by Giulio Meotti
Benjamin Franklin is credited with creating the expression “nothing in life is inevitable except death and taxes”. Today, however, to a cardinal candidate to become Pope, the Islamization of Europe is also inevitable.
I met Cardinal Christoph Schönborn. I think it was in 2004. We were in Rimini and I had the opportunity to talk to him for an hour. We talked about relativism, Europe, the cultural crisis. A cultured cardinal, pro Israel, aware of the fracture we were experiencing although at the time it was only the beginning. This is why I was surprised by what Schönborn, Archbishop of Vienna, a former student of Joseph Ratzinger and today one of the cardinals most admired by the reigning Pontiff, just stated to a French magazine. According to him, faced with the growth of Islam in many historically Christian nations, the decline of Europe should be considered “inevitable.”
“We have to accept the decline of Europe, it is an undeniable continental movement,” Schönborn told Famille Chrétienne. “In 20 years, the European population will not be the same as today and it is not the same as it was 50 years ago. This is inevitable, because of the declining birth rate in Europe, immigration and the growing presence of Islam.”
What does “inevitable” mean?
“Islam can conquer France, Belgium, Sweden, England,” Ayaan Hirsi Ali declares this week to Spiked. The former head of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, Hans-Georg Maaßen, has warned that “Europeans will succumb to Islam.” And the famous Spanish novelist Arturo Perez Reverte asks: “Will I live to see Europe transformed into an Islamic continent?”.
But if Schönborn says so, is that a premonition or admission of the ongoing submission? Or is it the implicit acceptance of the proposal of the famous German architect Joachim Reinig, who told the Catholic newspaper Tagespost that to integrate Islam in Europe we need to demolish churches and replace them with “more visible mosques”?
I was surprised to discover so much defeatism about Europe while the Pope was engaged in “interreligious dialogue” in Indonesia (a country that is 90 percent Islamic and not at all a symbol of “harmony”), because the tone of Schönborn’s previous interview with Der Standard was very different: “Take a look at the Viennese schools and you will see how the demographic developments of Christian children and Muslim children are divergent. This is a serious issue. There is no shortage of Islamic voices that say that Europe is a ripe fruit for Islam.” And what a scandal that had generated.
Schönborn’s extreme realism surely derives from the situation in his city. The Krone Zeitung published shocking data: “In 2046, one in three Viennese will be Muslim.”
The “feeling of dispossession,” which was the sad prerogative of the Jews until the last century, has spread throughout Europe.
But to say that Europe is a “ripe fruit” is not equivalent to pronouncing that we Europeans must accept Islamization and decline as “inevitable.”
We should listen to Mosab Hassan Youssef, the son of one of the founders of Hamas, who said to Le Figaro: “Islamism is a global phenomenon that advances hidden under a victim mentality, that invades Europe and that will be very difficult to get rid of. Personally, I want Europe to resist.”
“Resisting” is very different from “inevitable”.
How sad to see the Vatican surrendering on Europe.
The Vatican now considers Europe’s Islamization “inevitable” | Israel National News – Arutz Sheva