A Loss of Cultural Identity and Self-Confidence

I've written about the deceptive and arrogant Islamic supremacist Reza Aslan's book elsewhere; this is not about him, but about the Jesuit priests who encouraged him to return to Islam. For Catholic priests, Christian clerics, to do such a thing bespeaks a loss of confidence in (and belief in) their own religion, tradition and heritage: one might have expected them to point Aslan in the direction of defenses of Christianity (of which there are plenty to respond to the puerile objections that Aslan advances), but instead, full of enlightened Leftism, relativism, and indifferentism, they encouraged him to return to a religion that has been the historic enemy of the Church.

Even if these Jesuits believed that Islam was no longer the enemy of the Church, or were ignorant enough to think that it never had been, or thought that the idea of having any enemies at all was an unenlightened relic of the past that had to be rejected, their action epitomized the West's present loss of self-confidence and suicidal eagerness to abase its own history and traditions. And these Jesuits are not singular in any way. If these priests told anyone in their circles what they had done, every one of their fellow Jesuits and Leftist clerics of all kinds are certain to have applauded their actions. In fact, they would probably have criticized them if they had tried to restore Aslan's flagging commitment to Christianity.

And they will keep on acting this way, right up to the moment when Aslan's more bloody-minded coreligionists knock on the door of the Jesuit house and tell them the game is up.

"Another Jesuit Success Story," by Rod Dreher in The American Conservative, July 15 (thanks to The Cardinal Newman Society):
During my years as a Catholic, more than a few times I would meet someone who had left the faith, and would credit their Jesuit education for having opened their eyes. Just now, I heard the Muslim scholar Reza Aslan on Fresh Air, talking about his new book. Terry Gross mentioned that he (Aslan) had been born into Islam, but his parents fled with him from Iranian Revolution. In America, his father became atheist, but Aslan became an Evangelical Christian. His mother followed him into Christianity. But then, studying at the Jesuit-run Santa Clara University, Aslan encountered Jesuit priests who encouraged him to go deeper into Islam, the religion of his forefathers.

Aslan did, and subsequently renounced Christianity to return to Islam.

Posted by Robert Spencer at http://www.jihadwatch.org/2013/07/a-loss-of-cultural-identity-and-self-confidence.html