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The USCCB has a very informative website dedicated to the Pope’s upcoming visit to the United States (he arrives on Tuesday night, at Andrews Air Force base). This is the link for his itinerary. The itinerary is surprisingly detailed (at least I thought so); details like “The Pope kneels before a pool of water and candle, offering a silent prayer” (in connection with his visit to Ground Zero) are included. (That one struck me as a little too detailed, which is partly why I used it as an example.)
There will, of course, be one interreligious gathering and one ecumenical prayer service while the Pope is here. Now the visit’s “theme” or “title” is “CHRIST OUR HOPE”. But what is the theme or title for the interreligious meeting next Thursday? “PEACE OUR HOPE”. So who’s it gonna be, Christ or Peace? This kind of thing disgusts me. It’s the message of freemasonry: believe what you will in your own homes, but when you come out into public, remember that our ultimate goal is peace; peace is at the top of the pyramid, not Christ.
Here’s the description of the event - no surprise that it’s taking place at the John Paul II Cultural Center, is it? :)
6:30 p.m. - Interreligious Gathering at the Pope John Paul II Cultural Center
The Pope will meet with representatives of other religions on the theme “Peace Our Hope.” Construction on the Pope John Paul II Cultural Center began in 1997 on 12 acres adjacent to the Catholic University of America. Since its dedication in 2000, the Center has been the site of many interreligious discussions and events.
* 6:30 p.m. - The Pope will enter through the front door of the Center. Bishop Richard J. Sklba, chairman, USCCB Committee on Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs will welcome the Pope along with an audience of some 220 individuals representing five religions: Buddhism, Hindu, Islam, Jainism and Judaism. Pope Benedict XVI will give an address. The Holy Father will then be presented with symbols of peace by five young people:
o Judaism: Menorah, presented by David J. Michaels, director for intercommunal affairs, Center for Human Rights and Public Policy at B’nai B’rith International.
o Islam: Qur’an, presented by Saman Hussain, coordinator, Unity Walk 2007.
o Jainism: Metallic cube, presented by Aditya Vora, a Jain young adult studying at Haverford College in Pennsylvania.
o Buddhism: Bell, presented by Masako Fukata, a youth leader of Rissho Kosei-kai, a socially engaged Buddhist organization headquartered in Tokyo.
o Hinduism: Sculpture of syllable Om by Dr. Ravi Gupta, assistant professor of religion, Centre College, Danville, Ky.
A greeting of interreligious leaders will be followed by a song: “Peace Prayer”, attributed to Saint Francis of Assisi, sung by a schola cantorum.
St. Louis-Marie de Montfort,
Pope St. Pius X,
St. Joseph,
St. Ambrose of Milan,
St. Thomas Aquinas,
St. Francis (and St. Clare),
St. Catherine of Siena,
St. Alphonsus Ligouri,
St. John Chrysostom,
Maybe the next time he visits they’ll add a few more erring religions to the list. Satanism: a sacrificed goat. Freemasonry: a picture of the all-seeing eye. Wicca: a broom stick. Free presbyterian: A Chick tract.
This is absolute craziness especially to the Catholic converts from these faiths — they are the people most upset about this stuff.
Say a prayer for an Iranian friend who visited me this week. He departed today via bus back to Iran. He’s still a catechumen. The Jesuit priests here will have nothing to do with him because he’s a simple uneducated working class man. And on top of his lack of formal education, baptizing him would only make his life more difficult. So these sons of Loyola tell me. Also, of course baptizing Muslims interferes with their ecumenical relations with the senior Imams.
A former smuggler, he ran his truck into a ravine while being chased by police a few years ago. He almost died, was in a coma for a long time, and had some sort of contact with Our Lord and Our Lady.
He had tears streaming down his face as he said goodbye to the congregation this morning. This man with a giant sized hands and muscles like an ox had to control himself from shaking and sobbing visibly.
He would be so scandalized to see the Holy Father praying with an Imam. Did you know that part of an Imam’s duty is arranging sexual contacts between the unmarried? These people, like my friend, know the true face of Islam beyond the superficial level of understanding reached through the dialogue of Catholic ecumeniacs.
Pray for this man. His name is Abbas.
Pray for the Muslims who knock on the doors of Catholic Churches every day and are turned away.
I say everyday, because I’ve seen it too many times myself when I’m at the Church. Muslim men bringing a friend who they believed to be possessed or cursed to the Church to see a priest. The priest will not let them in. “Go see your Imam. We don’t believe in superstition here.” That’s an exact quote.
Every bishop or priest should spend 1000 years in purgatory for each instance of telling a person to get advice or counsel from non-catholic clergy.
