urgent – to draw the attention of public opinion, social movements, policy makers and the media to this crucial issue and to provide a unique annual opportunity for Christians to defend their rights in society.

A World Day against Christianophobia is the natural next step after recent positive attitudes adopted by the European Parliament, such as its resolutions expressing deep concern over the attacks against Christian communities in Iraq (Nov 25th, 2010), and its condemnation of attacks against Christians in Egypt, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, Iran and Iraq, as well as the forcible interruption by the Turkish authorities of the Christmas Mass in northern Cyprus (Jan 20th, 2011).

However, words – even if they are pronounced from the floor of a Parliament – are not enough ! No concrete results will come from them if the persecution against Christians is not recognised as the first worldwide emergency with regard to religious discrimination and violence.

Sign the petition here!

London Protest: Christians Persecuted in Pakistan Demand Equality

Saturday 2nd March I attended in London the protest against discrimination and persecution of Pakistani Christians.

Organized by the British Pakistani Christian Association, it included the presentation of a petition both to London's Pakistani Embassy and to the British Prime Minister's residence in 10 Downing Street. Several religious figures and human rights campaigners were speakers at the demonstration.

A Peace Rally and Memorial Concert in Trafalgar Square followed, in memory of Shahbaz Bhatti, the Roman Catholic man who was Pakistan's first Minister for Minorities Affairs from 2008 until Muslim extremists assassinated him in 2011 for his work to abolish the country's blasphemy law which has been used to persecute faith minorities. He was the only Christian in the government.

Minister Bhatti had received repeated death threats for his consistent defence of the rights of Pakistan's religious minorities and for his fight for the abolition of Pakistan’s shameful blasphemy laws, which mandate the death sentence for anyone thought to have spoken ill of Muhammad or to have in any way offended Muslim sensitivities: the standard of accepted evidence is very low, and intent or lack of it is not a consideration in passing the sentence.

Two months before the assassination of Bhatti, another man campaigning for the same cause, Provincial Governor Salman Taseer, had been killed by his own bodyguard, who for his crime was welcomed as a hero by many Pakistani Muslims.

Saturday's event, like a similar one in 2012, commemorated the anniversary of Shahbaz Bhatti's assassination on 2 March 2011 outside his home in Islamabad.

Constantly Pakistani Christians are killed for their faith, or other atrocities are committed against them, like the rape of a Christian 2-year-old girl because her father refused to convert to Islam.

The situation of Christians in Pakistan is dire. Recently a Christian 19-year-old boy, Mard-e-Khuda, living in the Bahawalpur district, was barbarically killed on the false accusation of having an affair with a Muslim girl.

"20 million Christians in Pakistan are treated as second class citizens and denied justice in Pakistan by Islamic governments which never feel ashamed to release Muslim criminals and terrorists" said Dr. Nazir S Bhatti, who has been been campaigning for equal rights for Christian people in Pakistan since 1985 and is President of the Pakistan Christian Congress (PCC). He had to flee Pakistan for his safety and now lives in the USA.

While in his country Nazir Bhatti was arrested many times. The government of Pakistan registered 21 false cases of treason and blasphemy against him on February 13 1998, for leading a protest against the burning of the Christian village Shanti Nagar in Punjab by radical Muslims.

The reality of Christian victimization and persecution in this Muslim-majority country is so horrific that I suggested that the international community, particularly the British Commonwealth of which it is part, should give Pakistan the South African treatment and treat it like a pariah until it repeals its blasphemy laws and protects its religious minorities.

As usual, last Christmas was a dark Christmas for Pakistani Christians, and, amid growing fear of persecution and rampant economic and social discrimination in Pakistan, the year 2012 was one of the worst years for them.

Raymond Ibrahim, in his monthly report of Muslim Persecution of Christians throughout the world for December, writes about Pakistan:

Birgitta Almby, a 70-year-old Bible school teacher from Sweden, was shot by two men in front of her home; she died soon after. She had served in Pakistan for 38 years. Police said they could not find the assassins and could not unearth a motive, although Christians close to her have no doubt "Islamic extremists" murdered the elderly woman: "Who else would want to murder someone as apolitical and harmless as Almby, who had dedicated her life to serving humanity?" That service may have included sharing the Gospel with Muslims, an act strictly forbidden in Islam.

Other recent Muslim atrocities against Christians are listed on Jihad Watch.

The list of horrors could continue, but I'm sure that those who do not want to look away and pretend it does not happen have now got the message.

On a positive note, March 2nd has now been proposed as the Annual World Day against Christianophobia, with a petition to the United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon for the recognition of a World Day against “Christianophobia”.

I would have probably preferred "against the persecution of Christians" to another "phobia", but it is true that the latter includes other forms of attack against Christianity, like the ones coming from the Western "progressives" as well as from communist regimes or the 1,400-year-old cult of Islam.

Female Genital Mutilation Is an Islamic Practice

Another macroscopic, gigantic example of media cover-up regarding the reality of Islam.

