Insight Scoop | The Ignatius Press Blog

New: "From Islam to Christ: One Woman's Path through the Riddles of God" by Derya Little

Now available from Ignatius Press:

From Islam to Christ One Woman's Path through the Riddles of God

by Derya Little

Born and raised in Muslim Turkey, Derya Little wandered far and wide in search of her true home. After her parents' divorce, she rejected her family's Islamic faith and became an atheist. During her stormy adolescence, she tried to convince a Christian missionary that there is no God but was converted to Christ instead.

Her winding path through the riddles of God was not over, however. While attending a Turkish university and serving as a Christian youth minister, Derya began to compare the teachings of Protestantism and Catholicism, and during her doctoral studies in England, she entered the Catholic Church. Ultimately, she ended up in the United States, where has become a citizen and has settled down to raise a family.

Derya's story provides a window into both Islam and modernity. It shows that the grace and the mercy of God know no bounds. Rather, the good news of salvation in Jesus Christ reaches souls in the most unlikely places.

Derya Little has a Ph.D. in politics from Durham University in England. Her articles on foreign affairs have appeared in academic journals and Catholic World Report.

"Little has done the world a service by writing this courageous book. On her journey from Islam to atheism to Evangelical Christianity to Roman Catholicism, we see how the Divine Physician brings a healing balm to many open wounds people live with today."
— Kathryn Jean Lopez, From the Foreword; Senior Fellow, National Review Institute

Is Dialogue with Islam Possible? Some Reflections on Benedict XVI's Address at the University of Regensburg

Fr. Joseph Fessio, S.J., founder and editor of Ignatius Press, with Pope Benedict XVI.

Is Dialogue with Islam Possible? Some Reflections on Benedict XVI's Address at the University of Regensburg | Fr. Joseph Fessio, S.J.

Editor's note: This essay was originally published on Ignatius Insight on September 18, 2006. It is republished here on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of Benedict XVI's Regensburg Address. 

I.

Both before and since his elevation to the papacy, Benedict has taken a consistent approach to controversial issues: he locates the assumptions and fundamental principles underlying the controversy, analyzes their "inner" structure or dynamism, and lays out the consequences of the principles.

For example, in Deus Caritas Est, Benedict does not address directly the controversial issues of homosexual partners, promiscuity, or divorce. Instead he examines the "inner logic" of the love of eros, which is "love between man and woman, where body and soul are inseparably joined . . ." He shows that it has been understood historically to have a relationship with the divine ("love promises infinity, eternity") and to require "purification and growth in maturity ... through the path of renunciation". In love's "growth towards higher levels and inward purification ... it seeks to become definitive ... both in the sense of exclusivity (this particular person alone) and in the sense of being 'for ever'."

So starting from the "inner logic" of the fundamental reality of love, Benedict concludes to an exclusive and permanent relationship between a man and a woman. That is a fair description of the Catholic idea of marriage, and it excludes homosexual partners, promiscuity, and divorce.

Incidentally, in the very first paragraph of this encyclical, Benedict states: "In a world where the name of God is sometimes associated with vengeance or even a duty of hatred and violence, this message [that God is love] is both timely and significant." Clearly the religious justification of violence is an aberration that's on his mind.

II.

While in Deus Caritas Est Benedict defends the foundational truth that God is Love, in his Regensburg lecture he is defending the foundational truth that God is Logos, Reason. The central theme of the lecture is that the Christian conviction that God is Logos is not simply the result of a contingent historical process of inculturation that has been called the "hellenization of Christianity". Rather it is something that is "always and intrinsically true".

In the main body of the lecture, Benedict criticizes attempts in the West to "dehellenize" Christianity: the rejection of the rational component of faith (the sola fides of the 16th century reformers); the reduction of reason to the merely empirical or historical (modern exegesis and modern science); a multiculturalism which regards the union of faith and reason as merely one possible form of inculturation of the faith. All this is a Western self-critique.

But as the starting point of his lecture, Benedict takes a 14th century dialogue between the Byzantine Emperor and a learned Muslim to focus on the central question of the entire lecture: whether God is Logos. The Emperor's objection to Islam is Mohammed's "command to spread by the sword the faith he preached". The emperor asserts that this is not in accordance with right reason, and "not acting reasonably is contrary to God's nature". Benedict points to this as "the decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion".

It is at this point in the lecture that Benedict makes a statement which cannot be avoided or evaded if there is ever to be any dialogue between Christianity and Islam that is more than empty words and diplomatic gestures. For the Emperor, God's rationality is "self-evident". But for Muslim teaching, according to the editor of the book from which Benedict has been quoting, "God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality".

Benedict has struck bedrock. This is the challenge to Islam. This is the issue that lies beneath all the rest. If God is above reason in this way, then it is useless to employ rational arguments against (or for) forced conversion, terrorism, or Sharia law, which calls for the execution of Muslim converts to Christianity. If God wills it, it is beyond discussion.

III.

Let us now turn to the statement in Benedict's lecture which has aroused the most anger. Benedict quotes the Byzantine Emperor's challenge to the learned Muslim: "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."

Benedict's main argument -- that God is Logos and that violence in spreading or defending religion is contrary to the divine nature -- could have been made without including that part of Emperor's remark (made "somewhat brusquely" according to Benedict) that challenges Islam much more globally. And in his Angelus message the following Sunday, Benedict said: "These (words) were in fact a quotation from a Medieval text which do not in any way express my personal thought." Nevertheless, it may be instructive to examine this "brusque" utterance of the Emperor and ask the question: Is it simply indefensible?

As a thought experiment, let's reverse the situation. Suppose a major spokesman for Islam publicly issued the challenge: "Show me just what Jesus brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman." What would be the Christian response? Not to burn a mosque or an effigy of the Muslim spokesman, or to shoot a Muslim nurse in the back in Somalia. It would rather be to reply with some examples of just what makes the New Covenant new: the revelation that God is a Father who has a co-equal Son and Holy Spirit; that Jesus is God's Son made flesh; the Sermon on the Mount; the Resurrection of the body; the list would be long. As Irenaeus put it: he brought all newness, bringing himself. Such a statement would not make dialogue impossible; it would be an occasion for dialogue.

There is obviously much room for qualification in the Emperor's blunt statement, even for a Christian who holds that Mohammed was not a prophet, and that whatever is good in Islam is traceable either to man's natural religious knowledge or to conscious or unconscious borrowings from Jewish and Christian revelation.

Yet there is a crucial underlying principle that needs to be enunciated. Christianity and Islam make incompatible truth claims. Despite the difficulty in determining who can speak authoritatively for Christianity or for Islam, there are elements of belief common to all Christians which are incompatible with elements of belief common to all Muslims. The two most obvious and most fundamental are the Trinity and the Incarnation.

I would expect an intelligent and informed Muslim to consider me a blasphemer (because I introduce multiplicity into the one God) and an idolator (because I worship as God a man named Jesus). Should I be offended if he says so publicly? Should I not rather be offended if he conceals his position for the alleged purpose of fostering dialogue?

The question of respect is entirely distinct. Benedict is clearly aware of this distinction as evidenced in the official Vatican statement subsequent to Benedict's lecture, where the Secretary of State refers to his "respect and esteem for those who profess Islam". That is, one can and should respect Muslims (those who profess Islam) as persons with inherent dignity; but where there are incompatible truth claims, they cannot be simultaneously true. One cannot hold one as true without holding the other as false. Any religious dialogue should begin by examining the evidence for the incompatible claims.
 
