For Catholics who seem to hate the word "Allah"...

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Rete said:
Allah refers to a completely different idea of God. Allah is not the
Trinity. Allah is not Love. It doesn’t make any sense to me for Catholics to refer to God as
Allah.
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ANND you just dismissed every Arabic speaking Catholic
on the face of the Earth who natively say Allah, some of
whom might be becoming modern martyrs as we speak.
 
Prodigal_Son1 said:
Then what about Mormons, who refer to God in the same terms as we do?
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Mormons are very different, they are polytheists, or henotheists if you
prefer, they have far removed themselves from the Abrahamic family.
 
bsroufek said:
I’m pretty sure that if you were talking to a Catholic priest and referred to God as “Allah”, he would not be pleased.

Does the Church lead you to refer to God as “Allah”? No.

You should follow the teachings and traditions of the Catholic Church.
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Some of the oldest Catholic churches in the world call God Allah.
 
Rete said:
If it would be outrageous for a Catholic priest to refer to God as Allah in the mass, then it probably would be outrageous for a Catholic to do the same in other contexts.

Allah refers to a completely different idea of God. Allah is not the Trinity. Allah is not Love. It doesn’t make any sense to me for Catholics to refer to God as Allah.
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The oldest Catholic churches in the world call God Allah.

These Churches are producing more Christian martyrs today than we are in the west.
 
BTNYC said:
My own ethnic background is Maltese (arguably the most Catholic people on earth). Ours is a semitic language, very closely related to Arabic. The Maltese word for “God” is “Alla.”

I call God “Alla” when speaking Maltese. I call God “God” when speaking English.

Mohammedans use “Allah” when referring to (their false, nontrinitarian concept of) God in English (and other languages) because they believe Arabic to be a divine language (since it is the language their founder “received” his “revelation” in) and therefore no other language has a word as proper for God as “Allah.”

No Christians (not even Arabic speaking Christians) afford Arabic this favored status. We have no reason to. We don’t even afford Hebrew and Greek (the languages of our Scriptures) this status. That’s why you’re not likely to hear an English speaking Christian using “Elohim” or “Theos” to refer to God in everyday speech.

For a Christian to refer to God as “Allah” when speaking any language other than Arabic is pointlessly provocative. It bespeaks a shallow tendency toward exoticism or (much worse) a tacit endorsement of Mohammedan claims. Needless to say, a Christian should avoid this.
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👍👍
 
bsroufek said:
To complain that one people (Western Catholics) aren’t accepting or cozy with the word for God used by another people (Arabs basically) is kind of nationalistic, whether you belong to that people or not. By definition.

It seems you are wanting to fight over words and cultural differences, which don’t generally change. There is no profit in this.
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No, I don’t think you are appropriately defining nationalistic. Misconceptions and Misunderstandings are very harmful not only to society, but to religion as well. Muhammad used Allah to Islam’s advantage, to gain converts, now Muslims in certain countries ban Christians from using the word Allah, as some Muslims are converting to Christianity.
The phrase you used was “no profit”?
 
Then how about Catholics in whose native language Allah means a trinitarian God identical with the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit use the word Allah in their own cultural context, and the rest of us avoid using the word since its context in our culture is very much not that of God. Problem solved. /shrugs
 
Rete said:
Then how about Catholics in whose native language Allah means a trinitarian God identical with the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit use the word Allah in their own cultural context, and the rest of us avoid using the word since its context in our culture is very much not that of God. Problem solved. /shrugs
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What is the problem?
 
Rete said:
Then how about Catholics in whose native language Allah means a trinitarian God identical with the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit use the word Allah in their own cultural context, and the rest of us avoid using the word since its context in our culture is very much not that of God. Problem solved. /shrugs
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But Allah is God. Muslims worship the same one true God. They are incorrect in their understanding of God, but still the same God.
 
BTNYC said:
Mohammedans use “Allah” when referring to (their false, nontrinitarian concept of) God in English (and other languages) because they believe Arabic to be a divine language (since it is the language their founder “received” his “revelation” in) and therefore no other language has a word as proper for God as “Allah.”

