Syncretistic prayers with Muslims... any advice?

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FabiusMaximus said:
Muslims have a distorted vision of God, as do Jews.

Praying with them gives no fruitful outcome.

I don’t even think it’d be a stretch to say that the Muslim God was not the same as ours.
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I know that’s not true! Jews do not have a distorted view of God. Their view is not as explicit! The outcome of being a Jew is that you are the chosen people. Jews are favored by God. I’m not even aware of any views on God himself that changed with the New Testament. God is God! Christ was a Jew!
 
israelcatholic said:
Hello everyone,

A case has come to my attention recently of a Catholic community here in Jerusalem that prays together with Muslims.

Does anyone know of a Magisterial document that says that this is wrong so that we could take action and write to the superior of the community?

thanks in advance,

Ariel
Catholics for Israel
www.catholicsforisrael.com
catholicsforisrael.blogspot.com/
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Ok I looked it up, it’s called “Nostra Aetate”, one of teh 3 conciliar declarations of the ecumenical council of Vatican II. See paragraphs III and V.

Also see the “guidelines and suggestions for implementing the Conciliar declaration of Nostra Aetate”. Look at the Dialogue Topic to find specificis including the 5th paragraph down.

Note that this declaration does not allow a catholic to overlook any doctrine or their faith or beliefs.

Now in 2011, last Oct, Pope Benedict gave us a practical example when he met with an interfaith summit, but in this case prayer was private and not mandatory. The Popes wish was to not cast the impression that the religions and beliefs were identical. But in fairness Pope Beneict had been very critical of Pope John Paul openly. Even Pope Benedicts decision to hold the summit was criticized by Catholics. So there is a strong fundamental arm that wishes to have no interfaith prayer. But regardless of this desire Nostra Aetate remains a declaration of our faith.

Please keep in mind that simultanous and syncroneous prayers with muslims is not the same as the word you used: syncretistic. That word is a very specific word that means to merge and compromise on one’s faith. That’s is not allowed because Nostra Aetate does not serve as infaliable doctrine over other doctrines of faith. But, I think you used that word perhaps in a personal bias against the person who prayed with Muslims. So you really have to decide whether your word you used was fair and accurate to what the member was doing and if so how? Was the member modifying their prayers and chaning their our father or nicene creed? Those would only be a few ways, but I wanted to give examples on what would not be allowed.

The best way to implement interfaith prayer is to agree on a topic and have simultaneous private prayer without mandate of prayer. A muslim and a jew and a catholic could agree to pray for peace at the same time. This already existed long before the declaration. For example when previous catholics died, those who are not catholic would attend and prayer their own prayers for the bereaved and the deceased soul.
 
Contarini said:
The One True God.
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Baltimore Catechism:
Q. 1148. How do we offer God false worship?

A. We offer God false worship by rejecting the religion He has instituted and following one pleasing to ourselves, with a form of worship He has never authorized, approved or sanctioned.
Contarini said:
Note that according to the New Testament and the early Church generally, even pagans were referring to the true God when they spoke of a supreme Being in whom “we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17 and Romans 1 are the clearest examples of this in the NT–it’s implicit in all the early Christian apologists as well).
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“But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true adorers shall adore the Father in spirit and in truth. For the Father also seeketh such to adore him.” John. 4:23.

“The Mohammedan Paradise, is only fit for beasts; for filthy sensual pleasure is all the believer has to expect there.” St. Alphonsus de Liguori, History of Heresies, Vol. 1., ch. vii., art. 1.
Contarini said:
Note further that St. Thomas Aquinas clearly identifies the God of pagan, Jewish, and Islamic philosophers with the God of Christian revelation, merely claiming that Christians have fuller truth about this God.
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“But through unbelief man is separated most from God: because he has no true knowledge of God. Nor can anyone in any way know God who holds a false opinion of Him” Summa Theologica II - II q. 10, Art. 3
Contarini said:
But we’ve been over and over this before, and the fact that your side has no solid arguments doesn’t change a thing, because this isn’t a position that depends on reason.

Edwin
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“He that believeth in him is not judged. But he that doth not believe, is already judged: because he believeth not in the name of the only begotten Son of God.” John 3:18
 
Mickey said:
Wow! So then it is required of every Catholic to believe that they share the same god as the muslims because of this document. Are you really labeled as a dissenter if you do not accept this?
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As I said earlier in this thread, the source for CCC 841 is Lumen Gentium - for Catholics, considered to be a teaching of an ecumenical council. I do not know whether the bishops intended to teach infallibly with Lumen Gentium, but even if they didn’t, the document is certainly authoritative and universally binding on Catholics, thus requiring religious submission of intellect and will. After all, you can’t get any higher than an ecumenical council (the pope is himself part of an ecumenical council and is its head, not an arbitrary authority over and outside it), and Lumen Gentium is a “dogmatic constitution,” the very highest authority of any document of Vatican II (there are some sixteen or so documents, and only four are dogmatic constitutions).
jam070406 said:
Do you believe the Koran is inspired by the Holy Spirit?
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Definitely not.

