"Are we not to fear, during this period, that the Mohammedans will come again, working out their sinister schemes against the Latin Church? During this period, many men will abuse the freedom of conscience conceded to them. It is of such men that Jude the Apostle spoke when he said: 'These men blaspheme whatever they do not understand; and they corrupt whatever they know naturally as irrational animals do... They feast together without restraint, feeding themselves, grumbling murmurers, walking according to their lusts; their mouths speaketh proud things, they admire people for the sake of gain; they bring about division, sensual men, having not the spirit.'
During this unhappy period there will be laxity in divine and human precepts. Discipline will suffer. The Holy Canons will be completely disregarded, and the clergy will not respect the law of the Church. Everyone will be carried away and led to believe and to do what he fancies, according to the manner of the flesh. They will ridicule Christian simplicity ; they will call it folly and nonsense, but they will have the highest regard for advanced knowledge...As a result no principle at all- however holy, authentic, ancient, and certain it may be, will remain free of censure, criticism, false interpretations, modifications, and delimitation by man.
These are evil times a century full of dangers and calamities. Heresy is everywhere, and the followers of heresy are in power, almost everywhere. Bishops, prelates, and priests say that they are doing their duty, that they are vigilant and that they live as befits their state of life. In like manner therefore they all seek excuses. But God will permit a great evil against His Church; Heretics and tyrants will come suddenly and unexpectedly; they will break into the Church while Bishops prelates and priests are asleep. They will enter Italy and lay Rome waste; they will burn down the churches and destroy everything." - Venerable Bartholomew Holzhauser
"If you actually took the number of Muslim Americans, we'd be one of the largest Muslim countries in the world." - President Barack Hussein Obama. Full article here.
From the Fox News website:
ReplyDelete"Americans are strongly opposed to shutting the doors of the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay and moving terrorism suspects to detention centers in the U.S., according to a recent poll.
A USA TODAY/Gallup Poll released Tuesday found that those surveyed oppose the closing of Guantanamo by more than 2-1.
By more than 3-1, respondents oppose moving the detainees to prisons within the U.S., according to the poll.
Sixty-five percent of Americans polled said they do not support closing Guantanamo and sending its detainees to U.S. prisons while just 32 percent said they did support the idea.
President Obama signed an executive order in January to close within a year the prison at Guantanamo -- widely perceived by many as a symbol of U.S. abuse and torture around the world.
But critics charge that Obama has jeopardized U.S. national security by deciding to close Guantanamo by January 2010.
And former Vice President Dick Cheney has publicly defended harsh interrogation techniques practiced at Guantanamo, claiming they helped obtain useful information.
The poll surveyed 1,015 adults by phone from Friday through Sunday, and has a margin of error of 3 percentage points."
Obama declares June 'LGBT Pride Month'
ReplyDeleteJody Brown and Allie Martin - OneNewsNow - 6/2/2009 7:20:00 AM
In a presidential proclamation on the White House website, Barack Obama has lauded what he calls "the determination and dedication" of the LGBT movement by proclaiming June as "Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month."
"The LGBT rights movement has achieved great progress," Obama states in the official proclamation, "but there is more to be done. LGBT youth should feel safe to learn without the fear of harassment, and LGBT families and seniors should be allowed to live their lives with dignity and respect."
The proclamation, released on Monday, credits the LGBT movement with being a factor in more Americans who ascribe to those groups "living their lives openly today than ever before."
The president also takes pride in being the first U.S. chief executive to appoint "openly LGBT" candidates to Senate-confirmed positions in the first 100 days of an administration.
He uses the proclamation to emphasize LGBT-related initiatives that he intends to pursue in the future -- both domestically and internationally.
"I have joined efforts at the United Nations to decriminalize homosexual around the world," he states. "Here at home, I continue to support measures to bring the full spectrum of equal rights to LGBT Americans."
Among those measures he lists "hate crimes" laws, civil unions, discrimination in the workplace, adoption rights, and ending the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy "in a way that strengthens our Armed Forces and our national security."
Presidential pandering
Pro-family activist says Peter LaBarbera it is sad, but not surprising, that President Obama has chosen to issue a proclamation celebrating homosexuality. The president of Americans for Truth About Homosexuality says Obama is pandering to homosexual political activists.
