A Request for More Information about Central Africa
Since our last news update a week ago, one reader wrote to ask for more information on what is happening in the Central African Republic in particular, and throughout countries where Islamic militants are persecuting Christian Churches. As one can imagine, just getting accurate news from some areas is very difficult, and it often comes late after corrections or updates may already be issued but not received. There is also danger in repeating something inaccurate, as it could foment further harm. Nevertheless, our persecuted brothers and sisters deserve more than silence, so we begin this week’s post with a limited patchwork of what we find in Zenit this week. The more extensive full text can be found at: http://www.zenit.org/en/articles/plea-from-bishops-of-central-african-republic-let-us-rebuild-together-in-peace
Let Us Rebuild Together in Peace: “While the world was celebrating Christmas, we were spending our time killing one another”
ROME, January 15, 2014 (Zenit.org) – Here are excerpts from the Jan. 8 message from the bishops of the Central African Republic:
TO ALL MEN AND WOMEN OF GOODWILL
“On the threshold of this new year 2014, we, the bishops of Central Africa offer our wishes of peace and long life to all the people of the Central African Republic, despite the difficult situation our country is going through. To the French, Congolese and Chadian governments, to the families of the soldiers who have fallen in this land for our liberation, and for all our compatriots who have lost loved ones, we offer our sincere condolences…. The people of Bossangoa, Bouar, Bozoum, Gaga and Bangui have been particularly traumatised by this fratricidal violence. How did we manage to arrive at this human degradation?” (The headlines of each section follow, with just a bit of content in some. Use the link above to read the entire document.)
1. A military and political crisis that has destroyed our social cohesion: Certain demands of a social and political nature have led some Central Africans to resort to armed rebellion. The rapid advance of the Seleka coalition forced the ousted president to flee and led in consequence to a change of government. This movement was led to a great extent by Chadian and Sudanese mercenaries and young unemployed men, enlisted progressively during the advance of the Seleka forces, who committed numerous outrages (thefts, rape, looting, violence, murder…) against the civilian population. They have destroyed the administrative and economic system of the country and … the life of the nation, by destabilising its social cohesion. Human rights were trampled underfoot.
Central African Republic shown in yellow.
The disintegration of the state and the silent complicity of our rulers, of the political class, together with the slowness of the response by the international community have together driven those who felt themselves to be the victims of this system to take the law into their own hands and organise into self-defence movements in order to protect what was left to them. …. In the present conflict between the Seleka and the anti-balaka we have slipped into a cycle of reprisals and counter-reprisals in which the civilian population is held hostage. We condemn all this violence, regardless of its origin. … The inaccurate language which equates the anti-balaka with a Christian militia has to be corrected. This generalisation, propagated by the national and international media, leads people to attribute a sectarian character to a crisis that is above all political and military.
2. Gratitude to the International Community:
3. Our responsibility as Christians and citizens:
4. The struggle for human advancement and social cohesion: “We present a deplorable picture of ourselves and of our country. We seem to be content to destroy what little infrastructure we still have left. The result is devastating. The country is laid low, like the rotten fruit that blankets the soil in our villages, while our people are scattered, wandering through the bush like wild animals. Far from the claims about the cementing of national unity, reinforcing social cohesion and good governance and the just distribution of the national wealth that were bandied about by the seleka coalition, in justification of the seizure of power, the country has instead been plunged into desolation. The roads are no longer maintained, the hospitals are destroyed or left devoid of medication and medical personnel. Those living with HIV AIDS no longer have access to the necessary drugs. The schools no longer exist. Now we are on our way towards a second lost year. Are we even aware of the children of schoolgoing age whom we are sacrificing on the altar of this crisis? The government administration is non-existent, the state employees are on strike and the young are unemployed. There is no sign of progress. There is no longer any guarantee of respect for the individual in his physical integrity and the protection of his goods. Killing has become a routine and anodyne action. We are sinking into a “culture of violence and death….”
5. The promotion of national unity: “Our present behaviour is an utter discredit to the values of unity, dignity and work on which our nation of Central Africa is founded. …. Let us be on our guard that this crisis does not harden our hearts against our brothers and sisters and make us question the advantages of the spirit of welcoming and hospitality for which our country is renowned. It is heartbreaking to see our brothers and sisters departing in droves, who have been settled for decades here in Central Africa and who have contributed to the development of our country. It is equally discouraging to hear some of our countrymen speaking of the partition of the Central African Republic.”
6. Fraternity
7. Forgiveness as a healing process
8. Some proposals for a way out of the crisis
9. Conclusion: “The year 2013 has been a year of severe trials for the entire Central African people. No one has been spared by this crisis, which has brought so many misfortunes, plunged so many families into mourning and destroyed not only our social fabric but our entire administrative and judicial apparatus and brought our economy to its knees. Nevertheless, the Lord has not abandoned us. Trusting in his fatherly concern, which urges us to live as brothers and sisters because we are all his children, we pray that this New Year of 2014 may enable us to live in peace and mutual harmony.”
