Brutally Honest

Afghanistan Comes To London

Guest post by tim, The Godless Heathen

Sultan Knish - 

After telling the story of Mohammed’s boast that he would make the mountain come to him, only to be forced to go to it, Francis Bacon observed, “If the mountains will not come to Mohammed, Mohammed will go to the mountain.”

Americans, Englishmen, Frenchmen and countless others went to the Muslim world hoping to turn it into another Boston, another London and another Paris. Instead Boston, London and Paris are turning into another Kabul, another Islamabad and another Mogadishu. Mohammed has come to the mountain

Five years ago, the sight of Muslim terrorists beheading British soldiers was a horror that could happen in Afghanistan or Iraq. Now it has happened in broad daylight in the capital of the United Kingdom.

In a decade, 600,000 white Londoners have fled the city. Those are the sorts of numbers you would expect from the Syrian civil war. Their place has been taken by the million Muslims occupying the city.

Woolwich Common, adjacent to the area where the attack too place, is described as an “inner-city multicultural neighborhood” which is to say that it is more ethnically diverse than the London average; it has more violent crimes than average and is among the 5% of poorest neighborhoods. Only 58% of its population was born in England and a quarter of its residents immigrated in that same dreadful decade.

Multiculturalism has enriched the area with the Woolwich Manz, a Somali Muslim gang whose antics have led residents to fear walking the streets at night. The Royal Borough of Greenwich’s Social Inclusion and Justice Division informs us that there are thousands of Somalis in the borough, most of whom live in Woolwich Common and Woolwich Riverside.

Gang wars over the lucrative drug business have broken out between the Woolwich Manz and other African gangs. Already in 2007, the London Evening Standard said that area residents were describing the Woolwich Common Estate as a “war zone” with stabbings and shootings and a new generation of child soldiers being recruited into the war. It was a little piece of Somalia in the United Kingdom.

The two men who butchered a British soldier are believed to be Somalis. Last year it was reported that dozens of Muslims in the UK were being trained to fight for Al Qaeda in Somalia. There were concerns over what those men would do once they returned to the United Kingdom.

Al-Shabaab, the local Al Qaeda franchise, subsists on tens of thousands of pounds from the hundreds of thousands of Somali settlers living in the United Kingdom. In 2012, Al-Shabaab terrorists had threatened a terrorist attack against the UK, saying, “The nightmare that surreptitiously looms on British shores is bound to eclipse the horrors of 7/7 and 21/7 combined.”

That nightmare still looms. It is the nightmare of the savage wars of the Muslim world being exported to the United Kingdom.

Read the rest.

“He really was an example of all that’s right about a strong faith.”

I suspect this book would make an excellent Father's Day gift:

The risk-taking side of Adam that came across in his standing up to those taller boys also came out in other ways. Ever the daredevil, he would jump out of trees and do belly flops into shallow water. He generally escaped unscathed, until he took a risk with something he couldn’t control: crack cocaine.

Eric said, “Adam first started failing when he went off to college where he had no friends. All of his good buddies had gone somewhere else and he’d always been this team player. He was big on the football team, he had that community in his high school [in] Hot Springs, Arkansas. It was a little bit of his identity, his moral compass, if you will. When that was gone, that was when he started going down the wrong path.”

Adam got involved with a group of friends and a girl he was trying to impress. They encouraged him to use crack for the first time – and then, the drug owned him.

Eric explained, “Anyone who has any experience with family members that fought that addiction, they realize that drug changes a chemical balance in your brain so you will crave it for the rest of your life…Many never overcome it.”

Adam started stealing from his family in order to buy more drugs, including meth. The good kid from Hot Springs wound up a criminal with eleven felonies. He even stole a hand gun at one point.

His parents, Larry and Janice, who at first didn’t know about this side of Adam, were devastated when it came to light. They wanted to help, but had no choice other than to watch him hit rock bottom.

Though Janice had never gone to church and Larry hadn’t attended in 30 years, Adam’s troubles led them to join a local church and put Adam in God’s hands. Spiritual support from the pastor and prayer community helped the Browns take a “tough love” approach with their son: they had him arrested and he went to jail.

That’s when Adam’s life began its turnaround as well because he found God there and started reading the Bible.