"Homosexuality is nothing to be proud of -- bottom line," says LaBarbera. "The fact is people have left the lifestyle, people have overcome homosexuality [with God's help] -- I think that's something to be proud of...."
LaBarbera warns of the repercussions of the president's pursuit of expanded rights for those who are confused about their sexual orientation.
"This proclamation talks about the entire radical homosexual agenda that Obama supports -- including homosexualizing the U.S. military [and] federal so-called 'rights' based on homosexuality, which will impinge on the religious freedoms and freedom of conscience of other Americans."
Christians, he believes, must reach out to homosexuals with the message of the gospel.
It seems that President Obama has respect for everyone except orthodox Christians.
Belloc on the Islamic Heresy---Fr. Schall
ReplyDeletePublished in Vital Speeches of the Day, LXIX (April 1, 2003), 375-82
James V. Schall, S. J.
BELLOC ON THE "APPARENTLY UNCONVERTIBLE" RELIGION
"Islam is apparently unconvertible. The missionary
efforts made by great Catholic orders which have been occupied in
trying to turn Mohammedans into Christians for nearly 400 years have
everywhere wholly failed. We have in some places driven the
Mohammedan master out and freed his Christian subjects from Mohammedan
control, but we have had hardly any effect in converting individual
Mohammedans...."
– Hilaire
Belloc, The Great Heresies, 1938.
... it may be of some merit to take a
further look at Belloc's discussions of the future of Islam made back
in the 1930's. What is remarkable about Belloc's comments on Islam,
as we read them today, is his ability to judge historical trends on
the basis of a spiritual force or power. Though he was a soldier and
a military historian who loved the knowledge of battles and
battlefields, generals and soldiers, Belloc never thought that it was
material power that ultimately determined what would happen among men
and civilizations. "Cultures spring from religions; ultimately the
vital force which maintains any culture is its philosophy, its
attitude toward the universe; the decay of a religion involves the
decay of the culture corresponding to it – we see that most clearly
in the breakdown of Christendom today"5 (132). He is aware that, for
some three hundred years after the Battle of Vienna on September 11,
1683, the Muslim lands had gradually dropped out of the modern
picture as serious threats. They were seen to be backward lands and
in fact were backward. In spite of the oil, the cause of whose value
they had little or nothing to do, this is still largely the case.
Yet, Belloc was aware that Islam did not change in
spite of centuries of western influence. When it came to the
fundamentals, it was utterly unaffected by western occupation. As
Belloc wrote in Survivals and New Arrivals:
we thought of its (Islam's) religion as a sort of fossilised thing
about which we need not trouble. That was almost certainly a mistake.
We shall almost certainly have to reckon with Islam in the near
future. Perhaps if we lose our Faith it will arise. For after this
subjugation of the Islamic culture by nominally Christian nations had
already been achieved, the political consequences of that culture
began to notice two disquieting features about it. The first was that
its spiritual foundation proved immovable; the second that its area
of occupation did not recede, but on the contrary slowly expanded (1929)..
Suffice it to say, we are reckoning with Islam today. Europe and much
of America did largely lose the faith, as Belloc observed even before
World War II. The expansion of Islam is also into Europe and Africa,
as well as in Asia and even in North America.
The solidity of Islam, its inner coherence, whatever
its cause and the methods by which it was kept, was something that
struck Belloc. As he wrote in the same book,
Islam would not look at any Christian missionary effort. The
so-called Christian governments, in contact with it, it spiritually
despised. The ardent and sincere Christian missionaries were received
usually with courtesy, sometimes wit fierce attack, but were never
allowed to affect Islam. I think it true to say that Islam is the
only spiritual force on earth which Catholicism has found an
impregnable fortress. Its votaries are the one religious body
conversions from which are insignificant.
(continued below)
Belloc on the Islamic Heresy---Fr. Schall (continued)
ReplyDeleteBelloc recognized that Islam flourished because it did have some basic
truth about God, however that be interpreted. "Mohammedanism struck
permanent roots, developing a life of its own, and became at last
something like a new religion...," Belloc wrote in The Great Heresies.