The Catholic Church doesn’t need to walk through the streets of the Muslim world “proselytizing.” Just open the Church doors. People will flock inside. Fleeing the darkness and coming into the Light. This thought sends modern Catholic clergy in fits of horror.
God have mercy on us.
Someone remind me. What precisely is inter-religious dialogue for?
The supreme difficult (so it seems to me) is that when any sort of dialogue takes place, both parties extend to each other a sense of legitimacy. By acknowledging the “other” in the dialogue, the group/person in question acknowledges that said “other” is a party deserving of conversation and a party from whom he has something to learn. But is this true when it comes to the followers of the various false religions?
Secondly, what happens when each group has said all that it can say and both realize that they’re separated by irreconcilable differences? Don’t all committed Christians and Muslims already know that such differences separate them and no amount of talk can change that fact without doing violence to their various “faith” “traditions”?
So someone remind me. What precisely is inter-religious dialogue for?
I don’t know the purpose of inter-religious dialogue. All I know is that the people formally engaged in it are at best traitors and cowards, and at worst full-fledged apostates.
The big victims are the lower class Muslims who are not allowed to even darken a church doorway for fear that this will upset the Muslim authorities and the dialogue partners of the priests.
Literally, Muslims are turned away at the door of the church. “You cannot come in. Only Christians we know can come to Mass.” Exact quote.
The Holy Father needs to proclaim a bill of rights for non-Catholics. It’s just sickening what’s going on. Jesus died for all men, not just Catholics — who are we to deny other men the opportunity to hear the truths of our holy Faith, or to pray at Mass or outside of Mass before the Blessed Sacrament? How can we deny anyone these things — yet this is the policy of the Church in the Muslim world?
Pastor boast of being stationed for so many decades in one assignment or another and never converting anyone. (I’ve heard this sad boast from two different priests)
How can we send men trapped in darkness back into the darkness saying, “Go away from here? Just pray directly to God yourself.”
Though not a fan of such events myself, I’m at least glad that they didn’t try to have anything resembling a liturgy. There isn’t even really a prayer (though there is a song called “Peace Prayer”, I guess.) It’s basically just letting some people give the Holy Father presents, and then everyone singing a song together. And it’s held in some kind of convention center, not in a place of any spiritual significance. Again, I’m hardly clamoring for tickets, but at least there can’t be anything resembling sacrilege in it when it doesn’t have really any trappings at all of a sacred event.
Though shocking and scandalous, what Joe Six Pack describes in Turkey needn’t (and shouldn’t) be the essence of interfaith dialogue. In its better form, such a conversation should have the aim of converting others. Sometimes people can be won over by reasoned debate (or at least partly so… the Holy Spirit “closes the deal” as it were, but talk can make people more receptive sometimes), but people don’t tend to stick around for debates unless you let them say their piece too. I’m not saying that that’s the spirit in which the thing is always taken, but insofar as it is, there’s a long and venerable tradition of it within the Church.
Just a question, JSP — and to be clear, I’m not denying anything you say, nor denying the tragedy of it — but what are the laws governing Catholic priests in Turkey? That is, would they be in trouble with the civil authorities if caught ministering to Muslims?
Note, I’m not suggesting that such laws would excuse indifference to the spiritual state of the Muslims. But it might mandate more discretion. If ministering to Muslims carried heavy civil penalties, priests wouldn’t necessarily want to offer their help immediately to just any unknown Muslim who wandered into the church… they might need to dig a little deeper to be sure the person was sincere and could be trusted before taking further action. After all, wasn’t this sort of discretion regularly applied in the early days of the Church?
Again, I don’t doubt you that indifferentism is a terrible problem there, as it is all over these days. My own husband, when he first decided to abandon his Anglican heresy and come over to Rome, was basically told by the person he talked to at the local Catholic parish (I’m not sure if it was the nun who worked there, or the RCIA director, or what) that he should really just try to “adjust better to his own worship community”, or something to that effect. (So he ended up driving 2 hours to the closest FSSP parish to do his catechesis there. It was a trip, but at least they didn’t try to shoo him back to the Anglicans!) I know a woman who, as an undergraduate in the early 80’s, desperately wanted to be Catholic, but was continually discouraged by the local Catholic priest, who eventually ushered her into an Anglican “seminary.” Now she’s been an Anglican priestess for a number of years. I don’t like to make predictions about people’s ultimate postmortem destinations, but that priest will have a lot to answer for on judgment day. So anyway, I’m not doubting your general assessment, but having lived in Muslim countries myself, I was curious what the political situation was like for priests.
Officially, Turkey has religious tolerance. It’s an EU candidate state - so it meets all those requirements.
