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Fone_Bone_2001
Guest
Sounds reasonable to me - both the scenario and your choice to consult your spiritual father.
Oh, I don’t disagree with you, nor am I implying that Islam is a peaceful religion across the board. Far from it; it has serious problems in this regard.
Yes, I agree with you here. We cannot be perceived to approve of false beliefs. My impression of these events, however, is that prayers are either (a) individual (literally what I identified as praying next to them), which simply encourages peaceful coexistence, or (b) deliberately crafted beforehand so as to include only common ground.
I wholeheartedly agree, of course, that any implication that Islamic teaching is true or good across the board must be avoided. Our disagreement is a practical one, Mickey.
The Latin Catholic understanding of Genesis 18 also teaches that the three strangers are the three divine Persons of the Holy Trinity.
At least, that’s what I’ve always been taught about that Bible story, and I’ve been a member of the Latin Church since I was baptized as an infant.
Officially - as the documents of the Second Vatican Council, the recent Catechism of the Catholic Church, etc. attest - it’s a rather open question. The Catholic Church encourages cooperation and ecumenism, potentially including some type of interfaith prayer.
But as you also know, the Catholic Church always stands firm against religious relativism. Plenty of recent papal teachings - for instance, in last decade’s Dominus Iesus - firmly reiterate that Jesus is the only way to salvation, that the Catholic Church is the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church founded by our Lord, etc.
So Catholics are called to walk a fine line: stay true to Christian orthodoxy while meaningfully and openheartedly engaging the world and other faiths.
When they pray, they pray to someone. And the one to whom they intend to pray, and whom they intend to worship, is the God of Abraham. Of course they are dead wrong to deny that God is a Trinity. What that shows is that because of their errors, they fail to see that God (yes, their God, the One True God), is a Trinity.
As I said, the Catholic teaching that we share the same God is actually an implicit assertion that Islam is in grave error on this matter: it necessarily implies, “You and your Qur’an are wrong about your God, Who is actually Triune.”
It’s possible to communicate through prayer with the One True God, Who is, after all, omniscient, despite believing falsehoods about Him. That is the position Muslims find themselves in.
I do agree with you on this, Mickey. I don’t think it’s accurate to say that Islam is somehow “Christian.” Pope John Paul II himself referred to it as “a religion without redemption,” which is not an insult but a simple statement pointing out that they do not have the Savior, our Lord Jesus, the Son of God… thus, no redemption.
Exactly.
I’m not sure. Its source is the Second Vatican Council’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, so as a teaching of an Ecumenical Council it is certainly authoritative and binding on all the faithful.
I sort of think “Is that an infallible teaching?” is the wrong question, though, because it’s not even really an assertion. It’s more like a recognition of a logically necessary conclusion: Muslims, despite their errors, believe that there is one God, eternal, incorporeal, omniscient, omnipotent, divine simplicity, etc. Thus when they pray… who hears their prayers but the only God who actually exists, Whose uniqueness as the only God they consciously recognize? As I said above, the teaching actually presupposes and inherently asserts that they are in error. It logically follows from the teaching that Muslims adore the One True God that their teachings and Qur’an (which deny the Trinity) are in grave error.