Eric said, “When Adam was recovering [and back from rehab], he would go into church with his parents give his testimony to the congregation. He told these people who had all been praying for him that their prayers had been important, that he’d felt them, that he’d felt that sense of community. Because at the end of the day, you’re very alone in that situation…Knowing that people are rooting for you was so important.”

The person who was there for Adam the most, though, was his wife, Kelley. Adam’s parents called her “an angel” and his friends were astonished that she stuck by him through all his relapses into drug abuse.

Eric said, “She would go and find him in crack houses and bring him back, put him back on his feet, and say, ‘You are better than this.’ We’re talking years of putting up with this type of repeated behavior. She said she would pray to God, if she should stay with this guy or leave him, and she said she never felt in her heart that she should leave Adam. She knew that what was inside, his spirit, was something special. She was a humble warrior herself because she did stand by his side. She ultimately inspired him to try for the Navy. That would be his second chance at life, which was a miracle in and of itself, that he was even given the opportunity to join the Navy.”

...

Becoming a father to his children, Nathan and Savannah, was also one of the joys of Adam’s life. They gave him something special to live for, a responsibility greater than himself. He made sure to coach Little League and teach Sunday School whenever he was home from deployment.

Though Eric only came to know Adam through conversations with his family and friends, the author notes the Navy SEAL’s influence on his own life and relationship with his kids. Eric said, “I realized how important it is to give of yourself, and Adam reminded me of that. For the first time, I started to coach Little League. And I’ve been coaching it for a second season. I also hadn’t opened a Bible in 25 years, and I had my own reservations about religion. Adam helped remind me a about the power of faith and the good in religion, not just the negatives that some people associate with it. He really was an example of all that’s right about a strong faith.”

Read the whole thing and ask again, where do we get such men?

Unmasking an idol, revealing The Truth

It’s coming up on 4 years ago that Elizabeth Scalia, aka The Anchoress, and I had an online spat of sorts. 

Without delving into the details of the quarrel (feel free to pursue them yourself at the link), suffice it to say that via the wonder that is hindsight I can now confidently state that particular squabble has proven to be the turning point, the proverbial fork in the road moment, of my trek back to Catholicism. 

Ms. Scalia was able to gently yet firmly set me straight on a wrongheaded, even ignorant, opinion I was using to justify an action.  Her correction masterfully, though not initially, made me turn inward, made me check my premises, made me stop and think about something I was holding on to with passionate yet foolhardy rigidity.  Though I’m sure she didn’t know it at the time, she was confronting me with something that stood between me and the truth.  In fact, again looking back, I can affirm that this something stood between me and The Truth. 

All of which brings us to Elizabeth’s new book Strange Gods, Unmasking the Idols of Every Day Life.  The book
arrived on my doorstep just a few days ago and I’ve been devouring it.  Unlike too many faith-focused books I’ve laid my hands on in the recent past -- books I lose interest in finishing because of syrupy platitudes or the highfalutin theological gobbledygook contained therein -- this book was a literal page turner, with one insight after another worthy of noting, worthy of sharing.

Take as an example, and trust me when I say the book is filled with these nuggets, something Elizabeth wrote in Chapter Eight, a chapter she titled The Super Idols:

We all do that from time to time; we get caught up in our cause, and we become careless with our words.  Sometimes that’s about busyness and distraction, and not idolatry.  But when we catch ourselves being thoughtless (or when someone points it out to us), we should consider the first commandment and ask ourselves if we have not elevated the object of our enthrallment to that position where it blocks God.

Those words take me back to that squabble back in August of ’09, the spat that began this piece, a time when I was not just stubbornly blocking a view of God I now cling to but a time when I was holding to a distorted view of Him l thought was not just reasonable but pure.  The God I knew then, the God I was in essence imposing upon others who had good reason to be offended by that imposition, was in fact a strange god.

Ms. Scalia gently unmasked that unknowing idol to me four years ago and that unmasking led to a series of decisions that brought me home to my Catholic roots. 

Pick up her book today and perhaps she’ll unmask an idol or two for you.  Who knows where that might take you? 

Meet Zach Sobiech... and be changed by that meeting

I didn't 'meet' him until early this morning when my sister-in-law made the introduction via Facebook.  I was mesmerized by what I hope you'll take the time to watch below... over 4 million others have done so:

As I watched the video, as I stopped numerous times to compose myself, as I marvelled at this young man's strength and the love he and his family shared, I couldn't help but wonder over and over again, what was the source of all this strength... and can my family and I also tap into it?

