"Meanwhile, these parties often seem to be on the antipodes of the Church’s positions on migration"
Is it really Church teaching that Christian countries are required to import people who want your religion suppressed and think rape is a men who rape immodest women do a service to Allah? There's a reason Hungary is by far the safest place in Europe for Jews. They haven't imported millions of rabid anti-semites like the UK, France, and Germany.
Somehow, Asian and African bishops often oppose this teaching, and the African people almost universally do so. People who live in aggressively anti-Christian countries usually understand the mistake Europe has made in precipitating civil war for their grandchildren. Ask a Nigerian if Germany should import tens of millions of Muslims out of a misplaced sense of charity. As Bishop Chissengueti said of his diocese, “The phenomenon of illegal immigration, specifically here in our province of Cabinda is a real threat to Angola’s sovereignty.”
Do you deny that St. John Bosco wrote the words in the video? If not, what specifically do you disagree with regarding St. John Bosco's assessment?
The earlier attack of the person reading Bosco's writing isn't terribly persuasive. I believe that logical fallacy is called the ad hominem attack, except normally it is leveled at the person whose ideas you disagree with. In this case, you leveled an attack against someone reading the writings of a saint, as if that has any bearing on the saint's writings themselves.
If you disagree with St. John Bosco's words because you disdain the people who quote him, do you also disagree with St. Thomas Aquinas because I quote him below?
"…those who founded sects committed to erroneous doctrines proceeded in a way that is opposite to this, The point is clear in the case of Muhammad. He seduced the people by promises of carnal pleasure to which the concupiscence of the flesh goads us. His teaching also contained precepts that were in conformity with his promises, and he gave free rein to carnal pleasure. In all this, as is not unexpected, he was obeyed by carnal men. As for proofs of the truth of his doctrine, he brought forward only such as could be grasped by the natural ability of anyone with a very modest wisdom. Indeed, the truths that he taught he mingled with many fables and with doctrines of the greatest falsity. He did not bring forth any signs produced in a supernatural way, which alone fittingly gives witness to divine inspiration; for a visible action that can be only divine reveals an invisibly inspired teacher of truth. On the contrary, Muhammad said that he was sent in the power of his arms—which are signs not lacking even to robbers and tyrants. What is more, no wise men, men trained in things divine and human, believed in him from the beginning, Those who believed in him were brutal men and desert wanderers, utterly ignorant of all divine teaching, through whose numbers Muhammad forced others to become his followers by the violence of his arms. Nor do divine pronouncements on the part of preceding prophets offer him any witness. On the contrary, he perverts almost all the testimonies of the Old and New Testaments by making them into fabrications of his own, as can be. seen by anyone who examines his law. It was, therefore, a shrewd decision on his part to forbid his followers to read the Old and New Testaments, lest these books convict him of falsity. It is thus clear that those who place any faith in his words believe foolishly.”
It depends which part of the Church you are referring to. Pope Francis' view is grotesquely false. Witness para 253 of Evangelii Gaudium.
"Faced with disconcerting episodes of violent fundamentalism, our respect for true followers of Islam should lead us to avoid hateful generalisations, for authentic Islam and the proper reading of the Koran are opposed to every form of violence."
And his response in 2016 after Father Hamel had his throat cut.
Fanatics in every religion including our own. There are 1.9 billion Muslims in the world. If their religion required such actions, a lot more would be happening. This is as false as the accusation that all pro-life activists are clinic bombers.
False equivalence. How many clinic bombings have taken place? How many total casualties? Now stack that up next to 9/11, 7/7 in London, Paris November 2015, plus ISIS, Boko Haram, et al. There's no comparison between Christianity-based "terrorism" and Islamic terrorism. If you take the amount of violence committed explicitly in the name of Christianity in proportion to global Christian population, versus violence in the name of Islam relative to global population of Muslims, Islam has a much higher "per capita" level of violence.
In both cases, compared to the billion plus followers of each Abrahamic faith, it is not possible except by bigotry to assert this is a teaching or requirement of either religion. This assertion is like the infamous "charts" my grandparents endured where anti-Catholic bigotry was promoted by charts alleging the higher rates of illegitimacy, crime, and prostitution in Catholic countries compared to Protestant nations.