That’s not to say absolutely no danger exists - priests and protestant ministers have been killed over the years here - even recently. But, proper security can be taken. Metal detectors and a security guard out in front of the church — conducting searches on persons entering the church — for instance.
The actions of the priest have nothing to do with safety or security.
It’s all about a different theology (from Catholicism) - which sees many paths to Heaven.
And probably equally important - it’s about having an easy life with less difficulty, stress, and strain. Acknowledging Jesus Christ and publicly serving Him costs. It’s sad to see priest who should be willing to bare these costs, shirking from it. It makes one wonder how faithful they are in other aspects of their lives. I don’t want to judge individuals — but really, when you think about it, can these men really be crucified to their world and the flesh, if having an easy life is such a priority for them? If laity with politically sensitive careers take more risks in evangelizing and catechizing Muslims then priests, it makes me wonder.
Fr. Hardon said something like no priest who dissents from any even a single aspect of Catholic doctrine is living a chaste life. Not one. This is his view. But he was a prominent and respected priest for 50 years. And I would never apply this principle to individual people — but if it’s true, the consequences are frightening.
There is no excuse for a priest turning anyone away who desires to know Our Lord or seeks the priest’s help in any situation. Even were there government censures or restrictions imposed on priests they, as all of us, must remember that when we open the door we are looking into the face of Christ. “For I tell you, as often as you did not do it for the least of my brothers, you did not do it for me.”
Father Bailey,
One of the ironies of the situation is that while these liberal priests think they are being open-minded and progressive toward the Muslim world, they are in fact viewed as racist by many of the Muslims who are turned away at the Church door. They feel — “They don’t like Turks” or “They don’t trust Arabs”
It’s a sad situation.
A few years ago, I remember sitting in the pew of my parish in the USA, after listening to a sermon where the priest was encouraging us to try and invite someone into the Catholic Church, thinking — this was a hard task — one could go his whole life in the America earnestly seeking converts and never achieve even one conversion.
Yet here in the Muslim world, all you have to do is keep your door open and non-Catholics flock inside. What a strange paradox that at this time of seemingly strong Muslim interest in Our Lord and His Church, the bishops and priests are so lacking in true Faith and Charity.
The Church needs a new traditional order of missionary priests and brothers. Legions of zealous religious independent of the local ordinaries and answering directly to the Holy Father. The poor Muslims and other non-Catholics need something drastic to happen. The Church has all but abandoned her divinely ordained mission to the world.
(The Easter Rite priests are pretty much no better. If you don’t come from the right tribe, you don’t belong in their church. I am amazed at the hostility of the Armernian people in Turkey to having Turks attend Mass. They don’t fear violence or anything like this. And it’s not so much pent up hate from the massacres 100 years ago. They literally don’t want to be in the same Church with Muslims. In this case some sort of racism is involved. “The Muslims are looking at us” that’s an exact quote from an Armenian protesting about a young Turk who regularly attends Sunday and daily Mass. It’s totally crazy. One would think that a Christian would view a Turk coming to Mass as a victory. Or even a blow to Turks and greater Islam. But this is not how they view it.)
This isn’t necessarily something that is limited to Muslim countries. About 25 years ago here in the US, the Muslim husband of one of my mother’s good friends inquired about converting to Catholicism. The priest with whom he spoke told him that he was better off where he was (i.e. as a Muslim.)
Po,
The Body of Christ is beaten and broken throughout the world.
I remember back in 2004 or 2005 listening to Bishop Vasa on Catholic Answers Live radio program telling a Jewish man with interest in learning about Our Lord and the Catholic Church to go talk to his rabbi. He further said to the man something to the like, “Are you not comfortable in your jewishness?”
This is Bishop Vasa — one of the supposedly solid orthodox Catholic bishops of the USA.
(Interestingly, after a few months, I noticed that the Catholic Answers Live web archive of their past radio programs had edited or re-recorded this response from Bishop Vasa to this particular caller — so now if you listen to it, he doesn’t say this. One can only presume that they did not try or if they did were not able to contact the original caller, and this caller was left in his error. What’s the price of one soul?)
I’ve also heard Bishops Bruscewitz, Burke and Finn (all good bishops by modern standards) say that their personal preference for celebrating Mass was the Novus Ordo Missae.
Now, some say that they “have to say this” to be good party men - and support the Holy Father.
But since when is lying part of the job requirement to be a priest of Our Lord?
If they aren’t lying in order to support the Holy Father and the Novus Ordo, then what are we to believe of men who fully know and understand both the OF and EF of the Roman Rite, yet still prefer the OF??