Cardinal Antonio María Rouco has the courage to tell the truth. From The Guardian, with thanks to Filtrat:
Spain's leading archbishop, Cardinal Antonio María Rouco, yesterday denounced the new socialist government, saying its policies were taking the country back to medieval times, when Muslim invaders swept across the Straits of Gibraltar.His comments came after the government's decision to cancel the reintroduction of compulsory religious classes and to find ways of financing other faiths, including Islam, with public money.
"Some people wish to place us in the year 711," Cardinal Rouco said. "It seems as if we are meant to wipe ourselves out of history."
The Catholic church is coming to terms with a sudden and dramatic dwindling of its power following the socialists' victory, in March, over the conservative, pro-Catholic People's party of the former prime minister José María Aznar. Mr Aznar's government had planned to make religion a compulsory exam subject.
But the socialists have already announced that the law reintroducing compulsory religion lessons, a feature of the Franco dictatorship, will be scrapped.
Wow! Catholics are finally waking up. If I was Catholic, I would want Cardinal Ratzinger as Pope.
Ratzinger has been around for a long time, and has had a lot of good to say (as far as being on the Right side of things). He would be an excellent choice for Pope.
Wouldn't it be great if there was a Cardinal Ratzinger fan club? Whoops! Well, wuddya know? There is one!
http://www.ratzingerfanclub.com/
The Catholic Church still has an amazing power in the Iberian peninsula. If they wanted they could stop dead on its tracks this Muslim version of the Reconquista.
I think they are afraid of being remembered of the Churche's alliance with Franco (in Spain) and Salazar (in Portugal).
The next Pope will probably be chosen because of his stance regarding the Islamic penetration in Europe, just like John Paul II was chosen because of his anti-communist background.
I am not Roman Catholic but I tell you I am very impressed and heartened to hear some very definate and couragous statements coming from various factions in Rome!!
I would like too see more Protestants, especially in North America also make these bold correct claims.........I know Franklin Graham came out early against Islam but not too much otherwise....
Surely also the Eastern Church is making some noise about Islam.......after all, no one suffered worse in Christendom under Islam then the Greek Church!!
Thanks
There is irony in the strong resistance to Islam from conservatives, like Ratzinger, in the Catholic Church as well as conservatives in other domains, like European and American politics: as far as social policy is concerned these folks are far closer to common Islamic views than liberals and socialists.
A social liberal finds himself in the odd position of praising Ratzinger in one breath for opposition to Islam and then hoping he and his ilk do not run amuck in the Catholic Church and try to reverse pillars of Vatican II, for instance.
A strange world...but, liberals on social policy must get their priorities straight. Combating social conservatives in a context where meaningful debate and change is possible is a billion times better than being silenced by the threat of death, or just murdered: and that will be your fate under Islam.
JTF - You are a freakin' moron!
The west is what we like to call "Secular" - Your islammamamamaists are not!
Any questions?
Frankly, I have my own problems with Ratzinger and Rome's traditionalists--although such people are probably more likely to be sensitive to the evil radical Islamicism presents. When God has made it perfectly clear that he hates idolatry almost more than anything else (including liberal Protestant mental idols as well as the pix and statues in which Constantinople and Rome indulge), one can almost understand why something like Islam aros at the dawn of the middle ages.
Actually, JTF, there are points at which post-enlightenment liberalism is closer to Islam than conservative Christians of any stripe are:
(1) Both the heirs of the enlightenment and Muslims love to ridicule the doctrine of the Trinity.
(2) Both the enlightenment and Islam deny original sin.
(3) Both the enlightenment and Islam are optimistic about the human ability to know and do good apart from divine grace.
(4) Both the enlightenment and Islam believe in human perfectability prior to the state of glory.
(5) Both the enlightenment and Islam find traditional Christian sexual mores stifling.
(6) Both the enlightenment and Islam try to hijack the person of Jesus: the first tries to make him into a humanitarian rebel, the second into a merely human prophet. Both use fanciful reconstructions of Jesus' life and teachings to do so (Ernest Renan's _Vie de Jesus_, the present-day "Five Gospels", and the mish-mash of folklore, misquoted Scripture, and apocrypha that defines the Muslim Isa).
(7)Both the so-called enlightenment and Islam make a virtue of the tolerance necessitated by their initial inability to extirpate Christianity; but when they feel strong enough, they invariably show their true, persecuting colors that would make the mere statement of what the Bible says to be true a crime (Christian fundamentalism is the original target of most "hate speech" legislation).
Where traditionalist Protestants (such as myself), ROman Catholics, and Muslims agree is that there is such a thing as truth; and that law reflects something other than 51% opinion in the country that can lick all others (as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes would've had it).
H'mmmn, that's one but where are the rest of protests considering still powerful position of Catholic Church? Heard statue of a saint, think it was St James, the Moor Slayer, was actually removed from a cathedral so as not to give offense
to Muslims. [This was after Madrid train bombing].
Shades of Queen Isabella of Castile, Isabella The Catholic, would be turning in her grave!!
I post the comment to reenforce the notion, advanced by Robert many times, that being actively involved in the anti-Jihadist movement should have nothing to do with common Western conceptions of 'liberalism' and 'conservatism': the movement concerns the protection of basic notions of human freedom, dignity, and rights, that are fundamental to both conservative and liberal outlooks: even the outlooks of some who call themselves Muslim.
This point is just lost on many folks, like the poor fellow above with the red herring about secularism.
This site should be home to folks from a broad political spectrum, and it is unfortunate that folks on what we call 'the left' (as well as folks on the 'the right'), cannot get past traditional political boudaries to see the real stakes of this very, very dangerous threat to our ways of life,liberal, whatever you take that to mean, and conservative.
I am happy to be Ratzinger's ally against Islam,
and European socialists should be happy to join hands with George Bush, as irritating as he can be sometimes, and say, 'pass the ammunition brother'.
Right on JTF:
We all have to join hands to fight this threat.
Everyone who believes in freedom of conscience, in freedom of thought, in freedom of religious belief, in FREEDOM, period, full stop, has to be against Islam.
I did not see Crdnl. Ratzinger mentioned in the article. Perhaps all of you are referring to a different story.
My guess is that Cardinal Rouco will end up apologizing and the loudest sound we hear from Spain from now on will be prayer calls from minarets.
Spain kneeling before the Moors is an unpleasant picture.