Tuesday, December 28, 2010
This is just a quick link to follow -- an "aside." These are links to interesting things that, for one reason or another, I didn't place into a full posting. Click the link to visit the full article. Go to the blog index for a regular listing of posts.
Islamists Slaughter Christians, and Jews Are Blamed - 'The recent wave of deadly attacks on Iraqi Christians must have cast a pall over Christmas celebrations worldwide this year. But one can't help wondering whether it also prompted any soul-searching at the Vatican. After all, it was just two months ago that a synod of Middle East bishops proclaimed Israel the main source of Middle East Christians' woes...'
Middle East bishops, as with so many other M.E. Xians, have been rather thoroughly co-opted along ideological, cultural, etc. lines - and, yes, theological lines as well. Lebanon's evolution in this vein is but one illuminating tell-tale indicator. It is particularly telling, for example, that many M.E. Xians, notably in Lebanon and including ecclisial hierarchies, have given formal and de facto ascent to Marcionism, a Xian theological "heresy" formally rejected in the 2nd century, which denies the Xian O.T., the Jewish Tanakh, among other things, effectively creating a seedbed for anti-Judaic and anti-Semitic hatreds, including the particularly vile and misbegotten deicide charge.
Revivifying Marcionism, among other notable anti-Judaic and anti-Semitic - and, properly understood, anti-Xian - initiatives, should be a stark tell-tale indicator that things, at a very elemental level, are awry in Xian communities in the M.E. This is dark, dark stuff and Xians in the U.S. and elsewhere should be able to identify it as such, and from its very origins, its very genesis.