Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised to be on the receiving end of discrimination, prejudice and intolerance and dumped as a friend given the recent bout of attacks on the Catholic Church. It seems as though Christians are being targeted in many nations around the world and in some, being killed because of their belief in Jesus Christ.

The absolute lack of respect and vitriol spouted by someone I once considered a friend caught me completely unawares. I knew that he had no liking for anything remotely resembling religion but was unaware as to how deep his intolerance, prejudice and discrimination against anyone or anything Christian ran.

It is entirely possible that he wasn’t aware that in his attempt to promote peace, love and inclusion of all he betrayed the most basic of all human rights – the right to believe and practice your faith and even more basic than that, the right to be who you are. He spouted nonsense in his assertion that all Christians were incapable of having intelligent conversation and that all Christians needed a doctor – presumably a psychiatrist – from the way his ranting was expiated.

Granted there are fanatics among all religions and even among atheists, and it is this fanaticism that has created inherent problems across the world and is responsible for much of the wars, violence and killings occurring in this world. However, to generalize 2.1 billion Christians across the world as delusional and insane because they don’t believe as he – one person – does, goes beyond the pale and he crosses that line into fanaticism himself and through his vitriol spreads hatred and sows the seeds of prejudice and discrimination for others amongst his friends and their friends and their friends and so it goes.

In my former friend’s attempt to ridicule, jeer and hiss contemptuously at Christianity because it doesn’t fit with his Lennon-ish style of dogma actually betrays what John Lennon tried to convey to a generation of people – sow the seeds of Love, not hatred.

I am proud to call myself a Roman Catholic Christian Woman and willingly attest to the fact that I am a follower of Jesus Christ and his teachings and if I lose friends because of my being a Christian woman, then I can truly say that they were not a friend to begin with.

http://www.citizenglobal.com/voa/congo/overview

The blood of the innocent has long been spilled by those in power regardless of the nation the innocent belong to. They are the sacrificial lambs in the quest for more. More power, more resources, more money, more drugs, more things – more of that which cannot feel, which cannot see, which cannot hear, which cannot love, which cannot breathe, which cannot taste – more of that which has no life or pulse.

How much genocide are we to witness before the world sits up and takes notice and says enough? How many more innocents must be slain before the people of the world say enough, no more?

We profess that human rights are rights for all people in the world yet we do not intervene when we clearly see that human rights are being violated on countless levels; when human beings are being slaughtered and hunted down as though they were animals? People hunted down for minerals. People slaughtered for ore.

People displaced from their homes, their sense of belonging to be herded into refugee camps; just a number among many.
Do we continue on in this vein in nations where war is rampant? Where the loss of life is considered collateral damage?
This vicious circle begets more viciousness; more hatred; more envy; more death; and more numbing as people around the world look on and watch and do nothing.

Displaced and dispossessed people create more poverty; more illness; more unemployment; more social inequities; more disparities. Through no fault of their own, they are victimized, often by their own governments.

Children, who are the innocent ones, are sacrificed on the altar of greed. This altar of greed created by the hands of family men who have children of their own but hold no value for the children of others. If only these men would look at each child through the eyes of their own child or see the face of their own child among the faces of the innocents; then perhaps we might cease to destroy innocent life as a means of gathering more riches.

What does it profit the leader of a nation to destroy its own people? What then does he govern — the birds, the bees, the trees perhaps?

What are we teaching our future when we allow this to continue without intervention? Are we giving our future tacit consent by our inaction that it is okay to stand by and watch the wholesale slaughter of innocents? Are we teaching our future how to be crueler than those who came before?

What is it that we are teaching our future when we allow such to happen?

Our children are our future – what are we teaching our future?