The Pope Takes on Islam

The new Pope has been bold, fearless in taking on the wave of Islamism devouring Europe. Atlas readers know I am an enormous admirer and have been since he ascended to the head of the Roman Church. His minions have picked up the baton and are standing up and taking it on . Daniel Pipes has a very good piece detailing

THE VATICAN CONFRONTS ISLAM

"Enough now with this turning the other cheek! It's our duty to protect ourselves." Thus spoke Monsignor Velasio De Paolis, secretary of the Vatican's supreme court, referring to Muslims. Explaining his apparent rejection of Jesus' admonition to his followers to "turn the other cheek," De Paolis noted that "The West has had relations with the Arab countries for half a century … and has not been able to get the slightest concession on human rights."

De Paolis is hardly alone in his thinking; indeed, the Catholic Church is undergoing a dramatic shift from a decades-old policy to protect Catholics living under Muslim rule. The old methods of quiet diplomacy and muted appeasement have clearly failed. The estimated 40 million Christians in Dar al-Islam, notes the Barnabas Fund's Patrick Sookhdeo, increasingly find themselves an embattled minority facing economic decline, dwindling rights, and physical jeopardy. Most of them, he goes on, are despised and distrusted second-class citizens, facing discrimination in education, jobs, and the courts.

These harsh circumstances are causing Christians to flee their ancestral lands for the West's more hospitable environment. Consequently, Christian populations of the Muslim world are in a free-fall. Two small but evocative instances of this pattern: for the first time in nearly two millennia, Nazareth and Bethlehem no longer have Christian majorities.

This reality of oppression and decline stands in dramatic contrast to the surging Muslim minority of the West. Although numbering fewer than 20 million and made up mostly of immigrants and their offspring, it is an increasingly established and vocal minority, granted extensive rights and protections even as it wins new legal, cultural, and political prerogatives.

This widening disparity has caught the attention of the Church, which for the first time is pointing to radical Islam, rather than the actions of Israel, as the central problem facing Christians living with Muslims.

Rumblings of this could be heard already in John Paul II's time. For example, Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, the Vatican equivalent of foreign minister, noted in late 2003 that "There are too many majority Muslim countries where non-Muslims are second-class citizens." Tauran pushed for reciprocity: "Just as Muslims can build their houses of prayer anywhere in the world, the faithful of other religions should be able to do so as well."

Catholic demands for reciprocity have grown, especially since the accession of Pope Benedict XVI in April 2005, for whom Islam is a central concern. In February, the pope emphasized the need to respect "the convictions and religious practices of others so that, in a reciprocal manner, the exercise of freely-chosen religion is truly assured to all." In May, he again stressed the need for reciprocity: Christians must love immigrants and Muslims must treat well the Christians among them.

Read it all. It has only just begun.

Comments

[TommyG]

I believe it is the mission of B16 to reach out and try to save Europe from the slow and seemingly inevitable capture by the Islamists, but it is already very late. The Pope and the bishops can draw this line, but the Euros will reject the Pope and bishops by repeating their constant bleat against the Mother Church - no gay marraige, priests are child molesters, medevial hierarchy that discriminates against women. The Euros truly believe while there may be something to fear from the Islamists (see the Spanish Capitulation after the train bombings), there is everything to loathe about Christianity.

And the US is urged to be more like Europe? Shoo....

[Thomas Carney]

Mohammed the "Prophet" (or whatever that manipulative stinkin' pervert's real name was) was no fool. He knew that if he made the Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians into martyrs it would strengthen at least two of the three groups, so instead, he consistently humiliated them by making them dhimmis.

Over 3/4 of the immigrants from Islamic lands to the USA are Christians not Muslims. I know a Melkite priest from Bethlehem (yes, THAT Bethlehem) who has seen Bethlehem turn from being over 90% Christian to less than 5%. I know two men from Nazareth, the town where Jesus Christ lived, had their businesses firebombed because they were Christians and were told by the Muslims that if they left, the firebombings will stop.

TommyG: I know Europe's bleat.... it's been there since the so-called "Enlightenment". Europe's culture died over a century ago. Cultural and intellectual RIGOR MORTIS is setting in.