NEW YORK (LifeSiteNews) — Cardinal Timothy Dolan has equated Easter with the Islamic season of Ramadan and the Jewish Passover, saying that all three are about the “triumph of light and life.”
Easter Sunday, Passover, and Ramadan are about the triumph of light and life – the renewal of God’s life within us! We share in God’s constantly reinvigorating power in the world, as we see in nature during spring. @thegnewsroom pic.twitter.com/v6IGXW1hmT
— Cardinal Dolan (@CardinalDolan) March 13, 2024
In a video message posted on X, formerly Twitter, Dolan said, “Does it dawn on you that Lent and Ramadan and Passover always occur close to each other?”
“They all always happen within two or three weeks apart, and you wonder why. The why is because they all take place in the spring, and the spring is the time of rebirth.”
“Spring is the time of triumph of light and life, and that, of course, is what Good Friday and Easter Sunday is about, that’s what Passover is about, that’s what Ramadan is about; the renewal of God’s life within us that we actually share in God’s constantly reinvigorating power in the world, as we see in nature during spring. So, Ramadan, Passover, Holy Week, and Easter, it’s all sort of a supernatural springtime,” the archbishop of New York concluded.
Dolan was met with numerous critical comments from faithful Catholics accusing him of promoting syncretism and religious indifference.
“Equating Our Lord’s Resurrection (Easter) with the obsolete OT [Old Testament] Passover and the so-called ‘holy month’ of a false religion is outrageous and shameful — on par with commending as ‘heroes’ the priests who presided over the sacrilegious funeral at [St. Patrick’s Cathedral],” Matt Gaspers, editor of Catholic Family News, wrote.
READ: Cardinal Dolan says St. Patrick’s priests ‘acted extraordinarily well’ during ‘transgender funeral’
While the Catholic Church commemorates the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ during the Easter Triduum, Judaism and Islam both reject the truth that Jesus is the Son of God and the Redeemer of mankind.
Passover and other sacrificial feasts of the Old Testament have become obsolete, as Catholics recognize, because Christ fulfilled these sacrifices with his one Sacrifice on the Cross, which is sacramentally offered anew at every Catholic Mass.
Moreover, the comparison of Islamic Ramadan to Easter is absurd since Islam is diametrically opposed to Christianity.
On March 11, Dolan published a video commemorating the beginning of Ramadan in which he wrongly claimed that Muslims are “a good example” to Catholics “on our Lenten journey.”
READ: Cardinal Dolan wrongly claims Muslims are a ‘good example’ for Catholics ‘on our Lenten journey’
As the Islamic scholar Robert Spencer explained, Ramadan is a season in which Islamic attacks against non-Muslims, including Catholics, increase every year.
“[T]he idea of Ramadan providing a possibility of outreach to Muslims is a tragicomic display of the failures and inherent limitations of the ‘dialogue’ imperative,” Spencer said in comments given to the Catholic Herald.
“Ramadan is a month in which Muslims are to redouble their efforts to please Allah,” the author of more than 20 books continued. “The highest form of service to Allah, according to Muhammad, is jihad, which principally involves warfare against unbelievers.”
“Every Ramadan, therefore, we see an increase in jihad attacks. The idea that this is a time to seek friendship and cooperation with Muslims is laughably naive and demonstrates abject ignorance of Islam,” Spencer stated.
READ: 15 Catholics killed at Mass by Muslim jihadists in Burkina Faso
Spencer explained in a 2016 article published in FrontPage Magazine that Muslims are exhorted “to grow more generous and kind toward their fellow Muslims” during Ramadan.
“However, the Qur’an says: ‘Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah, and those who are with him are severe against disbelievers, and merciful among themselves’ (48:29). If the Ramadan imperative is to become more devout, the Muslim who applies himself diligently to the Ramadan observance will simultaneously become more both merciful to his fellow Muslims and more severe against the unbelievers,” the Islamic scholar wrote.
“Murdering infidels thus doesn’t contradict the spirit of Ramadan; it embodies it,” he concluded.
Several German bishops have made similar statements to Cardinal Dolan’s, including Bishop Heiner Wilmer and Bishop Georg Bätzing, the head of the German bishops’ conference. Both Wilmer and Bätzing are proponents of the heretical German Synodal Way that seeks to change perennial Church doctrine.
Dolan, Bätzing, and Wilmer failed to mention the role of Jesus Christ as the only Redeemer of mankind (cf. John 14:6), the primacy of the Catholic Church, or the call to conversion in their messages.
Pope Francis has also made similar remarks and been accused of promoting religious indifferentism during his pontificate, especially through his encyclical on “human fraternity,” Fratelli tutti, and the controversial Abu Dhabi declaration that Francis signed together with Ahmad el-Tayeb, Grand Imam of Egypt’s al-Azhar Mosque. The declaration, officially called “Document on Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together,” states that “pluralism and the diversity of religions… are willed by God in His wisdom.”
READ: Pope Francis silent about Christ, Catholicism in new messages on anniversary of Abu Dhabi document
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