I believe firmly that I've found the answer:

For Laura Sobiech, the image of Mary is clear: standing silently, helplessly at the foot of the cross, watching her son die.

For Catholics, it's at the heart of understanding who Mary is and why she matters to our faith.

In Sobiech's case, it doesn't take much to conjure up the sight of the suffering mother of God. She just needs to sit at the foot of her son Zach's bed.

Zach is dying of a rare form of bone cancer called osteosarcoma. He is now in the final stages of the disease, at home in hospice care and taking only medications to help ease the pain and make him feel comfortable.

"Identifying with Mary's suffering has been huge," said Laura, of St. Michael in Stillwater. "To meditate from her point of view, watching her son suffer, has just really brought me peace and shown me how to do it. ... Mary was there for the whole thing, and there was nothing she could really do but be there."

Like Mary, Laura has resolved to be by her son's side for whatever time he has left. She is joined faithfully by her husband of 23 years, Rob. Together, both have shared the ups and downs, joys and deep sorrows of their son's battle with cancer, which began in the fall of 2009.

Zach, the third of the Sobiechs' four children, was out on a run trying to get in shape for the upcoming basketball season at Stillwater High School when he began experiencing pain in his hip. But when he sought treatment for what he thought was a hip flexor, Zach instead was told he had a tumor. 

Said Rob: "It was like someone punched you in the gut."

Not long after the diagnosis on Nov. 13, 2009, Laura got serious about a goal she had set several years earlier -- praying the rosary.

"When things started with Zach in 2009, it was pretty immediate that I needed that lifeline," Laura said. "That's when I decided that this was going to be part of my daily routine. So, I actually set up my work schedule to start later so that I could make sure I would get prayer in before I started my day."

Now Laura craves her daily time with the Blessed Mother as much as ever. Though a lifelong Catholic, only recently has she developed a devotion to Mary and the rosary.

"Any time we have a struggle in the family, I go right to the rosary because I know that's where we're going to get the grace -- or I'm going to get the grace -- to get through things," she said. "I just don't have to do it on my own. It's my safety net."

The safety net of faith is what has helped the whole family get through the dozen-plus surgeries, the 100-plus days in the hospital, and the grim reports from doctors. And, it has given them eyes to see Zach's illness as something more than just pure misery and heartbreak.

"We were given our situation as an opportunity," Rob said. "It's had purpose. It was part of God's plan. Now, every day I look at it, I'm going, 'I don't like it.' But, if you can understand that there's an eternal (component), then the whole suffering part makes a lot more sense."

We now know that this past Monday, Zach succumbed to the illness. His suffering ended, his family's entering a brand new phase but one that seemingly, they seem well equipped to deal with.

Might we all learn something from Zach's life and from the lives of those close to him and more importantly, from where they've drawn their strength.

Carry on.

"You are not what gives you a boner"

Rather provocative title I know, but if it gets you to read in its entirety what Marc Barnes, aka BadCatholic, has to say about the news hitting the wires of a Catholic priest coming out as gay, then it's worth the heat I might get for the decision to use it.

After all, this blog isn't called Brutally Honest for nothing.

Here's but a piece of some of the most enlightening writing describing Catholic teaching on this issue I believe I've ever read:

Bravely facing the applause of a world in love with labels, and just in time for the release of a second edition of his new book “Hidden Voices, Reflections of a Gay, Catholic Priest,” Fr. Gary M. Meier came out today and declared himself openly gay to the notoriously unsympathetic Huffington Post.

Bless the man, may the Lord keep him, let His face shine upon him and give him His peace. He’ll be attacked by idiotic Catholics, whose quotes will undoubtedly be used in his up-and-coming “This Has Been Difficult” op-ed. But the sins of hatred will hardly puncture his popularity. I am attacking — with trident and with fire  – his philosophy and his easy critique of Church teaching that will win the blank-eyed nods of every other person who doesn’t give a damn about reading what the Church actually teaches.  He says:

…that’s precisely the message our Church is sharing. LGBT youth are hearing that they are disordered, diseased, defective, damaged goods, wrong when they should be right.

If they are being give this message, it is not by the Church. The message the Church has been consistently giving to LGBTQ youth is the same message she gives to heterosexual youth — you are not your genitals. Stop introducing yourself with your penises.

