The true face of socialism - yet again!

Lest we forget — this from Catholic World News:

Imprisoned Viet Catholic priest denied Bible, sacramental wine

Hanoi, Oct. 31, 2007 (CWNews.com) - A Vietnamese Catholic priest, imprisoned for "spreading propaganda against the socialist state," is being denied access to the Bible, pens and papers, and wine for celebrating Mass behind bars.

The BosNewsLife service, which provides news of Christian prisoners of conscience, reports that Father Nguyen Van Ly remains in solitary confinement in a prison camp in northern Vietnam. The jailed priest has warned his sister that she should not put his clerical title on packages sent to him, because prison authorities refuse to recognize his priestly status. The reason, he explained, is that the government insists that it "does not imprison the Church's people."

Father Ly was sentenced to an 8-year prison term in March 2007, after a court found him guilty of criticizing the Vietnamese government and sending his criticisms to pro-democracy workers abroad.

Father Ly, who has now spent 14 years in prison, gained international prominence in 2001 with a letter to a US congressional committee in which he detailed human-rights abuses in Vietnam and argued against American approval of a bilateral trade pact.

Human rights abuses, you say, in a socialist state? How could that even be possible, since the dogmas of marxism are guaranteed to yield an earthly utopia to all who live by them? Time and again we see the socialists reveal themselves in their true colours. Father Ly has been punished for failing to joyously affirm the socialist hegemony with a remarkable abuse of his human rights. He has committed no crime. Except that in a socialist state, it is a criminal act to express criticism or disapproval of socialism.

For all its trenchant atheism, socialism is nothing else than a religious cult writ large. The “proletariat” is its god, and marxism is its dogma. Political theorists and revolutionary demagogues are its priesthood. Its sacraments are bloody purges, show trials, imprisonments, confiscations and executions. It commands a kind of absolute obedience to and total trust in its leaders found in no Church, and it does not tolerate even the existence of any religion different to its own.

And now Melancholicus really must stop harping on about socialism, or he’ll never write anything else.

Now THIS is fidelity and commitment

From Catholic World News:

Conversions reported on the rise in Yemen

Yemen, Oct. 11, 2007 (CWNews.com) - The Palestinian newspaper al-Quds al-Arabi is reporting 2,000 conversions from Islam to Christianity in Yemen.

Many of the converts are reportedly living abroad in fear for their lives. Yemen adheres to Shari'a law, which forbids conversions from Islam on pain of death.

The World Muslim League has appealed to Yemen’s government to stem the tide of conversions, placing the blame on schools administered by foreigners.

When one reads stories such as this, which bring home to us that there are Christians in some parts of the world who live daily with the possibility of paying with their lives for their adherence to Jesus Christ, how ashamed ought we not to be of ourselves at how lukewarm and insipid we are, we who live in peace and comfort in an indifferent democratic society, where the worst we might have to fear for our witness is the ridicule of our peers and the scorn of the media!

Yemen is a Mohammedan state. There is no such thing as ‘religious liberty’ in such societies. We in the west tend to take our freedom for granted. We can change our religion as we change our clothes, at our pleasure. But under Shari’a law, any Muslim who leaves the religion of Mohammed for any other faith may legally be put to death. Muslim converts face not just the hostility of their former co-religionists; they must leave everything behind, and must almost always flee abroad for fear of being killed.

“And every one that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands for my name’s sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall possess life everlasting. And many that are first, shall be last: and the last shall be first.” — Matthew 19:29-30.

This witness by our brothers and sisters in Mohammedan lands is true commitment. Melancholicus is intrigued by the reported figure of 2,000 conversions. Over what period of time did these conversions take place? It is a remarkably high figure. It may be, that as Mohammedanism grows ever more militant and repressive, gentler souls will find in the profession of Christianity that repose which their own brutal religion cannot give, and be called to Christ.

And we in the easy, comfort-loving west must not let them down.