Venerable Pope John Paul II and the Koran-Kissing Incident: Summary and Analysis of the Incoherence of the Horrified "Traditionalist" Objection

John Phillips, a Catholic "traditionalist", wrote in one of my comboxes:

. . . the Koran kissing incident. . . . The argument against the incident is not that the last Pope was a secret Muslim, or even that he apostasized or intended to. It was an imprudent thing to do, it gave scandal to me and my former protestant pastor, it gave great polemics to the evangelicals down the street who now had "photographic proof" that the Pope was the anti-christ and other obnoxious things.

But step back for a moment and consider this argument. Why was it so supposedly scandalous that he did this? Why would anti-Catholic types of Protestants think that it was such a terrible thing or conclude that the pope was the antichrist because of it?

Well, it's because they assume that by doing it he was giving carte blanche approval to Islam. But this is exactly what is ridiculous to conclude, because clearly he does not or did not agree with everything in Islam. Nor did he think all religions are equal. It was a conciliatory, ecumenical gesture, meaning, "I respect all that is true in Islam, and it does contain much truth." One has to take a sensible view of the event in light of what the Church teaches and what John Paul II believed.

To not do that would possibly lead to someone thinking it was an atrocious and "imprudent" thing to do. Well, sure, if someone is of such a limited scope of vision, there isn't much that can be done. Catholics are falsely accused of all kinds of things. What are we supposed to do? Venerating a saint through a statue is considered idolatry, as is the Eucharist itself (the Lutherans call the Mass "Baal-worship" in their confessions!). The Mass has been compared to Golden Calf worship. If we modified everything because the ignorant and misled don't or won't understand it, we'd have little of true theology left.

So this argument amounts to a distinction without a difference:

1) Why was it bad for Pope John Paul II to kiss the Koran?

2) The objection isn't that he was "a secret Muslim, or even that he apostasized or intended to."

3) The essence of the objection is, rather, that it was imprudent and gave scandal.

4) But why would it be considered imprudent and give scandal?

5) Well, because folks might think he was accepting all of Islam, including those elements where Catholics clearly disagree with Islam (e.g., the Trinity and Incarnation and Redemption), or some part of it, and then he would be like the antichrist, etc. But we can accept true parts of overall false belief-systems.

6) But these things (Trinity, etc.) are clearly the things that any sensible, reasonably informed person would know that John Paul II and the Church would not ever deny.

7) Therefore the act must not have meant that, and must have meant something else.

8) And reasonably informed people could figure that out without being scandalized and horrified, in ignorant, idle speculation.

9) But nevertheless many people, including gazillions of so-called "traditionalists" were and are immensely scandalized (for no good reason).

10) Why? Again, it must be because they accept fallacies such as the examples noted in #5, to some degree.

11) But #5 is exactly what was denounced as not the reason for the objection, in #2.

12) This is self-contradictory.

13) Therefore, the entire objection to the act must be discarded as incoherent. One must correctly understand the intent of the act, within the existing backdrop of Catholic belief. If that is done, the objection from "imprudence" vanishes into thin air. There will always be people who misunderstand somewhat complex issues and acts. We cannot dumb down everything we do because of that.

The fallacy is repeated in another form:

He could have shown love and respect to Muslims without a stupid foot in the mouth thing like that.

But doing this was precisely one way of showing love and respect that should not have been so maligned, if folks would simply try to sensibly reason through the thing in the first place. Who's to say that other acts would not have been equally condemned, within the framework of massive "traditionalist" miscomprehension of Catholic ecumenism? Whatever he would have done would have been lambasted. This act was particularly blasted because it had a strong visual component.

So he kissed the Koran. Big wow. So what! If we kiss an eccentric, sometimes sinful, and estranged aunt, does this imply that we agree with everything and anything (or even very much) about her? No, clearly not. Does it imply that all aunts are exactly the same in our estimation, and that we have equal affection for them all (to follow the analogy of all religions being equally valid)? No, of course not.

