MOVING ON:

Church to remove Moor-slayer saint (BBC, 5/03/04)

A statue in a Spanish cathedral showing St James slicing the heads off Moorish invaders is to be removed to avoid causing offence to Muslims.

Cathedral authorities in the pilgrim city of Santiago de Compostela, on Spain's north west coast, plan to move the statue to the museum.

Among the reasons for the move is to avoid upsetting the "sensitivities of other ethnic groups".

The statue of St James "the Moor-slayer" is expected to be replaced by one depicting the calmer image of St James "the Pilgrim", by the same 18th century artist, Jose Gambino.

The Saracen-slaying image of St James, or Santiago in Spanish, is a symbol of the fight between Christianity and Islam and the reconquest of Spain from eight centuries of Moorish rule before 1492.

The saint is said to have appeared to Christian troops fighting Moorish army at the Battle of Clavijo in 844, the crusaders rallying to the cry of "Santiago y cierra Espana" - "St James, we will reconquer Spain".

Until Brother Miller mentioned it on the radio the other day, I'd not known that the name Iago derived from thence in Shakespeare's Othello.

If this news is disheartening though, it's good to see the Vatican showing more sense, Vatican rebuff to Spanish Muslims (Giles Tremlett, May 3, 2004, The Guardian):

The Vatican will not allow Muslims to pray once more in the Mezquita, the former mosque that is now the cathedral of Cordoba, telling them they must "accept history" and not try to "take revenge" on the Catholic church.

"We, too, want to live in peace with persons of other religions," Archbishop Michael Fitzgerald, president of the Pontifical Council for Inter-religious Dialogue, told the Vatican's AsiaNews agency. "However, we don't want to be pushed, manipulated and go against the very rules of our faith."

Mgr Fitzgerald criticised the authorities of the southern Spanish city for lobbying to have the building, once one of the world's biggest mosques, opened to Muslim prayer.

"[They] have not the necessary theological sensitivity to understand the church's position," he said.

He claimed Spanish Muslims who had been publicly lobbying for the right to pray had yet to make a formal request to the Vatican.

The archbishop said the Vatican had been careful not to demand similar rights at mosques which were once Catholic churches - though he acknowledged that Pope John Paul II had prayed at a mosque at Damascus in Syria.

"The Holy Father visited the Ummayade mosque in Damascus, praying in front of the tomb of St John the Baptist. But he did not ask to celebrate mass," he said. "One has to accept history and go forward."

That last pretty much sums up the problem with Islamicism, an inability to get over it.

Posted by Orrin Judd at May 5, 2004 2:36 PM