I’ve seen lots of response around the blogs to my blog entries on Cardinal McCarrick’s praying to Allah. In general, they’ve either focused on whether someone like me should deign to criticize a bishop, on whether the Muslim concept of God is based on a pagan moon god, on whether Arab Christians use the world “Allah” in their prayers, or even on whether Muslims worship the same God as Christians and Jews. They’re all missing the point.
For one thing, as I’ve said before, Cardinal McCarrick is neither Arabic, nor speaking Arabic, nor addressing an Arab Christian audience. He was addressing a mixed Muslim/Catholic audience in attendance at an event at a Catholic university. (In fact, the Catholic University of America.) My point isn’t that a Catholic, or Catholic bishop of any rite, should never invoke “Allah.” It’s the context in which he should do so.
It’s also not just about Cardinal McCarrick, but a trend I see among American bishops and even priests at large. Let me give an example. Thirty-five weeks a year, NASCAR holds a stock car race. And with NASCAR having its roots in the old-fashioned red states, every race begins with the singing of the national anthem and a prayer. At 33 of those races, the prayer is given by a Protestant minister, usually evangelical or fundamentalist, and every one of those prayers invokes the name of Jesus. But twice per year, at the races held in Loudon, New Hampshire, the prayer is given by a Catholic bishop (I suspect the owner of the track is himself Catholic). Rarely does the prayer given by the Catholic bishop mention the name of Jesus.
The difference between McCarrick’s speech and the crucifixes at Georgetown is that McCarrick’s speech was given to a Muslim-Catholic audience. The Muslims were not in the audience by happenstance, or because they wanted a Catholic education. Rather, they were there specifically because they had been invited by Catholic University and were the focal point of the event: Abdullah, King of Jordan, was there to discuss his Amman Message which was an Islamic religious response to Islamic religious terrorist ideology, and a call to end violence against non-Muslims because of their religion.
Educating non-Catholics is not why Catholic schools and universities were built with Catholic money, and it is not why they continue to exist. But I think making use of their facilities to help reduce violence against Christians at home and abroad would be approved by everyone who donated to their construction.
McCarrick used the name “Allah” because he wanted to make clear that he was referring to the same God adored by Muslims. He used the terms “merciful” and “compassionate” again to emphasize the elements of faith we have in common with Muslims. In paragraph 841 of the Catechism, the Catholic Church uses these precise terms to refer to God when describing the common adoration we share with Muslims. The source of this teaching is the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church (Lumen Gentium), adopted by the Second Vatican Council and promulgated by Pope Paul VI.
Can anyone honestly claim that an American cardinal speaking at an American Catholic university prior to Vatican II would have invoked the name Allah?
Vatican II was pastoral, not doctrinal. As such it must be interpreted in the light of Catholic Tradition. “Allah” doesn’t work.
Cardinal McCarrick could have used the word “Lord” as suggested above. He could have used the phrase “The God of Abraham” and mentioned that Abraham’s God was the Father of Jesus. He could have just said “God.” He could have prayed that Jesus would grant peace and well-being to our Muslim neighbors. And there are probably a thousand other phrases he could have used. Instead he chose to apostacize.
In the Liturgy of the Hours, I have often come across psalm 16, which is something like: ‘Those who choose other gods increase their sorrows. I will not offer their offerings of blood. I will not take their names upon my lips.’
After I read this a couple of times, I, personally, stopped using ‘Allah’ as a synonym for God.
It’s possible it’s wrong-headed of me – perhaps even uncharitable, I don’t know – but there it is.
The “PC” take on the Bishops is correct, but not quite complete.
We have a large group of “Oprah” Bishops; they are convinced that being nice, being ‘pals,’ being ‘acceptable’ is what Catholicism is all about.
And they are wrong. What that “nice-ness” really is is a demonstration of the feminization of the Church—on which Leon Podles has written quite persuasively.
God forbid (the “God” that doesn’t include Christ nor The Holy Ghost, of course) that a Catholic Cardinal should use the word “Jesus” during a prayer.
Am I the only one who noticed that in the days after 9-11, very few “Catholic” Cardinals, Archbishops and Bishops actually uttered the Name of Jesus during those ecumenical prayer group hugs? I seem to recall the Eastern Orthodox and the Protesants being able to.
With shepherds like these, who needs wolves?
Carrie,
It is simply not acceptable for you to claim Cardinal McCarrick’s speech was apostasy. Shame on you.
