Justin Scherrer

“On reaching their new dwelling places in Ottoman territory, the boys were “either persuaded or forced to be circumcised and made Muslim.” Nor were these merely symbolic or superficial acts: “The first thing they are made to learn is the Turks’ false religion, which they know so well as to put us to shame.”28 Having learned to submit, they were next subjected to a draconian training system not unlike the ancient Spartan agoge: “They make them drudge day and night, and they give them no bed to sleep on and very little food.” They were allowed to “speak to each other only when it is urgently necessary” and were made to “pray together without fail at four prescribed times every day.” As “for any little offense, they beat them cruelly with sticks, rarely hitting them less than a hundred times, and often as much as a thousand. After punishments the boys have to come to them and kiss their clothing and thank them for the cudgelings they have received. You can see, then,” concluded the Italian observer, “that moral degradation and humiliation are part of the training system.”29 Ironically, however—and as with other historically Muslim institutions that have been whitewashed¶—this abduction, forced conversion, and jihadi indoctrination of Christian children is portrayed by several leading academics “as the equivalent of sending a child away for a prestigious education and training for a lucrative career.”
― Raymond Ibrahim, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West

“Let God alone be sought as the judge of loveliness, Who loves even in less beautiful bodies the more beautiful souls.”
― Ambrose of Milan, The Complete Works of St. Ambrose (11 Books): Cross-Linked to the Bible

“Natural grief is one thing, distrustful sadness is another, and there is a very great difference between longing for what you have lost and lamenting that you have lost it.”
― Ambrose of Milan, The Complete Works of St. Ambrose (11 Books): Cross-Linked to the Bible

“Error never shows itself in its naked reality, in order not to be discovered. On the contrary, it dresses elegantly, so that the unwary may be led to believe that it is more truthful than truth itself. IRENAEUS OF LYONS”
― Justo L. González, The Story of Christianity: Volume 1: The Early Church to the Dawn of the Reformation