Thursday, March 28, AD 2024 11:46pm

PopeWatch: Islam

As the Pope is visiting the United Arab Emirates, it is a good time to read Giulio Meotti’s article at Gatestone Institute:

Pope Francis did manage to explain that the “idea of conquest” is integral to Islam as a religion, but quickly added that one might interpret Christianity the same way. “Authentic Islam and the proper reading of the Koran are opposed to every form of violence”, the Pope claimed, not quite accurately. He also not quite accurately remarked that “Islam is a religion of peace, one which is compatible with respect for human rights and peaceful coexistence.” It is as if all of the Pope’s efforts have been directed to exonerating Islam from any of its responsibilities. He seems to have been doing this even more than observant Muslims — such as Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, American author and physician M. Zuhdi Jasser, former Kuwaiti Information Minister Sami Abdullatif Al-Nesf, French-Algerian author Razika Adnani, Paris-based Tunisian philosopher Youssef Seddik, Jordanian journalist Yosef Alawnah and Moroccan author Rachid Aylal, among many others — have been doing.

The dramatic persecution of Christians in the Islamic world highlights a Western paradox: “Since their victory in the Second World War, Westerners have brought great benefits to all of humanity”, wrote Renaud Girard in Le Figaro.

“Scientifically, they shared their great inventions, such as penicillin or the Internet. Human rights and democracy are far from being applied everywhere in the world, but they are the only reference for governance that exists internationally. It is undeniable that, under the impulse of Westerners, vast political, technical, health and social successes have been achieved in two generations. But there is one area where the planet has undeniably regressed since 1945 and where Western responsibility is obvious. It is the freedom of conscience and religion… By refraining from defending Christians in the East, the West made a twofold strategic error: it gave a signal of weakness by abandoning its ideological friends; it has renounced its creed”.

“In the eyes of Western governments and the media”, noted another report on persecution of Christians compiled by Aid to the Church in Need. “religious freedom is slipping down the human rights priority rankings, being eclipsed by issues of gender, sexuality and race”.

“Political correctness does not want to know anything about the ongoing persecution and suppression of Christianity and so it is being ignored in an almost sinister way”, Bishop Manfred Scheuer of Linz, in Upper Austria, recently said.

This eclipse is even more dramatic, as everybody knows that Christianity is at the risk of “extinction” in the Middle East, noted the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby:

“Hundreds of thousands have been forced from their homes. Many have been killed, enslaved and persecuted or forcibly converted. Even those who remain ask the question, ‘Why stay?’ The Christian population of Iraq, for instance, is less than half what it was in 2003 and their churches, houses and businesses have been damaged or destroyed. The Syrian Christian population has halved since 2010. As a result, across the region Christian communities that were the foundation of the universal Church now face the threat of imminent extinction.”

The West has betrayed its Christians friends in the East (such as here and here). The West might well ask: What are the Vatican and the Pope doing to fight this new religious persecution?

Criticism has already come from the Catholic world. “Just as he has little anxiety about the wave of church closings, Francis seems to have little anxiety about the Islamization of Europe”, wrote the US Catholic columnist William Kilpatrick.

“Indeed, as evidenced by his encouragement of mass migration, he seems to have no objection to Islamization. Either because he truly believes the false narrative that Islam is a religion of peace, or because he believes that the self-fulfilling prophecy strategy will create a more moderate Islam, Francis seems to be at peace with the fact that Islam is spreading rapidly. Whether Francis has been misinformed about Islam or whether he has adopted a strategy of misinformation, he is taking a huge gamble—not only with his own life, but with the lives of millions”.

There are now entire areas in Syria cleansed of their historical Christians. Pope Francis recently received a letter from a Franciscan priest in Syria, Father Hanna Jallouf, the Patriarch of Knayeh, a village close to Idlib, the stronghold of anti-Assad Islamist rebels. “Christians in this land are like lambs among the wolves”, Jallouf wrote.

“The fundamentalists have devastated our cemeteries, they have prevented us from celebrating liturgies outside the church, stripping us of the external signs of our faith: crosses, bells, statues as well as our religious habit.”

If the Pope does not want to receive more letters like that, he will need show courage and tackle one of the most urgent persecutions of our time.

Pope Benedict XVI, in his address at Regensburg, said what no Pope had ever dared to say before — that there is a specific link between violence and Islam. To illustrate his case, Benedict cited a 14th-century dialogue between a Byzantine Christian emperor, Manuel II Paleologus, and a Persian scholar, about the concept of violence in Islam: “Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things.. .such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached”, Benedict quoted the emperor as saying to his Muslim interlocutor.

Another Pope, John Paul II, also expressed concerns. During a meeting in 1992, Mgr Mauro Longhi, who, while still a student, often accompanied the late Pope on hiking trips says, John Paul II told of an “Islamist invasion” of Europe.

“The Pope told me: ‘Tell this to those whom you will meet in the Church of the third millennium. I see the Church afflicted by a mortal wound. More profound, more painful than those of this millennium,’ referring to Communism and Nazi totalitarianism. ‘It is called Islamism. They will invade Europe. I have seen the hordes come from the West to the East,’ and then told to me each country one by one: from Morocco to Libya to Egypt, and so on till the East.

“The Holy Father added: ‘They will invade Europe, Europe will be like a basement, old relics, shadows, cobwebs. Family heirlooms. You, the Church of the third millennium, must contain the invasion. Not with armies, armies will not be enough, but with your faith, lived with integrity.”

John Paul II’s vision resembles a continuation of Islam’s historic campaign in the Christian lands: “In 637, the Islamic army seized Jerusalem, twice holy, then the heart of the entire Middle East, the historic center of Christianity”, wrote the Algerian novelist Boualem Sansal. He went on to describe “the irresistible progression of Islam to the West: the Judeo-Christian North Africa, which immediately converted; Catholic Spain, which was annexed at the beginning of the VIII century; Byzantium, which they took in 1453; [then] to Vienna, which they besieged in 1529…”.

Go here to read the rest.  Since the Popes ceased to be secular rulers as well as the heads of the Church, a distinct air of unreality has taken hold of the Church in various areas including economics, international relations, war, etc.  So long as the Popes ruled a country themselves, that tended to put a hard brake on harebrained utopian musings.  That brake has now been gone for a century and a half, and papal pronouncements often resemble college bull sessions in their fixed detachment from the frame of reality we inhabit.  Nowhere is this more the case than the attitude of the Church towards Islam.  Traditionally the attitude towards Islam was simple:  it was a religion founded on fraud and was the mortal enemy of Catholicism.  Popes might observe diplomatic niceties when dealing with Muslim rulers, but they never deluded themselves into thinking that Islam was not a threat to Christianity.  However both clarity of thought and honesty seem to be absent from those who hold power in the Church today, God help us.

 

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Philip Nachazel
Philip Nachazel
Monday, February 4, AD 2019 4:01am

“What are the Vatican and the Pope doing to fight this new religious persecution?”

……………….ask Chinese Catholics.

father of seven
father of seven
Monday, February 4, AD 2019 6:40am

No muslim listening to Pope Chastisement would ever conclude that becoming Catholic was a good, much less a necessary, thing. He is a cheerleader for islam because he is not even a Christian, nor does he face any personal risk from it. He has no clue what the Christian sheep in muslim lands smell like, nor does he care.

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