Roman Catholic Jesuits Rebel.
There appeared in The Scotsman on 26th September, a special article with the heading “Spiritual Rebellion of Jesuits,” written from Rome by this paper’s special correspondent. There are 35,000 members of the Society of Jesus, the most important religious Order in the Roman Catholic Church. Its activities cover the globe and scores of branches of human activities. This article reveals that 180 leaders of this Society met in Rome in September for an Extraordinary General Assembly, only the sixth in the Order’s four centuries of history. This was said to be sensational. The Order’s leaders came to Rome from every part of the world, except Communist countries, to discuss demands by the “younger generation” of Jesuits to “modernise the Order’s organisation” and “to analyse and if necessary revise the Order’s attitude” towards communism. It was generally known that this meeting under the chairmanship of the Order’s ailing Belgian general, Father Janssens, was judged by the Pope as a near-breach of discipline. The Pope gave a severe reprimand in a public address to the Order’s leaders, at the beginning of the Assembly instead of at the end. He declared that there was no reason why the Order should be modernised and that they should continue to live in their present austerity. The Pope also quoted canon law emphasising that the Order owes the Pope unquestionable loyalty and obedience. The article refers to reports that the Jesuits do not see eye to eye with the Vatican, and states: “According to those who have close connections with the Order, the spiritual rebellion in the Society of Jesus began in the United States among the younger members of the Order.” This gained ground, the article says, in France and Germany, etc. The rebellion is said to be directed against the archaic and antiquated vow of poverty. Poverty, it is said, compels members to use primitive methods and means for the Order’s teaching and missionary work. “The vow of poverty, they say, is to-day a formalism without substance of reality in modern times. A Jesuit has no personal property and all his needs are supplied by his superiors: even books or bus fares when he is not expected to walk.” The Order owns valuable properties all over the world and often inherits vast fortunes. “The younger Jesuits now demand that the tenets of individual poverty should be adjusted to the realities of our time, and that those engaged in teaching or on other intellectual occupations on behalf of the Order should have some use of the material profits gained from their activities.” And the article refers to another group of Jesuit rebels who are pressing for the modernisation of the Order’s structure and organisation. “The ferment in the Jesuit Order made such a deep impression on the Order’s priest general, that he yielded to the demand for an Extraordinary General Assembly. . . . If the rebels should win, the Order would have to defy the Pope. . . . But if the Papal reprimand is heeded the efficaciousness of the Order may be seriously impaired.” Now these extracts and quotations are significant from varied points of view. In a word, where is the blind, absolute obedience to the Pope, by all sections of the R.C. Church, in the light of the Jesuit rebellion? Where is the boasted unity which is said to exist throughout the R.C. Church when the most powerful Order in that Church is completely out of harmony with the Pope and Vatican on basic matters within the borders of the same? This article in The Scotsman is most illuminating.
A Boycott by Roman Catholics Damaging to their Cause.
Our readers will have read about the wife of a farmer in Fethard-on-Sea, 120 miles from Dublin, who, being a Protestant, left her Roman Catholic husband taking her two children with her and disappeared. From the domestic circumstances and religious feelings involved there arose in the above village a bitter situation last Spring and Summer. Because the children were not traced nor returned to their Roman Catholic father, the majority in the village who are R.C.’s, boycotted out and out the Protestant merchants and people. At one stage even Mr. de Valera condemned the boycott as “ill-conceived, ill-considered and futile.” Priests have supported the boycott. But Mr. Donald Barrington, lecturer in Public Administration and Constitutional Law, University College, Dublin, said that the boycott of Protestant traders and their families is the most terrible thing that has happened in Ireland since the civil war. He said it was damaging the cause of Roman Catholicism. It appears to us that Mr. Barrington is an R.C. himself, and if so, he ought to know his Church’s basic policy regarding Protestants who are looked upon as heretics.
Deplorable Church Attendances in Glasgow.
Dr. Julian Highet, lecturer on Sociology at Glasgow University, recently gave the following figures for average Church attendances in Glasgow, viz.: “Something like three-quarters of Glasgow adults either stayed away from or were relative strangers to public worship. In 1936 average attendance of just under 50,000 represented 28 per cent. of Church of Scotland membership in the city, and about 6.8 per cent. of Glasgow adults.” What a sad and dismal picture this is of Glasgow, especially on the Lord’s Day. (It applies of course to other cities in Britain.) The vast majority in this great city being without any public recognition of God, with no heart for religious worship, and the Lord’s Day deemed a day for secular and worldly activities. In other words, practical atheism is rife, and neither Billy Graham nor Rev. Tom Allan can deal with the root of this plague. And true, god-fearing ministers of the gospel cannot personally deal with it either. Glasgow and Scotland need a day of the power of the Holy Ghost with the pure gospel to regenerate sinners and to implant in their souls the life of faith upon Christ Jesus, which will bear the fruit of love to God’s Word, worship and house.
