In response to Tim Staples’ article here, I sent these three points to Church Militant:
1. Mr. Staples argues at great length that the Vatican II statement that God’s plan of salvation includes Muslims means only that God desires them to be saved. No Christian could possibly disagree with that, and that is not what is actually controverted about the phrase. The ambiguity is not in the Church Militant article, but in the Vatican II statement itself. Many observers have noted that Vatican II maintains a posture of studied ambiguity, making statements that were intentionally vague and can be taken in any number of ways. All too many people, Catholic and non-Catholic, have taken the phrase about the “plan of salvation” to mean not just that God desires Muslims to be saved, but that Islam is itself a salvific faith. This has led to many Catholics thinking that it is wrong not only to share the Gospel with Muslims, but wrong even to criticize the Muslim persecution of Christians and to note Islam’s denial of basic Christian teachings: speaking these unwelcome truths has become in many areas of the Church synonymous with uncharity. That is, I believe, a disastrous effect of Vatican II’s ambiguity.
2. The same can be said of Mr. Staples’ second point. He is right that as fellow monotheists, Muslims are worshipping the one true God while being unaware of many of His attributes. St. Paul says the same thing of pagan Greeks in Acts 17. But here again, the problem is with the ambiguity of the Vatican II text. I have spoken to many Catholic groups and always encountered Catholics who believed that it was wrong to oppose even jihad violence and Sharia-based oppression of women and others because the Church taught that we worshiped the same God. The phrase can be interpreted in an orthodox manner, as can the phrase about the plan of salvation, but it can also be taken in a way that leads to numerous blind alleys and outright heresies, including indifferentism and the relativization of all religious ideas without regard for truth. I hope Mr. Staples’ interpretations will win out in the Catholic Church. They haven’t yet. In fact, the Pope has just quoted the Qur’an in an encyclical, which will lead many Catholics to believe that the Qur’an is holy writ.
3. Mr. Staples then acknowledges that Vatican II was a pastoral council that made no dogmatic statements, but invokes the responsibility that Catholics have to assent to its teachings anyway. Here again, there is ambiguity and clarification is needed. Mr. Staples is basing his view on this statement from Lumen Gentium: “This religious submission of mind and will must be shown in a special way to the authentic magisterium of the Roman Pontiff, even when he is not speaking ex cathedra; that is, it must be shown in such a way that his supreme magisterium is acknowledged with reverence, the judgments made by him are sincerely adhered to, according to his manifest mind and will. His mind and will in the matter may be known either from the character of the documents, from his frequent repetition of the same doctrine, or from his manner of speaking.” All right. But what character of document must be assented to, and what character of document need not be? How many times must a doctrine be repeated before all Catholics must give religious submission of mind and will to it? What manner of speaking conveys that assent is required? I have been told by a Catholic cleric that I must believe that Islam is a religion of peace because several Popes have said words to this effect, and therefore he believes it falls within this category of doctrines to which Catholics must give assent. Yet I know this to be a false statement, based on years of study of Islam’s core texts, doctrines, and history. Consequently, this cleric maintained that I was a heretic. This presents a problem far larger than my individual case. If the Church is requiring assent to claims that are demonstrably false, this will cause millions of believers to have a crisis of faith. The nature of this assent, the conditions for it, and to what it is applicable — all this and more must be clarified. It looks as if Mr. Staples and I don’t really disagree on the issues at hand here. But there are deeper issues that all this raises that could cause considerable trouble for the Church if they are not addressed, and there is no sign that they will be anytime in the foreseeable future.
“Tim Staples: Allah, Trinity Refer to Same God,” by Jules Gomes, ChurchMilitant.com, October 8, 2020:
SAN DIEGO (ChurchMilitant.com) – Catholic apologist Tim Staples has reiterated his support for controversial Vatican II claims about Islam, clarifying explicitly that Allah and the Holy Trinity refer to the same God.
Church Militant asked Staples if his position could be summed up in the proposition: “The Allah of the Koran is the Holy Trinity of Christians.”
Staples responded: “I don’t think you yet understand the position of the Catholic Church. Even though it is true that ‘Allah’ and the Blessed Trinity are each referring to the same God.”
“You seem to want to imply by that, that unless you accept the truth of the Trinity, you are talking about another God. That is not true,” he explained.
Confusion Rooted in Vatican II
The theological postulate that “Islam’s God is also the same God as worshipped by Catholics,” as British theologian and academic Gavin D’Costa phrases it, appears for the first time in Catholic teaching in Vatican II in Nostra Aetate 3 and Lumen Gentium 16.
Robert Spencer, author of 21 books on Islam, noted he had no difficulty with Staples’ claim that the Vatican II statement that God’s plan of salvation includes Muslims meant “only that God desires them to be saved” and “no Christian could possibly disagree with that.”
However, “many observers have noted that Vatican II maintains a posture of studied ambiguity, making statements that were intentionally vague and can be taken in any number of ways,” Spencer explained.
“I have spoken to many Catholic groups and always encountered Catholics who believed that it was wrong to oppose even jihad violence and Sharia-based oppression of women and others because the Church taught that we worshiped the same God,” he continued, adding:
The “same God” phrase can be interpreted in an orthodox manner, as can the phrase about the plan of salvation, but it can also be taken in a way that leads to numerous blind alleys and outright heresies, including indifferentism and the relativization of all religious ideas without regard for truth. In fact, the pope has just quoted the Qur’an in an encyclical, which will lead many Catholics to believe that the Qur’an is holy writ.
Staples later responded: “When you say, ‘Is the God of the Koran the Blessed Trinity,’ that cannot be answered with a yes or no answer. Some will take that to mean the Church is saying the Koran is inspired or something like that.”
Staples elaborated:
Of course, the Catholic Church acknowledges that the Qur’an is not the inspired word of God. It is filled with errors. … There is little doubt that Satan, the Father of Lies, has inspired much of what we find in the Qur’an. But that does not mean that the Qur’an does not acknowledge what the Devil himself acknowledges — ‘you believe God is one, you do well, the demons believe and tremble’ (James 2:19).
“It seems to me if people want truth, they go beyond six-word statements and try to ascertain truth,” Staples remarked.
Scant Evidence, Ample Interpretation
Staples, however, does not provide evidence of a Catholic magisterial document which states that “the Qur’an is not the inspired word of God” or is filled with error.
Indeed, as Islamic scholar David Marshall observes, “since no explicit theology of the Qur’an is stated either in the conciliar documents or indeed in post-conciliar teaching, the field has been open for Catholic scholars to argue for a range of approaches.” Catholic scholars, he says, are “at the positive end of the spectrum,” claiming that “the Qur’an is ‘an authentic Word of God, but one in part essentially different from the one in Jesus Christ.'”
Pope St. John Paul II kissed the Qur’an in public. Pope Francis quotes the Qur’an approvingly in his latest encyclical, Fratelli Tutti.
In his 2013 apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, Francis affirmed the Qur’an as “sacred writings of Islam [that] have retained some Christian teachings,” adding that “the proper reading of the Koran [is] opposed to every form of violence.”…