Mexico: Evangelicals Expelled, Domiciles Destroyed

[thereselittleflower]

 

33 minutes ago, *Zion* said:

Are we really all one faith?  Or are their tares among the wheat?

Do you know this has been going on since 2007 and this is what was said back then by someone not friendly to the Catholic Church?

• But this story about shameful treatment of Mexican evangelicals by “Catholics”, is extremely unfair. So, count this as one of the times when this blog will defend Catholics and instead denounce the fundamentalist and evangelical Christians who are circulating this story. Yes, evangelicals are being persecuted in southern Mexico, and Mexico is a 94% Catholic nation, and of course Catholics want to keep it that way (and of course, to be fair evangelicals and fundamentalists do not want any of their ranks to switch to Catholicism). But these people committing such acts that previous to now were being done by Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists (ok, to be fair Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist criminals) ARE NOT CATHOLIC. They call themselves Catholic, but just like Mitt Romney and any other number of “many paths to Heaven” liberal and moderate universalists and pantheists, Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Oneness Pentecostals or other anti – Trinitarians call themselves “Christians”, saying so doesn’t make it true.

  Instead, these “Catholics” are really folks who have begun to mix their own idolatrous and paganistic practices with their Catholic practices and beliefs. They also have added their own laws, traditions, and what have to you to Catholicism. Further, they have disassociated themselves with and have nothing to do with any Catholic diocese or anything else connected to Rome. Hard core Catholic bashers – a road which I was heading down until a preacher showed me the error of my ways – would say “six of one, half a dozen of another”, but to me that is the same thing as tarring fundamentalist and evangelical Christians by associating us with people like Eric Rudolph
  , Timothy McVeigh
  , Adolph Hitler, those who bomb abortion clinics and shoot abortion doctors, David Koresh, and those people who disrupt funerals screaming homophobic slurs.

• https://healtheland.wordpress.com/2007/02/14/modern-protestant-persecution-by-catholics-in-mexico/

So nothing new here -  even in the anti-Catholic sentiments of those here at Worthy so ready to jump on these reports to bash the Catholic Church.

For example:

• PROTESTANTS IN MEXICO FORCED TO FLEE

  Mexico's Constitution guarantees religious liberty. However, a fierce Mexican nationalism expressing itself in anti-Americanism and anti-Protestantism, and insisting on 'traditional' cultural observance, is leading to persecution of Protestants. An estimated 300 believers from Agua Fria, Jalisco state, western Mexico, have been driven from their homes and land because they will not compromise their faith by joining in certain cultural practices.

  The villagers are ethnic Huichol Indians, of Aztec descent.

  Traditional rituals involve sharmanism and the use of the hallucinatory drug peyote. Most Huichol practise Catholicism mixed with Huichol ritual. The Seventh Apostolic Church of Tepic is caring for the 300 Christian refugees who have fled for their lives across the state border. Please pray for them all, and for the authorities to find the courage to defend religious liberty.

  http://www.ea.org.au/ea-family/Religious-Liberty/MEXICO--PROTESTANTS-FORCED-TO-FLEE

 

 

 

[other one]

I'm not bashing the Catholic Church by itself......   I bash everyone who treats people this way who are not a threat to them.  If the Catholics thought that the others were a physical threat to their lives, I would understand and most likely defend them....   but I haven't heard anything about the others even bothering the Catholics there much less a danger to them.

[thereselittleflower]

1 minute ago, other one said:

I'm not bashing the Catholic Church by itself......   I bash everyone who treats people this way who are not a threat to them.  If the Catholics thought that the others were a physical threat to their lives, I would understand and most likely defend them....   but I haven't heard anything about the others even bothering the Catholics there much less a danger to them.

My point is this is not the Church that is doing this.  These are individuals and secular powers doing this, and the "catholicism" of those involved is highly suspect.    Yet there is no discernment by people reporting and commenting on this here, or that this has been going on since 2007 and that it was known back then these are not the Catholic Church doing this.

Yet, reading what people have to say here, one would never know that unless they went searching.  Instead the Catholic Church is attacked without anything more than limited superficial reporting of the problem.   

 

[OneLight]

This thread reminds me of what is being said about Islam and ISIS.  If someone calls themselves Catholic and makes demands to another group of people that do not fit into the world view of what Catholics believe, they are not Catholic, but a group of people pushing personal agendas.   So people say ISIS is not Islam and those in Mexico are not Catholics, yet both do what they do in the name of the faith they believe in.   Again we see a dilemma ... ISIS claims to be Islam and those in Mexico claim to be Catholic.  While nobody can speak for them, why do we try to dispel what they claim?  Remember that "For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks."  It is their heart that condemns them, for their actions start there. 

[other one]

Problem is that Islam really does instruct its members to do the things that ISIS IS doing....   and the Catholic Church did, in the past, do the things that is happening in Mexico...  and since I haven't heard any rebuttal from yhe Catholic Church leaders I have to at least wonder at their standing on the subject....

 

And considering the size of both, it is something that could affect both myself and my family and friends.

[D-Dawn]

Roman Catholicism does indeed have some very dark history (that may or not be over at this point) but the expulsion of these Protestants was by no means sanctioned by RC. The state of Chiatas has been a HUGE mess for centuries...and even today parts of the state are practically war zones. While it's true that various local Catholic leaders have been involved in the conflict, it is not a Catholic undertaking.

I took some time to read about Chiapas and now have some understanding regarding what likely led to the Protestants being expelled. I didn't take the time to find information about the specific village where the violence occurred but I learned enough to get an idea of what is going on.

