Islamic prayers to be held at the Vatican
This Sunday, June 8, Pope Francis will allow for the first time in history Islamic prayers from the Quoran to be recited at the Vatican. The service is said to be in the cause of Peace in the Middle East (see report below). Members of Judaism will be part of the interfaith gathering as well. This radical initiative is scandalous on at least four counts:
1) The Prayers of Islam worship a false god; not the true God who is the Blessed Trinity; not the true God Jesus Christ, who said “No man comes to the Father but through Me.” Speaking on the modernist notion that various religions worship the same God, the eminent theologian Father Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange explained that such a tenet denies the principle of non-contradiction, which is the most fundamental principle of reason. Father Garrigou-Lagrange explains, “It is injurious to say that God would consider with equanimity all religions while one teaches truth and one teacher’s error, when one promises the good and one promises the evil. To say this would be to affirm that God would be indifferent to good and evil, to what is honest and shameful.”[1]
2) Pope Francis’ act fosters the religious indifferentism condemned by the Catholic Church and condemned by reason. Great popes such as Leo XII, Pius IX, Gregory XVI and others all condemned religious indifferentism; a false system that gives the impression that any religion is good enough for salvation. Along with the popes already mentioned, Pope Pius VIII forcefully condemned this error in the encyclical Traditi humilati nostrae:
“And this is the lethal system of religious indifferentism, which is repudiated by the light of natural reason itself. In this light we are warned that, among many religions which disagree with one another, when one is true, that there can be no association with light and darkness. Against these repeaters of ancient errors, the people must be assured, Venerable Brethren, that the profession of the Catholic Faith is alone the true one, since the Apostle tells us that there is one Lord and one baptism. As Jerome says, the man who eats the Lamb outside of this house is profane, and the man who is not in the ark of Noah is going to perish in the deluge. Neither is there any other name apart from the Name of Jesus given to men by which we must be saved. He who believes will be saved, and he who shall not have believed will be condemned.”
It seems safe to say the Papa Bergoglio would blush with embarrassment at this authentic Catholic teaching, and would probably die rather than reiterate it, or rather than conduct his Vatican and ecclesiastical policies accordingly.
3) It turns Peace in the Middle East into an idol, a false god that must be appeased at the expense of the ordinary and universal magisterium of the Church since the time of the Apostles. The First Commandment does not say, “Thou shalt not be an atheist,” but says rather, “Thou shalt not have strange gods before me.” The trampling of Catholic truth and practice in a quest for a humanistic peace is, effectively, apostate actions in the service of an idol, a false god; the ever-elusive “peace in the Middle East”
4) The act will bring punishment rather than blessings. Belgium’s Cardinal Mercier explained that the First World War was actually a punishment to the world for governments placing the one true Church on the same level with false religions. How much worse when this is done by Catholic leaders, in the quest of a humanistic peace. In his 1918 Pastoral Letter, Cardinal Mercier said:
“In the name of the Gospel, and in the light of the Encyclicals of the last four Popes; Gregory XVI, Pius IX, Leo XIII, and Pius X, I do not hesitate to affirm that this indifference to religion which puts on the same level the religion of divine origin and the religions invented by men, in order to include them in the same skepticism, is the blasphemy which calls down chastisement on society far more than the sins of individuals and families.”[2]
The very inter-religious prayer that is supposed to foster peace, as Cardinal Mercier explains, is a form of blasphemy and will end up to be a source of chastisement.
Where are the Cardinals, bishops and priests who have the faith and fortitude to openly denounce Francis’ actions, and to warn their faithful against this defiance of the Catholic Faith?
As Father Frederick Faber warned, “Where there is no hatred of heresy, there is no holiness”.
Making matters worse, Francis will encourage this Muslim/Vatican action on the Feast of Pentecost. Indeed, these actions show the blasphemous nature of the Conciliar “New Pentecost”.
From the beginning of the Bergoglio pontificate, we knew it would be a bumpy ride. We knew we were headed for heartbreak and scandal. We knew he was a Vatican II radical who will recklessly drive the Conciliar revolution to even greater romps than his Conciliar predecessors. His actions call for greater resistance on our part, increased fidelity to the perennial teaching and practice of the Church, and a greater need to instill the counter-revolutionary spirit in ourselves and in our young ones.
We do not follow, imitate or respect his inter-religious actions. We pray we may soon be granted a Pope who is not in the poisonous grip of a modernist mindset.
Prayers of reparation are in order. And as the message of Fatima encourages, “Pray a great deal for the Holy Father”.[3]
Notes:
1. De Revelatione, Father Garrigou-Lagrange, [Paris: Galbalda, 1921], Tome 2, Quoted from “Christians, Muslims and Jews: Do we all Have the Same God?”, Father François Knittel, Christendom, November, December, 2007.
2. Cardinal Mercier’s Pastoral Letter 1918, The Lesson of Events. Cited from The Kingship of Christ and Organized Naturalism, Father Denis Fahey, (Dublin: Regina Publications, 1943), p. 36. (Emphasis added)
3. Please note: I did not call Papa Bergoglio an apostate, but of engaging in apostate actions that would be condemned by every Pope for 2000 years from St. Peter to Pius XII. We do not and cannot judge the interior state of Francis’ soul.
First published in Catholic Family News
John Vennari, Catholic Family News, a Traditionalist Catholic monthly publication, printed and published in the Western New York/Southern Ontario region.