Accepting interpretation of Islam according to the CCC

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falabraza

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Are we as Catholics bound to accept what the Catechism says regarding the muslim religion: That they worship the same God Christians do? Are we free to disagree with that statement in the Catechism?
 
falabraza said:
Are we as Catholics bound to accept what the Catechism says regarding the muslim religion: That they worship the same God Christians do? Are we free to disagree with that statement in the Catechism?
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Where is this in the Catechism?
 
CCC

841

The Church’s relationship with the Muslims. “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.”

Edit to add link:

vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p123a9p3.htm
 
falabraza said:
Are we as Catholics bound to accept what the Catechism says regarding the muslim religion: That they worship the same God Christians do? Are we free to disagree with that statement in the Catechism?
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My opinion is we may be bound to accept that as the current Church teaching, but that we are not bound to accept it is factually accurate.
 
I believe it’s paragraph 846. I do not believe it is dogmatically binding (and it’s hedged quite well, as if to say that by definition anyone who engages in worship is worshiping the Creator, as there can only be one Pure Act, and further hedges by saying “they profess”, as if it can be, as they say in Old Testament exegesis, “describing but not endorsing”). If it is God help us, Mary, our Lady, defeater of all heresies, pray for us.

Based on the Islamic scriptures, Islamic praxis, and the example of Muhammad, which is binding on Muslims, Allah is a bloodthirsty demon (by no means is he merciful in the slightest, even though the most common words in the Koran are “rahman” and “rahim”, two words for mercy, and often combine in the rote phrase, “Allah, the merciful source of mercy” or “Allah, the ever-present and most merciful”, but actions speak louder than words, as is said) who tried to usurp the place of God by claiming to be the ultimate power and Creator and has succeeded in the minds of Muslims. Allah is not the great and forgiving, triune YHWH who sent his only-begotten Son to die for us. The Koran, believed by Muslims to be the literal words (not word, but words, which is why the Koran is no longer holy in any language other than Arabic) of Allah (who speaks 7th century Qurayshi Arabic mixed with the Syriac trader’s pidgin), says in Surah 112:1-2: “Say, he is Allah, one: the self-sustaining, who does not beget, nor was begotten”.

Disregarding any other considerations, that’s proof that Allah and the YHWH God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (and Jesus) are different.
 
Note that the CCC basis its statements on the VII document Nostra Aetate, Latin for “In Our Time,” ; which discusses our relationship to non-Christian religions. Your disagreement is not with the CCC but with the Fathers of VII.

In regard to Islam this says:
3. The church has also a high regard for the Muslims. They worship God, who is one, living and subsistent, merciful and almighty, the Creator of heaven and earth,1 who has also spoken to humanity. They endeavor to submit themselves without reserve to the hidden decrees of God, just as Abraham submitted himself to God’s plan, to whose faith Muslims eagerly link their own. Although not acknowledging him as God, they venerate Jesus as a prophet; his virgin Mother they also honor, and even at times devoutly invoke. Further, they await the day of judgment and the reward of God following the resurrection of the dead. For this reason they highly esteem an upright life and worship God, especially by way of prayer, alms-deeds and fasting.
Over the centuries many quarrels and dissensions have arisen between Christians and Muslims. The sacred council now pleads with all to forget the past, and urges that a sincere effort be made to achieve mutual understanding; for the benefit of all, let them together preserve and promote peace, liberty, social justice and moral values.



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:shrug:Sometimes I just have to shake my head and wonder what the USCCB is thinking.

I worship a kind-loving-merciful-just and forgiving God,not at all sure who or what kind of god Islam worships.
 
Joe_Kelley said:
The church has also a high regard for the Muslims. They worship God, who is one, living and subsistent, merciful and almighty, the Creator of heaven and earth,1 who has also spoken to humanity. They endeavor to submit themselves without reserve to the hidden decrees of God, just as Abraham submitted himself to God’s plan, to whose faith Muslims eagerly link their own. Although not acknowledging him as God, they venerate Jesus as a prophet; his virgin Mother they also honor, and even at times devoutly invoke
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They obviously have toned back the extreme modernism/indifferentism/latitudinarianism and plain ignorance as evidenced in that document as of the publication of the CCC, which adopts a much more conservative, albeit not nearly traditional, more precisely worded and better-hedged statement. If that was the dogmatic position of the Catholic church (I don’t think it is, with all I’ve heard about Vatican II being “pastoral”) I could not in good conscience remain a Catholic (although the spirit of the times at Vatican II, the new “ecumenical movement”, etc. probably played a role in some of that as an era of great “hope for the future” - and we see how the 1960s and 1970s turned out, two of the worst, most immoral and apostate decades in history [speaking of society, not of the Church]). Linking that statement together to some others, it could be made to seem that the Catholic Church believes in the salvation of Mohammedans as Mohammedans, without prior conversion to Christ, which is patently absurd (given, additionally, that there is no group of people on the whole more hateful and hostile to Christianity than Muslims).

