[T]he dress rehearsal for the Nazi extermination of the Jews took place exactly 100 years ago, in 1915. The genocide was carried out by Turkish authorities, and it murdered more than 1 million Armenians, a people who were overwhelmingly Christian. Religion wasn't the only reason for the killings - ethnic and economic resentments of Turkey's Armenian minority played an important role - but Muslim contempt for the "unbelievers" legitimized the violence and was a powerful current throughout the killings. Emphasis added
Men, women and children were turned out of their homes, marched to exhaustion and starved, beaten, hanged and burned to death by the tens of thousands. The systematic murder campaign went on in bloody waves into the 1920s. Witnesses recalled Turks taunting their victims with shouts of "Where is your Christ now? Where is your Jesus? Why does he not save you?"
To this day, Turkey has never adequately acknowledged the Armenian genocide. As President Jimmy Carter once remarked, "there weren't any Nuremburg trials" for the mass murder inflicted on the Armenians.
| It was an internal affair. Nor have there been trials for the millions of Kulaks murdered by Stalin's men. |
Today, with the resurgence of militant Islam inside Turkey itself, a full national truth-telling by Turkish authorities may be even more remote. Armenians were the first nation in the world to formally adopt Christianity in A.D. 301. Today, in their historic home regions of modern Turkey, their culture and memory have been wiped out.
Lent is a time of repentance. It's also a time for forgiving even the wicked. But it's also a time to remember and learn from history ‐ even when the whole world wants to forget it. On its centenary, Christians from every tradition need to remember and pray for the victims of that genocide, which remains one of the worst unrepented crimes in history.
Archbishop Chaput certainly has more courage, insight and clarity of vision than any other Bishop in America. I've met him and had drinks with him when he was Archbishop of Denver. One of the most intelligent people I have ever met and had a drink with - and very much a Man of God.
Go read all of it - a very powerful piece and just the sort of thing the Church should be speaking up about.