For a Christian to refer to God as “Allah” when speaking any language other than Arabic is pointlessly provocative. It bespeaks a shallow tendency toward exoticism or (much worse) a tacit endorsement of Mohammedan claims. Needless to say, a Christian should avoid this.
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You make a fair point about using Allah when speaking English, but other than in this I would speak (or attempt to speak) in Arabic when using my Tasbih (the content of which is not exclusive to Islam).

Also, even though Arabic isn’t the divine language, it still certainly is beautiful. Take the phrase “La illaha illa Allah”, just a series of al’ and 'la sounds and we get that elegant Truth that there is no god except God. VERY POETIC
 
Judas_Thaddeus said:
You make a fair point about using Allah when speaking English, but other than in this I would speak (or attempt to speak) in Arabic when using my Tasbih (the content of which is not exclusive to Islam).

Also, even though Arabic isn’t the divine language, it still certainly is beautiful. Take the phrase “La illaha illa Allah”, just a series of al’ and 'la sounds and we get that elegant Truth that there is no god except God. VERY POETIC
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The gold mask of Tutankhamun is very beautiful. But it doesn’t belong in a Catholic sanctuary.

The Popl Vuh is very poetic, but it doesn’t belong in a Catholic liturgical reading.

There is a venerable old saying in the Church that can even be found in the Catechism: “Lex orandi, lex credendi,” The law of prayer is the law of belief. It means just that - The manner in which we pray will inform what and how we believe.

Thus, to be Catholic, we must pray like Catholics.

There is absolutely no good to be found in the religion of Mohammed that cannot be found in the Catholic Church. If you had a choice between clear, clean drinking water and a spring that contained, in addition to water, a certain amount of poison, why would you slake your thirst in the latter over the former? Even if the spring contained only trace amounts of poison… why choose it over clean water?

The Islamic chaplet to which you refer is essentially a Mohammedan copy of the ancient Christian Kombologion (100 beads, used to mark 100 repetitions of the Jesus Prayer). This is a genuine Christian prayer of ancient and venerable pedigree. Why not incorporate it into your prayer life rather than an anti-trinitarian bastardization of it?

“There is no God but God” can, in the abstract, be stated in a perfectly orthodox Christian sense. So why should we not use it? Because it is a specifically islamic formulation, formulated by and for men who view God as “one” in a sense that totally rejects the Holy Dogma of the Trinity. Therefore it should be avoided altogether and not incorporated into Christian prayer - Lex orandi, lex credendi.

Talk to a good, orthodox Catholic priest about this as soon as possible (emphasis on “good” and “orthodox”).
 
Judas_Thaddeus said:
“Pretty sure” isn’t absolute, I’m gonna need more of a commitment than that. I need you to say that you absolutely know beyond a doubt. Dare you.

The Catholic Church I don’t believe has an opinion on the word “Allah”.

And as for “teachings and traditions of the Catholic Church”, we are again slamming into the language barrier issue. Should we avoid “God” deriving from the Proto-Germanic ǥuđan deriving from the Proto-Indo-European * ǵhu-tó-m based on the root * ǵhau(ə)-, which meant either “to call” or “to invoke”? Why did we abandon the Hebrew “El”? Do we shun Jesus who in his earthly ministry likely used the Aramaic “Elah”?

Why do you shun Arab Christians today for using terms such as Allāh al-Ab (الله الأب, ‘God the Father’), Allāh al-ibn (الله الابن, God the Son), and Allāh al-rūḥ al-quds (الله الروح القدس, God the Holy Spirit)? Why couldn’t we Catholics just stick with the original Greek, as seen in John for example: “En archē ēn ho Lógos, kai ho Lógos ēn pros ton Theón, kai Theós ēn ho Lógos”?