The Koran is no different. It's making a mountain out of a molehill, and it's all based on fallacy and profoundly muddled thinking. It's basically, as I see it, an emotional reaction to a visible thing that was elevated to a symbol of all that is supposedly wrong with the Church today (in the wise eyes of "traditionalists" who always seem to know better than the Church). But since the premises underneath such detestation are thoroughly false and able to be exposed as such, this conclusion collapses under its own weight.

I went through all this and much more in my dialogue with "traditionalist" David Palm on this issue in 1999; all to no avail, of course:

Dialogue: Should the Pope Kiss The Koran?: Ecumenism as an Effort to Acknowledge Partial Truth Wherever it is Found

Almost the exact same fallacies are evident in the tempest in a teapot about the Church supposedly making Allah the same as Yahweh in some ecumenical documents of Vatican II. It's wrongheaded in the same fashion. I wrote about that, too:

Does the Catholic Church Equate Allah and Yahweh? (+ Discussion)

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These fallacies are rampant, in, for example, several of a "traditionalist's" (who wishes to be anonymous) related statements:

In 2001 John Paul II kissed the Qur'an. There have been numerous martyrs to Islam throughout the ages, as it is the Church's perennial enemy and remains so today. Some of these martyrs, particularly the Franciscan proto-martyrs were given choices, including the choice to kiss the Qur'an. They refused and they were martyred. Doesn't this represent a contradiction too great to give a Pope the title of Great, when so many other Popes did more for the Catholic Church? 

This is a false equation; hence, shabby reasoning. Obviously, in a martyr situation, the Catholic is being urged to show by some sign that they renounce Christianity and accept Islam; failing to do so, they are killed. That was not the case with Pope John Paul the Great. He was making a conciliatory gesture. No one was threatening him with his life or suggesting that he deny his own faith. He voluntarily did this. So it is apples and oranges. Some outward characteristic is seized upon and and a bogus equivalence is implied that doesn't apply. He writes elsewhere, after railing against the same act:

The Qur'an is a pack of lies and always has been, for if it is otherwise our Scriptures can not be true. It is just a matter of logic.


Of course it contains much error, but it also contains much truth, too. For example, Muslims regard Jesus as a prophet. That's a lot better than the Jews have historically thought. They think he was a liar, false prophet, and false messiah. Yet the early Christians continued to worship at the Temple and in the synagogues and St. Paul called himself a Pharisee at his trial. Jesus Himself was pretty strict in observing the Law and Pharisaic customs, and urged His disciples to follow whatever the Jewish teachers told them to do (Matthew 23:1-3). The Judaizers are described as Christians in the NT.

Muslims revere the Blessed Virgin Mary far more than Protestants do. And for them she is the mother of a prophet, whereas for Protestants she is the mother of their Lord and Savior. Observant Muslims still have lots of children and do not contracept, whereas Protestants contracept by the hundreds of millions. Faithful Muslims are pro-life, have a proper view of the sinfulness of sexuality outside of marriage, and do not have the huge problem with, for example, pornography, as we do in the west. Millions of Protestants and Catholics do not practice traditional sexual morality. There is plenty of truth in this religion (and plenty of hypocrisy and sinfulness in how we Christians practice ours). But all our friend can see is falsehood and wickedness in Islam and its holy book.

He gets so extreme in this that he denies that Protestants are disciples of Christ, too, even though Vatican II (that he agrees contains no heresy) plainly says that they are:

Thus we arrive at a situation where people reject their better sense or accept and even defend things they would never do for the sake of supporting whatever the Pope does, and being "with the Pope". How many people are ready to line up and kiss the Qur'an? How many people are willing to burn wood chips with a voodoo witch doctor, or call protestant ministers disciples of Christ, when their doctrines are hateful to Him? Well?


