-------
[Part
One]
Roman Catholicism
The Testimony of Holy Scripture
By Peter Slomski
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Contents *
[* Author’s ‘Notes’ are included throughout Part 1.
‘Roman Catholic Doctrines’ and ‘Some
Recommended Resources’ are not shown.]
An Explanation and a Plea
Part 1 Roman Catholic History
* *
*
An Explanation and a Plea
This study was originally prepared for the weekly
Bible study of the church I attend in
[*See following section by
the Ulster
Bulwark – Ed.]
Perhaps you are not what may be referred to as a ‘Protestant’ or ‘Evangelical’,
but rather a Roman Catholic. You may read this study and feel aggrieved at what
is said about the Roman Catholic Church.
If this is the case, I would have one plea: that you would please
consider carefully what is written and search history’s records and the Word of
God to see if it is not so.
I write as one who was brought up in a (Polish)
Roman Catholic home and who attended the mass and confession regularly. In my short lifetime I have known my uncle,
grandmother and father die as Roman Catholics and die with what appeared to be
no assurance of peace. They clung on to
the Roman Catholic faith but at the expense of true peace.
But Christ has given us a certain hope and
peace. He told His disciples: “Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe
also in me ... I go to prepare a place for you”. If it depended on our good works and the
sacraments we could never be sure of heaven.
Salvation, however, can be certain, because Christ and His work is complete and sure.
From the cross He said, “It is finished”. It is trusting in Him alone and His
finished work, not in the
church or in what we can do, that we can find the peace of sins forgiven and
the assurance of heaven.
I hope that you too may know that sure peace with
God.
Peter Slomski
January 2006
Part 1
Roman Catholic History
Serious
Questions
Do the following mean anything to you?
• National
Evangelical Anglican Congress ‑ NEAC 2 (1977) and NEAC 3 (1988),
• Anglican-Roman
Catholic International Commission, or better known as ARCIC 1 (1982) and
ARCIC II (1987),
• Evangelicals and Catholics Together: The
Christian Mission in the Third Millennium ‑ ECT (1994) and ECT II:
The Gift of Salvation (1997),
• The World Lutheran Federation and the Catholic
Church Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification (1999),
• “Mary: Hope
and Grace in Christ” document (2005).
These are all attempts to bring the Roman Catholic
(RC) Church and Protestant churches together and demonstrate that the differences
are not that great.
What about the following
Christian organisations: the Billy Graham Association, Campus Crusade, Focus on
the Family, Promise Keepers, Scripture Gift Mission, Wycliffe Bible
Translators, and YWAM? These are
organisations which rather than try to evangelise RCs
are working together with RCs.
What about the following respected Christian
leaders: Bill Bright, Chuck Colson, Nicky Gumbel, Billy Graham, J. I. Packer,
Pat Robertson and John Stott?*
[*
For instance John Stott affirmed,
with 2000 Evangelical Anglicans, in the Nottingham Congress Statement of 1977,
“Seeing ourselves and Roman Catholics as fellow
Christians we repent of attitudes that seem to deny it … We believe … visible unity … should be our goal”, cited in Iain Murray, Evangelicalism Divided – A Record of Crucial Change in the years 1950
to 2000 (Edingborough/CarlislePennysylvania: The
Banner of Truth Trust, 2000), p216. Billy Graham said (in Notre Dame), “I
have no quarrel with the Catholic Church” and “I don’t
think the differences are important as far as personal salvation is concerned”,
cited in Murray, Evangelicals Divided,
p68. J. I. Packer in defending himself and the RCs
and Evangelicals who signed the ECT document reasoned, “Those who love the Lord must stand together”, cited in
These and others have
furthered the belief that although there are differences between RCs and Evangelicals, they are all brothers and sisters in
Christ.
Was the
Reformation a mistake …
Were
Christians wrong in dying for their faith at the hands of
Are they right? Was the
Reformation a mistake, when Martin Luther made his stand and protested in the
16th century against RC doctrine?
Were Christians wrong in dying for their faith at the hands of
We will see that both history and Scripture are in
perfect harmony in their responses to the above questions. It is in this first Part that we turn to the
history of the Roman Catholic church.
Preaching,
praise and persecution
To understand Roman Catholicism and how it emerged
we need to first look at the beginnings of the New Testament (NT) Church. It is in the book of “The Acts of the Apostles”, in
the Holy Bible, that we first see the activity and growth of the NT
church. We note in Acts 2: 41-47
what marked them out; “they
that gladly received his word were baptised
... continued steadfastly in the apostle's doctrine and
fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers ... praising God”. We
also observe throughout the Book of Acts that the early church suffered much
for their faith.*
Throughout these times of preaching, praise and persecution the
church grew phenomenally. This pattern
would continue until the beginning of the fourth century.
[*
Acts 4: 21; 5: 40-41; 7: 54-8: 1; 9: 1; 9: 23; 12:
1-4; 14: 1-5, 19; 16: 19-24; 17: 5-9; 19: 29; 21: 27-31.]
However, something else was appearing: errors began
to creep into the church. Ironically,
certain errors came in because the church was trying to fight against false
teaching and heresy. As soon as A. D.
115 it was taught in the works of Ignatius,
bishop of
Perhaps you can see where this is all heading - the
Papacy and
In the face of heresy and persecution,
a stand had
to be made by men of authority...
Why was this happening? By the end of the first century the first
leaders of the church, the apostles were no longer alive, and many of their
disciples were nearing old age.
Secondly, the NT as we have it now had not been collated together in one
canon - instead it consisted of the various books been read out in churches. It would not be until the fourth century when
the NT would be brought together and the church would have the Bible within ‘one cover’.* In the third
place, we must remember that the church was in its earliest stages. “They did not stand where we stand today, with the help of
twenty centuries of reflection on God’s Word”, but they stood at the
beginning of the church’s history, “and therefore at
the beginning of theological thought”.** On top
of all this there was constant persecution.
In the face of heresy and persecution, a stand had to be made by men of
authority, and thus the elevation of bishops began.
[*
Athanasius in 367 and the Synods of Hippo Regis (393)
and
** Harry R Boer, A
Short History of the Early Church (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1995), p35]
A cross in
the sky
Many have said that the RC church was born in the
year 313. What is significant about this
year? As already stated, the church was
suffering persecution and had done since its birth. The source of this persecution was the pagan
[*
See for instance Richard Alderson, The
Early Christians – a taster (Kent: Day One Publications, 1997) p23; Boer, A Short History, p45; John Foxe, Foxe’s Book of Martyrs
– Popular Edition ed. W, Grinton Berry (London: The
Religious Tract Society), p17 and S. M. Houghton, Sketches of Church History (Edinburgh/Carlisle, Pennysylvania: The
Banner of Truth Trust, 1980), p12 for more details.]
By A.D. 312 the persecution had not abated and the
The day before the battle outside the city of Rome,
it is said that in a vision Constantine saw the sign of a cross and above it
the words ‘In
hoc signo vinces’
– ‘In this sign conquer’. The next day, October 28, 312,
Whether
Widening the
door
Up to this time there had been persecution, due
primarily to the church seeking to be biblically separate from the world and
its pagan practices. But now Christianity
became the state religion - and conversion became easy with ‘former’ pagans bringing in to the church their pagan
ideas. The command of God that His
people be holy (1 Peter 1: 16), that is,
separate from the things of the world, was disregarded.
Although there had been error previously,
persecution had helped purify the church from false believers and beliefs. With
From the time of
[* Boer, A Short History, p142.]
Five fathers
We have already seen that as early as A.D. 115 the position
of bishop was being lifted above Scriptural warrant. The term 'bishop' no
longer was synonymous with the terms ‘elder’, ‘overseer’ and ‘pastor’.*
Instead it meant the leading elder in a local church or the head of all the
churches in a city. Cyprian, who was bishop of
[*These
terms, along with the term ‘bishop,’ are used
synonymously in the Holy Bible to describe the role of those who are the
spiritual shepherds and leaders of each church; see Acts
14: 23; 20: 28, 21: 18; Ephesians 4: 11; Philippians 1: 1; 1 Timothy 3: 1-7;
Titus 1: 5-9; Hebrews 13: 7, 17.
Though leaders and guides they were never to be regarded as ‘above’ any other believer – 1
Peter 5: 14.]
By the year 451, in five
cities of the Roman empire the bishops were known as ‘patriarchs’,
from the Greek word meaning ‘first (or ruling) father’. The
five cities were
In taking on such a title as ‘father’, in the context of church relationships, they
had forgotten the words of the Lord Jesus in Matthew
23: 8, “call
no man your father upon earth, for one is your Father, which is in heaven”. But, it was the patriarch in
Bishop of
It was in
…the
influence of
it was the
judgment of
As early as A.D. 417, the
bishop of Rome, Innocent I, wrote
that final authority lay with Rome.* A further
step was taken when Zosimus,
Rome’s next bishop, said no one had the right to question a decision taken by
the Church of Rome. In A.D. 445, Leo, the bishop of
[* Henry Battenson, Documents of the Christian Church
(London: Oxford University Press, 1975), p81.
**Ibid,
p22]
Was this the birth of the RC Church, as we know it
today? Not quite, for Pope Gregory the Great stopped short of
the heresy that is now found in the RC Church - that
the pope is the ‘Universal bishop’ of the
church and ‘Vicar of Christ’ (i.e. in place of Christ). When the patriarch of Constantinople, John IV, claimed the title of ‘Universal bishop’, Pope Gregory warned him that such
a title was “blasphemous, anti-Christian and diabolical”.*
[*Henry Roberts, Christ
and Antichrist – audio (Salsbury Conference
recordings, 2001), Session 3.
It was in the 7th century following
Gregory the Great that the RC church began to ‘hatch
out of her egg’. Boniface III,
as pope in 607, had the Emperor Phocas confer on him the title of ‘Universal bishop’.
“It was at that point ... this
anti-Christian spirit began to manifest itself ... From that date onwards the papacy grew
in strength and Christian doctrine declined in force and clarity”.*
[* Ibid.]
But it was not just ecclesiastical authority but
political and temporal authority that the pope began to assert. When in the
year 800, Charlemagne (Charles the
Great) became Holy Roman Emperor, it was the bishop of
The following years would see corrupt and wicked men
opposing and murdering each other to attain the position of pope.*
[*
Two examples will suffice: Pope John XII (955-963) was charged by a Roman Synod
with almost every crime that man is capable of, describing him as a monster of
iniquity. Pope Boniface VIII put his
predecessor to death by strangulation in 974, and was described by a Synod as
‘a papal monster, who in his abject depravity exceeds all mortals’ (cited in
Houghton, Sketches, p51).
Establishment of power
It was, however, in the
eleventh century that the RC Church would emerge out of its shell in its full
strength and heretical ‘splendour’. The church in the East, with its centre in
Constantinople, had never accepted the title of pope for the bishop of
[*
The word ‘Catholic’ means “general, universal” and was used as early as the 2nd
century to describe the orthodox Christian church. It was not initially a controversial term,
however,
Ironically, both the Western and Eastern churches
were very much alike. Both had been
influenced by paganism; both now bore the marks of compromise and apostasy.
Both had raised up the
position of their bishops beyond Scriptural warrant. Magnificent buildings were erected, with
Constantine and his mother Helena
leading the way, the finest being in
[* Houghton, Sketches,
p33. “The architects, musicians,
artists, designers of furniture, vestments, and metal-ware, the composers of
liturgies – a these now found means to express their faith not only spiritually
but outwardly, with appeal, to eye, ear, and imagination.” (Boer, A Short History,
p141).]
By this time, in 1054, other signs of apostasy were
present. Saints were being prayed to and
images worshipped. The pagan belief that
the dead could help the living was further seen in the worship of relics of
dead saints. The mother of
Within thirty years, the next bishop of
1. The bishop of
2. He alone can depose bishops or receive them
again.
3. He alone has power to make new laws in the
church.
4. All princes ought to kiss his foot.
5. No book is canonical (i.e. with authority) without his authority.
6. He is subject to no human judgment.
7. The Roman Church never did nor ever can err (i.e. be wrong in what it teaches).
Ceremonies,
crusades and corruption. Slowly but surely the power and
authority oi God's Word was being replaced with the pseudo power of ceremonies
and so called miracles. People's trust was no longer
being directed to the one true Saviour found in the Scriptures but in the
church itself with its popes and priests.
...the power and authority of God’s Word
was being
replaced with the pseudo power of ceremonies...
The belief that the bread and wine are changed
during the mass (celebration of the Eucharist) into Christ’s body and blood
(transubstantiation) was generally believed.
By the eleventh century, this had developed into the belief that the
mass - was an offering again of Christ’s sacrifice for the sins of living and
the dead.
In the year of 1095, the RC Church would preach that
a man’s sins would be washed away if he died fighting in the Crusades. Over a hundred years later, in 1227, Pope Innocent III began the feared ‘inquisition’, an organisation to uncover, physically
punish and burn ‘heretics’. Belief was no longer in spirit and truth, but
by sword and fire.
Bereft of God’s Spirit and drunk with worldly power,
the corruption of the papacy continued.
In 1378, infighting resulted in two rival popes, Urban VI and Clement VII. They were both elected separately by the
church and each excommunicated the other!
By 1409, there were three rival popes ‑ Gregory XII, Benedict XIII and Alexander
V! The inconsistency of the RC
Church’s claim that the pope had a direct line of succession from the apostle
Peter was glaringly apparent.*
[*
Despite history’s record of corrupt, murderous and opposing popes, one RC
cardinal was able to say, before the conclave of clergy elected Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger
(becoming Benedict XVI) as the 256th
pope in 2005, “The Holy Spirit always ensures the
right pope for the times. It dis so in the case of John Paul
II, and will do so again”.
Richard Owen, “To do list: defend the faith,
unite the world” in The Times,
No 68366, (Wednesday April 20 2005), p7.]
Men, ceremonies, traditions and methods were
usurping the place of Christ and His Word.* The doctrine of faith only in Christ,
and in His Word, had been pushed into the darkness.
[* “Rome’s theology revolves
around her view of the mystical power of the pope and the bishops … grace can
reach sinners through the sacraments which only consecrated priests have the
power to administer … The effect of this is to
produce a gospel of works…” Alan Cairns, Dictionary of
Theological Terms (Belfast/Greenville, South Carolina: Ambassador-Emerald
International, 1998), p315.]
Flames in
the darkness
Had the true church disappeared? Was the truth lost? We find our answer not only in history but
also in the Bible. Christ said, “I will build my church and the gates of hell
[Hades] shall not
prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18; cf. Daniel
7: 13-14). Believers without and within
the Church of Rome would form Christ’s indestructible church.
Even before the darkness had begun to cover the
Roman Church, there were flames burning brightly in other parts of
In A.D. 432 a man who would become known as Patrick (385-461) arrived with others
in
[*
Patrick, when only a boy, was captured and taken from his home (British
mainland) and sold as a slave in
In the year 580, Columban set out with twelve assistants to what is now
In time, however, the Celtic church was swallowed up
into the Roman Church, largely through decisions made at the synod of
Blazes of
glory
In about 1170, Peter
Waldo (or Valdes) a merchant of
Lyons, France, came to understand there is one Mediator, that saints should not
be worshipped and the Scriptures alone are the basis of faith.
Soon he had a band of followers and founded a movement called the Waldensians. They visited southern
In fourteenth century
[*
Indulgences were pardons from purgatory.
This was a place, taught by the RC Church, where souls suffered after
death to ‘pay off’ some of the punishment for
their sins. In effect this meant that a
person could buy his way out of sin.
(This, like many of the RC teachings, such as transubstantiation, clearly
flies in the face of the truth that Christ has once and for all paid for sin on
the cross and demonstrated this through his resurrection. See Holy Bible, John
19: 30; Romans 4: 25; Hebrews 7: 27; 9: 28 – the sinner can add nothing
to this but trust only in what Christ has done).]
**
This was by order of the Council of
Constance in 1415. (Wyclif would become known as
the ‘Morning Star of the Reformation’).]
In
[* Houghton, Sketches,
p69.
**
Cited in Houghton, Sketches, p70.]
About eighty years later, in
These were only a few of the many who shone in the
darkness. It was not until the next
century that these scattered flames would join to cause such a blaze of truth
in the RC Church, that the darkness would finally be dispelled from many hearts
and nations.*
[* Chapter VI of J. H. Merle d’Aubigne,
History of the Reformation of the
Sixteenth Century Vol. I
(Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1846) contains
fascinating accounts of various people in the RC Church who knew the truth of
trusting in Christ alone for salvation during the period of darkness before the
shining of the light of the Reformation.
(All five volumes of
d’Aubignes History are available in one
paperback volume published by Hartland Publications).]
Protestation
and separation: the Reformation
Whilst studying the book of Romans, Martin Luther (1483‑1546), a German Augustinian
monk, came to understand the reality of Paul’s words, “The just
shall live by faith” (Romans 1: 17). He realised his personal helplessness and
inability to earn salvation through his good works. In 1511, his eyes were
further opened; when visiting
...the whole
RC system of sacraments was based on the principle
that the church
dispensed God’s grace at a price.
Luther’s public complaint “went
to the heart of the existence of the [RC] Church”*
(though he did not yet see it that way).
God’s grace in salvation could not be bought or earned,
otherwise it would not be grace (Ephesians 2: 8-9). Yet the whole RC system of sacraments was
based on the principle that the church dispensed God’s grace at a price. Pope
Leo X soon realised the threat that Luther’s protest had on his authority
and the doctrine of the church, and he demanded that Luther recant. Luther did not recant but instead would go on
and make his stand against
[* Kirsten Birkett, The Essence of the Reformation
(Sydney/London: Matthias Media, 1998), p42.]
Whilst Luther blazed a trail
of truth in
Five
foundational doctrines
The crucial doctrinal issues of the Reformation were
encapsulated in the ‘slogans’ coined by Luther:
sola gratia (by
grace alone), sola Christi (by Christ alone) sola Scriptura (by
Scripture alone) and sola fide (by faith alone). This all pointed to salvation being soli Deo gloria (to God’s glory alone).* The “Reformers knew
they could no longer remain within the Roman Catholic church ... [and] were
convinced that the Roman Church had departed from Biblical Christianity at
these crucial points”.**
[**Brikett in The
Essence of the Reformation (p86-87) helpfully says, “In essence these Latin phrases were Luther’s answers to four
basic questions: How can a person be
right with God? Sola gratia (by grace alone) … How does this grace come? Sola Christi (by
Christ alone) … How do we find Christ? Sola Scriptura (by Scripture alone) … What is our part? Sola fide (by faith alone.)”.
**Ibid, p88.]
The RC Church however, would not only continue with the
fires of persecution but with what would become known as the Counter
Reformation to reclaim hearts and minds.
Pope Paul III led The Council
of Trent (1545‑1563) to counter the Reformation and reaffirm RC doctrines
such as justification by faith and works, transubstantiation, purgatory and celibacy of clergy. he Inquisition was
revived and men such as Ignatius Loyola
and his Jesuit Order of priests used
literally almost any means to win people back to
Although there was some success, the truth that the
Reformation had brought had transformed hearts and minds, and men no longer
wished to return to the darkness.
History of
heresy
Has the RC church changed? Some would claim that things are different in
the 21st century. However, if
we take a brief look at the development of the Church’s official doctrine, we
see the rapid advance and not the repentant retreat of heresy.
600 Worship in Latin.
750 Temporal power of Pope
788 Worship of relics permitted.
850 Holy water.
1079 Celibacy
(priests not allowed to marry).
1090 Rosary
(repetitious praying with beads).
1190
1215 Transubstantiation (bread and wine change to
the literal body and blood of Christ).
1215 Confession of sins to priests.
1220 Adoration of the wafer (adoration of
the ‘body of Christ’).
1229 Bible forbidden to
laymen.
1274 Purgatory (place
between heaven and hell where sins paid for).
1508 Prayer ‘Ave Maria’
(praying to Mary)
1545 Tradition given equal authority as Scripture (at the
Council of Trent).
1546 Apocrypha given equal authority as
Scripture (at the Council of Trent).
1854 Immaculate Conception of Mary (perfect
at birth).
1870 Papal Infallibility (Pope perfect in what he
decrees).
1922 Mary co-redeemer with Christ.
1950 Bodily Assumption of Virgin Mary (taken to
heaven rather than face death).
This has continued apace to the present. Rather than
refuting these doctrines and practices, which find no support in the Bible, the
RC Church has reasserted them. Some recent examples highlight this.
In 2001, the arrival of St Theresa’s bones in the
A few years prior to this in 1998, Pope John Paul II (1978-2005) stated., “We define that the Holy
Apostolic See and the Roman Pontiff has primacy over the whole world. And that the same Roman Pontiff is the
successor of blessed Peter, Prince of the Apostles and true Vicar of Christ,
head of the whole church and father and teacher of all Christians, and that
upon him, in blessed Peter, our Lord Jesus Christ conferred the full power of
shepherding, ruling and governing the universal church.”*
[*
A Catechesis on the Church, Vol. 4, The Church Mystery Sacrament Community, (1998,
p275) as cited by Roberts, Christ and
Antichrist, Session 1. Pope John
Paul II was reaffirming a statement of the Council of Florence, 1439. The Catechesis has such chapter headings as ‘The Pope Exercises
Supreme Jurisidiction’, ‘The Roman Pontiff
is the Supreme Teacher’ and ‘The Successor Teaches Infallibility’. As Maurice
Roberts points out, Pope John Paul II affirmed the “headship, supremacy and infallibility” of his position.]
In May 2005, representatives of the RC church and
the Anglican church
published a document, Mary: Hope and grace in Christ. In essence, this document affirmed that the
RC beliefs in the immaculate conception and bodily
assumption of Mary are “authentic expressions of
Christian belief”. It stated
that, “we do not consider the practice of asking Mary
and the saints to pray for us as communion-dividing”* and private
devotions inspired by apparitions of Mary are “acceptable”.**
[*
Cited in Ruth Gledhill “Cracks in Anglican dissent
over Mary” in The Times, No 68389,
(Tuesday May 17th 2005), p5.
In the same article, Rev. Rod
Thomas, an evangelical and member of the Roman Conservative grouping,
pointed out, “If Mary has been wholly and completely
assumed into Heaven and we are able to pray to her, it goes completely against
the grain of Jesus Christ being our great high priest who intercedes on our
behalf with the Father”.
**An
excellent critique of the Marian apparitions and doctrines if Timothy F. Kauffman’s Quite Contrary – A
Biblical Reconsideration of the Apparitions of Mary (Huntsville, Alabama:
White Horse Publications, 1994).
Relics, popes, saints and the exaltation of Mary
continue to usurp and devalue the place of Christ and His Word.
[*
Robert M. Zins states, “The
Roman religion is based 100% on the notion that Jesus Christ came and left His
own with an elaborate system. These
religious rituals are to be performed in hopes of achieving salvation. They are to be administered through the power
of the Catholic priests who, by virtue of the sacrament of holt
orders, take Catholic initiates through the sacraments. These sacraments are administered from the
cradle to the grave”. The Relentless Roman Catholic
Assault on the Gospel of Jesus Christ (Huntsville, Alabama: White Horse
Publications, 1995), p13.]
New clothes,
no change
As we began this study, we cited a number of
Christian organisations and people who regard the RC church as Christian. Some are saying that
[*In
regard to the Lutheran joint declaration W.
Robert Godfrey comments: “In the affirmation of
merit, the silence on imputation, the confusion of justification with renewal,
and the use of ‘imparting’ as a functional equivalent for ‘infusion’, the real
nature of the Joint Declaration is revealed.
The Roman Catholic position has not changed at all … The Lutherans
alone have changed. They have abandoned
the Reformation and betrayed the gospel”. “The
Lutheran–Roman Catholic Joint Declaration” in Banner of Truth, Issue
436, (January 2000), p20. (Italics mine).]
However, there have been certain events that have given
the impression of remarkable change, if not in doctrine at least in practice;
and this is not only in its policy towards Protestant/Evangelical
churches. In 1964 Vatican Council II was convened and made certain declarations. In respect of Protestant churches it said, “It follows that the separated Churches ... though we believe
they suffer from... defects ... have by no means deprived of significance and
importance in the mystery of salvation”.* What was more remarkable was that it also
stated, “The plan of salvation includes those also who acknowledge the Creator;
foremost among these are the Muslims ...”** In 1986, Pope John Paul II convened a meeting in
Assisi, Italy, where 160 leaders of different religions prayed together. The pope said, “We will
stand side by side asking God to give us peace”.
[*
Vatican Council II, Vol II, Austin Flanery, gen,
ed., (Costello Publishing Company, 1992, p456), cited in Zins,
Romanism, p198.
**
Vatican Council II, Vol II, p367 cited in Zins, Romanism,
p233.]
