Some Reflections On The Present War
September 11, 2001 opened to millions of Americans the vast war between the holy and fallen angels for every human soul. It has also opened Islam, as Muslims in the information age look more closely at the heart of their religion than ever before.
The War Becomes Visible
The attack on the World Trade Center made the spiritual war visible at two levels. First, many Americans had come to accept the relativist view that objective good and evil do not exist. It got blown out of the water that day. Most Americans look at a passenger jetliner and think family, vacation, or business opportunity. Looking at the same airliner and seeing integrated bomb and delivery system is pure evil. Jesus said, "I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly." (John 10:10) The terrorists came that we might have death, and have it abundantly. The spiritual war between good and evil for the souls of men now stands out in bold relief.
Indeed, we may well ask who was flying those four airplanes on September 11. Was it the terrorists, or were they possessed by demons? Did holy angels place their own sign amid the World Trade Center wreckage? Several perfectly formed crosses were found, beams that "just happened to fall that way," welded in place by the terrible heat. The worker who found them spray-painted "God's House" on a nearby wall. As word spread, tired workers flocked there to pray. In the entire sixteen acres of rubble there was no symmetry whatever, except those crosses.1
That evening, Avery Cardinal Dulles delivered a homily at Fordham University. He declared, "In our studies of history and politics we tend to concentrate on the rivalries and struggles between different classes, races, or nations. We divide the world into competing power blocs, equipped with armies and arsenals. But events such as we have experienced this morning prompt us to look deeper, at the invisible realm in which the forces of light and darkness, good and evil, clash in unceasing strife. It is in this larger battle that we must take a position, if we want our lives to rise above the self-interest of the particular group to which we belong."
The War And Islam
Across the centuries, Islam has been at war with Judaism and Christianity. The Catholic Church respects the truths that Islam teaches. "The plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator, in the first place amongst whom are the Muslims; these profess to hold the faith of Abraham, and together with us they adore the one, merciful God, mankind's judge on the last day."2 At the same time, Hilaire Belloc reminds us:
Mohammedanism was a heresy: that is the essential point to grasp before going any further. It began as a heresy, not as a new religion . . . He sprang from pagans. But that which he taught was in the main Catholic doctrine, oversimplified. It was the great Catholic world — on the frontiers of which he lived, whose influence was all around him and whose territories he had known by travel — which inspired his convictions. He came of, and mixed with, the degraded idolaters of the Arabian wilderness, the conquest of which had never seemed worth the Romans' while . . . the very foundation of his teaching was that prime Catholic doctrine, the unity and omnipotence of God. The attributes of God he also took over in the main from Catholic doctrine: the personal nature, the all-goodness, the timelessness, the providence of God, His creative power as the origin of all things, and His sustenance of all things by His power alone. The world of good spirits and angels and of evil spirits in rebellion against God was part of the teaching, with a chief evil spirit, such as Christendom had recognized. Mohammed preached with insistence that prime Catholic doctrine, on the human side — the immortality of the soul and its responsibility for actions in this life, coupled with the consequent doctrine of punishment and reward after death.3
The Qur'an4 in Chapter 19 presents a respectful paean to the Mary of Nazareth as the Blessed Virgin: "Relate in the Book the story of Mary, when she withdrew from her family to a place in the East. She placed a screen to screen herself from them; then We sent her our angel, and he appeared before her as a man in all respects. She said: 'I seek refuge from thee to Allah most gracious, come not near if thou dost fear Allah.' He said, 'Nay, I am only a messenger from thy Lord to announce to thee the gift of a holy son.' She said, 'How shall I have a son, seeing that no man has touched me, and I am not unchaste?' He said, 'So it will be: Thy Lord saith, 'that is easy for Me: and We wish to appoint him as a sign unto men and a mercy from Us. It is a matter so decreed.' So she conceived him, and she retired with him to a remote place."5
The same chapter continues: "And the pains of childbirth drove (Mary) to the trunk of a palm-tree: She cried in her anguish: 'Ah! Would that I had died before this! Would that I had been a thing forgotten and out of sight!"6 But St. Luke tells us the opposite, that our Blessed Mother proclaimed the Magnificat: "All generations will call me blessed" (Lk 1:48). The Blessed Virgin experienced no pain whatever during the birth of her Son, because the pain of childbirth came from sin (Gen 3:16). She was filled with joy at the birth of her Son (Luke 2:13f).