"Like all heresies, Mohammedanism lived by the Catholic truths which
it had retained. Its insistence on personal immortality, on the Unity
and Infinite Majesty of God, on His Justice and Mercy, its insistence
on the equality of human souls in the sight of their Creator – these
were its strength" (128). Belloc saw the strength of Islam in its
virtues.
It is for this reason alone, the impregnability of
Islam to Catholicism, however, that the Church needs to take more
cognizance of what is this growing force in the world. It is not
enough to condemn violence in the abstract. "Go forth and teach all
nations" is not possible if the nations will not allow themselves to
be preached to. The western theories of freedom of religion, whether
secular or religious, have made no headway in Islam, and only rarely
are they criticized for this lack. Those few who are Christians or
members of other religions, in most Muslim lands, in practice must be
content to remain second-class citizens and are constantly subject to
the pressure to convert to Islam.
Belloc's thesis is that Islam began as a Christian
heresy which retained the Jewish side of the faith, the Oneness and
Omnipotence of God, but denied all the Christian aspects – the
Incarnation, the divinity of Christ, who, as a result, became just a
prophet. The denial of the church, the priesthood, and the sacraments
followed. Islam succeeded because, in its own terms, it was a simple
religion. It was easy to understand and follow its few doctrinal and
devotional points. The expansion of Islam was almost always by arms;
after each conquest, the Muslim Califs or Sultans ruled. They were
intolerant but they more or less accepted political submission in
return for tribute. At least twice in the history of the West, Islam
almost overran Europe, once at Poitiers in the 8th Century and once at
Vienna in the 17th Century.
Interestingly, the Church since that period has
celebrated certain feast days precisely in memory of these victories,
the most notable is St. Pius V's establishment of the Feast the Holy
Rosary, on October 7, 1571. This feast commemorated the naval victory
at Lepanto. "The name of Lepanto should remain in the minds of all
men with a sense of history as one of the half dozen great names in
the history of the Christian world" (122). In these days of
apologizing for practically everything, one wonders if some pope
someday will not rescind this feast on grounds of good will. The
cynic might hope that we at least wait till Islam first apologizes for
the initial slaughter and conquest of Christian lands from Spain to
Africa and Asia.
These earlier popes, in any case, understood that
they had an enemy and that they were blessed not to have fallen under
Muslim army rulers. Urban II's call to the Crusades, though much
misunderstood, can largely be judged as a belated and mainly
unsuccessful effort of the European Christians to defend themselves
against Islam. Belloc, in fact, thought that the Crusaders were from
the beginning undermanned and rather poorly led, though often with
much heroism. Their final defeat at the hands of Saladin at Hattin in
1187, he considers to be one of the most significant battles in the
history of the world because it confirmed Muslim rule across a wide
stretch of the world, most of which it still controls.
(continued below)
Belloc on the Islamic Heresy---Fr. Schall (continued)
ReplyDeleteUnlike Stanley Jaki, Belloc did not think that there
was something in Islamic theology that militated against Islam's ever
becoming a major industrial or military-technological power by itself.
(133). The fact that it never accomplished this transformation was
for Belloc merely an accident, whereas for Jaki it was rooted in the
relation of an absolute notion of divine will to its consequent denial
of stable secondary causes. Jaki sees much of the rage in modern
Islam to be due to its failure or inability to modernize itself by its
own powers.6 Most of the weapons and equipment found in Muslim states
are still foreign made, usually inferior, and paid for with oil money.
The "new" weapon that Islam has displayed with
September 11, 2001, is a kind of fanatic willingness to use any method
of terror even if it costs the lives of individuals who are often
popularly considered to be "martyrs" for killing Infidels. This
method needs little technology. The West has minimum moral equipment
with which to respond to such tactics. Indeed, as both Aristotle and
Machiavelli saw, that if someone does not fear for his own life, it is
very difficult to stop him. But neither of them thought of the idea
of sacrificing one's life specifically for this purpose. Indeed, in
the history of the West, Islam has always sent a kind of terror
through the hearts of those on its borders who were about to be
attacked or in the hearts of those who had to live under its control.
