From the UK’s best Catholic weekly, The Catholic Herald comes this, also of interest to readers in the USA because of the accelerating same-sex cultural re-engineering agenda.
Muslims and Sikhs back Church on same-sex marriage
By Staff Reporter on Tuesday, 20 March 2012
The leader of the Muslim Council for Britain has said that he agrees with the Catholic Church’s response to the introduction of same-sex marriage.
Farooq Murad, Secretary General of the MCB, said: “Whilst we remain opposed to all forms of discrimination, including homophobia, redefining the meaning of marriage is in our opinion unnecessary and unhelpful.
“With the advent of civil partnerships, both homosexual and heterosexual couples now have equal rights in the eyes of the law.
“Therefore, in our view the case to change the definition of marriage, as accepted throughout time and across cultures, is strikingly weak. In common with other Abrahamic faiths, marriage in Islam is defined as “a union between a man and a woman”, he said. “So while the state has accommodated for gay couples, such unions will not be blessed as marriage by the Islamic institutions.”
Murad’s comments follow criticism of the Government’s proposals from Cardinal Keith O’Brien and Archbishop Vincent Nichols of Westminster.
The leader of Britain’s Sikh’s community, Lord Singh, head of the Network of Sikh Organisations, also said that the Government’s proposals were “a sideways assault on religion.”
“It is an attempt by a vocal, secular minority to attack religion,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.”
He continued: “We have total respect for gays and lesbians and we are delighted that there is a Civil Partnership Act. We believe that this gives gays and lesbians everything they need.”
The Government are now in the process of consulting on how a change to the definition of marriage would be brought about.
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…great, helpful, timely comments from both Murad and Singh…
The Muslim theologian Algazel has left us a lengthy treatise on marriage from which it is abundantly clear that it refers only to the union between a man and a woman, with procreation heading the list of advantages he enumerates for it –
http://ghazali.org/works/marriage.htm
…I….well, I’m not comfortable being in their company. I don’t want to be associated with some of their extreme reactionary policies, or even give the perception that Catholics are like them.
I do not like to think of an alliance with Muslims–it seems much like the alliances which have been made by the U.S. in the past with certain groups in the Middle East: useful at the time, problematic later.
@Faith and wmeyer,
Feel free to not ally with people of a common goal here, but also feel free to watch all of your rights disappear in England, a country famous for forming Coalition governments. Fact is, the Church needs all the help it can get on this, because its voice alone has proved not loud enough. No need to turn away those who wish to help it.
Gift Horses, mouths, etc.
I guess the word Sin is no longer acceptable.
Religious using the secular argument?
How about the old stand by. It is a Sin against God and Nature, for the reason we won`t accept it.
Faith, you’d better get used to such alliances.
If you regularly read C-FAM (http://www.c-fam.org/) or Lifesitenews (http://www.lifesitenews.com). There are some very powerful alliances pushing forward the gay agenda, anti-religion agenda, and the pro-sexual libertarian even at the expense of corrupting our children agenda and murdering preborn children agenda (e.g. google “Happy, Healthy, and Hot.” and either UN and Girl Scouts for one such example).
These global agendas are being pushed on individual countries. Poorer countries are being forced to choose between accepting foreign aid and preserving their faith. About the only two effective groups fighting this agenda are Catholics (although severely weakened) and Muslims, so it is no surprise that co-incidentally we repeatedly find ourselves in alliances.
While we do not believe that theft and robbery should be legalized, we have great respect for the community of thieves. This new legislature will allow thieves to steal from each other as much as they wish. The thief and plunderer community has our utmost respect and we hope they will be satisfied with this new arrangement that will allow them full recognition. Finally, it should be clear that we do not condemn anyone experiencing an attraction for stealing.
In other news: scientists at a prestigious university have isolated a “stealing” gene. They are now looking for a cure. But the thief community is protesting: “we do not wish to be cured” stated their leader. “We wish to be recognized. Those who think there is anything wrong with us are displaying thief phobia.”
I am having serious trouble with the Internet and my comment has been deleted several times. Try again. I agree with wmeyer for several reasons.
One, the God of the Muslims and Sikhs is not the Divine Trinity, our God, who informs our theology about marriage. The Catholic marriage covenant reflects the relationship of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, especially after the addition of children to the union. That we believe in a Sacramental Marriage, created at the beginning and reaffirmed at Cana by Jesus Christ, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, are ideas hated by the Muslim religion.