Our Blessed Mother's virginity is important because Jesus the Son of God needed a perfectly pure woman through whom to come into the world, and also because she would fulfill the prophecy, "Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, a young woman shall conceive and bear a son . . ." (Isaiah 7:14). Isaiah's original Hebrew word for "young woman" was almah, which meant a young unmarried woman. An almah was assumed to be a virgin; if she had pre-marital sex she would have been stoned to death. Isaiah could have used betulah, which specifically meant a virgin, but that would have disrupted the great Marian them of the woman.7 The Septuagint, a Greek translation prepared by the rabbis for most of the world's Jews who at the time spoke Greek, translated almah into Greek as parthenos, which definitely means a virgin. The rabbis who translated the Septuagint accepted that Isaiah meant a virgin, and that the child born at Isaiah 9:6 was the child conceived at 7:14. Remember Isaiah 9:6, "For unto us a child is born, to us a son is given . . . and his name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace."
So if Mary gave virgin birth to Jesus of Nazareth it would be a strong sign of fulfillment. Yet after emphasizing Mary's virginal conception of Jesus, the Qur'an denies what had to follow from it. "They say 'Allah most gracious has begotten a son!' Indeed ye have put forth a thing most monstrous! At is the skies are ready to burst, the earth to split asunder, and the mountains to fall down in utter ruin, that that should invoke a son for Allah most gracious. For it is not consonant with the majesty of Allah most gracious that He should beget a son."8 This passage entirely denies the divinity of Jesus.
Islam accepts much of the appearance of Christianity as a monotheistic religion but rejects its substance, Christ's divine personhood and all that followed from it. Yet Muhammad called Jesus his brother. Ibn Ishaq wrote, "A learned man told me that some of the apostle's companions asked him to tell them about himself. He said: 'I am what Abraham my father prayed for and the good news of my brother Jesus.'"9 It is remarkable that Muhammad would regard Jesus as a brother prophet. Jesus affirmed His divine personhood. "Simon Peter replied, 'You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.' And Jesus answered him, 'Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven." (Matt. 16:16) "Again the high priest asked him, 'Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?' And Jesus said, 'I am; and you will see the Son of man . . .'" (Mark 14:61) Once a man declares that he is the Son of God, he is exactly that or he is exactly what the Sanhedrin said he was. Calling Jesus a human person but a good teacher or prophet denies the historical record of His life.
Muhammad wrote into his new religion doctrines that would appeal to the masses. During the seventh century, much of the world was pagan and suffered the typical ills that come when men ignore God. Arbitrary rule and heavy taxation imposed social strains. Many men were poor and deeply in debt. Slavery was rampant. In this environment, Islam falsely appeared to be a balm from heaven. Muhammad's Qur'an outlawed usury, so a debtor who accepted Muhammad as God's prophet no longer recognized his debts as valid. His Qur'an outlawed slavery, so a slave who accepted Muhammad as God's prophet was no longer a slave in his own eyes. The Qur'an relaxed the marriage laws, opening the way for men to have polygamy or divorce as they desired.
The Qur'an is a book of simple statements, many repeated several times, often contradictory. It says that the world was made in six days,10 but it also says that the world was made in two days.11 The internal contradictions within the Qur'an are so obvious that it actually has a verse to explain them. "None of Our revelations do We abrogate or cause to be forgotten, but We substitute something better or similar."12 Muslims say this is progressive revelation, adapting God's word to different peoples at different times, like the kosher laws vs. Jesus' declaration that all foods are clean, (Mark 7:19) but they are not comparable. God developed His revelation from Moses to Jesus over twelve centuries, during which time the Israelite people were transformed from desert nomads to a nation that followed religious law from the Sanhedrin and civil law from a Roman procurator, king and emperor. The verse on abrogations refers only to the Qur'an itself; a change or correction to the same book within twenty years cannot be progressive revelation. A reversal within such a short interval can mean only that the author was not all knowing or that the recorder made changes.
