William Kilpatrick, Life Site News, March 25, 2020

In a number of talks and statements over the years, Pope Francis has scolded Europeans for their fear of immigrants. He came back to that theme early in March following electoral gains by “anti-immigrant” parties in Italy. According to a Reuters report, “Pope Francis on Sunday expressed concern over national policies dictated by fear.”

On other occasions, Francis has denounced Europeans for their “xenophobia,” thereby suggesting that the fear of immigrants is irrational. But, as a number of polls have revealed, Europeans aren’t anti-immigrant, they’re anti–Muslim immigrant. Europeans appear to have little or no problem with Hindu, Chinese, Filipino, Polish, and West Indian immigrants. If Europeans are “xenophobes” why aren’t they calling for a ban on Hindu and West Indian immigrants?

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A survey by Chatham House shows that the majority of Europeans want a total and permanent halt to Muslim immigration — not Hindu immigration or Chinese immigration. This specificity suggests that the problem lies not with the Italians, French, English, Germans, and Dutch, but with Muslims. Or — more specifically — with something in Muslim culture. That something is Islamic ideology. As Europeans are finally coming to realize, Islamic ideology is thoroughly incompatible with Western values. Indeed the Koran instructs Muslims not to associate with non-Muslims who are regarded as “vile creatures.”

One of the misleading assumptions of our times is that fear is born of ignorance. Its corollary is the belief that increased education or increased familiarity with the “other” will banish fear. For example, after the Italian election results, Cardinal Parolin, the Vatican Secretary of State, said that the Church would have to continue its “work of education.”

But, in fact, Italians along with Germans, French, Brits, Dutch, and so on have been drenched for decades in the kind of education that Cardinal Parolin favors. A large part of the curriculum in European schools is devoted to teaching youngsters to respect different races and cultures. Indeed, many European students are given the distinct impression that other cultures are morally superior to their own.

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{snip} By encouraging people not to be fearful of a real danger, the pope only adds to the danger. For example, attacks on European Jews have risen sharply in recent years. Jews in Europe are fearful once again — not because of some irrational prejudice on their part, but because of the rise of an ideology every bit as anti-Semitic as that fostered by the Nazis.

Jews are not alone in their fears. The victims of Muslim immigrant crime include Christians, Hindus, agnostics, men, women, children, the handicapped, the elderly, and babies in carriages. According to many verses in the Koran, all non-Muslims who have not submitted to the rule of Islam are legitimate targets. Some teen-age victims of Muslim rape gangs report that their abusers quoted the Koran to them in justification of the abuse. Because of mass Muslim migration of the type that Francis favors, thousands of girls have been raped in England alone. Indeed everyone is at increased risk: concert-goers in England, families celebrating Bastille Day in France, shoppers at Christmas markets in Germany, pedestrians in Barcelona, and train and subway passengers all over Europe.

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Are Europeans guilty of an irrational fear as Francis suggests, or is he guilty of an irrational optimism? He never explains why their fear is irrational. And he never explains why his optimism is justified. All he offers are vague assurances that everything will work out once people “encounter” each other in “authentic” ways and engage in cultural “exchange.”

Pope Francis’s injunction to fear not seems biblical at first glance, but it’s not entirely so. Christ tells us to fear not because despite persecutions and hardships he is always with us. He does not, however, enjoin us to invite the persecutors into our midst and then expect that he will save us from the consequences. Persecutions will come but Christ does not command us to facilitate the persecutions.

When he does send his disciples out into fearful situations, he makes sure that they understand the danger and take precautions against it: “Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves” (Mt. 10: 16).

Christ understood that some men were as dangerous as wolves and he wanted his disciples to understand it as well. By contrast, Francis seems oblivious to the danger posed by the lone wolves that mix in with the Muslim migrants coming into Europe — this despite the fact that Islamic State leaders have repeatedly talked of their plans to seed Europe with thousands pf lone-wolf terrorists.

In addition to the lone-wolves, Europe is also filling up with “wolf-packs” — gangs of migrant youth who roam through the streets of towns and cities armed with knives and iron bars, terrorizing all in their path and, in some cases, forcing police to flee. Just last week, police in Duisburg, Germany clashed with a gang of 80 Muslim youths armed with machetes. Does the pope know about Duisburg? Does he know about the 1,400 rapes committed by Muslim gangs in Rotherham? The thousand victims of rape gangs in Telford? The 1,200 sexual assaults committed outside the Cathedral of Cologne on New Year’s Eve 2016?

If he does know — and there is a good chance that he doesn’t — it doesn’t seem to enter into his calculations. Pope Francis, it seems, doesn’t bother with prudential calculations. He has a preconceived narrative about Muslim migration, and anything that doesn’t fit into it is simply ignored.

If, indeed, allowing Islam’s pernicious ideology to flood into Europe is the proper Christian thing to do, then good Christians should follow Francis’s advice. But Francis has never made the case for mass Muslim immigration. He tells us that Christ wants it, but offers scant evidence that this is so. There is a much stronger case, backed by history, scripture, and common sense that Christian are called upon to resist the Islamic invasion of Europe.