In 1999, an ecumenical meeting was held in
[*
Dallas Morning News, Saturday March
20th 1999, cited in Robert M. Zins, “Wrong at Both Ends: the need to re-think our apologetics
with
Twelve days after the terrorist attack of September
l1th 2001, Pope John Paul II declared before the predominantly Muslim nation of
[*
See Richard Bennett and Robert J. Nicholson, “Islam and the
The
doctrines of this ecclesiastical organization have not changed.
In fact they
are now adding new errors to the old ones.
What is it the RC Church
doing? The truth is that
[* Vatican II stated, “… the
separated churches … derive their efficacy from
the very fullness of grace and truth entrusted to the Catholic Church” (Vatican Council II, Vol
II p456), cited by Zins, Romanism, p198.]
Serious
warnings
We saw at the beginning of this study that men and
movements appear already to have begun to fall into the lap of the ‘mother church’.
They have become anaesthetized to the deadly error of
One may ask whether they have forgotten the lessons
of history. Do they not recall what
first led the Roman church into the darkness, how that darkness enveloped the
church and how the light of truth finally blazed forth in the 16th
century?
This study began with serious questions and it
closes with serious warnings:-
“Some evangelicals today
think that times have changed and that it is now possible to hold a dialogue
and to collaborate with the Roman Catholic Church in order to achieve Christian
unity. This is a deception of Satan. The
doctrines of this ecclesiastical organization have not changed. In fact they are now adding new errors to the
old ones and in particular they are working towards bringing in all the other
religions ... It is therefore of
utmost importance for us at the present time to obey the exhortation of the Word
of God, “Be
ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers…” (converted priest Salvatore
Gargiulo).*
[* Richard
Bennett and Martin Buckingham,
compilers, Far from
Another converted priest, Bartholomew E Brewer, has written, “The
history of the Catholic church is the history of paganism, corruption and the
lust for power. The church has not mellowed,
and it should not be trusted.”*
[* Bartholomew
F. Brewer with Alfred W. Furrell, Pilgrimage
from Rome (Greenville, South Carolina: Bob Jones University Press, 1986),
p129.]
The error of
[*
Note. James speaks also of justification
by
works (Jas. 2: 24). Presumably a Christian’s justification by works
is required if we are to “inherit the [millennial] kingdom He promised to those who love Him” (Jas. 2: 5; 5: 8.) cf. Eph. 5:
1-7; John 15: 10; Col. 3: 23; Luke 20: 35; Rev. 20: 4, 5; 2 Tim. 2: 12; Rom. 8:
17b, etc.]
Either we put our trust in a system of sacraments
and a fallible pope, or we place it in a sufficient Saviour and His perfect
Word. Like the Waldensians,
Wyclif, Huss, Luther,
Tyndale, Calvin and the multitude of others we must make our stand against
error and therefore apart from the RC Church.
And like these past figures, in compassion, we must also warn those
within the RC church of the spiritual danger they are in. Truth demands it. God’s glory demands it. The eternal fate of souls demands it.
Soli Deo loria.
“…the holy scriptures…
able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith
which is in Christ Jesus.” (2 Timothy 3:15)
“For by grace are ye
saved through faith; and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God: Not of
works, lest any man should boast.” (Ephesians
2: 8, 9)
*
* *
* *
* * *
* *
[Part
Two]
[Picture
above from D. M. Panton’s DAWN MAGAZINE (April 15th,
1929).]
A SELECTION OF RELEVANT AND PROPHETIC
QUOTATIONS FROM VOICES IN THE PAST
1.
A WARNING.
We are sinking beneath a power before which the
proudest conquerors have grown pale – the POWER
OF A FOREIGN PRIESTHOOD: your empire and your liberties are more in danger at this present moment
than when Napoleon’s army of invasion was encamped at
-
LORD
2.
POST-WAR
The illusion of a dying Papacy – “a deplorable and
mysterious slumber,” as Pere Chiniquy
called it – is slowly giving way before post-War facts. “One often hears,”
says Dr. Adolph Keller, “the statement from a military point of view
3.
THE CAMPAGNA.
The Campagna, foreseen by
John in divine vision – “he carried me away in the
Spirit into a wilderness, and I saw a Woman” (Rev. 17: 3) – was unknown to pagan
4. INTOLERANCE.
Catholic supremacy always spells Roman
intolerance. It is thus that the
5. TEMPORAL ORIGINS.
It is most difficult to determine whether one
inexplicable silence on the restoration of the Temporal Power is ignorance or
craft. In not one paper that we have
seen, religious or secular, has the origen
of the
6. FORGERY
The gigantic structure of the Temporal Power, of which,
it need hardly be said, the Church of Christ was totally ignorant for six
centuries, rests historically on one plank alone:- FORGERY. “I know no part of Church history,” says Professor Salmon, of Dublin, whose Infallibility
of the Church remains (so far as we know) the ablest anti-Papal work of
modern days, “less calculated to impress a truly
religious man with respect for the Papacy than the history of those Popes who
did most to gain the Italian States for the Church. Frauds
used in order to gain that power, beginning with the famous forgery of the
donation of
7. DECORATIONS
The root sin which the Holy Spirit charges the Papacy
is spiritual fornication – a sin possible only to those who take the name of
Christ’s Bride – with kings (Rev.
17: 2), and the consequent intoxication of the democracies with this
spiritual prostitution. It recurs once
more. The Collar of the Annunziata is to be
conferred (Times, Feb. 11, 1929) on
Cardinal Gasparri, Cardinal Vanutelli
and Cardinal Maffi by King Humbert;
and Signor Mussolini the Pope will invest with the Knighthood of the Order of
Christ. In the union of Catholicism with Royalty, says Ranke,
lies the main development of the Papacy.
8. MY PEOPLE.
It is
exceedingly important, in the dread controversies that are upon us, so to guard
our own hearts as to feel as we oungt towards all who
are in the One Body, however corrupt the fellowship in which they may be found. In the context of the Papacy there is a
priceless utterance of God:- “Come forth, my people, out of her” (Rev. 18: 4).
“I confess,” says Dr. Stier, “that I find the one faith on the Lord in many
a Catholic, with a hearty joy of brotherly agreement; and in many a zealot for
the pure Word and Sacrament I might look for it in vain.”
9. COME
Ears are in the dark, unknown, all
the world over, and in the Church of Rome, that are
only awaiting the summons. A
Presbyterian youth from New Orleans, a wireless operator, having just read the
Twenty third psalm, and no business being transacted, suddenly thought he would
send the psalm out over the water:- As he issued the last word, sixteen
ships sent a wireless Amen. A
letter lies before us from a devoted Protestant worker:-
“As one mixes with Roman Catholics of all classes, and
has many a quiet talk, and has been well
received in Convents, etc., I can say with conviction that there are many true believers, and I
believe happy ones too, in the Roman Communion and within Convent walls.”
10. A FAREWELL.
From the death-bed of a
11. APOCALYPTIC
It is a revealing fact that while the leaders of the
Churches are twittering optimism dashed with interludes of panic, the world is
being forced by facts to think and speak in terms Apocalyptic. Mr.
Winston Churchill, speaking from a knowledge of
War facts shared by few and excelled by none, discloses the inescapable
precipice to which the world draws on. “Certain sombre facts emerge solid, inexorable, like the
shapes of mountains from drifting mist.
It is established that henceforward whole populations will take part in
war, all doing their utmost, all subjected to the fury of the enemy. It is established that nations who believe
their life is at stake will not be restrained from using any means to secure
their existence. It is probable – nay,
certain, that among their means which will next time be at their disposal will
be agencies and processes of destruction wholesale, unlimited, and perhaps,
once launched, uncontrollable. Mankind
has never been in this position before.
Without having improved appreciably in virtue of enjoying wiser
guidance, it has got into its hands for the first time the tools by which it
can unfailingly accomplish its extermination.
This is the point of human destinies to which all the glories and toils
of men have at last led them.”
12. COMING CRISIS
Yet light breaks here and there, though not on the [coming Millennial]
Glory, but on the [advancing] gloom. ‘Dick’
Sheppard (the Rev. H. R. L. Sheppard,
D.D.), says:- “Frankly I cannot see how the future
can be made possible for mankind unless a fresh access of power is provided by
religion, and at the same moment I see no signs of its arrival.” It is the considered judgment of Mr. Lloyd George, who knows the secrets
of the world War as no other man alive, that “if the
League fails, civilization is doomed.”
The Rev. Hubert L. Simpson
has just said:- “I think we
are coming into the most difficult years of the Christian in the history of the
world.” It appears that the one
thing incredible is inspired Apocalyptic.
13. SEX CRIMES
In
14. DISOBEDIENCE TO THE GOSPEL OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST.
Instead of the apostasy of
Christendom, characterized by daring impiety and atheism, under the leadership of
the Man of Sin, the Son of Perdition, popular
teaching represents the gradual triumph of the Gospel over every nation tribe,
until all mankind shall become Christian, and Church be co-extensive with the
human race. This is the picture
which the pulpit delights to exhibit, and a very beautiful picture it is.
In skilful hands it is sometimes executed with such ingenuity that the moral landscape of nations seems to laugh
before us under the sunlight of spirit beauty.
For imagination, poetry, graphic detail, and bursts, of enthusiastic
eloquence, it offers an exceedingly fruitful theme. But there is this drawback – it
is not true! The Holy
Ghost “speaketh expressly” against it. It is not only not the predicted issue
of Christian testimony, so far as the nominal Church and the world are concerned, but that issue is directly the reverse – apostasy, direful wickedness, impiety,
blasphemy, atheism, doom! For mercy spurned, and grace refused, the
end of the age is terrible “Judgment!” For disobedience to the Gospel of our Lord
Jesus Christ, the close of the dispensation is characterized by unprecedented
wickedness culminating in unparalleled judgments. The day of long-suffering is ended by “the wrath of the Lamb.”
- WILLIAM LEASKE,
15. AT LAST
Not silent – just pass’d out
of earthly hearing
To sing Heaven’s sweet new song;
Not lonely – dearly loved and dearly loving,
Amid the white-robed throng.
Oh no, not dead, but past all fear of dying,
And with all suffering o’er:
Say not that I am dead when Jesus calls me
To live for evermore.
*
* *
THE GROWTH OF THE ROMAN CHURCH
Few errors are so deplorable
(though so sincerely held) as the Historicist dream of a dying Papacy. Historicism imagines it has its finger on the
pulse of a death-bed consumptive when as a matter of fact it stands in the
dangerous presence of a rousing giant. “All that has been achieved in American and European
countries,” says Nippold,
the German successor of Ranke as historian of the Popes, “is insignificant in comparison with what has been set on
foot in the East; and,” he continues - taking a world-wide survey – “a calm review of the triumphs won by the Papacy forces upon
us the conclusion that they are simply preliminary successes, that far greater
triumphs are bound to follow.”*
[*History of the Papacy, pp. 214, 224. Some of
figures in this article are not the latest, but the latest that we can obtain.]
The Church of Rome emerged
from the Great War vastly stronger than she entered it. “Several reasons for
this,” says Dr. Adolph Keller,
“stand out clearly.
In the first place, it must be borne in mind that the German Empire, the
strongest bulwark of Protestantism in
[*Keller’s Protestant
The Church of Rome now
stands in a position of great power. It
is estimated that [during 1929 when this writing was published - Ed.] there are in the world 265,000,000 Roman Catholics as against
210,000,000 Protestant Christians. In
the League Assembly there are 192 Catholics to 94 Protestants; and 70 Per cent.
of the League Council, and 80 per cent. of the
The Church of Rome grows steadily stronger in
In
The advance of the Church of Rome in the
The Roman revival is enormously accentuated by a
simultaneous Protestant decay. “In
fourteen countries of Europe,” says Dr.
Adolph Keller, “due to an accumulation of
calamities, the
The missionary activities of the Church of Rome are
immense. In
Thus the progress of the Roman Church, almost
totally unobserved and constantly denied, grows by leaps and bounds.
“The only people,”
says Dr. Charles Brown, “who appear to be making headway are the Roman Catholics. New
churches are being constantly erected and they are often well filled. However perplexing it may appear, there is no
escape from the fact that the Catholics appeal to something in the modern mind. They have an almost illimitable power of
adapting themselves to the people and the spirit of the times. Their note of authority saves trouble in
thinking about religion, and that is what modem people like. The craze for pleasure is condoned; after an
attendance at an early Sunday morning service their adherents can with clear
conscience do as they like for the rest of the day. There is also something else, which rather
puzzles me, a sort of imperious demand on the religious in man. ‘While you are all the while talking about the duty of the
Church to the people,’ once said a Catholic
priest to me, ‘we are all the while talking
about the duty of the people to the Church.’”
