Catholic Online: Italy’s Famous Catholic Convert From Islam Leaves the Catholic Church
CORPUS CHRISTI, TX (Catholic Online) – Five years ago, in a highly-publicized event, Magdi Cristiano Allam, an Egyptian-born Muslim, naturalized Italian citizen, former contributor to Manifesto and Repubblica, and vice-director of the Corriere della Sera, left Islam and converted to Catholicism. The event received significant press coverage because this notable convert was baptized by then-Pope Benedict XVI at St. Peter’s Basilica during the Easter Vigil on March 22, 2008.
Allam was instructed in the Catholic doctrine by Archbishop Rino Fisichella, head of the Pontifical Council for the New Evangelization, and was sponsored by Maurizio Lupi, a high-ranking member of the Forza Italia party, a political party that was founded by Silvio Berlusconi, the former prime minister. You’d have thought with that behind him, the Faith would have stuck.
Unfortunately, after five years as a Catholic, Allam has announced in a very public way that he has left the Catholic Church. “I believe in Jesus . . . . but I no longer believe in the Church,” he wrote in an editorial in the Italian daily Il Giornale.
“My conversion to Catholicism, which came at the hands of Benedict XVI during the Easter Vigil on March 22, 2008,” Allam explains in the Monday-edition of the right-wing Milan daily newspaper Il Giornale, “I now consider over, in line with the end of his pontificate.”
While he describes his decision as “extremely painful,” he attributes the decision to a variety of factors, all of which he addresses in his editorial.
A number of things apparently triggered Allam’s decision. The most important and overriding reason in Allam’s view was the Church’s accommodating policies regarding Islam, a position which is resulting he says in practical dhimmitude and impairing the proclamation of the Gospel.
Other reasons include the Church’s anti-national positions regarding immigration which hamper the Italian desire to preserve their culture from foreign elements caused by illegal immigration. Also in play is what Allam calls the recent “papalotry” arising from out of the recent resignation of Benedict XVI and the election of Pope Francis. Finally, Allam appears to have rejected some of the Church’s teachings on moral theology and ecclesiastical disciplines.
As Allam explains it: “The thing that drove me away from the Church more than any other factor was religious relativism, in particular the legitimization of Islam as a true religion.” In Allam’s view, Islam is an “intrinsically violent ideology,” and does not deserve the respect that it is getting from those responsible for fashioning the Church’s public stance regarding Islam including the papacy and the curia.
It is an error of first proportion to legitimize even implicitly Islam as a true religion where “Allah is a true God, and Muhammad a true prophet, the Qur’an a sacred text, and mosques as places of worship.” This, he says, is nothing less than “genuine suicidal folly” and a practical relativism.
As examples of this excessive accommodation, Allam pointed to Blessed John Paul II’s controversial kissing of the Qur’an, and Benedict XVI’s placing his hand on the Qur’an while facing Mecca when praying in the Blue Mosque in Instanbul.
It is clear to Allam that this sort of accommodation will increase under Pope Francis, who spoke early in his pontificate about the Muslims “who adore the one God, living and merciful,” and who has announced that he looks forward to continuing dialogue especially with Islam.
While the Church speaks–in the words of Benedict XVI–of the “dictatorship of relativism,” Allam observed, “the truth is that the Church is, from a practical [literally, physiological] perspective, relativist (fisiologicamente relativista).”
Moreover, in Allam’s view, the Church’s message against the dictatorship of relativism and in favor of a confident Christian message is encumbered by the fact that it recognizes and promotes modern secular society, with its tolerant acceptance of multiculturalism, itself a relativistic secular social creed.
Additionally, he complains that the Church has taken a globalist and therefore anti-nationalistic, pro-immigration, and hence anti-Italian ideology. As a result of these positions, the Church in Allam’s view, has pitted herself against the common good of nation states, in particularly–as far as Allam is concerned–Italy.
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Wow!
He’s quite correct, though it’s hardly surprising, given that the Roman Catholic denomination is historically the worldly successor to the Roman Empire. In that sense, it has ALWAYS been a secular institution to a great degree and it is certainly and deliberately failing to challenge and defeat Islam.