Blessing the Koran in a Cathollic cathedral

In a previous entry I compared John Derbyshire, who wants us to surrender to Islam, to a carcass rotting in the sun. But he’s nothing compared to the people described in this article by Abbot Joseph, at the blog Word Incarnate. On the ninth anniversary of the 9/11 attack, they held an interfaith service at a Catholic Cathedral in Sacramento, California to bless the Koran.

Go Ahead, Hit Me Again (or, A Rose for bin Laden)

On September 11, 2001, an Islamic jihad murdered at least 3000 American citizens on our own soil, causing immense human sorrow, economic loss, and national humiliation. Now how do you think that event was commemorated in the Catholic cathedral in Sacramento, CA, in 2010? By holding a service to bless the Koran, of course—even though the ones who perpetrated those evil deeds believed the inspiration for them was found therein.

It seems that insanity is reaching new levels in certain places. Here is a portion of the story: “Representatives of different religions, including members of the Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Muslim, Mormon, and Druid [yes, California has everything] communities, took part in an interfaith blessing of the Qu’ran at Sacramento’s Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament on September 11. During the ceremony, Father Michael Kiernan, rector of the cathedral, read from the Beatitudes … Several dozen people placed roses on the Quran, in front of the main doors to the cathedral. Upon placing their roses, people said before the crowd, ‘Let there be peace on Earth, and let it begin with me.’”

Yes, you read it correctly, they placed roses on the Koran in a Catholic cathedral dedicated to Christ in the Blessed Sacrament. Do you see anything wrong with this picture? (A Druid placing a rose on the Koran in a Catholic cathedral: I couldn’t have made that up if I tried!)

There is much that can be said about this, but I’ll limit myself to a couple points. First of all, do those deluded people really think that by blessing the Koran and showering it with roses they are in any way making peace with Islam? I suppose that Islamic leaders all over the world, after wiping the tears from their eyes, will now say: “See how sensitive and conciliatory are those Americans who worship the one they call the Son of God. We’ll now forgive them for that particular blasphemy, and we’ll even stop burning their churches and raping their women and wantonly slaughtering them all over the world. Just think of it: they blessed our holy book. Allahu Akbar!” Um, no, I don’t think so. What they are more likely to say is: “The satanic fools! This is going to be easier than we thought. We destroy their buildings and kill their citizens, and they sing happy songs to us!”

Ostensibly, the rosy Koran blessing was a reaction to the intentions (never carried out) of the Florida pastor who was going to publicly burn the Koran. He never should have made a media event out of that, if for no other reason than that he put in serious jeopardy Christians all over the world who are now going to experience more vicious persecutions than they already have. I frankly wish that the Muslims held to the law of retaliation: An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. As it stands now it is a thousand eyes for an eye …

Another point: I regularly read the publications of The Voice of the Martyrs, a Christian organization that serves persecuted Christians throughout the world, supplies them with Bibles and other Christian materials, medical care when Muslims burn or hack them with machetes, housing when Muslims burn their houses down, etc. They are in the trenches. They see the havoc that the Islamic jihad is wreaking all over the world, targeting Christians especially. Now this is not a Catholic organization, but suppose they decided to see how their Catholic brethren might be helping the cause, supporting the persecuted, preaching the Gospel of Christ boldly and without compromise. And then they see, to their horror, that we are blessing and showering with roses the book that the murderers of Christians hold in the air as they angrily shower us with their curses and threats!

Jesus said to love our enemies, not flatter or fawn on them. We love them by prayer and sacrifice, begging God to enlighten them to the truth, to convert them from their murderous intentions, to forgive their sins by the power of the Precious Blood of Jesus so that they may be saved and find everlasting life in Him. That is genuine love, not making ineffectual gestures that weaken us by denying, in effect, that Jesus Christ is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and that no one comes to the Father except through Him.

This is an isolated incident, but the fact that it can happen at all, and then of course be plastered all over the internet, means that some internal housecleaning is indicated. Those Koran-blessers are doing it in the name of peace, but peace is not an absolute value (see Lk. 12:51; Mt. 10:34), and it can’t simply mean “peace” in the sense of placating those whom we fear will slit our throats if we look at them the wrong way—which seems to be the reason why practically the whole world is allowing Islam to pervade and possess it. We are at ceaseless war with the devil and his evil spirits (Eph. 6:12), and the truth of our faith cannot be compromised for the sake of an elusive “peace” with those who are not interested at all in being at peace with us—either with America or with Christianity. We have to be respectful of the dignity of all humans as such, and we ought to acknowledge religious freedom as a right (though there is no reciprocity in countries where Islam reigns). But it is foolish to bless that which categorically denies what we hold precious and holy in the revelation of the true God. “God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son” (1Jn. 5:11).

Let us pray that we’ll soon see the last of such wrongheaded displays of politically-correct, tolerant, multi-cultural ecumenical diversity and Islam-is-a-religion-of-peace propaganda. I wonder: has the Catholic cathedral in Sacramento ever held a special service in which roses were lovingly placed upon a Bible?

on September 18, 2010

LA writes:

Abbot Joseph writes:

On September 11, 2001, an Islamic jihad murdered at least 3000 American citizens on our own soil, causing immense human sorrow, economic loss, and national humiliation.

People should really stop saying that the victims were “3,000 American citizens.” This was in the World Trade Center in New York City. Many of the victims were of course foreigners and non-citizen resident aliens.

LA writes:

I wrote this e-mail to Abbot Joseph:

Dear Abbot Joseph,

Re your article about the interfaith Koran blessing service in a Catholic cathedral in Sacramento, it seems to me that the root of this problem is not in the individuals who performed this disgusting exercise, but, at least as far as the Catholics are concerned, in the Catholic Church itself, namely in the Vatican II authoritative documents Lumens Gentium and Nostra Aetate, which command Catholics to look on Muslims as “fellow adorers of the one God.” Moreover, the principles stated in those documents, of respect for Muslims, are made obligatory on Catholics in the Catholic Catechism. And let’s not forget John Paul II who kissed a Koran.

As I have written at my blog several times, so long as those principles are made obligatory on Catholics, the Church will never be able to oppose Islam in any meaningful way. Instead, they will follow the pattern shown by Pope Benedict with his Regensburg lecture: they will say something critical of Islam, which sets off a firestorm, which then leads them to go running back to the Catholic position that Muslims are our “fellow adorers of the one God” and so abandon all criticism of Islam.

So don’t blame the Catholic dhimmis in California who allowed this service to take place. Blame the current authoritiative stance of the Church itself.

Below is a recent article by me, in which I copy an article from 2007 about what the Catholic Catechism says about Islam. By the way, I am not a Catholic.

Best regards,

Lawrence Auster


Posted by Lawrence Auster at September 20, 2010 11:32 AM | Send
    

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