You are making out my use of “Allah” as antiCatholic, when you are in fact barring Catholics from Muslims based on such a pitiful matter as language.
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👍:)👍
 
BTNYC said:
The law of prayer is the law of belief… …Thus, to be Catholic, we must pray like Catholics.
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Okay so “No god except God” is out the window. God is surely not great. Glory / Praise
to God? No No, we don’t need that, we are Catholic so we can’t say any of those things.
(I hope you caught the sarcasm)
BTNYC said:
There is absolutely no good to be found in the religion of Mohammed that cannot be found in the Catholic Church.
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So what is the problem? Take the good, forget the bad, is what I’m doing.
BTNYC said:
If you had a choice between clear, clean drinking water and a spring that contained, in addition to water, a certain amount of poison, why would you slake your thirst in the latter over the former?
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I can both have the clean water and filter the tainted water, even take the clean water from which the poison was filtered out.
BTNYC said:
Why not incorporate it (Christian Kombologion) into your prayer life rather than an anti-trinitarian bastardization of it?
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Well first, I didn’t know about the Kombologion, but I can still use both that and the Tasbih, which isn’t an anti-trinitarian bastardization. Glory to God, Praise to God, God is Great, No god Except God, where is the anti-trinitarian bastardization?
BTNYC said:
“There is no God but God” can, in the abstract, be stated in a perfectly orthodox Christian sense. So why should we not use it? Because it is a specifically islamic formulation, formulated by and for men who view God as “one” in a sense that totally rejects the Holy Dogma of the Trinity. Therefore it should be avoided altogether and not incorporated into Christian prayer - Lex orandi, lex credendi.
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It’s the abstract I’m focusing on. Plus I am incorporating the “Glory be” Christian prayer into the Tasbih, AND I specifically beaded the tasbih in such a way as to remind me of the Trinity. Law of Prayer is Law of Belief? I pray to One God, believe in only One God, which doesn’t diminish my belief in the Trinity, and you can’t impose such meaning on me.

I do mean to talk to a Catholic priest soon.
 
Allah is simply ‘God’ in Arabic. That’s all. Muslims use Allah a lot because their prayers and holy text have to be read in Arabic, thus words like Insha’Allah (God willing) and Mash’Allah (an expression of joy) are in their vocabulary. Most of us don’t speak Arabic so why use Allah anyway?

Even for a Christian who does use that word, I don’t see what the fuss is. I also use Insha’Allah, wallah, Mash’Allah, Alhamdullilah etc. occasionally. With the community I live in, plus Swahili borrowing lots of Arabic words, you eventually get used to such variations.and phrases.

Picture this: The Arabic version of the devil is ‘Shaitan’. In Swahili it’s ‘shetani’, and is used by both religions. So should we also ditch that word because it is derived from Arabic?

At the end of the day, no matter the language, God is one.
 
Using Allah is a tradition one of which I as a Latin Rite, American Catholic do not share.

God is my tradition.
 
I love to learn from you. I am very interested in history. I just wanted to say that a name is just a name even if we are talking about God or Allah. God is only the name we we give God. It is not God. As someone that I read his books says " the words are just pointers to what our heart is trying to say." Well as in my language says Adios or go with God!🙂
 
BTNYC said:
There is absolutely no good to be found in the religion of Mohammed that cannot be found in the Catholic Church.
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While true in the grand scheme of Truth, they may have good ways of expressing themselves that we can use ourselves in a perfectly orthodox way, just as we’ve done in relation to Protestants in the past. The example I’m specifically referring to right now is of the Advent Wreath, which I believe was originally put together by a Lutheran church and then spread to other Protestant churches, and because of the orthodox and beautifully expressive nature of the wreath, Catholics too have adopted it. Similarly, if Muslims have a beautiful way to express a truth about God that we too believe, why can’t we use it? Because it originated from Muslims? So what?! The time of year for some Christian holidays, such as All Saints Day and Christmas, were set as what they are to have a Christian replacement for pagan holidays. Do you mean to say that this shouldn’t have been done because celebrations on those days were originally pagan? Truth is truth, and just because another religion came up with a way to express a truth that we share with them doesn’t mean we can’t use it.

“There is no god but God.” Is this not the first commandment?
 
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