Most heresies start with a great rush and then slowly decline. They begin by exaggerating a particular Catholic teaching. For example, during the fifth century Nestorius started with the Catholic teaching that Jesus Christ is true God and true man, but falsely concluded that there are two persons in Christ, one divine and one human.13 St. Cyril of Alexandria refuted him so effectively that Eutyches of Constantinople lurched into the opposite heresy, monophysitism, that in Jesus Christ the union of divinity and humanity was so complete as to be only one divine-human nature. These heresies arise and become fashionable because they contain partial truths about Jesus. But because they are incomplete, they age and lose vitality over several centuries as their adherents eventually return to the Catholic Church. Satan recycles heresies that have worked in the past, but there is no significant movement today following Nestorius or Eutyches. Islam, however, did not follow the pattern.
During its early years and even today, Islam has achieved many of its gains by force rather than inspiration. Muhammad himself gathered a group of converts and imposed Islam by force on all of Arabia. The sins of Christians, in the weakness of the Byzantine Empire, the rivalry between the Greek and Latin Churches and the schisms of Nestorius and Eutyches allowed the successors of Muhammad to conquer Palestine, Syria, Mesopotamia, Egypt, North Africa, and the South of Spain and impose Islam by military force, in considerably less than a century. The Muslims even crossed the Pyrenees, threatening to stable their horses at St. Peter's in Rome, but Christ protected His base. Charles Martel's great defeat of the Muslim forces at Tours, in 732, exactly one hundred years after the death of Muhammad, arrested Islam's western conquests and saved Europe. In the eighth and ninth centuries the Muslims further conquered Persia, Afghanistan, and a large part of India.
By 1071 the Seljuk Turks had conquered Jerusalem and made Christian pilgrimages nearly impossible. When the Turks also threatened to seize Constantinople from the Eastern Christians the Byzantine emperor, Alexis I, asked Pope Urban II for help. In the Councils of Piacenza and Clermont in 1095, the Pope appealed to the knights of Europe to free the Holy Land. Thousands of Frenchmen, Germans, English, and Italians responded, riding under the battle cry, "God wills it."
The Christian nations had an affirmative responsibility to defend themselves and prevent future attacks to protect their innocent and helpless citizens. The Crusaders never attacked Arabia, the Muslim homeland. They fought only to recover Christian territories conquered by Muslims. Christians had every right to govern the places where Christ, God incarnate, walked the earth, and to protect them from desecration. Muslims to this day exclude non-Muslims form whole cities they regard as holy, as any Jew or Christian who tries to enter Makkah or Madinah in Saudi Arabia quickly discovers. However, the Crusaders committed grave sins of their own, particularly the Sack of Jerusalem during the first crusade and the Sack of Constantinople during the fourth. These were abuses of only brief intervals during a period of two centuries, but our sins do untold damage, and the Muslims held their conquered lands.
Today Islam's one billion adherents live in a huge crescent from Morocco to Indonesia and from Kosovo to Nigeria. More than half of all Muslims live in South Asia and Southeast Asia, about a third in North Africa, and most of the rest in the Near and Middle East. The Islamic Conference currently has 57 member states: Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Benin, Brunei, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Comoros, Cote d'Ivoire, Djibouti, Egypt, Gabon, Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Libya, Malaysia, Maldives, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria, Oman, Pakistan, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, Surinam, Syria, Tajikistan, Togo, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Uganda, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, and Yemen. There are also three observer states: Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Central African Republic, and Thailand.
When the World Trade Center fell, President Bush quickly declared that the American response would not be a war against Islam, but against terrorism. Over and over, American commentators insisted, this is not a war between Christianity and Islam. But the war is against Islamic terrorism.
