Pastor praises ‘table of encounter and friendship’…
‘Table of Abraham’: Washington Novus Ordo Parish Hosts Interreligious ‘Peace Meal’
On the Thursday before Palm Sunday, Mar. 26, 2026, Holy Redeemer ‘Catholic’ Church in Washington, D.C., hosted what it called an “interfaith peace meal for Jews, Muslims and Christians”.
The official title of the event was “Celebration at the Table of Abraham”, although ‘Table of Apostasy’ would have been more appropriate, considering the heresies that were dished up there. The dinner event was co-sponsored by Masjid Muhammad, a local Sunni mosque.
Here are two news reports on the event, both of them written by the same author, Mark Zimmerman:
- In time of war, Holy Redeemer Parish in Washington hosts interfaith peace meal for Jews, Muslims and Christians (Catholic Standard)
- In a time of war, Catholic parish’s interfaith peace meal celebrates ‘our oneness in faith’ (OSV News)
To see interesting photos from the event, please check out both of these links.
‘Beanie man’ in the title image above is the pastor of Holy Redeemer, the Rev. David A. Bava. His boss is ‘Cardinal’ Robert McElroy, the Novus Ordo archbishop of Washington, D.C. There is no doubt that McElroy is pleased with the fraternal supper for the ‘Abrahamic’ religions.
A promotional flyer for the event was posted on Facebook. Here is what it looks like:
(image source: Facebook)
Since Jews can only eat what is kosher and Muslims’ diet is restricted to what is halal, the promotional flyer for the event duly notes: “dinner menu prepared to food restrictions”.
The painting featured in the promo is clearly meant to depict Abraham’s hospitality towards the “three men” that appeared to him (see Gen 18:1-15), of whom St. Paul says they were angels, and who “symbolically signified the Holy Trinity”, as Fr. Cornelius a Lapide writes in his commentary on Genesis. In connection with the interreligious ‘peace meal’, however, the three men are clearly meant to represent the three ‘Abrahamic’ religions of Christianity (Catholicism), Judaism, and Islam. What a blasphemy!
To see how opposed this event and its underlying theology is to the real Roman Catholic religion from before Vatican II, let’s have a look at what the two reports linked above say about it.
In the wake of the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran, “I felt called … to celebrate our oneness in faith, going back to Abraham”, the Rev. David Bava (‘beanie man’) is quoted as saying in the OSV News report, and there we have the first egregious error already. Catholics, Talmudic Jews, and Moslems are not one in Faith, and that should be obvious to anyone who has his wits about him. Although all three may profess to share the Faith of Abraham, no more than one of these three distinct religious groups can possibly hold it.
As our Blessed Lord Jesus Christ made clear to the Jews who were boasting of being the seed of Abraham, it is not the fleshly link that makes one a true heir of this father in Faith but precisely the spiritual link: “They answered, and said to him: Abraham is our father. Jesus saith to them: If you be the children of Abraham, do the works of Abraham. Abraham your father rejoiced that he might see my day: he saw it, and was glad” (Jn 8:39,56; cf. Jn 6:64); “For you are all the children of God by faith, in Christ Jesus. And if you be Christ’s, then are you the seed of Abraham, heirs according to the promise” (Gal 3:26,29).
In an encyclical letter written in 1919, Pope Benedict XV explains: “Abraham is called the father of all believers because of his faith and obedience which are an example for all…” (Encyclical In Hac Tanta, n. 24). Unlike in our ecumenical and interreligious age, the term “believer” in Catholic documents of ages past referred exclusively to those who possess the true Faith, not simply to anyone who happens to have a religious belief. Hence St. Paul the Apostle explicitly calls those who do not believe in the Gospel the “children of unbelief” (Eph 5:6), not excepting the apostate Jews, telling the Romans that “because of unbelief they were broken off” (Rom 11:20; cf. Mk 6:6).
Abraham is only the father of all true believers, then, not the father of all religious people who claim him as their patriarch.
A typical Novus Ordo objection that is bound to be made now is that although Jews, Muslims, and Christians are not ‘one in Faith’ properly speaking, they are nevertheless ‘one’ in their belief concerning God’s calling of Abraham. But while they may all have that same belief, this fact does not make them one in Faith; for Faith, as Pope Benedict XV pointed out so memorably, cannot be dissected into elements: “Such is the nature of Catholicism that it does not admit of more or less, but must be held as a whole or as a whole rejected” (Encyclical Ad Beatissimi, n. 24).
In the OSV News report, Zimmerman relates further:
The priest read words recited by Pope Francis during the pontiff’s 2021 trip to Iraq, as he visited Ur, the birthplace of Abraham, who is regarded as a common father in faith for Jews, Muslims and Christians: “It is fitting that we come together here, back to our origins, to the sources of God’s work, to the birth of our religions, to pray together for peace as children of Abraham.”
Father Bava then said, “This meal is held in that same spirit.”
