Muslims are taking over Europe faster than we realize
“Islam has a future because Islam believes in children,” he said. “Without a transcendent faith that makes life worth living, there’s no reason to bear children.”
Let’s stop right there for a bit of analysis. The first thing that merits scrutiny is the timeline. One hundred years from now is 2117. Most of us won’t be around then, so for many the matter will seem less urgent than, perhaps, Archbishop Chaput meant it to be seen. A number of observers of the European scene—Thilo Sarrazin, Douglas Murray, Bruce Bawer, and Mark Steyn—project that large parts of Europe will be Islamic within three or four decades. And if you were to wander by mistake into the no-go zones that surround Paris, you would think that the “faces of young Muslim immigrants” is already the face of Europe.
Timelines aside, Archbishop Chaput is basically right about the direction in which Europe is headed. And he’s right that much of the blame falls on all those Europeans who are reluctant to have children. Europe is dying, he says, because not enough Europeans have a stake in the future.
A couple of points he makes, however, might be misinterpreted. And because of the current climate in the Church, many Catholics may draw the wrong conclusions from his remarks. “Islam has a future because Islam believes in children,” he says. Moreover, “Without a transcendent faith that makes life worth living, there’s no reason to have children.”
The mistake—the fatal mistake, really—that many Catholics make is a twofold assumption: first, that Muslims believe in children in the same way that Catholics do; and, second, that the “transcendent faith” of Muslims is similar to the transcendent faith of Catholics. In fact, ever since Vatican II, Catholics have had it drilled into their heads that Islam and Catholicism have much in common. For instance, the Vatican II document Nostra Aetate emphasizes the similarities between the two faiths and glosses over the differences.
But if that’s so—if Muslims share more or less the same view of children and transcendence that Catholics do—then there’s no need to worry overmuch about the future of Europe. One could even argue that Europe would be better off in the hands of a God-fearing, faith-filled, and family-centered people than in the hands of the post-Christian secularists who now hold power.
I don’t think that’s what Archbishop Chaput had in mind. In another part of his talk, he tells young people “to love each other, get married, stay faithful to one another, have lots of children, and raise their children to be men and women of Christian character.” Still, to a Catholic of a certain universalist mindset, words like “Christian character” and “Islamic character” are practically interchangeable, as are terms such as “Christian family values” and “Muslim family values.” So, for the sake of clarity, let’s look a bit more closely at Islamic family values, and test the commonality thesis.
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