A priest, Allah and a bad joke
From an original German text of the ever-wonderful kreuz.net (who use a photo from my story, Muslim group transforms chapel.)
During a celebration in an Innsbruck school, a priest insulted Islam last December. There is a local newspaper in Innsbruck called Tirolean Week, by some better known under the name, TIP. There is a regular unsigned column, the editor of which identifies himself as “Town Falcon”. In Edition 50, dated 15 December 2006, this “Town Falcon” reports on a school celebration at an Innsbruck Primary School in which the local priest also took part.
The priest started to put on his stole, during a rather moderately funny joke and then he told his primary school children that “God and Allah are the same”. He then made several comparisons, several times between God and Allah. The “Town Falcon” who cannot stand pseudo-jolly people, began to have a few thoughts of his own, in the process of which he recognised why people don’t like the Catholic Church anymore. There are, for instance, people who no longer find it funny when liturgical clothes are put on, and when a priest explains to small children, without further background that the Trinitarian God of the Christians, one person of whom became man, was identical with the God of the Muslims, then this statement was surely an insult to Islam – and not the content of the teaching of the Magisterium.
It is self-evident that the priest’s statements have gone without punishment. The”Town Falcon” also explained that the pupils have been betrayed in their seach for Truth and the souls of these children have been substantially damaged.
A priest that acts in this way takes the risk that the Mass that is the highest object of humanity becomes ridiculed in the eyes of young Christians. If the City of Vienna were to trust such bishops and priests in the year 1683 with the Turkish Siege, there today be no Cathedral of St Stephen.
It is therefore not surprising that many people leave the Church or do not want to have anything to do with it.
They have after all too little humour left to be part of a happy, fun Church.
The tragedy is that these school children will probably never learn what the difference between the Christian Trinity and the god of the Muslims is. How should a constructive dialogue between Islam and Christianity take place in this manner? Because, if one wants to talk, one has to first recognize what one stands for.
Cathcon comment
No surprises in the modern world, the Bishop of Aachen declared in 2003, "God is not Catholic".
During a celebration in an Innsbruck school, a priest insulted Islam last December. There is a local newspaper in Innsbruck called Tirolean Week, by some better known under the name, TIP. There is a regular unsigned column, the editor of which identifies himself as “Town Falcon”. In Edition 50, dated 15 December 2006, this “Town Falcon” reports on a school celebration at an Innsbruck Primary School in which the local priest also took part.
The priest started to put on his stole, during a rather moderately funny joke and then he told his primary school children that “God and Allah are the same”. He then made several comparisons, several times between God and Allah. The “Town Falcon” who cannot stand pseudo-jolly people, began to have a few thoughts of his own, in the process of which he recognised why people don’t like the Catholic Church anymore. There are, for instance, people who no longer find it funny when liturgical clothes are put on, and when a priest explains to small children, without further background that the Trinitarian God of the Christians, one person of whom became man, was identical with the God of the Muslims, then this statement was surely an insult to Islam – and not the content of the teaching of the Magisterium.
It is self-evident that the priest’s statements have gone without punishment. The”Town Falcon” also explained that the pupils have been betrayed in their seach for Truth and the souls of these children have been substantially damaged.
A priest that acts in this way takes the risk that the Mass that is the highest object of humanity becomes ridiculed in the eyes of young Christians. If the City of Vienna were to trust such bishops and priests in the year 1683 with the Turkish Siege, there today be no Cathedral of St Stephen.
It is therefore not surprising that many people leave the Church or do not want to have anything to do with it.
They have after all too little humour left to be part of a happy, fun Church.
The tragedy is that these school children will probably never learn what the difference between the Christian Trinity and the god of the Muslims is. How should a constructive dialogue between Islam and Christianity take place in this manner? Because, if one wants to talk, one has to first recognize what one stands for.
Cathcon comment
No surprises in the modern world, the Bishop of Aachen declared in 2003, "God is not Catholic".
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