Bishop McManus and dialogue with Muslims

In a previous post, I refuted Bishop Robert McManus' argument for rescinding the invitation of Mr. Robert Spencer to speak at this year's Catholic Men's Conference which was held in Worcester.  Specifically, Bishop McManus asserted that his decision was based, "..solely on the concern that Mr. Spencer's talk would impact negatively on the Church's increasingly constructive dialogue with Muslims."

And now we are suffering the aftermath of a heinous terrorist attack in Boston perpetrated by Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who was radicalized by militant Islam and who possessed jihadist videos on his YouTube channel, and his younger brother Dzhokhar, who was more than likely influenced by the older brother's fanatical intolerance.

If our dialogue with Islam is as "constructive" as Bishop McManus would have us believe, why are Christians being put to death and persecuted by Muslims all around the world?  Why are Christian churches being destroyed? 

Lee Harris, in his important book entitled The Suicide of Reason: Radical Islam's Threat to the West, notes how Islam's fanatical intolerance isn't limited to the Taliban or groups which openly call for Jihad.  He writes, "Another example of the persistence of the fanatical intolerance of Muslims came to the world's attention in the same year as the cartoon riots.  A Muslim in Afghanistan had converted to Christianity - the same Afghanistan that the United States had liberated from the fanaticism of the Taliban.  But fanatical intolerance in Afghanistan clearly did not require an organization like the Taliban to keep it alive.  Here again, it sprang up quite spontaneously from the religious and learned mullahs and from the bulk of the people.  Islamic law demands that an apostate from Islam should be executed, and there were cries for blood that again took the form of riots and outrageous pronouncements from Muslim clerics, one of whom urged that the apostate be torn limb from limb by the people themselves.  Fortunately, due to pressure from the West, the man was flown out of Afghanistan to sanctuary in Italy." (p. 210).

There is a concerted effort within the Church to promote a false irenicism and some even wish to merge Christianity and Islam, which rejects the divinity of Christ.  Bishop McManus rescinded Robert Spencer's invitation to speak at the Catholic Men's Conference because he was worried Mr. Spencer's informative presentation might be offensive to Muslims in the State of Massachusetts.  I wonder how offensive he finds the Boston Marathon terrorist attack to be.

Important article written by Robert Spencer here.