While not one I've seen very often, this is a quote I was curious about enough to look into, and it may be worth it to share my findings.
The quote in question comes from Gary Miller, also known as Abdulahad Omar (or Abdul-Ahad Omar), a Muslim apologist. He has used this quote multiple times in different lectures, which he claims comes from the Catholic Encyclopedia. The exact way he gives it varies, however. Here are three versions I've found from him:
"While many theories have been offered to explain the
Quran's origin, "today no sensible person believes these theories. This
leaves the Christian in some difficulty," in the words of the NEW
CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA."
(transcription of "A Concise Reply to Christianity" from 1983)
"In fact,
there exists a very interesting reference concerning this subject in the
New Catholic Encyclopedia. In an article under the subject of the
Quran, the Catholic Church states:
"Over the centuries, many
theories have been offered as to the origin of the Quran... Today no
sensible man accepts any of these theories!!"
Now here is the
age-old Catholic Church, which has been around for so many centuries,
denying these futile attempts to explain away the Quran."
(transcription of "The Amazing Quran" from 1992)
"In the New Catholic Encyclopedia in the article on the subject of
Quran, the church says that over the centuries many theories have been
offered as to the origin of the Quran. And in their own words they say
today no sensible man accepts any of these theories. This leaves the
Christian in some difficulty."
(another version of The Amazing Quran I found; this was not transcribed so I typed up what he said manually)
He seems to have made this claim in other lectures, but these three examples of him offering this quote should be sufficient. The question, of course, is whether this is accurate.
To make a long story short, the quote is false. Nothing like this is found in the New Catholic Encyclopedia. For those who want the long story to say long, continue reading.
As we can see, exactly what the quote allegedly says varies in these different lectures of his; at one point he says "today no sensible person" but in the others he says "today no sensible man". In the first he claims "This leaves the Christian in some difficulty" is part of the quote, and (depending on how one interprets his statement) possibly the third version of the quote, but this is left off in the second and later on in the document he says, with no indication it is a quote, "Of course, such a statement by the Catholic Church leaves the everyday Christian in some difficulty."
Regardless, all of them make the claim that the New Catholic Encyclopedia says that while there have been various theories offered to explain the Quran's origin, today no one sensible accepts these theories, with the first (and possibly the third) saying that the New Catholic Encyclopedia says this leaves the Christian in some difficulty.
Now, this post will not be examining other arguments made in those writings/lectures of his; there has been much back-and-forth on the other points he raises, and there is nothing I can add to them. If someone wants to see a Christian response to Muslim arguments, they could look at something like Answering Islam. The point of this post is simply to examine this particular quote, as I was curious about it and felt it would be useful to share the information online. While Miller himself seems to have disappeared from the scene, some of his writings/lectures are still available, and I have also seen a few people make use of this alleged quote of his in their own writing. Hence this post.
Before discussing the quote he alleges itself, an oddity is his idea on what this alleged quote, if it were true, means for Catholicism or Christianity. He seems to regard this as some kind of formal judgment of the Catholic Church. In the transcribed version of The Amazing Quran, he goes on to say:
"Of course, such a statement by the Catholic Church leaves the everyday
Christian in some difficulty. It just may be that he has his own ideas
as to the origin of the Quran, but as a single member of the Church, he
cannot really act upon his own theory. Such an action would be contrary
to the obedience, allegiance and loyalty which the Church demands. By
virtue of his membership, he must accept what the Catholic Church
declares without question and establish its teachings as part of his
everyday routine. So, in essence, if the Catholic Church as a whole is
saying, "Do not listen to these unconfirmed reports about the Quran,"
then what can be said about the Islamic point of view? If even
non-Muslims are admitting that there is something to the Quran -
something that has to be acknowledged - then why are people so stubborn
and defensive and hostile when Muslims advance the very same theory?
This is certainly something for those with a mind to contemplate -
something to ponder for those of
understanding!"
What should be "pondered by those of understanding" is how inaccurate the above paragraph is. Even if the New Catholic Encyclopedia made this claim, it was not a proclamation of the Catholic Church; the New Catholic Encyclopedia was not even directly made by the Catholic Church, but rather the Catholic University of America. Now, it is true the New Catholic Encyclopedia has an imprimatur and nihil obstat, which grants it a certain level of authority, but what a nihil obstat actually does is often misunderstood. More recent works printed with it try to clarify the matter by saying what it is, such as: "The Nihil Obstat and Imprimatur are official declarations that a book or pamphlet is free of doctrinal or moral error. No implication is contained therein that those who have granted the Nihil Obstat and the Imprimatur agree with the contents, opinions or statements expressed." It is not a statement that everything in it is true, or that everything in it must be believed by a Catholic; it is a statement that, in the judgment of the person who granted the imprimatur/nihil obstat, everything in it can be believed by a Catholic.
