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Catholic Muslims
—What Next?
by Christopher A. Ferrara
 The Fatima
revisionists, with all their talk about the “conversion” of Russia,
are overlooking something rather fundamental: America hasn’t converted
either. In fact, America today—the home of partial-birth abortion—can
be seen as perhaps the most fabulously successful example of the spread of
Russia’s errors throughout the world. The “American way”, which
can be summed up in that fatal modern dictum that everyone is entitled to his
own opinion, has managed to make evil look attractive. Even the Catholic
hierarchy in America feels obliged to offer a pinch of incense at the altar of
American pluralism. Thus, the late Cardinal O’Connor could say in all
seriousness that while he objected to homosexuals desecrating Saint
Patrick’s Cathedral, he would defend to the death their right to conduct
the unspeakably obscene annual “Gay Pride” Parade. And his successor,
Cardinal Egan, was seen sitting next to that champion of partial-birth
abortion, Al Gore, at the last Al Smith Dinner—to which Gore had been
invited by none other than Egan.
With even
Catholic clerics yielding to the pluralist Zeitgeist it is no wonder we
see in America a new wrinkle on the whole question of conversion. This writer
has pointed out the rapid rise of Islam in Russia, but now we find that Islam
is making substantial inroads among American Catholics of Spanish
extraction. According to the Washington Post of January 7, 2001 “in
growing numbers, Hispanics, the country's fastest-growing ethnic group, are
finding new faith in Islam, the nation's fastest-growing religion. Moved by
what many say is a close-knit religious environment and a faith that provides a
more concrete, intimate connection with God, they are replacing Mass with
mosques.”
According to one
Spanish Catholic convert to Islam, “Islam has given me a sense of
religious community and well-being that I was starting to miss in my life ...
It's helped give me a sense of completion.” The Washington Times
notes that “The Muslim population in the United States is estimated at
more than 4 million, nearly six times the number in 1970 ...”
What is to
account for this phenomenon? For one thing, the religion of Islam offers
definite answers to moral questions, a clear, uncompromising creed, and a
disciplined way of life that creates an oasis of order in America’s
chaotic moral desert—rather like Catholicism used to do in this country,
back in the days when no one ate meat on Fridays and the League of Decency
could make or break a motion picture. Of course, Islam is a religion of heresy,
and any Catholic who abandons the Church to join this false religion is facing
the prospect of eternal damnation. But try telling that to an ex-Catholic from
el barrio who wasn’t being “fed” by Father
Feel-good—who isn’t about to warn his lost sheep about hell in any
event.
One Muslim convert, Becky Diaz, who now goes by the name Abu Ghannam, said that
her mother “a lifelong Catholic, converted several months ago after seeing
her daughter's spiritual path.” The Washington Times piece notes
that “These concerns about Catholicism mirror a trend that many officials
in U.S. dioceses have tracked for years: the defection of Hispanics. The
Catholic Almanac estimates that 100,000 Hispanics in the United States
leave the Church each year, although some other experts put the number as high
as 600,000. Most have moved to Pentecostal and evangelical Protestant faiths as
well as Mormonism, Islam and Buddhism.”
More of those
“fruits of Vatican II.” And so, as Islam rises in Russia, America and
indeed everywhere, we shake our heads in wonderment as the “Fatima is
finished” gang extols all the wonderful changes in the world since the
“consecration of 1984.” Meanwhile, thousands of Americans who were
once Catholics are now bowing to Mecca and praying to their new God
Allah who explicitly denies Jesus Christ is God. Is this the
triumph of the Immaculate Heart that Our Lady of Fatima came to herald? That
question answers itself.
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