We take offense at the Church when she says that “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered,” (CCC 2357) but only because we put her words through the mind-numbing blender of reductionist thought which defines people as being their sexuality, as being heterosexual, being homosexual, being a lesbian, being pansexual, etc. The LGBTQ movement is so concerned with developing and refining their plethora of scientific labels by which to reduce human beings to a word describing their genital behavior that they — and the culture they own — have forgotten a very simple fact. You are not what gives you a boner.

It is by the urging of the Catholic Church that I refuse, reject, and trample on the label heterosexual. Why? Because I will not be defined as being attracted to women. My sexuality is personal, that is, it exists not as an abstract label generally unifying me with other people attracted to the opposite sex, but as an expression of my personal belonging to the bodily world, my personal integration of my soul and my body, which becomes “personal and truly human when it is integrated into the relationship of one person to another” (CCC 2337), with a single, particular, personal, woman, not to a general sex.

But this is far too complex. We want a label to be subsumed into. And thus Meier, in claiming the label “gay,” says “I want the world to know the truth about who I am,” because personal identity has been wonderfully reduced, and we can say — without fear of contradiction — that who I am is gay, or who I am as straight.

This reduction is the primary reason Meier makes the tired, required leap from what the Church says — that homosexuality is disordered — to what he claims the Church says — “LGBT youth are hearing that they are disordered.”  Our culture defines individuals by their genital urges, and thus any rejection of a sexual behavior is immediately heard as a rejection of the individual. If who you are is a homosexual, then there is no distinction between being told “homosexuality is disordered” and “you are disordered.” While blurring this distinction and allowing ourselves to exist as walking erections certainly allows for easy, sure-fire, and oh-so-safe criticism of the Catholic Church, how small it renders the human person! What a piece of work becomes man, how lacking in depth, how easily negated, how boring and how bored!

You must read the whole thing.  Get over the giggles.  Get over the snickering.  Read the piece, the whole piece, then decide for yourself if you're learning something new about Catholicism.

Because if you already knew it, then you need to get about spreading the teaching.

And if you didn't, it's past time to get started.

It's about honesty, truth, integrity, freedom and in the end, the gospel.

It's not about boners.

Carry on.

"Our modern culture has gone a long way towards severing any connection between the living and the dead"

On a government installation near my office sits a graveyard that dates back to the mid 1800s.  I play on a softball field adjacent to the cemetary and checked it out just last week before a game.  It's fenced off and so you can't walk amongst the headstones and grave markers but from the fence you can read a few of the inscriptions.  

On one of those markers, the names of 3 children are engraved, their ages listed as 1, 3 and 5 years old respectively, incompletely telling a tragic and heartbreaking story of young lives lost and the lives of those left behind to bury them.

This morning I came across this related piece by tiberjudy that reminded me of that pre-softball game visit to the old cemetary and the connections to the past we're missing out on today:

Back in the days when cemeteries were grand and beautiful, the living and the dead were much more connected than they are in our modern world. People were born at home and many babies died very young also at home. Families lived together with several generations under the same roof. If you were sick or injured you were treated at home where you’d either recover or die, surrounded by your family.  When you died, your body wasn’t whisked away to a funeral home. Your body was washed and dressed by family members and your wake and funeral was held, most likely, in the room where you died. Many families had burial plots on their own land. If not, the parish church always had a cemetery, usually adjacent to the church. You’d see it every time you went to Mass. You’d grow up helping to keep your family plot tended and you’d surely visit your family’s graves on birthdays and anniversaries. You knew where your kin were buried and they were still, in some ways, part of your family life. You visited them and took them flowers. As you helped pull the weeds from their graves you’d hear stories about the deceased person and these would keep their memory alive. Today’s sterile, drive-through “gardens” are rarely near the parish church. The staff there mow the grassy expanse so there’s no need for family upkeep. Without monuments or statues it’s often difficult to locate a loved one’s grave. Great for mowing but bad for encouraging family visits and reflection. Many modern cemeteries don’t allow flowers to be left on the gravesite. Dying in a sterile hospital and buried in an easy-mow plot, our dead are pretty removed from our daily lives.

