Posted on 09/13/2014 4:06:30 AM PDT by markomalley
Catholic Cardinal Theodore McCarrick offered Islamic religious phrases and insisted that Islam shares foundational rules with Christianity, during a Sept. 10 press conference in D.C.
“In the name of God, the Merciful and Compassionate,” McCarrick said as he introduced himself to the audience at a meeting arranged by the Muslim Public Affairs Council. That praise of the Islamic deity is an important phrase in Islam, is found more than 100 times in the Koran, and is akin to the Catholic prayer, ”In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”
McCarrick next claimed that “Catholic social teaching is based on the dignity of the human person… [and] as you study the holy Koran, as you study Islam, basically, this is what Muhammad the prophet, peace be upon him, has been teaching.”
McCarrick was 71 when 19 Muslims brought Islam to the public eye by murdering 3,000 Americans on 9/11. He is one of the 213 Cardinals of the Catholic church, but is too old to vote in church debates.
“Either the cardinal has studied the whole thing and does not know what he’s talking about, or he is making a somewhat misleading statement,” said Michael Meunier, head of the U.S. Copts Association. “The practice of the Muslim majority people that adhere to the Koran… have proven that [claim of equivalence] is not correct,” he told The Daily Caller during a Sept. 11 trip to Jordan.
“Has Cardinal McCarrick converted to Islam?” asked a scornful critic, Robert Spencer, the best-selling author of many books on Islam.
“‘Peace be upon him’ is a phrase Muslims utter after they say the name of [their reputed] prophet… [so] probably he is unaware of the unintended Islamic confession of faith he has just made,”said Spencer, who runs the Jihadwatch.org website.
McCarrick is wrong to say “that Islam teaches the dignity of every human person,“ Spencer said. “Actually it teaches a sharp dichotomy between the Muslims, [who are called] ‘the best of people’ and the unbelievers [are called] ‘the most vile of created beings,’” Spencer told TheDC.
“The Koran also says: ‘Muhammad is the apostle of Allah. Those who follow him are merciful to one another, harsh to the unbelievers,’” Spencer said.
The same warning came from Archbishop Amel Nona, who was head of Chaldean Catholic Archeparch of Mosul in Iraq. In a August comment made to Europeans, he said that “You think all men are equal, but that is not true: Islam does not say that all men are equal [and] your values are not their values.”
“If you do not understand this soon enough, you will become the victims of the [immigrant] enemy you have welcomed in your home,” said Nona, who is now exiled — along with surviving Chaldean Catholics — in the Kurdish city of Erbil.
Islamic societies have routinely persecuted non-Muslims, including Christian Armenians in Turkey and Christian Copts in Egypt, said Taniel Koushakjian, a spokesman for the Armenian National Committee of America.
During the First World War, more that 1.5 million Armenians were deliberately killed by Turkey’s Islamic government, he said.
In Egypt, Copts “seem to bear the brunt of the persecution… [which] comes from the religious divide [and] is an interpretation of the theology in which people who are not of the same [Islamic] belief are cast out as infidels, as unrighteous,” he said.
The Islamic Society of North America says Islam “recognize[s] plurality in human societies, including religious plurality.” The section of the Koran that endorses plurality, it is claimed, include verses 10:19, 11:118 and 11.19.
“Mankind was not but one community [united in religion], but [then] they differed. And if not for a word that preceded from your Lord, it would have been judged between them [immediately] concerning that over which they differ,” says verse 10:19, which ISNA says shows Islam’s tolerance for other religions.
The Koran has some welcoming messages, but they’re from Islam’s early period, Meunier said. “When Islam became strong and had a strong army, the tougher verses came down from heaven — apparently — and according to Islamic teaching, those later verses abrogate the earlier verses [so] moderate Muslims have an uphill battle saying Islam is tolerant.”
“We have to encourage moderate Muslims to present a more moderate version of Islam and the Koran,” but they’re outgunned by Saudi clerics who have used petrodollars to make Islam tougher and less tolerant, he said.
But the Saudi clerics “won’t do it [because] they don’t believe in it,” he added.
For Muslims, the Koran is the unimpeachable transcript of commands from Allah, the single and all-powerful deity. Muslims believe that the Koran was dictated by an angel to Islam’s final prophet, Mohammad, 1,400 years ago. This rigidity sharply constrains Muslims’ use of alternative ideas, including elements of Christianity, or secular ethics and philosophy.
The Koran also include many passage urging the use of violence. “The penalty for those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger and strive upon earth [to cause] corruption is none but that they be killed or crucified or that their hands and feet be cut off from opposite sides or that they be exiled from the land,” says Verse 33 of the Koran’s fifth book.
