An American Catholic Cardinal has finally lent voice to an obvious truth that has eluded our virulently-politically correct society: Christianity and Islam do not worship the same God.
“I hear people saying to me, well, we’re all worshipping the same God, we all believe in love,” Cardinal Leo Raymond Burke, an archbishop who once served at the highest court at the Vatican, said at a teleconference introducing his new book on Christian theology.
Making a clear distinction between the two most popular monotheistic faiths, Burke argued that Islam’s God “is a governor.” In contrast, Christianity’s God is “giver of revelation,” Burke explained, saying that for Catholics, God’s law is written “on our hearts” and “we’re given a divine grace to live according to that law.”
“I don’t believe it’s true that we’re all worshipping the same God, because the God of Islam is a governor,” he elaborated. “In other words, fundamentally Islam is, Sharia is their law, and that law, which comes from Allah, must dominate every man eventually.”
According to Burke, Islam is a public faith that cannot be separated from earthly political concerns. That isn’t the case with Christianity.
“But the Church makes no pretense that it’s to govern the world,” noted Burke. “But rather that it’s to inspire and assist those who govern the world to act justly and rightly toward the citizens.”
Warning parishioners about the dangers of cultural relativism, Burke stated that Christians have to proactively assert the truth about their faith without giving credence to politically correct distortions.
In the past, we “had to fight to save Christianity … [b]ecause they saw that Islam was attacking sacred truths, including the sacred places of our redemption,” Burke said, adding:
We have to have a profound respect for right reason, for the natural law which God has written in every human heart. I think most people don’t realize that there is no natural law doctrine in Islam and neither is there an ocean of conscience — everything is dictates of the laws that are given by either in their sacred text or by those who are entrusted with interpreting the law.
As CNS News notes, Burke isn’t just any old cleric; he’s an expert in theology with extensive knowledge about the history of Christianity:
Cardinal Raymond Burke, 68, is the former bishop of LaCrosse, Wisc., and former archbishop of St. Louis, Mo. Between 2008 and 2014, he was the Prefect of the Apostolic Signatura, the head of the highest court at the Vatican. He is an expert on Canon law, the law that governs the Catholic Church and its teachings. He also is a member of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Causes of the Saints.