So we see that his logical problems run much further than a derision of Islam. Now he is implying that non-Catholic Christians are not "disciples of Christ." He detests John Paul the Great; apparently in large part because of his ecumenical actions:

Did you follow John Paul II's good sense and kiss the Qur'an? Did you invite pagans to pray to their false gods for peace (condemned in the Bible)? Did you follow John Paul's "good sense" and support Bishops who have enabled child molestors or even promote them? Great. By their fruits you shall know them, and we know John Paul the non-great, because his works speak for him. He was a bad Pope, and manifestly one of the worst in Church history.


This also is a gross distortion of what happened in the Assisi ecumenical conferences. Fr. Alfredo M. Morselli, in his defense of same, that drew heavily from St. Thomas Aquinas' principles, noted:

[W]e can pose a more definite question: must an unbeliever (an unbeliever by way of pure negation) pray? I think the answer is "yes," because, according to St. Thomas's teaching, we know that religion is a part of Justice, and Justice is an obligation by natural law. Every man must be religious, because every man must be upright (iustus). Prayer is an act of religion (not an act of faith), so every man must pray. So we must say to an unbeliever: follow natural law; you must be prudent, temperate, strong, upright.
St. Thomas says:

Now the Divine law which is the law of grace, does not do away with human law (non tollit ius humanum) which is the law of natural reason. S. Th., II II, q. 10, a. 10 c.

How is it possible that God orders man to be religious, knowing that men (today the majority of humankind), although unbelievers "by way of pure negation," performing this precept, will sin? If an unbeliever doesn't pray, he sins (against natural law). If an unbeliever prays, he sins, because He doesn't pray to the true God. This would be a trap!
Therefore, I conclude that invitation to unbelievers to pray, is not a formal participation in an act of false religion, but is a formal invitation to be religious, to follow natural law. The pope doesn't says: "Pray to a false God," but "Pray [as best you can]." Everything false in such act of religion, becomes an "indirect voluntary" (as the death of a child in case of removal of a cancerous uterus).

Catholic apologist Mark Shea noted the "traditionalist" myths about Assisi, too, in a paper that I uploaded to my site:

I'm having trouble figuring out what, exactly, the problem is with the whole Assisi thing.

Pope calls together a bunch of religions to agree on the need for peace. Blessed are the peacemakers, etc. I'm tracking with that.

Pope says no we're not praying together, everybody go to your own corner and pray according to the dictates of your conscience. But let's work together as we can to keep the world from going up in flames. Lumen Gentium and Unitatis Redintegratio teach this. Okay. I'm still tracking.

I'm not seeing an affirmation that "We're all really saying the same thing." Far from it, I see the same clear statement of Dominus Iesus and Lumen Gentium that in the Catholic faith alone the fullness of God's revelation subsists. Same deal on the distinction between the baptized and unbaptized. I'm still tracking.

About half the people on the list are really, really angry about all this. I'm not tracking. I haven't the time to read the whole thread. Could somebody summarize for me what the problem is? How is telling somebody at an interreligious gathering "Work with us where you can and go off and pray according to your conscience" (though the Catholic revelation is the fullness of the Truth) a craven capitulation to indifferentism, but telling somebody in your city they can have a mosque or a temple or a Lutheran Church or whatever a common sense acknowledgement of human conscience and freedom? It seems to me it's all one or all the other. If it's a wonderful testament to the Church's anthropology that pagans are free to be pagans in a Catholic country, why is it a damning rebuke of the Church's leaders that they apply exactly the same principle in a Catholic meeting? I don't get it.

It seems to me that once the Church affirms the principle of religious liberty (as it should), it's perfectly possible to hold a meeting like Assisi which, in essence, affirms what can be affirmed in common (like "Nuclear annihilation would be bad. Terrorists should really not blow up innocent people.") and then tells the various participants "Go obey your conscience according to your religious tradition, just understand that we don't affirm the truth of that tradition when it contradicts ours because our Tradition is the fullness of what God himself has revealed." It appears to me that this is precisely what's going on at Assisi. So I'm having trouble figuring out the problem. Do the critics of Assisi also think that Lumen Gentium and Unitatis Redintegratio were bad things?