<i>We have a large group of ishop Edwin Conway, Sister Joan McGuire, Rev. Ronald Roberson, Archbishop William Levada, along with other Christian Church representatives have all signed a statement titled <a href=“http://www.brethren.org/genbd/CIR/ChurchesTogether.html”>“Christian Churches Together in the U.S.A.: An Invitation to a Journey”[/url] on April 6, 2002. The statement laments the divisions and closes with:
We have only just begun to explore how to walk together. The questions for conversation, the ways to talk together and the paths to take all remain to be fleshed out by those whom, we trust, will join us on this difficult and essential journey of faith and obedience. We cannot know the details of the way, but we long to allow the Holy Spirit to answer our Lord’s prayer to the Father, “that they may all be one…so that the world may believe that you have sent me.” John 17:21
Not to let McCarrick off the hook, but to be frank,I am tired of George Bush always being held up as a great Christian as I have never heard him utter the name Jesus in public. Quite honestly, he speaks of god quite a bit. I just wonder sometimes if he is not referring to some Masonic concept of god.
Brian, Bush isn’t a cardinal. McCarrick is.
Allah is not the same as Jahweh. Just check out the descriptions Muslims use. They can’t be sharing the same God with the Jews—they’d have to repent!
Michigan,
You don’t have to convince me that McCarrick is a disgrace to the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Faith.
I was just trying to relate how tired I am of Evangelicals telling me how Christian Bush is. I don’t see any evidence that he is. For that matter, I am not that convinced that McCarrick is much of a Catholic.
Don’t forget: Pope John Paul II kissed the Koran when he received one as a gift from Muslims. Is invoking Allah is a sin, surely that’s worse.
My point? Neither is a sin, neither is a betrayal. They are acts of generosity which express the fact that, despite what michigancatholic says, we do worship the same God. Ask Muslims if Christians worship the same God they do. There may be some who deny it, but the vast majority say Muslims and Christians worship the same God.
Who is that? The One Creator and Sustainer of the Universe. That’s the clincher. You can make mistakes about Him, but it doesn’t mean we’re not talking about the same guy.
The Masons honor the Grand Architect of the Universe, so I guess they worship the same God the Catholics and Muslims do, then. How odd that so many Popes condemned Freemasonry.
Forgive me for being lacking in my PC charity, but by rejecting Jesus, Jews and Muslims (and all who reject Jesus, for that matter) reject the Father, the one who sent Him, don’t they?
How does this explicit teaching of Jesus square with saying that Muslims worship the same God we do?
As for McCarrick, he should remember that he who is ashamed of Jesus will suffer the same shame from God the Father.
As Dom has pointed out, his criticism of Cardinal McCarrick’s speech and prayer was not the affirmation that Christians and Moslems worship the same God, albeit in different form and with a different understanding of His being and life.
The problem, and I agree it is a problem, is the pandering tone of the use of specifically Moslem prayer phrases such as “Allah, the merciful, the compassionate” and praying in the name of Allah.
The latter isn’t even sensible, although I’ve heard similar twaddle in the past. The first big parents’ meeting at BC High when my son attended had a prayed led by one of the lay campus ministers. He ended his prayer with “we pray in your name.” Of course, no mention of Jesus. Here we were, in a Catholic high school, and he was leery of mentioning Jesus. But the real foolishness is not even speaking sensibly. You don’t appeal to someone in their own name; you invoke the name of someone else who is, in a sense, recommending you. You might appeal to someone’s legacy of compassion or mercy (e.g., “Your majesty’s great clemency being widely known, I beg of you to have pity on me”) but you don’t say “Your majest, I beg of you in your name to have pity”, because it doesn’t make any sense.
As Christians we appeal to the Father in the name of Jesus because we are incorporated into his body, and because it is by virtue of his redemptive death and resurrection that we have been accepted as children of God. But the Cardinal’s prayer doesn’t indicate any understanding of why Catholic prayers typically end with a formula like “through Jesus Christ, Thine only Son, our Lord…” These prayer forms mean something, they’re based solidly on the New Testament and Tradition of the Church. To abandon them, especially publicly, is of course going to make others wonder why.
If the Cardinal didn’t feel he could utter a Christian prayer in the presence of the Jordanian King, he could have just not prayed there (shades of Matthew 5?), and just indicated that he did pray for the King’s intentions.
Oh, and lest people think badly of BC High, that lay campus minister never gave another benediction or invocation at a public meeting after that. They managed to rustle up a Jesuit or two, who prayed using more traditionally Catholic formulae. Apparently rediscovered what the J is S.J. stands for.