It's not necessarily part of the teachings of the religion, but it's part of the culture that has attached itself to that religion for the last 1,400 years. And as for the charts, this isn't based on 20th century racial pseudo-science, but on global events over the last 25 years or so. Obviously this may not be the majority of Muslims, but the violent extremists aren't an insignificant anomaly that can be overlooked either.
Fanatics of all religions can be properly responded to without fanning religious bigotry or stereotypes, and certainly without restriction immigration based on denomination or faith.
“Importing” is the crux of your straw man argument here. OF COURSE church teaching does not “require importing” of people any more than it requires importing cattle or rice.
Christians are called to radical hospitality and welcoming of the stranger. We are also called to love our enemies and there’s no caveat exempting muslims from this teaching.
Now… a State charged with the responsibility of ensuring the safety of a community and monitoring a just distributions of resources is a different matter to individual Christians. Different States charged with different political communities will make different decisions legitimately about this. Hungary is an outlier in Europe (and always has been) as it is a linguistic and cultural anomaly directly descended from invading horse nomads from Central Asia. They will make a different decision about how to ensure the flourishing of that particular community to the Netherlands or France or Poland.
The colonial legacy of western Europe is a large part of why so many muslims have migrated to Europe. Many of them were fleeing genuine political and economic oppression after the independence of the former colonies and embraced the secular promised prosperity of secular liberalism in most of their receiving states and integrated successfully. Nation-statehood is new to most of their former homelands (60-70 years instead of 300 for Europe) and the process of state formation to the point we expect to it be stable and normative is a long and bloody process. See Western Europe from 1600 onwards. This is true for Muslim majority post-colonial countries and non-Muslim majority ones in Eastern Europe too. The only exception I can see is Israel and that has unique inputs to other post-colonial nations plus its relatively small land and population size.
"“Importing” is the crux of your straw man argument here. OF COURSE church teaching does not “require importing” of people any more than it requires importing cattle or rice." -KP
It isn't a straw man argument.
1) The Church bureaucracy has condemned the only political parties who oppose mandatory acceptance of mass immigration of Muslims.
2) The article in question specifically called out those parties as opposing Church teaching.
3) Hungary is being fined $200 million dollars and $1 million a day for not accepting immigrants. You don't fine someone for violating suggestions. Currently, Budapest is the only major European city where women can safely walk alone at night. That world no longer exists in Berlin, London, Paris, and Stockhold, due to mass immigration.
4) You blame colonialism on the mass immigration, but the countries in question are materially far better off than pre-colonialism, and mandatory mass immigration is being imposed on countries with no history of colonialism.
My objections to people making mandatory acceptance of mass immigration a pseudo-teaching of the church is based in fact.
We have a political party which agrees with the Church on all the issues. It's only on the ballot in a few states because the 2 major parties do what they can to remove the opposition. In Indiana a party can only get on the ballot by running a candidate for the office of Secretary of State who takes at least 2% of the vote, and they can only be write ins because the party isn't on the ballot until after they achieve this. The Libertarians have pulled this off once and were on the ballot for the next 4 years. They're off again. So we know but there's not much we can do but write in the candidates we want to have win.
If one were living in Germany in the 1930s, would the message here from the bishops be appropriate? No party supports Catholic social teaching 100%, so everyone must follow their conscience and strive as an act of charity to participate and work to change the party in power from within. And would the bishops tell the Germans everyone has to participate, there is no "Benedict Option". As written in the gospels, Satan tempted Jesus by offering him political power, and Jesus refused. From his life, I see no indication of Jesus or his disciples working within the political structures of the day and trying to promote better forms of civil government. Are we not called to imitate Christ?
"Meanwhile, these parties often seem to be on the antipodes of the Church’s positions on migration"
Is it really Church teaching that Christian countries are required to import people who want your religion suppressed and think rape is a men who rape immodest women do a service to Allah? There's a reason Hungary is by far the safest place in Europe for Jews. They haven't imported millions of rabid anti-semites like the UK, France, and Germany.
Somehow, Asian and African bishops often oppose this teaching, and the African people almost universally do so. People who live in aggressively anti-Christian countries usually understand the mistake Europe has made in precipitating civil war for their grandchildren. Ask a Nigerian if Germany should import tens of millions of Muslims out of a misplaced sense of charity. As Bishop Chissengueti said of his diocese, “The phenomenon of illegal immigration, specifically here in our province of Cabinda is a real threat to Angola’s sovereignty.”
