European nationalists, Catholics among them, worry about the Islamicization of Europe, but the Vatican itself has been steadfast in its support for immigrants. If anything, Vatican officials see the growing secularization of Europe as a greater threat.
H/T Reinhard
There's actually nothing surprising about that. Religious people always claim "there can be no morality without religion". To them, secular humanism can't possibly be perceived as being ethical according to their own criteria to define ethics with.
Seeing as the pope is in fact the central authority of the medieval religion of Roman-Catholicism (and on top of that still claims to this day he is the central authority of ALL Christianity), it is the Vatican's evident logic to go cosying up to the equally medieval religion of Islam.
In case you haven't noticed the parallel, here is another one. Mohammed has been claimed as the ultimate prophet of Islam, which makes Sunni Islam superior to all other subsects of Islam, like Shia Islam, Sufism, Ahmadiyya etc. He has unquestionable central authority.
The view that Protestants cannot have churches was first set out by Pope Benedict in 2000 when, as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, he headed the Vatican "ministry" for doctrine."It is nevertheless difficult to see how the title of 'Church' could possibly be attributed to Protestant communities, given that they do not accept the theological notion of the Church in the Catholic sense and that they lack elements considered essential to the Catholic Church."
It is good to know that petty medieval squabbles have been carried through to this very day and age, propagated by religions that want to emphasize being 'ethical'. An effing disgrace if ever there was one ! That's how 'ethical' religion really is: condemning others is way more important than taking a reconciliatory approach to others.
It is quite self-explanatory that religions, who want to obtain a moral hegemony of sorts (simply by way of multiplying their number of world-wide followers), will condemn all those who want to breach this monopoly on the Absolute Truth.
Whether those critics come to the surface as religiously inclined reformists or as secular humanists that want to make a clean break with the past doesn't make a difference in any case: they all constitute an obvious threat to those that want to cement their moral supremacy, and therefore they have to be denoted as heretics and their views have to be discarded as unethical.
Seeing as reformism and secular humanism both constitute such a threat to the old paradigm of "no morality without religion" by offering an alternative on ethics, it becomes quite apparent why the Vatican would rather sustain the import of religious fanaticism from abroad than support Western values, and even more so when they have been 'de-Christianized'.
The mere though of reforming religion is abhorrent to those who claim to have a monopoly on morality, and secularism to them is the cardinal sin. (if you like) Now, whatever has changed since the Middle Ages, I have to ask ? Well, absolutely nothing !
I think that a lot has changed since the Middle Ages. The birth of Republicanism which is chiefly the result of the enlightment which gave birth to the notion that the US was to be founded on certain principles that not only allow for the resurgence of religious thought, but also secular rule, founded on christian ideals….says much for those who find religous life outside of the Vatican and Islam.
I agree with what you are saying in a way. When Christian religion becomes truly personalized and a private matter, it can indeed take another form, which may turn out less dogmatic and more respectful towards others. I have absolutely no doubt about that.
However, there is a clear distinction in my mind between those people and others who totally comply with and enslave themselves to the archaic views of the Church as an institution. The Roman-Catholic Church IS in fact an institution that doesn't reform itself, because it will not find the need to do so, as long as an overwhelming number of people will conform with the doctrine wholesale, and take it as chapter and verse without thinking twice about it.
To me it is quite clear that reformism throughout the ages was essentially a matter of personal dissent and criticism by people like Calvin or Luther. Some people seem to think that the Church has adapted itself as a whole to modernity at some point. Which is far from the truth in any case. It simply has never been that way.
The obvious disdain towards reformism and secular society that persists to this day clearly indicates that essentially the Roman-Catholic Church remains inherently Medieval in its outlook on pluralism within society. Institutionalized dogmatism still has the same roots today as it had centuries ago. This is where the Church shows itself to be an inflexible ideology, as opposed to those who have made Christian spirituality a personal matter and not an Absolute Truth, dictated by a central authority.
It is quite obvious to me why the Vatican would rather sustain the import of religious fanaticism from abroad than support Western values, regardless of those values being rooted in Christianity. If the Church cannot reclaim 'moral territory' in Europe on its own merits, then some other religion has to be brought in to do so, because anything in their mind would be better than losing their moral battle and moral ground to reformist of secular heretics. In that sense, they have made a common cause with Islam.
And that is basically the root cause of what you are describing by citing this particular article. In fact, it is still the static Medieval outlook the Church has on society that brings this whole issue about.