So his idea that disagreeing with such a statement would somehow "be contrary to the obedience, allegiance and loyalty which the Church demands" is egregiously wrong, as simply having a nihil obstat does not require obedience. Of course, perhaps I am giving him too much credit even on that; he may not have even based his statements on existence of the nihil obstat and may have simply seen "New Catholic Encyclopedia" and thought it was some kind of authoritative statement based simply on that. But even if the Catholic Church formally declared that all Catholics must accept that the Quran has no human origin or else face excommunication, it still would not leave any non-Catholic Christian in difficulty because they don't accept the Catholic Church's authority to begin with.
So it is clear that Gary Miller has ignorance of Catholicism due to him being unaware the New Catholic Encyclopedia saying something is in no way a proclamation of the Catholic Church, and he appears ignorant of Christianity in general given his apparent assumption that the "everyday Christian" (which obviously includes a lot of non-Catholics) considers themselves dependent on the opinions of the Catholic Church.
But now we finally come to the question of whether the quote is there or not. It appears to not be there. While he was vague in the other cases about where it is found, in one of the above quotations he said it was in the article on the Quran. There is an article on it (though it is spelled Koran, which was the more common spelling back then), but one does not find this quote or anything like it.
Yes, that's right, this talking point he apparently considered so strong that he brought it up in multiple lectures is not true at all. One may see for themselves here (requires free account) on pages 249-254 of Volume 8. I have read through it and do not see anything similar to the quote he offers. I am pretty confident I am not missing anything, given the fact that even searching for words he offers in the quote do not turn up anything relevant. So the claim this is found in the article on the Quran is false.
Although he specifically said it was in the article on the Quran, I considered the possibility it might be somewhere else in the many volumes of the New Catholic Encyclopedia. Just to try to be sure, I went to every volume of it on archive.org and put in a search for "Koran". I was unable to find anything resembling the quote. It is not impossible that I overlooked one by accident, or due to a scanning error it simply wasn't caught by the search function... but honestly, this is probably giving him too much credit anyway, because as noted he does specifically say it is in the article on the Quran.
Nevertheless, again to try to be thorough, I opted to look at the original Catholic Encyclopedia's article on the Quran (spelled Koran), which does not have the quote. Just in case he was mixing up the New Catholic Encyclopedia with the "Twentieth Century Encyclopedia of Catholicism" which came out in the mid 20th century, I looked at that. Volume 143 (68th volume in order of publication, though) is devoted to Islam, or as it calls it, "Mohammedanism". If it matters, this does have a nihil obstat and imprimatur (nihil obstat by "Daniel Duivesteijin, S.T.D., Censor Deputatus" and the imprimatur by "E. Morrough, Vicarius Generalis")" and explains what the nihil obstat is, saying "The Nihil obstat and Imprimatur are a declaration that a book or pamphlet is considered to be free from doctrinal or moral error. It is not implied that those who have granted the Nihil obstat and Imprimatur agree with the contents, opinions or statements expressed."
Now, this work is 174 pages long, and reading through every page just to try to find the quote would be cumbersome. But looking at the table of contents, it says pages 29-36 is devoted to "The Koran", and in the Sources and Formulation of Belief section the Quran (listed as Koran) is on page 82-83. The quote is not found in either that I can see. So that seems out as well.
Thus, it is blatantly not in the article he claimed he was quoting, nor does it seem to be found anywhere in the New Catholic Encyclopedia, nor in the (somewhat similarly titled) Twentieth Century Encyclopedia of Catholicism, nor even in the original Catholic Encyclopedia's article on the Quran. In truth perhaps simply seeing it was not in the article he quoted was sufficient, but I wanted to try to be charitable and therefore attempted the others.
So, where did this false quote come from? While it is of course possible Gary Miller made it up, it is also possible he heard of this quote from someone else and decided to parrot it without bothering to verify it. Whatever the reason is, this is not just a one-off error; he made this repeatedly in multiple speeches across a period spanning years. Thus no Christian is in "some difficulty" over this quote; the one in "some difficulty" is Miller for repeatedly offering it despite it being, by all appearances, completely false.
While perhaps this is a minor point in the grand scheme of any arguments he made, why should someone take his other claims particularly seriously (including some other quotes I noticed he offered without clear sources) if he can't be trusted to get this quote right?
This isn't a quote I've seen that often outside of him, but given the time I spent trying to find it, I thought it might be useful to post this for the benefit of others.