Posted on 02/24/2017 8:32:43 PM PST by NYer
Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center
Pope Francis continues to argue for two interrelated points that, while seemingly humane, compromise Western nations and expose their citizens to danger.
He reiterated his first point earlier this month when he said, I appeal not to create walls but to build bridges. Francis has made this appeal frequently, both figuratively (when imploring Western nations not to close their doors against more incoming Muslim migrants), and literallyincluding by characterizing Donald Trumps proposal to build a U.S.-Mexico wall as not Christian.
Francis reiterated his second point a few days ago when he said, Muslim terrorism does not exist. His logic is that, because there are Christians who engage in criminal and violent activitiesand yet no one blames Christianity for their behaviorso too should Islam not be blamed when Muslims engage in criminal and violent activities.
In this, the Catholic pope appears unable or unwilling to make the pivotal distinction between violence committed in accordance with religious teachings (Islam) and violence committed in contradiction of religious teachings (Christianity).
But theres another relevant and often overlooked irony: every morning Francis wakes up in the Vatican and looks out his window, he sees a very large and visible reminder that gives the lie to both his argument against walls and his argument in defense of Islam. I speak of the great walls surrounding Vatican City, more specifically the Leonine Walls.
Context: A couple of years after Islamic prophet Muhammad died in 632, his followers erupted out of Arabia and conquered the surrounding lands of non-Muslims in the name of Islamic jihad. In a few decades, they had conquered two-thirds of what was in the 7th century Christendom. They took all of the Middle East, North Africa, and Spain, until they were finally stopped at Tours in central France (732). By the late 9th century, jihadi incursions had transformed the Mediterranean into a Muslim lake; the major islandsSicily, Crete, Rhodes, Malta, Cypruswere conquered, and the European coast was habitually raided for booty and slaves.
According to the most authoritative and contemporary Muslim chroniclesthose of al-Waqidi, al-Baladhuri, al-Tabari, al-Maqrizi, etc.all this was done because Islam calls on its followers to conquer the lands of infidels.
It was in this context that, in 846, Muslim fleets from North Africa landed near Rome. Unable to breach the walls of the Eternal City, they sacked and despoiled the surrounding countryside, includingto the consternation of Christendomthe venerated and centuries-old basilicas of St. Peter and St. Paul. The Muslim invaders intentionally desecrated the tombs of the revered apostles and stripped them of their treasures, including a large golden cross. Pope Leo IV (847-855) responded by building large walls and fortifications along the right bank of the Tiber to protect the sacred sites from further Muslim raids. Completed by 852, the walls were in most places 40 feet high and 12 feet thick.
Further anticipating the crusades against Islam by over two centuriesand thus showing how they were a long time comingPope Leo decreed that any Christian who died fighting Muslim invaders would gain heaven. After him and for the same reasons, Pope John VIII offered remission of sins for those who died fighting Islamic invaders. Such was the existential and ongoing danger Muslims caused for Christian Europemore than two centuries before Pope Urbans call for the First Crusade in 1095.
Today, many Muslims, not just of the ISIS-variety, continue to boast that Islam will conquer Rome, the only of five apostolic seesthe other four being Antioch, Alexandria, Jerusalem, and Constantinoplenever to have been subjugated by jihad. Similarly, Muslims all throughout Europe continue exhibiting the same hostility and contempt for all things and persons non-Islamic, whether by going on church vandalizing sprees and breaking crosses, or by treating infidel women as theirs by right for sex and rape.
In short, Pope Leos walls prove Pope Francis wrong on both counts: yes, walls are sometimes necessary to preserve civilization; and yes, Islam does promote violence and intolerance for the otherfar more than any other religion. This fact is easily discerned by examining the past and present words and deeds of Muslims, all of which evince a remarkable and unwavering continuity of violence for infidels.
More ironically, had it not been for Pope Leos wallsand so many other Christian walls, such as Constantinoples, which kept Islam out of Europe for centuries, and Viennas, which stopped a full-blown jihad as recent as 1683there might not be a pope today to pontificate about how terrible walls are and how misunderstood Islam is. And when Francis accuses those who want to protect their people by building walls of not being Christian, as he did of Trump, he essentially accuses his bettersmen like Pope Leo IV, who did so much to protect and preserve Christendom at a time when Islam seemed to be swallowing up the worldof being no Christians at all.
Honestly don’t know. Lots of plausible potential theories, I admit.
You catholic fellas and gals need to do something about this problem. I’ve never seen ANYTHING like this before. All of the catholic wrong-doing of centuries past pales in comparison to what this Pope keeps saying.
Kind of ironic how a man that lives in his own city behind a wall with his own army to guard him has the nerve to tell us we are wrong for wanting to build a wall to keep illegals out and arm ourselves for protection against the same invaders (and other various slugs).
Well, the whole world will be made to worship the beast or his image. As a child I could not reconcile how America (or any modern civilization as I knew it, would ever in a million years fall under a spell to worship of an evil empire or system but, we now see how it’s starting. The Holocaust was not too far before our time yet as a kid it seemed so very long ago. And the verse about be-headings felt so medievel and outdated. Yet, here we are :(
It seems to me, as a neutral observer ( not a Catholic but conversant with Catholicism all my life ) that Francis is on an accelerating path towards the destruction of the Roman Catholic Church .
What I’m saying is, that he shocks ME, and officially, it’s none of my business!
This Pope is a dope, and I don’t say that lightly being a practicing Catholic. He is DANGEROUS to the flock.
I bet he’s ordering the Vatican’s walls to be torn down, right?
No, but condoning heresy causes him to lose the office automatically, after which the Cardinals can elect a new one.
It's never actually happened before is the problem...so though it seems to be a generally accepted theological principle that the Pope can lose his office for heresy, there's no "case law" on how the process unfolds.
Not coincidentally, next month there just so happens to be a conference in Paris on the Deposition of a Pope.
Tear down that wall.
Seriously. Imagine how shocking it is from the inside!
But I’m confident orthodoxy will eventually triumph....if we believed Christ’s Church could be destroyed by a bad Pope, we couldn’t really call ourselves Catholic anymore.
Demographically, as well, this seems to be the last gasp of liberalism in the Church. Its adherents are entrenched, yes, and very powerful, but also old and dying. There are no hordes of young, liberal Catholics to succeed them
All the young scrappy fighting spirit now is in the traditionalist camp. Francis, like Obama, is provoking a huge backlash.
Argentine Socialist fool.
Given he is a manifest heretic, God has already impeached him. We just need the Church to officially declare it.
The 'bridge' would be the gospel of Jesus, but I'm not so sure this pope wouldn't consider it to be too exclusive.
So he’s ready for the walls around the Vatican to come down? Get the word out that he is wanting immigrants to come into his city.
Really? You want to do this now?
What are you talking about the “people chose Linus”?? The very oldest source we have (Irenaeus, ca. 160-180) says that the Apostle Peter personally appointed Linus, Cletus, and Clement over the Roman Church. Clement who, by the way, may well be the Clement mentioned by Paul, and who in any case was written to by the Church in Ephesus to settle a conflict while the apostle John was perhaps still alive—interesting in itself.
Also, two Eastern bishops: Polycarp, who sat at the feet of St. John, and Ignatius who likely did as well, both went to Rome, and both spoke in glowing terms about the Roman Church. Neither had any notion that the leaders who followed Peter “were not of God” of Christ’s Real Church as you claim.
I dunno where your got your church history from, but you’ve been fed a lot of bad information.
Sorry, Clement’s letter was to Corinth, not Ephesus.
Thank you for posting this historical reminder.
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