Posted on 02/27/2026 9:57:56 AM PST by ebb tide
The Dicastery for Interreligious Dialogue has sent a message to Muslims “on the occasion of the month of Ramadan.” The Islamic season of fasting coincides with Lent this year in what the message calls “a providential convergence of calendars.”
Cardinal George Jacob Koovakad, Prefect for the Dicastery for Interreligious Dialogue, expressed his hope that “through the shared season of Ramadan and Lent, our inner transformation becomes a catalyst for a renewed world.”
The approach adopted in the letter is erroneous in two respects:
The distinction between Lent and Ramadan
The existence of God, and the necessity of mortification of the passions through fasting, are truths that can be known by the natural light of human reason.
Many world religions teach these truths, but that does not mean their beliefs and practices can be equated with those of the Catholic Church.
This is because the Catholic Church alone transmits a supernatural revelation entrusted to her by God. She brings man to the supernatural life of grace which finds completion in perfect bliss in the eternal contemplation of God.
God wills that everyone should be saved. That is why the Catholic Church was given the “Great Commission” to preach the gospel to all mankind. Before His Ascension, Our Lord said to His Apostles:
All power is given to me in heaven and in earth. Going therefore, teach ye all nations; baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world. (Mt 28:18-20)
“Entrusted with this mandate,” Pope Benedict XV taught, “‘they went forth and preached everywhere’ (Mk 16:20) the word of God, so that ‘through all the earth their voice resounds, and to the ends of the world, their message’ (Ps 18:5).” [1]
The Holy Father continued:
From that time on, as the centuries have passed, the Church has never forgotten that command God gave her, and never yet has she ceased to dispatch to every corner of the world her couriers of the doctrine He entrusted to her, and her ministers of the eternal salvation that was delivered through Christ to the human race. [2]
Yet, the Holy Father lamented, despite the heroism of so many missionaries and martyrs, hundreds of millions of men, women, and children still live without the knowledge of Jesus Christ:
(T)o anyone who weighs these facts the realization must come as a shock that right now, there still remain in the world immense multitudes of people who dwell in darkness and in the shadow of death. According to a recent estimate, the number of non-believers in the world approximates one billion souls.
The misfortune of this vast number of souls is for Us a source of great sorrow. [3]
Today, due to population growth and the collapse of Catholic missionary work, the number of souls who live without Christ is even greater.
Pope Benedict XV regarded this as “a source of great sorrow” because, as Pope Pius IX reminded us, “well known is the Catholic teaching that no one can be saved outside the Catholic Church.” [4]
The Catholic Church is the only Ark of Salvation. As St Jerome said:
This is the Ark of Noah, and he who is not found in it shall perish when the flood prevails. [5]
The greatest act of charity is to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ with those who do not believe. It is not an act of intolerance but of love.
“God forbid,” Pope Pius IX remarked, “that the children of the Catholic Church should even in any way be unfriendly to those who are not at all united to us by the same bonds of faith and love. On the contrary, let them be eager always to attend to their needs with all the kind services of Christian charity, whether they are poor or sick or suffering any other kind of visitation.” [6]
Christian charity, however, does not mean pretending that differences do not exist and that everyone should remain as they are. The Vicar of Christ continued:
First of all, let them rescue them from the darkness of the errors into which they have unhappily fallen and strive to guide them back to Catholic truth and to their most loving Mother who is ever holding out her maternal arms to receive them lovingly back into her fold. Thus, firmly founded in faith, hope, and charity and fruitful in every good work, they will gain eternal salvation. [7]
In this particular passage, the Supreme Pontiff has in mind the baptized who are separated from the unity of the Church, but the same principle applies to those who have never heard the gospel.
In his encyclical Singulari Quidem, Pius IX warned against the “devilish system of indifference between the different religions.”
He taught:
This belief embraces people who have strayed from the truth, who are enemies of the true faith and forget their own salvation, and who teach contradictory beliefs without firm doctrine. They make no distinction between the different creeds, agree with everybody, and maintain that the haven of eternal salvation is open to sectarians of any religion. [8]
The pope then instructs the bishops on the true doctrine that they are to teach:
Teach them that just as there is only one God, one Christ, one Holy Spirit, so there is also only one truth which is divinely revealed. There is only one divine faith which is the beginning of salvation for mankind and the basis of all justification, the faith by which the just person lives and without which it is impossible to please God and to come to the community of His children. There is only one true, holy, Catholic church, which is the Apostolic Roman Church. [9]
Cardinal Koovakad does not share these truths with Muslims, our brother and sisters in descent from Adam, but instead addresses them as if they already have a religion that can save them and is on the same footing as the true Catholic religion.
Referring to Muslims as “true believers,” he states:
Such a believer strives, with every ounce of strength, to live according to God’s commandments, for in him alone are found both the hope of the world to come and the peace so deeply desired by every human heart.
The implication here is that Muslims are on the road to eternal salvation, even if they remain separated from the Catholic Church. While it is true that living according to God’s commandments, as discerned by conscience, can prepare a person to cooperate with divine grace, natural virtue in and of itself cannot avail for eternal salvation.
As Pope Pius IX teaches:
The narrow and difficult path which leads to life can be found not in the practice of the virtues alone or in the observance of precepts, but on the way of faith. [10]
It is through baptism that men are incorporated into the Mystical Body of Christ – which is the Catholic Church – and begin a new life in sanctifying grace, a life radically different from the life that preceded it.
The liturgical season of Lent is inextricably connected with this life of grace. Through prayer, penance, acts of charity, and the reception of the sacraments, the season of Lent renews us in the life of grace and the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity.