Do you realize the ramifications of dismissing a teaching of an ecumenical council? I don’t ask this question of our brother Mickey in this thread, since he can reject Catholic teaching quite consistently, as he believes the Orthodox Church is the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church.

The Catholics in this thread, however, enjoy no such luxury.
jam070406 said:
Wait wait…you’re saying this matter concerning worship of the same God is a matter of dogma!?
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No, I’m not actually saying that. At least, I don’t think so. Dogmas are teachings like the Incarnation, the Trinity, the full divinity and humanity of Christ, the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, her Immaculate Conception, etc.

A teaching on who someone else prays to isn’t really an article of faith, so I don’t think it’d be right to call it dogma. But Vatican II did proclaim it as true in one of its dogmatic constitutions, so it’s certainly an authoritative and universally binding teaching of an ecumenical council, and it follows logically and necessarily from what we believe about God and prayer.
 
Fone_Bone_2001 said:
Do you realize the ramifications of dismissing a teaching of an ecumenical council?
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I have not dismissed a teaching of an ecumenical council. Please stop trying to paint me as a dissenter, it is uncharitable and I don’t appreciate it.

841 “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.”

Yes, when they accept Jesus they will indeed adore Him, the Creator, on the last day with us. That plan of salvation is Jesus. They must accept Him for all this to entail.
Right now, as it stands, Muslims do not acknowledge the Creator Jesus, whom we confess “through Him all things are made”

For which reason conventions, meetings and addresses are frequently arranged by these persons, at which a large number of listeners are present, and at which all without distinction are invited to join in the discussion, both infidels of every kind, and Christians, even those who have unhappily fallen away from Christ or who with obstinacy and pertinacity deny His divine nature and mission. Certainly such attempts can nowise be approved by Catholics, founded as they are on that false opinion which considers all religions to be more or less good and praiseworthy, since they all in different ways manifest and signify that sense which is inborn in us all, and by which we are led to God and to the obedient acknowledgment of His rule. Not only are those who hold this opinion in error and deceived, but also in distorting the idea of true religion they reject it, and little by little. turn aside to naturalism and atheism, as it is called; from which it clearly follows that one who supports those who hold these theories and attempt to realize them, is altogether abandoning the divinely revealed religion.

vatican.va/holy_father/pius_xi/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_19280106_mortalium-animos_en.html
 
couponfit said:
I know that’s not true! Jews do not have a distorted view of God. Their view is not as explicit! The outcome of being a Jew is that you are the chosen people. Jews are favored by God. I’m not even aware of any views on God himself that changed with the New Testament. God is God! Christ was a Jew!
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I AM CHRISTIAN AND there is no other truth than JESUS IS GOD and always will be to the end of Time.
 
Jesus in God and God in Jesus. Praise be to Jesus Christ our Lord, our God. For he is wonderful and great and He is the Truth.
 
Did Christ our Lord kneel down and pray in front of a statue to God; or was it Our Lord that taught us to pary to God?
 
St Augustine
Why are you so unreasonable as not to consider that, as it was possible for the Jews to remain hardened in unbelief after hearing the voice from heaven, so it was possible for them, when Christ said that Moses wrote of Him, to refrain from asking what Moses wrote, because in their ingenious hostility they were afraid of being proved to be in the wrong?
 
“What good does your faith [Islam] have when it is deception, falsehood, myth, error…”
(The Neo-Martyr St Christos the boatman from Preveza, Greece—killed my the Muslims in 1668)
 
Mickey said:
Then my understanding is that it is not binding on Latin Catholics to believe that muslims have the same God.
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It is a binding teaching on Catholics. Lumen Gentium is binding. Binding and infallible are two different things, all the Church’s teachings are binding, they are not all infallible.
 
TMC said:
It is a binding teaching on Catholics. Lumen Gentium is binding. Binding and infallible are two different things, all the Church’s teachings are binding, they are not all infallible.
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So you are saying that there are non-infallible binding teachings…and infallible binding teachigs? Are there non-infallible non-binding teachings? Where do you find your information about this non-infalible binding teaching?

Furthermore, there were Popes prior to Vatican II who taught the opposite regarding Islam…which teachings are the true non-infallible binding teachings?
 
TMC said:
It is a binding teaching on Catholics. Lumen Gentium is binding. Binding and infallible are two different things, all the Church’s teachings are binding, they are not all infallible.
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Yes Lumen Gentium reaffirms that those Muslims that acknowledge the Creator, Jesus, and profess the Faith of Abraham, the Christian Faith, are included in the plan of salvation and will adore the just judge, Jesus, along with us.

Read in light of Tradition no problem.

What it doesn’t say is that Catholics and Muslins worship the same God.
 
Mickey said:
Christ was/is the Messiah. The Son of the Living God.
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The second statement doesn’t make the first statement I made false. My response was to the statement that Jews had a distorted view of God. It’s not distorted! It’s not complete! There’s a difference. In fact our view and the Jews are exactly the same up to the end of the old testament. For the first maybe 400 years we christians did not even have a “new testament”. We followed the jewish service which in the 200’s was deemed insufficient (not distorted).
 
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