Second, women are not equal partners in a Muslim marriage. In the Koran, which I have taught, the woman’s place is that of a slave and not an equal. She may be abused, beaten and even divorced without her permission. In a marriage I know, a German woman married to an Islamic man, lost her children when he took them back to Saudi Arabia. The German citizen mother had no rights and never saw her girls again, and that was 15 years ago. That woman are not considered “wive” or helpmates to salvation is a serious issue.
Three, Catholics cannot make alliances with evil. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn stated that the West, especially the Christian West, could not make alliances with atheism. Detente is not merely for utilitarian reasons, such as elections or government policy changes, but creates relationships one may regret later. The Muslims do not have a great track record for accommodating Catholics.
I am not happy about any so-called alliances with those who really hate us.
Supertradmum, wmeyer, Faith, I’m with you on this one. It’s so tempting to relax vigilance — “See? They agree with us!” when Moslems are perfectly clear, all around the world, that what they want for Catholics is that we convert or die. No temporary “alliance” between predator and prey works to any benefit of the prey.
Of the two groups, I have a greater level of acceptance for the Sikhs, as their sense of honor doesn’t include the compulsion to convert, subjugate or murder those who are outside their group. On the other hand, the roughly 550,000 Sikhs in the USA, honorable as they may be, comprise a rather small population, as allies go.
As Supertradmum points out, the Koran makes slaves of women; it also requires Islam to be the source of a nation’s laws. In truth, no alliance with Islam is possible, as their goals lead inevitably to the destruction of our society, and of the Church.
I know I posted on another entry that I believed a tactical alliance was in order to fight the secularist agendas in the West, however, I don’t think it would be beneficial to ever ally with Mohammedans for the purposes of preserving Christendom! It’s like the tale of the frog and the tarantula!
Sikhs? Well, they’re another ball of wax. I think they can appreciate the trend of western society and government, and the prospect of oppression on religious grounds. I have no fear that Sikhs would turn on anyone of good will. Their religious dictates, of course, instruct them to take up arms against all oppressors, but that can be avoided simply by not shooting at them. No, the Sikhs are not a liability to Christendom, if only because they worship their deity and not their founder (an important step towards truth and away from error), and intend to convert by reason and not by the sword.
Indeed, Christians have a great potential connection to the minds and hearts of Sikhs, I believe, because of their respect for Reason. A fertile soil for evangelization that is largely overlooked.
It is not wrong to take a stand alongside someone who agrees with you without compromising your position.
However, the statements by the Muslims and Sikhs accepting of civil unions for homosexuals, including the Sikhs celebrating it, is a compromise that Catholics cannot make. Though let’s not ignore the fact that Catholic leaders themselves are also skilled in the art of compromising with pleasing words and sidestepping issues.
Let’s make a point straight:
The HOMOSEXUAL machine is not out for compromises or to create any system where you respect their rights and they respect yours. They are out to TOTALLY ANNIHILIATE your rights and make it subservient to theirs.
Therefore I see no problem knowing your enemies motives and combating them in like manner. To totally eradicate their ‘rights’ that are non-existent anyway so I wouldn’t feel too bad about it, and constantly remind them that their persistence in sin is a danger to us through sexual immorality undermining the fabric of society whether it is homo or hetero-sexual and spreading disease.
Also that it is unjust as it deprives rightfully married husbands and wives from resources, forces children to be raised against their rights of having 2 different sexes in a stable marriage, and also ignores the fact that many of those identifying themselves as homosexuals were taken advantage of by predators when they were young. But they do not define that as abuse. As well as the injustice of not seeking to encourage more stable marriages with environmental conditions that won’t raise children towards psychologically disordered desires. And also the injustice of persecuting and preventing attention and care from homosexuals who want to be cured through counseling that specifically addresses the former two injustices as well as other complex things that could lead to homosexuality.
Make no mistake that the homosexual ideology is dangerous in the long term to the welfare of the state and people, it covers up and ignores injustices that must be addressed, and finally and ultimately leads souls to eternal damnation because in rejecting the clear biology designed by God in Creation, they misunderstand creation and thus misunderstand God, or reject the God of creation for a false one, and thus will reject Him for eternity where their soul, conditioned by carnal lusts on Earth, will direct itself towards those same lusts in eternity and therefore away from the one and only God and choosing hell instead because those are the only two options available to them as is their right to choose. This reality leads to the final injustice that will be fostered upon religious people, the silencing of religious people to warn homosexuals of the danger their lifestyle poses for them after death where they will only face misery and sorrow and whose lusts now reaching eternal proportions will not be satiated and will burn within them like torture.
