LAWRENCE AUSTER writes:

There may be no excuse for it, but there is a very compelling and authoritative reason for the Vatican’s statement this week that the Koran must be respected and protected by Catholics. I discussed this reasoning several times in 2006-07 following the Regensburg Lecture Jihad and the pope’s pathetic surrender thereto. Why did he surrender to the rioting Muslims and renounce the penetratingly critical statements about Islam that he had made in Regensburg? Because the Church’s own authoritative documents from the Vatican II period, implanted in the Catholic Catechism, require Catholics to look at Muslims as “fellow adorers of the one God.”

Here is a 2007 entry at VFR in which I discuss the Catholic Catechism’s teaching on Catholics’ relationships with Islam. I’m quoting the entire initial entry. (The discussion following the iniitial entry is lively and I recommend it too.):

 What the Catholic Catechism says about Islam   

In a lively discussion, Vincent C. defends the Church from the charge that it commands its members on penalty of sin to support open borders. I replied that though support for open borders is not required of Catholics, it is still promulgated by the Church hierarchy and carries much authority and influence, and therefore the Church, as the Church, can be criticized for it.

Unfortunately, it is also the case that some of the most dangerous liberal teachings of the Church are not optional, but are included in the Catholic Catechism, the Church’s official statement of the Catholic faith, and thus all Catholics are required to subscribe to and practice them. I am thinking specifically of the Catechism’s passage on the Church’s relations with Islam, which, along with the rest of the Catechism, Vincent tells us, Catholics must accept on penalty of sin. Here it is:

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).

Let us now consider these statements of authoritative Catholic doctrine one at a time.

“Moslems profess the faith of Abraham.”

Meaningless and dangerous. That Muslims claim descent from Abraham and even claim to share his faith tells us nothing about the actual doctrines and history of Islam. It does not mean that those doctrines have anything in common with Christianity and Judaism.

“Muslims along with us adore the one and merciful God.”

False. The god of the Koran, who is a god of pure will unknowable to man, a god who commands his Islamic followers to conquer the earth, a god who commands that Muslims kill Jews and Christians unless they accept Islam, is not the God of the Bible.

“The Islamic faith regards Jesus as a prophet.”

False. The Islamic faith regards Jesus, along with Abraham and Moses, as Islamic prophets, and says that anyone who believes otherwise is an enemy of Islam who must be punished.

“Moslems prize the moral life, and give worship to God especially through prayer, almsgiving and fasting.”

False. Muslims only believe in moral treatment toward their fellow Muslims. Non-Muslims are enemies, to be lied to, warred against, stolen from, subdued, and killed. The idea of an objective morality is foreign to Islam.

* * *

Let me repeat that all the false and destructive ideas discussed above are in the Catholic Catechism and therefore are obligatory on Catholics.

What is to be done? There must be a movement within the Church to remove the passages relating to Islam from Nostra Aetate and Lumen Gentium that are quoted in the Catechism, and to remove the passage in the Catechism that makes those statements part of the official body of Catholic faith. Until that is done, the Catholic Church remains officially committed to–and requires its flock on penalty of sin to believe–false ideas that spell dhimmitude and religious and civilizational suicide, both for itself and for the whole Western world.

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