Patriarchs Urge West to Stop Extinction of Middle East Christians

Chaldean Bishop Ibrahim Ibrahim, Antiochian Orthodox Metropolitan Joseph and Syriac Catholic Patriarch Ignace Joseph III Younan at an ecumenical service in Washington (CNS)

United in the suffering of their people, five Catholic and Orthodox patriarchs from the Middle East urged Westerners to take action to help ensure that Christians and other minorities can remain in the Middle East.

“Christians are not (just) looking for humanitarian aid. They are looking for humanitarian action, to save Christianity in the Middle East,” said Catholicos Aram of Cilicia, patriarch of the Armenian Apostolic Church.

The Armenian patriarch said a comprehensive strategy is needed to defeat Islamic State extremism that “threatens the very survival of Christianity” in places like Iraq and Syria. He said it was essential to promote human rights, pluralism and religious freedom.

The September 11 panel was part of an inaugural summit, In Defence of Christians (running from September 9-11), a new Washington-based group formed to promote awareness of the plight of Christians in the Middle East, and to lobby US policymakers on their behalf.

Read more at The Catholic Herald (UK) >>

Dear Scotland: An Open Letter from Your Canadian Cousins

An editorial from The Globe and Mail

Dear Scotland,

You probably don’t know this, but you made us. The first European to cross the continent and reach our Pacific coast was Alexander Mackenzie – a Scot. Our first prime minister and chief Father of Confederation, Sir John A. Macdonald? Scottish. So too our second PM. Our country’s national dream, a railroad from sea to sea, was realized in 1885 when Sir Donald Smith, head of the Canadian Pacific Railway, drove The Last Spike at Craigellachie – a place named after a village in his homeland. The man who did the most to create Canada’s system of universal public health care, and chosen as “The Greatest Canadian” in a national survey of CBC viewers, was Tommy Douglas. He was born in Falkirk. The thistle and the red lion rampant on our national coat of arms identify you as one of our four founding nations; half of our provincial flags contain a Saint Andrew’s cross; and one of our provinces – Nova Scotia – is named after you. There are said to be more pipers and pipe bands in Canada than in Scotland. And nearly five million Canadians identify their ethnic origin as entirely or partly Scottish, which means we have almost as many Scottish-Canadians as you have people.

"Lift High the Cross"

Last Night of the BBC Proms Finale

The Forever War

By Patrick J. Buchanan

The strategy that President Obama laid out Wednesday night to “degrade and ultimately destroy the terrorist group known as ISIL,” is incoherent, inconsistent and, ultimately, non-credible.

A year ago, Obama and John Kerry were straining at the leash to launch air strikes on Syrian President Bashar Assad for his alleged use of chemical weapons in “killing his own people.”

But when Americans rose as one to demand that we stay out of Syria, Obama hastily erased his “red line” and announced a new policy of not getting involved in “somebody else’s civil war.”

Redefeating the Turks: the Battle of Vienna, September 12, 1683

From The American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property (TFP)

King Jan III Sobieski with a gorget of the Black Madonna of Częstochowa.

Before he set out, Sobieski had sent a letter to Innocent XI, in which he wrote: “When the good of the Church and Christianity is concerned I shed my blood to the last drop, together with the whole kingdom. Since my kingdom and I are two bulwarks of Christianity”.

To commemorate Sobieski’s victory Pope Innocent XI announced 12 September the day of glory of the Holy Name of Mary, and to show his admiration for the Poles and their king the Pope accepted the sign of the Crowned Eagle into his papal coat of arms.

It is said that Pope Blessed Innocent XI instituted this feast honoring the holy name of Mary, because the Polish winged hussars, in response to the Turks battle cry of “Allah, Allah!” rushed into battle crying “Maria! Maria!” Indeed, the Mother of God showed Her great power that day for King Sobieski utterly routed the Turkish army.

Would that this heroic and faith-filled attitude of King Sobieski and his famed Polish winged hussars be emulated in the great Cultural War that embroils all of the Christian West. Having put “on the breastplate of faith and charity, and for a helmet the hope of salvation” (1 Thess. 5:8), and praying to God for the courage of King Sobieski and his men, let us charge into this fray–always legally and peacefully–crying “Maria! Maria!”

King John III Sobieski Sobieski sending Message of Victory to the Pope, after the Battle of Vienna painted by Jan Matejko

Gallup: By 6 to 1, Americans Think US Government More Important Problem than Situation in Iraq

From Gallup

by Rebecca Riffkin

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Four percent of Americans currently mention terrorism as the most important problem facing the U.S. Although low on an absolute basis, it is the highest percentage naming this issue since May 2010. Mentions of terrorism have been near 1% for the past four years.

Relatively few Americans -- usually less than 0.5% -- mentioned terrorism as the most important problem facing the U.S. prior to 9/11. But that changed quickly after the 9/11 attacks. Mentions jumped to 46% the month after the attacks, the highest percentage Gallup has found for terrorism since it began asking Americans monthly to name the most important problem facing the nation in March 2001.