Koovakad expresses hope that “through the shared season of Ramadan and Lent, our inner transformation becomes a catalyst for a renewed world.”
But the “inner transformation” of the baptized Christian is not possible for a Muslim to attain through the practice of Ramadan, but only through embracing the Catholic faith.
A false naturalistic Lent
The “inner transformation” and “renewed world” of which the Vatican letter speaks is something that can, apparently, be attained by both Catholics and Muslims through the practices proper to each religion.
If this were a reference to the life of grace in the soul of the Christian – and its effects on the world – the letter would be erroneous for the reasons outlined above.
However, it seems clear that such a transformation is far from the mind of the author.
There is no reference in the text to key aspects of Lent such as penance, repentance, sin or the sacraments. The focus is clearly on temporal political ends. Koovakad writes:
Dear Muslim brothers and sisters, especially those among you who struggle or suffer in body or spirit because of your thirst for justice, equality, dignity and freedom: please be assured of my spiritual closeness, and know that the Catholic Church stands in solidarity with you. We are united not only by our shared experience of trial, but also by the sacred task of restoring peace to our broken world. We are truly “all in the same boat” (Francis, Encyclical Letter Fratelli Tutti, 3 October 2020, 30).
The “spiritual closeness” and “solidarity” that unites Catholics and Muslims is ordered toward the “sacred task” of pursuing a purely temporal peace. The letter goes on:
Peace — this is my fervent wish for each of you, for your families, and for the nations in which you live. It is not of an illusory or utopian peace, but as Pope Leo XIV emphasized, of one born from the “disarmament of heart, mind and life” (Message for the 59th World Day of Peace, 1 January 2026). Such peace is a gift received from God and nurtured by defusing hostility through dialogue, practicing justice, and cherishing forgiveness.
It is certainly good to have peace, if by that we mean the absence of unlawful violence, but this is not the peace toward that Lent is primarily ordered. The peace that Our Lord Jesus Christ spoke is quite different:
Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, do I give unto you. (Jn 14:27)
This is the peace found only in the Gospel, and which the Vatican withholds from Muslims in order to pursue instead a secular, political form of peace.
God-centered vs man-centered religion
In previous articles, we have examined the false devotion to the “Social Heart” promoted by Francis in place of the Sacred Heart, the false Marian devotion established in new Vatican statutes, and now the promotion of a secular Lent.
In all three cases, practices that were ordered toward the greater glory of God and the salvation of souls have been replaced by practices ordered toward a man-centered political agenda.
This is not a coincidence. It follows directly from the Modernist philosophy that underpins the ideology of those in power in the Vatican.
Modernism replaces God with man. Modernists are attempting to replace the Catholic Church with a new man-centered “Synodal Church.”
But let those of us who remain faithful to the Catholic Church pray in the words of the Collect of the Third Sunday of Lent:
We beseech Thee, Almighty God, look upon the prayers of Thy humble servants and stretch forth the right hand of Thy majesty for our defense.
ReferencesReferences
| ↑1, ↑2 | Pope Benedict XV, Maximum Illud, No. 1. |
|---|---|
| ↑3 | Pope Benedict XV, Maximum Illud, Nos. 6,7 |
| ↑4 | Pope Pius IX, Quanto Conficiamur Moerore, No. 48. |
| ↑5 | St Jerome, Letters of St Jerome, Letter 15. |
| ↑6, ↑7 | Pope Pius IX, Quanto Conficiamur Moerore, No. 9. |
| ↑8, ↑10 | Pope Pius IX, Singulari Quidem (1856), No. 3. |
| ↑9 | Pope Pius IX, Singulari Quidem (1856), No. 4. |
|
Click here: to donate by Credit Card Or here: to donate by PayPal Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794 Thank you very much and God bless you. |
Ping
People should give up something for Lent.
I suggest they give up Islam.
I dont know what god the Vatican is kneeling to, but Allah never had a son
If the Vatican expects islam to reciprocate, they’re gonna be waiting a loooong time.
Wth is that? Pachamama’s uber?
At what point are the members of a Church accountable for the permissive that allows their leaders to profane the faith of said Church?
At what point does a Church stray so far through the proclamations of its leaders that it no longer identifies with its intended doctrine?
The pope likes the gayness of islam.
Islam has for years promulgated the fraud of equating ‘the three Abrahamic religions” as if they are related to Judaism and Christianity, and Islam is really just the culmination of the three. The Vatican has been buying into this trap for years in a misguided attempt to curry amicable relations with the devil. This statement from the dicastery is despicable and heretical.
BS even from the Moslem perspective, to honor Christian holidays is verboten in the extreme
The only way I can make sense of it is that many Catholics enjoy self sacrifice and abuse rituals.
They get lots of them.
Hint: When you reward bad behavior you just get more of it.
Our new pope sounds a lot like our old Pope.
I miss John Paul the Second
Revelation 18:4 And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues. 5 For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities.
Second looney pope in a row.
How can you Catholics continue to allow this to happen?
BLIND faith? Blindly follow these blasphemous popes and other Catholic hierarchy.
How can you even belong to such a religion whose leaders constantly spit in the face of God? I couldn’t.
These are not the same or interrelated in anyway.
This is sacrilege.
2 Corinthians 6:14
Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness?
The Dicastery for Interreligious Dialogue expressed hope that ‘through the shared season of Ramadan and Lent, our inner transformation becomes a catalyst for a renewed world.’ What is that renewed world padre?
Muslims don’t “fast” during Ramadan….
They eat two Thanksgiving meals per day for a full month….
“ The REAL Ramadan Rules You Never Knew Existed”
https://youtu.be/K8DnIm1FkF4?si=cxOA7HKVXyVDDL6K
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.