Not Peace but a Sword- The Great Chasm between Christianity and Islam is the new book published by Catholic Answers written by Robert Spencer.

As the title suggests this is not a soft look at Islam, but it is also not a diatribe against Muslims and a recitation of acts of evil committed by individuals or groups of Muslims. There is a very common idea that Muslims, Jews, and Christians being “People of the book” have many foundational ideas in common. There is certainly some truth to this, but when it comes to Islam there is much thought to be in common that actually isn’t. Robert Spencer also does not set out to say that we can’t have common cause with Muslims in some areas, but that we should be aware how far that common cause actually goes. For example he talks about how for example working with Muslim countries in the United Nations in regard to abortion has certainly been helpful to keep or delay more odious abortion rights language. Yet at the same time this alliance was not all that we would want.

The Muslim representatives agreed to the language ruling out the use of abortion as a means of family planning but opposed Vatican efforts to call for an end to it in all circumstances. For Islamic law, unlike Church teaching and contrary to widespread belief, does not forbid abortion in every case.

This and many other examples he gives us shows that many terms and ideas we might think we have in common often have many caveats attached to them. This becomes even more apparent when we look at basic philosophical and theological ideas that ground Christian influenced Western thought that is just missing in Islam.

Robert Spencer does a lot of quoting from the Qur’an and some would object that you can find calls to violence in the Bible also. The problem with this is that Muslims have a totally different view of their scripture compared to how Catholic view scripture such as detailed in the Second Vatican Council’s Dei Verbum. Muslim’s consider the “Qur’an was dictated by Allah word for word, miraculously protected from scribal error, and contains no human element whatsoever.”

While on the other hand regarding Holy Scripture Dei Verbum says:

(1) In composing the sacred books, God chose men and while employed by Him (2) they made use of their powers and abilities, so that with Him acting in them and through them, (3) they, as true authors, consigned to writing everything and only those things which He wanted. (4) Therefore, since everything asserted by the inspired authors or sacred writers must be held to be asserted by the Holy Spirit, it follows that the books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching solidly, faithfully and without error that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings (5) for the sake of salvation. Therefore “all Scripture is divinely inspired and has its use for teaching the truth and refuting error, for reformation of manners and discipline in right living, so that the man who belongs to God may be efficient and equipped for good work of every kind” (2 Tim. 3:16–17, Greek text).

This contrasting view provides a very different view concerning how Muslim read the Qur’an and how the various semi-official schools of interpretation view the Qur’an in general and specifically what we would call the difficult passages. Adding to that those vary same passages which usually occur later in the Qur’an are given more weight over earlier less violent ones.

The biggest problem in understanding Islam as one of the Abrahamic faiths is that what we seem to have in common can be seen as completely different. We might think we are looking at the same basic story in the Old Testament, but while there might be commonalities in the Qur’an there are also vast differences. This comes about because of the way the Qur’an came about in the first place. Maybe this analogy is off-base, but it seems to me to be kind of like fan-fiction. Somebody takes a story they like and writes another story in that same universe. They also might reboot the story to be in a similar framework, but with some diferences. You can even have a case of one fan-fiction writer writing a story like the latter and then another writer taking off on that story. The Qur’an to me seems to be an awful lot like that as you have some similar biblical stories, but there are major differences such as Abraham attempting to sacrifice Ishmael instead. There are also obvious Gnostic Christian influences along with examples of other early Christian heresies.

Much is made of Jesus and Mary being in the Qur’an and yet where we think we have something in common, we really don’t. It would be like two people talking about President Lincoln where one is talking about the historic Abraham Lincoln and the other one talking about the Vampire Killer Abraham Lincoln. The Jesus in the Qur’an is really a sock puppet mainly used to deny that he is the son of God. A rebooted Jesus used to proclaim Islam. A major reboot happens where Jesus at the end of time is going to come back to break all the crosses and kill all the pigs. As annoyed by reboot story arcs found in Marvel and D.C. Comics are, they have nothing on the author or authors of the Qur’an.

Another major underpinning that we don’t share with Islam is the view that we were created in the Image of God and that we are merely “Allah’s slave.” The lack of the Imago Dei and the lack of the concept of original sin leads to many distortions that are evident in historical and modern-day Islam. A view of predestination that might even make Calvin cringe. This flawed anthropology concerning the human person means that the dignity of the human person as understood in Christianity is not reciprocated in Islam.

