S
Shin
Guest
I have looked and I see no quotes out of context. In fact one of my primary tasks is to make certain there are none.
I think Brother J.R. that you might want to look at your own method of speaking and contrast it to the actual words of St. Francis of Assisi, and whether in fact you are not speaking words of commentators and interpreters of him rather than what he actually intended. I have rarely heard you say many of the things the saints and St. Francis have said, the way he and they said them. Instead I hear words of commentators… interpreters… and a great deal can be lost by this. Would you feel comfortable saying straight out, everything he said? Everything the saints say? If not… why not?
Do you think that explaining the deep destructive capacity for sin, and false worship, is foreign to St. Francis and Christianity? We cannot love God and not hate sin, we cannot love neighbor and not warn him of it, even at the risk of martyrdom.
'The earliest sources indicate that St. Francis included the followers of Islam in the general category of “unbelievers” and “infidels” who were in need of conversion to the God of Christianity in order to be baptized and saved. Preaching Christ at the risk of martyrdom was not something to be shirked for a committed disciple like St. Francis. But the revisionist movement offers a contrasting interpretation which de-emphasizes and obscures St. Francis’ mission of saving souls by bringing them to Christ and the True Religion. The crux of this false hypothesis is that St. Francis had no overriding desire to proselytize the Muslims, preferring instead that his friars live in peace and subjection to them. One of the major proponents of this hypothesis is the Dutch teacher and scholar J. Hoeberichts, who admits in his book, ‘Francis and Islam’, that while teaching in Pakistan he was influenced by “Asian theologians of liberation.” (Liberation Theology, often reproved by the Vatican, appears more concerned with the economic plight of the poor than with their spiritual needs and salvation.)
Hoeberichts summarizes his position by stating that St. Francis’s primary objective for his Order was that the friars should be “subject to the Saracens, staying among them without any feeling of superiority and sharing their work and food with them.” In another place he states, “In Francis’ approach, preaching did not take priority.” Further, according to Hoeberichts, martyrdom was also not a consideration: “Francis clearly indicated that he and his brothers were not motivated by a desire for martyrdom,” but should “avoid arguments and disputes and be subject to the Saracens for God’s sake.”
Even the publisher of the English translation of Hoeberichts’ books admits in its Foreward that the author’s view is a “radical reinterpretation.”** This reinterpretation flies in the face of the descriptions of St. Francis’ preaching to the Muslims provided by the original sources and reported in Part II of the present book.** But these accounts are no obstacle for Hoeberichts; instead, he makes the incredible assertion that “the stories about the disputes between Francis and the Saracens must be banished to the land of fables.”
St. Francis did, in fact, in his Rule of 1221, mention that one way his friars could conduct themselves among the Muslims was to simply confess themselves Christians and avoid arguments by living in peaceful subjection. However, this was not the primary objective of the Franciscan mission to Islam, but only applied to those brothers who had not yet discerned that it was God’s will for them openly to preach Christianity. Thus, one way of conduct was essentially passive, without the risk of martyrdom that could come by openly proclaiming Christ. The preferred way, however, was the active one of fulfilling Christ’s commission to preach the Gospel fearlessly, which the early sources clearly document is the way St. Francis acted with the Sultan in Egypt.
Hoeberichts reverses the priority of these two ways of approaching the Muslims. His thesis is aptly refuted by Professor Benjamin Kedar in his acclaimed work, ‘Crusade and Mission.’
. . . There is no doubt that for St. Francis, preaching the word of God came first and foremost, and martyrdom was the risk that had to be taken – as well as the reward that might be proffered. St. Bonaventure affirms the fact that St. Francis was primarily interested in the conversion and salvation of souls. . .
- ‘St. Francis of Assisi, and the Conversion of the Muslims’
looks like you’re not the only one. 
