A Lying Cardinal-Patriarch

Patriarch Emanuel III Delly, of the Chaldean Church and of Iraq, was recently appointed a Cardinal of the Catholic Church. On December 3, 2007 the National Catholic Register pubished an interview with him. Below you will find my letter to that paper. The points of contention can be deduced from my comments.


TO THE EDITORS, THE NATIONAL CATHOLIC REGISTER:

Emmanuel Cardinal-Patriarch Delly is not a truthful man; That is, he did NOT present to your interviewer (As published in your Dec. 3, 2007 issue) the fullness of truth. Below you with find the necessary truthful statements as to the topics of that interview.

1. Chaldeans are leaving Iraq because of the fear and murders derived from enforcing Islam's teachings as no longer kept under control by a tyrant, Saddam Husein, who would allow such crimes (Along with rape, robbery and genocide) inflicted by others than his own thugs and for reasons other than his own evil passions.
2. He misspoke for God when he denied that there are very desirable and proper wars and equally proper invasions of other nations (eg Against the Nazis and into Nazi Germany; All military actions against Islamic aggressors who would destroy the Faith the People of God), such military actions being approved by God against the enemies of Israel and by that "Doctor of The Church", St. Bernard of Clairvaux, in his De Laude Novae Militae, with special attention to Muslims.
3. Such godly wars have been effective in the past (eg British naval actions against slavers, the USA's War Between The States against those who build a culture on slavery, those campaigns which defeated Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan and, most of all, those crusades which drove Islam out of Iberia, Italy, the Balkans, Greece and the borders of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth).
4. He was certainly NOT frank in responding to a question about persecution of Christians in Iraq, when the answer truthfully would have been, "Yes and in every place where Islam rules".
5. He was false in stating that Church leaders always side with the civil authorities as demonstrated by the many martyrs (eg Those who resisted the authority of Pagan-Roman, civil, authorities, St. Thomas a Becket, The recently canonized Spaniards who resisted the "Republican" government of 1930s Spain, the yet unnamed martyrs of the Dafur region of the Sudan) and many others in the Western and Eastern Churches who suffered and died in resistance to civil authorities) who did so and are doing so. (In fact and in truth resistance to such evils as slavery, abortion and the crimes of Islam not being sufficiently utilized by the too political leaders of today's Church.)

The Church and the Faithful are not well served by the elevation of such a dishonest man. Of course, I could alternatively state a man ignorant of history who is subtracting from the sum-total of human knowledge with every word he utters.