Posted on 03/30/2003 12:41:35 PM PST by NYer
Perhaps this article will provide a clearer understanding of the gesture made by John Paul II and put to rest the papal bashing so prevalent among certain members on this forum.
Bring it on!
Why, whoever do you mean??? :-0
I learned this pretty fast. LOL
I just got home from Mass but I still don't believe the Pope should be kissing the Koran. Why isn't he evangelizing the Muslims, trying to save their souls? Wouldn't that be a better way of showing respect for them? If he tried to show a better way?
Whoever he means, he knows them very well.
God reinforced the separation of the child of 'flesh', from the Child of 'Promise', when Hagar and Ishmael were sent off to wander. Another separation of darkness from light. Just like at the beginning of the first creation.
Romans 13:12
The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light.
Ephesians 5:8
For ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord: walk as children of light:
2 Corinthians 6:14
Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness?
Ephesians 6:12
For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.
1 John 1:5
This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.
1 John 1:6
If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth:
I give him the benefit of the doubt, though. It could be he didn't know it was the Koran... why would someone hand him a Koran, anyway? Wouldn't ya think they'd hand him a Bible?
OTOH. Even if he knew it was the Koran, maybe it was a sign of respect for Islam. Although we do not hold all the same beliefs, there is a lot of good in Islam (not the minority wacko interpretation of it) that all of us can recognize.
And despite what some others believe, we do worship the same God, although in varying degrees of perfection.
But the bottom line for me is that in the matter of faith and morals, I'm with the pope. Whether or not he kissed the Koran matters not a whit to my faith.
Sometimes I think JPII fears the world will fall into something akin to the crusades. Only in our modern world, the results would be catastrophic.
How can allah be the God of Abraham? In the Christian faith, we believe that God made the Jews his chosen people but allah calls them pigs and monkeys? How can that be the same God? The leader the Muslims choose to follow was a polygamist pedophile ---Mohammed took a 6 year old child to be his "wife"? Nothing like the example Jesus set for his followers.
That's why I prefer to remember this Pope for the way he used to be ---he was a staunch anti-Communist, he didn't say to appease them. I think age and illness has done him in, he has gone from the level of Ronald Reagan to the level of Jimmy Carter. I don't hold his illness against him anymore than I hold Reagan's illness against him. Reagan at least is protected by his loved ones, he's been kept out of the spotlight, but I suspect there are those in the Vatican who are using the Pope's medical conditions to promote their own agendas.
That's where I am also ---the Pope can bow down to the Hindu monkey god for all I care ---I'm still keeping my faith.
At the present time, the hatred of the Moslem countries against the West is becoming a hatred against Christianity itself. 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. Moslem writers say, "When the locust swarms darken countries, they bear on their wings these Arabic words: 'We are God's host, each of us has ninety-nine eggs, and if we had a hundred, we should lay waste the world, with all that is in it.'"
The problem is, how shall we prevent the hatching of the hundredth egg? It is our firm belief that the fears some entertain concerning the Moslems are not to be realized, but the Moslemism, instead, will eventually be converted to Christianity — and in a way that even some of our missionaries never suspect. It is our belief that this will happen not through the direct teachings of Christianity, but through a summoning of the Moslems to a veneration of the Mother of God. This is the line of argument:
This interesting and timely article by the late Most Reverend Fulton J. Sheen first appeared in the Mindszenty Report of August 1991. It presents the Bishop's observations on whether Islam and Christianity can find common ground to co-exist in the coming decades. As editor John Boland says they are "more significant now perhaps than when written 49 years ago."
I'd hate to hear your take on some of the Borgia popes. ;-)
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