The Church has a more Christian and more informed view of Islam that you do.
I think you might be surprised at what the Church has taught.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJTdoWdIato
Oh please. 'America Needs Fatima' is a TFP front group that is still stinging from the exoneration of Captain Dreyfus.
Do you deny that St. John Bosco wrote the words in the video? If not, what specifically do you disagree with regarding St. John Bosco's assessment?
The earlier attack of the person reading Bosco's writing isn't terribly persuasive. I believe that logical fallacy is called the ad hominem attack, except normally it is leveled at the person whose ideas you disagree with. In this case, you leveled an attack against someone reading the writings of a saint, as if that has any bearing on the saint's writings themselves.
https://www.txst.edu/philosophy/resources/fallacy-definitions/ad-hominem.html
Certainly you can make your point without showing me something from an anti-Dreyfusard organization. Or maybe not?
Why should one be concerned about what a group thought in the 19th century? Isn't what matters what they think about now?
The fixation on the Dreyfus affair makes me suspicious that the poster is actually a time-traveler from fin de siècle France.
If you disagree with St. John Bosco's words because you disdain the people who quote him, do you also disagree with St. Thomas Aquinas because I quote him below?
"…those who founded sects committed to erroneous doctrines proceeded in a way that is opposite to this, The point is clear in the case of Muhammad. He seduced the people by promises of carnal pleasure to which the concupiscence of the flesh goads us. His teaching also contained precepts that were in conformity with his promises, and he gave free rein to carnal pleasure. In all this, as is not unexpected, he was obeyed by carnal men. As for proofs of the truth of his doctrine, he brought forward only such as could be grasped by the natural ability of anyone with a very modest wisdom. Indeed, the truths that he taught he mingled with many fables and with doctrines of the greatest falsity. He did not bring forth any signs produced in a supernatural way, which alone fittingly gives witness to divine inspiration; for a visible action that can be only divine reveals an invisibly inspired teacher of truth. On the contrary, Muhammad said that he was sent in the power of his arms—which are signs not lacking even to robbers and tyrants. What is more, no wise men, men trained in things divine and human, believed in him from the beginning, Those who believed in him were brutal men and desert wanderers, utterly ignorant of all divine teaching, through whose numbers Muhammad forced others to become his followers by the violence of his arms. Nor do divine pronouncements on the part of preceding prophets offer him any witness. On the contrary, he perverts almost all the testimonies of the Old and New Testaments by making them into fabrications of his own, as can be. seen by anyone who examines his law. It was, therefore, a shrewd decision on his part to forbid his followers to read the Old and New Testaments, lest these books convict him of falsity. It is thus clear that those who place any faith in his words believe foolishly.”
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles I:6
It depends which part of the Church you are referring to. Pope Francis' view is grotesquely false. Witness para 253 of Evangelii Gaudium.
"Faced with disconcerting episodes of violent fundamentalism, our respect for true followers of Islam should lead us to avoid hateful generalisations, for authentic Islam and the proper reading of the Koran are opposed to every form of violence."
And his response in 2016 after Father Hamel had his throat cut.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/01/pope-francis-says-it-not-right-to-identify-islam-with-violence
We have a more critical view in my parish after a zealot killed three men 100 yards from the church doors.
https://www.leighday.co.uk/news/news/2024-news/forbury-gardens-terror-attack-victims-families-call-for-urgent-change-after-judge-coroner-says-state-agencies-could-have-prevented-deaths/
And I bet that Catholics in Sri Lanka would like a few words with His Holiness after Easter Sunday 2019.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Sri_Lanka_Easter_bombings
Not to mention Catholics in Nigeria and elsewhere in Africa.
https://www.genocidewatch.com/single-post/nigeria-s-silent-slaughter-62-000-christians-murdered-since-2000#:~:text=Since%202000%2C%2062%2C000%20Christians%20in,ISWAP)%2C%20and%20Fulani%20militias.
Fanatics in every religion including our own. There are 1.9 billion Muslims in the world. If their religion required such actions, a lot more would be happening. This is as false as the accusation that all pro-life activists are clinic bombers.
False equivalence. How many clinic bombings have taken place? How many total casualties? Now stack that up next to 9/11, 7/7 in London, Paris November 2015, plus ISIS, Boko Haram, et al. There's no comparison between Christianity-based "terrorism" and Islamic terrorism. If you take the amount of violence committed explicitly in the name of Christianity in proportion to global Christian population, versus violence in the name of Islam relative to global population of Muslims, Islam has a much higher "per capita" level of violence.
