My dear brothers and sisters in Christ,

The secular newspaper here in Springfield has recently published a letter to the editor and a column criticizing the homily that I gave at Christmas Midnight Mass in our Cathedral. In order to make sure that my views are fully and accurately represented, I will express myself here in the Catholic media.

The context of my homily was the fact that Christian churches in Iraq had cancelled their Midnight Mass and other Christmas celebrations due to the threats of al-Quaida on their tiny Christian community that was still terrified from a bloody siege on a Baghdad church this past Oct. 31. Sixty-eight people were killed including two priests, one of whom was shot while presiding at the Mass and the other priest was killed while he was hearing confessions. Days later Islamic insurgents bombed Christian homes and neighborhoods across the capital. Since the church attack, some 1,000 families have fled to Iraq’s safer Kurdish-ruled north, according to the United Nations, which recently warned of a steady exodus of Iraqi Christians.

The Chaldean Archbishop in Kirkuk said, “Nobody can ignore the threats of al-Quaida against Iraq Christians. We cannot find a single source of joy that makes us celebrate. The situation of the Christians is bleak.”

The Archbishop of the Chaldean Diocese of Mosul, said in a recent interview, “These are the worst and most perilous times” for Christians.

My message for the people at Midnight Mass in Springfield was that we should count our blessings that we enjoy the freedom to do this in relative safety, but we should not forget our Christian brothers and sisters in other parts of the world that are not so fortunate and for whom Christmas is not so joyful.

In his opinion piece printed in The State Journal-Register on Jan. 22, Father Corey Brost, a Catholic priest who grew up in Springfield but is now assigned to St. Viator High School in the Archdiocese of Chicago, stated “there is no onslaught of Muslims against Christians in this era.”

Oh, really? That’s easy to say from the calm safety and peaceful security of Arlington Heights, Illinois. But try telling that to the Christians across Iraq who have been living in fear since the assault on Our Lady of Salvation Church as its Catholic congregation was celebrating Sunday Mass in Baghdad last October, or the Christians in Iran who have been arrested in the two weeks since Christmas for converting from Islam or seeking to convert others from Islam —actions considered sins under Islamic law and punishable by death in Iran.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Jan. 7 that the “Iranian crackdowns follow a recent wave of unrelated attacks against Christians in the Middle East, notably in Iraq and Egypt, which have triggered a sense of siege among Christians in the region.” The report noted, “On Jan. 1, a bomb attack targeting a Coptic Christian church in Alexandria, Egypt, killed 23 people.”

Father Brost also faults me for not mentioning that “our Catholic ancestors waged merciless war against Islam during the Crusades.” However, Professor Thomas Madden, director of the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at St. Louis University and author of A Concise History of the Crusades, asserts that the Crusaders were defensive wars, not wars of conquest. As he points out, from the time of Mohammed, Muslims had sought to conquer the Christian world, which they did with great success. After a few centuries of steady conquests, Muslim armies had taken all of North Africa, the Middle East, Asia Minor and most of Spain.

In other words, by the end of the 11th century the forces of Islam had captured two-thirds of the Christian world. Palestine, the home of Jesus Christ; Egypt, the birthplace of Christian monasticism; Asia Minor, where St. Paul planted the seeds of the first Christian communities — these were not the periphery of Christianity but its very core. They continued to press westward toward Constantinople, ultimately passing it and entering Europe itself.

“As far as unprovoked aggression goes, it was all on the Muslim side,” says Dr. Madden. “At some point, what was left of the Christian world would either have to defend itself or simply succumb to Islamic conquest.”

Dr. Madden also explains that the fundamental purpose of jihad is to expand the Dar al-Islam — the Abode of Islam — into the Dar al-Harb — the Abode of War. In other words, jihad is expansionistic, seeking to conquer non-Muslims and place them under Muslim rule. Those who are then conquered are given a simple choice. For those who are not People of the Book — in other words, those who are not Christians or Jews — the choice is convert to Islam or die. For those who are People of the Book, the choice is submit to Muslim rule and Islamic law or die. The expansion of Islam, therefore, was directly linked to the military successes of jihad.

My Midnight Mass homily was a call “to live our Catholic faith and practice our Christian beliefs much more fervently.” In 2000 as part of the “purification of memory” that Pope John Paul II called for during the Great Jubilee of the new millennium, the Holy Father asked for pardon “for the violence some have used in the service of the truth and for the distrustful and hostile attitudes sometimes taken towards the followers of other religions.” Similar apologies and repudiations of violence from Muslims would be welcome in light of Pope Benedict XVI’s 2006 call for “reciprocity” in relations between Christianity and Islam.

May God give us this grace. Amen.