Posted on 11/02/2001 5:42:58 AM PST by Brian Kopp DPM
Mary and the Moslems
11/1/01
Moslemism is the only great post-Christian religion of the world. Because it had its origin in the seventh century under Mohammed, it was possible to unite, within it, some elements of Christianity and of Judaism, along with particular customs of Arabia. Moslemism takes the doctrine of the unity of God, His Majesty and His creative power, and uses it, in part, as a basis for the repudiation of Christ, the Son of God.
(The following was written in 1952 and reprinted in the October 2001 Mindszenty Report.)
The Power of Islam
by Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen
Misunderstanding the notion of the Trinity, Mohammed made Christ a prophet, announcing Him just as to Christians Isaiah and John the Baptist are prophets announcing Christ.
The Christian European West barely escaped destruction at the hands of the Moslems. At one point they were stopped near Tours and at another point, later on in time, outside the gates of Vienna. The Church throughout northern Africa ws practically destroyed by Moslem power, and at the present hour, the Moslems are beginning to rise again. If Moslemism is a heresy, as Hilaire Belloc believes it to be, it is the only heresy that has never declined. Others have had a moment of vigor, then gone into doctrinal decay at the death of the leader, and finally evaporated in a vague social movement. Moslemism, on the contrary, has only had its first phase. There was never a time in which it declined, either in numbers, or in the devotion of its followers.
The missionary effort of the Church toward this group has been at least on the surface, a failure, for the Moslems are so far almost unconvertible. The reason is that for a follower of Mohammed to become a Christian is much like a Christian becoming a Jew. The Moslems believe that they have the final and definitive revelation of God to the world and that Christ was only a prophet announcing Mohammed, the last of Gods real prophets.
At the present time, the hatred of the Moslem countries against the West is becoming a hatred against Christianity itself. Although the statesmen have not yet taken it into account, there is still grave danger that the temporal power of Islam may return and, with it, the menace that it may shake off a West which has ceased to be Christian, and affirm itself as a great anti-Christian world power. Moslem writers say, When the locust swarms darken countries, they bear on their wings these Arabic words: We are Gods host, each of us has ninety-nine eggs, and if we had a hundred, we should lay waste the world, with all that is in it.
The problem is, how shall we prevent the hatching of the hundredth egg? It is our firm belief that the fears some entertain concerning the Moslems are not to be realized, but that Moslemism, instead, will eventually be converted to Christianity - and in a way that even some of our missionaries never suspect. It is our belief that this will happen not through the direct teachings of Christianity, but through a summoning of the Moslems to a veneration of the Mother of God. This is the line of argument:
Mary, Mother of God
The Koran, which is the Bible of the Moslems, has many passages concerning the Blessed Virgin. First of all, the Koran believes in her Immaculate Conception, and also, in her Virgin Birth. The third chapter of the Koran places the history of Marys family in a genealogy which goes back through Abraham, Noah, and Adam. When one compares the Korans description of the birth of Mary with the aprocryphal Gospel of the birth of Mary, one is tempted to believe tht Mohammed very much depended upon the latter. Both books describe the old age and the definite sterility of the mother of Mary. When, however, she conceives, the mother of Mary is made to say in the Koran: O Lord, I vow and I consecrate to you what is already within me. Accept it from me.
When Mary is born, the mother says: And I consecrate her with all of her posterity under thy protection, O Lord, against Satan! The Koran passes over Joseph in the life of Mary, but the Moslem tradition knows his name and has some familiarity with him. In this tradition, Joseph is made to speak to Mary, who is a virgin. As he inquired how she conceived Jesus without a father, Mary answered: Do you not know that God, when He created the wheat had no need of seed, and that God by His power made the trees grow without the help of rain? All that God had to do was to say, So be it, and it was done. The Koran has also verses on the Annunciation, Visitation, and Nativity. Angels are pictured as accompanying the Blessed Mother and saying: Oh Mary, God has chosen you and purified you, and elected you above all the women of the earth.
In the nineteenth chapter of the Koran there are 41 verses on Jesus and Mary. There is such a strong defense of the virginity of Mary here that the Koran, in the fourth book, attributed the condemnation of the Jews to their monstrous calumny against the Virgin Mary.