Archbishop
Alexander
relates of Dr. Benson that, after a
sermon on the Revelation, “with the shadow of death
almost resting upon the austere beauty of that brow,” Archbishop Benson said, “It is borne in upon me that the times are near when the Book
of the Apocalypse will be specially required by the
*
* *
COME OUT OF HER, MY PEOPLE
Pere Hyacinthe, whom Pius IX playfully addressed as “a precious
stone and a precious flower,” was for eight years the acknowledged
prince of the French pulpit. His oratory
was magnificent. It was the event of the
year 1870 that precipitated the crisis of his career. For some time it had been announced that the
dogma of ‘Papal Infallibility’ declared to be
already fluid, would be fixed at a General Council to be held in
The General’s letter ran thus:- “I order you
formally, by this present, for the future to print no letters nor speeches; not
to speak outside the Churches, not to be present at the Chamber of Deputies; to
take no part in the peace league or any other meetings which have not an
exclusively Catholic and religious object.” That proved to be the last straw. Hyacinthe replied to his General in the following terms:- “I could not again enter the pulpit of Notre Dame. I withdraw at the same time from my convent,
which has now become to me a prison of the soul. It is not at such a moment that a preacher of
the Gospel, were he the least of all, can consent to hold his peace, like the
‘dumb dogs’ of
[*
One verse (Rev. 18: 4) alone is decisive of
selective rapture. For to deny that the
souls summoned forth from the Papacy are God’s people is to contradict God; and
His warning is that if they remain in Rome, they must share her plagues. But her plagues fall in the Great
Tribulation, and are inflicted by the Antichrist himself. Thus it
is impossible to escape the conclusion that some of the Church will be in the
Tribulation.]
FORGERY
Has God, then, need of your falsehoods,
that you speak deceitfully for Him?
This mode of apologetics without openness is one of the causes of our
religious decay for centuries past. As
soon as human nature perceives in the apostle the smallest trace of craft or
duplicity, it turns aside and takes to flight; the best always flee farther
than the rest. Are we the preachers of
falsehood or the apostles of truth? Is
not every truth, every true gift, every historical and
real fact for us, just as every falsehood is against us? Has not the time arrived - in this age of
publicity, in which everything is seen and brought to light, in which
everything that before was spoken in the ear, is now preached upon the
housetops - has not the time arrived, I repeat, to reject with disgust the
frauds, the interpolations, and mutilations which liars and forgers, our most
cruel enemies, have been able to introduce amongst us? I myself was long before I could believe in
this apologetic of ignorance, blindness, and half-honesty, or rather dishonesty
which desires the end, which believes in the goodness of its aim and its
truths; but which, to attain this end, has recourse to deceit, to mystery, to
force, to falsehood, to a fraudulent invention of forged passages. Once more, Has God need of these frauds?
‑ PERE
GRATRY.
* *
*
DOLLINGER ON THE DONATION OF
After the middle of the eighth century, the famous Donation of Constantine was concocted
at
The first reference to this gift of
Twenty years later the need was felt at
There have unquestionably been some falsifications
in the privileges granted to the Roman See by Emperors later than Charles the
Great, though they do not go so far as has often been maintained. The pact or gift of Louis the Pious in 817 bears internal signs of genuineness, but has
evidently been interpolated. It makes
the Emperor give the islands of Corsica, Sardinia, and
We cannot suppose that such a man as Gregory VII
would consciously take part in these fabrications, but, in his unlimited
credulity and eager desire for territory and dominion, he appealed to the first
forged document that came to hand as solid proof. Thus, in 1081, he affirmed that, according to
the documents preserved in the
archives of St. Peter’s, Charles the
Great had made the whole of Gaul tributary to the Roman Church, and given
to her all Saxony.*
[*
The new Concordat sheds curious light on Rev. 17:
16. For it is
the Harlot, not the Woman, who is destroyed. Neither in pagan nor papal
* *
*
MYSTIC
By ALEXANDER HISLOP
The College of Cardinals, with the Pope at its head,
is just the counterpart of the Pagan College of Pontiffs, with its “Pontifex Maximus,” or “Sovereign Pontiff,” which had existed in
The reader will now be prepared to understand how it
is that the Pope’s Grand Council of State, which assists him in the government
of the Church, comes to be called the College of Cardinals. The term Cardinal is derived from cardo, a
hinge. Janus, whose key the Pope bears,
was the god of doors and hinges, and was called Patulcius
and Clusius, “the opener and
the shutter.” This had a
blasphemous meaning, for he was worshipped at
Hence the Pope’s privy councillors, his high
functionaries of state, who were associated with him in the government of the
Church and the world, got the now well-known title of “Cardinals”
- the priests of the “hinge.” This
title had been previously borne by the high officials of the Roman Emperor,
who, as “Pontifex Maximus,” had been himself
the representative of Janus, and who delegated his
powers to servants of his own. Even in the reign of Theodosius, the Christian Emperor of the West, the title of
Cardinal was borne by his Prime Minister.
In the countries where the Babylonian system was
most thoroughly developed, we find the Sovereign Pontiff of the Babylonian god
invested with the very attributes now ascribed to the Pope. Is the Pope called “God
upon earth,” the “Vice-God,” and “Vicar of Jesus Christ?” The King in
Now, as the Pope bears the key of Janus, so he wears the mitre of Dagon. The excavations of
Whence came
the crosier? The answer, in the first
place, is, that the Pope stole it from the Roman
augur. The classical reader may remember, that when the Roman augurs consulted the heavens,
or took prognostics from the aspect of the sky, there was a certain instrument
with which it was indispensable that they should be equipped, curved at the one
end, and called “lituus.”
Now,
so manifestly was the “lituus,”
or crooked rod of the Roman augurs, identical with the pontifical crosier, that
Roman Catholic writers themselves, writing in the dark ages, at a time when
disguise was thought unnecessary, did not hesitate to use the term “lituus” as a synonym for
the “crosier.”
Thus a Papal writer describes a certain Pope or Papal bishop as “mitralituoque decorus,” adorned with the mitre and the augur’s
rod, meaning thereby that he was “adorned with the mitre
and the crosier.” Now
this lituus, or divining-rod, of the Roman augurs,
was, as is well known, borrowed from the Etruscans,
who, again, had derived it, along with their religion, from the Assyrians. As the Roman augur was distinguished by his
crooked rod, so were the Chaldean
soothsayers and priests, in the performance of their magic rites. All the Paganism of the human race, first
concocted in
* *
*
THE CELEBRATION
[The
incurable passion of the Papal Curia for worldly pomp and glory,
that prostitution of things Christian to world-lust which the Holy Spirit calls
spiritual fornication as embodied in a meretricious Harlot (Rev. 17: 16), is revealed afresh in St. Peter’s celebration of the restoration
of Papal sovereignty. The Roman Correspondent of the Daily Express unconsciously supplies an exposition of the Apocalypse of the
first order. It must never be
forgotten that the Woman is
I saw in St. Peter’s to-day the most magnificent
pageant in the world - the state entry of the Pope. I rose at dawn and put on full evening dress -
an act which to an Englishman is almost indecent - and presented myself at St. Peter’s fully three hours before the service
was due to begin. The vast marble church
was already full, and the Vatican Guards patrolled every aisle and stood at
every door. They wore enormous
bearskins, white doeskin breeches, and thigh boots with spurs, and they carried
drawn swords. I went on up the nave
towards the great bronze canopy under the dome.
Beneath is the high altar, at which no one but the Pope may officiate.
Below this altar a double flight of marble steps leads down to two doors of
gilded bronze, behind which is the sarcophagus
containing the headless body of St. Peter.
The famous Swiss Guard was on duty round the shrine,
standing at attention, each man grasping a long pike. They wore the marvellous
uniform said to have been designed by Michael
Angelo - steel casques and doublets and hose,
slashed with broad stripes of yellow, blue, and red. The
More than three hours passed. Candles were lit on the altars, and one by
one the College of Cardinals assembled and occupied the scarlet benches placed
before the tribune near the papal throne.
Each cardinal wore a skull cap of red silk, a red silk gown, and an
ermine cape. Suddenly rang through St.
Peter’s from some distant stairway the words of command. Troops all over the church came to attention
with the ring of steel pikes and the clatter of spurs on the marble floor, and
from the roof of St. Peter’s sounded the mighty fanfare of silver trumpets, and
to my complete astonishment the thousands of men and women rose to their feet
and began to cheer. I looked down the
nave and saw an amazing procession, a procession which might have stepped from
the beginning of history.
There were the Swiss Guards, their burnished casques shining in the light; there were the Pope’s
bodyguard carrying drawn swords, and wearing scarlet
coats and helmets from which hung long plumes of black horsehair; there were
members of the Vatican Chapter walking two by two, and representatives of every
Catholic order. Among the vivid gowns
and vestments walked many a simple monk and friar, barefoot and with shaven
head. As this procession came at a
funereal pace up the nave the trumpets grew louder. Lights were lit all over the church. The trumpets ceased their fanfare, and broke
into a stately march, and into the
great church came the Pope, carried high
on the shoulders of men in the sedia gestatoria, or state palanquin, clothed from head to foot
in white, and wearing the jewelled tiara.
St. Peter’s became a pandemonium.* Women stood on chairs and waved
handkerchiefs, and crossed themselves.
Men shouted themselves hoarse. Cries of “Viva il Papa!” swept round the church in successive
waves. Never have I heard such mighty
cheering, and high above the heads of all men, through the tempest of sound,
came the Pope, an immobile figure in white, his chair rocking just slightly on
the shoulders of the bearers, and on either side of him two great Egyptian fans
of white ostrich feathers mounted on long wooden poles. The Pope was as still as a statue. He looked like an effigy of a saint borne in
procession, and the only visible sign that he lived was his right arm, raised
with mechanical regularity as his hand traced an invisible Cross in the air
above the clustered heads. It was
impossible to think of him as a man, impossible to realize that he had been in
[* Could any fulfilment be more exact
than this wild uproar in a Christian Church, a frenzied intoxication dragging
all sense of decency and order? – “made
drunken with the wine of her fornication”
(Rev. 17: 2) – D. M. Panton.]
In this procession the pomp of dead empires lived
again. Caesar and Pharaoh had
contributed to it, and beside its authentic grandeur the greatest magnificence
of any other reigning monarch became something recent and almost provincial. Before the altar of the tribune the Pope stepped
from the sedia gestatoria
and mounted the steps of the throne. He sat, a white figure on the white throne, beneath the crimson
canopy. The cardinals approached and
kissed his ring, and then began the intricate ceremony. Priests in gorgeous vestments removed the triple crown from the Pope’s head and placed thereon a
golden mitre. From a hidden chapel
sounded the voices of the singers of the Sistine Chapel, while we saw the Pope
through clouds of incense, and saw waves of colour rise and fall before him,
and so it was for two unforgettable hours.
Then came the supreme moment, when the Pope stepped
from his throne and knelt before the altar while the Host was elevated. The troops sprang to attention and then
knelt, and every member of the vast
gathering knelt with them, while at the altar, among the kneeling cardinals and
high officers of his court, the Pope made his communion. The trumpets sounded; the procession
reformed, and the Pope was borne back through the cheering throng down the nave
of St. Peter’s. Outside in the pouring
rain hundreds of thousands had been waiting since the dawn of day. They never took their eyes from the windows
at which they hoped to see the Pope, now a king again. They had their wish. The curtain parted, and there, among a group
of cardinals, stood the figure in
white, making the sign of the Cross over St. Peter’s Square. A shout like a gunshot broke from hundreds of
thousands of throats “Viva il
Papa!” The curtain fell into
place again. It was over. The people of
‑H. V. MORTON.
* *
*
MODERNISM AND THE CHURCH OF ROME
One of the difficulties of to-day is to keep a just
spirit and a balanced judgment in face of a mass of highly confused and
confusing phenomena. It is only fair to
the Church of Rome – which possesses the Meal, as well as inserts the Leaven (Matt. 13: 33) ‑ to reveal, by such a
quotation as the following from the Roman Catholic Universe (Nov. 2, 1928), how saved souls can be
within her pale whom God summons forth.
Such an utterance is the more startling when put alongside the fact that
towards the publication of Bishop Gore’s
New
Commentary, in which the
great miracles of the Old Testament are openly derided, the English Church
Union contributed Ł2,662.‑ [D. M. Panton].