Knowing all this is important when dealing with the individual Muslim so that we don’t assume more than is evident. That when we enter into common cause we understand the limit of it. That when we evangelize that we don’t forget that we often mean very different things when it comes to referring to the Old Testament. There view like so many religions that appeared after Christianity is that the texts we have today are totally corrupted and that goes for both Testaments of the Bible. When the Qur’an refers to the “Gospel”, they refer not to the New Testament, but a lost Gospel of Jesus. Or at least that is the interpretation Muslim theologians give these passages referring to the Gospel as a source of knowledge.

I found this book quite worthwhile as it gave me a better understanding of what it actually means to be a “People of the book” and that it does not mean as much as I thought. If we are not going to talk passed each other and to be able to talk with each other we have to have some common understanding. While many might think that this would be a rather polemical book, I did not find this to be true. As the author wrote “The object of these explorations is to generate more light than heat.” Still just pointing out the underlying philosophical and theological problems is something many people would rather ignore. A view that charity means pretending there are no differences. This is a critique of Islam not the lives of individual Muslims. Often there is a disparity between the two. I learned a good bit concerning this in The Monks of Tibhirine: Faith, Love, and Terror in Algeria which was the basis for the great movie “Of God’s and Men.” That book nicely detailed the lives of these monks and there relationship with the Muslim village they served and had deep friendships with.

The book ends with a transcript of a debate with Peter Kreeft and Robert Spencer. I had previously seen the debate on YouTube and greatly enjoyed it. For one I wish all debates could be so free of contention. Peter Kreeft is on the side of even greater common cause. Yet while he basically disagreed with Spencer’s conclusions, there was little disagreement if any with the fact presented.

Right now for free on Amazon you can download a selected short story collection as part of the “2012 Tuscany Prize for Catholic Fiction.”

I haven’t read them myself yet.

“… a new Catholic culture has gradually emerged in the United States, ….The establishment of the Tuscany Prize for Catholic Fiction has called forth that art, allowing readers to discern the new Catholic cultural flowering. And if this year’s prizewinning short stories are any guide, Catholic art in America is headed, once again, toward great things.”

—Joseph Bottum, author of The Christmas Plains, Essayist and Poet

The editor is Joseph O’Brien and if this is the same person who did Cover to Cover over at Catholic Radio International I have high hopes for the selected stories.

I really miss the show “Cover to Cover” as they use to have episodes three times a week where they provided audio episodes of books. They really had some quite excellent books and the production value and narration was quite excellent. You can still download some of the books they did and I came upon this archive of their mp3’s some time ago (some detective work required to figure what is what). Although “Atticus” by Rob Hansen was never completed. Which is too bad since I really loved it when I read it and really wanted to hear their audio version.

Francis: Pope of a New World is a book on Pope Francis that was just released as an ebook with the Hardcover coming in the next two days. This was written by the fairly well-known Vaticanista Andrea Tornielli. The writer who I keep forgetting is a man.

This book has the flaws you would expect from a book on a new Pope released just two weeks after his election. This is certainly not going to be the definitive biography and that is not what you would expect anyway. As a buyer what I was hoping for was a book that would flesh out his childhood, vocation to the priesthood, and to his years as the Cardinal of Bueno Aires.

The fact that Andrea Tornielli was a friend of Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio helps to make this book more than just put a pope on it marketing. The caveat would be that while the author had a light friendship with the Cardinal, Bergoglio spent as little time in Rome as he had to. Still he is able to give some insight to the man and tell some intriguing stories.

It does take a couple chapters for the book to get really worthwhile. The book is setup with the time of the Conclave and the election of the Pope. There is some of interest here, but those familiar with much of the news in the last weeks will find nothing really knew here except for some possibly leaked news to how the voting went. Mention was also made regarding some of the scandals in recent years such as the so-called “Vaticanleaks” and Cardinal O’Brien’s resignation. Also mentioned was Cardinal Mahony and the pressure for him not to attend. In regards to this I thought the author rather minimized the extent of what Cardinal Mahony did in the coverup of abuse. I was also annoyed by the blanket term of “pedophile” used throughout as this is not a very helpful term as it is often inaccurate, but I guess ephepophile does not roll of the tongue as well.

The following chapter concerns Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI and his resignation. There is as you would expect a historical overview of Popes who have resigned, but what I found worthwhile was information about Pope’s from Pope Piux XII on who had considered resigning. I have seen bits and pieces about this before, but it was nice having it all together to give perspective. One thing I found annoying was that twice Pope Benedict XVI was referred to as Pope Ratzinger. I am not sure whether this is a custom that varies, but it was not one I was use to.