It's worth noting, however, that while consistent Christians and Muslims in fact hold the position of the other to be erroneous in important ways, the Christian is not obliged by his faith to subject the Muslim to dhimmitude nor to deny him his religious freedom. There is a serious asymmetry here, which Benedict has criticized before. The Saudis can build a multi-million dollar mosque in Rome; but Christians can be arrested in Saudi Arabia for possessing a Bible.

Certainly, it may sound provocative to make the claim the Emperor did. But why (since Christians believe that God's full and definitive revelation has come with Christ, who brings all prophecy to an end) isn't it just as provocative for a Muslim to proclaim that Mohammed is a new prophet, bringing new revelation that corrects and supplements that of Christ?

Is it really offensive to say that Christians and Muslims disagree profoundly about this? Is not this the necessary starting point that must be recognized before any religious dialogue can even begin?

And if the response from Islam is violence, then must we not ask precisely the question raised by Benedict: Is this violence an aberration that is inconsistent with genuine Islam (as similar violence by Christians would be an aberration inconsistent with genuine Christianity)? Or is it justifiable on the basis of Islam's image of God as absolutely transcending all human categories, even that of rationality? And if the response to this question is violence, then the question has been answered existentially, and rational dialogue has been repudiated.

IV.

Finally, has no one seen the irony in the episode related by Benedict? Byzantium was increasingly threatened in the 14th century by an aggressive Islamic force, the growing Ottoman Empire. The Byzantine Emperor seems to have committed the dialogue to writing while his imperial capital, Constantinople, was under siege by the Ottoman Turks. It would fall definitively in 1453. Muslims were military enemies, engaged in a war of aggression against Byzantium. Yet even in these circumstances the Christian Emperor and the learned Persian Muslim could be utterly candid with one another and discuss civilly their fundamental religious differences. As Benedict described the dialogue, the subject was "Christianity and Islam, and the truth of both".

The West is once again under siege. Doubly so because in addition to terrorist attacks there is a new form of conquest: immigration coupled with high fertility. Let us hope that, following the Holy Father's courageous example in these troubled times, there can be a dialogue whose subject is the truth claims of Christianity and Islam.

Regensburg Revisited: Ten Years Later, A West Still in Denial

Pope Benedict XVI waves to pilgrims after a 2006 Mass on Islinger Field near Regensburg, Germany. (CNS photo/Kai Pfaffenbach, Reuters)

Regensburg Revisited: Ten Years Later, A West Still in Denial | Dr. Samuel Gregg | CWR

Irrationality not only manifests itself in violence but also in an inability to apply authentic reason to the many pressing challenges of our age.

A decade ago, a 79 year-old soft-spoken, white-haired German theologian returned to visit a university at which he had spent much of his academic career. On such occasions, it’s not unusual for a distinguished professor-emeritus to offer some formal remarks. Such reflections rarely receive much attention, and are often seen as exercises in reminiscing by scholars whose most substantial achievements are behind them.

In this instance, however, the speech delivered at the University of Regensburg on 12 September 2006 by the theologian Joseph Ratzinger, better known as Pope Benedict XVI, had immediate global impact. For weeks, even months afterwards, newspapers, magazines, scholarly journals, and even entire books attacked, defended, and analyzed the almost 4,000 words which came to be known as the Regensburg Address. Copies of the text and effigies of its author, however, were also ripped up, trampled on, and publicly burnt throughout the Islamic world. Television screens were dominated by images of enraged Muslim mobs and passionate denunciations by Muslim leaders, most of whom had clearly not read the text.

Also noticeable, however, was the frosty reception accorded to Pope Benedict’s remarks in much of the West. Descriptions such as “provocative,” “ill-timed,” “insensitive,” “un-feeling,” and “undiplomatic” appeared in religious and secular media outlets. Certainly the Pope had plenty of vocal defenders in North America and Europe. Among other things, they suggested that some Muslims’ frenzied reaction to the Regensburg Address proved that Benedict’s gentle query about the place of reason in Islamic belief and practice was dead on-target.

Yet there’s no doubt that Benedict’s words at Regensburg touched a nerve—perhaps even several nerves—in the Western world. For while the Regensburg Address received so much attention because of nine paragraphs in which Benedict analyzed a fourteenth-century exchange between a Byzantine Emperor and his Persian Muslim interlocutor, the text’s primary focus concerned deep problems of faith and reason that characterize the West and Christianity today. And many of these pathologies quickly surface whenever and wherever Islamist terrorism rears its head. They continue to enfeeble the West’s response to people whose acts in locations ranging from Brussels to Paris, Beirut to Jakarta, Jerusalem to San Bernardino, Abuja to London, and Lahore to New York reflect many things, including a particular understanding of the nature of the Divine.

The West contra Logos

One of the basic theses presented by Benedict at Regensburg was that how we understand God’s nature has implications for whether we can judge particular human choices and actions to be unreasonable. Thus, if reason is simply not part of Islam’s conception of the Divinity’s nature, then Allah can command his followers to make unreasonable choices, and all his followers can do is submit to a Divine Will that operates beyond the categories of reason.

Most commentators on the Regensburg Address did not, however, observe that the Pope declined to proceed to engage in a detailed analysis of why and how such a conception of God may have affected Islamic theology and Islamic practice. Nor did he explore the mindset of those Muslims who invoke Allah to justify jihadist violence. Instead, Benedict immediately pivoted to discussing the place of reason in Christianity and Western culture more generally. In fact, in the speech’s very last paragraph, Benedict called upon his audience “to rediscover” the “great logos”: “this breadth of reason” which, he maintained, orthodox Christianity has always regarded as a prominent feature of God’s nature. The pope’s use of the word “rediscover” indicated that something had been lost and that much of the West and the Christian world had themselves fallen into the grip of other forms of un-reason. Irrationality can, after all, manifest itself in expressions other than mindless violence.

That irrationality is loose and ravaging much of the West—especially in those institutions which are supposed to be temples of reason, i.e., universities—is hard to deny.

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

Christmas, ISIS, and the Apocalypse

Icon of Nativity (us.fotolia.com | Renáta Sedmáková)

 
Christmas, ISIS, and the Apocalypse | Carl E. Olson | CWR Editorial

While various ideologies pursue power and control through coercion and violence, Christianity points to the humble and life-giving invasion of the Incarnate Word 

Christmas is a reminder that we live in a certain sort of war zone. And the sufferings of those who live in war zones with bombings, physical violence, and killing is a reminder that the deepest roots of all conflicts are spiritual, not simply political.

"God", wrote C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity, "has landed on this enemy-occupied world in human form.” What was the purpose of this divine invasion behind enemy lines? To simply teach? To punish mankind? No, Lewis wrote, Christians “think the main thing He came to earth to do was to suffer and be killed.” That is true, of course, but there is more—as Lewis himself noted.

God became man in order to reveal the truth about both God and man. "The truth is that only in the mystery of the incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light", stated the fathers of the Second Vatican Council. "For Adam, the first man, was a figure of Him Who was to come, namely Christ the Lord. Christ, the final Adam, by the revelation of the mystery of the Father and His love, fully reveals man to man himself and makes his supreme calling clear. It is not surprising, then, that in Him all the aforementioned truths find their root and attain their crown." (Gaudium et spes, 22).

Those "aforementioned truths" include what the Catholic Church teaches about the nature of God, the work of the Incarnate Word, the mission of the Church, the place of the State and human government, and the divine vocation of men. The Church "has been taught by divine revelation and firmly teaches that man has been created by God for a blissful purpose beyond the reach of earthly misery. ... For God has called man and still calls him so that with his entire being he might be joined to Him in an endless sharing of a divine life beyond all corruption. ... The root reason for human dignity lies in man's call to communion with God" (GS, 18, 19). This is possible because the Son, by becoming flesh and dwelling among us (Jn 1:14), has established his Kingdom. But not a Kingdom of this world, as he explained to Pontius Pilate, and not a Kingdom to be enforced by violence, oppression, and death. 

