Did Cardinal McCarrick compare Allah to the Trinity?
By Phil Lawler ( bio - articles - email ) | Sep 15, 2014
Cardinal Theodore McCarrick began a speech to a Muslim group with the traditional Islamic invocation: “In the name of God, the merciful and compassionate,” according to a report by the Daily Caller. The retired Archbishop of Washington also used a traditional Islamic formula in a reference to “Muhammad the prophet, peace be upon him.”
Wishing peace upon Muhammad might be dismissed as one more attempt by the cardinal to ingratiate himself with a Muslim audience. But can it possibly be true, as the Daily Caller suggests, that Cardinal McCarrick likened the Islamic homage to “Allah, the merciful and compassionate,” with the Catholic invocation: “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit”?
From a Muslim perspective, that comparison is blasphemous. Islam teaches that Allah is a single being, and recoils at the notion that this proud deity would take human flesh. And from a Catholic perspective… Let’s just hope that the Daily Caller-- with its dramatic headline, “Catholic Cardinal McCarrick Embraces Islam”—got the story wrong.
Phil Lawler has been a Catholic journalist for more than 30 years. He has edited several Catholic magazines and written eight books. Founder of Catholic World News, he is the news director and lead analyst at CatholicCulture.org. See full bio.
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Posted by: shrink -
Sep. 19, 2014 4:13 PM ET USA
Cdl McCarrick is right at home with theological pluralism/relativism. He was one of the main authors of the Land O' Lakes declaration—a manifesto of relativism if there ever was. In that most islamic countries are dictatorships, could we have in Cdl McCarrick the embodiment of the Dictatorship of Relativism?
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Posted by: bernie4871 -
Sep. 17, 2014 4:35 PM ET USA
Met a Muslim man in Paris' airport. I was returning from a Rome Canonization. I talked about God our Father. He said two things that resolve the issue for me. "I have no father but Adam", he said. Then, as he walked coldly away from me, he said, "The problem with men is they have not learned who their master is." He was not talking about the Master of the Gospel, rather the 'Overseer' or 'Cracker' of slavery who is above good and evil. Cdl. McCarrick might ask himself if Allah is God.
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Posted by: FredC -
Sep. 17, 2014 2:05 PM ET USA
There is no proof that the angel that appeared to Muhammad was not a bad angel (e.g., the devil). The Mormon's Moroni might also have been a bad angel.
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Posted by: dover beachcomber -
Sep. 17, 2014 1:33 AM ET USA
From a Catholic perspective it's blasphemous, too. And Allah, as a "single being" and "proud deity" who would never take on human flesh, sounds a great deal more like Lucifer than God. I wonder who actually appeared to Muhammad in that cave in Arabia so long ago. An angel of God, they say. But which one?
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Posted by: [email protected] -
Sep. 16, 2014 8:18 PM ET USA
Hopefully the story is wrong. But it would not be surprising that Cardinal McCarrick made the comparison to show we worship the same God. Sorry but the "Allah" the muslims use as an excuse to rape, slaughter and murder others is not God. It is but the example of a sick person by the name of Mohammed and his followers in league with satan to justify world wide murder unless you bow to them./
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Posted by: jg23753479 -
Sep. 16, 2014 8:16 PM ET USA
If 'embrace' is too strong a word here, we can say at least that McCarrick's take on Islam is peculiar. Tens of thousands of terrorist attacks since 9/11 and even cursory reading about the teachings of the "prophet" Mohammed tell us that what McCarrick said was simply dead wrong. Islam is anything but a "religion of peace" and everyone knows this or should by now. McCarrick and other prelates should be called out when they so grossly distort the truth to ingratiate themselves with Mohammedans.
