As a Catholic, I'm very much in favor of ecumenism, including greater cooperation and improved uderstanding between Christians, Jews, and Muslims. However, when it comes Bishops opening their churches to illegal immigrants in order to pressure the Belgian authorities to allow the immigrants to stay in the country, altering the inside of a Catholic church, and especially moving the altar and covering the statue of Our Lady to hide her from the eyes of the Muslim believers, we have left the realm of Christian charity and reached into the bottomless and dangerous well of voluntary dhimmitude.
While Western Europe is turning Muslim, its Christian Churches are committing suicide. A Muslim would never allow his mosque to be turned into a dormitory for non-believers. This, however, is exactly what the Belgian Catholic Church is doing. The Belgian Bishops have already opened up 20 churches and chapels to illegal immigrants - so-called "sans-papiers" or "people without papers [=staying permits]" - who by Belgian law have to be expelled.
The illegal immigrants have been told that they are safe in the churches because the authorities will refrain from entering the buildings out of respect for the Catholic Church. It is strange that the Church should insinuate that there is some type of persecution considering that the Belgian authorities never organised searches for illegal immigrants, and hardly ever expel even criminals. The number of people camping in churches so far varies from 100 to 700. More than 160 immigrants in the churches have also gone on hunger strike. The church authorities say they are offering "church asylum" to the "sans-papiers."I happen to volunteer almost all of my spare time to Catholic Charities and particularly, The Society of St. Vincent de Paul - where I am very much accustomed to working with and helping people of all faiths. As a matter of fact, 95% of the people we help are NOT Catholic, and fall in a range of folks from the Protestant, Jewish, or Muslim faith, with many others who will proclaim to be whatever you want them to say, just to get help. In other words, I'm a very big believer in Mother Teresa's doctrine, described in her statement that:The Belgian Bishops are so ignorant that they do not see what is going on: their churches are being turned into mosques before their very eyes.
The Muslim squatters hold Islamic prayer services in the church. The altar has been moved and the statue of Our Lady covered by a cloth to hide her from the eyes of the Muslim believers.
"There is only one God and He is God to all; therefore it is important that everyone is seen as equal before God. I've always said we should help a Hindu become a better Hindu, a Muslim become a better Muslim, a Catholic become a better Catholic. We believe our work should be our example to people. We have among us 475 souls - 30 families are Catholics and the rest are all Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs--all different religions. But they all come to our prayers."Note here that the percentage of non-Catholics helped by SSVDP in our area is the same percentage helped by Mother Teresa of Calcutta, a condition that one will find holds true throughout much of the world, and which substantiates my claim here that helping people in need is paramount in the mindset of the Catholic church.
Companion post at Freedom's Zone
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