The great temptation—as seen even in the Gospels—is to establish the Kingdom by force and to establish it today, on earth, by the use of temporal, coercive force. The desire for utopia today becomes the logical creation of the killing fields tomorrow. And as irreligion becomes the new religion of the supposedly non-religious, forms of totalitarianism are both spawned and inspired. "History attests that religion has not encroached upon the temporal sphere," observed Abp. Fulton Sheen in 1946, "but rather jealous temporal rulers have invaded the spiritual. Sometimes these rulers were kings and princes, even so-called 'Catholic defenders of the faith." Today, they are dictators." These various movements of temporal madness—sometimes obscured in the most mundane forms, sometimes demonstrated in madness made mandatory—are apocalyptic. Not in the Christian sense of the much-maligned word, but in the sense of forcing the will of—take your pick—the State, the Caliphate, or the System upon the whole.

The word "will" is key here, for these apocalyptic ideologies are not interested in truth or even reality as it is, but in power.

Continue reading on the CWR site.

The 15 Most Popular CWR Stories of 2015

Carl E. Olson | The Dispatch at CWR

Articles and commentary about Pope Francis, radical Islam, the Shroud of Turin, France, President Obama, the devil, "50 Shades of Grey", and much more

For the third year in a row the most read article on the CWR site was about radical Islamic attacks on innocents. In 2013 it was the account by nuns in Syria about the violence and bloodshed that was becoming increasingly commonplace in that war-torn country. In 2014 it was the story of slain journalist James Foley, who was killed in, yes, Syria. This year it is the story of Pope Francis' response to the beheading of 21 Egyptian Christians by members of ISIS.

Four of the top 15 articles (#1, 6, 7, and 15) were about the Holy Father, while President Obama featured in two others (#4 and 12). Other top topics include The Shroud of Turin (#2), Catholicism in Francis (#3), Cinderella (#13), the terrorist attack in San Bernardino (#11), and liberal theologians (#9). The devil gets two mentions, both times in pieces about spiritual warfare (#5 and 14).

Here are Catholic World Report's 15 most read articles of 2015:

1. “Their blood confesses Christ”: Pope Francis on the murder of Egyptian Christians by ISIS (February 16) by Catherine Harmon. Pope Francis responds to the news that 21 Egyptian Christians were beheaded by Islamic State militants.

2. The Shroud: Not a Painting, Not a Scorch, Not a Photograph (March 27) by Jim Graves. “One of my favorite testimonials as to the authenticity of the Shroud,” says Barrie Schwortz, an expert on the Shroud of Turin, “actually came from my Jewish mother.” 

3. France’s Catholic Revolution (November 23) by Dr. Samuel Gregg. While Mass-attendance rates have steeply declined over the last 30 years, today France is witnessing the rise of an increasingly self-confident—and dynamically orthodox—Catholicism. 

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

Why we’d all be Catholic if we really thought about it

(us.fotolia.com | Sergey Nivens)

Why we’d all be Catholic if we really thought about it | Thomas M. Doran | The Dispatch at CWR

And why the only rational alternative to Catholicism is fatalism-hedonism

In the modern world, where we shouldn’t presume to tell others what’s true and false, good and bad, or right and wrong, saying we’d all be Catholic if we really thought about it is sure to provoke scorn and ire. What about happy and generous Buddhists, Muslims, Lutherans, atheists? Didn't this sort of close-minded thinking go by the board a hundred years ago? Isn’t this the problem with ISIS and Al-Qaeda, that they think they have a corner on the truth?

The novelist and essayist Walker Percy, who converted to Catholicism from secular humanism, once wrote a self interview in which he had the following exchange with himself:

Q: How is such a belief [in Catholicism] possible in this day and age?
A: What else is there?

Q: What do you mean, what else is there? There is humanism, atheism, agnosticism, Marxism, behaviorism, materialism, Buddhism, Muhammadanism, Sufism, astrology, occultism, theosophy.
A: That’s what I mean.

So, here goes. And yes, those with other belief systems share some of these things. And no, no other belief system embodies all of them.

• Catholicism insists that every person is created to be great, a hero, to rise above human weaknesses and mistakes, to be more than just a smart animal, and that becoming this hero has permanent significance.

• Catholics are convinced that heaven is a glorious adventure, not eternal boredom or conformity or mindless obedience, and if heaven is real, as Catholics believe, even the longest and most fruitful life on Earth is just a speck compared to life in heaven as your best self.

• What if hell—the misery of self-absorption and separation from your Creator—is real, and people actually go there, as Thomas Aquinas, Dante, C. S. Lewis, and others have described and depicted? For Catholics, hell is the willful rejection of the means the Creator gives us to get to heaven, where our Creator ardently desires us to be.

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

ISIS at the Doors: Erasing the Memory of a Christian Europe

Soldiers pass the main entrance of Notre Dame cathedral in Paris Nov. 15.Sunday Masses were celebrated amid tight security outside the cathedral in the aftermath of Nov. 13 terrorist attacks in Paris that killed129 and injured 352. (CNS photo/Paul Haring)

ISIS at the Doors: Erasing the Memory of a Christian Europe | Diogo Miguel Machado | CWR

By indulging our fetish for spiritual and cultural forgetfulness, we have permitted the coming-to-be of a hell on earth under the reign of ISIS.

In the wake of last weekend’s terror attacks in Paris, Europe continues to fall deeper into her spiritual and cultural torpor. As I write these words, the continent is still absorbing the shocking news that some 129 people will never see the sun rise again. For the second time this year, terrorism has struck at the heart of France. However, this time President François Hollande has declared a state of emergency and ordered all borders closed.

But more than France, the entire continent of Europe has been embroiled in a bitter border debate. It was sparked by the refugee crisis brought on by the rise of ISIS in the Middle East. And now, at least one of the Paris assailants has been identified as a refugee. The debate has vacillated between two opposing poles. Just after the Charlie Hebdo attacks, people demanded the borders be shut. Then, the dead body of a young child washed ashore at the edges of the continent and people clamored for them to be opened. With Paris in flames, we have returned again to the first position. It would seem that each new incident in this tragic narrative pushes Europe from one pole to the other.

At the heart of the debate about Europe’s borders, the refugee crisis, and immigration policy stands a question about the continent’s identity and its responsibility for the plight of Middle Eastern Christians wanting to seek safe refuge among us. For as long as they have been living side by side with radical Muslims, they have borne a bullseye target on their backs. But, this history goes back to the foundations of Islamism. For our part, we give no heed to this history, forgetting the stated goal of the reconquest of Europe in the fifteenth century: to wrest the continent from militant Muslims and return it to the Christian faith at its origin.

How did we come to this point of forgetfulness? When did we become lethargic about our spiritual heritage and start to submit to those who overtly want to impose their Sharia Law?

Continue reading on the CWR site.

Journeying with Abraham, the Father of Faith

Steve and Janet Ray on location, working on the filming of the 10-part video series "The Footprints of God: The Story of Salvation From Abraham to Augustine"

Journeying with Abraham, the Father of Faith | CWR Staff | Catholic World Report

Author and filmmaker Stephen Ray discusses his ambitious video series, traveling in Iraq, filming in the Holy Land, and delving into the incredible life of Abraham

Stephen K. Ray was raised in a devout Baptist family and was very involved in the Baptist denomination as a teacher of Biblical studies. Steve and his wife Janet entered the Catholic Church in 1994. Since that time, Steve has been active as an author, speaker, blogger, apologist, and film producer. He is the author of Crossing the Tiber: Evangelical Protestants Discover the Historical Church, Upon This Rock: St. Peter and the Primacy of Rome in Scripture and the Early Church, and St. John's Gospel: A Bible Study and Commentary, all published by Ignatius Press.

