The Chair of Saint Peter at Antioch

Three of the five Patriarchs of Antioch are seated at Damascus, and both of the other two, next door in Lebanon, are in full communion with one of those three, the Melkite Catholic.

In order to join them in placing themselves at such proximity to major potential targets as to make any attack impossible, their brethren around the world should all make their way to that city: the heads of all the other autocephalous or autonomous Orthodox Churches, this being an opportunity for those whose claim to autocephaly is disputed to prove their mettle; the heads of the other five Oriental Churches, even if, admittedly, the Coptic Patriarch does have rather a lot on his own plate at the moment; and most obviously the heads of each of the other Eastern Catholic Churches, although, again, the Chaldean one at Baghdad does already have some especially pressing calls on his time.

But what of that other Patriarch in full communion with the Syrian Catholic, the Melkite and the Maronite, namely the Patriarch of the West, the Roman Pontiff, the Pope? Undoubtedly, he, too, should participate fully in this most urgently necessary protection against the destruction of an age-old integral part of Christendom by the same Islamists who have destroyed the one in Iraq. Egged on and assisted by the same perennially anti-Christian factions and interests in the West. Indeed, by the horrific synthesis of Max Shachtman and Ayn Rand, of the Talmud and The Jefferson Bible.