The “Allah” pandering is just a symptom of what Dom rightly observes to as “… our efforts to be liked (one of the strongest vices facing priests and bishops) and to be nice, these false steps prevent us from being true to our faith and to our calling to proclaim the Gospel unflinchingly”.
This is dead on accurate and a perfect observaton. In other places this defect is referred to as the desire for “human respect” or a desire for the love of man over the love of God. This desire rips holiness from our hands, is the assassin of virtue and is the guillotine of saints. Every saint makes waves because he loves God more than Man. That is why we remember them.
Consider how many great Christian works are squelched in our own lives because of a desire to be liked or a fear of a sarcastic word, or even less the exasperated sigh or the rolled eyes of a non-believer.
The fundamental difference between a saint and a mediocre, near do well in-name-only Christian is how one deals with this core defect we all share. Remember that Jesus said everything with perfect charity, perfect word selection and perfect timing. They killed him in less than three years. He did not desire human respect, he desired the Father’s will which for all of eternity has been controversial to fallen men.
It is not at all about the nature of the word “Allah” or the location or the audience or even the Cardinal per se. It is about the desire for the love (or even less the respect) of man over the love of God and our collective disappointment when we see that the Cardinal has a defect that is just like most of us. A defect so ingrained in our personality that we can even mistake it for a virture.
Daniel,
You have ascribed a sinful motive where non-sinful motives can be found, namely to avoid causing offense to a guest, and to proclaim the truth that Muslims and Christians together adore the one, merciful God. All of this was in the context of imparting a blessing upon the King and his work of temporal peace.
Human respect does not enter into this. Keeping the Commandments, proclaiming the Faith and exercising his episcopal office do.
I think the man stands accused less for pandering to Muslims than for not pandering to those who are already Catholic.
Paul,
Jesus said if you reject those whom He sent (His disciples), you reject Him, and the Father who sent Him. The Holy Church of God, in an Ecumenical Council assembled, together with the Successor to the Chair of Peter, adopted a Dogmatic Constitution that included the following text:
Steve,
The prayer the Cardinal gave was Christian.
Carrie,
How odd that so many Popes condemned Freemasonry
And how odd that you accept their authority to condemn others but you do not listen to them.
Nevertheless, the question of whether God is worshipped by the Freemasons did come up in the past:
Seamole,
Here is the prayer as it was recorded on the CUA web site:
<blockquote>May Allah, the merciful and compassionate, continue to guide your steps along this noble path. May He guide and protect you, your family and your beloved country and may peace and justice come to all lands and all peoples through your efforts, your vision and your courage.
In the name of Allah, the merciful and compassionate God, we pray. Amen.</blockquote>
In what sense is this a Christian prayer? It is not a prayer to God in the name of Jesus. It uses the Arabic term for God when speaking in English, which is a Moslem practice (I have lots of Maronite neighbors, and none says “Allah” when referring to God in an English conversation or in those parts of their liturgy that are in English).
Respect for the papacy, the episcopate and for the teachings of Vatican II do not require us to believe that popes and bishops are incapable of mistakes or even of sin.
Daniel,
You made the most sane explanation of the Cardinal’s and most Catholic’s failure to proclaim his/our faith that I have read in a long time.
Thank you!
I intend to copy and send this to my conservative friends. I hope that this is agreeable to you.
Quote from Humanum Genus:
“But, indeed, the sect allows great liberty to its votaries, so that to each side is given the right to defend its own opinion…”
I submit that this is precisely the nature of interreligious dialogue, and that Cardinal McCarrick’s prayer demonstrates this precisely.
Steve,
When a Christian prays correctly to God, it’s a Christian prayer. Christians can pray to any of the three Persons of the Holy Trinity. We do not need to pray in the Name of Jesus, for the substance of God is not divided (cf. Athanasian Creed).
How your Maronite friends pray is interesting, but irrelevant. McCarrick is not a Maronite.
McCarrick used the Arabic term in English to make clear that he, and by extension the Catholic Church, acknowledges that Muslims worship God. He did not use the term Allah to not offend Muslims, who are not offended by prayers to God or to the Lord, but to make clear that Muslims and Catholics together worship the one God. Do you understand what I am saying? Are you listening to me at all? I’ve repeated this twice now. HE USED THE ARABIC WORD PRECISELY BECAUSE THAT IS HOW MUSLIMS PRAY TO GOD. That doesn’t change the fact that it was a Christian prayer by a Christian to the one, true God.
