Thanks for posting this proud2bRC, I wanted too but its going to be a busy day.
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Posted on 11/02/2001 5:42:58 AM PST by Brian Kopp DPM
America sorely needs a prelate of his spirituality and stature today.
Thanks for posting this proud2bRC, I wanted too but its going to be a busy day.
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Fatima was also the name of Mohammed's daughter. (As well as a brand of fags.)
But after the death of Fatima, Mohammed wrote: Thou shalt be the most blessed of all the women in Paradise, after Mary.
In a variant of the text, Fatima is made to say, I surpass all the women, except Mary."
And what would Mohammed have to say about the treatment of his daughter in the current scheme of things in the Moslem world....
Although the statesmen have not yet taken it into account, there is still grave danger that the temporal power of Islam may return and, with it, the menace that it may shake off a West which has ceased to be Christian, and affirm itself as a great anti-Christian world power.
Archbishop Sheen was a very wise man.
Thank you for posting this, and for the bump. I didn't know about the Muslim significance of Fatima.
As long as a heresy allows the heretic to better contemplate God from his unique vantage point, the heresy will persist. We do notice conversion of Muslims, not to Christianity, but to secularism. This secularization is seen, not incorrectly, by some Muslim thinkers as westernization, and we have this war on the Western civilization as a result. Why secularism brings a Muslim closer to God? Because it reminds him of the loving and forgiving nature of God, that smiles at our petty philistinism. This aspect of God is nearly completely hidden from view in Islam.
Ultimately, everything good comes from God. Even our cooperation with God's grace is a grace. That is constant Church teaching. But in a more proximate sense, and to use everyday language, we say that "Mary always leads us to Christ."
If you feel more comfortable with "The Holy Spirit, operating through Mary, leads us to Christ," that's perfectly OK. In fact, it is Catholic teaching.
Please add me to the list, thanks.
"Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger has taken public exception to a statement by Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who caused an uproar in Italy by saying that Western culture is superior to Islam. 'One cannot speak of the superiority of one culture over another, because history has shown that a society can change from one age to another,' the cardinal remarked, speaking to the Italian daily La Repubblica.
I hope that the internet will open Islamic society to Christian teaching, even classical philosophy. I know someone who corresponds with Muslims in north Africa over the internet. He told me that they frequently say things like, "We don't have to believe these things?" The idea of freely accepting or rejecting specific religious doctrines is a strange idea to them.
Another obstacle to Muslim conversions is psychological. Because the Koran contains contradictory passages, and because the Koran is treated as the literal word of God, Koranic teachings must be accepted on blind faith, and in contradiction to natural reason. So Muslims must also overcome a lifetime practice of sublimating contradictions.
But, the position of a Christian missionary in an Islamic country is very perilous -- almost as dangerous as it was to be a Jesuit in Elizabethan England. Unless the radical governments, such as Saudi Arabia's, are compelled to renounce Sharia, the prospect of conversion through preaching and disputation seems very remote.
There will never be any widespread conversion from Islam to Christianity for as long as the government can impose a death sentence for "apostasy." And, in the case of Saudi Arabia, that self-same government has the unquestioning support of the U.S. There is something brutally consistent that the U.S., where it is illegal to pray on public property, supports a regime that imposes a death penalty for conversion to Christianity.
And bin Laden calls us "Crusaders." It is to laugh.
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