Tuesday, April 10, 2018

Pope Francis: Catholics should treat compassion for Muslim immigrants as equal to pro-life activism


Pope Francis: Catholics should treat compassion for Muslim immigrants as equal to pro-life activism

By Julio Severo
In his third papal exhortation — a 100-page guideline on how Catholics could strive for holiness in the modern world —, Pope Francis said, “Not infrequently, contrary to the promptings of the (Holy) Spirit, the life of the Church can become a museum piece or the possession of a select few.”
“This can occur when some groups of Christians give excessive importance to certain rules, customs or ways of acting. Our defense of the innocent unborn, for example, needs to be clear, firm and passionate, for at stake is the dignity of a human life, which is always sacred and demands love for each person, regardless of his or her stage of development. Equally sacred, however, are the lives of the poor, those already born, the destitute, the abandoned and the underprivileged,” he wrote.
With the crisis of massive influx of Islamic immigrants in Europe, Francis said, “For a Christian the only proper attitude is to stand in the shoes of those brothers and sisters of ours who risk their lives to offer a future to their children. Some Catholics consider the situation of migrants to be a secondary issue. Can we not realize that this is exactly what Jesus demands of us, when he tells us that in welcoming the stranger we welcome him?”
Are Muslim invaders brothers of Christians? When Christians welcome them, are they welcoming Jesus himself — or Satan?
Nevertheless, Francis recognized that there are Islamic extremists: “If I speak about Islamic violence, I need to speak about Catholic violence. One thing is true: I believe that in almost all religions, there is always a small fundamentalist group. We have them, too.”
“The exhortation was widely seen as a dig at conservative Catholics in the U.S. and elsewhere who staunchly uphold tradition on abortion, homosexuality, and divorce while pushing anti-migrant laws,” said the British paper DailyMail.
In April 2016, he flew to the Greek island of Lesbos on the frontline of the migrant crisis and returned to Rome with three families of Syrian Muslims.
Even though I agree with the pope on his stance against abortion, I cannot agree with him on Islamic immigration, which poses a serious threat to the survival of the European culture and civilization.
Yet, would a right-wing pope treat Islamic immigration in Europe in a correct way? I do not know. Many right-wing Catholics look to U.S. President Donald Trump, who is a Protestant, to have a better stance on this subject. But actually Trump has been as contradictory as the pope is. Trump has enlisted Saudi Arabia, the main sponsor of Islamic terror around the world, to fight terror. In fact, most of the 9/11 authors were Islamic Saudis.
Saudi Arabia has a great control over the mass influx of Islamic immigrants to Europe. But Trump has never pressed the Saudi dictators to stop it. And Trump has never ordered NATO, which is under U.S. control and is responsible for the protection of Europe, to hinder the Islamic invasion to Europe.
If pro-life, conservative Catholics are distressed about the pope’s contradictions, as a pro-life, conservative evangelical I am equally distressed about Trump’s contradictions regarding Saudi Arabia and NATO’s cowardice to hinder Europe from being destroyed by Islam.
NATO, which is Trump’s responsibility, has not been better than the pope to address the Islamic invasion in Europe. In fact, while NATO is directly responsible for this invasion, the pope is not.
Perhaps when Francis said that Muslims are brothers of nominal Christians he meant Bush, Obama and Trump and their traditional friendship with Saudi Muslim dictators.
Above all, the most powerful symbol of welcoming or even submitting to Islam is not the pope. It is the Liberty Statue. So if they tell you that a Catholic is facilitating the Islamic invasion of Europe, tell them: No, it is the largest Protestant nation in the world and its Protestant president.
With information from the DailyMail.
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