The Significance of Fatima
Mary, then, is for the Moslems the true Sayyida, or Lady. The only possible serious rival to her in their creed would be Fatima, the daughter of Mohammed himself. But after the death of Fatima, Mohammed wrote: Thou shalt be the most blessed of all the women in Paradise, after Mary. In a variant of the text, Fatima is made to say, I surpass all the women, except Mary.
This brings us to our second point: namely, why the Blessed Mother, in the 20th century, should have revealed herself in the significant little village of Fatima, so that to all future generations she would be known as Our Lady of Fatima. Since nothing ever happens out of Heaven except with a finesse of all details, I believe that the Blessed Virgin chose to be known as Our Lady of Fatima as a pledge and a sign of hope to the Moslem people, and as an assurance that they, who show her so much respect, will one day accept her divine Son too. Evidence to suport these views is found in the historical fact that the Moslems occupied Portugal for centuries. At the time when they were finally driven out, the last Moslem chief had a beautiful daughter by the name of Fatima. A Catholic boy fell in love with her, and for him she not only stayed behind when the Moslems left, but even embraced the Faith. The young husband was so much in love with her that he changed the name of the town where he live to Fatima. Thus, the very place where our Lady apeared in 1917 bears a historical connection to Fatima, the daughter of Mohammed.
The final evidence of the relationship of Fatima to the Moslems is the enthusiastic reception which the Moslems in Africa and India and elsewhere gave to the Pilgrim statue of Our Lady of Fatima, as mentioned earlier. Moslems attended the church services in honor of our Lady, they allowed religious processions and even prayers before their mosques; and in Mozambique the Moslems who were unconverted, began to be Christian as soon as the statue of Our Lady of Fatima was erected.
A Missionary Strategy
Missionaries in the future will, more and more, see that their apostolate among the Moslems will be successful in the measure that they preach Our Lady of Fatima. Mary is the advent of Christ, bringing Christ to the people before Christ Himself is born. In an apologetic endeavor, it is always best to start with that which people already accept. Because the Moslems have a devotion to Mary, our missionaries should be satisfied merely to expand and to develop that devotion, with the full realization that Our Blessed Lady will carry the Moslems the rest of the way to her divine Son. She is forever a traitor, in the sense that she will not accept any devotion for herself, but will always bring anyone who is devoted to her to her divine Son. As those who lose devotion to her lose belief in the divinity of Christ, so those who intensify devotion to her gradually acquire that belief.
Many of our great missionaries in Africa have already broken down the bitter hatred and prejudices of the Moslems against the Christians through their acts of charity, their schools and hospitals. It now remains to use another approach, namely, that of taking the 41st chapter of the Koran and showing them that it was taken out of the Gospel of Luke, that Mary could not be, even in their own eyes, the most blessed of all the women of Heaven if she had not also borne the Savior of the world. If Judith and Esther of the Old Testament were pre-figures of Mary, then it may very well be that Fatima herself was a post-figure of Mary! The Moslems should be prepared to acknowledge that, if Fatima must give way in honor to the Blessed Mother, it is because she is different from all the other mothers of the world and that without Christ she would be nothing.
(This article courtesy of The Mindzenty Report, published by the Cardinal Mindzenty Foundation.)
In all fairness, most who say those things are ex-Catholic themselves, so you can't really call them ignorant. They simply look upon their upbringing differently than you do.
LOL! ME too! Of course, according to some here, the fact that we no longer place crowns of flowers on statues heads, or bless throats(I could never figure that one out), or incessantly light candles, simply means that we have lost our minds and never really "got it" to begin with. LOL!
Ah, but they DO imitate Jesus.
Frankly, I find former Catholics to be the most ignorant of the real teachings of Catholicism, and, as you noted, the most offensive. If they knew the faith, they would not have left it. Of course, a large percentage, a majority in my experience, are "emotional," not "intellectual" converts.
Emotional converts are the divorced & remarried, the "Father So-and-so was mean to my dad," "Sister Such-and-such hit my knuckles with a ruler," and those easily swayed by the emotionalism and feel-good-ism of the simplistic false gospels out there since 1517.