Steve and Janet are currently writing and producing a 10-video series for Ignatius Press called The Footprints of God: The Story of Salvation From Abraham to Augustine, filmed on location in the Holy Land and other parts of the Middle East. His website is www.catholic-convert.com. The most recent film, titled Abraham: Father of Faith and Works, is now available from Ignatius Press. He corresponded recently with Catholic World Report, shortly before departing for another trip to the Holy Land.

CWR: This movie about Abraham is the eighth of 10 videos in this long and challenging project. When did you start filming this series and what sort of time, energy, and effort has gone into the project?

Ray: Long and challenging, indeed! It all began in 1995, the year after we converted to the Catholic Church from Evangelical Protestants. We took our family to Israel to see land of Our Lord and Lady, the land of the Bible and Catholic history. When I stepped off the plane in Tel Aviv I fell to the tarmac and kissed the ground with tears welling up in my eyes. This adventure with our family had a profound impact on all of us. It made me want to share the land and its story with everyone.

The next step came in the year 2000 when I woke up in the middle of the night. I am not certain to this day whether it was a dream, a revelation, an angel, or simply indigestion. But it was all in my head and I knew exactly what I had to do.

As soon as I woke up I grabbed my wife Janet and shook her and said, "We have to do a video documentary on the whole story of salvation for my Catholic perspective!” Shaking and scared since I woke her up so quickly, she said, “You woke me up in the middle of the night, scaring me to death, to tell me that! We can’t even take good pictures — how does God expect us to make movies? Go back to sleep!"

But I couldn’t sleep. I was inspired and trembling. I jumped out of bed and ran to my computer. By the time the sun came up that morning I had put together the outline for the documentary series. I knew the titles, the biblical people we would feature, the places we would film, and the whole drama I wanted to present. My target audience would be the Catholic family. It could not be a boring “talking head” documentary but had to be a rollicking adventure. We wanted to bring the lands of the Bible and the Catholic Church into the homes of every Catholic family.

CWR: Speaking of adventures, what was it like filming in Iraq, Turkey, and Israel?

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

Read the first chapter of "The Last Crusader" by Louis de Wohl

Read the first chapter of the novel The Last Crusader by Louis de Wohl. If you like what you’re reading, visit the novel’s page to learn more or order!

CHAPTER 1

There was no road to Leganés, just a narrow, muddy path marked by occasional imprints of naked feet and strewn with stones—irregular, ragged, and discolored like the teeth in an old man’s mouth. The village itself, perched on a cluster of hillocks, was brooding wearily in the early afternoon sun.

When Charles Prévost saw it through the window of his carriage, he shook his large, gray head. They might have chosen a better place, he thought. But then that man Massy had been a viol player, a musician, and there was no way of understanding such people. He could have settled down in Valladolid or even in Madrid itself, though of course life there would have cost more; moreover, in the cities there was a far greater danger of meeting people who might ask questions, or worse still, get a glimpse of the—the secret. And that. . . .

A sharp knock interrupted his chain of thought—something had hit the carriage.

Charles Prévost heaved his large, fleshy body nearer the window and peered out. And then he gasped. There was an arrow sticking in the leather curtain. An arrow!

Glancing about he saw at some distance a turbaned head—and another and a third. Moors. . . .

For one wild moment Charles Prévost felt himself whirled back in time to the siege of Tunis, trumpets blaring, banners streaming in the wind and the Emperor himself roaring commands as only he could.

But then he saw that the faces under the turbans were boys’ faces and very frightened ones at that. Boys playing Moors and shooting at his carriage! His face flushed and he pulled at the silk cord the other end of which was tied to the coachman’s little finger. The carriage came to a stop.

“Just you wait”, said Charles Prévost grimly. He began to fumble at the door.

“Don’t do that”, a young, clear voice said sharply. “Please!”

The heavy man turned around. A boy was looking into the carriage from the other side, a boy perhaps seven or eight years old, fair-haired, with a pale, eager face. He was dressed in rags.

“What do you mean?” Prévost stared at him, goggle-eyed.

“You were going to interfere, weren’t you?” The boy sounded impatient. “They didn’t shoot at you—your carriage just ran into their line of fire.”

“Vaya. . .”, Prévost began to splutter. “Go away! I never. . .”

“It was bad shooting”, admitted the boy hastily. “But if you’ll stay in your carriage, I’ll avenge you.”

Prévost’s eyes narrowed. Blue eyes. Blue eyes and blond hair.

“Who are you?” he asked hoarsely.

“I am the ‘Christian’ leader”, the boy said gravely. “And this is my chance to win the battle. Stay in your carriage, please! You’ll see, I’ll win it.” He turned away and let the flap drop behind him.

Prévost blew up his cheeks. Mechanically he drew out a large silk handkerchief and dabbed his forehead. Then he lifted the flap. The “Moors” were still there—in fact there were more of them now, six, seven, a whole dozen, boys between seven and twelve, beturbaned and armed with wooden swords, slingshots, and bows and arrows.

Still more were coming up and all of them were gaping at the carriage. Maybe it was the first they had ever seen. The countryside was poor here. A man was considered well-off if he had a donkey, and rich if he owned a mule. A carriage with two outriders, a liveried coachman, and groom was doubtless a sensation and of far greater interest to them than their game.

Prévost began to tell them what he thought of a flock of snotty-nosed urchins trying to impede his progress by shooting at his carriage, and they listened, wide-eyed and respectfully.

From somewhere a clear, sharp voice yelled: “Santiago!” and they looked up, startled, and tried to get into some kind of formation.

It was too late. A compact little troop of boys attacked them from the rear and almost as soon as they had come to grips with them a second batch came straight at them from behind the coach, led by the fair-haired boy. The “Moors” broke and ran, hotly pursued by the “Christians”.

Charles Prévost began to chuckle. Then he pulled twice at the silk cord and the carriage rumbled on toward Leganés. After a few minutes the first houses stared at it with the eyes of all their inmates. Doors began to fill. Dogs barked madly at the horses.

When Prévost saw an old priest passing, he leaned out of the window and took off his hat. “Good morning, Reverend Father”, he said courteously. “Will you tell me where I can find the house of Señor and Señora Massy?”

The priest was at least eighty years old, and his cassock not very much younger. He looked like a scarecrow, but he bowed like a grandee.

Continue reading at IPNovels.com.

The De-Christianization and Gradual Islamization of France

Firefighters carry a victim on a stretcher at the scene of the deadly shootings at the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo, a satirical newspaper, on Jan. 7th. (CNS photo/Jacky Naegelen, Reuters)

The De-Christianization and Gradual Islamization of France | Charles Adhémar | CWR

Islamist networks in France and across Europe are increasingly organized and well-armed, but it is France that is sitting on a powder keg

Just before Christmas, as I was walking along the streets of Paris, I happened to see the disgraceful cover of the latest edition of Charlie Hebdo, a failing satirical magazine well known for its insults against religion and general vulgarity. It showed the Blessed Virgin Mary in an outrageous, almost pornographic position.

Such crudeness was not a first for Charlie Hebdo. Although the cover angered me, the spirit of Christmas overrode any hateful thoughts. Two weeks later, on January 7, the Kouachi brothers (of Algerian origin) shot the men behind the irreverent magazine, along with two policemen and a hapless maintenance worker. And a day later, Amedy Coulibaly (of Malian origin) murdered a policewoman and four Jews after taking hostages in a kosher supermarket.

