"You're next!", Chaldean Archbishop of Mosul warns West

This is the Most Reverend Amel Nona, Chaldean Catholic Archbishop of Mosul, Iraq. Behind him is what remains of St. Paul's Cathedral, destroyed in July by the jihadists of ISIS. These are the Islamic extremists the Vatican was telling us we must "dialogue" with, until recent events proved that there can be no dialogue with the devil.

The ISIS forces -- much more powerful than Al-Qaeda at its peak -- have forced a million Christians in Syria and Iraq to either convert to Islam or be killed. Until the very public beheading of James Foley this week, the Prez and other western "leaders" thought the war in the Fertile Crescent was little more than "a spot of local trouble" which could be handled with a few well-placed air strikes. This week it finally dawned on Messrs Obama, Cameron et al. that we could be next. See "'We’re coming for you, Barack Obama': Top U.S. official discloses threat from ISIL", from the Washington Times.

In an August 18th interview with Corriere della Sera, Archbishop Nona describes the danger as being not in the future, but clear and present. The fanatics are not coming, he says. They are already here! Speaking of our insane immigration policies which welcome increasing numbers of Muslims into our countries, the prelate said, "Our sufferings today are the prelude of those you, Europeans and Western Christians, will also suffer in the near future.... "I lost my diocese. The physical setting of my apostolate has been occupied by Islamic radicals who want us converted or dead.... You will become the victims of the enemy you have welcomed into your home."

Further reading: "ISIS Leader Says Christians Must Convert to Stay", from the English edition of Corriere della Sera.

"We are a ruined church": Patriarch Sako talks about Christianity in Iraq

Migration of Christians: Percussion of the Alarm Bells is a very sad commentary by Louis Raphaël I Sako, Patriarch of the Chaldean Catholic Church, on the situation of Christians in Iraq.

Patriarch Sako blames the American invasion of Iraq for the demise of the Church in his country. "We are a ruined church", he said. "1400 years of Islam could not uproot us from our land and our churches, while the policies of the West [have] scattered us and distributed us all around the world."

The Chaldean Catholic Church is an Eastern Syriac particular church of the Catholic Church, maintaining full communion with the Bishop of Rome and the rest of the Catholic Church. Founded in the earliest days of Christianity (1st to 3rd centuries A.D.), it was originally a part of The Assyrian Church of the East, until in the 16th century Shimun VIII Yohannan Sulaqa entered communion with the Roman Catholic Church. It was renamed as the Chaldean Catholic Church by Rome in 1683.

The Chaldean Catholic Church presently comprises an estimated 500,000 believers, mostly ethnic Assyrians indigenous to northern Iraq, and areas bordering it in southeast Turkey, northeast Syria and northwest Iran. This is a troubled area, coinciding geographically with large parts of what is called "Kurdistan", where the Muslim majority are struggling to carve their own state out of parts of Iraq, Turkey and Syria. In central and south Iraq, fighting between Sunni and Shia Muslims goes on as usual, in spite of -- or because of -- the failure of the American "intervention".

According to Patriarch Sako, the West would have been better off leaving the local peoples to sort out their differences on their own. "Democracy and change come through upbringing and education rather than through conflict," he said. "Intervention by the West in the region did not solve the problems...but on the contrary, produced more chaos and conflict."

Referring to the régime of Saddam Hussein, the patriarch said that "in the Church of the Ascension, Al-Mashtal, for example, there were about 5000 families and over 240 students preparing for their First Holy Communion before the régime’s fall.... On 25 April 2014, I celebrated in this church the Holy Mass for First Holy Communion of 13 students only."

"[Iraqi] government authorities bear part of the responsibility of this migration for failing to restore security and stability," Patriarch Sako continued. He called upon Muslim clerics to issue "a joint statement denying all forms of violence, mistrust and considering others as 'infidels'" and calling "for peace and brotherhood among the people."

For all the goodwill exhibited by Patriarch Sako, Walt thinks the likelihood of any such statement coming out of Iraq is about the same as that of Pope Francis admitting that "we are a ruined church" applies in the larger sense to the Roman Catholic Church as a whole.