I am not claiming that the Cardinal is impeccable. Marcel Lefebvre was an archbishop and he certainly made a lot of “mistakes”. I am defending the Catechism and the decrees of the Second Vatican Council.
Carrie,
Aha! You’ve proven that every time two differing opinions are argued in public, a Mason is involved. I guess Dom is a Mason for having this forum, and you are a Mason for participating in these threads. What’s another symptom of Freemasonry, Carrie? Attacking the Catholic Church?
Thank you, M.McC for your compliment. You certainly may use my comments as you see fit, but Dom owns the words in this blog…
Seamole, I did not ascribe a sinful motive to the Cardinal, I described a fault of personality held to a greater or lesser extent by all persons that can lead to sin but possession or manifestation of a fault is not a sin in and of itself. the fault is part of our fallen nature as a result of original sin.
Some, may no doubt ascribe the good Cardinal’s words to hospitality, a virtue of charity, by not offending and/or comforting an invited guest. This, unfortunately is not the charity that Jesus exemplified during his proclamation of the Kingdom.
Making a guest (even if he is a Muslim King visiting a democratic republic in a Judeo-Christian country, on a Roman Catholic campus when you are a Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church serving in a position that is life long answerable to no one other than the Holy Father himself) comfortable by suppressing your own set of beliefs, by altering a common Roman Catholic blessing or by bastardizing the accepted vernacular language of the locale is to me, apparently a manifestation of a love for human respect which is a defect, not a in every case a sin, over a love of Truth.
Or, it could simply be an act of charity or hospitality to a visiting VIP, extoling our commonly held beliefs. Determining if such an act is an act of charity or a desire for human respect or a sin or none of the above is to be determined in the Sacrament of Confession, not in a blog. Obviously many observed the same event and came away with different perspectives.
I was merely expanding on Dom’s salient observation quoted at the beginning of my original response. An observation that was not really mentioned in the early commentary and muddled by other relevant tangents such as the root origins of the word and the nature of the commonality of belief between Catholics and Muslims. The core of the issue to me is not the nature of the word or the depth of common creedal belief. It is the answer to the question of whether the actions of a Cardinal on his home turf in his own country a manifestation of a desire for human respect, a manifestation of charity or a great catechetical moment in Muslim – Catholic relations?
Quote:
“When a Christian prays correctly to God, its is perhaps one of the fruits to be expected from the constant use of versus populum in liturgy: priests often act as if they were speaking to and instructing the assembly instead of as if they were speaking to God. Perhaps some no longer know the difference; or perhaps they forget.
If you are correct in the motive of the Cardinal’s choice of words in the prayer, and I don’t doubt it, it was that his words were directed at least as much to the King as to God. That would seem to be what happens when you act of respect of man rather than fear of the Lord, as others have speculated.
The difference is, I see that as problematic and you think it’s fine. I see prayer as something offered to God. You seem to see it as a sort of public witness.
Let’s focus on the motive of McCarrick, which we can’t exactly know, but can only speculate given those things we do know about McCarrick.
I don’t like the use of Allah, but let’s put that issue aside.
I’ll draw an analogy:
Let’s say I have a stepbrother. I call my father “Dad” and he calls him “Art”. Now, if in speaking to this stepbrother, I imagine I’d sometimes refer to my father as “Art”. By itself, it’s not a bad thing, but if I’m doing it because I think my stepbrother will be offended by me referring to him as Dad, then I’m selling my Dad out for the sake of someone else’s “hurt feelings”.
This would appear to be the case with McCarrick, and many others – they sell out Jesus in order to kiss the rear ends of those who SPECIFICALLY reject Him. THAT’S what I find objectionable.
Paul,
Among the many problems with your analogy is that, by nature, a step-brother can never become a full brother. Likewise, if the step-brother denies that you are “Art”‘s son, and it is currently the subject of a nasty court battle, you might not want to emphasize this point of disagreement when you invite him over to your house to impart Dad’s blessing on his efforts to treat the drug addiction in your step-family.
You say that this is a rejection of Christ. I disagree: it is the proclamation of the Gospel. The Cardinal has the authority to ask for God’s blessings. He is proclaiming implicitly that Jesus is the one and only God, as opposed to “our” God vs. “their” God, but the God of everyone. By blessing the King’s efforts to promote peace and religious tolerance, the Cardinal proclaims Christian values.
