A story in this morning’s NYTimes, “For Iraqi Christians, Money Bought Survival,” reveals a little-known (to most of us in the U.S., I suspect) story of how Iraqi Christians have been paying off militias in exchange for their lives. The story starts with Chaldean Catholic Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho, who died earlier this year after he was kidnapped because he apparently thought it was safe enough to stop paying the extortion money. This story, as the entire tragic story of our enormous collateral damage to the church in Iraq, is shameful for the United States. Yet this Times piece raises questions of moral or ethical culpability on the part of Iraqi Christians:
Officials say the demands could be hundreds of dollars a month per male member of a household. In many cases, Christian families drained their life savings and went into debt to make the payments. Insurgents also raised money by kidnapping priests. The ransoms, often paid by the congregations, typically ran as high as $150,000, several priests and lay Christians said. In a paradox, this city, long the seat of Iraqi Christianity, also became known as the last urban stronghold of Sunni insurgents. Another, more painful, paradox is that many of Iraq’s remaining 700,000 Christians paid to save their lives, knowing full well that the money would be used for bombs and other weapons to kill others. Archbishop Rahho was a man of God who preached peace in his sermons. How he was contorted into fulfilling the role of providing payments to the insurgents is a complex question.
Is it complex? My reflex is to absolve him and other Christian leaders of the burden of guilt, without too much complex thinking on my part.
posted June 26, 2008 at 10:42 am
Shameful for the United States? Not shameful for the insurgents or for those participating in extortion? Here we go again – I am beginning to be “ashamed” of being associated with “Catholicism” as defined by blogs and media such as this.
posted June 26, 2008 at 11:07 am
What I want to know is why has the Vatican been so shamefully quiet? Why is the Vatican quiet about the multitudes of attrocities that occur and have been occurring for decades?
Why is it that the only issues the Vatican seems to have any interest in are sexual morality in the United States, abortion in the United States, and how long will the bishop’s tails be this year?
The Vatican, which claims to be led by Christ, is disturbingly quiet when it comes to working to bring peace and love into greater expression in the world. Why?
posted June 26, 2008 at 12:47 pm
Tess, I think there is more than “shame” for the killers. But the reality is that the near-extermination of Christianity in Iraq was caused by our invasion, which we know was unjustified and based on manufactured evidence. So we bear a great responsibility here–and my point is I’m not sure I can put it on the Iraqi Christians and their leaders as much as some in the story might.
posted June 26, 2008 at 12:52 pm
What an absurd thing to say – that the Christians are responsible for the crimes committed against themselves. Talk about blaming the victims.
If we were simply to apply the law to the question, the common law in the United States generally recognizes a duress defense to all crimes other than murder. So if these Christians were asked to directly kill someone in order to save their child’s life, that would not be a complete defense to a charge of murder. But if they were asked to do any other crime (here aiding and abetting terrorist activity), the test would be whether they were faced with an imminent threat which they reasonably believed would be carried out, whether there was no reasonable legal alternative or means of escape from the threat, and the threat was of such a nature that it would lead a person of ordinary fortitude to comply with the criminal. If all these conditions are met (which it seems they are in these cases), then the person is completely exonerated.
As to the Vatican’s pronouncements on various horrors in our world your previous commenter posts the old canard that the Vatican only comments on sex and fails to comment on atrocities. This is simply not true. The press may not cover their statements, but there are plenty of them out there. Check out the Vatican’s website if you are interested.
Furthermore, it is the duty of the Church to teach their followers how to comply with the Gospel and be completely converted to Christ, and Christians in our present age seem to have a lot of difficulties with regard to the moral questions relating to sex. Therefore, while there are relatively few such statements (I can think of two encyclicals in the last 50 years dealing with the topic, out of scores of such documents), they do tend to get a lot of attention. There are so few things swimming against the stream in this culture, that anyone disagreeing with the reigning culture does seem to catch the attention of the press.
And then the sad reality is that Jihadis don’t generally read encylicals.
posted June 26, 2008 at 1:25 pm
My intent was not to “blame the victims” but to blame the actual perpetrators (insurgents). Mr. Gibson you state that we “know” that the invasion of Iraq was “unjustified” and based on “manufactured evidence”. I am not sure that “we” know that at all. And I don’t feel any responsibility for the actions of thugs, terrorists, and murderers. I resent and reject the notion that this evil is the fault of the US. Let me guess – does that make me a bad Catholic?
posted June 26, 2008 at 3:55 pm
What??????? You have got to be kidding???? It is shameful for the United States??? Come on. I’m with you Tess. Why don’t you blame everything on the US and Oh don’t forget to throw GW in there too. Look War is horrifying, but a necessity. How about your freedom??? Thank God, we are not afraid to stand up to these barbarians. And yes innocent people will die during war. That’s a given. I don’t know about you Tess, but I didn’t want to be associated with the church when it started to take away things that were good like Holy days of Obligation, yet they won’t let priests marry and the of course the preying on innocent children and turned the other way so not to see. Yeah I think that pretty much nipped it in the bud for me. It was then I realized it was just a business.
posted June 26, 2008 at 4:47 pm
I don’t know what Peggy is talking about in her rather rambling post, but I have to say that the US does have some responsibility for failing to protect the civilians (both Islamic and Christian) in Iraq after our invasion. It is elementary that when a military power has taken authority over the use of force in a country that they have a duty to protect those who are defenseless. At the very least, the US was negligent in failing to provide for the protection of civilians, and that is shameful.
This is clear if you simply put yourself in the place of the Iraqi’s. Imagine if the Canadians invaded our country, dismantled our military and police forces, and took up control over our government. Imagine that part of their justification for the invasion was to liberate us from a tyrant. Then they stayed for years and during that time imagine that we all became prey to thugs and criminals with no defense in a manner proportionate to the savagery inflicted on the civilians in Iraq (which would be very high indeed). Would we not hold the invading force culpable for failing to provide protection and security in a situation where all our own civilian defenses have been dismantled by them?
I recall that is was only with the “surge” of the past year and a half that the US military decided to make it a part of the mission of the troops to protect the civilians in Iraq. I heard this discussed several times in testimony to congress and the debate about the surge, and found it frankly incredible that this had not been part of the mission all along. But this was confirmed over and over, and the fruits can finally be seen in recent months as civilians are starting to have some security. How in the world did the military find it acceptable to neglect the protection of civilians for so long? I find that previous policy to be shameful. Thank goodness that the mission has been changed to include the previously neglected duty.
posted June 27, 2008 at 6:19 am
CL writes “What I want to know is why has the Vatican been so shamefully quiet? Why is the Vatican quiet about the multitudes of attrocities that occur and have been occurring for decades?”
How do you know they are silent? If you are not committing these atrocities maybe the Vatican is not addressing the issue to you but to the perpetrators and those who can do something about it!
Then “Why is it that the only issues the Vatican seems to have any interest in are sexual morality in the United States, abortion in the United States, and how long will the bishop’s tails be this year?”
Who knows? Perhaps you are hearing only what you need to hear??!!
posted June 27, 2008 at 7:51 am
You made a good point of the first issue I had not considered, and gave me a good laugh on the second. Thank you.