One of the most significant
features of the religious life of our day is the extraordinary rapidity with
which the disintegration of dogma is proceeding outside the Church [of
But the pace
at which the disintegration is going on amongst us to-day is
unprecedented. Not merely is every dogma
we have enumerated above being openly denied in Anglican pulpits by Anglican
dignitaries, as well as in practically every section of nonconformity, but the
representatives of the school of thought - the Tractarians
- founded more particularly to re-assert and propagate the principle of dogma,
are parleying with its denial. They have been all along making a winning
fight for the externals; the outward aspect of the Church of England is
changed, and bishops in copes and mitres all over the land are the sign thereof. And every “crisis”
brings a step forward in ritual and ceremonial practice, consolidated after a
lot of skirmishing, and then made a starting-point for further advance. Simultaneously, the whole basis of the
sacramental system and of the ceremonial that illustrates it is given away.*
[*
What some of us ventured to predict decades ago is transpiring before our eyes:
destructive Criticism, in digging the grave of the Protestant Faith, by the
same act has been casting up the entrenchments of
Among the very few Great Cities which then were, and
still survive, One was seated on Seven Hills. She was universally recognized in
* *
*
A RELAXING CHURCH
It
is impossible to deny that vast changes have passed over our conception of the
Church within the last fifty years. We
have relaxed the severity which characterised the Church of our fathers. What an ordeal it used to be to join the
Church in the days before the statistician and the interviewer were
abroad! Before also the Church was a
vast business concern, overloaded with departments, publishing an annual report
and balance-sheet and sending it promptly to the newspapers. When the business of the Church was simple
and was kept sacredly to itself! When a
candidate had to appear before the Church in meeting assembled, to tell what
the Lord had done for his soul, and when he might be questioned and
cross-questioned as to experience and beliefs by any of the members. How strait was the gate then, how narrow the
way! How clear the dividing line between
the Church and the world! Somebody
suggests to me that we should make admission to the Church easier! Why, people can stroll into the Church now on
the strength of a little religious sentiment, or emotion, or the faintest
desire to be better, or of the slightest interest in Christian or philanthropic
work. We are so anxious about numbers
and statistics that we press people in almost unconditionally, and so far from
it being a high privilege to belong to the Church, it is in danger of being
regarded as a favour bestowed on the community when persons of intelligence and
respectability consent to join it.
Church discipline, save for gross moral offences, is almost unknown.
The
final test of any religion and of any Church is, What
kind of character is it producing? Is it
of a higher type than that in the surrounding world? The people who watch us and our Church will
not ask as the first question whether we support our own institutions and cling
to our own rites. These are the
machinery. The final product is character, and apart from that we have no claim to
be considered a part of the true Church of Christ. It is
by that that the final impression will be made, and the battle will be either
lost or won. If we have not that our works will be barren and
our institutions a mockery. We dare to claim that when we are met
together in the name of Christ, He is in the midst: we must make good so
tremendous a claim by the fruits corresponding.
‑
CHARLES BROWN, D.D.
* *
*
A HAVEN OF REST
The
Church is a house of prayer, a place of healing, a
haven of rest. She stands for the peace
of God in the midst of a weary, troubled, sinful world. Her atmosphere is sweet and still, and when
we enter her, we breathe the air of Eternity.
It is a priceless blessing that there should be such a harbour in a
world like this; and wherever it is found, it will be largely frequented; for
the troubled children of men long for rest, for healing, for escape, however
brief, from the noise and dust of the crowded highway. Such is the ideal of the Church; but I fear
it has been lost sight of in these days.
We have forgotten what the Church is - not a propaganda, but the
communion of believing and worshipping souls, living a supernatural life in the
midst of the world, and thus, by their simple presence, extending the borders
of the Kingdom of Heaven, as the lamp illumines the darkness, as the spring of
living water makes the desert rejoice and blossom as the rose. It is for lack of the spirit of devotion that
the Church is failing; and instead of recognizing this and returning to the
primal simplicities of faith and communion, we have got hysterical and resorted
to a multitude of sensational devices which, as we are finding, only aggravate
the evil by more thoroughly secularizing the Church. The
Church in these days is seething with fretful and feverish activities. The cloister has been turned into a
committee-room; the man of God has yielded place to the man of affairs, the
saint to the ecclesiastic. When I hear
the clamour for more workers, I remember that our Lord was content with very
few. “He
ordained twelve, that they should be
with Him, and that He might send them forth to preach.” Our need is
not more preachers, but more gentle, gracious souls to
live for Jesus and carry the atmosphere of the House of Prayer into the dust
and tumult of the market-place.
-
BISHOP WORDSWORTH.
* *
*
THE
Disruption has been a constant cancer in the Body of
Christ. The unity made in heaven is
broken into fragments on earth. At this moment
(for example) there are four separate bodies of Quakers in the
[* But for one argument it is
difficult to see how even the Church of Rome can avoid going to pieces, for Pius X denouncing Modernism is merely Canute ordering back the tide: that argument is- the
stake.]
GRACE
Now it is a golden truth that God has put into our
hands a sevenfold unity whereby, even if the worst happen, any believer can
keep his catholic integrity; and this unity lies embedded in something
infinitely more difficult to attain and to maintain than fact or doctrine. Unity is buried deep in heavenly grace. “With
all lowliness and meekness, with long-suffering, forbearing one another in
love, STRIVING” - for it will
require the utmost effort, and constant self-abnegation – “to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Eph. 4: 2).
Unity is the fruit of ripeness of character: the battle for unity is won
or lost in the heart ere ever it reaches the intellect or the church. While on all explicit declarations of Holy
Writ there can be no yielding, and God asks for no surrender of principle or
sacrifice of truth, a vast sphere remains where loving concession and mutual
tolerance not only make a much more powerful church, but create one of life’s
sweetest joys. The epigram of Meldensius has
survived, because it has deserved to survive, many centuries:-
“In essentials,
unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity.”*
[*
“The Jews would not willingly tread upon the smallest
piece of paper in their path; for, they say, the name of God may be on it: the
name of God may be written upon that soul thou treadest
on; despise it not” (Archbishop
Leighton).]
[1] ONE BODY
Assuming, therefore, such a background of grace,
seven facts - doctrines as well as facts, but facts before they were doctrines
- create our unity; and he who maintains the seven can under no circumstances
be in God’s sight a disruptionist, or a
schismatic. The Holy Spirit begins with
the cardinal fact creating unity:‑ “There is ONE BODY.” Every reborn soul, with no other
qualification whatever, is automatically and organically in the Church, exactly
as a limb is in a body when it is born: God makes this unity at conversion, and all we can do is to keep it afterwards: race, colour, language,
rank, gift, temperament - all are lost in a new creation, a living, throbbing
organism. Therefore negatively, as a
glass eye or an artificial limb is no part of a body, so every Christless soul,
whatever ritual may have been performed over him, or whatever his general moral
character, we must refuse as a fellow-limb because he is not a limb; and
positively, so long as we keep an open Table and an open fellowship to all
believers, solely because they are fellow-limbs, so long ‘schism in the body’
(1 Cor. 12: 25) is
impossible to us, it is a sin which can never be laid to our charge. For the Holy Ghost, laying the Church’s
foundations, lays down only positives, never negatives: ‘separation from evil’ -
meaning, thereby, separation from unscriptural believers - He nowhere
commands:* association with all,
everywhere, who constitute the ‘Body,’ is the huge, underlying bedrock of the
Church.
[* The six excommunicating sins (1 Cor. 5: 11) are the
sole exception.]
[2] ONE SPIRIT
Penetrating past this living
mass is a unity beneath the quivering flesh: “and ONE SPIRIT.” The Holy Ghost, being lodged in each, is
lodged in all: “there are diversities of gifts, but the
same Spirit” (1 Cor. 12: 4): one Spirit not only
quickens, but informs, every limb; and therefore unity is inevitable in
proportion as the Spirit has sway in each, amd in
all. Every impulse of the Spirit must be
toward unity, because there in only one Spirit: He cannot, suicidally,
lead against Himself. An Indian pastor
remarked recently:- “Were it
not for the vigilance of the Western shepherds, the Indian sheep would, some
fine morning, all be found in one fold.”
“Church unity is not a compromise, but an incorporation” (Eadie). Ubi Spiritus, ibi
Ecclesia.
[3] ONE HOPE
The Holy Spirit next passes
to outlook: “even as also ye were called in ONE HOPE of your callng.” As emigrants clustered on one deck, bound for
the same new land; as joint-heirs of a
great inheritance, speeding together to it by express train; as travellers
to a City in which we must live as one for ever: “begotten
again to a living hope” (1 Pet. 1: 3), it is natural for us
to be one; and the sharper our severance from the world, the more we are hated
as aliens, the closer we shall be driven towards all separated saints, and the
more intense will be our community of feeling.
There are not two heavens to which we go.
[4] ONE LORD
The middle unity, the
central hinge, appropriately, is “ONE LORD.”
As we enter the Church, Jesus is our Saviour; but the moment we have
crossed the threshold, He is our Lord. ‘One Lord,’ and
therefore excluding all other Lords - such as the Pope: one Head, and therefore
with no universal president on earth, not even in Paul’s lifetime: one Teacher,
and all we brethren - therefore our Lord’s theology can never be superseded:
one thinking Head, and therefore the closer we all
are to Christ mentally, the closer we shall be to one another, in doctrine, in
judgment, in discipline, in conduct. Thus by our very refusal of all other lordship
- Papal or Royal - we are emsolidating, not
dismembering, the body of Christ.
[5] ONE
FAITH
Consequent on one Lord is “ONE FAITH.” There is one faith, among all, for all are justified in exactly the same way,
and that by faith: it is a faith which is in all, and which is in each: a
faith, therefore, not in a multitude of doctrines, on which there may be
infinite divergence, but that faith in saving essentials which makes a Christian, and so is in every Christian. The same faith is in the most gigantic
intellect, and in the tiniest believing child, within the
[*This
presents an impassable wall to the Modernist: no faith, no Church. Not every unity is either strength or
life. Unity can be death. The union of fire and water extinguishes
both: union between the wolf and the lamb is death to the lamb: to chain together
opposing forces is the paralysis of all motion.
Separation from the unregenerate
is commanded (2 Cor.
6: 14) as stringently as union with the regenerate is enjoined.
[6] ONE
BAPTISM
Faith is confessed in “ONE BAPTISM.”* No historical record of infant baptism
occurs before Tertullian,
in the second century; while the Greek Church has never known anything but
immersion: the one baptism, therefore, is believers’ immersion; and all later
ritual is a second baptism
invalidating the ‘one baptism.’ Baptism engulfs
all believers in a common grave, and resurrects all into a common life. “For as many of you as
were baptized into Christ did put on Christ. There can be neither Jew nor Greek, there can
be neither bond nor free, there can be no male and female: for ye are ALL ONE in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3: 27).
All emerge from the ritual tomb One Man.**
[*
The omission of the Lord’s Supper seems to be a designed and studied prophetic
exclusion of the Mass, which, together with its Pontifex
Maximus, is the central unity inherited from ancient
Babylon.
**
Baptism is not before faith, as
creating it, nor simultaneous with
faith, as generated together, but after faith, as the visible confession of an invisible life.]
[7] ONE FATHER
The final unity lands us in the source and fount of
all unity: “ONE
GOD AND FATHER OF ALL.” We
begin at the palpable circumference - the Body scattered through all the world: we close at the secret centre - generating
Deity in heaven: “who is over all” ‑ as a
canopy of protection: “and through all” - as a
dynamic of service; “and in all” - the Church
heaven’s indestructible outpost, the unstormable citadel of Deity.*
faith.
[*It is characteristic of the confused mind of the Church through the ages that the Church of Rome
(so called by courtesy) has been right all along
in declaring a visible Church to be
the design of God, while the Reformed Communions have been right all along in
pronouncing her monstrous ecclesiasticism no church at all.
For hers is a catholicity founded on a ritual, and so consisting
(mainly) of the unsaved; while her critics disguise their sects by denying
visibility to the Body of Christ. But a body - unlike its spirit, and especially a
baptized body - is necessarily
visible, unless it has been
dismembered. Christian ‘bodies’ have replaced the One Body. Neither
‘apostolic succession’ nor a uniting hierarchy in any shape or form is pre-Chur ch scribed by the Holy
Ghost, and therefore none such is requisite for unity.]
UNITY
So the seven unities are
seven obligations to unity.*
We are to make the Church’s unity one of the master-passions of
our life. For there
could be no more golden truth for an age of disruption. He who believes the sevenfold unity, who
practises it, who preaches it, who suffers for it – that man may be
excommunicated by every sect in Christendom, and
outlawed by the Christian organizations of the world, yet nevertheless in
himself he embodies the Church Catholic, and, in whatever storms of disruption
the Church of God known may founder, in
the great day he will be found guiltless of schism. “I pray that they may
all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may
be in us: that the world may believe that thou didst send me” (John 17: 21).
