Cdl. Marx: Europe Should Keep Accepting Muslims

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BERLIN (ChurchMilitant.com) - Cardinal Reinhard Marx, archbishop of Munich and head of the German Bishops Conference, is running damage control in Germany brought on by unrestrained Muslim immigration, which he and fellow bishops promoted.

Cardinal Marx, who is also chairman of the conference groupings of German and European Union bishops, spoke at a Catholic forum in Berlin Sunday urging Europe to remain open to Muslim immigrants.

He urged the continent to avoid falling back into a nationalist mindset and building fences between the rich and the poor — drawing a comparison to the U.S. border with Mexico.

The cardinal, still advocating an open-border policy across Europe, remarked that the trend of renationalization deeply worries him.

The problem in Germany stems from the roughly one million Muslim refugees that have poured into the country from the Middle East. Many of these are undocumented, and the majority are male. The excessive immigration of these refugees into Germany was spurred on by the German bishops.

The Muslim refugees, many from Syria, made national news last month by causing random violence (see video).

At the meeting, Reiner Haseloff, spokesman for Germany's Christian Democratic Union (CDU), warned, "It should be quite clear that without a significant reduction of the influx of refugees, it will be unmanageable this year."

German state leaders are asking for $5–7 billion simply to pay for the integration of those refugees already there.

Germany's chancellor, Angela Merkel, is facingbacklash from the German populace unhappy with the government's immigration policy that brought in so many refugees. Because of the ensuing chaos — particularly the hundreds of sexual assault cases perpetrated by migrants on New Year's Eve — 40 percent of Germans are now demanding her resignation.

But Cdl. Marx is urging Chancellor Merkel's coalition, the Social Democratic Party, to "now stand together" in resisting voter disquiet, and demanding that her oalition explain specifically how they plan to take care of the refugees, of whom he said there are "no simple solutions."

He concluded by noting that such countries as Poland, which have refused to take in their quota of refugees allocated by the European Union, be urged to do so.

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