In contrast, the Christian Bible, including the almost-2,000 year-old New Testament, is based on the statements of witnesses. For example, Matthew the disciple provide the main account of the Beatitudes sermon, which includes the famous lines, “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall be shown mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the sons of God.”
The Christians’ reliance on witnesses allowed perpetual debate over the meaning and purpose of words from the twinned deity of Jesus and God, and it also allowed a Christian search for evidence of God via the “natural sciences,” that gradually created modern science. Christianity also endorsed separate roles for church and state, where Islam assumes that states’ laws comply with Koranic rules.
McCarrick, however, blended the two distinct religions in his comments at the press club.
“We are together on this against evil, we are against killing, we are against destruction… God bless you in this work you do,” McCarrick said to the Muslim speakers, which included representatives from one group — the Islamic Society of North America — that was implicated in a conspiracy to smuggle funds to the Hamas terror group that recently launched another bombardment of thousands of rockets at Israeli Jews.
“We believe that Islam is a religion which helps people, not kills them… the Muslim community has always taught this,” McCarrick said.
“I’m privileged to be able to lend my voice to the voice of many of my friends here,” he said about the Sept. 10 meeting, which was designed to help U.S.-based Islamic groups avoid the public disgust with The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.
Since early this year, the Islamic State group has killed and murdered thousands of Iraqis that don’t accept rule by the brutal Salafi variant of Islam. The victims include Shia Muslims, Christians and adherents of the pre-Christian Yazidi religion. Tens of thousands of non-Muslims have also been driven from their homes and fields.
McCarrick, however, downplayed ISIS’s attack on Christians in Iraq, and expressed more concerns for Muslim victims of ISIS attacks. “The truth of the matter is in these terrible massacres of the Islamic state, most of the victims have been Muslims, most of them have not been Christians,” he told his Sept. 10 audience.
“Many Christians, obviously, have suffered, so I am here to say that we stand with our brothers and sisters in the Muslim community, who here in the United States have been giving leadership in a very strong way,” he declared.
“They are proud to be Americans… they love America,” he said, without retuning to discuss the fate of his fellow Christians under Muslim rule.
Spencer urged McCarrick to challenge his Muslim hosts. “Cardinal McCarrick, rather than indulge in this fond and ignorant wishful thinking, would have done better to have challenged his Muslim friends to match their lofty words with real action to combat the Islamic State and other Muslim persecutors of Christians,” Spencer said.
McCarrick should have “asked them to institute programs in mosques and Islamic schools to teach against the literal meaning of the verses I quoted above and others like them, so that they no longer incite Muslims to violence,” in the U.S. or abroad, Spencer said.
McCarrick’s last act as Archbishop of Washington was to re-assign a huge number of priests, making sure the “conservatives” were put in the most unsuitable assignments.
One priest who didn’t know a word of Latin was put in a parish that has an Extraordinary Form Mass every Sunday.
This was deliberate on McCarrick’s part. A person in the know has said, “Fr. X was sent here to fail.” But he didn’t. He learned the “Old Mass,” and is a great pastor.
McCarrick is evil. Of course, he was at the graveside, slobbering on Ted Kennedy’s casket, just as Cardinal O’Malley slobbered on the living Kennedys earlier that same day.
Thank you for the background info.
As a lapsed Catholic, Cardinal McCarrick’s suicidal ignorance inflicted upon followers through the influence of his stature within the church confirms my decision to remain lapsed.
How, in God’s name, is he permitted/authorized to consecrate the sacraments with his antithetical views?
uh......you’re putting your soul for ALL eternity in jeopardy because of a few bad men??? Come on.....that is just an excuse for not getting out of bed on Sunday to go to Mass and receive HOLY COMMUNION....the greatest treasure on earth Jesus gave us!!!
Got to remember who the Muslims REALLY worship and it is NOT the SAME GOD, in other words SATAN.
Rather the Koran was dictated by SATAN whom the Bible does warn CAN be an “angel of light.”
One two greatest treasures, the Holy Euchurest and the Holy Bible.
Cardinal McCarrick’s evil and stupidity does not change the fact that the Church was founded by Christ. It also does not change the facts about Lourdes, Fatima, St. Therese, Padre Pio, Mother Theresa, Thomas Aquinas, and innumerable other evidences of the working of grace in the Church.
So Cardinal McCarrick is evil. That’s not a rational excuse to leave the Church. You don’t get to heaven on the sins of others.