[* The dynamite has never been created powerful enough
to blast denominational walls, the stereotyped mental limitations of saints
long dead and gone: it is a destruction
that can be wrought only by the judgment Seat of Christ. But the
* *
*
ONE LORD
Immortal love, for ever
full,
For ever flowing free,
For ever shared, for ever
whole,
A never-ebbing sea!
Our outward lips confess the
Name,
All other names above;
Love only knoweth whence it
came
And comprehendeth love.
We may not climb the
heavenly steeps
To bring the Lord Christ
down.
In vain we search the lowest
deeps,
For Him no depths can drown:
But warm, sweet, tender,
even yet
A present help is He;
And faith has still its
Olivet,
And love its
The healing of His seamless
dress
Is by our beds of pain;
We touch Him, in life’s
throng and press,
And we are whole again.
Through Him the first fond
prayers are said
Our lips of childhood frame;
The last low whispers of our
dead
Are burden’d
with His name.
0 Lord and Master of us all,
Whate’er our name or sign,
We own Thy sway, we hear Thy
call,
We test our lives by Thine!
In vain shall waves of
incense drift
The vaulted nave around;
In vain the minster turret lift
Its brazen weights of sound:
The heart must ring Thy
Christmas bells,
Thy inward altars raise;
Its faith and hope Thy
canticles,
And its obedience praise.
-
J. G.
-------
* *
* * *
* *
[Part
Three]
Rear cover book photo above: Centre: Joseph
Alois Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI.
Left, top to bottom: Giambattista Pamfili, Innocent X; Achille Ratti, Pius XI; Angelo Giueeppe Ronchalli,
John XXIII.
Right, Giovanni
Maria Mastai-Ferretti, Pius IX; Eugenio Pacelli, Pius XII; Giulio Rospigliosi, Clement IX.
WHO IS BENEDICT XVI?
By MATTHEW VOGAN
POPE Benedict XVI will arrive in
As Cardinal Ratzinger, the
Pope was responsible for producing the New Catechsm of
the [Roman] Catbolic Church which states regarding the
Pope that he “as Vicar of Christ, and as pastor of the
entire Church has full, supreme and universal power over the whole Church, a
power which he can always exercise unhindered”. It also claims for him infallibility when “he proclaims by a definitive act a doctrine pertaining to
faith or morals. … This infallibility
extends as far as the deposit of divine Revelation itself.”
Behind the great swelling titles and claims is a
man, a man of words and ideas - a theologian whose doctrine can be compared
with that of the Word of God. He is also
a man whose actions in the past and more recently can be reviewed, a man with
unparalleled power to discipline within the Roman Catholic Church or to conceal
and avoid discipline.
1. The Pope and the Nazi regime
Josef Alois Ratzinger was born in 1927, at Marktl am
Ratzinger’s memory of this time appears
a little selective and confused. Hitler
Youth membership was made compulsory in 1936 and 1939, not 1941. Ratzinger says that
he was “still too young” at the time, but he
was 14 in 1941 and therefore eligible.
Membership in the Deutsche Jungvolk (a group
for younger children) was mandatory between the ages of 10 and 14. We do not know whether or not he belonged to
this group.
Ratzinger says that his father was
critical of the Nazi regime and due to this the family had to move four times
before he was ten years old. Neither his
father nor any of the Ratzinger family, however,
actively resisted the Nazis; Ratzinger claims it was
“impossible” to resist. This is quite untrue. Elizabeth
Lohner, a Traunstein
resident whose brother-in-law was sent to
A few hundred yards away from the Ratzingers’ house, a family hid Hans Braxenthaler, a local resistance
fighter. The Gestapo regularly searched
local homes for resistance members. It
was also possible to resist distributing anti-Nazi material. The Lutheran pastor in Traunstein
preached against the Nazi regime and was arrested as a result. Ratzinger must have
witnesssed violence against Jews and seen them being
rounded up for death camps. The Ratzingers escaped arrest and violence from the Gestapo;
they escaped the concentration camps at the expense of others. There were, for instance, 411 German Roman
Catholic priests at
Ratzinger began military service in
1943 as a member of an anti-aircraft unit charged with killing Allied pilots
and protecting a BMW factory that used slave labour from the
Ratzinger was young, but so were many
others who chose to resist the evil of the Nazi regime. There were various options available to him;
he chose that of complicity and blind obedience. He displays no remorse for this. David
Gibson observes in his biography: “What the Nazi
experience seems to have bred in Joseph ... was
a kind of distancing, a pattern of removing himself from unpleasantness,
isolating the pure ideal ‑ of the the faith,
the church, the family, the nation - from the inevitable corruptions of the world.” Ratzinger believes
that only a Church with a strong central authority and absolute dogma can
withstand the sort of political and social context in which he grew up and he
is committed to ensuring that the Roman Catholic Church possesses these characteristics.
2. The Pope and theology
No previous Pope has been a
recognised, widely published academic theologian to the same degree as Pope
Benedict XVI. A crucial early
theological study was criticised for making revelation subjective by saying
that it depends upon someone to receive it.
To Ratzinger this “means
that there can be no such thing as pure Sola Scriptura [Scripture alone], because an essential
element of Scripture is the Church as understanding subject, and with this the
fundamental sense of tradition is already given”.
This means that Tradition (the teaching of the Roman
Catholic Church) is more authoritative than Scripture which is rejected as a
final authority. Objective Scripture is
weakened to such an extent that verbal inspiration is out of the question for Ratzinger. He has
said that “it is quite impossible to pick out one
single sentence and say, right, you find this sentence in God’s great book, so
it must simply be true in itself”.
He refuses to take certain parts of
the Old Testament as accurate historical accounts and has rejected the doctrine
of a bodily resurrection.
During his early academic career Ratzinger
admired and worked with radical liberal theologians such as Hans Kung and Karl Rahner. He played an important role among the greatly
influential German theologians at the Second Vatican Council. In 1968 he signed the Nijmegen Statement along with a number of key liberals of the Roman
Catholic Church.
Although there was liberal pressure for change,
Vatican II did not alter the fundamental doctrine of the Roman Church ‑
it addressed areas of administrative and liturgical reform in order to create
ecumenical appeal. Ultimately, the movement for structural change in the Roman
Catholic Church has been gradually rolled back. Alarmed by the student
uprisings of 1968, which involved his lectures being disrupted, Ratzinger adopted a more conservative outlook. He came to play a key role in this reversal
but remains committed to ensuring ecumenism through “reconciled
diversity” without abandoning Roman Catholic identity.
Ratzinger likes to refer to one of
his theology professors who questioned the Assumption of the Virgin Mary into
Heaven as an infallible tenet because of its lack of Scriptural
foundation. But the professor
immediately surrendered his convictions to the authority of the Roman
Church. Ratzinger
elaborates concerning his own blind obedience to Romanism: “It was always my idea to be a Catholic, to follow the
Catholic faith and not my own opinions.”
He is devoted to the core blasphemies of
The Roman Catholic Church is the fundamental
principle in Ratzinger’s theology ‑ he remarks,
“I began with the theme of the Church, and it is
present in everything”. Ratzinger’s theology gives the Roman Catholic Church an
indispensable role in salvation. David Gibson observes a “near-total equivalency between Christ and the church ‑
the Catholic Churh” in Ratzinger’s
views. Ratzinger
claims: “It is in the Church that we encounter Christ:
she is our contemporaneity with Christ: there is no
other.” Although he brokered the
1999 Joint Declaration with Lutherans on on
justification, he rejects Luther’s emphasis upon personal justifying faith in
favour of a blind assent in “coming to participate in
the already existing decision of the believing community” and “surrender one’s
act of fith to it”.
In 1977 Pope Paul VI appointed him Archbishop of
Munich and Freising and a year later he was made a
cardinal. In 1981 he became prefect of
the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (formerly the Inquisition). A succession of as many as 100 theologians
with views that were unacceptable found themselves silenced or excommunicated,
all wihout a formal hearing. As Pope John Paul II’s
pontificate developed, Ratzinger’s influence grew so
much that in 1998 one
3.
The Pope’s role in concealing sexual abuse
committed
by Roman Catbolic priests
A few weeks before he was elected Pope in 2005, Ratzinger spoke publicly at a mass of “how much filth there is in the Church, even among those in
the priesthood”. This was widely
interpreted as a reference to phedophile
priests. No one had a better knowledge
of the nature and extent of that “filth”, since
he had read every Friday a large quantity of reports from around the world of
sexual misconduct which were his responsibility to investigate. Despite such harsh words, however, his role
in investigation has been one of obstruction and concealment.
Obstructing justice
Ratzinger sent a private letter to
every Roman Catholic bishop in 2001 ordering them to ensure that their
investigations into child sex abuse claims be carried out “in the most secretive way ... restrained by
perpetual silence”. The
document recommended that rather than reporting sexual abuse to the relevant
legal authorities, bishops should encourage “everyone”,
including the victim, witnesses and perpetrator, not to talk about it but to “observe the
strictest secret which is commonly regarded as a secret of the Holy Office ...
under the penalty of excommunication”. This
included keeping the evidence confidential for up to 10 years after the victim
reached adulthood.
This was designed to obstruct rather than secure
justice. Father Tom Doyle, a
Vatican lawyer until he was sacked for criticising the Church’s handling of
child abuse claims, said: “What you have here is an
explicit written policy to cover up cases of child sexual abuse by the clergy
and to punish those who would call attention to these crimes by the churchmen. When abusive priests are discovered, the
response has been not to investigate and prosecute but to move them from one
place to another. So there’s total
disregard for the victims and for the fact that you are going to have a whole
new crop of victims in the next place.
This is happening all over the world.” The Tablet (26th April 2008), noted that Ratzinger
had chosen to give “greater weight to the prevention
of scandal than to the protection of vulnerable minors”.
Bishops were reminded in Ratzinger’s
letter that “in
every way the judge is to remember that it is never right for him to bind the
accused by an oath to tell the truth”. The letter also ordered that “preliminary investigations” into any claims of abuse
should be sent to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which
reserved the option of referring them back to private tribunals in which the “functions of judge, promoter of justice, notary and legal
representative can validly be performed for these cases only by priests”. The letter was not made public and it was
ordered that copies should be locked in a safe.
It came to public attention as a result of a legal case in
The step of reserving cases of clerical sexual abuse
of minors to the Congregation was seen to be a new step. The letter ensured
that Rnzinger became the chief judge of all such
cases, as was acknowledged by Rev.
Augustus Di Noia, a
senior official at the Congregation. “We’ve become the experts.
We know more about this now practically than anybody in the world.” “If there’s any pope
who knows what he’s talking about when we’re talking about this, it is Cardinal
Ratzinger,” said Msgr. Charles J. Scicluna, promoter of
justice at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. On Friday mornings, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger reviewed dossiers detailing allegations of abuse
sent in by bishops from around the world.
He referred to it as “our Friday penance”. David Yallop noted that by 2007 there were so many referrals for action against priests to the Congregation
that it was taking 18 months simply to get a reply.
In 2002 various people within or close to the
Minimising the problem
Ratzinger told the Catholic News
Service in 2002 that “less than one percent of priests
are guilty of acts of this type”.
This figure had altered by 2009 when at a September meeting of the
United Nations human rights council in
Ratzinger and others have
consistently attempted to portray clerical child abuse as a small problem, a
media-generated problem, a homosexual problem, an American, problem ‑ anything
but a problem that the Roman Catholic hierarchy must address. In truth, there is possibility of objective
measurement of the action that has been taken since the trials are secret and
the Congregation does not release any information about specific cases, the
number of cases they have considered, or how the cases have been handled.
Inaction and cover-up
Ratzinger took no action against the
nineteen American Bishops who have been named either as directly involved in
sexual abuse cases or in the resultant cover‑up. Even Cardinal Bernard
Law only resigned in 2002 and was subsequently given some of the most
prestigious positions in
Ratzinger chose his friend Archbishop William Levada
to replace him as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
This was despite the complacent handling of paedophile priests by Levada when he was Bishop of Portland, and for his friendly
approach to homosexuals when he became Archbishop of San Francisco. He is still
a known defender of homosexual rights. Appointments such as this served to
confirm to observers that the protection of paedophiles was accepted policy.
