Fighting Evil With Evil?

 

 

And it came to pass that the “bidding prayers” (if they are called that way) at the friendly NO parish near you contained a sort of appeal for people who follow the religions of Abraham to fight “evil” together. Now, “evil” certainly meant here the things all those religions (the true one and the false ones) oppose: abortion, perversion, euthanasia, and the like. It is also undoubtedly true that in Countries like the UK certain things can only be achieved if Christians and Infidels fight together (the famous example is a definition of “hate publication” that would have included the Bible and the Koran, a definition then expunged from the legislative text).

However, I cannot avoid alarm bells starting to ring whenever I hear anyone, the more so a priest, in any way engendering this idea that Islam and Judaism are somewhat good in themselves, at least by association with the goodness of Christianity. Whatever goodness there is in these false religion is Christ’s Goodness, not their own. Islam and Judaism are, in and of themselves, worth exactly nothing. Worse still: they deny Christ and are, therefore, objectively evil. And of the two, Islam is by far the worse one; then it came after Christ, and it is nothing but a grotesque, sensual, violent parody of the truth.  

Al Capone might have had some good feelings in himself. I am pretty sure he loved his mother, his wife and children, and probably even his dog. But you wouldn’t hear in church an appeal to fight together with a modern-day Al Capone for, say, the establishment of the new village park or children’s recreation zone.  Why? Because this modern-day Al Capone is evil even when he happens to do something good, that’s why.

We live in very confused times. The laymen who have “composed” the bidding prayer suffer of this common disease, good-ism; the priest who should keep them in check – and most certainly knows better – is too weak to speak out.

It is out of this huge sea of dung that Amoris Laetitia can grow and try to prosper.

M