Islam tolerated as a second thought? God merely ‘permits’ Islam, says Pope Francis
Pope Francis and Ahmad el-Tayeb, Grand Imam of Egypt's al-Azhar mosque, pay homage at the tomb of the Founders, Abu Dhabi, Feb. 4, 2019
If that is the case with our material world, what about our mental and spiritual world of logical thinking and irrational daydreaming with no one to control, because it is a free for all domain. Freedom of thought is your birth right. You are free to believe in a God or no God; accept a religion or no religion; promote your belief, ideology and way of life. Only you should not come into conflict and fist fight with your neighbor!
Crusades for God?
Still fist fights, blood sheds and mass murders have been too common to promote one’s religion or material, social or politidal ideology. Most blood has been shed to promote one’s religion, notably Christianity and Islam. Just think of the crusades and inquisition. Logic of the sword and power of the cross or Allah, have been the driving force to spread one’s religion, which defys all rhym and reason. So the CONFUSTION gets CONFOUNDED,
Pope Francis is trying to clear the confusion saying multiplicity of religious beliefs and practictices are willed by God. From a self evident truthful statement any numbe of rational and logical conclusion can be drawn. 2+2=4 is such a self-evident truth, it will never become 6 or 8 or 3. That God exists is not such a self evident truth to all. Similarly Jesus is man born of Mary, all readily accept; but weather born of Joseph or God the Father, no one can prove.
God, Jesus, Scripture controversial
Similar is the case of islam, its god Allah, its scripture, the KORAN. A Weak ago a friend of mine, Dr. Hilda Raja from Gujarat sent me a dozen quotations from Koran. Personally I could not believe because no religious scripture encorge to use vilence to promote one’s faith. Here comes another blind faith, that all scriptures, are God’s words, written or inspired by God. You know and I know, that no God, if he exists, wrote a single world in a any language. No proof, Full stop!
Religions due to God tolerating?
Then what about what Pope says? Very simple! He is the Father Figure of the whole world. He has to adapt himself to the intelligence capacity of adults, women and children. To children no use arguing, just tell them “Kokachi is coming” or the “Police is coming” and it will go to their head and will do what is expected of them. That is why he speaks of the “Devil” lurking in Clerical Sex abuse. No one has questioned him, except a few who think logically.
To atheists he said, he was not trying to convert them; to believers he said, many atheists are much better than believing Catholics, and to all he said; “My God is not a Catholic God!” That provokes us even to ask if he actually believes in a personal God.
Rational discussion: how?
So, for a hazzle free, rational and logical discussion, we should always start from a self evident clear presumption or assumption or premis clear as the noon day sun like: 2+2=4. So let there be a clear universal agreement that: God exists, that Jesus is son of God (I hear someone retorting: ‘Not Son of a bitch? A god impregnating, getting born, growing old and dyding? Heard of it anywhere in history?) that God or Gods actually wrote sacred scriptures of such and such religions!
Before having such impeccable or unchllengably clear premises, no rational discussion of any religious issue is ever possible. All will be a waste of time, an exercise in futility! Otherwise we will go on drawing conclusions that are stupidities par excellence! Of course you are welcome to any number of them. For that we are not going to have any fist fight with you, because we don’t believe in violence or terrorism. “Friend of Plato, but friend of Truth, fist!” Because Truth alone liberates!
Merely willed, permissive, just-in?
What is most disturbing is the Pope’s intentional statement, that Islam and plurality of religions are the result of of the “permissive will” of God, “merely” not “positively wished”, all indicating Islam and plurality of religions, are an after thought on the part of God. It implies that God originally and even now wants only the Catholic Church to be the sole agent of spreading the Gospel?
Vatican council may have said so 50 years ago. But is that the vew even today when the whole world is clamoring that any religion is as good as no religion, that all religions are equally good and true? Is not the Catholic church itself blundering along, after making mistakes after mistakes and justifying them with the catch phrase “Church is to be reformed constantly?” This is a topic of elaborate, independent discussion, not possible here.
More out than in?
So for the moment let Islam be the latest saint canonized and named: “Just-in” meaning, managed to scrape through, or on the margins, on the periphery, neither fully in nor fully out! You name a better word, please. james kottoor, Editor CCV.
Diane Montagna, in LifeSight, March 3, 2019
Abu Dhabi, Pope Francis, Thomas Weinandy
Please read below Pope’s views on God merely permitting Islam!
ROME, April 3, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) — Pope Francis has further clarified his controversial statement issued in Abu Dhabi, in which he appeared to state that God “wills” the existence of many religions.
