<< Cardinal Bernard Law, the former archbishop of Boston, followed the late pope’s example at a suburban mosque in 2002. As the Boston Globe reported on Nov. 25, 2002, “Law removed his shoes. Then, as the imam chanted the sunset prayers, the bishop knelt with his forehead just inches from the carpet and offered praise to Allah.” Afterward, Law partook of the meal that breaks the day-long Ramadan fast. ''I feel very much at home with my fellow fundamentalists here,” Law said, “who are convinced that God must be at the center of our lives.” >>

-- This article further illustrates the deluded and apostate state of the leadership of Roman Catholicism. This tragedy of the further apostasy of the leadership of Roman Catholicism should only go to drive home in the hearts and heads of every Orthodox Christian our own hierarchy’s tragic error in identifying themselves with such a decrepit and dying institution.

SLOUCHING TOWARD SUICIDE

By Joseph D’Hippolito

FrontPageMagazine.com | November 13, 2006

During his visit to Germany, Pope Benedict XVI stunned the world on Sept. 12 by issuing a subtle, discreet yet formidable challenge to Islam – a challenge that drew praise from various observers.

The pope’s rhetoric, however, contrasts with his failure to confront a more fundamental problem: the Catholic Church’s willingness to concede its own worship space to Muslims, without regard for the consequences.

In Europe and the United States, Catholic authorities have encouraged the transformation of Catholic schools and churches into Muslim schools and mosques. One order of friars is helping Italian Muslims build a mosque right next to its monastery. In Belgium, meanwhile, the Catholic bishops let illegal Muslim immigrants live and worship in churches to force the government to grant amnesty.

Those same Catholic authorities would not grant similar concessions to Protestants or Eastern Orthodox, whose theologies are infinitely more similar.

Given the violent, anti-Semitic and anti-Western ideology permeating contemporary Islam – as well as decades of massive Muslim immigration to Europe – the implications are obvious.

“While Western Europe is turning Muslim, its Christian churches are committing suicide,” wrote The Brussels Journal’s Paul Belien in May.

The Norwegian author Fjordman expressed the situation less dramatically but no less accurately for the same outlet in September: “The ideological civil war within the West is not just between secularists and religious people; it runs straight through the Church itself.”

The Catholic Church’s problem has its roots in an ecumenism that borders on syncretism and a sense of compassion that crosses into indulgence. Pope John Paul II set the example by praying in a Damascus mosque during his 2001 trip to the Middle East.

Cardinal Bernard Law, the former archbishop of Boston, followed the late pope’s example at a suburban mosque in 2002. As the Boston Globe reported on Nov. 25, 2002, “Law removed his shoes. Then, as the imam chanted the sunset prayers, the bishop knelt with his forehead just inches from the carpet and offered praise to Allah.”

Afterward, Law partook of the meal that breaks the day-long Ramadan fast. ‘’I feel very much at home with my fellow fundamentalists here,” Law said, “who are convinced that God must be at the center of our lives.”

Law’s basic attitude appears to be prevailing as Catholicism declines in the West. In Detroit, Our Lady Help of the Christians Catholic Church held its final Mass on Oct. 29. The Archdiocese of Detroit sold the church’s property to the Islamic Center of North Detroit, which plans to convert the complex into a mosque, an Islamic community center and a school for the neighborhood of Bangladeshi immigrants.

The archdiocese had leased another one of its properties to Muslims, the Detroit News reported Oct. 27, but did not disclose the location. The church, built in 1923 for Polish immigrants, was serving just 124 families when it closed.

The same month in Italy, the Capuchin Franciscan friars agreed to help the Union of Islamic Communities and Organizations in Italy (UCOII) build a mosque in Genoa immediately adjacent to one of its monasteries. The order agreed to exchange the land for an abandoned factory that the union had planned to convert into a mosque – and even agreed to build the new mosque’s foundation.

One of the deal’s most vociferous opponents is Magri Alam, an Egyptian immigrant to Italy who became a conservative journalist and a passionate critic of radical Islam.

In the Oct. 16 edition of the Milan daily Corriere della Sera, Alam wrote that the UCOII encourages “an extremist version of the Qu’ran, where Christians, Jews and Westerners are criminalized, as well as women and other Muslims who don’t submit to their rule.”

The union’s president, Mohammed Nour Dachan, has refused to sign a document in which Muslims pledged to accept Italy’s constitution, denounce terrorism and recognize Israel’s right to exist. His organization also demands Islamic schools, Islamic banks and clerical supervision of textbooks, as Front Page Magazine reported in its article, “How Will Rome Face Mecca?”

In Glasgow in 2003, Catholic officials approved attempts by Muslims to turn St. Albert’s School into an Islamic institution. More than 90 percent of the school’s 360 students were Muslim.

“We are in favor of Muslim schools,” an unidentified church spokesman told Edinburgh’s The Scotsman on Nov. 23, 2003. “We support faith schools across the board. In the case of St. Albert’s, we see a school in which for 95 percent of the children, the festival of Eid has more significance than Christmas or Easter. It is de facto not a Catholic school.”

The Catholic Establishment’s indulgent sense of compassion manifests itself most powerfully in its attitude toward immigrants. Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, the Archbishop of Westminster in London, demonstrated that attitude in his May 1, 2006 sermon at Westminster Cathedral:  “In migrants, the Church has always contemplated the image of Christ who said, “I was a stranger and you made me welcome” (Matthew 25:35). Their condition is, therefore, a challenge to the faith and love of believers who are called on to heal the evils caused by migration and discover the plan God pursues through migration even when there are obvious injustices. God’s appeal, made so forcefully in both the Old and the New Testaments, is for fraternity – for there to be new bonds of friendship forged between newcomer and native.

“The Church does not approve of illegal immigration…But nor can the Church ignore the plight among us of those who are here without legal status…We stand in solidarity with you too.” The Church, said Pope John Paul II in his migration day message, “is the place where illegal immigrants are also recognized and welcomed as brothers and sisters.”

“It is one of the central tasks of Christians – a constant theme of the Old and New Testaments – to offer hospitality to the exile and the stranger, seeing in him and her, the face of Christ. Faith in the presence of Christ in the migrant leads to a conversion of mind and heart, which leads to a renewed spirit of communion.”

The Catholic Establishment is so infatuated with creating such a spirit that it refuses to ask immigrants even to show a fundamental respect for others, let alone to assimilate into their new societies and obey the laws. Perhaps this is most true in Belgium, where the bishops encourage illegal Muslim immigrants to take over churches in virtually every diocese.

Posted on 11/15/06. Filed under: The Contemporary World • The "New Christianity" • Neo-Roman Catholicism • • Email This Entry