EWTN Whitewashes Sharia-Canon Law Equivalence in Service of Religious Indifferentism
EWTN News publishes a purportedly explanatory piece on the distinction between Catholic canon law and Islamic sharia, occasioned by Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed’s repeated equation of the two legal systems. The article cites David Long, a professor at the putatively Catholic University of America, who characterizes canon law as governing merely an “identifiable ecclesial community” while describing sharia as directing “life according to God’s will.” Long advocates resisting both “blanket reassurance and blanket suspicion” regarding sharia, insisting that “specific proposals deserve scrutiny on their merits.” The piece frames the controversy as a matter of constitutional religious liberty, omitting entirely the rights of Christ the King and the duty of the State to profess the true religion. This article is not an explanation but a capitulation: it surrenders the divine origin and universal jurisdiction of canon law to the level of a private sectarian code, placing it on par with the legal fabric of a false religion spawned in darkness.
The Diabolical Equivalence: Reducing Divine Law to Human Statute
The very premise of the “comparison” is a concession to the error of indifferentism, condemned by Pope Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors (1864): “Man may, in the observance of any religion whatever, find the way of eternal salvation” (Error 16); “Protestantism is nothing more than another form of the same true Christian religion” (Error 18). By treating canon law and sharia as two species of the same genus—“socio-ecclesial governance”—EWTN and its expert witness implicitly deny that the Codex Iuris Canonici participates in the very legislative authority of Christ the King, Rex regum et Dominus dominantium (Apoc. 19:16). Canon law is not the internal rulebook of a voluntary association; it is the lex ecclesiastica binding all baptized persons by divine institution, deriving its force from the potestas iurisdictionis conferred by Christ on Peter and his successors: “Whatsoever thou shalt bind upon earth, it shall be bound also in heaven” (Matt. 16:19). Sharia, by contrast, is the fabrication of a false prophet, a system that denies the Trinity, the Incarnation, and the Redemption. To juxtapose them as comparable “religious legal systems” is to commit intellectual apostasy.
The Professor’s Naturalism: “Ecclesial Community” vs. the Kingdom of Christ
David Long defines canon law as governing “an identifiable ecclesial community and orders the Church’s life and mission.” This is the language of sociological reductionism, not Catholic theology. Pope Pius XI in Quas Primas (1925) teaches that Christ’s kingdom “extends not only to Catholic nations… but His reign encompasses also all non-Christians, so that most truly the entire human race is subject to the authority of Jesus Christ.” The potestas legislativa of the Church is not limited to her visible members; it extends to all matters necessary for the salvation of souls, including the right to legislate on marriage, education, and the public profession of the faith. By restricting canon law to an “ecclesial community,” Long adopts the Masonic-liberal error condemned in the Syllabus: “The Church is not a true and perfect society, entirely free… but it appertains to the civil power to define what are the rights of the Church” (Error 19). He renders the Church a societas privata subject to the secular state—the very essence of laicism which Pius XI calls “the plague that poisons human society.”
Sharia as “Life According to God’s Will”: Blasphemy Sanitized
Long’s description of sharia as directing “life according to God’s will” is a theological obscenity. Allah is not God; the Muslim god is an idol, a unitary monad who “begets not, nor is he begotten” (Qur’an 112:3), explicitly denying the Father and the Son (1 John 2:23). St. John Damascene, the last of the Greek Fathers, calls Islam the “forerunner of the Antichrist” and a “superstition” (De Haeresibus, 101). The Syllabus condemns the proposition: “The civil liberty of every form of worship… conduce more easily to corrupt the morals and minds of the people, and to propagate the pest of indifferentism” (Error 79). Yet Long and EWTN propagate precisely this pest, granting sharia a theological dignity it cannot possess. Sharia is not “law” in the Thomistic sense—lex est ordinatio rationis ad bonum commune—because its finis is not the true common good (God) but submission to a false revelation. It is a system of iniquitas legalis, mandating the death penalty for apostasy, the subjugation of women, and the perpetual jihad against the Dar al-Harb. To speak of its “fiqh” as “Islamic jurisprudence” without condemnation is to legitimize the instruments of a satanic counter-church.
The Heresy of Religious Liberty: “Freedom of Your Religion”
El-Sayed’s refrain—“we live in America, where you should have the freedom of your religion”—echoes the condemned doctrine of libertas religionis. Pope Gregory XVI in Mirari Vos (1832) calls it “that absurd and erroneous proposition… liberty of conscience and worship is each man’s personal right.” Pius IX in Quanta Cura (1864) anathematizes “the liberty of conscience and worship… as a right.” Leo XIII in Libertas (1888) teaches: “The Church… cannot renounce her duty of proclaiming the truth… nor can she admit that error has the same rights as truth.” The article’s uncritical citation of El-Sayed’s claim that “the Constitution protects the right to live by canon law while barring anyone from enforcing it on others” inverts the divine order: the State has the duty to enforce the canonical discipline of the Church (e.g., Sunday rest, marriage laws, Catholic education) as an ordinance of the lex naturalis and lex divina. The Americanist heresy—condemned by Leo XIII in Testem Benevolentiae (1899)—is here recycled by a Muslim politician and validated by a “Catholic” professor.