A Free Church Suggested Claim if Bishops Proposal Effected.
In a letter to the Editor of The Scotsman on 18th October, Rev. Kenneth A. MacRae, Free Church, Stornoway, in dealing with the possibility of the introduction of Bishops into the Church of Scotland, states that this will deprive the present State Church of all claim to be recognised any longer as the Church of Scotland, etc. He then declares: “If the proposal materialises, the Free Church will inevitably feel it obligatory to press her claim before Parliament for recognition as the Church of Scotland as declared in the Treaty of Union.” One would think by this statement that the present Free Church of Scotland, and their original leaders who formed the present Free Church in 1900, and who did not go with Principal Rainy and the majority of the pre-1900 Free Church into the Union with the United Presbyterian Church in 1900, were always faithfully holding to the principles of the Church of Scotland since the Reformation and the Disruption Free Church of 1843. This is of course not the case, although they did, as a minority, win their case in the House of Lords in 1904, as heirs of the Free Church property. The fact is, that the Free Church leaders who formed in 1900 the present Free Church of Scotland, were ministers and men who remained under the Declaratory Act of 1892 right on till 1900; the said Act containing subject matter and teaching contrary to the Word of God and the Confession of Faith, and as a fixed Act of the Free Church from 1892, it vitiated, undermined and changed the Constitution of the Free Church from then onwards. And thus from 1892 until indeed 1905, when the present Free Church rescinded the evil Declaratory Act of 1892, the Free Church therein failed to hold to the Word of God and doctrines of the Confession of Faith these being the Supreme and Subordinate Standards of the Church of Scotland, Reformed and Established three centuries ago. In other words, the Free Church with the Declaratory Act on its Statute Book from 1892 till 1905, was completely out of line with the Constitution and practice of the Church of Scotland (Free) from its best days. The fact is, historically and legally that when the late Rev. Donald Macfarlane, then of Raasay, in the Free Church Assembly, May, 1893, protested against the Declaratory Act, and thereby separated from the Declaratory Act Free Church and formed the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland as presently constituted, that the constitution and continuity of the Free Church, or the Church of Scotland (Free) of 1843, and the Disruption, were thus conserved and preserved intact. And thus, small and despised as the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland is, it can with humble confidence and composure claim to be the only Church in Scotland in the direct line of the Church of Scotland in its best days. But we hear nothing of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland, being prepared to claim recognition as the true Church of Scotland, should Episcopacy enter that Church. God will in His good time, fully and manifestly vindicate the position of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland, as brought into existence by His divine interposition and use of humble instruments for the genuine conserving of His Truth in Scotland.
The Death Penalty.
As the law stands at present, every one guilty of proved murder, although sane, are not put to death. But since a recent relaxation in the law as to the administration of the death penalty, cruel and brutal murders are said to have increased. Two Members of Parliament were to ask the Home Secretary, in October, if he would consider reintroducing the death penalty for all murders in view of the increased number of murders. We support the attitude and procedure of those M.P.’s, and hope that something will be done by the Home Secretary. Firstly, criminals expose themselves to appropriate punishment in the administration of justice. The consideration of the reformation of any proved criminal is a secondary matter when the protection of society is at stake.
Dr. George MacLeod and the Sabbath.
Rev. Dr. George MacLeod, Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, said among other supposed clever things during one of his many public appearances in September: “How can we possibly insist on old-fashioned Sabbath Observance when we accept the economic need for Sunday work?” We would ask, but who are the “we”? True, god-fearing Christians following in the footsteps of the godly in Scotland of past days, and with the laws of God in their hand, do not accept at all the economic need for cursed unnecessary work on God’s Day, when no emergency or necessity exists. Dr. MacLeod, of course, moves in an atmosphere of worldly Christianity, if there is such a thing. True Christianity separates from the world and Sabbath desecration. But Rev. Dr. MacLeod is conversant with the attitude of the many ministers, elders and members in his own large Church, who do not insist on no work on the Lord’s Day. The backsliding and worldly ministers and members of the Church of Scotland cannot condemn now what they have condoned for years, viz., laxity of every form in relation to the Sabbath Day.
Widow Wins a Cash Fortune.
A Mrs. McGrail, Reddish, Cheshire, won on a football Pool coupon, in November, £205,000 for the expenditure of twopence. She revealed that she did not even work a system, but selected a set of numbers at the beginning of the football season and kept putting them down. Although we do not know the varied processes adopted by people in this gambling cancer throughout the nation, we do know from what Mrs. McGrail has said that the whole business was a complete gamble every week with her. And it was the money lost by other gamblers which went to make up her cheque of £205,000. There can be no blessing from God with this money, and His blessing alone maketh rich, in the truest, highest sense, spiritually and eternally.