The True Islam – The Catholic Thing

[Note: In a column written in 2016, Father Schall’s thoughts resonate well with recent events.] Lumen Gentium, the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church of Vatican II, states that the Mohammedans “profess their faith as the faith of Abraham, and with us they worship the one, merciful God who will judge men on the last day” (par 16). But when we examine what each tradition means by unity, worship, judgment, and mercy, we hesitate to affirm that they mean the same things by the same words. And the assumed agreement that God is one provides little basis for further agreement about what flows from it. Islam confronts religion and politics as we know them with questions of the true and the false, with questions of life and death. Seemingly both fascinated and paralyzed, we watch Christians and others killed or beheaded before our very eyes most brutally.