The three gunmen who killed 17 French victims were of French nationality. They had been born in France, raised in France, educated in France, and fed by the French welfare state—before taking an all-too-common and desperate path: crime, prison, Islamism, delinquency, and commitment to global jihad. Along with their henchmen, they were engaged in a war against France, from within and without. Make no mistake: This is a civil war—although one camp is unarmed.

Are we Charlie?

The Charlie Hebdo killings compel us to look frankly at reality—without the hollow rhetoric of our political classes or the complacence of the media. In fact, for a while, a few days after the killings, it seemed like French people were beginning to wake up. When, on Sunday, the 11th of January, Paris and several other French cities witnessed the largest demonstration in the history of France, it seemed that there was a new realization of the threat now within our borders. A “Republican march” of around 4 million people (according to official sources)—more than during the funeral of Victor Hugo in 1885—with thousands of anonymous people following behind almost the entire political class, from France and abroad (including 44 foreign heads of state) seemed to suggest that people were ready to say, “enough is enough”.

The watchword of this moment of national unity was, of course, “je suis Charlie”. But are we really Charlie?

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

After Garissa Killings, Kenyan Catholics Seek Answers, Offer Solace

People attend a memorial vigil in Nairobi, Kenya, April 7, for the 147 people killed in an attack on Garissa University College. Kenyan bishops are urging the government to step up security and for citizens to remain united after al-Shabab militants atta cked the college campus April 2. (CNS photo/Goran Tomasevic, Reuters)

After Garissa Killings, Kenyan Catholics Seek Answers, Offer Solace | Allen Ottaro | CWR

The problem of the radicalization of young people is the most challenging battle as Kenya responds to radical Islamic violence

Students of the Garissa University College in Eastern Kenya should have been sitting this week for their end of semester examinations, at the end of which they would have joined their families for holidays. Instead, close to 150 of those families will have funerals for sons and daughters who were murdered a week ago today, on Holy Thursday, by Al-Shabab gunmen who singled out Christian victims. About 80 other students are nursing gunshot wounds in hospitals in Garissa and Nairobi. Some families are yet to locate their relatives, one week after the attack.

The Kenyan government declared three days of national mourning, which culminated in a candle-lit vigil at Nairobi’s Uhuru (Freedom) park on the evening of April 7^th. Hundreds of young people turned up to mourn their colleagues. They expressed shock but also made known their solidarity with the families of those killed and injured.

John Cardinal Njue, the Chairman of the Kenya Conference of Catholic Bishops (KCCB), while strongly condemning the attacks also announced that the Catholic Church would commit herself to “activate the parish networks for our Christian faithful to lend their support and prayers.” Cardinal Njue further invited priests, Church institutions, and other Christian groups to “journey with the victims and families of the terror attacks by providing them with psycho-social support at the Parish community levels”. This invitation from the Archbishop of Nairobi is, I think, very important as I suspect that once the media attention is eventually directed to other matters, the families will be left to their own devices. The support of the local communities, therefore, will be critical for each family, some of which—from the stories I have seen—were hoping that their sons and daughters would come back to help support them upon completion of their studies.

Cardinal Njue’s statement expressed hope that the Kenyan government would get to the bottom of the problem of terrorism and radicalization. A day after the attack, the Cabinet Secretary for the Interior stated that the terrorists had caught the government “by surprise”. The Garissa University attack is the latest in a series of terrorist attacks (since the Kenyan government sent troops into Somalia in October of 2011), for which the radical group Al-Shabab, with reported ties to al-Qaida, has claimed responsibility. (Ironically, Al-Shabab means “The Youth” in Arabic.)

In November 2015, 28 people were killed when a bus was ambushed by the Al-Shabab in Mandera, a town near the Kenya-Somalia border. A few days later, 36 quarry workers were shot dead in yet another attack; the Al-Shabab claimed responsibility. President Uhuru Kenyatta responded by replacing the police chief and the Cabinet Secretary for the Interior. New security laws were introduced and passed in the National Assembly during a chaotic session that ended in fisticuffs between members of the ruling coalition and the opposition. The latter felt that the government had gone overboard, using the pretext of counter-terrorism measures, by introducing laws that they considered retrogressive and infringing upon the basic freedoms of Kenyans, including the freedom of assembly.

However, the problem of the radicalization of young people is the most challenging battle.

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

A Message in Blood: ISIS and the Meaning of the Cross

(Photos: CNS)

A Message in Blood: ISIS and the Meaning of the Cross | Fr. Robert Barron | CWR

When Christians boldly hold up an image of the humiliated, tortured Jesus to the world, they are saying: "We are not afraid.”

Last week, the attention of the world was riveted to a deserted beach in northern Libya, where a group of twenty one Coptic Christians were brutally beheaded by masked operatives of the ISIS movement. In the wake of the executions, ISIS released a gruesome video entitled “A Message in Blood to the Nation of the Cross.”

I suppose that for the ISIS murderers the reference to “the Nation of the Cross” had little sense beyond a generic designation for Christianity. Sadly for most Christians, too, the cross has become little more than an anodyne, a harmless symbol, a pious decoration. I would like to take the awful event on that Libyan beach, as well as the ISIS message concerning it, as an occasion to reflect on the still startling distinctiveness of the cross.

In the time of Jesus, the cross was a brutal and very effective sign of Roman power. Imperial authorities effectively said, “If you cross us (pun intended), we will affix you to a dreadful instrument of torture and leave you to writhe in agonizing, literally excruciating (ex cruce, from the cross) pain until you die. Then we will make sure that your body hangs on that gibbet until it is eaten away by scavenging animals.”

The cross was, basically, state-sponsored terrorism, and it did indeed terrify people.

Continue reading on the CWR blog.

Will the Other Sleeping Giant Awake?

Left: St. Peter's Basilica (us.fotolia.com | © rudi1976); right: Muslim militants (us.fotolia.com | © Oleg_Zabielin)

Will the Other Sleeping Giant Awake? | William Kilpatrick | Catholic World Report

Despite widespread slaughter of Christians and other religious minorities in Muslim lands, the Church currently seems unable to mount any kind of resistance to Islamic ideology

It is often said that when Admiral Yamamoto ordered the attack on Pearl Harbor, he awakened a sleeping giant. Even though the Nazis had occupied much of Europe, bombed London, and advanced to the outskirts of Moscow, the United States was still slumbering on the morning of December 7, 1941.

Although we were aiding the anti-Nazi forces through Lend-Lease shipments and other forms of support, isolationist sentiment remained strong in America. The mood of complacency was succinctly captured in the 1942 wartime film Casablanca:

Rick: If it’s December 1941 in Casablanca, what time is it in New York?

Sam: What? My watch stopped.

Rick: I bet they’re asleep in New York. I bet they’re asleep all over America.

America woke up, but barely in time. Our allies were in disarray, a major part of our Pacific fleet lay at the bottom of Pearl Harbor, and the Wehrmacht was well-armed, well-trained, and highly experienced. Another year of delay and the fate of Europe might have been sealed, and our own future made that much more uncertain.

The Cold War which followed on the heels of World War II kept America on its toes for four more decades, but after the fall of the Soviet system, the sleeping giant resumed its slumber. Then came September 11, 2001—an attack which cost more American lives than Pearl Harbor. It was a classic wake-up call. And for a while, the giant awoke. The American homeland went on high alert and forces were mobilized to attack the enemy’s base in Afghanistan. However, with the relatively easy defeat of the Taliban and Saddam Hussein, the sleeping giant rolled over and went back to sleep. There seemed to be no more threat to our homeland and no serious threat to our military. As a result, the Army is being shrunk to pre-World War II levels, and the Navy to pre-World War I size. Meanwhile, social experimentation has become all the rage. Concern over the strength of the military has taken a back seat to concern over its sensitivity to diversity.

