Pope Francis and Islam: Following papal precedent

According to a report in Vatican Insider, Pope Francis has sent a personal message to the Grand Imam of the Al-Azhar Mosque, Ahmed Al Tayyeb.

According to a statement issued by Al-Azhar University, of which Al Tayyeb is president, the Pope stressed the Vatican’s respect for Islam and said he hoped every effort would be made towards achieving “mutual understanding between the world’s Christians and Muslims in order to build peace and justice.”

This isn’t the first time Pope Francis has expressed his “respect” for Islam.

In July, he even went so far as to tell Muslims that he expected their Ramadan observances to “bear abundant spiritual fruit,” when according to the Qur’an, the purpose of Ramadan is to “magnify Allah,” the false god that Catholics readily recognize as the figment of Muhammad’s imagination.

Even though some traditional Catholics may be tempted to believe that Pope Francis is, as Pope Francis is wont to do, blazing yet another new trail; in this case, he is not.

Just about one year ago to the day, a similar stream of nonsense was flowing from the Vatican as Fr. Federico Lombardi issued a statement concerning Islam saying, “Profound respect for the beliefs, texts, outstanding figures and symbols of the various religions is an essential precondition for the peaceful coexistence of peoples.”

This caused me to question at the time, as I do to this day, whether or not the Holy See applies any standard whatsoever to a particular set of religious “beliefs” or “texts” in order to determine whether or not they qualify for our “profound respect.”

Apparently, for modern day popes, all that is necessary in order to earn the Church’s respect is for a given proposition to be deemed “religious” by those who hold it.

The blueprint for this foolishness lies in the Vatican II document, Dignitatis Humanae, wherein the text strongly implies a certain shared dignity among the disparate religious confessions of the world, regardless of their relative offensiveness against, or even outright rejection of, the Lord who is Truth incarnate.

In the case of Islam, one finds in their so-called “holy writ” numerous lies and falsehoods, including the assertion that Jesus Christ is just another messenger of Allah, and his mission was not to redeem mankind by His passion, death and resurrection, but rather to proclaim the coming of Muhammad.

Yes, this is the same Islam that Pope John Paul II felt compelled to prayerfully implore St. John the Baptist to protect.

In his Regensburg lecture of 2006, Pope Benedict gave what appeared to be early signs of hope that he would address Islam for what it truly is – a deception of the Devil – but ultimately his papacy would leave intact the status quo.

Onboard a flight to Lebanon last September, the Holy Father commented upon the imperative of dialogue with Islam in light of the violence being perpetrated against Christians in the Middle East:

“Fundamentalism is always a falsification of religion and goes against the meaning of religion which is, instead, an invitation to share God’s peace throughout the world … The basic message of religion must be against violence which is a falsification like fundamentalism, it must be education and the illumination and purification of conscience to promote dialogue, reconciliation and peace.”

Pay close attention to what Pope Benedict is doing here; he is treating of “religion” in a strictly generic sense; one that rests on the demonstrably false proposition that every fanatical movement that happens to call itself a “religion” must necessarily be devoted to “sharing God’s peace throughout the world.”

Herein lies a concrete example of the “diabolical disorientation” of which Our Lady forewarned Fatima visionary, Sr. Lucia.

To read Pope Benedict’s words, it apparently never occurred to him – nor to either his predecessor or his successor, for that matter – that Islam is not ordered toward sharing God’s peace. This much is obvious to everyone, Catholic or otherwise, who has access to a newspaper.

If that’s not disturbing enough, take just a moment to ponder this hard reality:

Over the last more than 50 years, the papacy has been so spiritually bankrupt that no pope in that time has been able to summon the mustard seed’s worth of faith necessary to address Islam, or any other false religion, in a way that acknowledges the basic Catholic truth that “God’s peace” is unattainable for those who explicitly reject Jesus Christ and His Mystical Body, the Church.

So, when Pope Francis addresses Islam with little more than hollow exhortations about “mutual understanding” and “mutual respect through education,” he’s not bucking papal protocol; on the contrary, he’s simply following in the footsteps of the modernist popes who preceded him.

And guess what? His successor will do the same, as will his successor, and on and on it will go unless and until Christ the King is returned to His throne.