Belloc alludes to this phenomenon:
These things being so, the recrudescence of Islam, the possibility of
that terror under which we lived for centuries reappearing, and of our
civilization again fighting for its life against what was its chief
enemy for a thousand years, seems fantastic. Who in the Mohammedan
world today can manufacture and maintain complicated machinery whereby
the religion of Islam can play an equal part in the modern world? (131).
The question seems less rhetorical today because numbers, in the end,
count as does the willingness of people to die using modern machinery
like normal airplanes to carry our what is attested to be a religious
mission, however much we choose to identify it as simply "terrorism"
without a cause. What is also true is that this terrorism, or its
threat, is now everywhere. Thus far, at least, we see within Islam
itself little effort to control its own "terrorists" or to sympathize
with those who suffer from tem or who must defend themselves against them.
The inconvertibility of Islam leads us to several
perhaps radical reflections. It is a common saying among Christians
that the blood of martyrs is the seed of the faith. There have been
many, many Christian martyrs by Islam over the centuries and
currently. As in the case of the slaughter of the Armenians by the
Turks, there will always appear some justification – the Christian
blasphemed Allah – in one sense. The very existence of Christianity
is a blasphemy in Muslim terms if we insist on the truth of the
Incarnation, that God became man. These historical martyrdoms have
had little or no effect in terms either of conversion or even
acknowledgment, even by ourselves often.
(continued below)
Belloc on the Islamic Heresy---Fr. Schall (continued)
ReplyDeleteMoreover, we have the parallel phenomenon of the
Muslim martyr, the man who kills in the name of Allah, whether it be
in a suicidal attack in a church in the Philippines, French Trappist
monks whose throats were slit in Algeria on Christmas eve, or the
pilots who flew into the World Trade Center. In some basic sense,
these killers are pictured as martyrs. Nor is the notion of "holy
war" unknown in Islam. However much the Church tries to argue that
such actions cannot be considered to be justified, still within at
least some branches of Muslim opinion, they are considered to be
genuine martyrs seeking to defend or propagate the religion and
therefore worthy of Allah. When we try to oppose this position on say
natural law terms, we find that our mode of discourse is itself alien
to what much of Islam conceives itself to be. The basis of our
arguments are not admitted to be valid.
Belloc thought that Islam began as a heresy and
became a new religion culturally when it had to account and explain
its successes on the field of battle. The stunning successes on the
field of battle had to be administered. "Mohammedanism was a heresy:
that is the essential point to grasp before going any further. It
began as a heresy, not as a new religion. It was not a pagan contrast
with the Church: it was not an alien enemy. It was a perversion of
Christian doctrine. Its vitality and endurance soon gave it the
appearance of a new religion, but those who were contemporary with its
rise saw it for what it was – not a denial, but an adaptation and
misuse, of the Christian thing" (76-77). As most scholars recognize,
the main parts of what Islam took from revelation are from Judaism
rather than Christianity. Islam kept much of what Christianity has in
common with Judaism – the transcendence of Yahweh, creation, divine
justice and punishment, the devotion of the people to God.
But Islam was itself not like Arianism and other
early heresies. It arose from without the old ancient Christian
world. For it, Christ was not God but rather a human prophet. This
is the explicit denial of the root principle of Christianity. "With
the denial of the Incarnation went the whole sacramental structure.
He (the Muslim) refused to know anything of the Eucharist, with its
Real Presence; he stopped the sacrifice of Mass, and therefore the
institution of a special priesthood. In other words, he, like so many
other lesser heresiarchs, founded his heresy on simplicity" (79).
Though it is not often attended to, saying Mass itself is forbidden in
Saudi Arabia, even in private, and, even when permitted in other
lands, it is restricted and constantly hemmed in by various formal and
informal practices. "Freedom of religion" is not a concept that rises
naturally in Muslim theory but it is a Western idea, even largely a
modern Western idea. In Islam, the very practice of freedom of
religion is thought to be a species of not giving submission to Allah,
even where some non-Muslim churches are permitted.
