Dear John:

The central core of the difference between Protestants and Catholics is the subject of the fact that Jesus created only One True Church. It sounds like your bishop was not ramming this down the throats of the Protestants if the title of the meeting is "Is the CHRISTIAN Faith the One, True Faith?

This is an excellent approach and I applaud the Bishop for this technique -- This is a technique whereby we begin with something that we can all agree with -- the Christian faith is the one true faith. Brilliant. Once that beachhead is established with Protestants, we can then slowly move off the beach and into the fields of the fuller truth that the CATHOLIC Church is the One True Church of the One True Faith in the fullness of the faith. This is a brilliant move on the part of your bishop. Kudos to him.

As for the field trip to a mosque, I am sure the bishop's intent is at least two-fold:

1) To encourage fellowship and familiarity. It is much harder to hate or to be fearful of people when you get to know them. This field trip will show that not all Muslims have a pitchforks and tails or bombs strapped to their waists.

2) The whole purpose of Ecumenism is to fulfill the mandate of Christ to preach the Gospel to ALL people of the world. That means we need to go to Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, and even pagan peoples to bring that message of Christ.

People generally do not respond if we hit them over the head with a Bible. It is with dialogue that true evangelism takes place and can be successful.

As for "joining in," I don't know what is meant by that, if that is the phrase the Bishop actually used. Technically, we cannot truly "join in" with the Muslim rituals as we are not Muslim. But, would we not invited a Muslim to attend Mass? If the join us in Mass, the Muslim is  "joining in" with us, though not actually "joining us" as they cannot receive communion. Through this mutual respect we can open doors.

True Ecumenism always looks with an eye to apologetics toward our separated brethren in hopes they will join us in the fullness of the Faith that is the Catholic Church. To non-Christians, ecumenism always looks with an eye to evangelism in hope that our brethren in other Faiths will come to see Jesus Christ as the true Messiah of all men and that they will convert with a saving faith and come into baptism into the Catholic Church.

As for the God of Islam, they do worship the God of Abraham. This is the same God we worship. The problem with Islam is that they interpret the faith of Abraham incorrectly. This is not surprising since their spiritual lineage is from Abraham through Ishmael (a blood line rejected and not blessed by God). Our spiritual lineage is from Abraham through Isaac and Jacob through which God gave His first direct revelation of himself to the Jews through the prophets and then through Moses leading to the ultimate Revelation of Jesus Christ. It is the line of Isaac from which the True Faith is revealed.

The problem is not that they have a different God, per se. The problem is that their interpretation of God is highly flawed -- even to the point of being evil in its practice in some cases.

Muhammad's motivation was to unite the warring Arab Bedouins. He did this by taking bits and pieces of the Jewish Faith and bits and pieces of the Catholic Faith to create a new, but false, Religion. Make no mistake, Muhammad is a false prophet and Islam is fundamentally a violent and imperialistic religion seeking world domination politically and well as spiritually. That is their fundamental worldview.

While many individual Muslims are fine people, the core of the worldview of Islam is actually evil. What people are calling "radical fundamentalist" are actually acting in full consistency of the overall Islamic worldview.

The word "radical" means to "grow from the root". "Fundamentalist" means to return to the fundamentals of the faith (vis-á-vis, oppose liberalism and return to the "roots" of one's faith.)

When we understand those words properly, then every Catholic ought to be a "radical fundamentalist" and they are shameful if they are not. I am not talking about Catholics becoming ultra-traditionalists. Ultra-Traditionalists are neither radical nor fundamental. They are actually liberals (just the other side of the coin of those whom we typically call liberals) who think they know more than the Church. The very first tradition is obedience. Ultra-Traditionalists are not obedient to Peter, but have their own perverted views of the way things should be (and some are insane, and I mean that, in thinking that we have not had a Pope since 1958). No, these people are not loyal to the Catholic Faith or to the Catholic worldview.

The Muslim radical fundamentalists, from their point-of-view, are trying to return to the roots of their faith. Since the roots of the Muslim faith is violence and conversion by the sword, and what could be called a "spiritual cleansing" of infidels, they are actually very consistent with the overall worldview created by the false prophet Mohammad. The problem is that overall worldview is false and even evil. And that is the source of the problem.

Now, regardless of this, we do need to reach out to Muslims who allow us, to dialogue with them, to join them in events whenever it does not violate our faith, in hopes that by such dialogue they will some day convert to the True Faith. This is what our Lord mandates that we do. Of course, one ought not try this in a Muslim country since death is the penalty for trying to convert a Muslim to Christianity.

As for the statement in the Catechism, it is technically correct, and takes a very charitable position as it should. In as much as Muslims "hold the faith of Abraham, and together with us they adore the one, merciful God" we can "hold hands" with them, as it were, as we can with the other groups who look to Abraham, such as the Jews. But at least the Jews are a genuine faith created by God, only a faith fallen by the way due to their rejection of the Messiah. Islam, on the other hand, false from the beginning, invented by a false prophet.

The bottomline is that the spiritual lineage of Islam does indeed go to the God of Abraham, it is just that Islam has so distorted the faith of Abraham, probably because they come from the condemned line of Ishmael and have a religion based on a false prophet, that their perception of God is so distorted that the God of Abraham is no longer recognizable.

God can and does bless individuals no matter what faith they might come from. Islam itself, however, is not blessed by God. God does not bless or approve of false prophets; actually he condemns them. But, God will work with what He can get. If there is a glimmer in Islam that connects with Abraham, God will exploit that little glimmer to try to bring them to the True Faith (which ain't Islam).

We need to pray for them. But, we also need to tell the truth about Islam as well. We need to have open arms for individual Muslims who are willing to dialogue peacefully with us, but we cannot lose sight of what Islam actually is. This is also true to other false religions, such as the Mormons, Jehovah Witness, and One Pentecostalism (none of which are actually Christian). But, those groups generally do not have an worldview that includes the possibility of killing us for our criticism of them.

I am in the process of writing an essay that will reveal the true nature of Islam. That essay could get me assassinated I suppose. If it does, then so be it as I will never back off from the Truth.

God Bless,
Bro. Ignatius Mary