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Archbishop Charles J. Chaput: Armenian Genocide Was The Dress Rehear

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  • Archbishop Charles J. Chaput: Armenian Genocide Was The Dress Rehear

    ARCHBISHOP CHARLES J. CHAPUT: ARMENIAN GENOCIDE WAS THE DRESS REHEARSAL FOR NAZI EXTERMINATION OF JEWS

    15:37, 05 Mar 2015
    Siranush Ghazanchyan

    "The dress rehearsal for the Nazi extermination of the Jews took
    place exactly 100 years ago, in 1915," Archbishop Charles J. Chaput
    writes in his weekly column on The Catholic Philly. The full article
    is provided below:

    "Lent is a time for self-examination and repentance; a time for good
    spiritual reading and the sacrament of penance. It's also a time for
    renewing our sense of solidarity with fellow Christians around the
    world. It's a moment to remember the witness of so many Christians
    who've died simply because they were Christian.

    The world rightly remembers the mass murder of Jews and other
    minorities by Nazi Germany during the Second World War. In its scope,
    the Shoah dwarfs anything in human history, and its echoes continue
    today in the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe, much of it driven by
    radicalized Islam. But the Shoah was by no means the only mass murder
    carried out in the 20th century.

    In fact, the dress rehearsal for the Nazi extermination of the Jews
    took place exactly 100 years ago, in 1915. The genocide was carried out
    by Turkish authorities, and it murdered more than 1 million Armenians,
    a people who were overwhelmingly Christian. Religion wasn't the only
    reason for the killings - ethnic and economic resentments of Turkey's
    Armenian minority played an important role - but Muslim contempt for
    the "unbelievers" legitimized the violence and was a powerful current
    throughout the killings.

    Men, women and children were turned out of their homes, marched to
    exhaustion and starved, beaten, hanged and burned to death by the tens
    of thousands. The systematic murder campaign went on in bloody waves
    into the 1920s. Witnesses recalled Turks taunting their victims with
    shouts of "Where is your Christ now? Where is your Jesus? Why does
    he not save you?"

    To this day, Turkey has never adequately acknowledged the Armenian
    genocide. As President Jimmy Carter once remarked, "there weren't
    any Nuremburg trials" for the mass murder inflicted on the Armenians.

    During the Cold War, Turkey was a NATO ally. The United States and
    Europe found it easier to turn a blind eye to history than to resurrect
    a crime from the past.

    Today, with the resurgence of militant Islam inside Turkey itself,
    a full national truth-telling by Turkish authorities may be even more
    remote. Armenians were the first nation in the world to formally adopt
    Christianity in A.D. 301. Today, in their historic home regions of
    modern Turkey, their culture and memory have been wiped out.

    Every year on April 24, Armenians around the world celebrate
    Remembrance Day for the victims of the 1915 genocide. This year, on
    the centenary of that mass murder, Christians from every tradition
    need to remember and pray for the victims of that genocide, which
    remains one of the worst unrepented crimes in history.

    We also need to remember that the persecution and murder of Christians
    still continues at the hands of ISIS and radicalized Islam throughout
    the Middle East. And to date, our national leadership has been utterly
    ineffective in stopping it - or even fully engaging it.

    We Americans take for granted our traditions of religious liberty,
    human rights and judicial process. We see the coexistence - and even
    the friendship -- of different religious communities and beliefs
    as quite normal. But it's not. We too often don't understand the
    uniqueness of that gift.

    Today, in many places around the world, living as a Christian invites
    discrimination, hatred and violence. The beheading of Christians by
    ISIS is the latest crime in a long history of Middle Eastern Christian
    martyrdom - not the phony and homicidal "martyrdom" that involves
    blowing up innocent women and children, but the realmartyrdom of
    being murdered for one's belief in Jesus Christ.

    Lent is a time of repentance. It's also a time for forgiving even the
    wicked. But it's also a time to remember and learn from history --
    even when the whole world wants to forget it. This Lent we need to
    remember and pray for the Armenian Christians who died 100 years
    ago. Like us, they were part of God's people; the people of Jesus
    Christ. The memory of their suffering should turn our hearts and our
    energies to helping the millions of Christians now suffering in the
    Middle East and around the world."

    http://www.armradio.am/en/2015/03/05/archbishop-charles-j-chaput-armenian-genocide-was-the-dress-rehearsal-for-nazi-extermination-of-jews/

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