(continued below)
Belloc on the Islamic Heresy---Fr. Schall (continued)
ReplyDeleteBelloc thought that Islam expanded rapidly for the
very good reason that "it won battles." (81). This success should
give modern pacifists pause, but it usually does not. Yet, to call
Islam a religion of "simplicity" is, in Belloc's terms, rather a
compliment. He notes that it freed many people from the complicated
clutch of usury, from the lawyers. It freed slaves if they converted
and made them
brothers within the system (81-82). The brotherhood of faith trumps
other relationships. Belloc distinguished between the character of
the spread of Islam initially in the near East and that expansion into
Persian and Mongol lands – the area from Mesopotamia to India and
the Eastern Roman empire (85). "The uniformity of temper which is the
mark of Asiatic society, responded at once to this new idea of one
very simple, personal form of government, sanctified by religion, and
ruling with a power theoretically absolute from one center" (86). It
was from these conquests that Islam learned of Greek philosophy and
other cultures and was the origin of much of its science and art.
"Islam was the one heresy," Belloc wrote, "that nearly destroyed
Christendom through its early material and intellectual superiority" (88).
Much has been made of the "tolerance" in Islam,
especially for religions of the book. This tolerance was often merely
the inability to change large conquered populations in a short time.
Belloc thought that "the Mohammedan temper was not tolerant. It was,
on the contrary, fanatical and bloodthirsty. It felt no respect for,
nor even curiosity about, those from whom it differed. It was
absurdly vain of itself, regarding with contempt the high Christian
culture about it. It still so regards it even today" (90). The
practical compromise in this situation was to allow the Christians to
remain but within very confined areas and occupations. They had to
pay a tribute. Many were gradually absorbed into Islam (91).
This record of Islam's own consistency, its closed
nature, its remaining itself had to be reconsidered in some detail,
Belloc thought. It has been "the most formidable of the heresies"
(92). The question is now why has it survived? "Millions of modern
people of the white civilization – that is, the civilization of
Europe and America – have forgotten all about Islam" (92). This
could be written in 1938, but not in 2003. The questions must now be
asked not merely "why has it survived?" but "why has it flourished?"
Belloc can only be said to have foreseen the problem: "It is, in
fact, the most formidable and persistent enemy which our civilization
has had, and may at any moment become as large a menace in the future
as it has been in the past" (93). Neither our modern culture or the
modern Church allows us this frankness.
(continued below)
Belloc on the Islamic Heresy---Fr. Schall (continued)
ReplyDeleteUsually, Belloc thought, heresies make an initial
impact then they decline and disappear. Islam did not do this
(94-95). When Islam was defeated, it remained strong in numbers and
in convictions (95-96). How then is Islam different? Some westerners
say it is because it is simple and founded on justice and improves on
Christianity. Belloc did not think that this reason works because
every heresy maintains the same thing but they still fade, not Islam
(98). Historically, Islam constantly gained new recruits: the Turk,
the Mongol. "The causes of this vitality (of Islam) are very
difficult to explore, and perhaps cannot be reached. For myself I
should ascribe it in some part to the fact that Mohammedanism being a
thing from outside, a heresy that did not arise within the body of the
Christian community but beyond its frontiers, has always possessed a
reservoir of men, newcomers pouring in to revivify its energies. But
this cannot be the full explanation" (129) Today, I suspect, they
gain new recruits largely from their own population growth which
expands to fill the vacuum left by the low birth rates in the West.
The Crusades did not split Islam geographically. Belloc held that if
the Crusades (1095-1200) had cut Africa from Asia, Islam may have
declined (103). It is interesting how many of the advocates of
occupation of Iraq today use this theory of the need to split Islam
and hence reduce its geopolitical power.
Yet, Belloc maintained that, though based on the
army, Islam did have a cultural force. `The success of Mohammedanism
had not been due to its offering something more satisfactory in the
way of philosophy and morals, but, as I have said, to the opportunity
it afforded of freedom to the slave and debtor, and an extreme
simplicity which pleased the unintelligent masses who were perplexed
by the mysteries inseparable from the profound intellectual life of
Catholicism, and from its radical doctrine of the Incarnation" (103).
This position is not unlike that of Eric Voegelin, who argued that
the susceptibility of western Christians to modern ideology was due to
the practical disbelief of many Christians in the ultimate
transcendent goal of the faith.7
Belloc, in fact, saw a relation between the failure
of the Crusades and the rise of modern Europe which at first turned in
on itself before finding the technological means of bypassing Islamic
lands with the discoveries of America and the sea route to Asia.
