1. Even if with great difficulty, I feel constrained to agree that the official statement of the Holy See Press Office on the "Cartoon Crisis" is probably the best that could be said by the Holy See so that the lives and property of Catholics did not come under threat in regions of large Muslim populations -- the best option would have been the silence kept up to Saturday, since this is a ridiculously artificial, pseudo-crisis. As Mark Steyn wrote Sunday in the Chicago Sun-Times:...where do you get one [Danish flag] in an obscure town on the Punjabi plain on a Thursday afternoon? If I had a sudden yen to burn the Yemeni or Sudanese flag on my village green, I haven't a clue how I'd get hold of one in this part of New Hampshire. Say what you like about the Islamic world, but they show tremendous initiative and energy and inventiveness, at least when it comes to threatening death to the infidels every 48 hours for one perceived offense or another. If only it could be channeled into, say, a small software company, what an economy they'd have.
Exactly. As I wrote last week, I cannot imagine this kind of fuss in a place where most men (one sees mostly, though not exclusively, young men in these protests) have real, demanding, jobs and have to raise real families.
2. One may easily see, however, how such a "respect" for wrong and incomplete religions may make true mission ad gentes difficult, if not impossible -- and does not bode well for the future of Europe. In a few years time, will any Christian in the Old World be willing to say that the book of the Muslims is not True or that the Revelation ended with the Apostolic generation -- and therefore, that every "prophet" who revealed anything new was a false prophet? To claim a man was a false prophet of a false message is certainly more disturbing to those who follow him than to draw him.
Paul Belien concludes thus in his Brussels Journal article:
4. Very true! With bishops like these, Europe must prepare for a future under quiet submission. Or, as the Catholic Encyclopedia reminded its readers nearly a century ago:
Paul Belien concludes thus in his Brussels Journal article:
It is 1933 again and the SA is marching in Europe. This time they are not shouting “Heil Hitler,” but a creed I will not quote for fear of provoking them to kill a poor priest somewhere in Turkey, Palestine or Lebanon. Six years from now it will be 1939 and our future looks bleak. A war is about to begin, but Europe is in even worse shape than it was in the 1930s.3. Belien still adds the usual Belgian-bishop self-hating tirade of the day:
Europe has only itself to blame for this disaster. As if to make this clear the renowned Belgian cartoon award of the international “Knokke Humor Festival” yesterday awarded its first prize to a cartoon depicting a yawning Christ above the bed of an elderly couple lying with their backs to each other [see cartoon here]. Asked for a reaction to this cartoon, the Archbishop of Brussels, Belgian Cardinal Godfried Danneels, communicated through his spokesman: “We should be able to laugh at ourselves from time to time so that we do not take ourselves too seriously.”Naturally, no one really takes Cardinal Danneels very seriously, beginning with Mgr. Georg Ratzinger:
it is true that there are Cardinals who are taken over by the loss of substance. For example, the Brussels' Cardinal, Cardinal Danneels whose remarks, according to my opinion, are no longer in accord with a Catholic understanding.
4. Very true! With bishops like these, Europe must prepare for a future under quiet submission. Or, as the Catholic Encyclopedia reminded its readers nearly a century ago:
In matters political Islam is a system of despotism at home and aggression abroad. The Prophet commanded absolute submission to the imâm. In no case was the sword to be raised against him. The rights of non-Moslem subjects are of the vaguest and most limited kind, and a religious war is a sacred duty whenever there is a chance of success against the "Infidel". Medieval and modern Mohammedan, especially Turkish, persecutions of both Jews and Christians are perhaps the best illustration of this fanatical religious and political spirit.The picture which illustrates the article was taken in front of the Basilica of the Nativity, in that old Judean town of Bethlehem. It seems odd to see the land of the Prince of Peace in such turmoil -- but it is a reminder to Europe that the Lord promised that the gates of hell would not prevail against His Church, not that once great lands of Christendom would remain under special protection forever. Europe has been ungrateful to its mother, the Church, for too long -- it may soon cease to be Europe for good.
