A group of bishops in England overdosed on stupid pills this week and then sadly, came out with a document.Daily Mail
Muslim prayer rooms should be opened in every Roman Catholic school, Church leaders have said.
The Catholic bishops of England and Wales also want special toilet facilities in schools to be adapted for Islamic cleaning rituals.
Their demands will shock both Catholic parents and the Government because they go way beyond the legal requirements on catering for the rights and needs of religious minorities.
But the bishops are keen to answer critics who say religious schools sow division – and to show that they are leading the way in building bridges between people of different faiths.
Now, I wonder what would happen if lots of cannibals moved to Europe. Would the bishops start setting up buffet tables in the basements as a lesson in diversity?
What shocks me most is that no longer is the Catholic Church convinced of its singular-ness. Seemingly, Catholicism is just one faith among many others and the most important principle is diversity rather than truth. Someone should tell the bishops that the schools are CATHOLIC SCHOOLS. This is incredibly sad and disturbing.
No word yet on when madrassas will set up little areas for Catholics to pray. Calls to madrassas for a response ended with them screaming “Death to the infidel!” and “Death to America.”
December 2, 2008 at 4:18 pm
Pope Urban II has got to be rolling in his grave! Will we need a Crusade to rescue our Catholic schools?
Why do these bishops feel they need to kowtow to every other religion? When has any religion kowtowed to Catholics?! Where are the Blessed Sacrament Chapels in protestant schools, Jewish schools and muslim schools, I ask you?!
December 2, 2008 at 4:26 pm
Overdosed on stupid pills is a great analogy for this situation.
December 2, 2008 at 4:40 pm
I’m sorry….WHAT!?!?!??
December 2, 2008 at 4:59 pm
Some time ago, I was reading on another blog, i think that belongs to an English priest, about how the British government is putting extraordinary pressure on the bishops and the Catholic schools to stop teahcing Catholicism in the schools (he linked to transcripts from hearings in the House of Commons where one of our bishops was interrogated so horribly that the lines of questioning would curl your hair)In reading those transcripts, i came to understand that with some of the Catholic schools in question, as many as 90% of those kids enrolled are in fact Muslim. Doesn’t make the actions less stupid, but it does give it some context.
December 2, 2008 at 5:35 pm
What part of being in a Catholic school do they not get? This is exactly why the government should not be de facto running Catholic schools in the UK. I agree with the previous, the day you find a Blessed Sacrament Chapel in a Protestant or a Muslim school…then talk to me about catering, but since those days are never going to happen…let me just take a little time to say this…At a Catholic school, Catholicism should be taught. No one should be forced to convert, conversions come through the heart. There should be no need to be politically correct in appeasing people. They get exactly what they signed up for. If they don’t like it they can take their kids out the school…Rant over.
December 2, 2008 at 6:15 pm
This is insane!
December 2, 2008 at 6:18 pm
Muslims send their children to Catholic schools because the schools are Catholic. Whoever these Bishops are they are beyond the pale if they’re supposed to be Catholic.
December 2, 2008 at 7:08 pm
My children go to a Lutheran preschool because it’s WAY cheaper than the Catholic counterpart. We’ll pull them out before any specific doctorine gets taught (that happens in the sixth grade). At that time we’ll bite the bullet and find some way to afford another school. Money is always tight, makes life interesting.
I mention that because I can see where a Muslim family might want to send their kids to a Catholic school, from what I hear the schools in the UK are ten times worse than ours.
That being said, I’d think the school administration here would be crazy to start teaching Catholic doctorine because my kids and others like them happened to be attending.
Somebody over there needs a checkup from the neckup.
December 2, 2008 at 7:23 pm
Darn that President Bush. And those godless, satanic, evil, wicked public-school teachers. Except for me, of course.
My first teaching position, a gift of service, was in a Catholic school, which was a post-Catholic relic. In my evil, wicked, blah-blah public school the kids, Protestant and Catholic, often do get together informally to pray. Of course the Protestants don’t quite get it, still sure that Catholic and Christian are discrete terms, but we aren’t yet putting our noses to Mecca and our butts to the West.
Mack
December 2, 2008 at 8:31 pm
Run to the mountains:
Mark 13:14
But when ye see the abomination of desolation standing where he ought not (let him that readeth understand), then let them that are in Judaea flee unto the mountains:
December 2, 2008 at 9:00 pm
OK, class… up next is music class, singing the songs of George Harrison. Later, we’ll have assembly with Archbishop Rowan, just after the afternoon bowing to Mecca. But first, please read chapters 4-6 of GK Chesterton’s “Everlasting Man.”
“Uh, teacher? Half the pages are blacked out.”
Quite right, lad. Better make it chapters 4-8, then.