The key word is “they profess”. No Muslim I’ve known would admit that Christians worship Allah or that they worship the “polytheistic Christian god”, nor would any Christians in their right mind (disregarding liberal Protestants who want to raise Christianity “above theism and dogma”) claim that they worshiped Allah.

The “hidden decrees of God” for Muslims are “to lay in wait for the infidels in every stratagem of war, and to slay them wherever they are found” (Koran 9:5) and to “wage war against the infidels until they are dead, converted, or brought under the rule of Islamic law by paying the poll tax with debased submission, feeling properly subdued” (Koran 9:29).
 
Thank you for your responses so far. It’s passages like these though that make the God of Islam seem incompatible with the God of Christians:

“The Messiah, Jesus the son of Mary, was no more than God’s apostle . . .God is but one God. GOD FORBID THAT HE SHOULD HAVE A SON!” (4:171)

Those who say: “The Lord of Mercy has begotten a son, preach a monstrous falsehood, at which the very heavens might crack . . .” (19:88)

And written on the top of of the mosque on temple mount is “God has no son.” If they explicitly deny Jesus as the Son of God and have such passages in the Quran as the ones stated above, how can they be worshiping the same God? I understand they claim or desire to worship Him, but are they really?

I am willing to understand this differently though, as I know that the Church has much more wisdom than I do. Is this just a popular theological opinion that was written into the documents of Vatican II but have no intent on being authoritative, or does the fact that it was promulgated through Vatican II give it more weight than that?
 
Joe_Kelley said:
Your disagreement is not with the CCC but with the Fathers of VII.
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This may or may not be true.

The purpose of the passage you cite is to plead with the faithful to forget the animosities of the past.

In order to provide a basis for that conclusion, the writer of the document laid a series of facts presented as accurate.

That is the structure of the passage.

The CCC relies on that passage for what it puts forth as present teaching.

The writer of the underlying document may or may not have been accurate in his description of Muslim belief and practice, and in the conclusion that they believe in the same God that we believe in. There is nothing that preserves bishops from making mistake of facts. That would be superstition. Bishops, even writing official documents, can and have been in the past incorrect.

It is important to note that a mistake of fact does not vitiate the bishops’ right to teach. They have that authority regardless of whether their reasoning is valid or not.
 
Khalid said:
I could not in good conscience remain a Catholic (although the spirit of the times at Vatican II, the new “ecumenical movement”, etc. probably played a role in some of that as an era of great “hope for the future” - and we see how the 1960s and 1970s turned out, two of the worst, most immoral and apostate decades in history [speaking of society, not of the Church]).
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I don’t think you need (or would have needed) to cross that bridge, Khalid.

The bishops have a right to teach that is analogous to a ruler’s right to legislate. Laws may be wise or foolish, but they remain the law.

This right does not carry with it any protection from factual or logical error.

The statements from V2 cited here are aspirational and interpretive of facts. They are not dogmatic. They do not even speak to the Christian faith, but the Muslim religion. It is no more dogmatic than if a bishop remarked that the goddess Diana was “like” our Lady, because she, too, was a perpetual virgin.

Were matters otherwise, there would be no convergence between the faithful and the episcopacy, other than the sacraments. Bishops would, in effect, be oracles. That has never been the Catholic understanding of bishops. Apart from spiritual matters, how else can we communicate, other than through facts and logic?
 
Being first a Muslim, and then an Orthodox, I often am confused on the level of authority accorded to specific individual or documents, or even Papal writings. That’s why I appended, “if this was the dogmatic teaching of the Church” (interpreted as it being a dogma of Catholicism that “Muslims worship the same merciful god, obey his commands without obstinacy” so on): if it was just a teaching, not a dogma, it’s just a teaching. The fact that it was a Conciliar document raised doubts in my mind of the right or ability to question it faithfully, but on further thought, many Conciliar canons have been amended or nullified entirely (such as those requiring the marking of Jews in public).
 
