Posted on 12/28/2006 1:59:22 PM PST by Dallas59
Cordoba, 28 Dec. (AKI) - The Bishop of the southern city of Cordoba, Juan Jose Asenjo, has turned down a request from its Muslim community to be allowed to pray with Christians in its cathedral - a former mosque. Asenjo was quoted as saying the joint use of consecrated places of worship would "generate confusion" and lead to "religious indifference". Asenjo also said that the Bishopric had valid legal documents entitling the Catholic Church to sole use of the building. Moreover, while Catholics are able to live in peace with other faiths, and the Cordoba Diocese wants to maintain its good relations with local Muslims, Cordoba's Christian roots should be respected, Asenjo argued.
Spain's Islamic Board, which represents a community of some 800,000 in a traditional Catholic country of 44 million, argued in a letter to Pope Benedict XVI that such a move in Cordoba could serve to "awaken the conscience" of followers of both faiths and help bury past confrontations.
The organisation stated that they were not aiming at re-establishing the Cordoba Mosque - now a Unesco world heritage site - nor reviving Andalusia, the pre-Christian Muslim civilisation of Spain, of which Cordoba was the capital. Rather, the demand should be seen as a move to encourage tolerance and reconciliation, the Islamic Board argued.
"What we wanted was not to take over that holy place, but to create in it, together with you and other faiths, an ecumenical space unique in the world which would have been of great significance in bringing peace to humanity," said its letter to the pontiff.
The Cordoba mosque was turned into a Catholic cathedral in the 13th Century after the city was conquered by King Ferdinand III in the war to drive the North African Moors from the Iberian peninsula.
A building order than the present shrine was supposedly destroyed by the Moslems in 997, but within a short period Christian military (most likely Frankish knights under appropriate Cornish leadership) moved back into the region.
This area is at or North of the final d-mark of the Moslem venture into the peninsula.
The invasion began in 711 AD; the conquest happened quickly in a very underpopulated country; and was certainly well established for nearly 275 years before events in Compestala.
For comparison, 275 years ago it was 1731. Answers.com informs us that in that year "Trois-Rivières-born French fur trader Pierre Gaultier de Varennes, 46, sieur de la Vérendrye, begins expeditions into western Canada, looking for a great river that native tribesmen have told him might lead to the "western sea."
Thereby begins yet another story of high adventure with the American Revolution still 44 years in the future!
The Pope should ask to hold Easter mass in the Blue Mosque. That whole area was Christian until TROP killed every Christian in sight to obtain it.
Roman Catholicism was "allowed" to be practiced by the peasants, of course, but that did not make Spain "Roman Catholic" by any means.
In those days Bishops were undoubtedly very polite to the political leadership elite in the Peninsula.
Shortly after the invasion and conquest the peasantry pretty universally became Moslem.
The people in my parish could have used some of that "common sense" one year after 911,when my church held a memorial service for that tragedy. Various ministers from other Christian denominations were invited to participate and one muslim Imam. The only thing that kept me from getting up and leaving was that I was sitting amongst my fellow firefighters and I didn't want to embarrass them. The fact that the muslim Imam was there in a Catholic church really pi$$ed me off!
Perfectly reasonable, considering that riots were threatened if the Pope prayed at Hagia Sophia.
I'll add my voice to others here. Muslims should try creating that ecumenical space in muslim countries. Muslims are free to worship in Spain. In fact, muslims are free to come into any catholic church in the world and pray quietly, and no one is going to say a word. So lets reciprocate, and allow Christians to worship openly in muslim countries. Lets see synagogues and churches sprouting, unmolested, from Morocco to Indonesia.
right on!
You beat me to it!
Almanzor overran it in 997. The shrine was fairly new at that point, and the bones of Santiago were protected by a monk who convinced the Muslims that the relics were too holy and powerful to be touched. The area was actually under Muslim domination for some time, but the Muslims did not live there. They came from the south once or twice a year to collect tribute from various northern Spanish Christian kings; no payment meant that the towns and crops would be destroyed. Normally they took slaves, since the only wealth those areas had was population.
A certain number of young men and women were sent off to the Muslims every year. There is a town along the Camino de Santiago where the symbol of the town is a bull. This relates to a story where the Muslims were trying to leave town with a group of girls that they had been given in tribute. The girls prayed to the Virgin and a bull in the field charged the Muslims and drove them away, freeing the girls.
A number of Christian kingdoms in Northern Spain, prior to the gradual unification of Spain, which culminated under Ferdinand and Isabel, were permitted to exist only by paying tribute to the Muslim south.
"The organisation stated that they were not aiming at re-establishing the Cordoba Mosque - now a Unesco world heritage site - nor reviving Andalusia, the pre-Christian Muslim civilisation of Spain"
The mosque was built overtop a church!
Thank you Jesus that someone in Christendom is well suited to the title defender of the faith.
High Volume. Articles on Israel can also be found by clicking on the Topic or Keyword Israel. or WOT [War on Terror]
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The Bishop of the southern city of Cordoba, Juan Jose Asenjo, has turned down a request from its Muslim community to be allowed to pray with Christians in its cathedral - a former mosque. Asenjo was quoted as saying the joint use of consecrated places of worship would "generate confusion" and lead to "religious indifference".
Of course the long term intent is to alleviate confusion through prayer without Christians polluting the Mosque. Or polluting Spain.
A number of Christian kingdoms in Northern Spain....
There was one King in the NW who resisted successfully, stopping the Moors there. I forget his name now, but that's the place where the Reconquista began, somewhere I think in Asturias.
Sounds like the 'sleep. . .creeps. . .leaps'. . .Muslim MO for waging a different kind of war on a home front. . .
King San Cho Noe I arrived from Cornwall, subdued the Gaellic North, and founded three kingdoms.
Each were to work as a hammer, anvil and tong and work their way South. The idea was to ultimately conquer spain a piece at a time. This became known as the Reconquista.
Hundreds of years later two of the original kingdoms founded by San Cho Noe wrapped up the conquest. They are known as Castle and Lion (Castile/Leon). The third kingdom, Carvajal/Carvalho was kind of absorbed by the others (like a mini-Thurungia), refurbished Compostela, sponsored an order of French knighthood, and passed on into tourist history as the final stop on a Pardon that begins in Brittany.
Depending on where you live, your religious leanings, your ethnicity and language some of this may be more important to you than other parts.
Interesting story on the Bull. In fact, a Big Red Bull is the symbol of Carvajal ~ which is the first of the three Cornish kingdoms that didn't survive it's earliest days.
Thanks for "the rest of the story."
Oh, good grief, just ask the precious local Muslim community when the Christians can stick their "camel's toe" into the local Muslim mosque. Talk about Muslims knowing how to play the Western PC card.....
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