Roman Catholic Cardinal Theodore McCarrick embraces Islam

Daily Caller has the story:

(h/t: Pat Dollard

Catholic Cardinal Theodore McCarrick offered Islamic religious phrases and insisted that Islam shares foundational rules with Christianity, during a Sept. 10 press conference in D.C.

“In the name of God, the Merciful and Compassionate,” McCarrick said as he introduced himself to the audience at a meeting arranged by the Muslim Public Affairs Council. That praise of the Islamic deity is an important phrase in Islam, is found more than 100 times in the Koran, and is akin to the Catholic prayer, ”In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”

McCarrick next claimed that “Catholic social teaching is based on the dignity of the human person… [and] as you study the holy Koran, as you study Islam, basically, this is what Muhammad the prophet, peace be upon him, has been teaching.”

McCarrick was 71 when 19 Muslims brought Islam to the public eye by murdering 3,000 Americans on 9/11. He is one of the 213 Cardinals of the Catholic church, but is too old to vote in church debates.

“Either the cardinal has studied the whole thing and does not know what he’s talking about, or he is making a somewhat misleading statement,” said Michael Meunier, head of the U.S. Copts Association. “The practice of the Muslim majority people that adhere to the Koran… have proven that [claim of equivalence] is not correct,” he told The Daily Caller during a Sept. 11 trip to Jordan.

“Has Cardinal McCarrick converted to Islam?” asked a scornful critic, Robert Spencer, the best-selling author of many books on Islam.

“‘Peace be upon him’ is a phrase Muslims utter after they say the name of [their reputed] prophet… [so] probably he is unaware of the unintended Islamic confession of faith he has just made,”said Spencer, who runs the Jihadwatch.org website.

McCarrick is wrong to say “that Islam teaches the dignity of every human person,“ Spencer said. “Actually it teaches a sharp dichotomy between the Muslims, [who are called] ‘the best of people’ and the unbelievers [are called] ‘the most vile of created beings,’” Spencer told TheDC.

Much more here.

Blog admin 1389AD commented thus:

I’m an Orthodox Christian. Because of the decentralized, consensus-based way in which our Church is structured, it is literally IMPOSSIBLE for a bishop or anyone else to change our doctrine from what it was in the days of the Apostles. We can attend services in any part of the world, in any century, and, other than the fact that the services are offered in different languages, we know we’ll always get the very same thing. Anybody attempting to recognize Muhammad as a prophet would be anathematized and drummed out as a heretic, forthwith.

No, we don’t burn heretics…but we do firmly label them as such so that nobody will confuse the heterodox with the Orthodox.