Muslims often quote the Qur'an verse, "Let there be no compulsion in religion,"14 to suggest that Islam is peaceful. But this verse is evidently intended for quotation to non-Muslims; numerous other verses directly contradict it. For example, Yusufali translates, "Fight and slay the pagans wherever ye find them, and seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem of war."15 Pickthal translates the same verse, "Slay the idolaters wherever ye find them, and take them captive, and besiege them, and prepare for them each ambush." Shakir translates it, "Slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them captives and besiege them and lie in wait for them in every ambush."
More verses in the same chapter show that attacking non-Muslims is a consistent theme in Islam. Yusufali translates, "Strive hard against the unbelievers and the hypocrites, and be firm against them."16 Pickthal translates the same verse, "Strive against the disbelievers and the hypocrites! Be harsh with them." Shakir translates, "Strive hard against the unbelievers and the hypocrites and be unyielding to them." There is also, "O ye who believe! Fight the unbelievers who gird you about."17 Yusufali translates the phrase that follows, ". . . let them find firmness in you." Pickthal translates, ". . . let them find harshness in you," and Shakir, ". . . let them find in you hardness."
Other chapters add, "Slay [unbelievers] wherever ye catch them."18 "Allah hath granted a grade higher to those who strive and fight with their goods and persons than to those who sit at home."19 "Therefore, when ye meet the unbelievers in fight, smite at their necks."20
In every country governed under Shari'a, Islamic law, Christians have been the subjects of discrimination at best, persecution as the norm, and slavery or execution at worst. In many of these countries evangelizing a Muslim to become Christian is punishable by death. A Muslim who publicly becomes Christian is punished by death.
In fact, Islam claims the right to execute persons living outside Islamic countries. On February 14, 1989, Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa21 that Salman Rushdie's book, Satanic Verses, was blasphemous, and that it was the religious duty of any Muslim with the ability or means to kill the Indian-born author, who remained in hiding under Scotland Yard protection for nine years and is still very careful. This was not the action of an isolated extremist. Khomeini was recognized among Shiite Muslims as an ayatollah22 and an imam,23 a high Islamic authority, and ruled Iran as such. Islamic authorities could have formally declared Khomeini's fatwa contrary to the Qur'an and therefore void. If they had, Scotland Yard would not have had to shelter Rushdie for nine years.
It was not a one-time event. Shari'a holds that no one, especially a non-Muslim, may openly criticize Muhammad. For instance, Muhammad is said to have signed the treaty of Hudaybiyah in 628 AD and to have broken it when circumstances changed. Anyone who says openly that Muhammad never intended to keep the treaty will soon encounter violent threats and worse.24
Catholic Teaching On War
September 11, 2001 marked the first state-supported foreign attack on the American homeland since 1812. A lethal attack on thousands of another country's citizens is by itself an act of war. But on that day a hijacked passenger airliner was also vectored straight for the White House. The terrorist pilot, perhaps with God's help, could not see the White House and so decided to hit the Pentagon instead. A fourth terrorist pilot was evidently preparing to fly his airliner straight into another building representing American power, possibly the Capitol, until the passengers attacked the hijackers and forced the plane to crash in rural southwestern Pennsylvania.
Catholic teaching on war is rooted in the doctrine of self defense. Catholic teaching on the self-defense is based on the principle of double effect. Following St. Thomas Aquinas, the Catechism of the Catholic Church states: "The act of self-defense can have a double effect: the preservation of one's own life; and the killing of an aggressor . . . The one is intended, the other is not."25 It continues, "Someone who defends his own life is not guilty of murder even if he is forced to deal his aggressor a lethal blow."26 It adds, "Legitimate defense can be not only a right but a grave duty for one who is responsible for the lives of others."27
The principle of double effect says that it is morally allowable to perform an act that has at least two effects, one good and one bad, if four conditions are met. First, the act must be morally good, or at least morally neutral, in itself, independent of its consequences. Second, the good effect must not be obtained by means of the evil effect; the evil must be only an incidental by-product. Third, the evil must not be intended, only permitted. Fourth, there must be proportionally grave reason for permitting the evil effect.
