A certain Islam of today versus Christianity two thousand years ago

"Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery. Now in the law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?" (...) Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, 'Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.' (...)

When they heard it, they went away, one by one, beginning with the elders; and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. Jesus straightened up and said to her, 'Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?' She said, 'No one, sir.' And Jesus said, 'Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do no sin again.'" John 8:1-11

What was common practice in Jesus' time is still common practice today, after 2000 years, in some fundamentalist Muslim countries. Every now and then the newspapers report cases of women caught in adultery and how they are slaughtered by stoning.

The internet is full of photos and videos of these barbaric executions, which are not ordered in the Quran; in fact, there is no mention of stoning being prescribed for any crime in the entire book of the Quran; according to the Quran, adultery is punishable by lashes. When we compare this practice, which is still common today, with the one that Jesus advocated two thousand years ago for the same sin, it is surprising and moving...

On the other hand, the death penalty is always an injustice because laws exist to judge acts and not the totality of a human life; even when the crime is murder, the death penalty is a worse crime than the crime it seeks to sanction. Those who committed murder were most likely possessed by extreme anger or rage; those who hand out the death sentence do so in cold blood, in full use of their mental and rational faculties.

Since the dawn of humanity, all cultures and civilizations on this planet have been, and to some extents still are, patriarchal sexist or, as we commonly say, macho and chauvinistic. In addition to Eve in the Jewish tradition, and Pandora in the Greek tradition, all cultures blame women for the manifestation of evil in the world, they are the scapegoat.

If in Europe and the Western world in general, North America and to some extent South America, Russia, Australia and New Zealand, women are more respected, it is because something of the mentality of Jesus, and the spirit of Christianity, has influenced the culture.

In a large part of the Black Africa, women are the only ones who really work, in the agriculture they invented and in the home; men devote themselves to war, when there is one, hunting, fishing and governing the tribe; I have seen women in Africa carrying a heavy load on their head, another in each hand, a baby in the belly and another on their back, walking for kilometres while their husband went along empty-handed. In many countries even today, it is still considered normal to kidnap a girl for marriage, and female circumcision, to deprive women of sexual pleasure during intercourse.

In modern day Asia, women are still subjected to shame. Child prostitution is very widespread; take Japan for example, a country that is so advanced, it is the only one that does not accept the UN laws on child pornography. In Japan and China, there are restaurants where food is served on the naked body of a teenage girl.

This is unthinkable in the Western world, not even in the Middle Ages. In India, and in other Asian countries, impunity reigns when it comes to raping women and disfiguring their face with sulphuric acid. The only Asian country where women are somewhat respected is the Philippines, precisely because it is a culture that has been more or less shaped by Christianity for 500 years, since Spanish colonization.

Even a cursory reading of the gospels is bound to surprise the most inattentive and impartial reader by Jesus’ attitude towards women; he treats them as equal, defends them and includes them in his group of disciples, something that has never been done before.  Jesus was undoubtedly the greatest defender of women of all time.

Conclusion – Jesus is the only founder of religion that has looked at women as being equal to men and the only one that has never uttered a derogatory statement against women. 

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

Mary's Visitations

"In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth." Luke 1:39-40

Chapel of (dis) apparitions
Some time ago, here in Fatima, I participated in a meeting for priests and religious that culminated in a Mass at the Chapel of the Apparitions.  I was shocked by the fact that the president of this celebration made no mention of the importance of the place where we were celebrating the Eucharist; he did not mention, not even once, Our Lady of Fatima nor did he make much mention of Mary in general.

When I told another colleague what had happened, I was told: "You know, I don’t really believe in these apparitions either.” As devoted as I have always been to our Lady, and a believer of her apparitions, the accusation made against Pope Paul VI of having imposed Fatima on the Church immediately came to mind. At that time, the Pope defended himself by saying that it was not he who imposed Fatima on the Church, it was Fatima that imposed itself.

"The Virgin appears to all the fools"
With this Spanish proverb in mind, the Church is aware that there are many apparitions that are not genuine; so, it uses all kinds of scientific investigation, which corresponds to "the devil's advocate" in the beatification of saints, to disprove them. The Church only takes its hat off and bows before something that is genuinely supernatural.

"Against facts, there are no arguments"
A scientific investigator, dispassionate and impartial, applying all the methods and instruments of modern scientific investigation to Guadalupe, Lourdes and Fatima, the three great apparitions that the Church proposes to its faithful, cannot fail to be astonished by the halo, of mystery and supernaturality, that surrounds facts, whose explanation is irreducible to reason and science.

Faced with this, there are two free but always faith-based options: to deify science, believing that in the future it will be able to explain what today it cannot; or to believe that God is behind these facts, and in this case, that Mary really is visiting her people.

From now until the end of the world, Heaven can no longer say anything new
The reason why I am writing these lines is not to propose again Mary’s apparitions because of the inexplicable mystery that surrounds them, but to reflect on the theological reasons that justify them.

Of course, neither Guadalupe, nor Lourdes, nor Fatima are dogmas of faith. Heaven, in Jesus Christ, the eternal Word of God made flesh, has already said all it has to say; it makes no sense for it to speak again after God has sent his only begotten son; in fact, when he returns, it will be to judge the living and the dead.

Mary's visits
We explain and justify that Mary is our mediator and intercessor in heaven with the episode of the wedding feast in Cana (John 2:1-11), in which she presents the needs of the guests to her son, while at the same time exhorting them to do everything he says; and why not explain and justify Mary's visits with the episode of her visit to her cousin Elizabeth? (Luke 1:39-45)

Mary, in her visits, does not bring a new gospel, a new message, but, like the Holy Spirit to whom she is espoused, she recalls the forgotten parts of her son's message (ref. John 14:26) and reinterprets them in the "here and now" of human history. In fact, one of the important factors in the authenticity of these messages is their agreement with the gospel.

Mary continues to visit those to whom she is mother, at pivotal moments in the history of her children, to help incarnate the eternal Word of her son in those moments and places.

Guadalupe – Support for evangelization
How could the indigenous people in Mexico in 1531 have willingly accepted the religion of the Spanish conquerors, explorers and murderers if Mary had not appeared to a humble indigenous man? In fact, the indigenous people, who until that time had been reluctant to accept Christianity, converted en masse after the apparitions.

Lourdes – Heaven confirmed
The important part of the Lourdes message is the confirmation from Heaven, in 1858, of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, instituted by Pope Pius IX four years earlier in 1854.

Fatima - "Penance and Prayer" is the solution
Between the two world wars, Maria proposed at Fatima, among other things, "Penance and Prayer" as a means to confront, at that time and even today, materialistic and atheistic communism, as well as materialistic and consumerist capitalism which is no less atheistic.

Conclusion – Since Mary visited her cousin in time of need, she has never stopped visiting the Humanity to tell her son we have no wine and to tell us to do what His will.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC