Catholic working in an Islamic School

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auscath75

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Dear All

I am a Catholic working in the Islamic School as a Bursar. My employer is wonderful, the conditions are great. My employer, however loves to talk theology with me. I feel completely ill equiped to deal with some of his arguments or retort some of his own.

Namely he questions the trinity -the concept and historical background of the theology. He questions Christ’s crucifixion ( I find the Islamic thought on what happened quite ridiculous). He questions and brings his own history to the Virgin Mary and the background of her pregnancy and the events that followed.

Obviously this is all been done with the greatest of respect and he continuously highlights our similarities (We all love Jesus, We all love Mother Mary, We all love God)

I would like some kind of arguments to retort with.

Any help would be wonderful. Thanks for your help!

Kind Regards, God Bless

Ann from Australia!
 
I have found the Catechism of the Catholic Church to be helpful in understanding the parts of the Catholic religion that I am sometimes baffled with. I do not know if you are allowed but, it is helpful to attend RCIA at your local church, if for no other reason than to stay updated on our faith.

Good luck to you and your Islamic neighbor!:blessyou:
 
Its my understanding that Muslims believe that the Gospels were corrupted and are thus not inspired. Thus, its going to be difficult to have a reasonable dialogue on a number of issues if you believe in the New Testament based on faith and your employer does not, but instead believes in another book on faith.
 
Danquayle76 said:
Its my understanding that Muslims believe that the Gospels were corrupted and are thus not inspired. Thus, its going to be difficult to have a reasonable dialogue on a number of issues if you believe in the New Testament based on faith and your employer does not, but instead believes in another book on faith.
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Not necessarily. In fact, that’s the weak point of Muslims: They do not make the distinction between Protestantism and Catholicism.

Muslims make the assertion that the entire Bible is corrupted to some degree, and back this up by arguing that there are different translations of the Bible (e.g. KJV, ESV, DRB, etc). And because there are different translations, the Word of God has allegedly been corrupted.

However, this criticism is only applicable to Protestants who follow “sola scriptura”, which is latin for “by scripture alone”. In other words, Protestants generally believe the Holy Spirit will guide them personally to the correct interpretation of the Bible. With the varying translations of different Bibles, Muslims argue that this can not be possible. And they have a point: How can you interpret the same thing with different translations?

Yet, Muslims can not criticize Catholicism, the one true Church initiated by Jesus Christ (Matthew 16:18) because Catholics believe in the two-fold equation of Sacred Tradition (teachings not necessarily in the Bible, or explained explicitly, but has been handed down successively from the apostles of old) and Sacred Scripture (Bible). To that end, Catholics believe that the Bible is interpreted by the Magisterium rather than individual followers. The Magisterium creates a universal standard interpretation of the Bible for the faithful, and therefore advancing only one Truth. History backs this up: As the oldest existing institution in the world today, the Church has not reversed one single infallible teaching/doctrine (e.g. on birth control, abortion, Immaculate Conception, Trinity, etc). To quote William Shakespeare, “truth is truth till the end of the reckoning”. And the Church has spoken Truth for 2000+ years, and will continue to do so as the world rotates. From this, the Church precedes the Quran’s existence, and is therefore the one that is true. We know this because at the death of the last apostle, no other teaching could/can be added to the “deposit of faith” (Sacred Tradition/Sacred Scripture). To quote St. Paul, “But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed” (Galatians 1:8). Such passage easily diminishes the credibility of Muhammad who was to come later and claim to receive a message from the archangel Gabriel. Muhammad may have been delusional, or he may have even be confused by the Devil, who can appear as an “angel of light” (2 Corinthians 11:14).

The error is on his part for conflating Catholicism with Protestantism. There are major differences between the two, and Catholicism came before Protestantism, so that makes his arguments even more erroneous.
 
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