Catholic Reading Wednesday

With many thanks to our awesome curator, Karen Celano, you can delve into a faith-related news article each Wednesday! Karen writes:

Eighty percent of religious violence throughout the world is directed at Christians, making Christians the most persecuted religious group on earth, but you'll never hear those statistics from American secular media.  There are probably many reasons for the media's neglect of this issue, but what's more striking is that most American Christians are unaware of these facts as well.

I find this news humbling and challenging.  It's humbling to realize that the challenges we Christians in the U.S. face are absolutely nothing compared to what Christians endure in places like Syria or Pakistan.  It is also challenging to understand that we, as privileged American Christians, have an obligation to consider how our our country's foreign policy is affecting our Christian brothers and sisters in other nations.  I think we also need to ask ourselves if our self-centered political squabbling is blinding us to the suffering of our Christian family throughout the world.  How can we as Christians bring attention to this issue when we see our fellow members of Christ's Body in such desperate need?

Of course, one way to defend the principle of religious freedom throughout the world is to fight for its protection here in the United States.  But the recent government shutdown has thrown light on how shaky the ideal of religious freedom can be when a country is in political turmoil, as during the shutdown Catholic military chaplains risked arrest for saying Mass on military bases.  Such a threat is a blatant violation both of the rights of priests to fulfill their religious obligation to say Mass, and the rights of Catholic servicemen and women to worship freely.  This episode reveals that the U.S. is not immune to the political dynamics that occur in the rest of the world: where there is economic tension and political disarray, religious freedom is rapidly threatened.  Let us then pray for wisdom in our nation and peace in the world, for the sake of our Christian family both at home and abroad.