Because we went back to sleep, the Islamic threat to the world is significantly greater today than it was on September 11, 2001. Al-Qaeda is stronger than ever and active in numerous countries. ISIS controls large parts of Syria and Iraq, millions in Africa live in fear of Boko Haram and Al-Shaabab, Afghanistan looks like it will return to Taliban control, Iran will soon have nuclear weapons, and Turkey, with the second largest army in NATO, appears to have more sympathy for radical Islam than for its NATO allies.

America, the sleeping giant, may yet wake up again, but even if it does, it’s not at all clear that it’s up to the task of combating the ideology that fuels the fighting. The war with Islamic militants is both an armed conflict and a culture war. Some of the militants fight with machine guns and mortars, and some fight using weapons of propaganda and political intimidation. But the most powerful weapon that the jihadists wield is religion. The promises made by Islam to young warriors bring in the recruits, and the fact that Islam is a religion keeps the critics away. Islamic ideology is immune from criticism in a way that Nazism and Communism never were.

The other sleeping giant

And that is where the other sleeping giant comes in. I refer, of course, to the Catholic Church.

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

On the "Reform" of Islam

The Blue Mosque, left, and the Hagia Sophia Museum, right, are pictured at sunset in Istanbul in this Nov. 24, 2008, file photo. (CNS photo/Tolga Bozoglu, EPA)

On the "Reform" of Islam | Fr. James V. Schall, SJ | CWR

If violence, terror, beheadings, forced conversions, subjection of women, and intolerance of others are removed or “transformed” in Islam, is it still Islam?

I.

The President of Egypt, at Al Azhar University in Cairo, recently did everyone a favor by putting on the table, from inside of the Islamic world itself, the question of its public conduct and inner soul as they relate to the Muslim religion. Does its conduct, as manifest in its deeds, flow from its religious beliefs? One and a quarter billion Muslims, President al-Sisi bluntly affirmed, cannot hope to eliminate the other six and a half billion human beings. A May 14, 2014, article in the American Thinker estimated that over the centuries some 250 million people have been killed in wars caused by Islam. The religion itself thus needs, in al-Sisi’s view, a thorough “revolution” or transformation.

The issue that I bring up here, in the light of these observations, is this: “Is such a revolution possible without, in effect, eliminating the basic content of what we know as Islam?” If violence, terror, beheadings, forced conversions, bad treatment of women, and intolerance of others are removed or “transformed” in Islam, so that they are no longer parts of the religion but condemned by it, is it still Islam? Would it not be something totally unrecognizable as the same Islam faithfully loyal to its founding by Mohammed? If so, it would follow that something is radically disordered in the founding itself and its development to its present form.

No one thought that communism could fall except, perhaps, Reagan and John Paul II. Some elements of it still strive to hang on, to be sure, but its evils have generally been acknowledged as inhuman. Is there a similar hope about an unexpected turn in Islam? Could it almost miraculously morph into something else? Or, if it changes in any basic way, does it not have to change into something already known, such as Christianity? Or Hinduism? Or even modernism? Are the violent manifestations within Islam towards itself and others simply an aberration? Or, are they essential to the mission to which Islam is committed, namely, to conquer the world for Allah? The authors of Charlie Hebdo hoped that Islam would become as “harmless” as Christianity has become. But is a “harmless” Islam an irrelevant Islam?

In 2011, I called attention to the work of scholars (mostly German) in establishing a critical edition of the Qur’an. It becomes evident that the text of this famous book could not be what it is claimed to be—that is, a revelation in pure Arabic delivered directly from the mind of Allah in the seventh century through Mohammed. Moreover, it is said to be unchanged in any way, not only from its first appearance, but also from eternity.

My assumption, of course, is that the Muslim mind—or any mind—when faced with facts, can recognize a contradiction in its own origins or practices if pointed out. If the Qur’an cannot be what it said it was, how can anyone uphold it? If it is a correlation to previously existing texts, its origin is not what it said it was. The effort to eliminate the scholars who even dare to wonder about this issue is not an argument in favor of the Qur’an, but against it, a sign of unwillingness to examine the evidence. One can only suspect that the failure of any source in Islam itself to produce a critical edition of the Qur’an, combined with the efforts to impede anyone else from doing so, is an indirect proof that many in Islam know there is something strange about the original text that is not explained by the theory of direct revelation.

II.

Muslim thinkers, in the light of contradictory statements in the Qur’an, have had to devise a philosophical thesis about Allah’s nature that would, supposedly, defend the text from incoherence.

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

What Really Happened During the Crusades?

8 Myths About the Crusades

8 Myths About the Crusades | Dr. Thomas F. Madden

[This article originally appeared in the January/February 2002 issue of Catholic Dossier.]

The Crusades are much in the news of late. President Bush made the mistake of referring to the war against terrorism as a "crusade" and was roundly criticized for uttering a word both offensive and hurtful to the world’s Muslims. If it is painful, then it is remarkable indeed how often the Arabs themselves make use of the word. Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar have repeatedly referred to Americans as "crusaders" and the present war as a "crusade against Islam." For decades now Americans have been routinely referred to as "crusaders" or "cowboys" among Arabs in the Middle East. Clearly the crusades are very much alive in the Muslim world.

They are not forgotten in the West either. Actually, despite the many differences between the East and West, most people in both cultures are in agreement about the Crusades. It is commonly accepted that the Crusades are a black mark on the history of Western civilization generally and the Catholic Church in particular. Anyone eager to bash Catholics will not long tarry before brandishing the Crusades and the Inquisition. The Crusades are often used as a classic example of the evil that organized religion can do. Your average man on the street in both New York and Cairo would agree that the Crusades were an insidious, cynical, and unprovoked attack by religious zealots against a peaceful, prosperous, and sophisticated Muslim world.

It was not always so. During the Middle Ages you could not find a Christian in Europe who did not believe that the Crusades were an act of highest good. Even the Muslims respected the ideals of the Crusades and the piety of the men who fought them. But that all changed with the Protestant Reformation. For Martin Luther, who had already jettisoned the Christian doctrines of papal authority and indulgences, the Crusades were nothing more than a ploy by a power-hungry papacy. Indeed, he argued that to fight the Muslims was to fight Christ himself, for it was he who had sent the Turks to punish Christendom for its faithlessness. When Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent and his armies began to invade Austria, Luther changed his mind about the need to fight, but he stuck to his condemnation of the Crusades. During the next two centuries people tended to view the Crusades through a confessional lens: Protestants demonized them, Catholics extolled them. As for Suleiman and his successors, they were just glad to be rid of them.

It was in the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century that the current view of the Crusades was born. Most of the philosophes, like Voltaire, believed that medieval Christianity was a vile superstition. For them the Crusades were a migration of barbarians led by fanaticism, greed, and lust. Since then, the Enlightenment take on the Crusades has gone in and out of fashion. The Crusades received good press as wars of nobility (although not religion) during the Romantic period and the early twentieth century. After the Second World War, however, opinion again turned decisively against the Crusades. In the wake of Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin, historians found war of ideology–any ideology –distasteful. This sentiment was summed up by Sir Steven Runciman in his three-volume work, A History of the Crusades (1951-54). For Runciman, the Crusades were morally repugnant acts of intolerance in the name of God. The medieval men who took the cross and marched to the Middle East were either cynically evil, rapaciously greedy, or naively gullible. This beautifully written history soon became the standard. Almost single-handedly Runciman managed to define the modern popular view of the Crusades.

