As 18 doves flew into the skies over the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament Saturday night, more than 100 diverse Sacramentans blessed copies of the Quran with roses of love.
Again and again they uttered the refrain, “Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me” at the entrance to the downtown church framed by white statues of Jesus, Mary and Joseph. A musician with a white guitar accompanied them.
Representatives of Jewish, Catholic, Protestant, B’hai, Mormon, Sikh, Vedic Druid and Muslim beliefs read scriptures from the great religious texts – including six verses from the Quran calling for all faiths to live in harmony.
Irfan Haq, speaking on behalf of Sacramento’s Muslims, told the rose bearing crowd outside the cathedral, “On this day September 11 – this day of infamy and darkness – what we are witnessing is a new beginning for Sacramento, for America – this is the America the world needs to see.” [Source]
This is just as dumb if not dumber than burning Korans. You show religious tolerance by respecting those with other beliefs and supporting religious freedom. You show religious Indifferentism by blessing or holding sacred what you don’t believe to be either. You respect the beliefs of others because of their human dignity not necessarily because of the beliefs themselves. I am not any way offended if a non-Christian does not consider the scripture to be sacred or holy. In fact I would be more offended if they do so against their own belief.
It is especially dumb that Catholics were involved in this travesty. The Koran is the invention of either a liar, mad man, or someone demonically deceived. Islam is simply a Christian heresy that arose from the heresies of the time of Mohammad in his region and cobbled together other ideas You don’t bless heresies. You can call what is good and true in the Koran to be good and true and being a Christian heresy there are certainly those aspects in the Koran. But as a whole this book teaches error that leads people astray. Blessing a book that says that Mohammed is the last prophet and that he received his message from Archangel Gabriel is to bless lies. Catholics blessing a book that says Jesus is not divine and denies the Trinity is a rather odd target for a blessing.
I can only hope the Archdiocese did not give permission for this.
9 comments
im pretty sure any parish in that diocese has blanket permission for any herresy
There’s *always* some Catholic involved in this kind of stuff. -.-
Very well stated.
Just curious about the ceremony itself, how do roses confer blessings on books held sacred? The instrument of blessing has to have a deep symbolism for it to be effective, right? So the near universal symbolism of the rose for love qualifies it to be used as such an instrument.
Jeff, I assume you’ve read Hilaire Belloc’s The Great Heresies? I just downloaded the multi-part text format from EWTN and converted it into a PDF.
I don’t know, anthony, Bishop Soto doesn’t strike me as a relativist, and he’s been in charge since late in 2008.
http://www.catholic.org/national/national_story.php?id=29699
Well, the Pope kissed the Koran so it can’t be all bad, can it? http://www.jimmyakin.org/2006/04/jp2_and_the_qur.html
Have you seen Jimmy Akin’s article on this incident with what might have been the Koran? http://www.jimmyakin.org/2006/04/jp2_and_the_qur.html
This is part of the plan to “meld” various religions into the “one” true religion. Mix them all up and you get this gray mess that you can’t distinguish as Christian or Muslim, but man is at the center not Christ. Shame on those CINO’s for participating in this heresy.
All these Sacramentans should be excommunicated. If Bishop Soto knew about this and permitted it, the Pope should excommunicate him. Frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised if Soto did go along with it. After all, he was an auxiliary bishop under the corrupt Tod Brown here in the Orange, California diocese.
Then again, the Pope didn’t publicly correct the president of the German bishops’ conference, who stated on German television that Jesus did not receive God’s full anger for sin.
For the life of me, I can’t understand why Catholics (especially prelates) have more of an affinity with Muslims than with Eastern Orthodox or Protestants.