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PopeWatch: Appeasement

VATICAN-POPE-AUDIENCE

 

Sandro Magister at his blog Chiesa recognizes that the Catholic Church is in a war, something that the highest ranks of the Church utterly fail to comprehend:

 

 

 

 

ROME, November 21, 2014 – In a few days Pope Francis will go to Turkey, right into the thick of the new “piecemeal” global war that he sees overrunning the world.

The Islamic caliphate that has taken hold just beyond the Turkish border, between Syria and Iraq, pulverizing the old geographical boundaries, is global by nature. “The triumphant march of the mujahideen will reach all the way to Rome,” caliph Abu Bakr al Baghdadi proclaimed in the middle of November.

It has received declarations of obedience from patches of Islam in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Algeria, and Libya, opposite the coasts of Italy. In Nigeria and nearby Cameroon, Boko Haram has extended the caliphate to sub-Saharan Africa. New followers are streaming in from Europe and North America.

The black flag of the newly created Islamic State bears a Kufic inscription of its profession of faith: “There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet.”

Christians are among the many victims of this puritanical Islam, which calls itself the only true form and also wants to make a desert of what it considers the greatest betrayals of original Islam: the Shiite heresy with its epicenter in Iran and the secularizing modernism of the Turkey of Kemal Atatürk, from whose mausoleum Pope Francis will begin his voyage.

In Ar-Raqqah, the de facto capital of the caliphate and the Syrian city from which the Jesuit Paolo Dall’Oglio disappeared, on the 15 out of 1500 Christian families that have survived the new Islamic State has imposed the jizya, a protection tax of an exorbitant 535 dollars a year, on pain of the confiscation of their homes and possessions.

In Mosul there is no longer any church where Mass is still celebrated, as also happened after the invasion of the Mongols.

It is impossible not to see in this the features of a “war of Islam” pushed to the extreme, fought in the name of Allah. It is illusory to deny the Islamic origin of this unbridled theological violence. This has been published even by the officially supervised “La Civiltà Cattolica,” only to be contradicted afterward by its fearsome director, Antonio Spadaro, the Jesuit who plays the role of Francis’s interpreter.

On Islam the Catholic Church stammers, the more so the higher up the ladder one goes.

The bishops of the dioceses of the Middle East are calling upon the world for effective armed protection, which never comes. In Rome, Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran publishes the most detailed denunciation of the atrocities of the caliphate, and declares an end to all possibility of dialogue with those among the Muslims who do not stamp out violence at its roots.

But when the secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, speaks in New York from the tribunal of the UN, as he did on September 29, he carefully avoids the taboo words “Islam” and “Muslims,” and pays the obligatory tribute to the mantra that denies the existence of that conflict of civilization which is plain for all to see.

Go here to read the rest.  Weakness begets weakness.  Pretending that evil will go away seems to be the policy of the powers that be at the Vatican these days, and it is doomed to failure, no matter how many laudatory headlines it reaps from the mainstream media.

PopeWatch will be on hiatus until the Monday after Thanksgiving.

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the Old Adam
Monday, November 24, AD 2014 8:06am

This is going on everywhere.

Somebody needs to get the guts to speak the truth.

Michael Dowd
Michael Dowd
Monday, November 24, AD 2014 9:11am

Yes, where is the moral courage in the Vatican to speak out against radical Islam. It would appear their “courage” is limited to criticizing traditional Catholics and weakening moral restraints. Most disappointing for sure. Let us pray to Pope Pius V to give Pope Francis the strength to do his job.

Dale Price
Dale Price
Monday, November 24, AD 2014 10:38am

The new Ostpolitik, only applied to Islam.

That 70s Church, once again.

bill bannon
bill bannon
Monday, November 24, AD 2014 10:55am

Fortunately Islamic State is being suicidal in Kobani where they keep sending in replacements for those who have been bombed by us or hit by Peshmerga artillery. The local Kurds are giving both us and Peshmerga from Iraq…coordinates for our bombs and their artillery and in this instance IS continues to pour in “martyrs”. It’s like their martyrdom belief is working at cross purposes with their own desire for victory. They have no human shields in Kobani so we can bomb them forever if they keep sending replacement martyrs.
At Raqqa, they are very safe because of human shields. It’s amazing that they have not thought to bring human shields with them in the form of women and children to Kobani. We need IS to just keep resupplying Kobani with martyrs for months on end.
The last three Popes have been largely anti war since they became anti death penalty in 1995’s Evangelium Vitae. It is as though once the Soviet menace was reduced, their aim became “evangelize fallen away European elite”..who are anti death penalty and unwarlike. That leaves Catholics in hell holes wondering what they are supposed to do. Boko Haram killed 2500 specifically Catholics thus far.
And I doubt any Christians in these countries have sufficient small arms to fight Islam. They will get no organizing instructions for self defense from Rome who is obsessed with peaceful Islam as a concept. There are peaceful muslims but they are getting killed weekly by IS in Anbar when they resist cooperation and in Syria by IS and by Khorasan etc. when they resist cooperating. Many anti terrorist muslim pilots are helping us in the air strikes now though the media stresses the US in airstrikes to keep things simple.

