Just what does the Catholic Church teach with regard to the challenge presented by Islam?
Putting the question like that, I am aware, points to the answer. Islam is a “challenge”, not quite a threat, but certainly something that needs to be faced, and absolutely not something that is going to go away if we only ignore it.
The documents of the Second Vatican Council, which never mentioned Communism by name, even at the height of the Cold War, did address Islam, though really only in passing. It seems to me that Gaudium et Spes is an optimistic document that assumes the march of the Enlightenment is unstoppable. That may seemed to have been the case back in 1965, but it certainly does not look like the case now. Large parts of the world seem to have turned their back on rationality. The Islamic world, which never, please note, experienced the Enlightenment, is not quietly falling into line with the post-Enlightenment world.
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