December 2, 2008 at 9:04 pm
This is very odd to me, because through Irish dance world connections in the UK, it seems very hard atleast in some parts to get one’s children into Catholic schools without proving that one is active in the faith (attending Mass weekly, etc.). It was my understanding that they are also free, which I think is very attractive to many. That said, obviously there are some things going on I am not aware of. Maybe the bishops should ask for a Eucharistic Chapel in all madrasahs?
December 3, 2008 at 12:32 am
Cannibals in Europe!
Why thats what protestants and muslims called Catholics for eating the body and blood of christ…
Unfortunately, we dont have enough of those pesky cannibals left.
December 3, 2008 at 1:12 am
From a little closer to the UK situation let me point out that the Catholic Church and other faith communities are under pressure from the UK government to help them deal with Islamic extremism. If Muslim students are attending Christian or state schools the Government can easily monitor and influence what they are taught but if they go to a Muslim school that is far from easy to do – they risk trouble from the Muslim community and it forms a far bigger percentage in the UK than in the US. Still the bishops should be careful – even when what they say is right the media can distort it to their own ends.
December 3, 2008 at 2:18 pm
They may be being pressured into it but it is a mistake. Allowing this is a tacit admission of equivalence between Catholicism and Islam. That’s dangerous.
December 3, 2008 at 8:01 pm
The English bishops are doing this, I believe, because they somehow think that if they do this, then not only will Muslim schools make similar concessions to Catholics, but Muslim nations (such as Saudi Arabia) will allow Christian churches to be built in their lands.
It’s all part of Pope Benedict XVI’s policy of “reciprocity” — which, I believe, has become a dismal failure.
Muslim leaders aren’t interested in reciprocity. They’re interested in conquest, whether through jihad, the laws of host nations or the kindness of “infidels.”
Besides, B16 and his immediate subordinates don’t give a damn. Why do I say this? Because Catholic properties in Europe and the U.S. are being sold to Muslim congregations. Read the following that I wrote for Front Page Magazine:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=B3F2FF50-2C44-4EDF-A6EB-356A2CCDFA80
The Church is in far bigger trouble than any Catholic wants to realize.
December 3, 2008 at 8:13 pm
Just read your piece. Very disturbing. Thanks for the heads up.
December 4, 2008 at 10:35 am
I would be inclined to take Mark Shea’s line on this: this is charity, not ‘dhimmitude’.
December 4, 2008 at 1:18 pm
I suppose I might be more inclined to agree with Mark in this matter if these same Bishops showed the slightest spirit of accommodation toward traditional Catholics. Charity starts at home, yes?
December 4, 2008 at 6:09 pm
The problems with Shea’s opinion on this issue are 1)he rarely challenges the bishops on anything, save clerical sex-abuse and a lack of spine regarding abortion 2)he fails to recognize that charity does not necessarily mean doing for others what they can do themselves (that’s co-dependence) 3)part of his agenda includes ragging on anybody who disagrees with him.
As far as whether Islam and Christianity worship the same God, I refer you all to the comments of French Catholic scholar Alain Bescancon, who submitted the following in his article, “What Sort of Religion Is Islam?” in the May 2004 edition of Commentary magazine (cited in Front Page Magazine:
Though all three faiths are monotheistic, Islam rejects the doctrines of atonement and redemption that define Christianity and Judaism. Moreover, no concept of a covenant between God and humanity exists in Islam. Instead, Allah decrees his law “by means of a unilateral pact, in an act of sublime condescension (that) precludes any notion of imitating God as is urged in the Bible,” Besancon wrote.
Islam also rejects the Christian doctrines of original sin and the necessity of mediation between God and humanity. In the Koran, Jesus “appears… out of place and out of time, without reference to the landscape of Israel,” Besancon wrote.
Most importantly, Judeo-Christian and Muslim concepts of divinity revolve around one irreconcilable difference:
“Although Muslims like to enumerate the 99 names of God, missing from the list, but central to the Jewish and even more so to the Christian conception of God, is ‘Father’ – i.e., a personal god capable of a reciprocal and loving relation with men,” Besancon wrote. “The one God of the Koran, the God Who demands submission is a distant God; to call him ‘Father’ would be an anthropomorphic sacrilege.”
Regarding whether Jews and Christians worship the same God, remember that all Christians consider the OT as divinely inspired (the fact that Catholics, Protestants and Orthodox disagree on the number of books constituting the OT is a separate issue), and view the OT as a necessary complement to the NT. When St. Paul quotes Scripture in his letters, he invariably uses the OT. In fact, when he says that “All Scripture is inspired and useful for teaching, rebuke, etc.,” he refers specifically to the OT.