This was prior to the institution of the New Covenant. Their worship looked forward to the coming of the Christ. However, given that Christ has already come, their religion is a profession contrary to the Catholic faith which holds that Jesus is the Christ.
It is not contrary to the Catholic faith. It falls short. There is a difference. We share the same faith, but when they stop, we continue with Christ. The Church does not subscribe to that idea that the Jewish faith is contrary to our faith. Never say that to anyone, because you would be saying something that is contrary to the belief of the Church.
I don’t think St. Francis absolutely disregarded proselytism if the story of him and the Sultan is true. Of course, antagonizing people is wrong.
St. Francis was very much against proselytism. Ask the friars who have been in the Custody of the Holy Land for more than 750 years.
I fail to understand why you and other laymen keep wanting to teach us Franciscans that story about Francis and the Sultan, rather than let us teach it to you. After all, that story is part of our Franciscan legends.
That story has been distorted so many times that it’s sad.
St. Bonaventure first told the story in his biography of Francis. But if we read the letters from St. Bonaventure at the beginning of the biography, he makes it clear that he has chosen to put together Francis’ life by themes, not by historical facts. In other words, Bonaventure sets out to write a theological work on St. Francis. not a work of history in the strict sense.
Everything that he writes has an undercurrent. Everything in the work is connected to a theme.
That particular story Bonaventure takes and places it in the section of the biography where he deals with Francis’ love for Christ and desire for the cross. So strong was his desire for the cross that he was willing to accept martyrdom to do as St. Paul said, “Conform to Christ in all things, even in the cross.”
The point that St. Bonaventure wants the reader to take home with him is that Francis sets out to achieve two things and Bonaventure is not sure which one was more important to Francis.
One objective was to achieve martyrdom. If you walk into a Muslim camp preaching about Christianity, you are almost guaranteed martyrdom.
The other objective was to convert the Sultan, because he had heard the stories that the crusader brought back about the Muslims being practically demons. However, here is where Bonaventure points us in a different direction. Francis finds that the Sultan and his people are not devils. They are people of faith. They are also people of culture. The Sultan spoke fluent French. That’s how he and Francis communicated, because Francis is half French and spoke fluent French.
Francis also found that the Sultan was not out to kill him or every Christian, but that he also had some legitimate issues with the Christians. Not all of his issues were legitimate, but some were. Francis, being a mass of peace and justice, was open to listening to him.
Bonaventure points out that when they parted, Francis had failed to convert the Sultan, but they had parted as good friends and Francis left with a letter from the Sultan allowing him and his brothers safe passage through Egypt to Palestine. For centuries, the brothers have gone that route to Palestine, because the Moroccans murdered them when they try to go from west to to east.
Francis was delighted when he got to Jerusalem. He was so delighted that he did several things there. He created the Stations of the Cross to bring back to Europe. He adopted the method of prayer and meditation of the Muslims to teach to his friars, which we use to this day. He gave his brothers the command to avoid all forms of conflicts, arguments, and to be submissive to all men. They were to provide service to the Christians and to any Muslim, Jew or Orthodox who asked; but they were never to initiate conversion of the Muslims, Jews or Orthodox. To this day, the popes have upheld that mandate. Now it had become an official mandate of the Church to the Catholics in the region. It became so under Gregory IX.
So what Francis started out to do was based on distorted information. He gradually changed his approach as the time with the Sultan went on. By the time he left, his approach was very different from when he arrived.
Bonaventure is trying to point out to us the spiritual side of Francis, which is that love for the cross and his desire to bring all men to conversion from their sins, not from their religion. That seems to have been his starting point, but he did not end up there. By the end, he was much more tolerant and patient than most Catholics are today. He was willing to wait for them to come to us. Something that we don’t seem to want to do. We want to drag them into the Church.
If you have never had an animal, there is something called the opposition reflex. When you drag, the animal pulls in the opposite direction. Francis became very ware of this and told his brothers not to drag anyone. Why the rest of you folks don’t take this good advice is beyond us Franciscans. It is truly something that we don’t understand.
Some of you keep shoving that story in our faces out of context without paying attention to what Bonaventure is trying to do. According to Celana, who was an eye witness, Bonaventure emballishes the story with hagiography to drive home a theological point.
