In a few weeks, Bishop Tiny Muskens will retire–look for the Pope to graciously accept his resignation immediately. You may not know the name, but no doubt you have heard the news that Bishop Muskens has made in the past few days when he indicated in an interview that God doesn’t care what he is called and so we might as well just go ahead and call him “Allah” to mend fences with the Muslims. Now of course, this is rather naive and even though Bishop Muskens indicates that priests in Indonesia regularly use “Allah” rather than God when celebrating Mass, I doubt any Muslim I have ever known would find this something that would please them–unless Jesus suddenly became just another prophet and Mohammed was seen as the final and greatest prophet–something that it seems people of Bishop Musken’s ilk would probably readily agree to as well.
Which brings us back to Joseph Ratzinger’s Jesus of Nazareth
Those who have been baptized in Christ, now share in his Sonship and as Saint Paul says in his Letter to the Galatians “God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts crying, “Abba! Father!” (Galatians 4:6). This is the way of the followers of Christ.
Bishop Muskens represents the many reasons why the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has to release documents reminding Catholics that we believe that the fullness of revelation has been given through Christ and is present in the Catholic Church–for some reason quite a number of Catholics seem to have skipped class on the day that was taught and are all to ready to adopt the practices of other faiths and traditions without blinking and eye and calling themselves Catholics.
Filed under: bishop muskens, Islam, Jesus of Nazareth, Michael Dubruiel, Pope Benedict, Pope's Book Tagged: | Michael Dubruiel
Perhaps Bishop Muskens has overlooked the scripture: ” at the name of JESUS every knee shall bow, and every tongue shall confess JESUS is LORD..”
In the grand blog wars of 2003-2005, where was this touching introspection? Only rarely invoked, this kind of reflection was only offered by liberals, Todd of Catholic Sensibility comes to mind, during these contentious debates.
The dialogue of the time had a deafening silence on the certain more “embarassing” concerns of the faith by conservatives. Topics such as “abba,” the Lucan beautitudes (blessed are the poor, woe to the rich), and the Church’s wide hesitance on the use of war and killing were rarely noted by conservative voices, obsessed instead with Richard McBrien’s latest distortions and ignoring Weigel’s grand and tremendously influential apologetics for political sinfulness. The entire “conversation,” if that is the best term which describes this, required the oft-declared-as-evil liberals to remind conservative culture warriors of the “softer” parts of the gospel and the faith.
The larger mouthpieces were silent, and allowed what appeared as cooperative conservative proxies to blast such liberal softies.
Where was this opinion 2 years ago? And now that blogging has shifted and the trend is different, sharp opinions are less frequently offered with concerns that a culture war has abated in the ruins of the practice of conservative political theologies.
Instead of shaping the discourse at the time of its great need, and enlightening the hoards of babarians on all sides of the culture wars (me included) that the True Faith requires broad beliefs, the discussion of Father as “abba” only comes now-and at the opportunity to slam a liberal.
Nice.
I’ve been fairly consistent on this point, including blasting our going to war in Iraq–defending the Pope’s rejection at the time of our doing so.