The Vatican has begun to dismantle the policy of appeasing Muslim governments that oppress Christian minorities, an approach that reached its zenith when Pope John Paul the Great kissed the Qu'ran. The Vatican will instead insist on protecting Christian minorities in the ummah as Islamists increasingly targets them for abuse and worse:

'Enough now with this turning the other cheek! It's our duty to protect ourselves." Thus spoke Monsignor Velasio De Paolis, secretary of the Vatican's supreme court, referring to Muslims. Explaining his apparent rejection of Jesus' admonition to his followers to "turn the other cheek," De Paolis noted that "The West has had relations with the Arab countries for half a century...and has not been able to get the slightest concession on human rights."

De Paolis is hardly alone in his thinking; indeed, the Catholic Church is undergoing a dramatic shift from a decades-old policy to protect Catholics living under Muslim rule. The old methods of quiet diplomacy and muted appeasement have clearly failed.

The estimated 40 million Christians in Dar al-Islam, notes the Barnabas Fund's Patrick Sookhdeo, increasingly find themselves an embattled minority facing economic decline, dwindling rights, and physical jeopardy. Most of them, he goes on, are despised and distrusted second-class citizens, facing discrimination in education, jobs, and the courts.

These harsh circumstances are causing Christians to flee their ancestral lands for the West's more hospitable environment. Consequently, Christian populations of the Muslim world are in a free-fall. Two small but evocative instances of this pattern: for the first time in nearly two millennia, Nazareth and Bethlehem no longer have Christian majorities.

The instruction of turning the other cheek has long been prone to misinterpretation. Nothing in Christianity requires its adherents to blithely sentence themselves or their brethren to abuse or death, nor did Christ teach that in his instruction. Jesus taught us patience, and not to blindly return every provocation with violence. He taught peace as the first resort, but even Jesus did not use that as an exclusive strategy. The Bible shows Jesus violently ejecting the moneychangers from the temple, for instance, hardly a turn-the-other-cheek moment. He also told his apostles, "Let him who has no sword sell his mantle and buy one" (Luke 22:36). The Old Testament, of course, has a number of passages where God directs His people to commit total war on other populations.

St. Thomas Aquinas developed a formal Just War Doctrine, which recognizes that Christians must love peace but not shrink from confronting evil. That doctrine has grown in use over the centuries in Western thought to become a moral imperative. World leaders have often referred to its teachings, even those who aren't Catholic and lead secular nations. The one "nation" that has rejected the concept in its entirety recently has been the Vatican, ironically.

This change has been evolutionary rather than revolutionary. The Jerusalem Post notes that Catholic dissatisfaction with the lack of reciprocity offered by Islamists started during John Paul's pontificate. The Mohammed cartoon crisis accelerated this epiphany. At first, they scolded the Dutch newspapers and took the position that criticism of the Prophet should not have been tolerated -- and then watched as Muslims killed Christians in retaliation. That finally convinced the Church that offering appeasement did nothing to protect fellow Christians, and that the Church needed to act in defense of the faithful instead of offering apologetics for Islamists.

Reciprocity will apparently become the first principle in dealing with Muslims. Where Muslims offer the same protections to Christians that the West offers to Muslims, then the Church will preach tolerance and understanding. Where reciprocity fails to occur, the Church will start becoming more activist in speaking out against abuses. It's about time.

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