Don the Kiwi
Monday, November 24, AD 2014 2:20pm

They need to wake up – as does our government down here. The Aussies have had a couple of terrorist incidents, and although our govt. has just enacted new terrorism laws to cover local situations, they still won’t stop muslim immigration. Even here among our 50,000 odd Muslim community- and growing – there are a number who have openly expressed a desire to go and fight for IS. There is a radical mosque in Christchurch where they say that the radical immam who inspired the terrorist acts in Oz was radicalised during the time he spent there.

Most of the people are awake to the problem – what’s wrong with our political and religious leaders? They won’t wake up till our own govt. buildings are invaded as in Canada and a bomb goes off along with a few suicide vests in the local cathedrals and in the Vatican.

Penguins Fan
Penguins Fan
Monday, November 24, AD 2014 4:59pm

The present day Catholic hierarchy sees only Cardinal Burke and traddies as enemies to be squashed. Certain people are more comfortable with their ideologies than they are with the truth.

Steve Phoenix
Steve Phoenix
Monday, November 24, AD 2014 5:36pm

So we have a different pontificate and its surrogates, than perhaps, say, a Pope St Pius V, who not only spoke out clearly and decisively against the encircling grasp of Islam and the Caliphate of his time, but actually raised funds for warships, soldiers and arms, all to go defeat and slay the enemy; and in the end, through temporal action and divine grace, was victorious. The present pontificate would be ashamed of SPV.

By contrast, at a certain point, this “Church that subsists in the Catholic Church (Lumen Gentium. n. 8: “This Church constituted and organized in the world as a society, subsists in the Catholic Church,….”) points one’s thinking in the direction that there is truth, and untruth; true leadership and false leadership; and finally one Church that is true, and another (I am compelled to believe) that is false.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Monday, November 24, AD 2014 6:21pm

If you read Edwin Faust in The Latin Mass and Catholic Family News, you might remember his description of the contemporary Church: “like a mad mother who has abandoned her children”. That’s Francis and that’s quite a mess of diocesan bishops. They always seem to be responding to some influence you can never fathom, or, alternatively, responding to the newspapers.

trackback
Tuesday, November 25, AD 2014 12:02am

[…]   Pope Francis and Appeasement […]

Michael Paterson-Seymour
Michael Paterson-Seymour
Tuesday, November 25, AD 2014 3:27am

We need to step back and look at the broader picture.

Only Iran, with its nuclear ambitions poses an existential threat to our only real ally in the region, Israel.

Assad is an Iranian ally, Hezbollah is an Iranian proxy, as are the Shias of Iraq. Anything that undermines them is, so far, a good thing.

Any Western intervention in the region should be limited to destroying Iran’s nuclear capacity, decapitating the Republican Guard and degrading its infrastructure.

Mary De Voe
Tuesday, November 25, AD 2014 4:35am

Our Lady prophesied the first world war, the second world war and a third world war “of unimaginable proportions”
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What are the chances that Islam will build hospitals and schools?

Mighty Joe Young
Mighty Joe Young
Tuesday, November 25, AD 2014 8:41am

Yes, poor little Israel. They only have, at a minimum, 80 nuclear warheads vs Iran which has zero.

How they can survive with that overwhelming military advantage is anybody’s guess.

Sydney O. fernandes, MD
Sydney O. fernandes, MD
Tuesday, November 25, AD 2014 9:53am

Everyone should read “Milestones” by Sayyid Qutb: No one will ever doubt the malignancy of Islam after reading him. And we will stop bleating about the “monotheism” of Islam and its “high respect” for Our Lord Jesus Christ and His mother.

eddie too
eddie too
Tuesday, November 25, AD 2014 1:45pm

I believe it is more accurate to speak of the different versions of islam rather than try to make islam seem monolithic.

there may be versions of islam where by catholic-Islamic dialogue would be fruitful for both sides.

perhaps ISIS is only one version of islam? perhaps there are many others where reason might make headway?

perhaps we who wish to engage in intellectual discussions concerning these concerns should preface our comments by distinguishing which version of islam we are addressing?

to me, islam is about as monolithic as protestant Christianity. that would be to say not one whit monolithic.

