One day I will learn not to listen to Radio 4’s Sunday programme whilst getting ready to go to Mass; it is usually an irritating ‘Catholic’ who disagrees with Catholic teaching on almost everything, which raises my blood pressure, but this week it was a Muslim whining that it was Islamophobic (and anti-Turkish entry into the EU) for the Pope to be beatifying 800 martyrs at Otranto. He suggested that if the Church was going to do that, he would bang on about the Crusades. Well, I thought, I see your Crusades and raise you centuries of Islamic persecution of Christians in what we now call the Middle East.
So what has the Church said about our relationship with Islam
The Moslems, “professing to hold the faith of Abraham, along with us adore the one and merciful God, who at the last day wiill judge mankind” (Lumen Gentium 16). Though the Islamic faith does not acknowledge Jesus as God, it does revere Him as prophet, and also honors His virgin mother. Moslems “prize the moral life, and give worship to God especially through prayer, almsgiving and fasting” (Nostra Aetate 3). Noting that there had been many quarrels and hostilies between Christians and Muslims, the Second Vatican Council urged that all “forget the past and strive sincerely for mutual understanding, and, on the behalf of all mankind, make common cause of safeguarding and fostering social justice, moral values, peace, and freedom” (Nostra Aetate 3).
I have no idea what ‘professing to hold the faith of Abraham’ might mean; I do know that neither Muslims nor Jews believe in the Trinity; therefore how they can be thought to believe in the same God as we do is beyond me. One would also find that Muslims think Jesus a prophet of Islam, so quite why this should be a cause of anything save condemnation, only the authors of the document can explain. As for the ‘moral life’, if the authors investigate a trifle further, they would find that Islam is not well-disposed to Christians and think the moral life confined to Muslims. As for ‘social justice’, as I have no idea what it means, I daresay it could be reconciled with the social systems at work in Saudi Arabia, but I doubt that Tabletistas would go with that one.
It may well that the Muslim the BBC found to comment on the martyrs of Otranto (note, there was no apology) is conversant with this fashionable cant and was therefore naturally surprised to find that Catholics might which to beatify those ho had chosen to die for their faith. Perhaps noone told the Blessed 800 that Muslims profess the faith of Abraham, and therefore converting was ‘no biggie’. Martyred by the sword, we are martyred more slowly by the jawbones of asses who in all sincerity think that Islam believes in the same God as Christianity.
From its eruption from the Arabia desert until now, Islam has seen Christianity as its enemy, and it is right to do so. Islam’s teaching is false, Mohammed was at best deluded and at worst a lying fantasist. There is one true way to Salvation and one name alone we can call upon – that of Christ Jesus.
I fear that the Vatican is deluded if it imagines that the friendly Muslims with whom it talks are in any way typical. I hope that Pope Tawadros II had an opportunity to bend the ear of Pope Francis on his recent visit to Rome – he, like all Copts, knows the reality of the way Islam treats Christians when it is the ascendancy.
We seem to have created a class of politicians since the Second Vatican Council that are more inclined to write nice sounding inventions of the political stripe than speaking out with the veracity of earlier Church documents. It continues in the political statements, alas, that we are constantly bombarded with from the various bishop’s councils. Their statements and documents are at times rife with double-talk, conciliatory statements, and an acquiescence to the world without showing the backbone that Christ gave His Church to counter the lies of this world. It would be refreshing if our religious political class would get in step with our True teachings and leave the political talk to the corrupt whose lives are focused on increasing their own power and popularity. I doubt that winning popularity contests is in the cards for most Catholics anyhow.
LikeLiked by 1 person
It would be refreshing – and amazing 🙂
LikeLike
I’m not sure if you see it the same way C, but it seems to me that most of the problems seem to stem around ecumenism and ‘social justice’ as you have indicated in your post. I think it humorous if not that it is so very sad that in Unitatis Redintegratio they make a very sound statement that we should not seek a ‘false irenicism’ and then proceed in other Council Documents to do, at least seemingly, just that very thing; what they instructed us not to do, they do themselves. Is there any wonder that so many ended up dazed and confused and has required the full attention of the last 2 Popes to try to straighten out many of the ambiguities?
LikeLike
To my mind they are struggling to marry what can’t be married – the traditional teaching of the church and the demands of political correctness.
LikeLike
“Well, I thought, I see your Crusades and raise you centuries of Islamic persecution of Christians in what we now call the Middle East.”
What a splendid and loving attitude. There are people who will say, “To hell with the lot of them – Muslims, Christians, whatever.” Hard to blame them.
And it would be a good idea to bulldoze the entire Middle East back to a sand lot. At least that is my modest suggestion..
LikeLike
Really? Well, best of luck getitng someone to take you seriously – or even as a humourist.
LikeLike
When it comes to questions of the oxymoronic “Holy Land” and its various lamentable, interminable and ongoing insanities, taking the situation seriously is not an option anyone should consider taking seriously.
LikeLike
Personally, I always take it seriously when Christians are dying because they are Christians, probably something I learned when my ancestors were in the Varangian Guard. Bulldoze it back to a sand lot, no, that’s too inefficient, although parts would make a lovely sheet of glass.
LikeLike
You either don’t get out much, or aren’t allowed out much; either way seems sensible.
LikeLike
Might be that he is the product of a slowly rising temperature in a pot of water on the stove — croaking now and then and not remotely concerned about what awaits.
LikeLike
It might be assumed he thinks he’s a wit – double it and be’d be half way there.
LikeLike
Well said, C451. I am sick to death of the cant that is peddled about Islam by hand-wringing academics and bien pensant church leaders. We have built, in the West, a liberal civilisation founded on Christianity which is far superior to the authoritarian systems in place in the rest of the world. Yes, we should try to get along with Muslims if we can, but we should never drop our guard.
The confrontation between Islam and Christianity was launched by the Muslims, who overran a third of Christendom in the seventh century AD. The Crusades, provoked by Turkish harassment of Christian pilgrims to Jerusalem, were merely the culmination of three centuries of almost continual warfare between Muslims and Christians. The Muslims, it will be remembered, were not content with the conquest of Palestine, Syria, Iraq, Iran and northern Africa, but crossed the Straits of Gibraltar and invaded Spain and France. Thankfully, they were defeated at the battle of Tours in 732, or (as Edward Gibbon observed), ‘the interpretation of the Koran would now be taught in the schools of Oxford’. Given that the early Muslims fought so many bloodthirsty wars of conquest, I find it extraordinary that so many Western academics shrink from saying so. They seem to have adopted the behaviour of the three wise monkeys: hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil.
LikeLike
We are in entire agreement. Part of the trouble is the historical ignorance of our governing classes; another part os white-guilt. They appear to be under the conviction that they must appease it if it moves. Now, appeasement is not always a mistake, but appeasing the unappeasable is.
LikeLike
Pingback: Do Muslims and Catholics worship the same God? | All Along the Watchtower