Since the 1970s the Crusades have attracted many hundreds of scholars who have meticulously poked, prodded, and examined them. As a result, much more is known about Christianity’s holy wars than ever before. Yet the fruits of decades of scholarship have been slow to enter the popular mind. In part this is the fault of professional historians, who tend to publish studies that, by necessity, are technical and therefore not easily accessible outside of the academy. But it is also due to a clear reluctance among modern elites to let go of Runciman’s vision of the Crusades. And so modern popular books on the Crusades–desiring, after all, to be popular–tend to parrot Runciman. The same is true for other media, like the multi-part television documentary, The Crusades (1995), produced by BBC/A&E and starring Terry Jones of Monty Python fame. To give the latter an air of authority the producers spliced in a number of distinguished Crusade historians who gave their views on events. The problem was that the historians would not go along with Runciman’s ideas. No matter. The producers simply edited the taped interviews cleverly enough that the historians seemed to be agreeing with Runciman. As Professor Jonathan Riley-Smith quite vehemently told me, "They made me appear to say things that I do not believe!"

So, what is the real story of the Crusades? As you might imagine, it is a long story. But there are good histories, written in the last twenty years, that lay much of it out. For the moment, given the barrage of coverage that the Crusades are getting nowadays, it might be best to consider just what the Crusades were not. Here, then, are some of the most common myths and why they are wrong.

Myth 1: The Crusades were wars of unprovoked aggression against a peaceful Muslim world.

The Crusades 101

The Crusades 101 | Jimmy Akin | IgnatiusInsight.com

As conventionally reckoned, the Crusades were a set of eight expeditions to the East that occurred in just under a two-century period, from 1095 to 1270. The term crusade has since expanded to be applied to a wide variety of wars--especially ones involving religion--and even to things that are not wars at all (e.g., Billy Graham's evangelistic events). Here we will focus on the eight traditional Crusades.

Historical Background

Understanding the Crusades requires an appreciation of the events that led to them. Since the legalization of Christianity in the early 300s, European Christians had been conducting pilgrimages to Palestine in order to visit the holy sites associated with the life of our Lord. These pilgrimages were major exercises of piety, for in that age travel to the Holy Land was difficult, time-consuming, expensive, and dangerous. Some pilgrimages took years to complete.

Christians also went to Syria, Palestine, and Egypt in order to live ascetic lives. This was the age in which Christian monasticism blossomed, and numerous Christians were anxious to go to the Holy Land and Egypt in order to lead lives consecrated to God by asceticism. They also undertook the hardships of the journey. For both pilgrims and ascetics there was one factor ameliorating the journey: the path to Palestine went through Christian lands.

In A.D. 612, the Arabian Muhammad, son of Abdallah, reported receiving a prophetic call from God through the angel Gabriel. At first, he made few converts. However, after being driven from his native Mecca in 622, he found refuge in the city of Medina, where his followers increased. Mounting a military campaign, Muhammad conquered several pagan, Jewish, and Christian tribes and was able to seize control of his native Mecca, as well as all of Arabia. He died in 632.

Following his death, Muhammad's successors--the caliphs--continued an aggressive campaign of expansion. In less than a century they had seized control--among other lands--of Syria, Palestine, and North Africa. Though today we are used to thinking of these lands as Muslim, at the time they were Christian. It has been said that the expanding Muslim empire consumed half of Christian civilization. Even Europe itself was threatened. Muslims seized control of southern Spain, invaded France, and were threatening to invade Rome itself when their advance was defeated by Charles Martel at the battle of Poitiers in 732.

It had been a hard century.

After Muslim expansion in Western Europe had been checked for the moment, their attention for a time turned elsewhere, and within two more centuries they had conquered Persia (Iran), Afghanistan, Pakistan, and parts of India. They also later advanced against Christian nations, conquering the Byzantine Empire in 1453 and encroaching as far as Vienna, Austria in 1683.

The Crusades occurred in the middle of this struggle. The immediate preparation for them took place in the eleventh century, with increases in long-standing tensions between Christians and Muslims in the Holy Land.

The Spanish Inquisition: Fact Versus Fiction

The Spanish Inquisition: Fact Versus Fiction | Marvin R. O'Connell

"Even while I breathed there came to my nostrils the breath of the vapor of heated iron. A suffocating odor pervaded the prison. A deeper glow settled each moment in the eyes that glared at my agonies. A richer tint of crimson diffused itself over the pictured horrors of blood. There could be no doubt of the design of my tormentors. Oh, most unrelenting! Oh, most demoniac of men! 'Death,' I said, 'any death but that of the pit.'"

And so on for twenty pages reads the most familiar literary indictment of the wickedness of the Spanish Inquisition. Edgar Allen Poe's short story, "The Pit and the Pendulum," is, to be sure, a piece of fiction, its author a specialist in creating scenes of horror and dread, as the titles of some of his other works suggest: "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," "The Haunted Palace," "The Conqueror Worm." Yet Poe's hideous image of the red-hot poker being prepared as an instrument of torture by grinning Spanish sadists–the "most demoniac of men"–did not strain the credulity of his readers a century and a half ago, nor does it today. We may indeed express our abhorrence a little more light-heartedly - when Professor Higgins, in My Fair Lady, wishes to evoke the most frightful of possible alternatives, he sings, "I'd prefer a new edition/Of the Spanish Inquisition," and, with the shivers running up and down the spine, we know exactly what he means.

At a rather more sophisticated level was the picture drawn by Dostoyevsky who, in The Brothers Karamazov, imagines the Grand Inquisitor, with "his withered face and sunken eyes," in confrontation with Jesus on the streets of Seville, where the Savior has just restored life to a dead child. "The Inquisitor sees everything; he sees them set the coffin down at Jesus' feet, sees the child rise up, and his face darkens. He knits his thick grey brows, and his eyes gleam with a sinister light. He holds out his finger and bids the guards arrest Jesus. And such is his power, so completely are the people cowed into submission and trembling obedience to him, that the crowd immediately makes way for the guards, and in the midst of a deathlike silence they lay hands on Jesus and take him to the Inquisitor who says: 'Tomorrow I shall condemn thee and burn thee at the stake as the worst of heretics.'"

Once more, suspension of disbelief is not so difficult, because it is a given that the officers of the Spanish Inquisition were so glutted with pride and blood-lust that they would not have stopped at deicide to gain their ends. Does not the very name of Torquemada summon up visions of ruthlessness and cruelty?

And then of course there is the cinematic conception of the era of the Inquisition, brought to the silver screen in dozens of swashbuckling melodramas, in which the upright, truthful, intelligent, compassionate, handsome, brave Anglo, with his light complexion and buff-colored hair –this last constituent sends a strong ethnic message–crosses swords with the cruel, devious, lustful, foppish, superstitious, cowardly Spaniard with–please notice –his swarthy skin and greasy black hair and mustache. Needless to say, North Atlantic virtue always triumphs over Mediterranean depravity in these contests, Protestant blue-eyed heroism over intrinsically inferior Catholic dark-eyed perfidy, and the audience goes home contented, having seen the Spanish galleon, all afire, sink beneath the waves, while the gallant Erroll Flynn (or someone like him) stands coolly self-possessed on the main deck of his ship, his protective arm around the waist of the beautiful blonde lady he has just rescued from the clutches of villainous Latins.