Can somebody explain to me what I'm missing?

Well yes, the "traditionalist" critics do think that Vatican II had lots of "bad things," but they want to play the game of equivocation: it contained no heresy, but it was (so we are told) deliberately "ambiguous." They'll say it is kosher out of one side of their mouth, and then say it would have been better if it had never occurred, out of the other. Go figure.

Alas, at length, our anonymous "traditionalist" friend stopped being disgusted and angry at John Paul the Great and was reduced to pity (gee, what a vast improvement):

In truth, I have to say that I have gained more of a soft spot to John Paul II, which is part of the reason I have refrained from writing "of infelicitous memory" as I used to after his name, and I have stopped writing anything about him so I can pray and discern whether or not he is in fact a saint. Let me go one further, at the risk of losing all my readers and becoming anathema to rad trads: I have been praying for God to change my heart on the subject if John Paul II is a saint and should be canonized.

In the end, I have made the following conclusion: John Paul II is more worthy of pity and prayer than of anger which I had for him generally when I first started blogging, but in the end he is not worthy of being raised to the altars. . . .

. . . he might do something rash, for example in trying to show solidarity with Muslims in Iraq who were being murdered every other day by US and British air strikes, he might do something rash and offensive like kiss the Qur'an. . . .

They had with them the Qur'an, and he thought by reverencing it he might show the Church's solidarity with a people oppressed on the one hand by western bombing and on the other by a dictator in his palaces. So he kissed the Qur'an.

In such a context, my anger effaces, and is replaced by pity, pity for a man whose emotion boils over to the point where reason leaves him and he makes a rash action offensive to piety. . . . He didn't stop and think, he just kissed the Qur'an.


Yes; only if one massively understand what was intended by the act . . . It's like the Pharisees thinking that all the legalistic nitpicking aspects of their piety ("you tithe mint and dill and cummin") were the most important things, while ignoring what Jesus called the "weightier" elements of the Law: "justice and mercy and faith" (Matthew 23:23). In the same piece, he states:

Ultimately, I now find I have much more pity for JPII, and I pray for him all the more, because he wanted to do so much good, but caused so much scandal. It would be nothing short of a grave mistake for the Church to canonize John Paul II, declaring him a saint, because then you are canonizing Assisi I and II, you are canonizing religious indifferentism, and ecclesiastical laxity.

But of course they did not promote indifferentism! This is the muddleheadedness of this thoroughly confused analysis (as Mark Shea was driving at above). Again, the false premise and misunderstanding of the nature of the thing criticized leads to false conclusions and in this case, slander against a very great man in the Church. The silliness inherent in th "traditionalist" disdain for the kissing of the Koran is evident in the following statement, that hearkens back to my point-by-point examination of the fallacy-laden reasoning:

What needs to be kept in mind however is that we decry the action, we don't try to see the soul and say that there was wicked intent. We don't try to judge that person X, Fr. X, or Pope X is a wicked evil sinner and will go to hell. God will do that. What we decry is the action which is a scandal (a stumbling block) to others. If the Pope kisses the Qur'an that says that he thinks Islam is equal to Christianity in dignity and truth, etc. He didn't say that, probably didn't believe that. He probably just wanted to offer a sign of respect to Muslims. But his actions said it. When he gathered the pagans of the world at Assisi (the topic of this post) he sent a message that one religion is just as good as another, regardless of what he meant. . . . And when you canonize someone like that, who made these types of ecumenical mishaps the "cornerstone of his pontificate", then you have a problem. You are saying the faith handed down from the apostles has changed.

That's why we are traditionalists.

His shoddy argument here is a textbook case of the fallacious chain of logic I illustrated above in my 13-point "flow chart". Let me analyze it a little differently this time (a variation on a theme):

1) He sez the pope in all likelihood had no bad intent; he was probably just trying to show respect. He's willing to extend to him this gracious charity.