Catholic just war doctrine states the strict conditions for legitimate defense by military force require rigorous consideration. The gravity of such a decision makes it subject to rigorous conditions of moral legitimacy. At one and the same time:
— The damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain;
— All other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;
— There must be serious prospects of success;
— The use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The power of modern means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition.28
On September 11, 2001 the damage inflicted by the aggressor was indeed lasting, grave and certain. More than three thousand persons were killed, the World Trade Center towers in which 50,000 people worked were destroyed, and the Pentagon in which 25,000 people work was severely damaged.
All other means of putting an end to it have not worked. During recent decades there have been numerous terrorist attacks against the United States. After each of these attacks, the United States and other countries tried measures short of war to prevent recurrence.
The United States had done everything it could short of war in responding to these attacks. None of these responses prevented subsequent attacks. Serious military action has. In 1981 Israel destroyed Saddam Hussein's nuclear weapons program, preventing a nuclear exchange during the 1991 Gulf War. In 1986, when Libyan agents bombed a Berlin discotheque frequented by American soldiers, U.S. warplanes hit Libyan military sites as well as Muammar Qaddafi's personal compound. Libya has been relatively quiet since then. In 2001, after United States and Northern Alliance forces destroyed Taliban and al-Qaida control of Afghanistan, the "Arab street" was relatively quiet for a time. Military responses that have not seriously damaged a nation's ability to mount terrorist attacks but were instead designed to "send a signal" have not prevented subsequent attacks.
Let us recall, too, that the attacks have not only been against the United States. Mehmet Ali Agca, a Turkish Muslim terrorist, shot and nearly killed Pope John Paul II in St. Peter's Square on May 13, 1981.29
Faith Expressed In Works
The United States has set forth as a military principle that only the terrorist organizations and the government infrastructures that enable them are to be destroyed. Innocent civilians are to be protected from attack. There may be times when the terrorists and their enablers, hiding amid civilian populations or in mosques, may bring military fire on those civilian populations, but morally that is covered by the principle of double effect: the intention is never to kill the civilians but only to render harmless the infrastructure being used to attack other innocent civilians.
Catholics are naturally reluctant to conclude that significant movements within a major religion are intent on killing Jews and Christians. Many of us in the United States have a Muslim friend. The American Muslims we know are generally good and decent souls who love peace and are genuinely distressed by terrorist attacks, but Americans are a small minority within Islam. The speak of Islamist30 rather than Islamic terrorists, as if a small group of schismatics had hijacked a peaceful Islam. If that were true, the terrorists would presumably not accept the United States Islamic chaplains sent to their prisons. If it were true we would see most or all the Islamic countries doing all they could to suppress al-Qaida.
The reality is very different. In most countries where Muslims are in the majority, the textbooks read by school children are deeply hostile to the Christian West. In the months following the attacks on the World Trade Center, most of the Islamic countries did not allow United States armed forces to use their military facilities or airspace against the Islamic militants, or even cut off their funding. Pakistan stood out because it was one of the few Islamic countries to support American military activity in Afghanistan with deeds as well as words.
The Decline And Resurgence Of Islam
Medieval Islam surpassed Christian Europe in the arts and sciences. But Renaissance Europe advanced rapidly in science and culture while Arabs, disdaining Christians as having nothing of value to contribute, did not follow. Western nations established offices, then consulates, and finally embassies in the Ottoman Empire to learn from it. But the Empire, convinced that Muslims should not live in infidel states, did not reciprocate.
We cannot assume that Islam will remain in decline. With contraception available and widely promoted, the average European women gives birth during her lifetime to 1.4 children, a third less than the 2.1 needed to sustain Europe's population. At that rate, Europe's 728 million population will drop to 600 million by 2050.31 As populations decline through low birth rates their average age rises. If 40 percent of Europe's native population is 65 or older by 2050, that would be 240 million persons. Currently, Europe has 4.8 workers for every retiree. To sustain that ratio in 2050 would require 1.15 billion working people. But Europe would have only 360 million native working people. The gap could be bridged only by immigrating 790 million working-age persons. Based on present population trends, the majority of Europe's immigrants will come from Sub-Saharan Africa, with nearly 700 million people and a fertility rate of 3.5 births per woman. The European Union, already with a common currency and intent on full political union, will foreseeably be the first Muslim superstate within the lifetime of many living today. The consequences for the Vatican in particular and Christianity in general bring to mind Catholic teaching that "The Church will . . . follow her Lord in his death and Resurrection."33
What We Can Do
We can pray fervently for disappearance of the terrorist infrastructure so that we need not in self-defense make war against countries that sustain it. General Sherman reminds us, "It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance and more desolation. War is hell."