Belloc even held that the success of the Reformation in part was due
to the defeat of Catholic and papal policies in the Crusades (107-09).
Belloc's book on The Crusades remains one of the most poignant
accounts of a failed enterprise. "Had the crusaders' remaining force
at the end of the first Crusading march been a little more numerous,
had they taken Damascus and the string of towns on the fringe of the
desert, the whole history of the world would have been changed. The
world of Islam would have been cut in two, with the East unable to
approach the West."(114) North Africa, the old Roman lands, was not
recovered. "They failed ... but they made modern Europe" (115). The
Reformation was due to the weakness at the Center (115).
(continued below)
Belloc on the Islamic Heresy---Fr. Schall (continued)
ReplyDeleteWhat Belloc was most conscious of, however, was
that, unlike Islam, that Christianity did not retain its inner
coherence, its faith. "Christian Europe is and should be by nature
one; but it has forgotten its nature in forgetting its religion"
(116). Belloc connected this loss of inner coherence in the West to
the opportunity for Islam to rise again. It is partly the downplaying
of the importance of religion in the West that it has been unable or
unwilling to understand the attraction of Islam in its own inner
coherence. "It has always seemed t me possible, and even probable,"
Belloc wrote,
that there would be a resurrection of Islam and that our sons or our
grandsons would see the renewal of that tremendous struggle between
the Christian culture and what has been for more than a thousand years
its greatest opponent.... The future always comes as a surprise but
political wisdom consists in attempting at least some partial judgment
of what that surprise may be. And for my part I cannot but believe
that a main unexpected thing of the future is the return of Islam.
Since religion is at the root of all political movements and changes
and since we have here a very great religion physically paralysed but
morally intensely alive, we are in the presence of an unstable
equilibrium which cannot remain permanently unstable (127-28).
It is interesting that even with the return of Islam to the forefront
of our consciousness, we do not want to see this return as a religious
thing explained in terms of Islam itself.
How are we to assess these potent reflections of
Belloc? Stretched half-way across the world, Islam is divided up into
many "nations," though that concept of nationalism is not an Islamic
idea. The central organs of the Church seem to be against doing
anything radical about any Islamic threat, preferring diplomacy and
not forcefully noting the widespread attacks on Christians throughout
the world. It is interesting that several Vatican officials give as a
reason for not using force is the fear of the rising up of Islam and
the potential terror it can cause everywhere in the world. They are
right, the danger is real. Normally, this view would be an argument
for doing something about the problem when we can, before something
more terrible happens, particularly if the problem lies in Islam
itself and its inability to accept the normal peaceful structures of
society. Almost all the minor wars today have some Islamic component.
Within Islam, there are various schools of interpretation from the
well-financed Wahhabi extremists in Saudi Arabia to the more mild
versions of the Shiites.
Geo-politicians and theologians alike argue that,
since we really have no common philosophy, we must seek ways to
reinterpret Islam within itself, using its own texts and traditions to
mollify the extremists who now see an opportunity to establish Muslim
dominance all over the world. At first sight, this seems
preposterous. But as Belloc said, surprising things happen, like the
rise of Islam, or Christianity, or Judaism in the first place. It
makes us wonder whether there is not something objective to be said
for the reality of salvation history after all.
For Catholics in particular, Belloc's estimate was
sobering. He lived before "ecumenism," but he certainly wondered
about its effectiveness in the case of Islam, however politically wise
it might be to proceed as the Muslim philosophers and not mention any
truths outside the Koran. "Missionary effort has had no appreciable
effect on it (Islam)," Belloc concluded.
(continued below)
Belloc on the Islamic Heresy---Fr. Schall (concluded)
ReplyDeleteIt still converts pagan savages wholesale. It even attracts from
time to time some European eccentric, who joins its body. But the
Mohammedan never becomes a Catholic. No fragment of Islam ever
abandons its sacred book, its code of morals, its organized system of
prayer, its simple doctrine. In view of this, anyone with a knowledge
of history is bound to ask himself whether we shall not see in the
future a rival of Mohammedan political power, and the renewal of the
old pressure of Islam on Christendom (130).