The rest of the book though was really what I wanted as it gave me much more sense of the man and his family life and background. The story of his vocation was much more filled out than what I have read before and it is rather an interesting story. Especially since it came about a point in his life when he was considering a proposal for marriage and a sudden decision to go to confession rather than to go with his friends as planned. His sister weighing in on this was also rather enjoyable. I also found fascinating the different reactions from his parents to his pursuing the priesthood which was inverted from the norm since his Mother was against it and his Father for it. There is one story regarding this with his mother that I thought rather funny since it was so Jesuitical. Jesuitical while also being rather heart-warming in an odd way.

I had also already gotten some sense that the new Pope had a good sense of humor and there were several stories throughout that confirmed this. Just to give you a recent example, the then-Cardinal when arriving a the airport came in at the same time as two other Cardinals one being the Cardinal from Manilla who was dressed in civilian clothes.

They respect one another. They greet one another. The next day, in the Sala Clementina, when Padre Bergoglio meets Cardinal Tagle dressed in a regulation black cassock with red trimmings, red cape, and zucchetto, he tells him jokingly, “You know, yesterday at the airport there was a boy who looked a lot like you . . .”

One of the aspects of Pope Francis most commented on is his style which gets cast as humility. In some ways this is both endearing and off-putting. It can easily be misread as a theatrical humility which of course would be no humility at all. I confess to wondering about this myself at times, but I don’t believe this at all now. What the book really shows is that this Franciscan simpleness has always been an integral part of his life from the earliest days. Growing up in a semi-poor family provided some of the roots of his sensibility, but it seems to go beyond that. That this was a man always willing to be in service to others. That he was so focused on others seeing the individual, that he had no desire to puff himself up. We have all heard the stories of him riding on the bus, but the examples multiply as for example cooking for others. Impressive to me though was what he did to remove barriers from himself to others. His style seems to be all about removing barriers such as not having a secretary and installing a phone so priests could call him directly anytime. It will certainly be captivating in the years ahead how this direct style will be played out in his Petrine ministry.

We have already seen signs that God’s mercy will be a major theme in his pontificate as it has been a theme throughout his priestly ministry. A major theme throughout the papacy and certainly emphasized by Blessed John Paul II and Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI.

From this insight, Bergoglio derives also a bit of advice for confessors. He asks them, when they go into the confessional, to be neither rigorists nor laxists. “The rigorist is someone who applies the norm and nothing else: the law is the law, period. Basta The laxist “sets it aside: it is not important, nothing will happen … just go on that way.” The problem, explains the future pope, “is that neither one cares about the person in front of him”. And so, what should confessors do? “Be merciful.”

The author of the book takes this theme of rigorism and laxity up at certain point when relating stories. This narrative makes it hard at times to see the details of something and was rather confusing regarding the Cardinal and the baptizing of children of parents who were not living the faith. Of course “founded hope that the child will be raised Catholic” is a canonical question and outside of the scope of the book to address. Still it raises the question of whether following canon law is seen as being a rigorist. I don’t want to make a big deal here about what we have so little information on regarding the new Pope’s views, still it was something I wanted to know more about.

The book also deals with some of the slanders that have come out against him regarding the kidnapping of two of his priests during the dirty war. This is fairly well covered and detailed. The book-length interview in “El Jesuita” by journalists Sergio Rubin and Francesca Ambrogetti provided many details used in this book. The authors familiarly with this book and other sources really helped this book to provide some of the details you would want. The book mostly succeeds at giving you more of an idea of the man. Although there is a lot more information I would like to know more about such as his years as a priest, his time as the Jesuit provincial in Argentina, and his being the Ordinary for Eastern-rite faithful in Argentina which was not mentioned at all. There are certainly plenty of gaps regarding the life of Jorge Mario Bergoglio and no mention of all regarding his actions against liberation theology.

The book certainly left me yearning for more information, but while not sated by the information in this book I was satisfied that it more than met my expectation for a short-turnaround book on the new Pope. Certainly well-worth reading. I did not intend to write a book review almost as long as the book, but there you have it.

By the way the ebook is currently available at Ignatius Press to buy and download. It is also available on Amazon and other sellers at a price a couple of bucks lowers. Still I bought it at Ignatius Press since I wanted both to support them directly and the fact that their downloads contain no Digital Rights Management and you are able to easily read them on any device without hassle.