Saint George

To follow is an excerpt from an episode of Sunday Night Live with host Fr. Benedict Groeschel, and guest Dr. Peter Kreeft, discussing the state of Catholic higher education in the United States.   Do American Christians have the proper perspective on our faith or is it more important to be politically correct?

Benedict Groeschel: You and I were talking and you told me an anecdote about when they took the crucifixes down from the classroom walls at Boston College. I think this anecdote is a little bit long, but I think our audience would be very interested to hear it.

Peter Kreeft: Well, I was teaching comparative religions, and during the long break, there was a Jewish student and a Muslim student in the front row. The Jewish student noticed a faint cross painted on the wall behind me, so he asked me, “Is that supposed to be a cross?”

I started to explain that that’s where the crucifix used to be, and another student, a Catholic, said “Oh, we took the crucifixes down last year.”

“Why did you do take them down?”

“Oh, well, we didn’t want to offend people.”

“When did you take them down?”

“Well, let’s see. 1979.”

“Aha,” said the Jewish student. “It was the Bundy money.”

No one understood that, so he explained that President Carter’s secretary of state, McGeorge Bundy, had brokered a deal by which federal money could go to private schools if and only if those schools were not sectarian, divisive, discriminatory… something like that. And - by coincidence - all 21 Jesuit colleges took down their crucifixes from their classrooms in the year following that decision. So when he explained that to the students, the students were rather scandalized, and one said, “Oh, no, we wouldn’t do that for money.”

And he said, “Of course you wouldn’t, but I hope you got more than thirty pieces of silver this time.” Rather wicked… some of them were so biblically illiterate that he had to explain to them that Judas Iscariot was the first Catholic bishop to accept a government grant.

But then the student said, “No, we did that to be ecumenical.”

And then the Muslim chimed in.

“What is ecumenical?”

So the student said, “Oh, ecumenical means we think we’re all equal, and we didn’t want to discriminate against others, and offend outsiders.”

And the Muslim said, “You mean people like me, and my friend the Jew?”

“Well, yes.”

“Well, I am highly insulted.”

“Why?”

“Well, you’re treating me like a bigot.”

“No, we hate bigotry.”

“Let me explain. Suppose you came to my country. You enrolled in a Muslim university. Now we don’t have pictures or images; we think that’s idolatry, but when you are in a Muslim university, you know you are in a Muslim university. Who would object to a Muslim symbol in a Muslim university, except a bigot? Now you expect me to be offended by a Catholic symbol - the crucifix - in a Catholic university, so you are treating me like a bigot.”

Everyone was thinking.

He didn’t stop. He said to the students, “How many of you believe that Jesus is the Son of God?”

And most of them raised their hand.

He said, “Well, we Muslims don’t believe that; the Koran says that’s blasphemy, that’s ridiculous, but we have a great devotion to Jesus. We hardly ever mention his name without saying, ‘Blessed be he’ or ‘Blessed be his name’ and we think he’s one of the greatest men who ever lived, and he is a great prophet, and we love him and his mother Mary. And if we had pictures of him, we would never take them down, not for any money in the world. In fact,” he said, and he was now waxing eloquent, “what if some soldiers came into our classroom and said, ‘We demand that you take down this offensive picture of the prophet Jesus’? Every good Muslim would go in front of that picture and say, ‘You will take down this picture of our beloved prophet Jesus over our dead bodies. We would be glad to be martyrs for him.’ So I think we are better Christians than you are.”

You could hear a pin drop.

Bishop Fulton J. Sheen  

Muslimism is the only great post-Christian religion of the world. Because it had its origin in the 7th century under Mohammed, it was possible to unite within it some elements of Christianity and of Judaism, along with particular customs of Arabia . Muslimism takes the doctrine of the unity of God, his majesty and his creative power, and uses it, in part, as a basis for the repudiation of Christ, the Son of God. Misunderstanding the notion of the Trinity, Mohammed made Christ a prophet announcing himself (Mohammed) just as to Christians, Isaiah and John the Baptist are prophets announcing Christ.

The Christian European West barely escaped destruction at the hands of the Muslims. At one point they were stopped near Tours and at another point, later on in time, outside the gates of Vienna . The Church throughout northern Africa was practically destroyed by Muslim power, and at the present hour, the Muslims are beginning to rise again.

 If Muslimism is a heresy, as Hilaire Belloc believes it to be, it is the only heresy that has never declined. Others have had a moment of vigor, then gone into doctrinal decay at the death of the leader, and finally evaporated in a vague social movement. Muslimism, on the contrary, has only had its first phase. There was never a time in which it declined, either in numbers, or in the devotion of its followers. The missionary effort of the Church toward this group has been, at least on the surface, a failure. For the Muslims are so far almost unconvertible. The reason is that for a follower of Mohammed to become a Christian is much like a Christian becoming a Jew. The Muslims believe that they have the final and definitive revelation of God to the world and that Christ was only a prophet announcing Mohammed, the last of God’s real prophets.   

At the present time, the hatred of the Muslim countries against the West is becoming a hatred against Christianity itself. Although the statesmen have not yet taken it into account, there is still grave danger that the temporal power of Islam may return, and with it, the menace that it may shake off a West which has ceased to be Christian, and affirm itself as a great anti-Christian world power. Muslim writers say, “When the locust swarms darken countries, they bear on their wings these Arabic words: We are God’s host, each of us has ninety-nine eggs, and if we had a hundred, we should lay waste the world, with all that is in it.”

