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Christians cannot pray like or with Muslims, says Cardinal Gerhard Müller, former prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
Müller, the former archbishop of Regensburg, Germany, made the comment during a reflection in Verona on the theme “Prayer: A gift from God,” telling hundreds of listeners that “the faithful of Islam are not adopted children of God by the grace of Christ, but only his subjects.”
Therefore, “We cannot pray like or with Muslims,” he said.
“Their faith in God and his self-revelation is not only different from the Christian faith in God, but even denies its formula, claiming that God does not have a Son who, as the eternal Word of the Father, is a divine person and, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, is the One and Trinitarian God.”
He went on to explain that Muslims can pray only to a distant God, submitting to his will as an unknown destiny.
“Their prayer expresses the blind subordination to the dominant will of God. The Christian instead prays that the will of God be done, a will that we do in liberty and that does not make us slaves, but free children of God.”
Müller explained that unlike people of other religions, Christians “do not view their neighbours, who do not want or cannot believe in God, as opponents or victims of the Zeitgeist to be pitied.
“Instead, Christians see them as brothers whose Creator and Father is the only God, the One who seeks them out.
“They [Christians] offer an honest dialogue regarding the question that determines the meaning of being in general and of human existence in particular, because they feel united to them in the search for a better world.”
For Müller, “Even Islam has faith in the one God, but which is understood as a natural faith in the existence of God and not as faith as a virtue infused with hope and love, which makes us sharers in the life of God, ensuring that we remain in him and he in us.”
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