These words are strong and historically true. They also today strike
us as prophetic. Few paid much attention to Belloc in his time. No
Muslims are converted. No one ever abandons the book or its ritual.
In the end, I cannot help but have a gratefulness to
the "apparently unconvertible" religion, to radical Islam for waking
us up. We could make the case that all our studies, all our concern
with western ideology and power may have been misplaced. What we
should have been paying attention to are our souls and what is the
best explanation of our existence and destiny. Islam has another soul
and another destiny which it seeks to spread, by its own proven means,
to the ends of the earth, an idea that it probably got, ironically,
from the end of the Gospel of Matthew.
Pope Benedict XVI warns that, "..even Islam, with all the greatness it represents [here he is speaking of its positive elements; he recognizes more than anyone its flaws] is always in danger of losing balance, letting violence have a place and letting religion slide away into mere outward observance and ritualism.." (Truth and Tolerance, p. 204).
ReplyDeleteAnne Catherine Emmerich, 1842 AD:
ReplyDelete"In the center of Hell I saw a dark and horrible looking abyss, and into this Lucifer was cast, after being first strongly secured with chains. This occurred when Lucifer (Satan) and his fallen angels were thrown out of Heaven and condemned to Hell for eternity. Thick clouds of sulfurous black smoke arose from it's fearful depths and enveloped his fearful form in the dismal folds, thus effectually concealing him from every beholder. God Himself had decreed this, and I was likewise told that he will be unchained for a time fifty or sixty years before the year of Christ 2000. A certain number of demons are to be let loose much earlier than Lucifer, in order to tempt men, and to serve as instruments to prepare the way for Antichrist."
That preparation is being made now.
While Dianne Williamson labels pro-lifers as "terrorists," she doesn't seem too concerned over radical Islam. This article by Ann Coulter puts it all into perspective:
ReplyDelete49 Million to Five
by Ann Coulter
Human Events
06/03/2009
"In the wake of the shooting of late-term abortionist George Tiller, President Barack Obama sent out a welcome message that this nation would not tolerate attacks on pro-lifers or any other Americans because of their religion or beliefs.
Ha ha! Just kidding. That was the lead sentence -- with minor edits -- of a New York Times editorial warning about theoretical hate crimes against Muslims published eight months after 9/11. Can pro-lifers get a hate crimes bill passed and oceans of ink devoted to assuring Americans that "most pro-lifers are peaceful"?
For years, we've had to hear about the grave threat that Americans might overreact to a terrorist attack committed by 19 Muslims shouting "Allahu akbar" as they flew commercial jets into American skyscrapers. That would be the equivalent of 19 pro-lifers shouting "Abortion kills a beating heart!" as they gunned down thousands of innocent citizens in Wichita, Kan.
Why aren't liberals rushing to assure us this time that "most pro-lifers are peaceful"? Unlike Muslims, pro-lifers actually are peaceful.
According to recent polling, a majority of Americans oppose abortion -- which is consistent with liberals' hysterical refusal to allow us to vote on the subject. In a country with approximately 150 million pro-lifers, five abortionists have been killed since Roe v. Wade.
In that same 36 years, more than 49 million babies have been killed by abortionists. Let's recap that halftime score, sports fans: 49 million to five.
Meanwhile, fewer than 2 million Muslims live in America and, while Muslims are less murderous than abortionists, I'm fairly certain they've killed more than five people in the United States in the last 36 years. For some reason, the number "3,000" keeps popping into my head.
So in a country that is more than 50 percent pro-life -- and 80 percent opposed to the late-term abortions of the sort performed by Tiller -- only five abortionists have been killed. And in a country that is less than 0.5 percent Muslim, several dozen Muslims have killed thousands of Americans.
But the killing of about one abortionist per decade leads liberals to condemn the entire pro-life movement as "domestic terrorists." At least liberals have finally found some terrorists they'd like to send to Guantanamo.
Tiller bragged about performing 60,000 abortions, including abortions of viable babies, able to survive outside the mother's womb. He made millions of dollars performing late-term abortions so gruesome that only two other abortionists -- not a squeamish bunch -- in the entire country would perform them...."
Read the rest of the article at Human Events online.