Few are truly "intellectual" converts. Few leave the Church after having honestly studied the faith, the teachings of the early Christians, and the historical interpretation of scripture. The honest intellectual conversions by and large go through a one way door, into sacramental Christianity. When you talk to the rest long enough, you find the hurt or the insult or the other emotional aspect that precipitated the conversion. You also find that by offering a resolution to that emotional trauma, you can readily bring them home to Rome.
...What I stated in that post is noting compared to what has been said to me personally and what has been said about my Faith on this forum.
I think the key may be that a doctrinal disagreement should not be with confused with an attack on you personally. But if you feel you are being insulted, then take it like this:
1 Peter 3:9 Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult, but with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing.
or
1 Peter 4:14
If you are insulted because of the name of Christ, you are blessed, for the Spirit of glory and of God rests on you.
I've had some pretty good knock-down-drag-out doctrinal disputations with my FRiends patent, SoothingDave and Romulus, et al and they have yet to call me a terrorist. I don't say that because you called me any names, but after 9/11 the comparison of non-Roman Catholic Christians to terrorists is too raw to the memory of any "fundys" and "Bible only" Christians who no doubt perished in the planes and towers alongside some good Roman Catholics.
Cordially,
OK, my apologies. Rebuke rightfully made, and humbly accepted. I was wrong, and yes I was being uncharitable and setting a poor example for my Christian brothers and sisters here. I already apologized privately to one of my Catholic peers here for giving scandal by my anger on this thread (no better way to gut your witness and patient efforts at apologetics than to get angry and return insult with insult, as you point out), and he defended you:
My comment: "By the way, unfortunately I really lost my temper on this thread when the Jack Chick brigade showed up. I really blew it. Sorry."
His reply: Kind of got a kick out of it, actually. Diamond is pretty mellow, he isn’t a "Catholics are the antichrist type," but he wasn’t your initial target anyway.
Again, my aplogies,
proud2bRC
Some would say we are waging an undeclared war against Islam, since 9/11
"Diamond is pretty mellow, he isn’t a "Catholics are the antichrist type"
If I were to call Roman Catholics the antichrist then I would have to believe that I've been sleeping with a whore of Babylon for 22 years - "Wouldn't be prudent" (hehehe)
Cordially,
Stopped going to mass when he was in the Navy, got out at his wife's request and moved back to Ohio.
She wouldn't convert, and he'd kind of fallen by the wayside, so they found a little 'church in the wildwood' kind of place.
He went at it with all the fury of the convert; not only abandoning all trappings of Catholicism, but going to church three or four times a week, and eventually deciding to be a minister.
He 'studied' for three months. I can only compare this to mainline protestant sects, which, I am told, require a four year degree, and to Catholicism which requires four years of counseling and psychology studies plus four more years of theology. Needless to say, I had my doubts.
Anyway, he becomes a minister. I was unable to make the 'swearing in', but my brother-in-law gave me a general run-down. Some requisite Catholic bashing, followed by inductions, followed by some faith healing. Did you know that unemployment can be healed? Yep. So said the priestess: "Within the week, this woman will have a job."
Never did here whether that worked or not.
Unfortunately, this new minister was every bit as good a Protestant as he had been a Catholic. Last I heard, he was trying to become a fireman.
Ratzginer always has to get a dig in to confirm our low opinion of him doesn't he? I wonder when he will renounce his obnoxious VCII-era writings about the "senselessness" of Adoring the Eucharistic Host because "God is everywhere".
Here are three Scriptural passages that have to be reconciled:
1) Jesus established a Church that he said "the gates of hell would not prevail against." (Matthew 16:17-19)
2) Jesus told us to take our disagreements to "the church." Logically, this must be the Church that He established. And it must be a visible, discernable, united Church. Christ wouldn't recommend that we settle disputes in an unidentifiable church. And He wouldn't recommend that we go to one of many churches with conflicting doctrines to settle doctrinal disputes, among other disputes. (Matthew 18:15-18)
3) The Church is the "pillar and foundation of truth." This reinforces the idea that Christ would not instruct us to settle disputes in churches that cannot agree on the truth; churches with competing doctrines.(1 Timothy 3:14-16)
Now only two churches have been around since Pentacost: the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Churches.
btt
BTTT
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