Catholics have a responsibility not only to defy and decry state laws that tolerate or enshrine these things, but also to take steps to instruct and deter homosexuals from falling into such tragedy. It is ultimately for their own good.
Let’s say the UK government is trying to say that having sex in public restaurants with fruit, or chonking fellow restaurant patrons on the head with whole watermelons, injuring or killing them, is exactly the same as eating fruit.
Then let’s say that the pagan fruit-worshipping Temple of the Fruitbat is willing to stand up and say that the right to eat fruit doesn’t include having sex in public restaurants with fruit or attacking people with it, and that it’s not really what fruit is for.
As a Catholic and as a worshipper of Truth Himself, it would only be right that I applaud the Temple of the Fruitbat’s grasp of natural law in this instance, and that I regard them as an ally in this particular fight. That doesn’t mean I have to bow down to the Top Banana, or say prayers to the Lord of the Core, or anything of that nature. I can still deplore their habit of dedicating their girl children as perpetual apple polishers.
Suburbanbanshee, I am defeated… and convulsed with laughter!!
If you ignore the fact the fact that Catholics, Muslims, and Indigenous Religions all believe that there is no separation between the secular and personal, so we can find ourselves often on the same side against the radical secular agenda, there is another factor.
Yes, Christianity has suffered tremendously being a dhimmitude (2nd class citizen) under the Muslims as the current “Arab Spring” has enforced.
However, radical secularists are not our friends either. Stalin, Hitler, and modern China we’re exactly friends of Christianity either. Of the two, the later, IMO, is worse. Not only are Christians 2nd class citizens, but radical secularists have no shame about telling Christians what they believe and how they run their Churches. Even extreme Muslims don’t do that. So in Nazi Germany, Jesus was a non-Divine Arian that was killed by the Jews. In the USSR, Christianity was just one of several equally false religions that were taught in school as precursors to the “truth of Marxism”. In China, the government must be in charge of the Church and any mention of Humanae Vitae or Church lead opposition to any non-government approved activity is dismissed as external interference against “China’s religion”. In the current US administration, the president is telling bishops what they can and can’t believe (though he doesn’t yet have the law on his side).
So under the Muslims, the Church is corroded on the outside, but saints are forged. Under radical secularists, the Church is corroded on the inside, and bit by bit turn the Church into a cultural institution and tourist attractions through a series of compromises.
We should desire neither, but of the two, the later is the greater threat.
As Catholic we can stand with anyone who, as far as they do, stand for natural law.
In this instance, I would suggest we take a close look at what he said – “a union between a man and a woman.”. Notice he did not say a union between ONE man and ONE woman.
Quite honestly, I don’t see an issue here. There’s a line in the sand: “gay marriage” supporters on one side, their opponents on the other. If Muslims and Catholics happen to be on the same side, what of that? Surely we can say “I agree with those on this side of this specific line.” It doesn’t mean we’re in cahoots or anything, and if it looks that way to some people, well, what of it? To deny we agree on this is a lie, no?
I sat next to a Muslim way back in my high school American Government class, and I have to say that I was glad of the seating situation whenever the issue of homosexuality came up. She told me she opposed homosexuality on religious grounds and I said I did, too. Perhaps we’re all much more mature now, but at the time it was very encouraging to know that I had someone else’s support when everyone else would dismiss our position as homophobic.
I have a feeling that if we don’t all hang together on this one, we will hang separately … My first thought was that these two gentlemen would make fabulous Catholics….
It could go either way, depending on circumstances I do not know.
Certainly we can forge temporary alliances with those of other religions for limited and specific purposes. If these people are truly helpful in defending marriage, this would be a good example. However:
(a) This should not be something that becomes permanent and takes on a life of its own, like NATO, which still clings to life after the Soviet Union is long gone. Peter Kreeft’s idea of an “ecumenical jihad” is disastrously bad.
