But Lack of Curiosity may kill the Catholic Church
In his book, On Islam, Fr. James Schall, S.J. notes that ever since Vatican II, Church scholars have been more interested in dialoguing with Muslims than in questioning the truth of Islam’s claims.
For example, says Schall, the claim that Muhammad received a revelation from God is “unbelievable on any rational grounds.” Why is that? Well, for one thing, the Quran was composed about six centuries after the Gospels and much of it borrows heavily from the Old and New Testaments. In other words, it merely “reveals” what has already been revealed. Moreover, the Quran flatly contradicts the Bible on many key points. For instance, it denies the Trinity, the Divinity of Jesus, and the Crucifixion.
Which account is the true one? Anyone with an ounce of intellectual curiosity would want to know. But the current crop of Catholic clerics doesn’t seem to have much in the way of intellectual curiosity. Instead, their emphasis is on acceptance, accompaniment, fellowship, and good feelings. Indeed, when asked about their progress, Catholic dialoguers frequently mention the friendships they have made as though friendship, rather than getting at the truth of things, is the whole point of dialogue.
This habit of fudging the truth for the sake of fellowship goes back to the publication of Nostra Aetate, the Vatican II Declaration on the relation of the Church to non-Christian religions. Last week, Pope Leo XIV celebrated the 60th anniversary of the publication of Nostra Aetate and in keeping with the title of the anniversary celebration, “Walking Together in Hope,” he invited his audience to “walk together in hope”… “to keep hope alive, and to keep dialogue alive, and to keep love alive in the heart of the world.”
He also stressed the message of commonality that is the main theme of Nostra Aetate, noting that “hope” and “pilgrimage” “are realities common to all our religious traditions.”
At this point a red flag popped into my mind, and I recalled that the annual pilgrimage to Mecca is off-limits to Christians and, for that matter, for all non-Muslims. So, we can “walk together in hope,” but non-Muslims are well-advised not to do any walking in the vicinity of Mecca.
Another red flag popped up when I read Pope Leo’s assertion that “we cannot truly call on God, the Father of all, if we refuse to treat in a brotherly or sisterly way any man or women created in the image of God.” Unlike Christians, however, Muslims do not believe that God is a father, and it would be blasphemous to refer to him as “our father.” Moreover, Islam does not teach that we are created in the image of God. Allah is considered to be above everything and absolutely unique. Thus, humans cannot possibly be created in God’s image.
Pope Leo seems to be ignorant of some of the basics of Islam, but so, one can assume, are the advisors and speech writers who should have caught his mistakes. In fact, ignorance of Islam is widespread among the clergy and the laity. It seems safe to say that most Catholics today assume that Islam and Christianity are much closer than they really are, and Nostra Aetate bears much of the blame for this misunderstanding. The whole point of the section of Nostra Aetate that deals with Muslims is to convince Catholics that Islam and Christianity are very much alike. The document claims that both adore the same God, both revere Jesus and honor Mary, and both “value the moral life and worship God through prayer, almsgiving, and fasting.”
But the illusion that Christians and Muslims share the same beliefs and values can only be sustained by omitting the beliefs and practices that are not shared in common. It’s true that Catholics and Muslims adore the one God, but the God Christians believe in is a Trinity and the God of Islam is not. This is no small point of difference that can be glossed over. In fact, Muslims believe that to call God a Trinity is the greatest sin that one can commit.
Do Muslims revere Jesus and honor Mary? Well, yes. But it’s not the same Jesus and Mary. Read the Quran, and you will see that the Muslim Jesus bears very little resemblance to Jesus of Nazareth.
How about the claim that Muslims value the moral life? Yes, they do, but in many respects it’s a different code of morality from the one followed by Christians. A Muslim can have four wives, marry a twelve-year-old, and wage jihad, and still be considered a highly moral person. Unfortunately, the upbeat picture of Islam presented in Nostra Aetate does not prepare Christians for the reality.
Not that Nostra Aetate was all bad. It did help bring about an improvement in the Church’s relation with Jews. But it also marked the point at which the Church turned away from its clear-eyed view of Islam and adopted in its place a nonsensical view of Islam—one that was based largely on the work of one man.
The authors of Nostra Aetate were greatly influenced by the work of Louis Massignon, a French Catholic scholar of Arabic and Islamic studies. Although Masignon was intelligent and widely read, various personal problems and spiritual experiences led him to concentrate his studies on the life of a relatively marginal figure in Islam, Mansour al-Hallaj, an obscure tenth-century Sufi mystic who is considered a heretic by most Muslims. In al-Hallaj, Massignon saw a kindred soul, and even believed that al-Hallaj had interceded for him with God.
The trouble is that the Sufis are a small sect and one that is unrepresentative of mainstream Islam; and al-Hallaj was more like a Catholic mystic than a Muslim teacher. Nevertheless, Massignon spent most of his life studying al-Hallaj and writing about his life.
As a consequence, Massignon, his students and his followers came to identify authentic Islam with one man’s eccentric beliefs. As Edward Said, an Arab-American scholar noted, Massignon used Hallaj “to embody…values essentially outlawed by the mainstream doctrinal system of Islam, a system that Massignon himself described mainly in order to circumvent it…”
In short, despite all his scholarly credentials, Massignon was almost completely wrong about Islam. For a rough analogy, imagine that a Muslim scholar spent his life studying the work of Jesuit scientist Pierre Teilhard Chardin and managed to convince his followers that Chardin’s esoteric speculations about the evolution of the “noosphere” was the essence of the Catholic Faith.
It speaks volumes for the sorry state of Catholic understanding of Islam that Louis Massignon’s feverish obsession with al-Hallaj is still considered relevant. Unless the Church rethinks its commitment to Massignon’s delusional views, it will sink deeper into wishful thinking about Islam while the real Islam continues to make war against Christians.
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Pictured above: St. Peter’s Basilica
Photo credit: Pixabay