Sydney O. Fernandes, MD
Sydney O. Fernandes, MD
Tuesday, November 25, AD 2014 2:58pm

Oh yes, Islam is “mosaic, not a monolith”. But while we sit on our haunches and exchange intellectual tit-bits about the many faces of Islam, often mooning at the feet of the “moderate” one, the radical understanding of Islam is the one conquering the world: again! Even the “moderate” or “average” Muslim is hard-pressed to admit, when push comes to the shove, that the “radical” branch is not true Islam. “Din wa duniya wa dawla” is the sum of Islam. Only someone like Dr. Zuhdi Jasser postulates the dehision of the religious from the political.

eddie too
eddie too
Tuesday, November 25, AD 2014 3:49pm

I know there are those who claim adherence to islam and wish to rule the world.

I do not see them making much progress and thus fear of them does not influence my thinking to a great degree.

I can anticipate great stress and destruction growing from the violence of those whose will to power sublimates their need for community. we should all pray that this tension between violent islam and the rest of the world does not lead to the use of atomic weapons that we all know are already present in the most tumultuous area of our planet. but, violent islam will not prevail. at what cost will it be eliminated, sadly, but likely at an extreme cost whose full dimensions are yet to be revealed.

the death and destruction brought about by violent islam will never approach the death and destruction brought about as a consequence of sexual license and while neither should be ignored, the second is more subtle and dangerous to human souls.

Sydney O. Fernandes, MD
Sydney O. Fernandes, MD
Tuesday, November 25, AD 2014 3:57pm

eddie too: Well put. in the end, it the immortal soul of each human being that is the most important and most precious point. Our earthly lives are a mere flash in the pan: let us keep praying and putting forth our best foot forward so that every soul redeemed by Christ Jesus will see the wondrous Face of God.

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Tuesday, November 25, AD 2014 3:57pm

Ho-Boy!

There is only one “version” of islam and one requirement to be a muslim: Confess that there is no god but allah, and muhammad is his prophet [period] End of story.

There are many off-shoots, cults, mafias often involved in inter-necine mayhem and incestuous slaughter. But, they are united in their enmity to the Great Satan and in the one aim of it all: world domination.

The most moderate muslim is a muslim: he doesn’t mass-murder or blast things to smithereens. He works his pacific part to kove forwaed the ball, nonetheless, and when the claxon sounds . . . look out.

Sydney O. Fernandes, MD
Sydney O. Fernandes, MD
Tuesday, November 25, AD 2014 4:00pm

eddie too: Well put. In the end, it the immortal soul of every human being that is the most important and most precious point. Our earthly lives are a mere flash in the pan. Let us pray and strive that every soul redeemed by Christ Jesus will see the wondrous Face of God,

Michael Paterson-Seymour
Michael Paterson-Seymour
Wednesday, November 26, AD 2014 2:41am

T Shaw

I would suggest that the notion of “only one version of Islam” does not bear examination.

Perhaps, the Kemalist version, which is, in effect, the established religion of Turkey, is the most progressive. To quote one of its leading exponents, Ahmed Hamdi, “Islam takes [this] world as the principal [as opposed to the afterlife]; it is based on reason; it accepts popular rule and the principle that legal norms change in time; it wants to consider everything rationally and it wants to prevent any dogma. [However,] the original principles that existed during the foundation of Islam have been corrupted. A separate religious class has been set up, and the hegemony of this class and the institutions it established has damaged society. Today [true] religion has disappeared.”

The most radical assertion is that “legal norms change in time.” That is why the Kemalist reforms abolished Sharia law and replaced it with the German Civil Code, the Swiss Commercial Code and the Italian Penal Code.

Another striking feature is its anti-clericalism: religious scholars and jurists have corrupted the original message. Ahmed Hamdi again, “According to us, the meaning we should derive from secularism is not a separation of religion and world, but to prevent the hegemonic control of the worldly matters by religion, which appears under the guise of dogmatic principles at the hands of a separate religious class. Whatever we do in the name of secularism, we can do as Muslims.”

The result was to treat Islam as the “social cement” of the nation – stripped of superstition and obscurantism and linked to modern science and positivist philosophy.

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