The problem is, how shall we prevent the hatching of the hundredth egg? It is our firm belief that the fears some entertain concerning the Muslims are not to realized, but that Muslimism, instead, will eventually be converted to Christianity–and in a way that even some of our missionaries never suspect. It is our belief that this will happen not through the direct teachings of Christianity, but through a summoning of the Muslims to a veneration of the Mother of God. This is the line of argument:

MARY
The Qu’ran, which is the Bible for the Muslims, has many passages concerning the Blessed Virgin. First of all, the Qu’ran believes in her Immaculate Conception, and also in her Virgin Birth. The third chapter of the Qu’ran places the history of Mary’s family in a genealogy which goes back through Abraham, Noah, and Adam. When one compares the Qu’ran’s description of the birth of Mary with the apocryphal Gospel of the birth of Mary, one is tempted to believe that Mohammed very much depended upon the latter. Both books describe the old age and the definite sterility of the mother of Mary. When, however, she conceives, the mother of Mary is made to say in the Qu’ran: “O Lord, I vow and I consecrate to you what is already within me. Accept it from me.”

When Mary is born, the mother says: And I consecrate her with all of her posterity under thy protection, O Lord, against Satan!”

The Qu’ran passes over Joseph in the life of Mary, but the Muslim tradition knows his name and has some familiarity with him. In this tradition, Joseph is made to speak to Mary, who is a virgin. As he inquired how she conceived Jesus without a father, Mary answered:

Do you not know that God, when he created the wheat had no need of seed, and that God by his power made the trees grow without the help of rain? All that God had to do was to say, ‘So be it, and it was done.’

The Qu’ran was also verses on the Annunciation, Visitation, and Nativity. Angels are pictured as accompanying the Blessed Mother and saying: “Oh, Mary, God has chosen you and purified you, and elected you above all the women of the earth.” In the nineteenth chapter of the Qu’ran there are 41 verses on Jesus and Mary. There is such a strong defense of the virginity of Mary here that the Qu’ran, in the fourth book, attributed the condemnation of the Jews to their monstrous calumny against the Virgin Mary.

FATIMA
Mary, then, is for the Muslims the true Sayyida, or Lady. The only possible serious rival to her in their creed would be Fatima, the daughter of Mohammed himself. But after the death of Fatima, Mohammed wrote: “Thou shalt be the most blessed of all women in Paradise , after Mary.” In a variation of the text, Fatima is made to say, “I surpass all the women, except Mary.”

This brings us to our second point: namely, why the Blessed Mother, in the 20th century, should have revealed herself in the significant little village of Fatima , so that to all future generations she would be known as “Our Lady of Fatima.” Since nothing ever happens out of Heaven except with a finesse of all details, I believe that the blessed Virgin chose to be known as “Our Lady of Fatima” as a pledge and a sign of hope to the Muslim people, and as an assurance that they, who show her so much respect, will one day accept her divine Son too.

Evidence to support these views is found in the historical fact that the Muslims occupied Portugal for centuries. At the time when they were finally driven out, the last Muslim chief had a beautiful daughter by the name of Fatima . A Catholic boy fell in love with her, and for him she not only stayed behind when the Muslims left, but even embraced the faith. The young husband was so much in love with her that he changed the name of the town where he lived to Fatima . Thus, the very place where our lady appeared in 1917 bears a historical connection to Fatima, the daughter of Mohammed.

The final evidence of the relationship of Fatima to the Muslims is the enthusiastic reception which the Muslims in Africa, India , and elsewhere gave to the pilgrim statue of Our Lady of Fatima. Muslims attended the church services in honor of our Lady, they allowed religious processions and even prayers before their mosques; and in Mozambique, the Muslims who were unconverted, began to be Christian as soon as the statue of Our Lady of Fatima was erected.

MISSIONARIES
Missionaries in the future will, more and more, see that their apostolate among the Muslims will be successful in the measure that they preach Our Lady of Fatima. Mary is the advent of Christ, bringing Christ to the people before Christ himself is born. In an apologetic endeavor, it is always best to start with that which people already accept. Because the Muslims have a devotion to Mary, our missionaries should be satisfied merely to expand and to develop that devotion, with the full realization that Our Blessed Lady will carry the Muslims the rest of the way to her divine Son. She is forever a “traitor,” in the sense that she will not accept any devotion for herself, but will always bring anyone who is devoted to her to her divine Son. As those who lose devotion to her lose belief in the divinity of Christ, so those who intensify devotion to her gradually acquire that belief.

Many of our great missionaries in Africa have already broken down the bitter hatred and prejudices of the Muslims against the Christians through their acts of charity, their schools and hospitals. It now remains to use another approach, namely, that of taking the 41st chapter of the Quran and showing them that it was taken out of the Gospel of Luke, that Mary could not be, even in their own eyes, the most blessed of all the women of Heaven if she had not also borne One who was the Savior of the world. If Judith and Esther of the Old Testament were pre-figures of Mary, then it may very well be that Fatima herself was a post-figure of Mary! The Muslims should be prepared to acknowledge that, if Fatima must give way in honor to the Blessed Mother, it is because she is different from all the other mothers of the world and that without Christ she would be nothing.

 This was written by Bishop Sheen in 1952.