When everyone is considered to be a Christian, no one is a Christian. Some Catholic thinkers, like Hilaire Belloc, regarded Islam as a Christian heresy, and more to be condemned as a result. I regard it as an alien faith, dressed up with rags and tags that Mohammed obtained from various sources, many of them Christian heretics. Almost all Muslims would reject as nonsense that they are in any sense Christian, and I agree with them. I doubt if this Kraut priest will experience any papal correction. It isn’t as if he did something seriously heretical in the eyes of the Vatican, like defending the traditional Mass, condemning the Vatican-China deal or saying that Rupnik still has powerful protectors at the Vatican. Priorities, priorities.
LeoWatch: Harmless Heresy?
- Donald R. McClarey
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 43 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
Reading this, all I can be reminded of is the “Yes, Prime Minister” episode where Hacker needs to recommend a bishop in the C of E, and the man ultimately appointed (the Dean of Sir Humphrey’s alma mater) is constantly referenced as one who believes Christianity and Islam are equivalent (as well as loving cricket and steam engines).
The catch then was no one took the Dean seriously, and the episode is a hoot of puns, but the kind of nonsense coming from this guy is no laughing matter.
And nothing will be done, as Don rightly points out.
If he means Byzantine as Orthodox Christianity, he might want to talk to some Byzantine Christians about that. During my time with our Orthodox brethren, I heard more than once them refer to Islam as a Christian heresy (but then they say the same thing about Western Christianity as well). I also learned that Orthodoxy is not just Catholicism without a pope. It is a world apart. In many cases, as Dracula would say, their ways are not our ways. And they see almost everything (that includes Israel and the Middle East) through a different set of glasses than we in the West.