The London Evening Standard yesterday carried an article, London’s challenge to stop girls’ mutilation, in which it managed never to mention the words "Islam" or "Muslim" once in the entire piece while discussing FGM, female genital mutilation, the removal of part or all of the external female genitalia (vulva) to prevent sexual pleasure.

The dhimmi newspaper Independent (from reason and reality), which in past articles by Robert Fisk, a journalist personally recommended by Osama Bin Laden as a messenger of al Qaeda's propaganda, has shamefully demonized the Egyptian and Syrian Christians for not supporting the Islamist "revolutions" which for them spell persecution, has gone even further.

For this British rag's columnist Sadaf Qureshi, FGM, far from having an Islamic dimension, does not even have a cultural one: to believe it has, one can safely assume, she would probably consider a sign of racism.

For her "Female genital mutilation (FGM) isn’t just something that’s carried out in the deepest, darkest recesses of the globe. It's a UK problem too." I wonder in what mysterious ways it became a UK problem.

The most interesting part of that article is outside the article, in this illuminating comment:

Of the 31 countries with a proportion of Muslims greater than 90% of their population, the following 15 appear on the list of countries where FGM is prevalent. Afghanistan Iran Mauritania Yemen Tajikistan Iraq Turkey Somalia Niger Comoros Algeria Palestinian territories Saudi Arabia Djibouti Libya Pakistan Senegal Gambia Egypt Syria Bangladesh. Of the next 12 with between 70% and 80%, a further 8 are on the FGM list: Bangladesh Indonesia Oman Guinea Qatar United Arab Emirates Sierra Leone Sudan. There are only 53 countries on the FGM list.

That the practice of FGM pre-dates Islam is true but irrelevant. Islam has perpetuated and continues to perpetuate through its teachings this savagery, that Christianity never ever condoned. In fact, in many African countries like Kenya and Tanzania Christians are actively campaigning against it.

The mutilations carried out in London today do not have a "cultural" origin, as the Standard falsely says, but an Islamic one, brought as they have been into this city which did not know them before by Muslim immigrants, now settled here in great and increasing numbers.

As Jamie Glazov points out:

Naturally Muslims are not the only ones who perpetrate FGM. Of course, FGM is practised outside of Islam, including under non-Islamic African tribal cultures. I never said anywhere that FGM is only practised by Muslims. But the key issue here is that Muslims are the principle religious group that practices this sexual violence against women. And the reality is that if you are a victim of FGM, then the chances are very high that you live in a Muslim household and in a Muslim culture.

Now within the context of Islamic FGM, the barbarity is kept alive and legitimized by Islamic theology. This is the case in Egypt, where this crime against girls is waged on a massive level. The Egyptian government banned FGM in 1996, but an Egyptian court overturned the ban in July 1997 because of the ferocious uprising of the Islamic clerics, who fervently pointed to Islamic teachings to re-implement this war against women’s sexuality. The Muslim mutilators pointed to traditional Islamic teachings that sanction FGM, which include the Prophet Muhammad’s instruction that circumcising girls is “a preservation of honor for women.” Also, a legal manual of the Shafi’i school of Islamic jurisprudence, ‘Umdat al-Salik, which is endorsed by Al-Azhar University of Cairo — the oldest and most prestigious university in the Islamic world — states that circumcision is obligatory for both boys and girls.

Here is the whole quotation from the text mentioned by Glazov, The Classic Manual of Islamic Sacred Law ‘Umdat al-Salik by Ahmad ibn Naqib al-Misri:

Circumcision is obligatory (for every male and female) by cutting off the piece of skin on the glans of the penis of the male, but circumcision of the female is by cutting out the clitoris (this is called HufaaD).

Recently, the largest Muslim organization of Indonesia, the country with the largest Muslim population in the world, defended FGM as a "human right".

Nonie Darwish's book about Sharia law Cruel and Usual Punishment (Amazon USA) , (Amazon UK) says:

In Indonesia, the practice had previously been unknown before Shafi'i Islam was introduced into South-East Asia. The claim that female circumcision is not a religious practice doesn't hold up.

While many say there is nothing in Islam requiring female circumcision, one of Sunni Islam's 'Four Great Imams', Ahmad Ibn Hanbal (from whom the Hanbali school of Islamic jurisprudence takes its name) quotes Mohammed as saying, "Circumcision is a law for men and a preservation of honour for women".

The practice of FGM, moreover, is perfectly aligned to the whole message of Islam with its subjugation of women. So, linking the two has a much deeper significance than associating, for example, as the media disproportionately and misleadingy do, Catholic priesthood and homosexuality or paedophilia, as both of the latter are antinomic to Catholic teachings.

It is abominable that Islamic apologists and their leftist allies continue to try to exculpate Islam with assertions like: Muhammed was not a paedophile because in those days it was ordinary practice to marry prepubescent girls, or: FGM is not Islam's fault because it is "cultural". And all this nonsense is daily repeated by the media: no wonder the resistance against Islamization makes such a slow progress in Europe.