In both cases, compared to the billion plus followers of each Abrahamic faith, it is not possible except by bigotry to assert this is a teaching or requirement of either religion. This assertion is like the infamous "charts" my grandparents endured where anti-Catholic bigotry was promoted by charts alleging the higher rates of illegitimacy, crime, and prostitution in Catholic countries compared to Protestant nations.
It's not necessarily part of the teachings of the religion, but it's part of the culture that has attached itself to that religion for the last 1,400 years. And as for the charts, this isn't based on 20th century racial pseudo-science, but on global events over the last 25 years or so. Obviously this may not be the majority of Muslims, but the violent extremists aren't an insignificant anomaly that can be overlooked either.
Fanatics of all religions can be properly responded to without fanning religious bigotry or stereotypes, and certainly without restriction immigration based on denomination or faith.
“Importing” is the crux of your straw man argument here. OF COURSE church teaching does not “require importing” of people any more than it requires importing cattle or rice.
Christians are called to radical hospitality and welcoming of the stranger. We are also called to love our enemies and there’s no caveat exempting muslims from this teaching.
Now… a State charged with the responsibility of ensuring the safety of a community and monitoring a just distributions of resources is a different matter to individual Christians. Different States charged with different political communities will make different decisions legitimately about this. Hungary is an outlier in Europe (and always has been) as it is a linguistic and cultural anomaly directly descended from invading horse nomads from Central Asia. They will make a different decision about how to ensure the flourishing of that particular community to the Netherlands or France or Poland.
The colonial legacy of western Europe is a large part of why so many muslims have migrated to Europe. Many of them were fleeing genuine political and economic oppression after the independence of the former colonies and embraced the secular promised prosperity of secular liberalism in most of their receiving states and integrated successfully. Nation-statehood is new to most of their former homelands (60-70 years instead of 300 for Europe) and the process of state formation to the point we expect to it be stable and normative is a long and bloody process. See Western Europe from 1600 onwards. This is true for Muslim majority post-colonial countries and non-Muslim majority ones in Eastern Europe too. The only exception I can see is Israel and that has unique inputs to other post-colonial nations plus its relatively small land and population size.
"“Importing” is the crux of your straw man argument here. OF COURSE church teaching does not “require importing” of people any more than it requires importing cattle or rice." -KP
It isn't a straw man argument.
1) The Church bureaucracy has condemned the only political parties who oppose mandatory acceptance of mass immigration of Muslims.
2) The article in question specifically called out those parties as opposing Church teaching.
3) Hungary is being fined $200 million dollars and $1 million a day for not accepting immigrants. You don't fine someone for violating suggestions. Currently, Budapest is the only major European city where women can safely walk alone at night. That world no longer exists in Berlin, London, Paris, and Stockhold, due to mass immigration.
4) You blame colonialism on the mass immigration, but the countries in question are materially far better off than pre-colonialism, and mandatory mass immigration is being imposed on countries with no history of colonialism.
My objections to people making mandatory acceptance of mass immigration a pseudo-teaching of the church is based in fact.
“A party that has clearly un-Christian policies as a banner impedes a Christian, not only from voting but also from participating as a politician."
Has anyone told the Americans?
We have a political party which agrees with the Church on all the issues. It's only on the ballot in a few states because the 2 major parties do what they can to remove the opposition. In Indiana a party can only get on the ballot by running a candidate for the office of Secretary of State who takes at least 2% of the vote, and they can only be write ins because the party isn't on the ballot until after they achieve this. The Libertarians have pulled this off once and were on the ballot for the next 4 years. They're off again. So we know but there's not much we can do but write in the candidates we want to have win.
If one were living in Germany in the 1930s, would the message here from the bishops be appropriate? No party supports Catholic social teaching 100%, so everyone must follow their conscience and strive as an act of charity to participate and work to change the party in power from within. And would the bishops tell the Germans everyone has to participate, there is no "Benedict Option". As written in the gospels, Satan tempted Jesus by offering him political power, and Jesus refused. From his life, I see no indication of Jesus or his disciples working within the political structures of the day and trying to promote better forms of civil government. Are we not called to imitate Christ?