(b) It’s also possible that “with friends like these, who needs enemies?” The KKK probably does not favor “gay marriage”, but it would be a remarkably bad idea for Catholics to form even temporary alliances with them. It would do nothing to reverse the momentum of the gay agenda; it would only further erode any chance of the Church being taken seriously.
a) Practically speaking, Catholics can yell all they want and that’s good. BUT remember, it’s standing up for what’s right among the people you know that counts. Very uncomfortable, and some would say polarizing according to the prevailing model of holiness, although not older models. And absolutely necessary.
b) In this new period when we have material & ideological threats looming, we’d better get used to the idea that we need to initiate & employ practical ways to protect ourselves from having to engage in some very evil things that can’t be far away. If this means new methods for screening people to assure they’re really practicing the faith before sacraments and so on, then so be it. Postmoderns are not used to such things, but the Church has done this sort of thing before, in periods of uncertainty and persecution. Look back in history; you’ll see.
c) If we are to make common cause with other religious groups, then we’d better not go into it with the pliant & flowery ignorance and gullibility with which we usually approach such things. It’s about time that Catholics realize once again that holiness can be found in ability, bravery and common sense. In fact, we have many saints with these properties, although we usually fail to recognize this fact, preferring another model more in line with 19th century Victorian-style devotion. Wake up, we’re past that and into something new.
ContraMundum,
Correct. Temporary alliances are okay, as long as we:
a) watch appearances.
b) keep eyes open, and communicate well.
c) don’t fall into our usual sucker mode, which is just lazy and idealistic.
d) most importantly, do NOT do anything sinful for the sake of expediency.
Are these things really feasible for us to believe we can do? That’s really the question.
BTW, I don’t mean anything really onerous or contrived, historically speaking, when I speak of “practical ways to protect ourselves from having to engage in some very evil things.” I mean by this programs of real discernment and prayer, with extended periods of growth required and assessed by superiors and others along the way. Before a person receives the sacraments, they should be a part of the community where they are, and the priest should be talking to them, assessing their intentions, etc. This is a very old expectation that we’ve lost in the Church. If we don’t have enough clergy to accomplish this, then we’d better be looking for people who can serve as their helpers in a real, spiritual, practical and not superficial sense.
Before someone comes into the Church, for instance, forget the numbers and hype, we’d ought to know for sure that they’ve converted and that they are engaged in living the Christian life for real. This means reading the bible and discussing teachings, talking to other Christians earnestly [on weekdays!] and making appointments which they keep over a period of time. Preparation for sacraments such as marriage should involve some real spiritual and public work before the consent is given for the actual event. [Example: We so often get into a mode where we will marry anyone to prevent them from going to the Justice of the Peace, invalidating what they do. This is wrong. If they are willing to go to a Justice of the Peace in any event, are they really Christians?]
We need to turn down the people who won’t or don’t really accept the faith, or who come in wanting everything on their own terms or immediately. That’s not in line with Christian practice and it never has been. Trust me, when they see what they can have, if the conversion is real, they will be back on our terms. We need to believe in the message of the Gospel ourselves enough to trust in it!
The up-side of this is that when people prepare for things in the spiritual life, they know that they are supported and personally known, virtues warts & all. They will have a real spiritual life and some Christian companionship.
The problem with all of this, of course, is attitude and corruption. We have so much nonsense that’s gone on for so long. We are so soft.
Temporary alliances can be useful and acceptable for truly common purposes. At the UN Conference on Women in Cairo in 1995, the Holy See built alliances with Muslim countries to defeat proposals that would have made abortion a universal right.
I notice that the Muslim spokesman said merely that same-sex marriage is not in the Islamic tradition and the Sikh professed complete respect for lesbians and homosexual couples, just don’t call it marriage. Neither made the kind of natural law argument against same-sex couples and in favor of marriage and children that is the heart of the Catholic Church’s position. I would add the Orthodox Christian position, as well, and some Protestant and Orthodox Jewish groups.
We are in very deep water over here in the UK with this issue. Unlike the US, our legislation can be put through Parliament very quickly and with not much publicity and then it is binding for the whole country, not state by state. The anti-marriage/family people are very influential, organised and financially strong. The Catholic Church needs to stand with all those who are willing to support marriage as a lifelong commitment between one man and one woman. In fact, the first rebuttal of this horrible proposal came from the Coalition for Marriage which was set up by an evangelical Christian group called The Christian Institute. Several groups allied themselves to this coalition from the start but it took a while before the Catholic Church spoke up and associated itself with this great initiative.
The Coalition started a petition which gained 200,000 signatures in a week, which is unheard of here.
I am sorry to hear the negative comments about other religions. I am glad that those of other faiths are speaking out to defend Natural Law and I am sure that we can and should stand together to fight for truth. No-one is suggesting an Alliance, either Holy or of any other kind. I am afraid that in the time it is taking for people to air their complicated views about why they cannot stand up in public with non-Catholics to defend marriage and the family, it will be too late!!
Please pray for us. I keep praying for this issue and the Obamacare debacle together as they are both attacks on Holy Mother Church.