Commentary by Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
A gutsy Italian journalist is taking her colleagues to task and asking some hard questions about their blatant ignorance of one of the bloodiest persecutions of Christians in recent times.
CNA/EWTN News. com is reporting on the article by Lucia Annunziata in the Italian edition of the Huffington Post in which she admonishes the political left for ignoring what she calls “the most horrible of crimes perpetrated against the weakest.”
“I ask myself where is the Left, with a capital L, the social party wide as it is because of its history and principles, because it is outside of the cages of daily life, and loves itself because it is attached to its own sense of justice,” writes Annunziata, a self-proclaimed atheist in the op-ed she published earlier this month.
“Why have I not received any petition to sign, though I receive many of varied kinds? Why has no-one promoted, if not a public protest, a sit-in, or a meeting? I hear no slogans for persecuted Christians, nor do I get documents or petitions on the issue,” Annunziata complained.
She also cited the lack of interest among young journalists who are not proposing any stories to the Huffington Post on persecuted Christians.
Why doesn’t the Left, who she claims is “the political party that always claimed the strength and conviction to engage in the defense of the weakest” (except in the case of the abortion rights they so voraciously promote), take a stance on this issue?
She believes it’s because defending Christians “means activating other mines in the already tough struggle, thus giving the ‘green light’ to a reaction and finally legitimizing” the claims of Rightist political parties which are “already fanning the flames of racism and of the clash of civilizations” for their own interests.
Catholic League president Bill Donohue is not so willing to gloss over the real reason for the hostility of the left toward Christian persecution.
“Sexuality, pure and simple,” he writes. “It wants a no-holds-barred libertine understanding of sexuality. As such, it rightly identifies Christianity, especially Catholicism, as a bulwark to its advancement. Ironically, it is the West’s rejection of Catholicism’s sexual ethics, which prizes restraint, that is responsible for AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases.”
He also correctly points out that Christians are being persecuted here as well as abroad, and getting no support from the Left. “While Muslim barbarians are murdering Christians abroad, without any push back from the left, left-wing Christian bashers at home are justifying anti-Christian bigotry” such as the Christians who dare to defend traditional marriage and are losing their livelihoods because of it.
“The left has spawned every secular totalitarian regime in history, and Islam is responsible for every religious totalitarian movement the world has seen,” Donohue writes.
“Conservatives and Christians, by contrast, have never bequeathed a single political, economic, social, and cultural dictatorship. . . . That is why Hitler chose to govern the National Socialist Party; he ruled from the left. Moreover, from their crusades against Christianity in the 20th century — led by Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot — to their current tolerance for Islamist terrorism — the left has never been the friend of liberty. Just the opposite.”
He continues: “The left rejects nature, and nature’s God, as well as Original Sin, which is why it is so confident about reconstructing human nature and setting everything right. But in reality there is no such thing as heaven on earth. In fact, when the left gets control, it delivers nothing but poverty and genocide. To be idealistic is admirable; to be utopian is dangerous.
In conclusion, Donohue believes we’re lucky to have Lucia Annunziata’s voice heard. It’s just “too bad she is a freak among the left.”
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