These pulp-fiction romances seldom advert directly to the Inquisition; movie moguls make it a rule to keep their plots uncomplicated. But they do trade in a deep-seated prejudice that has been so carefully cultivated over so long a time that it has become an integral part of our culture. It was not only Poe and Dostoyevsky and even Professor Higgins who assumed that the Spanish Inquisition was wicked because it was Spanish; the rest of us, the hoi polloi, concluded the same. To assert that conclusion was enough to establish its truth; no evidence was required and no rebuttal allowed. In one of the most enduring public relations victories ever accomplished, the history of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Spain's Golden Age, was consciously and methodically distorted by what scholars now candidly call "the Black Legend." This collection of bitter fables, with their overtones of bigotry and racism, proves once more–if proof were necessary–that a lie told often enough and convincingly enough will in the end be accepted as gospel. "One of the great conditions of anger and hatred," the wryly cynical Thackeray observed, "is that you must tell and believe lies against the hated object in order to be consistent." The lies in this instance about the Spanish character and about the Catholicism practiced in the Spain of Queen Isabella, St. Teresa of Avila and Cervantes, were told in order to promote a Protestant and particularly an English Protestant ascendancy, which in due course crossed the Atlantic with the colonists who eventually founded the United States; the sad irony is that though any serious commitment to that cause has long since vanished from the old world and the new, the racist and bigoted distortions put on the record in its behalf by the concoctors of the Black Legend have proved to have a life of their own.

Will a Future Pope Be Forced to Flee Rome?

A demonstrator holds up a sign reading "I'm Muslim don't panic" during a protest against Islamophobia in front of the Brussels' Justice Palace in Belgium Oct. 26, 2014. (CNS photo/Francois Lenoir, Reuters)

Will a Future Pope Be Forced to Flee Rome? | William Kilpatrick | CWR

The current arc of history seems to be drawing us back into a very dark past—a time when Islam ruled half the civilized world and threatened the rest of it.

Where will the Pope live when Rome falls to Islam?

It’s not an idle question. For one thing, there is historical precedent. Popes have been forced from Rome in the past. For another thing, numerous Islamic authorities have explicitly targeted Rome for conquest.

Rome may be the Eternal City, but it has seen rough times. In 846, for instance, Pope Leo IV had to briefly flee Rome when it was attacked by an Arab fleet. The following year, he ordered the construction of a great wall around the Vatican to protect it from marauding Muslims. Even as recently as the 1940s, Rome was occupied by a foreign army. Although the Nazis left the pope alone, there is no guarantee that that situation would have continued had the Germans been able to keep the Allied forces at bay.

If Rome ever falls to Islam, the pope—whoever he may be at that time—may choose to remain in Rome and suffer the almost certain martyrdom that would follow. That is up to him and the Holy Spirit. However, in light of the escalating Islamization of Europe, it would seem prudent for Vatican officials to draw up some contingency plans. If the pope chooses exile, it would probably have to be in North or South American since it’s unlikely there will be any safe havens in Europe. In fact, Italy is currently a safer place than many other European nations. Although many Muslim immigrants pass through Italy, it is not their first choice of residence. Other European countries offer much more generous welfare incentives than does Italy. Countries such as England, Belgium, France, Sweden, and Germany are likely to fall first.

By “fall,” I don’t mean that these countries will fall to Muslim armies. That probably won’t be necessary. What we will see—what we are already witnessing—is a slow, steady process of submission. Well, slow and steady up to a point—and then, a rapid acceleration.

Some places in Europe seem already to be in the rapid acceleration phase. Birmingham, England now has more Muslim than Christian children. “That means,” as Mark Steyn observes, “that absent any countervailing dynamic, its future is Muslim.” What will that future look like? Steyn comments:

If you’re a Muslim girl, the authorities will systematically turn a blind eye to forced marriages and honor violence and, if you’re a lower-class infidel girl, to “grooming.” If you’re boorish enough to draw attention to such unpleasantness, you’ll be committing a hate crime…

It’s not necessary to consult a crystal ball to see the future of Birmingham (England’s second largest city).

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.

“What is Islam?” Revisited | Fr. James V. Schall, SJ

Firefighters carry a victim on a stretcher at the scene of a shooting at the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo, a satirical newspaper, Jan. 7. (CNS photo/Jacky Naegelen, Reuters)

“What is Islam?” Revisited | Fr. James V. Schall, SJ CWR

Within Islam, the world is divided into a zone of war and a zone of peace. Those who are in the zone of war or sympathize with it are enemies who deserve death.

“An aspect of the attack (in Syria) that was not often reported in the media was the way the Islamist invaders tried to remove not only the Christians but the Christianity from the town, a phenomenon that is common now when Islamism expands in the Middle East and in the greater Muslim world. It is not enough that Christians should leave, convert, or die, but all traces of Christianity should be removed as well.” — Michael Coren: Hatred: Islam’s War on Christianity (Plattsburg, N. Y. McClelland & Stewart/Random House Canada, 2014), 48

“Seventeen-year-old Ismael said he was ordered this summer by his Islamic State superiors to help behead every male ages 14 to 45 from an enemy Syrian tribe in Deir Essour. The teenager said he balked, but his 10-year-old brother took to the job with zeal. Activists said hundreds were killed.” — Maria Abi-Habib, “The Child Soldiers Who Escape Islamic State: Boys, Teenagers Tell of Lessons in Beheading, Weaponry at Training Camps,” Wall Street Journal, December 26, 2014

“The Islamic State stormed unimpeded through Mosul, Qaraqossh, and the smaller towns of Nineveh province last summer, marking Christian homes with the letter ‘N’ for ‘Nazarene’ and giving residents an ultimatum: renounce Jesus Christ and convert to Islam, or die. The 200,000 Christian faithful in Nineveh, many of whom still pray in Aramaic, refused. For that, they had to flee en masse one August day with little more than the shirts on their backs. Some, including children, were slaughtered, and some may have been enslaved.” — Nina Shea, “Christians on the Run from Iraq,” National Review Online, December 24, 2014

I.

Michael Coren, the Canadian journalist and TV host, has written a sober and frank book, titled Hatred: Islam’s War on Christianity. Its basic intent is to survey and accurately recount the extent of Islamic persecution of Christians in particular in every area of the world from the Mid-East, to Africa, Indonesia, Asia, the Philippines, Europe, and America. Others besides Christians are also attacked, but Christians have become the prime target. The goal, now almost achieved in many areas, is the total elimination of Christians from Muslim-held areas. No doubt, for many, this startling phenomenon has certain apocalyptic overtones. As Coren himself stated, one needs a strong stomach just to read about the mind-numbing, brutal Islamic atrocities that regularly occur in every part of the world—beheadings, stabbings, rapes, throat-slittings, eye-gougings, knifings, burnings, and killings of every imaginable sort.

These scenes are not figments of anyone’s imagination. They are often recorded live in various media. Most people cannot even imagine them even when they see them. If the extent and inhumanity of this persecution of Christians are at all reported in the West, they are played down or unstated because of political presuppositions, ecumenical or liberal presuppositions, or because of cowardice and very real fear of Muslim retaliation—the murder of 12 in Paris yesterday being a timely and horrifying example. While Walid Phares, Robert Spencer, Laurent Murawiec, and Andrew Bostom, among others, have presented earlier graphic accounts of Muslim-originated atrocities, Coren has brought this bloody record up-to-date, as the violence has increased measurably in recent months.

When Robert Royal finished his book Catholic Martyrs in the Twentieth Century in 2000, I recall being especially struck by his observation that so many of these martyrs died quietly, unknown except to God.  Usually they lived good lives. In no way were they the cause of their fate, other than for their being Catholics or Christian. A reading of the Coren book leaves one with the same agonizing impression. Catholics and Christians of every denomination are now being slaughtered on a regular basis in various Muslim-dominated lands for no other reason than that they are followers of Christ.

Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.