At the earthly level, we can support the legitimate military efforts of the United States, making it clear that we do so to protect human life and retain the political freedom to "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations" (Mt 28:19).
We can engage Islam by proclaiming the truth about the Catholic Church while exposing Islam's errors and contradictions. We need to write books, magazine articles, and pamphlets. Within the United States and other Christian-majority countries, these can be freely advertised and circulated.
When witnessing to Muslims, as to anyone, we begin by reviewing Catholic teaching on the Person and work of Jesus Christ, and by praying for the Holy Spirit's constant help. Certainly we radiate Christ's love; our Muslim friend will not see Christ at all unless he sees Him in us. We deeply live our faith and joyfully share it with our Muslim friend. We express authentic interest in his beliefs, and allow him time to articulate his views. We take the time to answer all his questions. We become his personal friend and evangelist.
The spread of Christianity during its first three hundred years occurred without anyone being forced into it. Ten successive Roman emperors persecuted the early Christians.34 Of their own free will, the early Christians so deeply believed the Gospel accounts that they were willing to be eaten by lions in the arena.35 By contrast, when Jews and Christians rejected Muhammad's claim to be a prophet, he gathered a force and subjugated them. The early histories of Christianity and Islam were polar opposites.
We need also to promote Catholic social teaching, and to contrast it with Islamic social teaching. Shari'a imposes totalitarian control over the society, but the Catholic Church exerts no control. "The Church proposes; she imposes nothing."36
Jesus taught us, "By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another." (Jn 13:34) and the Church confirms it. "By virtue of her own evangelical duty the Church feels called to take her stand beside the poor, to discern the justice of their requests, and to help satisfy them, without losing sight of the . . . context of the common good."37 The Catholic Church also teaches that the family is the basic unit of society. "It is necessary to go back to seeing the family as the sanctuary of life. The family is indeed sacred: it is the place in which life — the gift of God — can be properly welcomed and protected against the many attacks to which it is exposed, and can develop in accordance with what constitutes authentic human growth.38 Finally, we can observe that the right to private property ". . . is inherent in natural law: ". . . it is the most sacred law of nature that the father of a family see that his offspring are provided with all the necessities of life."39
Robust questions are appropriate. It is better to pay Islam the true compliment of taking seriously what it says than to construct a Potemkin Islam.40 Within our Christian family we take one another seriously. If we encounter a believer in the monothelite heresy today we boldly ask him how he can say Jesus has only one divine will when He prayed to the Father. "Not as I will, but as thou wilt." (Matt. 26:39) If we encounter a believer in the Protestant heresy we ask him how he can accept the authority of the Council of Hippo in 393 AD to specify the books of the New Testament but not accept the same Council's authority to specify the books of the Old Testament, or how he can accept a non-Scriptural doctrine that says only Scriptural doctrines are authentic.
To those who say we can accommodate the present level of terrorism, we answer that terrorism has increased in response to our past accommodation. To those who say we must be tolerant, we answer that true Christians never tolerate evil. To those who say robust questions are offensive, we answer that if the early Christians had held back lest they give offense the Holy Spirit would have descended in vain.
"Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful." (Heb 10:23) We may hope that the events of September 11, 2001 will open the minds and hearts of Christians, Jews, and Muslims all over the world and bring them home to the Church that Christ instituted two thousand years ago.