People who have not read the Koran should not be making pronouncements on Islam.
Eucharist.
Wow, they sure poorly catechize their Cardinals and Bishops!
“May St. John the Baptist protect Islam...”
St. John Paul II
Pope Benedict XVI delivered a lecture at the University of Regensburg in Bavaria, in his 2006 speech, simply titled “Faith, Reason and the University: Memories and Reflections,” Benedict characteristically took up a knotty concept — the interplay of faith and reason. He wanted to show how reason untethered from faith leads to fanaticism and violence.
To illustrate that case, Benedict dug up a 14th-century dialogue between a long-forgotten Byzantine Christian emperor, Manuel II Paleologus, and a Persian scholar about the concept of violence in Islam.
“Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached,” Benedict quoted the emperor as saying to his Islamic interlocutor.
In Islamic teaching, Benedict said, “God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality.”
I am reminded of when the Archbishop of Canterbury became a Druid High Priest, and saw nothing wrong with ecumenism with pagans.
I am also reminded of the movie Ladyhawke, with the Bishop of Aquila selling his soul to the devil in exchange for making a curse against the couple who had thwarted his carnal cravings.
And also of Hatto II, the Archbishop of Mainz, who for his murderous evil was consumed by mice in his “Mouse Tower on the Rhine”.
They whetted their teeth against the stones,
And then they picked the Bishop’s bones;
They gnawed the flesh from every limb
For They were sent to punish him.
It is the Holy Eucharist for those who believe the Word of God!
Protestant attacks on the Catholic Church often focus on the Eucharist. This demonstrates that opponents of the Church—mainly Evangelicals and Fundamentalists—recognize one of Catholicism’s core doctrines. What’s more, the attacks show that Fundamentalists are not always literalists. This is seen in their interpretation of the key biblical passage, chapter six of John’s Gospel, in which Christ speaks about the sacrament that will be instituted at the Last Supper. This tract examines the last half of that chapter.
John 6:30 begins a colloquy that took place in the synagogue at Capernaum. The Jews asked Jesus what sign he could perform so that they might believe in him. As a challenge, they noted that “our ancestors ate manna in the desert.” Could Jesus top that? He told them the real bread from heaven comes from the Father. “Give us this bread always,” they said. Jesus replied, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst.” At this point the Jews understood him to be speaking metaphorically.
Again and Again
Jesus first repeated what he said, then summarized: “‘I am the living bread which came down from heaven; if any one eats of this bread, he will live for ever; and the bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh.’ The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, ‘How can this man give us his flesh to eat?’” (John 6:51–52).
His listeners were stupefied because now they understood Jesus literally—and correctly. He again repeated his words, but with even greater emphasis, and introduced the statement about drinking his blood: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you; he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him” (John 6:53–56).
No Corrections
Notice that Jesus made no attempt to soften what he said, no attempt to correct “misunderstandings,” for there were none. Our Lord’s listeners understood him perfectly well. They no longer thought he was speaking metaphorically. If they had, if they mistook what he said, why no correction?
On other occasions when there was confusion, Christ explained just what he meant (cf. Matt. 16:5–12). Here, where any misunderstanding would be fatal, there was no effort by Jesus to correct. Instead, he repeated himself for greater emphasis.
In John 6:60 we read: “Many of his disciples, when they heard it, said, ‘This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?’” These were his disciples, people used to his remarkable ways. He warned them not to think carnally, but spiritually: “It is the Spirit that gives life, the flesh is of no avail; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life” (John 6:63; cf. 1 Cor. 2:12–14).
But he knew some did not believe. (It is here, in the rejection of the Eucharist, that Judas fell away; look at John 6:64.) “After this, many of his disciples drew back and no longer went about with him” (John 6:66).
This is the only record we have of any of Christ’s followers forsaking him for purely doctrinal reasons. If it had all been a misunderstanding, if they erred in taking a metaphor in a literal sense, why didn’t he call them back and straighten things out? Both the Jews, who were suspicious of him, and his disciples, who had accepted everything up to this point, would have remained with him had he said he was speaking only symbolically.
But he did not correct these protesters. Twelve times he said he was the bread that came down from heaven; four times he said they would have “to eat my flesh and drink my blood.” John 6 was an extended promise of what would be instituted at the Last Supper—and it was a promise that could not be more explicit. Or so it would seem to a Catholic. But what do Fundamentalists say?
And the guy is still part of the leadership in the Catholic Church. There is coming a sad day for those who follow that apostacy.
He’s hoping the muzz will saw off his head last.
Not ontil the influence of Islam is cleansed from the Church.
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