Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, Archbishop of Washington, released the following statement in response to recent violence by the Israeli army in Bethlehem, including attacks on Catholic institutions such as Holy Family Hospital and Bethlehem University;
Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, Archbishop of Washington, released the following statement in response to recent violence by the Israeli army in Bethlehem, including attacks on Catholic institutions such as Holy Family Hospital and Bethlehem University;
I want to express my deep concern over the deteriorating situation in Bethlehem and other Palestinian controlled areas this week. I applaud the strong and vigorous statement released on October 24 by Cardinal Bernard Law, the chairman of the International Policy Committee of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, and I associate myself with it strongly.
Of Course, all of us continue to be troubled and concerned by the attacks against innocent Israeli citizens and these must be stopped, but the Israeli army’s present aggressive actions are surely not the way to a lasting peace in the Holy Land and only fuel the fires of more unrest.
What Cardinal Law rightly calls the “indiscriminate violence in the streets of Bethlehem’ worried not only Christian and other religious leaders in that part of the world, but many of us here in the United States as well. In a particular way, repeated attacks against Catholic institutions such as Holy Family Hospital and Bethlehem University both of which have close relationships to the Church in the United States- are being interpreted as signs of a hostility to the Christian presence in this area.
The United States government’s recent strong calls for a resumption of the peace process deserves to be heard by both sides before even more innocent lives are lost and the fragile dream of peace and justice in the Holy Land turns into a recurring nightmare.