Here are a few key terms I came across for anyone who might be curious:

 

-Chiapas Conflict

- Zapatista

- Liberation Theology and Chiapas

 

 

Edited January 14, 2016 by D-Dawn
Spelling errors

[OldSchool2]

40 minutes ago, D-Dawn said:

Roman Catholicism does indeed have some very dark history (that may or not be over at this point) but the expulsion of these Protestants was by no means sanctioned by RC. The state of Chiatas has been a HUGE mess for centuries...and even today parts of the state are practically war zones. While it's true that various local Catholic leaders have been involved in the conflict, it is not a Catholic undertaking....

Thank you D-Dawn, but this may be even more complicated than we think.

from Religion, Nationalism, and Civil Society:

"We are living in the aftermath of the collapse of a system which claimed to have superseded both religion and nationalism. Both have survived it and are flourishing among its ruins ...  Nationalism--or proto-nationalism if you prefer--had been conjoined with religion in antiquity, in both branches of our Judaeo-Hellenic heritage. The Hellenic side had the religious cults of those who fell for the polis and the patria. The Hebrew Bible, even more strikingly, had the concepts of the Chosen People and the Promised Land, surely a nationalist combination...

"By the late Middle Ages, this fusion of religion and nationalism was inflamed both in France and England. Joan of Arc, on the eve of her trial, declared in a dictated letter: 'He who makes war on the Kingdom of France makes war on the Holy Kingdom of Jesus.' The English, who organized Joan's trial in British-occupied Rouen, were equally sure that Jesus was on their side. One of the charges against Joan was that she claimed that the heavenly voices she heard, St. Michael and St. Catherine, were speaking in French. This could not be, was indeed blasphemous, since everyone knows that the language spoken in Heaven is English.

"Now in theory the English and the French, in those days, shared the same faith. Both belonged to the same supranational religious institution: the universal Catholic Church. But clearly the forces which were about to rend that Church were already at work, and one of the most powerful of those forces was nationalism...."

http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/publications/civilsoc/obrien.htm 

I think many rural Mexican nationals so identify with Catholicism as to see Protestantism as akin to treason!

[SavedOnebyGrace]

3 hours ago, *Zion* said:

Are we really all one faith?  Or are their tares among the wheat?

Definitely.

[thereselittleflower]

3 hours ago, OneLight said:

This thread reminds me of what is being said about Islam and ISIS.  If someone calls themselves Catholic and makes demands to another group of people that do not fit into the world view of what Catholics believe, they are not Catholic, but a group of people pushing personal agendas.   So people say ISIS is not Islam and those in Mexico are not Catholics, yet both do what they do in the name of the faith they believe in.   Again we see a dilemma ... ISIS claims to be Islam and those in Mexico claim to be Catholic.  While nobody can speak for them, why do we try to dispel what they claim?  Remember that "For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks."  It is their heart that condemns them, for their actions start there. 

I can't believe you said that.  I can't believe you've ignored the evidence that demonstrates this does not have anything to do with actual Catholicism.  

3 hours ago, D-Dawn said:

Roman Catholicism does indeed have some very dark history (that may or not be over at this point) but the expulsion of these Protestants was by no means sanctioned by RC. The state of Chiatas has been a HUGE mess for centuries...and even today parts of the state are practically war zones. While it's true that various local Catholic leaders have been involved in the conflict, it is not a Catholic undertaking.

I took some time to read about Chiapas and now have some understanding regarding what likely led to the Protestants being expelled. I didn't take the time to find information about the specific village where the violence occurred but I learned enough to get an idea of what is going on.

Here are a few key terms I came across for anyone who might be curious:

 

-Chiapas Conflict

- Zapatista

- Liberation Theology and Chiapas

 

 

 

Thank  you D-Dawn for taking the time to try to understand what's really going on.

 

 

 

[thereselittleflower]

2 hours ago, OldSchool2 said:

Thank you D-Dawn, but this may be even more complicated than we think.

from Religion, Nationalism, and Civil Society:

"We are living in the aftermath of the collapse of a system which claimed to have superseded both religion and nationalism. Both have survived it and are flourishing among its ruins ...  Nationalism--or proto-nationalism if you prefer--had been conjoined with religion in antiquity, in both branches of our Judaeo-Hellenic heritage. The Hellenic side had the religious cults of those who fell for the polis and the patria. The Hebrew Bible, even more strikingly, had the concepts of the Chosen People and the Promised Land, surely a nationalist combination...

"By the late Middle Ages, this fusion of religion and nationalism was inflamed both in France and England. Joan of Arc, on the eve of her trial, declared in a dictated letter: 'He who makes war on the Kingdom of France makes war on the Holy Kingdom of Jesus.' The English, who organized Joan's trial in British-occupied Rouen, were equally sure that Jesus was on their side. One of the charges against Joan was that she claimed that the heavenly voices she heard, St. Michael and St. Catherine, were speaking in French. This could not be, was indeed blasphemous, since everyone knows that the language spoken in Heaven is English.

"Now in theory the English and the French, in those days, shared the same faith. Both belonged to the same supranational religious institution: the universal Catholic Church. But clearly the forces which were about to rend that Church were already at work, and one of the most powerful of those forces was nationalism...."

http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/publications/civilsoc/obrien.htm 

I think many rural Mexican nationals so identify with Catholicism as to see Protestantism as akin to treason!

I certainly don't follow you taking something from two cultures completely different from that found in these states in Mexico, and then trying to make something that happened in disparate cultures hundreds of years ago apply to what's happening in Mexico today?

One has very, very little to do with the other.