Khalid said:
Being first a Muslim, and then an Orthodox, I often am confused on the level of authority accorded to specific individual or documents, or even Papal writings. That’s why I appended, “if this was the dogmatic teaching of the Church” (interpreted as it being a dogma of Catholicism that “Muslims worship the same merciful god, obey his commands without obstinacy” so on): if it was just a teaching, not a dogma, it’s just a teaching. The fact that it was a Conciliar document raised doubts in my mind of the right or ability to question it faithfully, but on further thought, many Conciliar canons have been amended or nullified entirely (such as those requiring the marking of Jews in public).
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I don’t think a Catholic could say in good faith “The Church desires us to crusade against Muslims.” This would not be a valid statement of current Catholic teaching, and trying to rely on the Council of Clermont to support the view would be fallacious.

That is what I meant when I said the bishops, singly or in council, have the right to teach.

But outside of heresy and dogma, there is no overall guarantee that bishops will be correct, or that their logic will be sound in any given circumstance. They are men, and prone to make mistakes like other men.

Bishop Tetzel allegedly said, when raising money by selling indulgences, that “when a coin into the kettle rings, a soul from purgatory springs.” IF that is what he said, he was wrong, regardless of his office. He was a man, and prone to error like the rest of us.

In examining any given document, it is important to distill the teaching from the reasons and the teachings from dogma.
 
I worship the one who died on the cross for us and that’s it - period. THAT’s why we call ourselves CHRISTIANS not Muslims and I do not worship the same god as muslims. Jesus is one in being with the Father and he was a spirit of humanity not the destructions of humans.
 
Joe_Kelley said:
Note that the CCC basis its statements on the VII document Nostra Aetate, Latin for “In Our Time,” ; which discusses our relationship to non-Christian religions. Your disagreement is not with the CCC but with the Fathers of VII.

Who are the “Fathers of VII?” I read that Louis Massignon was influential to what went into NA and he was accused by some in the Church of being a syncretist.
Joe Kelley;8592190:
Over the centuries many quarrels and dissensions have arisen between Christians and Muslims. The sacred council now pleads with all to forget the past, and urges that a sincere effort be made to achieve mutual understanding; for the benefit of all, let them together preserve and promote peace, liberty, social justice and moral values.
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Forget the past? That approach reeks of post-modernism. The Bible is filled with conflicts should one not read it because “we should forget the past?” I think not. As difficult as some events in history can be they should not be forgotten. I think it is better understand history than to pretend it did not happen. The problem isn’t not forgetting the past it’s not forgiving the past. “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” -George Santayana.
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Hey people,
Khalid said:
Being first a Muslim, and then an Orthodox, I often am confused on the level of authority accorded to specific individual or documents, or even Papal writings. That’s why I appended, “if this was the dogmatic teaching of the Church” (interpreted as it being a dogma of Catholicism that “Muslims worship the same merciful god, obey his commands without obstinacy” so on): if it was just a teaching, not a dogma, it’s just a teaching. The fact that it was a Conciliar document raised doubts in my mind of the right or ability to question it faithfully, but on further thought, many Conciliar canons have been amended or nullified entirely (such as those requiring the marking of Jews in public).
Click to expand...
Joe_Kelley said:
Note that the CCC basis its statements on the VII document Nostra Aetate, Latin for “In Our Time,” ; which discusses our relationship to non-Christian religions. Your disagreement is not with the CCC but with the Fathers of VII.

