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Catholic spokesman evades question about whether Catholics and Muslims worship the same God
SEP 17, 2020 4:00 PM BY ROBERT SPENCER
72 COMMENTS
Tim Staples can’t be faulted for this. The problem lies not with him, but with the false teachings of Vatican II about Islam, which put Catholics in an impossible position. There are numerous reasons why Catholics and Muslims do not worship the same God. I explain some below, and more here. But the ecumenical council says otherwise, and so either its teachings must be accepted and justified, or Catholics find themselves in a crisis of authority that calls into question some of the foremost dogmas of their Church about the authority of the popes and councils.
Catholic Answers Ducks Loaded Question,” by Jules Gomes, ChurchMilitant.com, September 15, 2020:
SAN DIEGO (ChurchMilitant.com) – A prominent Catholic apologist has sparked an explosive debate after he evaded a charged question asking whether the Catechism was right to affirm that Muslims “together with us [Catholics] adore the one, merciful God.”
A questioner asked Tim Staples how the Catholic Catechism’s teaching on Catholics and Muslims worshipping the same God squared with Jesus’ words “whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him,” from John 5.
In the Sept. 5 video titled, “How Do Muslims Worship the Same God as Christians?” Staples, who is Catholic Answers’ Director of Apologetics and Evangelization, quotes Jesus’ words: “I am the way, the truth and the life. No man comes to the Father except by me.” (John 14:6)
However, the apologist immediately digresses into a discussion on “invincible ignorance,” insisting that “to knowingly reject the Son is to reject the Father.”
The apologist then links this doctrine to paragraph 841 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church: “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.”
Staples acknowledges that paragraph 841 is quoting Vatican II’s Lumen Gentium 16, but insists that this teaching is “not contradicting Jesus Christ.”
“Jesus’ Church is simply elucidating what Jesus teaches,” Staples stresses, in defense of Vatican II.
But nowhere does Jesus or the Bible or 2,000 years of Sacred Tradition teach that Muslims are included in God’s plan of salvation. The theological assessment that “Islam’s God is also the same God as worshipped by Catholics,” as theologian Gavin D’Costa phrases it, appears for the first time in Vatican II in Nostra Aetate 3 and Lumen Gentium 16.
‘Twisting Into Pretzels’
In comments to Church Militant, historian of Islam Robert Spencer observes how “Tim Staples spends a great deal of time in his answer talking about invincible ignorance, but that actually has nothing to do with the question of whether Muslims and Christians adore the same God, as Vatican II and the Catechism state.”
“Catholic apologists such as Tim Staples have to twist themselves into pretzels to make it appear as if Vatican II is correct on this point when there is a superabundance of evidence that it isn’t,” Spencer remarks.
“The Vatican II statement about Muslims says that they profess the faith of Abraham. It has nothing to do with whether they have heard the gospel or not,” he notes.
Spencer, author of 21 books on Islam, explains:
Islam denies the Trinity, the incarnation, and the divinity of Christ (Qur’an 5:116, 19:35), the Crucifixion (Qur’an 4:157) — and hence its redemptive value — and the Resurrection. It denies free will and says that God could have guided some people to the truth but decided arbitrarily to send them to Hell instead (Qur’an 32:13).
“This is part of a larger issue that has bedeviled the Church since the 1960s: What exactly is the authority of Vatican II? Do all its teachings require the assent of mind and will on the part of the believer?” Spencer asks….
“In fact, the false teaching about Christians and Muslims worshipping the same God is one of the foremost arguments for affirming that Vatican II is simply a pastoral council with no dogmatic value.”
The debate over Vatican II has raged recently with Bp. Robert Barron going on the offensive against critics of the council.
“Some Catholics in America today are increasingly vocal in their attacks on the Second Vatican Council — an ecumenical council of the Church summoned and presided over by the successor of Peter. How should we understand this disturbing trend?” asks Barron.
However, in his apologetics in defense of Vatican II, Barron never addresses the Islamic elephant in the conciliar chamber….
Spencer told Church Militant how he’d found “numerous Catholic spokesmen who are reluctant in the extreme to proselytize among Muslims, or to criticize Islam’s teachings of violence and subjugation, or even to speak out against the Muslim persecution of Christians because Vatican II says that we all worship the same God.”
“This teaching has caused an immense amount of confusion within the Church and misled all too many Catholics into thinking that Muslims are some sort of semi-Christian sect, a sect that teaches theological and moral errors which must never be noticed; to do so would be impolite and even un-Christian,” Spencer lamented.
