Another Long Regensburg Analysis

Another Long Regensburg Analysis We wonder whether this Jesuit's hope that a hermaneutic of peace can actually be applied to the Koran by the Mohammedans is not pure Pollyannaism.

Catholic bishops uneasy at demand for new mosques

Catholic bishops uneasy at demand for new mosques

We Stick With the Church's Prudential Judgement on the Death Penalty

Here are some comments from critics of the execution of Saddam Hussein including Cardinal Martino's:

Saddam's execution punishes 'a crime with another crime. ... The death penalty is not a natural death. And no one can give death, not even the state.' _ Cardinal Renato Martino, Pope Benedict XVI's top prelate for justice issues, to the Rome newspaper La Repubblica.

Mohammedans Try To Commandeer Spanish Cathedral

Cordoba cathedral in Spain is situated inside a complex that used to be a mosque. The mosque itself was built upon the remains of a church which had been destroyed by the invading Moors. It is currently the subject of a third attempt by Muslims to allow it to be used as an Islamic place of worship.

Orthodoxy's SSPX

Tsk tsk.

God's Law or Secular Law?

The Muslim Charter "an initiative challenging Muslim communities living in the West to subordinate their interpretations of Sharia law to the laws of the land" sounds from this article like an initiative with really horrific implications.

The practical subordination of God's law to secular law is a mark of totalitarianism, and the results have been particularly apparent in the 20th century. The very concept of human rights can only be coherent if such rights arise from something transcending the arbitrary secular law. The Nuremberg Trials only make sense if there is a "higher" law than that promulgated by the state. If there is not such a "higher" law, the Nuremberg trials represent nothing other than an exercise of force.

No, the problem is not in the Mohammedans believing that God's law is higher than the secular law. The Catholic Magisterium certainly teaches that. The problem is that many (arguably a plurality of) Mohammedans have a terribly defective understanding of God's law, most problematically in the area of religious freedom. One risks various forms of oppression up to and including death to convert from Mohammedanism to Christianity in most Mohammedan-majority countries.

For those groups of Mohammedans who do believe that God's law prohibits the killing of non-combatants and who also believe that God's law prohibits violent repression of religious freedom, we can have respect--with them we can engage in dialogue. Unfortunately, there is clearly no consensus within Mohammedanism that such is the nature of God's law.

The proposed Muslim Charter effectively asks Mohammedans to convert from their religion to secularism. This will not be good either for their own souls or for the European countries they live within.

3 Non-Negotiable Principles

Not news, since it was from March, 2006. But it is from a new compilation from the International Observatory - Cardinal Van Thuân - for the social Doctrine of the Church. Sounds very odd in English to call it an Observatory. Check it out.

The three non-negotiable principles.

Address of His Holiness Benedict XVI
to the participants in the Conference promoted by the European People’s Party

«As far as the Catholic Church is concerned, the principal focus of her interventions in the public arena is the protection and promotion of the dignity of the person, and she is thereby consciously drawing particular attention to principles which are not negotiable. Among these the following emerge clearly today:

- protection of life in all its stages, from the first moment of conception until natural death;

- recognition and promotion of the natural structure of the family - as a union between a man and a woman based on marriage - and its defence from attempts to make it juridically equivalent to radically different forms of union which in reality harm it and contribute to its destabilization, obscuring its particular character and its irreplaceable social role;

- the protection of the right of parents to educate their children.

These principles are not truths of faith, even though they receive further light and confirmation from faith; they are inscribed in human nature itself and therefore they are common to all humanity.. The Church’s action in promoting them is therefore not confessional in character, but is addressed to all people, prescinding from any religious affiliation they may have. On the contrary, such action is all the more necessary the more these principles are denied or misunderstood, because this constitutes an offence against the truth of the human person, a grave wound inflicted onto justice itself».