Times Changing

I'm surprised. I thought it would take another 20 years for the Catholic church to get to this point:

“Enough now with this turning the other cheek! It’s our duty to protect ourselves.” Thus spoke Monsignor Velasio De Paolis, secretary of the Vatican’s supreme court, referring to Muslims. Explaining his apparent rejection of Jesus’ admonition to his followers to “turn the other cheek,” De Paolis noted that “The West has had relations with the Arab countries for half a century…and has not been able to get the slightest concession on human rights.”

De Paolis is hardly alone in his thinking; indeed, the Catholic Church is undergoing a dramatic shift from a decades-old policy to protect Catholics living under Muslim rule. The old methods of quiet diplomacy and muted appeasement have clearly failed. The estimated 40 million Christians in Dar al-Islam, notes the Barnabas Fund’s Patrick Sookhdeo, increasingly find themselves an embattled minority facing economic decline, dwindling rights, and physical jeopardy. Most of them, he goes on, are despised and distrusted second-class citizens, facing discrimination in education, jobs, and the courts.

Let's hope this change in policy makes things better. We already know what doesn't work. Appeasement doesn't work.

Abduhl Rahman was allowed to leave Afghanistan with his life but he was the exception to the rule. His only crime was converting to Christianity, and he would have been killed for it had world attention not been focused on the case. Now we need to protect the hundreds of other converts who face apostasy charges each year. It's time to bring the Muslim world into the 21st century.