If, as the Catholic Church teaches, Allah is God, then asking Muslims to reject Allah is asking them to reject God, which is a sin.
I am speaking as a former half-brother, now adopted by our Holy Mother the Church, an ex-Anglican who was greatly moved by the Pope’s letter to the AAC after the ECUSA voted to ordain an unrepentant sodomite to the order of bishops. I am very glad that the Pope in his letter did not place the AAC under the intercessory patronage of the Blessed Virgin Mary, nor speak of Transsubstantiation in a letter referring to Communion! Did he thus deny Her and the Real Presence? I’m sure some of us scribes and Pharisees would say that he did. But the number of American Anglican converts to Catholicism would have dropped to zero if he had. Because of his tact and his desire not to provoke, I and many others were able to work out these issues with fear and trembling in just a few months. Truth without love is murder.
Steve,
Why not just affirm, in speech to the King, the substance of the quotes from Innocent III and Vatican II that have been posted, namely, that we acknowledge the worship of God by the Muslims, and then, if public prayer is warranted, pray to God to bless the King and his endeavors.
Because he didn’t have to, and there was no point emphasizing differences at that time. You’re basically asking why his speech wasn’t politically correct enough for a Catholic audience. It seems like you don’t care about the Cardinal pandering, you’re just annoyed that he pandered to someone else instead of you.
I see prayer as something offered to God. You seem to see it as a sort of public witness.
A blessing is normally a public act, at the least witnessed by the recipient, is it not?
Seamole,
I don’t quite get how affirming shared belief, which is what I suggested, would be “emphasizing differences”. I am not concerned with being “politically correct” with anyone. I am concerned with being doctrinally and liturgically correct, with right faith. An Archbishop is first and foremost an Apostle to those without the household of faith and a watchman of those within. While you see this speech and prayer as the proclamation of the Gospel, few others seem to be able to see it as such.
You introduced the phrase “pandering to Catholics” earlier in this thread. It is obvious to me that the Archbishop’s actions have been a cause of scandal to some Catholics; he could have attained the same ends that we here and in other comboxes have divined he intended in other ways that would not have scandalized Catholics. Why it should be considered “pandering” to not scandalize those for whom you have been ordained to minister?
Yes, a blessing is normally a public act. But the primary consideration in composing such a blessing or prayer should be that it reflects the faith, not the way others will perceive it. The Archbishop’s prayer seems to have those two priorities turned around.
Steve,
He scandalized us when his speech was posted to the web, and I have criticized him for this. It has since been removed from the web. He was able to scandalize us so easily (and it is a sin both to give scandal and to take scandal) because by and large we have not been catechized about the Church’s teaching about the Muslims, or because we reject it.
That few others on this Catholic site seem to see the Archbishop’s message in the light of the Gospel is telling of nothing. God is not a democracy. Few Jews saw the Messiah when He came among them.
You say that the primary consideration in composing a blessing is that it reflects the faith. This blessing reflects the faith very well: the object (the King’s Amman Message work) is worthy of a Christian blessing. Were a blessing to cause offense to the recipient, it would not reflect the Christian faith at all, for it would be heard as a curse or at best as ineffective. A blessing is a spiritual good. Asking God to impart a blessing is an act of spiritual charity. We do not typically give Cross-shaped cookies at our soup kitchens, and if we did, we wouldn’t put metal nails in them.
This was not an act of liturgy. It was not offensive to doctrine. Rather, many of the objections that have been voiced here contradict Catholic teaching.
The Cardinal replaced the name ‘Jesus’ with the word Allah. Is he thus saying that Jesus is Lord, and so is proclaiming a Catholic truth?
A few others commented that when Christians pray to one member of the Trinity, they pray to them all. True, but Christians still distinguish them. I don’t believe the following prayers are customary—
‘In the Name of the God, and of the God, and of the God. Amen.’
‘Through God, with God, and in God, in the unity of God, all glory and honor are yours, O God, forever and ever.’
You get the idea.
I saw in an old theology textbook that it was submitted to the Holy Office once
whether a baptism performed by Chinese priests “in nomine Firii Dei” was valid. (The answer was ‘yes’, by the way.) Maybe posing such a question shows too much concern for form over intention, but it shows how nowadays just about anything will pass muster.
For my part,I pray that the ever-virgin Mary, Mother of Allah, will shed some light on this for all of us.
See? It isn’t ‘just the Arabic word for God’.