2) Intelligent, informed observers (like our friend) can figure this out, and know that the pope did not intend to send a message that Islam is equal to Christianity in dignity and truth.

3) Yet less informed, ignorant people who don't know what Catholics teach about the One True Faith will nevertheless get this impression.

4) So it is a scandal to do what ignorant people don't grasp, but what intelligent people do grasp. Thus, we must never do such things. We must dumb down our faith and actions to the lowest common denominator (clueless people who can't interpret acts within their larger contexts and frameworks of previously established truths).

5) Therefore, we cannot believe in the communion of saints, papal infallibility, the Immaculate Conception, the Assumption, penance, purgatory, transubstantiation, infused justification, prayer for the dead, original sin, even trinitarianism and the divinity of Christ, etc., because lots of ignorant and misinformed people do not understand them, and it causes scandal.

6) Ergo, Catholicism and for that matter, Nicene Christianity, are false, because they cause scandal among those who don't comprehend them. We can't do or believe what causes scandal, and that includes all of Catholicism that is different from Protestantism and non-Christian religions, and all of larger Christianity that is incomprehensible to outsiders.

Huh?!?! There's the reductio ad absurdum, folks: the ridiculous conclusion that follows logically from premises that one's dialogical opponent holds. The false premise is clearly #4: the notion that one mustn't do an act that informed folks know doesn't mean what ignorant people take it to mean: because the ignorant will be scandalized. If we accept this, the absurd conclusion follows. Therefore, we reject the premise in #4 as false, and the objection to kissing the Koran (closely scrutinized, according to what it's own proponents say about it) collapses. End of story. Case closed.

I end with more of our friend's charitable estimates of Pope John Paul the Great. How thankful we are that now he will call for his "traditionalist" comrades to lay off the late Holy Father; thus lessening their relentlessly incoherent and logically tortured criticisms:

The pontificate of John Paul II will give us Traditionalists enough polemics for a generation to be sure, but we must not carry our offense and scandal at him through the grave, lest we find ourselves not being forgiven by the Father for not forgiving those who trespass against us!

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Recently on the CHNI forum I was involved in a similar discussion about the value of ecumenical meetings on a parish level. Questions will be paraphrased and in orange and purple:

My parish is considering having an ecumenical gathering of prayer with non-Christians. It's good to be friendly, but is that not legitimizing their false beliefs? Why would we wish to do that?

Objection to such practices like this has been a big (and, I think, mistaken) theme of so-called Catholic "traditionalists." But it can be defended from solid Catholic traditional principles, such as from St. Thomas Aquinas. I have two papers on my site (written by others) that deal with such issues:

A Defense of the Ecumenical Gathering at Assisi (Ecumenism in St. Thomas Aquinas) (Fr. Alfredo M. Morselli)

A Response to (and Befuddlement Over) Criticisms of the Second Ecumenical Gathering at Assisi (2002) (Mark P. Shea)

I should note that in these meetings, it wasn't literally praying together (i.e., to the same God) since this wouldn't be possible with someone like a Hindu or a Buddhist. But it was meeting together in the same place to pray separately. The latter doesn't involve any compromise of one's own principles or beliefs or implication of what is called indifferentism.

A retreat center I know stresses friendly dialogue with non-Catholic religions. It may go too far, but it is praiseworthy at least in showing respect to the people. This to me showed that there is an admirable spirit of humility in the Catholic Church. I like the attitude of back-and-forth dialogue because it goes against spiritual pride. And this acknowledges the truth that can be found in other religions.

Now, I have assumed that if they get off track and go too far, that the diocese will correct the excess. Is that the case?

Unfortunately, it is not always the case that places like this are rebuked (assuming they need to be). There is a lot of laxity on the part of bishops. I wish it weren't the case, but it is. So oftentimes we have to judge for ourselves.