Marty Barrack, a Jewish convert and Catholic evangelist, is the author of Second Exodus, which illuminates the Jewish heritage of the Catholic Church. The book is the centerpiece of Marty's Second Exodus apostolate (http://www.secondexodus.com) which helps Catholics serve Jews interested in learning more about the Church.
© 2002 Martin K. Barrack
End Notes
1. Information on the crosses from The Catholic Eye #188, September 30, 2001.
2. Catechism of the Catholic Church § 841.
3. Hilaire Belloc, The Great Heresies (London, Sheed & Ward, 1938) pp. 42-43.
4. The translation used here is the widely respected one by Abdullah Yusufali, except as noted.
5. Qur'an 19:16f.
6. Qur'an 19:23.
7. Mary was the only woman in all history so extraordinary that God could refer to her throughout salvation history simply as the woman. See Genesis 3:15, John 2:4, John 19:26, and Revelation 12:17.
8. Qur'an 19:88f.
9. Ibn Ishaq (d. ca. 773 AD) wrote one of the few full biographies of Muhammad.
10. Qur'an 7:54, 32:4.
11. Qur'an 41:9.
12. Qur'an 2:106.
13. The Catholic Church teaches that Jesus Christ is one divine Person with two natures, a divine nature and a human nature.
14. Qur'an 2:256.
15. Qur'an 9:5.
16. Qur'an 9:73.
17. Qur'an 9:123.
18. Qur'an 2:191.
19. Qur'an 4:95.
20. Qur'an 47:4
21. A fatwa is a religious edict issued by an Islamic authority.
22. From ancient Persian, aya, a miracle or sign, and Allah, God. In Shiite Islam, an ayatollah, is a sign from God, a title of high respect.
23. Among Sunni Muslims the term imam refers simply to the leader in Friday prayer at a mosque. Among Shiites, it denotes a leader in the line of Ali, held by Shiites as the divinely appointed, sinless, and infallible successors of Muhammad. Use of imam by the Iranian revolutionary leader Ruhollah Khomeini and by the Lebanese Shiite leader Musa al-Sadr signaled a new development in Twelve-Imam Shiite doctrine.
24. I take no position on Muhammad's intention when he signed the treaty. My point here is that Shari'a does not allow open criticism of Muhammad.
25. CCC 2263
26. CCC 2264
27. CCC 2265
28. CCC 2309
29. Agca is currently serving a life sentence in Italy.
30. Islamist is the accepted term for a totalitarian who seeks to destroy everything that is not Islamic.
31. Population figures count all Europe from Iceland to Russia and come from the United Nations Population Division report: World Population Prospects: The 2000 Revision Highlights, released February 28, 2001.
32. Muslim country population figures from World Bank data profiles.
33. Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 677.
34. Nero called Christians enemies of mankind. Domitian victimized mainly the nobility. Trajan considered Christians as state enemies. Marcus Aurelius confiscated Christian property and tortured his victims. Septimus Severus outlawed conversion to Christianity. Maximus Thrax persecuted the clergy. Decius ordered the death of any citizen who refused sacrifice to the Roman gods. Valerian outlawed Christian assembly, and persecuted clergy and nobility. Aurelian sustained the anti-Christian laws though he did not seriously enforce them. Diocletian ordered the bloodiest of the Roman persecutions.
35. For example, St. Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, sentenced to die among lions in Rome's Arena about the year 107 AD, wrote a letter to the Romans: "May I enjoy the beasts prepared for me, and I pray they may be prompt. I will even entice them to eat me promptly, so they will not refrain from touching me, as they have for some, out of fear . . . Understand me, brothers, do not hinder me from living eternally [by dying for Christ]."
36. Pope John Paul II, Redemptoris Missio, n. 39.
37. Pope John Paul II, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, n. 39.
38. Pope John Paul II, Centesimus Annus, n. 39.
39. Pope Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum, n. 20.
40. In Russia three centuries ago, Count Potemkin convinced ordering that false cottages and villages be built and that peasants be press-ganged into waving and smiling at their queen all along her carriage route. A "Potemkin village" has come to represent a public relations façade.
This item 4632 digitally provided courtesy of CatholicCulture.org