Our rebuttal of Francis’ scandalous remarks in Iraq can be found here:
Of course it gets better; that is, worse:
“We come to this table as Abraham’s children — Jewish, Muslim, Catholic — to offer one another that same welcome,” Father Bava told attendees. “We do not erase our differences. We bring them as gifts. We come to learn from one another, and to share what is most precious to us: the faith that God is one, that God is merciful, and that God desires peace among all peoples.”
Ever since Vatican II, religious differences suddenly became ‘gifts’ to be shared! What an absurdity this is can be demonstrated just from reason alone, for if God has revealed only one religion, then that religion alone is true, and all others must necessarily not only be false but also wholly displeasing to God!
As Christ told the Samaritan woman at the well: “God is a spirit; and they that adore him, must adore him in spirit and in truth” (Jn 4:24). Our Lord didn’t go around teaching about the immense ‘gifts’ that false religions or false worship bring; instead He stated bluntly: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No man cometh to the Father, but by me” (Jn 14:6); and further: “He that believeth and is baptized, shall be saved: but he that believeth not shall be condemned” (Mk 16:16).
To a Catholic, God’s oneness is indeed most precious; but no less precious to him is the fact that this One God is also Three Persons, and he values no less all the other dogmas, for the same Triune God has revealed all of them. What ‘Fr.’ Bava is doing there is simply reducing the three religions to a lowest common denominator and celebrating the little that remains. And yet even those few beliefs held in common are not quite what they seem to be, since, for example, for the Muslim, God’s oneness precludes His being a Trinity of Persons; etc.
In the OSV News report, the Rev. Bava is quoted as saying at the end: “We go from this table as pilgrims on the same road. We will walk it together.” Once again such a comment reveals the apostate theology that underlies such events. No, Catholics and non-Catholics do not travel the same road, much less are they making a ‘pilgrimage’ to the same destination. Christ alone is the Way, and no one can use that Way who does not even believe in Him! “How then shall they call on him, in whom they have not believed? Or how shall they believe him, of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear, without a preacher?” (Rom 10:14).
And who is preaching the Gospel to these souls so unhappily caught up in the darkness of Judaism and Islam? Certainly not beanie man!
“Then the priest noted how St. Francis of Assisi in 1219 held a dialogue with a Muslim sultan in Egypt during the Crusades…”, the report notes further. How ironic! Because St. Francis most certainly did not ‘dialogue’ in the sense in which that is understood today. Rather, he proselytized:
The Sultan Meledin asked him who sent them, and for what purpose they came? [Saint] Francis answered with courageous firmness: “We are not sent by men, but it is the Most High who sends me, in order that I may teach you and your people the way of salvation, by pointing out to you the truths of the Gospel.” He immediately preached to him, with great fervor, the dogma of One God in Three Persons, and the Lord Jesus Christ, the Saviour of mankind.
(Congregation of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri, The Life of S. Francis of Assisi [New York, NY: D. & J. Sandlier & Co., 1889], pp. 197-198)
Saint Francis wasn’t exactly your typical dialoguing ecumenical buddy!
It goes without saying that the interreligious dinner on March 26 included readings from the demonic Koran as well as from divinely-inspired Sacred Scripture: “After a candle was lit, representatives of the three faiths read passages from their sacred books,” Zimmerman writes in the Catholic Standard. We suspect that 2 Corinthians 6:14-15 was not one of the chosen passages: “Bear not the yoke with unbelievers. For what participation hath justice with injustice? Or what fellowship hath light with darkness? And what concord hath Christ with Belial? Or what part hath the faithful with the unbeliever?”
“The readings and format for the gathering were drawn from USCCB resources, Vatican II documents and the interreligious witness of recent popes”, the Catholic Standard report notes. Now that is quite revealing, isn’t it: It’s all based on Vatican II and what followed it. We call it the Vatican II religion for a reason!
There is one more tidbit from the Catholic Standard report we don’t want to fail to mention: “And the leader of the Nation’s Mosque expressed gratitude toward Father Bava and Holy Redeemer Parish for opening up the lower church hall for that community’s Friday Jumu’ah prayers while construction has been underway at the nearby mosque. … After the meal, Imam Shareef led the Muslim participants in night prayer.”
Is this surprising? Of course not. If religious differences are ‘gifts’, why shouldn’t people of other religions be allowed to bring their ‘gifts’ into the parish halls?
In one of his magisterial documents against Freemasonry, Pope Leo XIII noted that “the great error of this age” is “that a regard for religion should be held as an indifferent matter, and that all religions are alike” and warned: “This manner of reasoning is calculated to bring about the ruin of all forms of religion, and especially of the Catholic religion, which, as it is the only one that is true, cannot, without great injustice, be regarded as merely equal to other religions” (Encyclical Humanum Genus, n. 16).
Indeed, at the March 26 ‘peace meal’ event at Holy Redeemer, all three religions were treated de facto as objectively equal. The spiritual ruin this occasions in souls is horrendous, not to mention how gravely it offends the only true God.
Title image source: composite with elements from Catholic Standard (Mark Zimmerman), themuslimtimes.info, and Facebook
Licenses: fair use
;
No Comments
Be the first to start a conversation