There is legitimate Catholic ecumenism that presupposes the fullness of truth found in the Catholic Church, yet at the same time seeks to dialogue with other faiths (and other fellow Christians) and see how much we truly have in common: with respect and in love.

Then there is an illegitimate ersatz ecumenism that amounts to all religions being the same, or theological relativism, an obliteration of true distinctions and a pretense of agreement even where there is none. Chesterton wrote wittily about being so open-minded that your brains could fall out. If that is taking place then it is contrary to the Catholic faith, as clarified (particularly) in Vatican II.

I've written a lot myself about matters relating to ecumenism.

Why pray in the same place at the same time (separately) with non-Christians? Of what purpose is it?

Unity, mutual respect as much as possible, common goals (world peace, friendly relations, joint efforts such as fighting hunger or poverty or despots or natural disasters, etc.). These are all good things in and of themselves, and they can be done without compromise.

Couldn't this make the non-Christian think his religion is every bit as good and true as Christianity?

It could, if it's misunderstood.

This could possibly give credence to doubts about his own views that the non-Christian might have, no? Doesn't this enshrine and confirm his errors?

It is widely misunderstood as indifferentism or relativism, but I still say it is better to do it than not to, despite all that, because (I would argue) lots of things in Catholicism are misunderstood. It's a thinking man's religion. We catch misery about all sorts of things: particularly Mariology, the Eucharist, and papal infallibility. Does it mean we cease believing them because many will misunderstand and make little attempt to understand what we believe and why? No; clearly not. We can explain ourselves but if it is not received, we can't help that.

I think you are not properly understanding it. One of the problems is that this is a somewhat complex (and highly nuanced) discussion, so that one has to read some in-depth materials. The two links I gave about Assisi can help anyone work through the issue and better understand it. The one from Fr. Morselli is technical and cites Aquinas a lot. The Mark Shea piece is less technical (and quite witty, as all of his writing), so I would recommend that of the two, to start.

Won't this cause folks to not be drawn to the Church? What good comes of this?

Not necessarily, because ecumenism is not (by deliberate design) as "persuasive" as apologetics, in terms of "our view is the better view." The goal is to see how much we have in common. It's not contradictory to apologetics or evangelism, as many think; it's just as different thing. We all have friends or family who disagree with us, and where we know there is no immediate prospect of persuading them. And so we have to get along as best we can, realizing that there are differences. That is ecumenism: how can we get along despite differences, and how can we best appreciate each other where we agree? It's applying what we all do in extended families and work relationships to the world religious scene. Ecumenism is a wonderful thing, rightly understood and practiced.

Now, in your particular parish it may be practiced wrongly, in a liberal, indifferentist fashion that I would strongly oppose (sadly, this is probably the case more often than not). I don't know. I'm defending efforts like the Assisi conferences, that were high-level Church functions with the pope present. Plenty of people detested those, but in every case I've seen firsthand, and have debated, the people had to misrepresent what happened in order to condemn it. That's a straw man, and not a fair way to go about criticizing something. To refute an idea one must understand what it is in the first place. That's the first rule of all constructive debate and dialogue.

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Ecumenical efforts are not to persuade others that they are wrong (apologetics is for that!) but to agree on what can be agreed upon in good conscience without anyone having to compromise their own beliefs.

People misunderstand a lot of things (as I noted above). Does that mean we don't do them anymore? No. I don't think it helps the Catholic cause to "dumb down" our religion so that no one could ever possibly misunderstand it. What we need to do is better understand it ourselves and explain it to others. Jesus implies something along these lines when He states: "Not all men can receive this saying [consecrated celibacy], but only those to whom it is given . . . He who is able to receive this, let him receive it." (Matthew 19:11-12).

Elsewhere in the Gospels a similar thing is stated about parables: that not all would understand. Again, in 1 Corinthians 1, Paul talks about the foolishness of Christianity and how even the wise "philosophical" Greeks would not always understand it.