Posted on 05/14/2004 10:11:07 AM PDT by KentTrappedInLiberalSeattle
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - The Vatican warned Catholic women on Friday to think hard before marrying a Muslim and urged Muslims to show more respect for human rights, gender equality and democracy.
Calling women "the least protected member of the Muslim family," it spoke of the "bitter experience" western Catholics had with Muslim husbands, especially if they married outside the Islamic world and later moved to his country of origin.
The comments in a document about migrants around the world were preceded by remarks about points of agreement between Christians and Muslims but they seemed likely to fuel mistrust between the world's two largest religions.
The document said the Church discouraged marriages between believers in traditionally Catholic countries and non-Christian migrants.
It hoped Muslims would show "a growing awareness that fundamental liberties, the inviolable rights of the person, the equal dignity of man and woman, the democratic principle of government and the healthy lay character of the state are principles that cannot be surrendered."
When a Catholic woman and Muslim man wanted to marry, it said, "bitter experience teaches us that a particularly careful and in-depth preparation is called for."
It said one possible problem was with Muslim in-laws and advised future mothers that they must insist on Church policy that children born of a mixed marriage be baptized and brought up as Catholics.
If the marriage is registered in the consulate of a Muslim country, the document said, the Catholic must be careful not to sign a document or swear an oath including the shahada, the Islamic profession of faith, which would amount to converting.
DIFFERENT APPROACHES
The document highlighted the contrasting approaches the Vatican has taken in recent years toward Islam, which has emerged as a strong rival for souls, especially in Africa.
Pope John Paul has broken ground in dialogue with Muslims and even prayed in a mosque in Damascus. He won plaudits in the Muslim world for his strong opposition to the Iraq war.
But Vatican officials and leading Catholic prelates have expressed increasingly critical views about the spread of Islam and the challenge this poses for Catholicism.
The Vatican's top theologian, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, said earlier this week the West "no longer loves itself" and so was unable to respond to the challenge of Islam, which was growing because it expressed "greater spiritual energy."
The migration document also discouraged churches from letting non-Christians use their places of worship.
This issue arose last month when Muslims in Spain asked to be able to pray in Cordoba cathedral, which was once a mosque. A senior Vatican official said this would be "problematic."
I know of a woman who married a Muslim living in the USA --- from Iran. Her in-laws accepted her but when she couldn't bear children they pressured him --- strongly --- to take another wife. He wanted to make his family happy and proud and all that and requested his wife to allow it for the sake of him having children --- she told him that it would be a divorce and he could remarry ---- happily he chose to stay with his wife but it was a difficult decision which his family couldn't understand. It's best not to have mixed marriages that are so mixed with different beliefs.
The oppression of the female gender is due to a fear by men of being dominated by them?
Give me a break here. I was just watching an interview with a religious leader in Iraq and he was trying to explain why women are not supposed to be equal to men. Dominating of women is part of the Muslim religion and no amount of psychological mumbo jumbo is going to change that fact.
The honor killings still occur and the men who commit these honor killings still walk free.
I do hope you are correct about women in these countries finally getting some basic human rights but they can't afford to do what that Roman emperor said..."Hurry slowly"!
I wonder if some of the muslim posters will bother to give their opinion.
>> Her in-laws accepted her but when she couldn't bear children they pressured him --- strongly --- to take another wife.
Were their names Abraham and Sarah?
>> psychological mumbo jumbo
Lol! Ok..
Muslims will have a tougher time making violent inroads in America should they choose to do so; our populace is armed.
Not just to catholicism, but to the entire judeo christian community.
I had a sister who married an Iranian man. They had a son, and no subject was ever brought up with religion until then. He insisted on raising the kid muslim, brought his parents over to live with them, and destroyed their marriage, and he he has full custody of their son. Another muslim in the making. His parents are collecting full social security benefits, and the bunch of them are living on our U.S. Tax dollars.
to which I told my sister, Sorry, you made this all possible. Giving him U. S. Citizenship through marriage, and chain migration.
Oh, now he's bring over a new younger Iranian wife to be mother to their son.
Wrong answer. Abraham was not a polygamist. He was an adulterer at Sarah's insistence. His first offspring was not the recipient of the covenant due to the sinful nature of the conception. God had the final say.
As to your previous assertion re young girls marrying older men, are you saying it is perfectly acceptable for a 10 year old who has had her first period to have sex with a 30, 40 or even 60 year old man?
It's the old sheik of the burning sands of love fantasy. Arabs used to be popular male leads in romance novels. Then in the 90s the Indian romances became really popular and the Arab stories slowed down. After 911 I haven't seen a single one of the bookstore shelves.
If, maybe by mistake, someone does this and then tries to renounce it later, aren't they subject to an Islamic death sentence? Be careful what you sign.
"Don't marry a Muslim at all. It's against the Faith!"
No to mention good sense.
Mohammad saw one of his soldiers about to kill a civilian. Stopped the killer and asked: "Why are you putting him to the knife?" Answer: "He is a non-believer." Mohammad: "And so were you until not long ago."
It's a subset of a larger phenomenon: Girls are attracted to jerks.
The Church still does encourage marrying Catholics rather than non-Catholics because of the difficulties, especially with raising children, than can arise. They also help people who do marry non-Catholics to prepare for and work through those difficulties before and during the marriage.
New?
...yep, that'd be about right....
Because it seems these days, that the new 'liberated' woman rather enjoys being treated like garbage by the men they meet. At least, that's about right for about 9 out of 10 women that I have dated in the last while......but give them a decent Christian man and they stomp all over you......
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