Not Mohammed. But we're risking a Lutheran attack by publishing a picture of this prophet.
Obviously, there are some minor doctrinal differences between Christianity and Islam, but nothing that a truly ecumenical person cannot live with. Muslims believe that the prophet Mohammed was sent by God to re-establish the true faith of Adam, Abraham, Moses, and all the other good eggs; moreover, the Koran is the word of God, and a jolly good read. Many Christians see things slightly differently, maintaining that Mohammed was a very naughty boy, and that the Koran is a load of tosh.
"So, broadly speaking, we are in complete agreement," says Bishop Feige. "For those of us who are German Catholics and don't really worry about religious matters, as long as we can collect a good healthy church tax, it is hard to see what all the fuss is about."
Some Muslims live similar lifestyles to German bishops.
The bishops' report includes conciliatory letters between the German bishops’ conference president, Cardinal Reinhard Marx, and Hibatullah Akhundzada, Head of the Taliban. Cardinal Marx wrote that he had always thought that the Catholic Church could learn a lot from Islamic fundamentalism, and proposed a pilgrimage to the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, with a joint service devoted to "healing memories". Perhaps they could participate in a joint clown Mass, or perhaps a lesbian diversity Mass? Akhundzada replied that he would welcome the arrival of Marx, and was already setting up a commission to decide whether to boil him in oil, eviscerate him, or simply behead him as the highlight of an ecumenical service.
If this doesn't lead to Christian-Islamic Unity, then nothing will.
The ecumenical commission’s deputy chairman, Bishop Heinz Algermissen of Fulda, said Catholic-Islamic ties had improved since the Second Vatican Council, once Catholics had been encouraged to drop controversial notions such as sin, redemption, forgiveness, good and evil. However he stressed that churches must work for "visible unity, not just reconciled diversity".
The only way the Muslim so call religion come in to being was by the sword,One was give a choice became a Muslim or you die.
ReplyDeleteThat brilliant satire leads to the following proposal: let the liberal German bishops make their pilgrimage to Taliban land, and LET THEM STAY THERE.
ReplyDeleteGreat stuff..quite mystifying from Germany. True ecumenism rarely uses words. Where is the prayerful silence? They are tying themselves in all kinds of knots... We need the undoer of knots..right now
ReplyDeleteI suspect, Brother Eccles, that you may have written with sarcastic intent. I am worried, however, that certain Argentinian and German ecclesiastics may adopt your proposal as a serious and exciting development
ReplyDeleteI agree Felix.
DeleteJust wait. It won't be long though.
James.
Only too likely I fear. Anyone remember Prof Sir Michael Dummett, Oxford logician and Blackfriars Mass attender, writing exactly that (about the Prophet) in a letter to the Tablet--only the week before 9/11 struck in the United States? But the original news is shocking enough.
ReplyDeleteThat letter to The Tablet doesn’t seem to be available online. Pity. I’d also like to read an article* by Dummet called “The Intelligibility of Eucharistic Doctrine”, but that doesn’t seem to be available either.
Delete* In some other publication, not The Tablet!
http://archive.thetablet.co.uk/article/1st-september-2001/14/puzzled-by-islam
DeleteThank you, Nilus. It’s an interesting letter. Dummett seems to be treading very carefully so as not to get on the wrong side of Lumen Gentium and Nostra Aetate, but his gist seems to be that the square peg of Mohammed simply doesn’t fit into the round hole of the Gospel, and that Vatican 2 tried too hard to bash it in regardless.
DeleteI'll have to go back and reread it more carefully. At the time and subsequently I interpreted it as suggesting that Mohammed was in some way deserving of recognition as a prophet by the Catholic church, even if the precise manner of doing this was still obscure. But you see the letter as critical of Vatican II and its approach to other faiths?
DeleteWell, I think so, though I can’t be sure. It’s a very short letter and a lot of it is taken up with his cautious, even furtive, sidling up to the issue, “We have learned” this and “But we can have” that and “only if” the other, before he finally comes out with what he really wants to say. However, this bit seems fairly conclusive, I think:
DeleteAs things are, the existence of Muhammed and of the whole religion that he founded is a perplexity for Christian theology. Until we have solved it, our relations with Islam must remain ambiguous.
On other blogs recently, particularly after the murder of Fr Jacques Hamel, people have been asking tough questions about what went on at Vatican 2 and why it produced such an “irenic”, laid-back, unworried approach to Islam. There are some commenters (even here at Eccles’s on the “Allah! Allah!” thread) who put the blame on what they call “Cushingite theology”, though I think Cushing’s sole concern was to improve relations with Judaism, not with Islam. Others complain about the unduly high regard in which Louis Massignon’s ideas were held by many of the Council fathers. In particular, the fact that Massignon seems to have been an adept of Sufi mysticism led him ‒ so this argument goes ‒ to present a severely distorted vision of Sunni Islam, which he saw as being much more spiritual and inward than it really is.
Dummett may, I think have been trying to convey in his cautious, roundabout way the idea that Islam is misrepresented in Nostra Aetate and even in bits of Lumen Gentium (e.g. No. 16), but since they are both now part of the magisterium he naturally had to handle the whole argument with kid gloves.
I took it then and still am inclined to think that Sir Michael, a Guardian-style activist, wanted the church to come up with a new definition of how Mohammed had been, though not of the faith, divinely-inspired in a manner recognized by Catholics.
DeleteBy the way, the business over Luther is worse than I supposed. It seems that German Catholics have even called for him to be canonized. No miracles true --- but his career and works are tantamount to one, they say.
I like the idea of a pilgrimage to the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan and so will the Emir.
ReplyDeleteBut bring lots of lolly if you are trying to fit it into your summer hols. Dhimexit duty could be quite high?
If Martin Luther and his heresies are being venerated, why not Mohammad? Under the Pope Francis "religion" they're all better than the One Holy and Catholic Faith that they are bound to destroy. Lord, have mercy.
ReplyDeleteI think they meant "Fatwah" but there is so much ignorance among liberal modernists perhaps they really meant it.
ReplyDelete