The Civil Courts’ Complicity: Enforcing Islamic Contracts
The article cites a 2020 Maryland case enforcing a financial stipulation in an Islamic marriage contract “if it satisfied secular contract principles.” This is the pluralistic jurisprudence of the Masonic state: it treats the nikah (a contract dissoluble at the husband’s whim, permitting polygamy and child marriage) as a valid civil instrument. Canon law, by contrast, holds marriage to be a sacramentum indissoluble by any human power (Can. 1141 1917 Code). The civil court’s willingness to enforce sharia-based contracts while ignoring the canonical form of marriage (Can. 1094-1107) demonstrates the abomination of desolation standing in the holy place: the secular power usurps the Church’s exclusive jurisdiction over the matrimonial bond of the baptized. Long’s remark that courts “can recognize legal arrangements made for religious reasons without deciding whether a religion’s teachings are true” is the positivist abdication of justice: iustitia est constans et perpetua voluntas ius suum cuique tribuendi (Ulpian). Truth is the prerequisite of justice; a court that enforces the contracts of a false religion participates in the propagation of error.
“Blanket Reassurance and Blanket Suspicion”: The Modernist Method
Long’s concluding dictum—“I would… resist both blanket reassurance and blanket suspicion when it comes to applying religious-law elements in political discourse, including sharia. Specific proposals deserve scrutiny on their merits”—is the via media of Modernism, condemned by St. Pius X in Pascendi Dominici Gregis (1907) and Lamentabili Sane Exitu (1907). The Modernist “does not deny, but ‘reinterprets’; does not affirm, but ‘dialogues’.” The Church has already scrutinized Islam on its merits and found it wanting: “The faith of Christ is in opposition to human reason and divine revelation not only is not useful, but is even hurtful to the perfection of man” (Syllabus, Error 6, applied a fortiori to Islam). There is no “merit” in a proposal derived from sharia; every such proposal is an offense against the prima tabula of the Decalogue. The only Catholic response is reprobatio totalis: “We must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29).
The Silence on the Social Kingship: The Gravest Omission
Nowhere does the article mention the Social Reign of Christ the King, the very purpose of canon law in the temporal order. Pius XI instituted the Feast of Christ the King precisely “to address the needs of the present times and provide a special remedy against the plague that poisons human society… the secularism of our times, so-called laicism” (Quas Primas). Canon law is the lex regia of this Kingdom, binding princes and peoples alike. The Syllabus condemns: “The State… is endowed with a certain right not circumscribed by any limits” (Error 39); “The civil law prevails” over canon law (Error 42). EWTN’s article, by framing the issue as a dispute between two “religious legal systems” within a neutral public square, surrenders the potestas indirecta in temporalibus of the Church—the right to demand that the State legislate in conformity with divine law. This is not journalism; it is the lavender mafia of the conciliar sect polishing the chains of the faithful.
EWTN: The Propaganda Arm of the Neo-Church
EWTN, founded by the charismatic Mother Angelica, has long served as the vox clamantis in deserto of the novus ordo establishment. Its “news” division consistently promotes the hermeneutic of continuity, the ecumenism of return, and the religious liberty of Dignitatis Humanae—all condemned by the perennial Magisterium. The byline “Daniel Payne, senior editor at Catholic News Agency” reveals the incestuous network of the conciliar media: CNA, EWTN, National Catholic Register—all funded by the same structures occupying the Vatican, all propagating the same novus ordo religion. The article’s URL (ewtnnews.com) and its placement in the “World” section signal its target audience: the conservative Novus Ordo laity who crave “orthodox” validation for their assimilation into the Masonic republic. They are fed a diet of natural law talk divorced from supernatural faith, producing the Catholicism without the Cross that St. Pius X warned against: “They aim at such a development of dogmas as appears to be their corruption” (Lamentabili, Intro).
Conclusion: The Only Law Is the Law of Christ
The article is a masterpiece of diabolical disorientation. It takes the divine constitution of the Church—canon law—and reduces it to a private code for a “community,” while elevating the demonic legislation of Islam to a “way of life according to God’s will.” It quotes a “professor” who speaks the language of the City of Man and a politician who weaponizes the First Amendment against the First Commandment. The integral Catholic faith knows no “dialogue” with sharia, no “scrutiny on merits,” no “religious liberty” for error. It knows only Christus vincit, Christus regnat, Christus imperat. The 1917 Code (Can. 1324) commands: “All the faithful must strive to bring about the reign of Christ in society.” EWTN’s article strives to bring about the reign of indifferentism. Non est hic Deus nisi Dominus noster (4 Kings 19:19). The canon law of the true Church remains the lex aeterna participated; sharia remains the lex mortis. No amount of “explainers” from the anti-church can alter this reality.
Source:
EWTN News explains: What’s the difference between canon law and sharia law? (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 02.11.2026