A Blog for Dallas Area Catholics

Priest Martyred by ISIS Gave Land for Mosque August 1, 2016

While avoiding speaking ill of the dead, especially those martyred, I am overwhelmed with a sense of irony, and a sense that the Lord does indeed work in mysterious ways.

Father Jacques Hamel, murdered by crazed islamists (is there any other kind, I ask only somewhat in jest?), ostensibly in retribution for something that happened nearly 1,000 years ago (the Crusades – muslims will never, ever forget the time Christians came in and forcibly pried loose a small part of formerly Christian lands from the islamic death grip – that is such a grave offense to their sense of the “ummah,” and that what “allah” has granted to islam, shall always be a part of it), had donated some land so that a mosque (another one) could be built near his parish.  This can certainly be filed under no good deed shall go unpunished, but I wonder if there isn’t a more important message being conveyed by Him Who is infinitely Just. Not that God would be the author of evil, but………..I’m sure you can discern what I am driving at.

While trying to maintain charity for this poor departed soul, who desperately needs prayers, as do all un-canonized souls, I will say that Father Hamel certainly appears to be a man of his generation, the generation that found Vatican II and the “new pentecost” so intoxicating:

Father Jacques Hamel, the 86-year-old assistant priest at the church in St Etienne-du-Rouvray, near Normandy, met his Creator last Tuesday when two Muslim men armed with knives slit his throat while chanting the Islamic takbir. The killers claimed they were sacrificing blood to avenge the 11th century Crusades. It turns out that Fr Hamel was actually a dear friend to Islam. According to his fellow members of clergy, Fr Hamel helped put aside a plot of land near the church, where he would ultimately be murdered by Islamic jihadists, for the purposes of building a mosque to serve the Muslim community in the area.

“Church authorities facilitated the giving of land beside his church to local Muslims to build a mosque, and they were given use of the parish hall and other facilities during Ramadan,” stated Father Mark Ephrem Nolan, Prior of the Benedictine Monastery of the Holy Cross. [Was this true charity, with the eternal end of souls always in mind, or was this more worldly sentiment?]

Despite the ongoing wave of Islamic terrorism, Christians in the Rouen community where Fr Hamel was killed have made an earnest effort to welcome Muslims with open arms and open hearts.

“Efforts have been made by the Christian community to be welcoming to Muslims,” saidFr Nolan. “The Sisters even give reading lessons to Muslim kids in tower blocks.”

Both parishioners and clergy alike all attest to the fact that Fr Hamel was a humble man who put his life’s work in building personal relationships. “He led a pure, simple life, with an emphasis on building friendships,” added Fr Nolan. [Did he also instill a powerful sense the Doctrine of the Faith, especially the extreme dubiousness of salvation outside formal communion with the Church?]

…….. In the final pastoral letter to his parish before his unexpected death, Fr Hamel reminded the Christian congregation to “accept each other as they are,” without judgment or ridicule. [Even souls bound for hell?  Is that how Saint John Vianney preached, or practically any other Saint one might care to name?]

And still, Islamic terrorists took his life in a fit of hatred and rage.

Well, of course they did.  Expecting otherwise requires willful ignorance, or obstinance, in the face of 1400 years of unequivocal testimony to the nature of islam.  Only a West totally denuded of Faith, aside from a few souls here or there, and so blinded by a false and damnable ideology of “religious tolerance” (a tolerance originally dreamed up to drive the Church from the public square, and assert a permanent ascendancy of the secular state over Her), could think otherwise.

And yet, even in the face of this diabolical act of evil, even as muslims throughout the West throw down the gauntlet of challenge, openly advocating that they will force Europe, and, if possible, the entire West, to submit to their false, demonic cult of violence and cruel repression, Church leaders in France and in the Vatican STILL refuse to see the truth in front of their face. The secular leaders of the West are, if anything, even more blind.  Of course, for partisans of sexular paganism, which is pretty much all elites everywhere, their true enemy has always been orthodox, believing Catholicism.  They are quite happy to submit to the man-made religion of islam if it means seeing their archenemy vanquished.

I fear – or perhaps I should say, the evidence strongly indicates – that applies equally if they wear a red- or pink-piped cassock, or a Saville Row suit.

Lord, have mercy on Your Church. We are in desperate need of it.