SEP 17, 2020 4:00 PM BY ROBERT SPENCER
72 COMMENTS
Tim Staples can’t be faulted for this. The problem lies not with him, but with the false teachings of Vatican II about Islam, which put Catholics in an impossible position. There are numerous reasons why Catholics and Muslims do not worship the same God. I explain some below, and more here. But the ecumenical council says otherwise, and so either its teachings must be accepted and justified, or Catholics find themselves in a crisis of authority that calls into question some of the foremost dogmas of their Church about the authority of the popes and councils.
Catholic Answers Ducks Loaded Question,” by Jules Gomes, ChurchMilitant.com, September 15, 2020:
SAN DIEGO (ChurchMilitant.com) – A prominent Catholic apologist has sparked an explosive debate after he evaded a charged question asking whether the Catechism was right to affirm that Muslims “together with us [Catholics] adore the one, merciful God.”
A questioner asked Tim Staples how the Catholic Catechism’s teaching on Catholics and Muslims worshipping the same God squared with Jesus’ words “whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him,” from John 5.
In the Sept. 5 video titled, “How Do Muslims Worship the Same God as Christians?” Staples, who is Catholic Answers’ Director of Apologetics and Evangelization, quotes Jesus’ words: “I am the way, the truth and the life. No man comes to the Father except by me.” (John 14:6)
However, the apologist immediately digresses into a discussion on “invincible ignorance,” insisting that “to knowingly reject the Son is to reject the Father.”
The apologist then links this doctrine to paragraph 841 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church: “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.”
Staples acknowledges that paragraph 841 is quoting Vatican II’s Lumen Gentium 16, but insists that this teaching is “not contradicting Jesus Christ.”
“Jesus’ Church is simply elucidating what Jesus teaches,” Staples stresses, in defense of Vatican II.
But nowhere does Jesus or the Bible or 2,000 years of Sacred Tradition teach that Muslims are included in God’s plan of salvation. The theological assessment that “Islam’s God is also the same God as worshipped by Catholics,” as theologian Gavin D’Costa phrases it, appears for the first time in Vatican II in Nostra Aetate 3 and Lumen Gentium 16.
‘Twisting Into Pretzels’
In comments to Church Militant, historian of Islam Robert Spencer observes how “Tim Staples spends a great deal of time in his answer talking about invincible ignorance, but that actually has nothing to do with the question of whether Muslims and Christians adore the same God, as Vatican II and the Catechism state.”
“Catholic apologists such as Tim Staples have to twist themselves into pretzels to make it appear as if Vatican II is correct on this point when there is a superabundance of evidence that it isn’t,” Spencer remarks.
“The Vatican II statement about Muslims says that they profess the faith of Abraham. It has nothing to do with whether they have heard the gospel or not,” he notes.
Spencer, author of 21 books on Islam, explains:
Islam denies the Trinity, the incarnation, and the divinity of Christ (Qur’an 5:116, 19:35), the Crucifixion (Qur’an 4:157) — and hence its redemptive value — and the Resurrection. It denies free will and says that God could have guided some people to the truth but decided arbitrarily to send them to Hell instead (Qur’an 32:13).
“This is part of a larger issue that has bedeviled the Church since the 1960s: What exactly is the authority of Vatican II? Do all its teachings require the assent of mind and will on the part of the believer?” Spencer asks….
“In fact, the false teaching about Christians and Muslims worshipping the same God is one of the foremost arguments for affirming that Vatican II is simply a pastoral council with no dogmatic value.”
The debate over Vatican II has raged recently with Bp. Robert Barron going on the offensive against critics of the council.
“Some Catholics in America today are increasingly vocal in their attacks on the Second Vatican Council — an ecumenical council of the Church summoned and presided over by the successor of Peter. How should we understand this disturbing trend?” asks Barron.
However, in his apologetics in defense of Vatican II, Barron never addresses the Islamic elephant in the conciliar chamber….
Spencer told Church Militant how he’d found “numerous Catholic spokesmen who are reluctant in the extreme to proselytize among Muslims, or to criticize Islam’s teachings of violence and subjugation, or even to speak out against the Muslim persecution of Christians because Vatican II says that we all worship the same God.”
“This teaching has caused an immense amount of confusion within the Church and misled all too many Catholics into thinking that Muslims are some sort of semi-Christian sect, a sect that teaches theological and moral errors which must never be noticed; to do so would be impolite and even un-Christian,” Spencer lamented.
