by Gavin Ashenden, New English Catholic
A papal mistake betrays Islamic converts and Christian martyrs.
The Pope’s actual job
The Pope’s actual job — the irreplaceable, specific, urgent job for which he was selected — is to proclaim the uniqueness of Christ and to guard the faith.
The incarnation, the resurrection, the insistence that God entered history at a fixed point in human form.
This singularity is the hinge on which all human existence turns.
Either it is the most consequential fact in the history of the world, or it is nothing.
The Holy Father has spoken again about Islam from the papal plane, expressing a sincere hope that Christians and Muslims can live together in friendship and peace.
We should all share that hope.
However, hope is not the same thing as truth.
When the Pope presents Lebanon as a shining example of Christian-Muslim harmony, and suggests that the two faiths can easily become friends, he is speaking from an idealism that simply does not match reality — neither the reality on the ground in Lebanon, nor the clear teaching of the Quran itself.
The Quran is not ambiguous on this subject.
if you want to know why faithful Muslims will not respond to the papal under-informed optimism we need to turn to their authoritative text.