St James the Moor-slayer, Pray for us! +
Posted on 03/02/2005 3:53:04 PM PST by corpus
Muslims pray in Catholic centre
When the planning authorities ruled that the room in a restaurant they were using to pray was a fire hazard they had to find another place.
They temporarily decamped to a living room of someone's home where evening prayers were held every day during the holy month of Ramadan.
Now Jersey's St Thomas' Church has offered the use of its community centre for Friday prayers.
Mosque hope
Canon Nicholas France, said: "We are a universal Catholic church and our church has taught very much in recent years the importance of respect and the healing of past quarrels, particularly with Islam.
"This doesn't make us deny our own truths or own faith, but to respect all that's good in other people's faiths and respect their rights and freedom to worship."
There were about 25 people from the 200-strong Muslim community at prayers at the second session held at the community centre.
Muslim community leader Dr Abdel Abdelbaky said: "I appreciate the offer and I thank the people who helped us and offered this place for Friday prayers."
In the long term the Muslim community would like to build a mosque in the island.
END
It is my understanding once Muslims pray in a certain place (someone else's church?) that building becomes Muslim property according to their thinking. Am I right or wrong?
How stupid can people be.
"It is my understanding once Muslims pray in a certain place (someone else's church?) that building becomes Muslim property according to their thinking. Am I right or wrong?"
I am not sure. But they were not praying in the actual church but the community center that belongs to the church. At any rate, it is bloody ecuminism gone amuck.
In my church, during this season of Lent, Stations of the Cross are recited on Fridays (by Catholics) at noon and 7:00 PM.
"Canon Nicholas France"
Now he isn't just known locally as a jerk - the whole world knows it too.
What marvels the web has to offer!
Ping
"respect all that's good in other people's faiths and respect their rights and freedom to worship"
There is no such thing as a "right" to worship a false god, nor is there a "right" to worship God falsely.
How unecumenical.
Isn't this a SACRILEGE?? Worshipping a Sun god in a Catholic Church!!!! OMG!
See post 4 or read the article more closely. It would appear they were using the church's community centre, not the church building itself.
To hell with the Church's teachings for the prior 1962 years, Canon France.
And that good is...?
At some point it will be recognized that this is a struggle (or war) for the hearts, minds, and souls of the world's populace. But that is a subject for the Bible, not the practice of the present day Catholic church.
Yes, but then again, according to at least one Amchurch bishop, "we're non-Catholics" ,
Oh someone please explain to me again what a great thing Assisi was and how it gave no scandal.
Glad I left for the synagogue.
St James the Moor-slayer, Pray for us! +
St James the Moor Slayer, Spain's patron saint, has notched up another victory.
Church officials have been forced to overturn a decision to remove a statue of the saint from the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in north-west Spain.
The statue, an 18th-century work by Jose Gambino which depicts St James on a white charger hacking off the heads of Moors beneath his rampant mount's hooves, was deemed to be offensive to Muslims.
However a spokesman for the church, which is Christendom's third holiest site after Rome and Jerusalem and attracts half a million pilgrims each year, said yesterday that, due to public anger over the proposed move, the statue will now remain in place.
"It is still here on the same spot. It is not going anywhere," a spokesman for Alejandro Barral, the president of the cathedral's art commission, said. "We have decided that the statue of St James will stay in the cathedral. There is no reason why it should be removed in the near future. For the moment the debate over its future has been suspended."
The Spanish press reported that terrorist bomb attacks on Madrid trains in March had precipitated the withdrawal of the statue.
The Spanish national newspaper, El Mundo, said: "According to our sources the authorities fear that the image could attract the anger of the Arab world in a period of high tension."
The plan was to put the statue in a museum and replace it with a less provocative effigy, one of St James the Pilgrim.
The decision outraged Roman Catholics. One newspaper commentator dubbed it "political correctness gone mad". People gathered in strength to place flowers at the foot of the statue and newspapers published letters of complaint condemning the "intolerable heresy".
The announcement of the withdrawal was welcomed by the Muslim community as a "step towards peace" according to Houssam El Mahmoudi, the president of the Association of Moroccan Students in Santiago.
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