In the past, the Catholic Church has used its Theologians and Apologists to counter false Prophets and false ideas with strong language and long documents.
“Long documents” is an interesting term. I have certainly seen strong language come from the Magisterium against false teachings. Some documents on the subject are long, some are short. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith continues to produce documents identifying and refuting errors in theological books and calling on heretical authors to recant or be punished. For example,
here is a Vatican document which condemns a false theology book and identifies its errors.
Here is another with an associated
commentary.
Here is one where the Vatican describes its interaction with a heretical priest and nun; they both refused to recant certain heretical teachings on sexuality, so the Church in that document punishes them by forbidding them from certain pastoral positions in the Catholic Church:
“[We] declare for the good of the Catholic faithful that the positions advanced by Sister Jeannine Gramick and Father Robert Nugent…are doctrinally unacceptable… The ambiguities and errors of [their] approach…have caused confusion among the Catholic people and have harmed the community of the Church. For these reasons, [they] are permanently prohibited from any pastoral work involving homosexual persons and are ineligible, for an undetermined period, for any office in their respective religious institutes.”
source
To me, that is pretty harsh language.
I’m reading Augustine, and he strongly condemns many false beliefs; just like Aquinas condemns Islam in harsh terms. It seems like Popes and councils continued to call Muhammad false, as well as his Religion for centuries. Now however it seems in an effort to respond in love; the Catholic Church tiptoes around criticizing Islam.
I don’t think so. Here’s a paragraph from St. John Paul 2’s book Crossing the Threshold of Hope:
"Whoever knows the Old and New Testaments, and then reads the Koran, clearly sees the process by which it completely reduces Divine Revelation. It is impossible not to note the movement away from what God said about Himself, first in the Old Testament through the Prophets, and then finally in the New Testament through His Son. In Islam all the richness of God’s self-revelation, which constitutes the heritage of the Old and New Testaments, has definitively been set aside. [Paragraph break.] Some of the most beautiful names in the human language are given to the God of the Koran, but He is ultimately a God outside of the world, a God who is only Majesty, never Emmanuel, God-with-us. Islam is not a religion of redemption. There is no room for the Cross and the Resurrection. … [The] tragedy of redemption is complerely absent. For this reason not only the theology but also the anthropology of Islam is very distant from Christianity. … [But we should still] have a dialogue with followers of the ‘Prophet.’ "
source
To me, I think that is pretty harsh language, especially coming from an ecumenical pope. I especially note how the word Prophet is put in quotation marks. (He does it again on
page 43.) Mohammed is not a true prophet, he is a “prophet.” (I checked the Italian original, the one written by the pope himself, and the quote marks are in that one too.) And there are also well-received Catholic apologists who write lengthy works against Islam, such as Robert Spencer of Catholic Answers.
So unless I’m missing something (and I may be) would the Catholic Church still write any kind of Apology against the false Religion that is Islam, as well as the false prophet that is Muhammad; without fear of labeling it as such? Or are we beyond that?
Robert Spencer still labels Islam a false religion and Mohammed a false prophet. St. John Paul 2’s document quoted above essentially does the same thing. Other Catholics who loudly fight Islam include Walid Shoebat. I don’t think Mr. Spencer or Mr. Shoebat have endorsements from the popes, but I think at least some of their books have imprimaturs from their bishops. So yeah, it still happens.
I hope this helps. God bless!