“For a united and peaceful Central African Republic, through the intercession of Mary, Queen of Peace. Bangui Jan. 8, 2014”
When Children are Pushed Down the Slippery Slope, and the Common Core Curriculum Concerns
The history of the world of tyranny and dictatorship, of raw power, is a history of perpetuation of ideology through other people’s children. It would be naive to think that were not still true today. From capturing youth for the slave trade to the state schools of Nazi Germany, from recruitment of suicide bombers to human sex trafficking, it is the young who are the focus of abominable use and of new cannon fodder. Today, in the United States, and elsewhere in the world, we see well-defined threats not only to the bodies but also to the souls of children. More than 40 years of legalized abortion has obviously destroyed millions of young bodies and reduced birth rates. The emergent culture of so called “gay-marriage” begs the question “Where will the next generation of support for homosexual unions come from, if somebody else’s children are not raised to deny God and His moral teaching?” The answer should be obvious. Other people’s children must be, in some way, wrested away from the parents who would teach them of God, and in some manner “brainwashed” into believing what the emergent sin culture wants them to believe, in order to perpetuate itself.
In some countries, that might mean taking the children away from their parents entirely (see below, regarding an adverse judicial decision in Germany this week.) In the U. S. there have been pressures on organizations such as the Girl Scouts to promote Planned Parenthood connections, and this past autumn there was the charter change to admit alleged homosexual boys to the scouts. The biggest looming threat would seem to be the Obama administration’s proposed Common Core Curriculum, already denounced by several U.S. bishops. Deliberate actions against home-schooling are increasingly reported as well, setting the stage for further manipulation of children. It would be well for Catholics to refresh themselves on the rights of all parents, found in the Catholic Church’s Charter of the Rights of the Family, especially Article V regarding education.
http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/family/documents/rc_pc_family_doc_19831022_family-rights_en.html
Children taken away from Home-Schooling Parents in Germany
by Peter Baklinski, DARMSTADT, Germany, Jan. 16, 2014
A family court judge in Germany has denied a Christian homeschooling couple custody of their 4 children, to prevent their fleeing Germany,
calling homeschooling a concrete endangerment to the well-being of the child, a “straitjacket” to bind children to years of isolation. This is the same family, the Wunderlichs, whose home was stormed by police last August and the children forcibly removed. Homeschooling is illegal in Germany, just as it was in East Germany under communism and in all of Germany under the Nazis.
Apparently, the standards set forth in international law documents — such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the right of parents to direct the education of their children, and the right of individuals to leave a country are all likely being violated.
Something is rotten in the state of education: The Abominable Common Core Curriculum
by Anthony Esolen, Fri Jan 17, 2014 13:53 EST
LifeSiteNews has reprinted the subject opinion piece, stating “Any land in which parents, singly or in groups, do not have first and last authority over what and how their children learn is not free.” The original article can also be read on the Witherspoon Institutes Public Policy discourse, where it is entitled: “Peonage for the Twenty-First Century.” Here are a few key excerpts from the author:
- “The Common Core exists only because we have forgotten that parents have a right to educate their children. The state has no educational authority of its own apart from what parents delegate to it.”
- “Common Core…is a bag of rotten old ideas doused with disinfectant; its assumptions are hostile to classical and Christian approaches to education; it is starkly utilitarian; its self-promotion is sludged up with edu-lingo, thick with verbiage and thin in thought; its drafters have forgotten, if they ever knew, what it is to be a child.”
- “…that there should even be a Common Core proves how far we have fallen into peonage to the State.”
- “The family delegates some of its educational task to the schoolteacher, who is, as it were, a general governess or tutor hired by the parents through the intermediary of the town or county. The school is a deputy of the family, or, in the case of the death or debility of the parents, a substitute. It has no authority of its own apart from what the employers, the parents, delegate to it.”
- “…that we might countenance national authority over the mind of a child shows our abjection.”
In case you missed prior articles regarding the dangers of the Common Core Curriculum, here are a few of interest:
- See LifeSiteNews regarding “Homeschool group, Catholic education watchdog … concerned by Common Core standards” here:
- the Cardinal Newman Society’s: “Common Core May Endanger Religous Freedom of Catholic Schools” here:
- the Cardinal Newman Society’s: “Common Core’s ‘National Standard’ Threatens Autonomy, Religious Freedom, Says Education Policy Expert” found at:
- CathNewsUSA’s News from Nov. 4, 2013: “Catholic scholars blast Common Core in letter to U.S. bishops” which can be found here:
LATE BREAKING NEWS: JWYTICGAC (Just when you thought it couldn’t get any crazier) — NYS Assemblywoman Margaret Markey from Long Island has introduced a bill to require psychological testing and evaluation of every single student in public school. Now if the plan started with the NY Assembly, it might have made some sense.
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