Confessions of an Islamophobe by Robert Spencer

Author:Robert Spencer [Spencer, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Bombardier Books
Published: 2017-11-27T16:00:00+00:00

“Not Consistent with the Teachings of the Catholic Church”

Meanwhile, some Christians are also working assiduously, in the same spirit of dialogue and outreach, to erase even any historical memory of the fact that there was once conflict between Christians and Muslims. The Huffington Post reported indignantly in April 2017 that “the Catholic diocese of Orlando, Florida, says it has reprimanded a teacher at a Catholic school in the state for giving his sixth-grade religion class an anti-Muslim reading assignment.”18 Mark Smythe of Blessed Trinity Catholic School in Ocala, Florida gave students a handout that called Muhammad’s teaching “ridiculous, immoral and corrupting.”19

Clearly Smythe was getting material from “Islamophobic” websites, no? No: his handout came from a Catholic saint, St. John Bosco.

Nevertheless, Jacquelyn Flanigan, an associate superintendent at the Diocese of Orlando’s Catholic school system, said that “the information provided in the sixth grade class is not consistent with the teachings of the Catholic Church.”20

She didn’t explain the anomalous fact that the author of this supposedly un-Catholic material was a saint in the Catholic Church. So did a saint spread ideas that were “not consistent with the teachings of the Catholic Church?” How, then, did he become a saint? Why didn’t his apparently heterodox, disrespectful, hateful teaching on Islam prevent his canonization?

Or is it the “teachings of the Catholic Church” that had changed? Since it is Catholic teaching that only divinely revealed dogmas are immutable, if the Church’s teaching on Islam has changed, it must not be divinely revealed dogma, but mere human opinion, from which there could be respectful disagreement—couldn’t there?

Flanigan “pointed to Nostra Aetate, an official Vatican document Pope Paul VI released on Oct. 28, 1965. It stated that the Catholic Church regards Muslims ‘with esteem’ and urged Catholics to work with Muslims for peace and social justice.”21

Does the necessity to regard Muslims with esteem require that Catholics must not speak about the elements of Islam that jihadis use to justify violence, including the rampant global persecution of Christians?

About John Bosco’s document, the Huffington Post reported: “Elsewhere in the text, Muhammad is described as a ‘charlatan,’ ‘villain,’ ‘ignoramus,’ ‘imposter’ and ‘false prophet’ who ‘couldn’t even write’ and ‘propagated his religion, not through miracles or persuasive words, but by military force.’ The Quran, the holy book of Islam, is also called ‘a series of errors, the most enormous ones being against morality and the worship of the true God.’ ”22

This was strong and pejorative language. Where did Bosco get these ideas, that were inconsistent with Catholic teaching in the minds of the leaders of the diocese of Orlando that the teacher who spread this material deserved a reprimand? The Huffington Post, of course, took it for granted that it is false to claim these things, but there is actually a case to be made that Islam spread through force and that Islamic morality is decisively different from Christian morality. Can there be any discussion of this at all? Or is all dissent from the charge that John Bosco’s claims are false

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