Y’know why (sane, theologically-balanced) Christians aren’t willing to use violence in the name of their religion any more?
The Reformation was part of the reason.
Specifically: The Wars of Religion that followed the Reformation were so horrible that they forced Christians on both sides of the confessional divide to re-think the degree to which those Old Testament texts dealing with the religious use of violence were really applicable to our society today.
In the end, folks concluded that they weren’t.
Problem is: Muslims have never had a Reformation and have never been forced to conclude that those texts in the Qur’an that talk about the religious use of violence need to be declared inapplicable to today. As a result, many (though by no means all!) Muslims are willing to use violence to advance their religious goals.
It is therefore an urgent priority for the future of world affairs that Islam go down the path that Christianity went down and learn not to use violence in the service of religion.
How that might happen is unclear, but
ACCORDING TO ONE GUY, THE ISLAMIC REFORMATION IS HERE.
Problem is: Muslims have never had a Reformation and have never been forced to conclude that those texts in the Qur’an that talk about the religious use of violence need to be declared inapplicable to today. As a result, many (though by no means all!) Muslims are willing to use violence to advance their religious goals.
The problem is that the Muslims don’t have a New Covenant that fulfills the Old. Without that, saying the Quran verses about religious violence aren’t applicable today is like saying that St. Paul’s writing against homosexuality isn’t applicable today (which liberal Christians do contend, but which I know neither you nor I agree with).
But hasn’t Islam experienced violent divisions and splinters, hence the shia and suni and sufi and other flavors of Islam?
I think a case can be made that Islam is as intrinsically violent as Catholicism is.
Sure, you don’t see Catholics persecuting heretics today, but that’s just because we don’t have any Catholic ountries today that recognize the Church’s traditional teaching on the Social Kingship of Christ.
There are many orthodox Catholics who, in the event such a state would reconstitute itself, would like to see repressive measures against heretics, albeit as lenient as possible.
The same could be said, I think, for most Muslims living in the U.S., vis-a-vis their own relationship with those they perceive to be “infidels.”
Catholicism would be quite violent if it were to, by the Grace of God, take over the US. Just how long do you think we’d spend before abortionists, Wiccans, Satanists, and similar would receive free neck lengthenings, courtesy of the government?
The problem is that nationalism took over along the same time as Protestantism (see Richeliue and the 30 Years’ War), and so now we fight over nations, not religions.
Eric and Paul have a point. Societies can’t tolerate unlimited personal anarchy. There must be a consensus of values, and that consensus will simultaneously justify freedom for some and the oppression of others. Religious polities call deviation from the moral culture “heresy” and repress it, secular ones call it “hate speech” or some other tag and repress it as well.
I don’t think Islam must adopt Christianity’s passive response to secularism. In fact, I don’t think it should adopt them. The Christian solution to the Wars of Religion was only half satisfactory; it’s one thing to re-examine one’s theology to avoid turning society into a charnel house, and quite another to renounce one’s theology in favor of secularism. That was, by and large, the Christian solution. I would not recommend it to Muslims, nor do I much object when Muslims reject secularism or identify its domination with Christianity. They’re just being as confused about secularism as Christianity has been.
I do think Islam needs a theology that rebukes and puts away the “House of Islam / House of War” mentality which has characterized its perspective on non-believers. This would be the first step to avoiding the war of civilizations, and it’s up to Muslims to decide whether God calls them to that or whether He calls them to keep the old understanding and maintain a permanent posture of active hatred for non-Muslim societies.
That would be enough, for now. Whether Islam can ever embrace something like Dignitatis Humanae is another question, for another day.
I’ve been saying all along that we Catholics need to clean out our own theological closets before we even so much as suggest that Muslims do the same.
For instance, I’m still confused as Hell over what Divine Law has to say about the right of the Catholic State to reimpose the Catholic religion on heretics.
For centuries the Church taught that the State had this right. Now she’s reversed this teaching. Who’s to say that in 50 years she won’t switch back, once (if) we get back to having truly Catholic countries?
Until the Vatican II teaching is somehow, someway reconciled with the Church’s Tradition, we’re actually in a similar mess, and thus anti-Catholic Fundamentalist Protestants are fully justified of their fears of this country one day having a Catholic majority.
The attempts thus far to reconcile the two teachings are intellectually insane, as anyone with half-a-brain can see.
People in glass houses should not throw stones.
