The Pope combined being blunt and being oblivious in an interview with a French group:
Europe is facing an ‘Arab invasion’, Pope Francis mused while addressing a French Christian group, adding that the trend is actually a positive one.
“We can speak today of Arab invasion. It is a social fact,” the pontiff said, according to extracts from his address earlier this week which were published by the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano on Thursday.
He then added: “How many invasions has Europe experienced in the course of its history! But it’s always been able to overcome them and move forward, finding itself complimented and improved by the cultural exchange they brought about.”
The Pontiff also reflected on the history of migration into Europe and the positive impact it has had on European culture as we now know it.
The Pope also declared that Europe is “the only continent that can bring some unity to the world”. He then added, that in order to fulfill its “universal role”, Europe must “rediscover its cultural roots”.
Go here to read the rest. Arabs and other Islamic groups have been seeking to invade Europe since the Seventh century. For a thousand years Islam and Christianity confronted each other in an epic struggle over Europe, with Islam seizing control of parts of Spain up through the Fifteenth Century, and Sicily for almost three centuries from the Ninth to the Eleventh centuries. Islamic conquests in the Balkans in the Thirteenth-Fifteenth centuries established endemic warfare between native Christian populations and Islamic settlers and converts to Islam. The unique thing about the current invasion is that it is underway with the support of most of Europe’s secular leadership and the strong blessing of the Pope. Christians in Europe, as they struggle with the current invasion, are cursed with a leadership which is on the other side.
Either this man is a completely ignorant when it comes to history or he is aware of the untold suffering of Christians at the hands of muslims and calls it a “cultural exchange” by which Europe was “complimented and improved”. The first option means he really is foolish in ways unseen in the papacy. Even bad popes cared about Christians. The later option means he is a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
I really think he is ignorant.
I forget where I read a CV for him but it is extremely weak. Perhaps that is one of the reasons I find his pontificating so hard to bear.
Compared to Benedict and JP2, His Holiness is as far from an intellectual as I am from a professional athlete.
“How many invasions has Europe experienced in the course of its history! But it’s always been able to overcome them and move forward, finding itself complimented and improved by the cultural exchange they brought about.”
….Wow.
That, there, is prime silver-lining finding.
Agree Father of Seven and David Spaudling – we have powerful questions about his ignorance (willful?) or blindness to the suffering of the Christians – for whatever reason, not caring-
What about the possibility- that he is being useful to God’s purpose such as the prophet Habakuk said the Babylonians were be used by God not only as just punishment but to bring people back to Him.
I give the words of this Pontiff no credence whatsoever. He is as ignorant of history as Donald Trump is. Whereas Donald Trump wants no immigration, the Pontiff wwants every kind of immigration. Both men are idiots.
Anzlyne.
Great assertion!
I was reading some of the commentaries off of Bible hub relating to Habakuks insights.
Uncanny.
Good call Anzlyne.
Sweden is certainly being complemented and improved by the cultural exchange:
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/7577/sweden-migrants-sexual-assault
Foxfier quoted, “How many invasions has Europe experienced in the course of its history! But it’s always been able to overcome them and move forward, finding itself complimented and improved by the cultural exchange they brought about.”
Modern Europe, with its languages and its cultures, is the product of three great invasions: the Celtic, the Italo-Hellenic and the Teutonic. East of the Elbe, there was in addition the influx of the Slavonic and Finno-Ugric peoples.
As for its powers of resilience, if Horace could say that Greece conquered her rude conqueror, th same could be said of the Ottomans; not the laws of Suleiman the Magnificent, but the Corpus Juris of the Emperor Justinian is the law of modern Turkey and of all their European possessions.
uh oh Michael- I’m not sure the same could be said now of Turkey and the disappearing Church there
Anzlyne wrote, “I’m not sure the same could be said now of Turkey…”
I can assure you that quite a number of symposiums are being planned and collections of papers prepared for the 4th October this year to mark the 90th anniversary of the Turkey’s adoption of the Swiss Civil Code of 1907.
The Swiss Civil Code is virtually entirely based on Justinian’s Digest and the commentaries of the 19th century German Pandektists. In effect, Byzantine law was restored after an abeyance of 450 years. The two great branches of the civil law, ownership and obligation are wholly Roman.
At the same time, Turkey adopted the German Commercial Code and the Italian Penal Code, both thoroughly Civilian in their concepts and categories.
A Scottish or French lawyer would be on more familiar ground in a Turkish court than an English or American one (Louisiana excepted)
Thank you Michael. The words “finding itself complimented and improved by the cultural exchange ” sadly brought to my mind the loss of Christian Faith in Turkey,
I don’t know about any great cultural resilience shown in retaining the effects of Justinian on legal codes, and I wonder, even after reading your note about all of this, how that proud heritage will be effected ultimately by the Sharia. ?
As the culture has changed on the English Isle, there is a willingness to accept the will of the force of the population invasion that is also happening there.
Anlzyne wrote, “how that proud heritage will be effected ultimately by the Sharia. ?”
Having lived under Sharia since 1453, Turkey abolished it root and branch in 1926 and replaced it with Civilian codes. The Young Turks saw it as both inadequate for and incompatible with a modern, secular democracy and with a truly national identity.
“I don’t know about any great cultural resilience shown in retaining the effects of Justinian on legal codes.”
Next to language, law is, perhaps, the most profound cultural influence in any society. It is, like language, at once the product and the vehicle of culture.
Ataturk and the other leaders of the Turkish Revolution understood this very well. Hence, their programme of Europeanization included the replacement of the Arabic with the Roman alphabet and the elimination of Arabic and Persian loan-words. For the rising generation, anything written before the Revolution would be unintelligible.