The Interfaith Delusion

New Oxford Review ^ | April 12, 2017 | Timothy D. Lusch

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Timothy D. Lusch is an attorney and writer. His work has appeared in Saint Austin Review, New English Review, and Chronicles, and at CatholicExchange.com and Crisis.com. He blogs at www.pityitspithy.com.

Ed. Note: This is the first in a three-part series on the Catholic Church and Islam.

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For some time now, Catholics have been told that terrorist violence has nothing to do with Islam and that Islam is a religion of peace. To insist otherwise, even with irrefutable evidence from sacred Islamic texts and proclamations of Muslim clerics, is to risk being maligned as bigoted, Islamophobic, or prejudiced. Our collective witness of Muslim-perpetrated beheadings, bombings, mass shootings, vehicular assault of crowds of bystanders, gang rapes, infibulation of young girls, tossing of gays off buildings, burning alive of captives, and slaying of Catholic priests at Mass is explained away as an enigmatic nexus of mental illness and the ever-popular yet undefinable “violent extremism.” One expects to hear this sort of thing from a religiously ignorant news media. But, as practicing Catholics, to hear it from our Church hierarchy is disconcerting. One expects more from a highly educated clerical class. Perhaps one expects too much.

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From their own catechism:

“The plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator, in the first place amongst whom are the Muslims; these profess to hold the faith of Abraham, and together with us they adore the one, merciful God, mankind’s judge on the last day.” (Catholic Catechism)

They blatantly ignore John 14:6

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Perhaps one expects too much.

I dropped "You would think ... " from my vocabulary long ago.