In regard to Islam this says:
3. The church has also a high regard for the Muslims. They worship God, who is one, living and subsistent, merciful and almighty, the Creator of heaven and earth,1 who has also spoken to humanity. They endeavor to submit themselves without reserve to the hidden decrees of God, just as Abraham submitted himself to God’s plan, to whose faith Muslims eagerly link their own. Although not acknowledging him as God, they venerate Jesus as a prophet; his virgin Mother they also honor, and even at times devoutly invoke. Further, they await the day of judgment and the reward of God following the resurrection of the dead. For this reason they highly esteem an upright life and worship God, especially by way of prayer, alms-deeds and fasting.
Over the centuries many quarrels and dissensions have arisen between Christians and Muslims. The sacred council now pleads with all to forget the past, and urges that a sincere effort be made to achieve mutual understanding; for the benefit of all, let them together preserve and promote peace, liberty, social justice and moral values.
Click to expand...
Several things here:
  • The Church is infallible, whether at a council of Bishops in union with the Pope or the Pope himself, ONLY in matters of faith and morals. The Church can explain to us authoritatively and infallibly what the truths expressed once and for all in the public revelation of Christ (closed/completed at St. John’s death) are, she can tell us infallibly what the Divine Law is and the natural law is. But just as she cannot tell us infallibly whether or not the Earth is flat, or the age of the cosmos, or how gravity functions, she also cannot tell us what other religions outside of catholic faith actually teach, believe or practice.
So I believe that based on the Church’s own teaching alone regarding Revelation and magisterial and papal infallibility, even if today a Council or the Pope repudiated what the VII Council said and the CCC say about non-Catholic faiths and their beliefs and practice, it cannot in any way discredit catholic faith. Because the magisterium describing the content of other faiths is going beyond their mandate and protection (infallibility) and so could be as flat-out wrong as the flat Earth conviction.😉
  • The Church clearly rejects Islam as a religion in the CCC section on the Revelation of Christ. What she says of Muslims, is based on her focus on relations with Muslims and members of other faiths, not on the faiths themselves or their validity.
  • Because Paul clearly acknowledges in scripture the worship of the true God by Greek polytheistic pagans, it’s not all that absurd or contradictory to believe that Muslims **do **worship the true God, but just like the Greeks, have a false and twisted understanding of him, or total lack of credible knowledge of him at all.
-Especially considering Islamic understanding of God as one, invisible, immaterial, eternal, infinite, omni-everything being, I could certainly see why the Council fathers and the authors of the CCC hold this view (which I personally find very accurate) that Muslims worship the true God without knowing him, or with a false understanding of him. Like the former believers in the flat-Earth, they are all speaking of the same reality (God, or the Earth, sun, cosmos) with a very false understanding of it.

Either way, I strongly insist that even if the Church said tomorrow: We were totally wrong about the Muslims- They absolutely have a different god, it would not touch the faith one bit. Councils have condemned certain groups as heretical which have been found later not to have been heretical after all. Is their infallibility false? No! Their condemnation of the heresy was infallible, but their judgment as to whether certain groups held that heresy or not is most certainly not infallible.🤷

Peace.
 
Marybeloved said:
Hey people,

Several things here:
  • The Church is infallible, whether at a council of Bishops in union with the Pope or the Pope himself, ONLY in matters of faith and morals. The Church can explain to us authoritatively and infallibly what the truths expressed once and for all in the public revelation of Christ (closed/completed at St. John’s death) are, she can tell us infallibly what the Divine Law is and the natural law is. But just as she cannot tell us infallibly whether or not the Earth is flat, or the age of the cosmos, or how gravity functions, she also cannot tell us what other religions outside of catholic faith actually teach, believe or practice. So I believe that based on the Church’s own teaching alone regarding Revelation and magisterial and papal infallibility, even if today a Council repudiated what the VII Council and the CCC say about non-Catholic faiths and their beliefs and practice, it cannot in any way discredit catholic faith. Because the church describing the content of other faiths is going beyond their mandate and protection (infallibility) and so could be as flat-out wrong as the flat Earth conviction.
  • The Church clearly rejects Islam as a religion in the CCC section on the Revelation of Christ. What she says of Muslims, is based on her focus on relations with Muslims and members of other faiths, not on the faiths themselves or their validity.
  • Because Paul clearly acknowledges in scripture the worship of the true God by Greek polytheistic pagans, it’s not all that absurd to believe that Muslims do worship the true God, but just like the Greeks, have a false and twisted understanding of him. Especially considering Islamic understanding of God as one, invisible, immaterial, eternal, infinite, omni-everything being, I could certainly see why the Council fathers and the authors of the CCC hold this view (which I personally find very accurate) that Muslims worship the true God without knowing him, or with a false understanding of him. Like the former believers in the flat-Earth, they are all speaking of the same reality (Earth, sun, cosmos) with a very false understanding of it. Either way, i insist that even if the Church said tomorrow: We were wrong about Muslims- They have a different god, it would not touch the faith one bit. Councils have condemned certain groups as heretical which have been found to not be heretical after all. Is their infallibility false? No! Their condemnation of the heresy was infallible, but their judgment as to whether certain groups held that heresy is most certainly not infallible.🤷
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I agree. Whether Muslims worship the same God as Christians is not at all relevant to our salvation, so it really has nothing to do with our faith.
 
CCC 841 is a positive thing for the Christian faith, it shows the generosity of the true GOD, however, Muslims will be considered in the salvation plan but the question is how long they would stay in purgatory…
 
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