There was also a suspicion that homosexuality and paedophilia had infiltrated
the international Roman Catholic hierarchy to such an extent that it would be
extremely damaging for the
Ratzinger also sought to silence
allegations of abuse against Marcial Maciel Degollado, founder of
the global Legion of Christ movement. Marciel raised
enormous sums of money and was supported by Pope John Paul II and other key
The case was closed but then reopened in 2004 with
investigation of evidence by more than 100 victims besides allegations of
mismanagement funds, drug and substance abuse and drug trafficking. Eventually in 2006, when the allegations
could no longer be denied, Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict
XVI, removed Maciel from
active ministry, inviting him to spend the rest of his days in prayer and
penance, thus avoiding a canonical trial.
This left Maciel’s supporters the opportunity
of declaring that he had not been proved guilty of anything.
The Pope also issued in 2006 new guidelines
regarding homosexuals entering the seminary.
These merely barred those with “deep-seated
tendencies” towards homosexuality from the priesthood; those with “transitory problems” or “chaste”
homosexuals would be accepted. It was
seen as a soft response. New 0xford Review editor Dale Vree
observed that “the priesthood will continue to be or
become a ‘gay’ profession, to this document”.
By 2010, the year of the Pope’s visit to the
In his role leading the
Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, Ratzinger was
guilty of long delays before removing men from the priesthood; six years in the
case of Stephen Kiesle
a priest who was already convicted of the sexual abuse of young boys. There were similar of up to 12 years in cases
relating to priests in
The Pope was now more directly linked with the
cover-up of cases of abuse. This was
particularly in relation to a paedophile priest, Peter Hullermann, who was returned to a
parish after rehabilitation and went on to molest other children. Ratzinger was
Archbishop of Munich and Freising at the time but the
action has been hastily attributed by diocesan authorities to Gerhard Gruber, Ratzinger’s
deputy at the time. Der Spiegel reported (19th April 2010), drawing upon information from Gruber including an open letter he
himself had written, that he had been pressurised to take full responsibility
for “incorrect decisions”. In any case, Ratzinger
was ultimately responsible and evidence shows that he chaired a meeting in
relation to the case. The Pope could
only speak blindly and helplessly of the need for the faithful to do “penance” in light of “the
attacks of the world that talks to us of our sins”.
4. Conclusion
D. Vincent Twomey has written a biographical portrait entitled Pope Benedict XVI: The Conscience of OurAge, in which he writes of the Pope’s
capacity to teach the world not only by what he says but also by example. In the light of the objectionable character
of the Pope’s life and career that we have considered it is absurd that he
could be considered the “Conscience of Our Age”
in any positive sense. When the papal
visit to the
*
* *
What the Press Said in Print …
*
* *
The Attractions of Popery
By
ROBERT LEWIS DABNEY
D R. J0HN H.
RICE, with the intuition of a great mind,
warned Presbyterians against a renewed prevalence of popery in our Protestant
land. This was when it was so
insignificant among us as to be almost unnoticed. Many were surprised at his prophecy, and not a few mocked; but time has fulfilled
it. Our leaders from 1830 to 1860
understood well the causes of this danger.
They were diligent to inform and prepare the minds of their people
against it. Hence General Assemblies and
Synods appointed annual sermons upon popery, and our teachers did their best to
arouse the minds of the people. Now, all
this has mainly passed away, and we are relaxing our resistance against the
dreaded foe just in proportion as he grows more formidable. It has become the fashion to condemn
controversy and to affect the widest charity for this and all other foes of
Christ and of souls. High Presbyterian
authority even is quoted as saying, that henceforth our concern with Romanism
should be chiefly ironical! The figures
presented by the census of 1890 are construed in opposite ways. This gives the papists more than fourteen
millions of adherents in the
Both logic and Holy Writ teach us that the thing which
hath been is the thing which shall be” . Like causes
must be expected to produce like effects.
For Presbyterians of all others to discount the perpetual danger Romanism
is thoroughly thoughtless and rash. We
believe that the Christianity left by the apostles to the primitive church was
essentially we now call Presbyterian and Protestant. Prelacy and popery speedily began to work in
the bosom of that community and steadily wrought its corruption and almost its
total extirpation. Why should not the cause tend to work the same result
again? Are we truer or wiser
Presbyterians than those trained by the apostles? Have the enemies of truth become less skilful
and dangerous by gaining the experience of centuries? The popish system of ritual and doctrine was
a gradual growth, which, modifying true Christianity, first perverted and then
extinguished it. Its destructive power
has resulted from this: that it has not been the invention of any one cunning
and hostile mind, but a gradual growth, modified by hundreds of thousands of
its cultivators, who were the most learned, selfish, and anti-Christian spirits
of their generations, perpetually retouched and adapted to every weakness and
every attribute of depraved human nature, until it became the most skilful and
pernicious system of error which the world has ever known. As it has adjusted itself to every
superstition, every sense of guilt, every foible and craving of the depraved
human heart, so it has travestied with consummate skill every active principle
of the gospel. It is doubtless the no
plus ultra of religious
delusion, the final and highest result of perverted human faculty guided by the
sagacity of the great enemy.
This system has nearly conquered Christendom
once. He who does not see that it is
capable of conquering it again is blind to the simplest laws of thought. One may ask, Does it
not retain sundry of the cardinal doctrines of the gospel, monotheism, the trinity,
the hypostatic union, Christ’s sacrifice, the sacraments, the resurrection, the
judgment, immortality? Yes; in form it
retains them, and this because of its supreme
cunning. It retains them while so
wresting and enervating as to rob them mainly of their sanctifying power,
because it designs to spread its snares for all sorts of minds of every grade
of opinion. The grand architect was too
cunning to make it, like his earlier essays, mere atheism, or mere fetishism,
or mere polytheism, or mere pagan idolatry; for in these forms the trap only
ensnared the coarser and more ignorant natures.
He has now perfected it and baited it for all types of humanity, the
most refined as well as the most imbruted.
*
* *
1. Romanism now enjoys in our country certain important
advantages, which I may style legitimate, in this sense, that our decadent,
half-corrupted Protestantism bestows these advantages upon our enemy, so that
Rome, in employing them, only uses what we ourselves give her. In other words, there are plain points upon
which
(1) A hundred years ago French atheism
gave the world the Jacobin theory of political rights. The Bible had been teaching mankind for three
thousand years the great doctrine of men’s moral equality before the universal
Father, the great basis of all free, just, and truly republican forms of civil
society. Atheism now travestied this
true doctrine by her mortal heresy of the absolute equality of men, asserting
that every human being is naturally and inalienably entitled to every right,
power, and prerogative in civil society which is allowed to any man or any
class. The Bible taught a liberty which
consists in each man’s unhindered privilege of having and doing just those
things, and no others, to which he is rationally and morally entitled. Jacobinism taught the liberty of license -
every man’s natural right to indulge his own absolute will; and it set up this
fiendish caricature as the object of sacred worship for mankind. Now, democratic Protestantism in these
(2) The Reformation was an assertion of
liberty of thought. It asserted for all
mankind, and secured for the Protestant nations, each man’s right to think and
decide for himself upon his religious creed and his duty towards his God, in
the fear of God and the truth, unhindered by human power, political or
ecclesiastical. Here, again, a
part of our Protestantism perverted the precious truth until the “manna bred worms, and stank”. Rationalistic and
sceptical Protestantism now claims, instead of that righteous liberty, licence
to dogmatize at the bidding of every caprice, every impulse of vanity, every
false philosophy, without any responsibility to either truth or moral
obligation. The result has been a diversity and confusion of pretended
creeds and theologies among nominal Protestants, which perplexes and frightens
sincere, but timid, minds.
Everything seems to them afloat upon this turbulent sea of licentious
debate. They are fatigued and alarmed;
they see no end of uncertainties. They
look around anxiously for some safe and fixed foundation of credence.
(3) To the shame of our damaged
Protestantism, popery remains, in some essential respects, more faithful to
God’s truth than its rival. For
instance, while multitudes of scholars, calling themselves Protestant
Christians, are undermining the doctrine of the inspiration of the Scriptures,
Again,
multitudes of pretended Protestants utterly deny the trinity, the very
corner-stone of a theology of redemption.
(4) The best argument for any creed is
the godly living of its professors.
Protestantism used to have a grand and victorious advantage on that
point. She is ceasing to wield it. The wealth begotten by her very virtues of
industry, thrift, and probity has debauched many of her children. “Jeshurun has waxen fat, and kicked.” An unbounded flood of luxury sweeps
Protestant families away. A relaxed and deceitful doctrine produces
its sure fruits of relaxed and degraded morals. Church
discipline is nearly extinct.
Meantime spurious revivalism, relying upon all species of vulgar
claptrap and sensational artifice, upon slang rhetoric and the stimulating of
mere animal sympathies, instead of the pure Word and Spirit of God, is hurrying
tens of thousands of dead souls into the Protestant churches. These evils have gone so far that a
profession of faith in these churches has come to mean nearly as little as a
professed conformity to
The
Romanist’s machine prayers and vain repetitions have, at least, this tendency,
to sustain in his soul some slight habit of religious reverence, and this is
better than mere licence of life. While
the two communions wear these aspects, we need not wonder that those Americans,
at least, whose early prejudices lean towards
(5) We Protestants are also giving away
to
The
statesmen and divines of the Reformation, the Luthers,
Calvins, Knoxes, Winthrops, and Mathers, were
strong advocates of State education; they were such because they believed in
the close union of church and State; because their conception of the State was
thoroughly theocratic. Had these men
been asked, What think you of a theory of education which should train the
understanding without instructing the religious conscience; which should teach
young immortal spirits anything and everything except God; which should thus
secularize education, a function essentially spiritual, and should take this
parental task from the fathers and mothers, on whom God imposed it, to confer
it on the human and earthly organism, expressly secular and godless? they would have answered with one voice, It is pagan,
utterly damnable. But they thought that
the State might educate, because the State with them was Christian. Thus State education was firmly grafted into
the Puritan colonies.
(6) It is with this most valuable class
of minds that
The
Roman doctrine and canon law recognize no divorce except by the pope
himself. They teach that marriage is
inviolable. The divorce laws in our
Protestant States provide so many ways for rending the marriage tie that its
vows have become almost a farce. We are
told that many Protestant women in
Protestants
may exclaim that
I
have thus described six distinct lines of influence which our unfaithfulness to
our principles has betrayed into the hands of the Romanist. They are using them all with constant effect,
and we, at least, cannot blame them.
*
* *
2. I now proceed to explain certain evil principles of human nature which
are concurring powerfully in this country to give currency to popery. These may be called its illicit
advantages. I mention:-
(1) The constant tendency of American
demagogues to pay court to popery and to purchase votes for themselves from it,
at the cost of the people’s safety, rights and money. Nearly two generations ago (the men of this
day seem to have forgotten the infamy) William
H. Seward, of
Intelligent students of church history know that one
main agency for converting primitive Christianity first into prelacy and then
into popery was unlimited church
endowments. As soon as
But
it would appear that our legislators now know nothing about that great
principle, or care nothing about it. Church institutions, Protestant and
Romanist, are virtually perpetual corporations.
Whatever the pious choose to give them is held in mortmain, and they grow continually richer and
richer; they do not even pay taxes, and there seems no limit upon their
acquisitions. And last comes the Supreme
Court of the
(2) The democratic theory of human
society may be the most rational and equitable; but human nature is not
equitable; it is fallen and perverted.
Lust of applause, pride, vainglory, and love of power are as natural to
it as hunger to the body. Next to Adam,
the most representative man upon earth was Diotrephes,
“who loves to have the pre-eminence”. Every man is an aristocrat in his heart. Now, prelacy and popery are aristocratic
religions. Consequently, as long as
human nature is natural, they will present more or less of attraction to human
minds. Quite a number of Methodist,
Presbyterian, or Independent ministers have gone over to prelacy or popery, and
thus become bishops. Was there ever one
of them, however conscientious his new faith, and however devout his temper,
who did not find some elation and pleasure in his spiritual dignity? Is there a democrat in democratic
(3) All the churches which call
themselves Protestant, even the strictest, now betray the silent influence of
those Romanizing tendencies which have been and are hereafter to be
explained. There is an almost universal
letting down of the old standard of doctrine and worship. A comparison of prevalent usages of today and
of seventy years ago in the Methodist, Baptist, Congregational
and Presbyterian Churches (except those of the Secession) would startle any
thinking mind. Every one of them now
admits usages which were then universally‑ rejected by them, such as
architectural pomps, pictured windows, floral
decorations, instrumental and operatic music.
One may say, that these are matters of indifference which cannot be
proved anti-scriptural; but every sensible man knows that they proceed from one
impulse, the craving for a more spectacular and ritualistic worship. This is precisely the impulse which brought
about prelacy and popery in the patristic ages. The strictest Protestant communions
are now moving upon the same inclined plane.
