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There are many holy names connected to Bérulle's Oratory of Jesus : St. Vincent de Paul; St. Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort; St. John Eudes; Charles de Condren; Jean-Jacques Olier; Jean-Baptiste Massillon; in recent times, Louis Bouyer.  Only some of these were Oratorians proper, yet they all had some connection to Bérulle and his spirituality. But, as is ever the case with institutions of men, there were bad apples in the Oratory as well.  (Bérulle's own history reveals a bad apple among the Carmelites: Francisco de la Madre de Dios, superior general of the Carmelites from 1600 to 1607, who had a vendetta against Bérulle, and continually sought to strip him of his authority over the Carmelites in France.)  Here, I want to point out two of these Oratorian bad apples. Richard Simon (1638-1712) Despite his English-sounding name, Simon was a Frenchman and an Oratorian.  He early took an interest in Hebrew and other Eastern languages, which was not out of the ordinary ...

 In the Islamic tradition, the Qur'an is the center of everything, for it is believed to be the very word of God, the uncreated word of God, in human speech.  Muhammad was not its author, but rather its transmitter, the channel through which it came to men.  Every single word in it was directly told him by God, and he wrote it all down precisely; this is in contrast to the Catholic view of Scripture, which was written both  by God and men, the divine Author and the human authors.   Yet Islam does not treat Muhammad simply as a channel: he was also a prophet, and the final prophet, "the capstone of the prophets," whose example and practice ( sunnah ) should be followed.  This sunnah  is not contained in the uncreated Qur'an, though; instead, it is passed down by tradition, by word of mouth, by the sayings of and about Muhammad, the hadith . What is unique about the Islamic use of hadith  is the chains of succession each has, the isnad.   ...