I don’t think that it would serve any real purpose to bring about any sort of Islamic reformation as such a movement only muddies the waters of what is or is not religious belief. Put it this way, anytime there is a major theological policy shift in a religion, the religion splits up into two variations of that religion. That doesn’t server anyone very well because as the number of variations on religions increase, the hard it is for the Church to compete with all sorts of other false “lighthouses”.
Instead of making a religion like our notions of social Christianity, it is much easier to promote a strong “legitimate” understanding of the religion instead of a “progressive” one, and then watch it fall apart when confronted with the disparity between it and the True Faith. If we modify a false religion with Truth, we only seek to prop it up and make it last longer.
I think that there is a tendency to think that conversion to the Church are easier when we make the other religions more like Catholicism but rather in the vast majority of cases those who convert to the Catholic faith did so not because their religion was like Catholicism, but rather because Catholicism was so despairingly different that they could no longer stand to be anything but Catholic. We should not be interested in converting a religion into something similar to Catholicism, but rather in converting people.
It is my proposal that it is better to promote the idea that it IS an Islamic ideal to use violence in the service of religion and that IS the Islamic worldview and then contrast that destructive worldview to the worldview that Catholicism offers.
Eric – I do not believe that I have seen anything definitive on that problem….But it seems to me that….
1. It is Natural Law that the State is obligated to protect its citizens.
2. It is Natural Law that the State should promote the proper worship of God.
3. It is contrary to Natural Law that man should worship anything besides God.
4. Though it is contrary, man has the ability, but not right, to worship something besides God.
5. Divine Justice allows this so that those that stray from God might be shown, even in their refusal to worship God, to bring about good and glorification to God.
6. Divine Mercy allows this so that those that stray from God might obtain mercy, in that they are not instantly destroyed, but still receive grace, and might return to the worship of God.
So it seams to me that the not fully defined teaching of the Church would be….
1. The State does not have a Natural Law right to impose Catholicism on non-Catholics
2. The State, at times, might receive a Divine Law right to impose Catholicism on non-Catholics
3. The State has a Natural Law right to regulate according to Human Law destructive elements in non-Catholic religions.
4. The State has a Natural Law right to regulate/dissuade according to Human Law apostates and heretics from the Catholic faith.
The real questions come into play when we discuss what is regulated and how far can the State go in dissuading another person/group. This is the part that is not truly settled in Catholic doctrine.
Am I missing anything or does the above explanation basically correct??????
Islam doesn’t need a Reformation; it needs a Pope.
There simply isn’t any authority in Islam who could interpret a reforming event peacefully in a way that would have broad applicability.
Moreover, the Qu’ran is a near-Incarnational text for Muslims. From a theological perspective, it’s more like Christ than the Bible.
And it is decidedly violent, especially the later passages which are viewed as more authoritative.
Islam doesn’t need a Reformation; it needs a Pope.
Who could, of course, issue fatwas for the entire Islamic world to follow. What Islam really need is conversion to Catholic Christianity. While that is unlikely, so is its getting a Pope or a New Covenant or for that matter having a Reformation.
Reestablishing the Caliphate would be disastrous for the world I think.
Depends on who the Caliph is.
Some members of the Califa family have become *Christian* (and specifically Catholic).
“Some members of the Califa family have become *Christian* (and specifically Catholic).”
Huh?
And as I noted earlier, conversion to Catholicism does not mean that religion will not be forced on heretics.
Depends on who the Caliph is.
Some members of the Califa family have become *Christian* (and specifically Catholic).
Which is about as relevant as a cardinal who became Muslim while we were waiting for the election of a new pope.
Islam must either convert, or be destroyed. There is no middle option with it.
And strengthening it in any way would be suicide.
“Islam must either convert, or be destroyed. There is no middle option with it.”
ouch.
“Some members of the Califa family have become *Christian* (and specifically Catholic).”
I (for one) did not know that. My guess is the conversion happened during the Reconquista of the Iberian peninsula.
I think Mr. Akin’s point still stands – that it was the horrors of war, not somber theological reflection, that led Catholics and Protestants to make peace with the idea of tolerating each other, at first in different countries, later in the same ones.
And I’d urge anyone chomping at the bit to establish a state religion and make with the burning of heretics to carefully review the history of the Hussite Wars, Thirty Years’ War et al.
Spark:
My question simply continues to be: Can the State force heretics to revert to Catholicism under pain of death?
For centuries the Church said yes, now she says no.
Which is it?
I’m not looking for subjective appeals to history’s horrors. I simply want to know how the Church’s current teaching can possibly be reonciled with her Tradition?