The descent is gentle, at first, but as it proceeds it grows steeper;
and at the bottom is popery. The prelatic churches of
(4) In sundry respects I perceive a sort
of hallucination prevailing in people’s minds concerning old historical errors
and abuses, which I see to have been the regular results of human nature. Men will not understand history; they flatter
themselves that, because the modes of civilization are much changed and
advanced, therefore the essential laws of man’s nature are going to cease
acting; which is just as unreasonable as to expect that sinful human beings
must entirely cease to be untruthful, sensual, dishonest, and selfish, because
they have gotten to wear fine clothes.
Of certain evils and abuses of ancient history, men persuade themselves
that they are no longer possible among us, because we have become civilized and
nominally Christian. One of these evils
is idolatry with its two branches, polytheism and image-worship. Oh! they say, mankind has outgrown all that; other evils may
invade our Christian civilization, but that is too gross to come back again.
They are blind at once to the teachings of historical facts and to common
sense. They know that at one time
idolatry nearly filled the ancient world.
Well, what was the previous religious state of mankind upon which it
supervened? Virtually a Christian state,
that is to say, a worship of the one true God, under the light of revelation,
with our same gospel taught by promises and sacrifices. And it is very stupid to suppose that the
social state upon which the early idolatry supervened was savage or
barbaric. We rather conclude that the
people who built Noah’s ark, the
The
attempt is made, indeed, to hide the likeness by the sophistical distinction
between latria and dulia,‑ but its worthlessness appears from this, that even dulia cannot be offered to redeemed creatures
without ascribing to them, by an unavoidable implication, the attributes
peculiar to God. In one word, fallen men
of all ages have betrayed a powerful tendency to image-worship and
polytheism.
(5) I proceed to unfold an attraction of
Romanism far more seductive. This is its
proposal to satisfy man’s guilty heart by a ritual instead of a spiritual
salvation. As all know who understand
the popish theology, the proposed vehicle of this redemption by forms is the
sacraments. Romanists are taught that
the New Testament sacraments differ from those of the Old Testament in this:
that they not only symbolize and seal, but effectuate grace ex opere
operato
in the souls of the recipients.
Now
let no Protestant mind exclaim: “Surely this is too
gross to be popular; surely people will have too much sense to think that they
can get to heaven by this species of consecrated jugglery!” History shows that this scheme of redemption
is almost universally acceptable and warmly popular with sinful mankind. Apprehend aright the ideas of paganism,
ancient and modern: we perceive that this popish conception of sacraments is
virtually the same with the pagan’s conception of their heathen rites. They claim to be just this species of saving
ritual, working their benefit upon souls precisely by this opus operatum agency.
What a commentary have we here upon this tendency of human nature to a
ritual salvation. The evangelists and
apostles reintroduced to the world the pure conception of a spiritual salvation
wrought by the energy of divine truth, and not of church rites; received by an
intelligent faith in the saved man’s soul, and not by manual ceremonial; and
made effectual by the enlightening operation of the Holy Ghost upon heart and
mind in rational accordance with truth, not by a priestly incantation working a
physical miracle. The gospels and
epistles defined and separated the two conceptions as plainly as words could do
it. But no sooner were the apostles gone
than the pagan conception of salvation by ritual, instead of by rational faith,
began to creep back into the patristic church.
In a few hundred years the wrong conception had triumphed completely
over the correct one in nearly the whole of Christendom, and thenceforward
sacramental grace has reigned supreme over the whole Roman and Greek
communions, in spite of modern letters and culture. How startling this commentary upon that
tendency of human nature! Surely there
are deep seated principles in man to account for it.
These
are not far to seek. First, men are sensuous
beings, and hence they naturally crave something concrete, material, and
spectacular in their religion. Dominated
as they are by a perpetual current of sensations, and having their animality exaggerated by their sinful nature, they are
sluggish to think spiritual truths, to look by faith upon invisible objects;
they crave to walk by sight rather than by faith. The material things in mammon, the sensual
pleasures which they see with their eyes and handle with their fingers,
although they perfectly know they perish with the using, obscure their view of
all the infinite, eternal realities, notwithstanding their professed belief of
them. Need we wonder that with such
creatures the visible and manual ritual should prevail over the spiritual
didactic? Does one exclaim, “But this is so unreasonable ‑ this notion that a
ritual ceremonial can change the state and destiny of a rational and moral
spirit!” I reply, “Yes, but not one whit more irrational than the preference
which the whole natural world gives to the things which are seen and temporal,
as it perfectly knows, over the things which are unseen and eternal; an
insanity of which the educated and refined are found just as capable as the
ignorant and brutish”. But the
other principle of human nature is still more keen and pronounced in its
preference for a ritual salvation. This
is its deep-seated, omnipotent preference for self-will and sin over spiritual
holiness of life. The natural man has,
indeed, his natural conscience and remorse, his fearful looking for of
judgment, his natural fear of misery, which is but modified selfishness. These
make everlasting punishment very terrible to his apprehension.
But
enmity to God, to His spiritual service, to the supremacy of His holy will, is
as native to him as his selfish fear is.
Next to perdition, there is no conception in the universe so repulsive to the sinful heart of man as that of genuine
repentance and its fruits. The true
gospel comes to him and says: Here is, indeed, a blessed, glorious redemption,
as free as air, as secure as the throne of God, but instrumentally it is
conditional on the faith of the heart; which faith works by love, purifies the
heart, and can only exist as it co-exists with genuine repentance, which
repentance turns honestly, unreservedly, here and now, without shuffling or
procrastination, from sin unto God, with full purpose of and endeavour after
new obedience; which is, in fact, a complete surrender of the sinful will to
God’s holy will, and a hearty enlistment in an arduous work of watchfulness,
self-denial, and self-discipline, for the sake of inward holiness, to be kept
up as long as life lasts. Soul, embrace
this task, and this splendid salvation shall be yours; and the gracious
Saviour, who purchases it for you, shall sustain, comfort, and enable you in
this arduous enlistment, so that even in the midst of the warfare you shall
find rest, and at the end heaven; but without this faith and this repentance no
sacraments or rights will do a particle of good towards your salvation. Now, this carnal soul has no faith; it is
utterly mistrustful and skeptical as to the
possibility of this peace of the heart in the spiritual warfare, this
sustaining power of the invisible hand, of which it has had no experience. This complete subjugation of self-will to
God, this life of self-denial and vital godliness, appears to this soul utterly
repulsive, yea, terrible. This guilty
soul dreads hell; it abhors such a life only less than hell. When told by Protestantism that it must thus
“turn or die”, this carnal soul finds itself in
an abhorrent dilemma; either term of the alternative is abominable to it. But now comes the theory of sacramental grace
and says to it with oily tongue: “Oh! Protestantism
exaggerates the dilemma! Your case is
not near so bad! The sacraments of the
church transfer you from the state of condemnation to that of reconciliation by
their own direct but mysterious efficiency; they work real grace, though you do
not bring to them this deep, thorough-going self-sacrifice and
self-consecration. No matter how much
you sin, or how often, repeated masses will make expiation for the guilt of all
those sins ex opere operato. Thus,
with her other sacraments of penance and extreme unction, Holy Mother Church
will repair all your short-comings and put you back into a salvable state, no
matter how sinfully you live.”
Need we wonder that this false doctrine is as sweet to that guilty soul
as a reprieve to the felon at the foot of the gallows? He can draw his breath again; he can say to
himself: “Ah, then the abhorred dilemma does not urge
me here and now. I can postpone this
hated reformation; I can still tamper with cherished sins without embracing
perdition.” This is a pleasant
doctrine; it suits so perfectly the sinful, selfish soul which does not wish to
part with its sins, and also does not wish to lie down in everlasting burnings.
This
deep-seated love of sin and self has also another result: The soul is conscious
that, if it must do many things which it does not like in order to avoid
perdition, it is much pleasanter to do a number of ceremonial things than to do
any portion of spiritual heart-work.
After I stood my graduate examination in philosophy at the
(6) To a shallow view, it might appear
that the popish doctrine of purgatory should
be quite a repulsive element of unpopularity with sinners; that doctrine is,
that notwithstanding all the benefit of the church’s sacraments and the
believer’s efforts, no Christian soul goes direct to heaven when the body dies,
except those of the martyrs, and a few eminent saints, who are, as it were,
miracles of sanctification in this life.
All the clergy, and even the popes, must go through purgatory in spite
of the apostolic succession and the infallibility. There the remains of
carnality in all must be burned away, and the deficiencies of their penitential
work in this life made good, by enduring penal fires and torments for a shorter
or longer time. Then the Christian
souls, finally purged from depravity and the reaum paenae, enter
into their final rest with Christ. But
the alms, prayers, and masses of survivors avail much to help these Christian
souls in purgatory and shorten their sufferings. It might be supposed that the Protestant doctrine should be much more
attractive and popular; viz., that there is no purgatory or intermediate state for the
spirits of dead men, but that the “souls of believers, being at their death made perfect in
holiness, do immediately enter into glory”.* This ought to be the more attractive doctrine, and to
Bible believers it is such, but there is
a feature about it which makes it intensely unpopular and repellent
to carnal men, and gives a powerful advantage with them to the popish scheme. That feature is, the sharpness and strictness
of the alternative which the Bible doctrine presses upon sinners: “turn or die.”
[* See ‘The Assumption of Mary’ and ‘Hades’
on this website. – Ed.]
The
Bible offers the most blessed and glorious redemption conceivable by man,
gracious and free, and bestowing a consummate blessedness the moment the body
dies. But it is on these terms that the
gospel must be embraced by a penitent faith, working an honest and thorough
revolution in the life. If the sinner
refuses this until this life ends, he seals his fate, and that fate is final,
unchangeable, and dreadful. Now, it is
no consolation to the carnal heart that the gospel assures him he need not run
any risk of that horrible fate; that he has only to turn and live; that very
turning is the thing which he abhors, if it is to be done in spirit and in
truth. He intensely desires to retain his sin and self-will. He craves earnestly to put off the evil day
of this sacrifice without incurring the irreparable penalty. Now, Rome comes to him and tells him that
this Protestant doctrine is unnecessarily harsh; that a sinner may continue in
the indulgence of his sins until this life ends, and yet not seal himself up
thereby to a hopeless hell; that if he is in communion with the Holy Mother
Church through her sacraments, he may indulge himself in this darling
procrastination without ruining himself forever. Thus the hateful necessity of present repentance
is postponed awhile; sweet, precious privilege to the sinner! True, he must expect to pay due penance for
that self-indulgence in purgatory, but he need not perish for it. The
It
must be added that the doctrine of a purgatory and of an application of
redemption after death is intensely attractive to other principles of the human
heart, much more excusable; to some affections, indeed, which are amiable. I allude to the solicitude and the affection
of believers for the souls of those whom they loved in this life, “who died and made no sign”. The Bible doctrine is, indeed, a solemn, an
awful one to Christians bereaved by the impenitent deaths of children and
relatives. It is our duty to foresee
this solemn result, and to provide against it by doing everything which
intercessory prayer, holy example and loving instruction and entreaty can do to
prevent such a catastrophe in the case of all those near to our hearts. But human self-indulgence is prone to be
slack in employing this safeguard against this sorrow. Let us picture to ourselves such a bereaved Christian,
sincere, yet partially self-condemned, and doubtful or fearful or hopeless
concerning the thorough conversion of a child who has been cut down by
death. Of all the elements of
bereavement none is so bitter, so immedicable, as the fear that he whom he
loved must suffer the wrath of God forever, and that now he is beyond reach of
his prayers and help. To such a one
comes the Romish priest with this species of
discourse. See now how harsh and cruel
is this heretical Protestant dogma! instead of offering
consolation to your Christian sorrow it embitters it as with a drop of hell
fire. But
I
have thus set in array the influences which
There
is another class of weapons which
*
* *
SPURGEON ON THE MASS
What, then, will we say of those who come forward and
pretend that they perpetually present the body of Christ in the unbloody sacrifice of the mass? We say that no profane jest from the lip of
Voltaire ever had even the slightest degree of God-defiant blasphemy in it
compared with the hideous insult of this horrible pretence. It is infernal. There can be nothing more tolerable than the
notion, for our Lord Jesus Christ has offered Himself for sin once, and once
for all; and he who dares to think of offering Him again, insults Him by acting
as if that once were not enough. There
would be no language of abhorrence too strong if the performers and attendants
at the mass really knew what is implied in their professed act and deed. In the judgment of Christian charity we may
earnestly pray, ‘Father, forgive them; for they know
not what they do’ (Luke 23: 34).
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