This appears to contrast with the traditional doctrine of the Catholic Church, which teaches, in the words of the Second Vatican Council, that the “one true religion subsists in the Catholic and Apostolic Church, to which the Lord Jesus committed the duty of spreading it abroad among all men.”
The informal clarification came at today’s general audience, as the Pope reflected on his recent trip to Muslim-majority Morocco. In unscripted remarks, he said to pilgrims gathered in St. Peter’s Square:But some may wonder: but why does the Pope go visit the Muslims and not only the Catholics? Because there are so many religions, and why are there so many religions? With the Muslims we are descendants of the same Father, Abraham: why does God allow so many religions to exist?
God wanted to allow this: the Scholastic theologians referred to the voluntas permissiva [permissive will] of God. He willed to permit this reality: there are many religions; some are born of culture, but they always look to heaven, they look to God. But what God does will is fraternity among us, and in a special way — hence the reason for this journey — with our brothers, who are sons of Abraham, like us, the Muslims. We must not be afraid of the difference: God has permitted this. We ought to be frightened if we do not work in fraternity, to walk together in life.
In February, Pope Francis came under fire for signing a joint statement with a Grand Imam in Abu Dhabi, saying that a “pluralism and diversity” of religions is “willed by God.”The Feb. 4 statement incited controversy among Christians for asserting that “the pluralism and the diversity of religions” — like the diversity of “color, sex, race and language” — are “willed by God in His wisdom, through which He created human beings” — a claim many believe to be contrary to the Catholic faith.
Some critics argued the Pope’s statement seemed not only to “overturn the doctrine of the Gospel” but also to align with the ideas of Freemasonry.Observers pointed out that the potential for confusion was compounded by the fact that both Al-Azhar and the Catholic Church asked in the document that it “become the object of research and reflection in all schools, universities and institutes of formation.”
To remedy the confusion arising from the statement, four days later Bishop Athanasius Schneider issued a statement on uniqueness of faith in Jesus Christ. Three weeks after that, at a Mar. 1 ad limina meeting of the bishops of Kazakhstan and Central Asia with Pope Francis at the Vatican, Bishop Schneider privately obtained from Pope Francis a clarification that God only permits but does not positively will a “diversity of religions.”
The Pope explicitly stated that Schneider could share the contents of their exchange on this point. “You can say that the phrase in question on the diversity of religions means the permissive will of God,” he told the assembled bishops, who come from predominantly Muslim regions. Bishop Schneider in turn asked the Pope officially to clarify the statement in the Abu Dhabi document.
In light of the Abu Dhabi statement and today’s informal clarification from Pope Francis, LifeSite spoke with Capuchin Father Thomas Weinandy, a member of the Vatican’s International Theological Commission and former chief of staff for the U.S. Bishops’ committee on doctrine, about the controversy.
In 2017, Fr. Weinandy wrote a letter to Pope Francis (which was subsequently made public) saying his pontificate is marked by “chronic confusion” and warning that teaching with a “seemingly intentional lack of clarity risks sinning against the Holy Spirit.”In our interview with the Fr. Weinandy on the Abu Dhabi statement, he identifies what he believes is its most problematic element, and offers his perspective on both on the Pope’s private clarification to Bishop Schneider and his public remarks at this week’s general audience.
Fr. Weinandy says while he believes Pope Francis is motivated by a “noble desire” to “foster mutual understanding” and “undercut some Islamic factions that foster terrorism,” his signing the Abu Dhabi statement “has doctrinal consequences well beyond what he may have envisioned or desired.”
“What I find very sad and scandalously troubling” he added, “is that, in the midst of it all, Jesus is being insulted. He is reduced to the level of Buddha or Mohammed when in fact he is the Father’s beloved Messianic Son, the one in whom the Father is well pleased.”
Even with the Pope’s informal clarification at this week’s general audience, Fr. Weinandy points out that, “more than likely, the vast majority of the media and many other theologians and bishops will continue to interpret the original document in the manner that, as God willed Judaism and Christianity, so he also willed other religions – full stop.”
“There still persists some lack of clarity,” he says, “since Pope Francis has not directly repudiated the original statement as it appears in the Abu Dhabi document. In the end it is still quite confusing, and unnecessarily so.”
All religions suffer from one common shortfall that each one of them claim that theirs is the true religion of god. In other words, they all suffer from intolerance. Only the degree matters. What is stopping god from settling this issue once and for all by simply re-tuning the brain of people of the earth to accept Islam exclusively, or Christianity of Buddhism or Hinduism? It will just take a moment for the all power god to refix the brains of the living and the yet to be born. Yet, he had never done it in the past and there is no sign that he would ever. In the meantime, it is left to the fanatics in each religion to settle the issue in any which way they can. So the killings in the name of the religion will go on for ever.