Catholics believe in something called the “communion of saints.”  That means we believe that those who have died in God’s friendship are part of the same mystical Body of Christ as those of us alive on earth. If your church proclaims the Apostle’s Creed, then you believe this, too. Thus the faithful departed remain alive in Christ, just as we are. In short, we’re all in this together. Our modern culture has gone a long way towards severing any connection between the living and the dead. We hide the process of dying and we bury our dead in endless rows of unadorned identical plots. Gone are the beautiful statues of weeping angels or praying cherubs. There are no more poetic epitaphs remembering the life and loves of the deceased person. When was the last time you made a family visit to put flowers on your grandmother’s grave?  Do your children even know where your grandmother is buried?

Practically speaking, few families today could afford a lavish family tomb in one of the few grand old cemeteries that still survive. It’s even unusual to find a parish church that still has its own cemetery. And with families living all around the country, it’s hard to make frequent visits to family plots. But we can do a few things to recapture that sense of communion with our deceased family members. We can include them in our family prayers at mealtime and at bedtime. We can remember the anniversary of their death with a memorial Mass or donation to the parish in their name. We can share photographs and stories about them with our children and grandchildren. We could plant a special garden in their honor and include their favorite flowers or shrubs. The important thing is for us to teach our family that our faith in Christ makes us all members of His family and that dying doesn’t separate us from one another. Our faith connects us to one another through the love, mercy, and sacrifice of Jesus. Nothing, not even death, can separate us from His love.

          “Our dead are among the invisible, not among the absent.”
                                                     —Blessed Pope John XXIII

Beautiful piece.  And yet another reason I find my embrace of the Catholic Church so rewarding.

Tiberjudy by the way deserves to be a regular stop on your blogospheric rounds.

Is modernity killing morality?

Father Robert Barron expounds on "why the Catholic Church speaking on morality is so often hard to hear, hard to take seriously."

Stay with it:

"It is among the most gruesome and horrifying actions perpetrated on innocent persons"

It... is abortion and the Kermit Gosnell trial and his subsequent conviction has opened the door to some much needed conversations:

I recently read with great interest a fascinating story by the Associated Press. The life of a young girl, Lake Annabelle Hall, was saved following surgery to remove a cyst on her left lung. Had it not been discovered it would have killed her. She received such tremendous care that four teams comprised of 43 doctors and nurses tended to her and her mother. If it had been otherwise, her doctor noted, “She wouldn’t make it out of the delivery room.”

Delivery room? Did I neglect to mention that this surgery was done before Lake Annabelle was born?

The cyst was discovered during a routine 20-week OB/GYN visit. Ten weeks later, Lake Annabelle was partially delivered and medical staff performed the life-saving procedure. Fox News reports that “Doctors pulled her halfway out of her mother’s womb, leaving her connected to her umbilical cord and placenta, which served as life support for her,” and then they cut into her little body so that they might save her life. Lake Annabelle is now 6 months old, a marvelous example of the life-saving prospects of modern medical technology.

What a stark contrast between this life-affirming story and the horrors we’ve heard in recent weeks concerning Kermit Gosnell’s murder trial. Gosnell faced numerous charges including first degree murder, third degree murder, and infanticide and he was found guilty of three first degree murder charges and numerous others including the involuntary manslaughter of patient Karnamaya Mongar. His “Women’s Medical Center” in Philadelphia has been accurately described as a “house of horrors.” The techniques employed by Gosnell to take the life of both unborn and born are too gruesome to describe here.

Usually over the top in it’s coverage of anything concerning blood, death, and mayhem, the mainstream media has virtually ignored the story, only reporting on it after being called out for failure to do so. Archbishop Chaput has noted that “the failure—the allergic disinterest—of some of our most important national media … really doesn’t surprise. It’s part of the fabric of a culture that simply will not see what it doesn’t want to see about the realities of abortion.”

The reality of abortion is that it is among the most gruesome and horrifying actions perpetrated on innocent persons. Yet abortion, and to a lesser extent, infanticide have become accepted by the so called cultural elite. In Evangelium vitae Blessed John Paul lamented that “[c]hoices once unanimously considered criminal and rejected by the common moral sense are gradually becoming socially acceptable… In this way the very nature of the medical profession is distorted and contradicted. (4) The routine infanticide done in the “Women’s Medical Center” has horrified many including the jury who rightly determined that Gosnell was guilty of murdering infants. It cannot be forgotten, however, that the primary difference between infanticide and abortion is the location of the child being killed.

Arland K. Nichols, the author of that Crisis Magazine piece, goes on to challenge every Catholic, dare I say every moral person, to no longer remain silent.  Silence is evil.  Period.

