Neo-Church’s Naturalistic Response to Persecution Ignores Christ’s Kingship
The Catholic News Agency portal (December 3, 2025) reports on a discussion at the “Saint John Paul II National Shrine” featuring “Father” Atta Barkindo and “Father” Karam Shamasha regarding persecuted Christians in Nigeria and Iraq. The event, organized with the Knights of Columbus, showcased photographs by Stephen Rasche – senior fellow at the Religious Freedom Institute – who claims his work reveals the “spark of human dignity” in displaced Christians. Barkindo, director of The Kukah Centre, attributed Nigerian persecution to failed government policies and “Islamic ideology” rooted in pre-colonial caliphates, while Shamasha described ongoing discrimination in Iraq despite ISIS’ defeat. Both promoted grassroots mediation and U.S. political intervention as solutions.
Omission of Supernatural Causes and Remedies Constitutes Pastoral Malpractice
The report reduces persecution to sociological conflicts, ignoring its supernatural dimension as odium fidei (hatred of the faith). Pius XI’s encyclical Quas primas (1925) declares: “When once men recognize, both in private and in public life, that Christ is King, society will at last receive the great blessings of real liberty, well-ordered discipline, peace and harmony”. By contrast, Barkindo’s analysis of Nigerian violence as mere policy failure denies the metaphysical war against Christ’s reign inherent in Islamic doctrine. The 1864 Syllabus of Errors condemns as heresy the notion that “the Church ought to be separated from the State, and the State from the Church” (Error 55) – yet no speaker called for Nigeria or Iraq to recognize Catholicism as the sole true religion.
Post-Conciliar “Interreligious Dialogue” Masks Apostasy
Shamasha’s claim that Iraqi Christians seek to “shine” and “give light” while avoiding evangelization exposes the neo-church’s apostasy. The Holy Office under Pius X condemned in Lamentabili sane exitu (1907) the modernist error that “Revelation… does not cease with the Apostles” (Proposition 21). Authentic Catholic missions, as exemplified by martyrs like St. Francis Xavier, understood that “Faith depends on hearing, and hearing on the word of Christ” (Romans 10:17). The article’s praise for Barkindo’s licentiate from the Pontifical Institute for Arabic and Islamic Studies – an institution promoting religious indifferentism – confirms the conciliar sect’s betrayal. The 1864 Syllabus explicitly rejects the idea that “Protestantism is nothing more than another form of the same true Christian religion” (Error 18), yet these clerics treat Islam as a legitimate “Abrahamic faith.”
Canonical Illegitimacy of Cited Figures and Institutions
The “Saint John Paul II National Shrine” embodies the neo-church’s inversion of sanctity. John Paul II promulgated the blasphemous Assisi gatherings (1986, 2002) – condemned by St. Pius X as constituting “the synthesis of all heresies” (Pascendi Dominici Gregis, 39). Likewise, the Knights of Columbus’ involvement proves their complicity: Their 21st-century support for abortion-compromised politicians violates Pius XI’s condemnation of Catholic collaboration with evil (Divini Redemptoris, 58). Rasche’s role at Franciscan University of Steubenville – which promotes the invalid Novus Ordo Mass – renders his “human dignity” rhetoric suspect. True Catholic relief work, as seen in St. Vincent de Paul’s societies, always prioritized sanctifying grace over naturalistic charity.
Naturalized Eschatology Replaces Redemptive Suffering
Nowhere do the speakers mention the necessity of suffering for sanctification or the glory of martyrdom. The article’s focus on political solutions (“U.S. intervention,” “grassroots mediation”) rejects St. Paul’s maxim: “All who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution” (2 Timothy 3:12). Contrast this with St. Augustine’s teaching that persecution “tests the living, cleanses the stagnant, makes martyrs crowned” (Sermon 47). The conciliar sect’s obsession with earthly survival – evident in Shamasha’s Catholic University of Erbil project – ignores Christ’s warning: “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul” (Matthew 10:28).
Conclusion: False Mercy Over Truth
This exhibit epitomizes the neo-church’s abandonment of Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus. While authentic pre-1958 missions – like those of the Holy Ghost Fathers in Nigeria – baptized thousands daily, these conciliar operatives reduce Christianity to NGO activism. The 1907 Lamentabili condemned precisely this error: That “the Church is incapable of effectively defending evangelical ethics” (Proposition 63). Until Muslims and secularists are openly called to conversion – rather than “dialogue” – such efforts constitute not charity, but treason against the Kingship of Christ.
Source:
Nigerian, Iraqi priests tell of aiding persecuted Christians seen in photo exhibit (catholicnewsagency.com)
Date: 03.12.2025