Read the rest.

Accept the challenge.

Doing nothing is in actuality doing something... on the side of embracing death, embracing wickedness.

Carry on.

NARAL ignores Gosnell baby murder convictions

The National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League released a statement yesterday in the wake of the Gosnell convictions:

“Justice was served to Kermit Gosnell today and he will pay the price for the atrocities he committed. We hope that the lessons of the trial do not fade with the verdict. Anti-choice politicians, and their unrelenting efforts to deny women access to safe and legal abortion care, will only drive more women to back-alley butchers like Kermit Gosnell.

“From the lack of funding available for low-income women to access abortion services, to the sharp decline of reputable providers in Pennsylvania, to the gross negligence of authorities to enforce the law after complaints were filed against Gosnell, each aspect of this case must be a teachable moment for lawmakers: until we reject the politicization of women's medical care and leave these decisions where they belong — between a woman and her family and her doctor — women will never be safe. The horrifying story of Kermit Gosnell is a peek into the world before Roe v. Wade made legal a woman's right to make her own choices. 

“NARAL Pro-Choice America's annual Who Decides? publication has given Pennsylvania an ‘F’ grade precisely because it has passed medically unnecessary laws that restrict access to safe and legal abortion care. It is my sincere hope that the women in Gosnell's clinic did not suffer in vain and that Pennsylvania, and every state, will step up and join us in making the protection of women’s ability to get, safe, high quality, and legal abortion care a top priority.”

What's missing in the NARAL statement?

The fact that he was found guilty of the murder of 3 babies born alive.  

Nowhere is this even acknowledged, NARAL instead focusing on the need for women to continue to safely and legally have their children killed in the womb... with "high quality".

Sickening... but revealing.

As sickening and revealing as Gosnell's attorney who blamed the baby factor for the jury's decision:

He said he was confident in the legal system but blamed “The baby factor” for the convictions.

He also blamed the media which is incredible in that they were AWOL pretty much throughout the trial.

There is evil in the world, let there be no  doubt, and those involved in defending and promoting abortion are some of the biggest propagators. 

God have mercy on their wickedness.

"The choice to highlight their sacrifice may put a strain on the already fragile relationship between the Catholic Church and Islam."

I learned only yesterday of the long ago events leading to the canonization of more than 800 Catholics in Saint Peter’s Square on Sunday but what is familiar is the press' reaction to it:

Pope Francis canonized more than 800 Catholics in Saint Peter’s Square Sunday – the largest number to be elevated to sainthood at once in the history of the Catholic Church.

The choice of some of the new saints was also striking, touching on the already-fragile relationship between Christianity and Islam.

The new saints included hundreds of laymen from the southern Italian port town of Otranto who were slain in the 15th century by the invading Ottoman Turkish army after they refused to convert to Islam.

In 1480, after conquering Constantinople – modern day Istanbul - the Ottoman Sultan Mohammed II planned to invade Rome, and Otranto became his army’s port of entrance into Italy.

The local population fought back in a week-long siege, putting up a brave but hopeless resistance. When Ottoman soldiers finally overrun the town, they were ordered to kill every man over the age of 15 who refused to convert to Islam.

More than 800 resisted, locking themselves up into the town’s Cathedral. Their ringleader, local shoemaker Antonio Primaldo, was first to be beheaded. According  to local legend, his headless body remained standing until the last of his fellow townspeople was killed.

Since then, Primaldo and his townsfolk, who chose to die rather than betray their Catholic faith, have been hailed as martyrs. Their bones and skulls – proudly on display behind glass walls in the Cathedral of Otranto – are well-known Catholic relics and a popular pilgrimage destination.

But the choice to highlight their sacrifice may put a strain on the already fragile relationship between the Catholic Church and Islam.

Ever since his election, Pope Francis has called for greater dialogue between Christianity and other religions, in particular Islam. And so far, he has acted on that promise. He washed the feet of a young Muslim woman jailed in a juvenile prison on Holy Thursday, and reached out to the many “Muslim brothers and sisters” during his first Good Friday procession.

So why risk creating yet another inter-faith row with a celebration which some in the Muslim world may be seen as a provocation?

NBC News goes on to blame Pope Francis' predecessor Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI.

Read the rest and shake your head along with me but more importantly, answer this question for me in the comments.

How many of you had heard about this massacre by Islamists?