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Home » Publications » Free Presbyterian Magazine » 1958 » December 1958 » Indictment of Romanist Persecutions in Colombia. BY A ROMANIST EDITOR.\

Indictment of Romanist Persecutions in Colombia. BY A ROMANIST EDITOR.\

The following scathing denunciation of the Papal System, by the Romanist editor of a secular newspaper, is positive proof that the ordinary Romanist, even when naturally intelligent and well-educated, does not realize the implications of the false religion of the politico-ecclesiastical system, which has deluded, ensnared, and enslaved him. If, however, they studied the official, authoritative, and standard text-books of Popery, they, as well as non-Romanists, who imagine that Rome to-day is different from Rome of yesterday, would discover that it is no murder to kill a heretic when it is done in the interests of “Holy Mother Church,” neither is it theft to steal the property of a heretic for the same purpose. The reason is a heretic has forfeited all right to life and property by being a heretic. It would be in their own highest interests if Protestants (heretics) always tried to remember this fact. A Romanist can take a solemn oath, and thousands of such oaths, to be loyal to a Protestant national constitution, from the reigning monarch downwards, for the sake of holding office, but the principle of moral theology, inculcated in Romanist text-books:—”No faith is to be kept with heretics” dispenses with them all, in the twinkling of an eye, when the paramount claims and rights of “Holy Mother Church” demand it. No wonder John Calvin has described Papal Rome as “The Masterpiece of Satan.” Here, then, is the strong editorial criticism by the Colombian newspaper, entitled “El Nacional,” of Barranquilla, Colombia, as it appeared in a recent issue of that paper:—

“Yesterday, Colombia was the scene of another of those Acts of religious savagery that have portrayed our people to the world newspaper Press as a herd of savage beasts. A Protestant Church near Cali was dynamited at 4 o’clock in the morning, with the death of at least three persons, and the injury of others, in an action repulsive to common civilization. In the same State, some months prior to this, the dead body of a Protestant minister was found tied to a tree where he had been emasculated. Editorials in the world newspaper Press described this shocking and terrible deed as calling for international intervention to prevent its recurrence. Daily newspapers all over the world reproduced paragraphs from a frightful circular of the Bishop of Santa Rosa, recommending the extermination of all anti-Catholics, including members of the Liberal Party (also Roman Catholics). We, Colombians, who travel know the experience of shameful embarrassment in answering questions as to how, in a semicivilized country like ours, these inconceivable abnormal acts could take place.

* This article sent in by Rev. J. P. MacQueen with comments — Editor

‘Why do we persist in humbling our Church before the world? How is it possible that the Church authorities do not condemn assassination, dynamitings, and other revolting acts against a sister Church. What is sisterly about it? How indeed, if we take into account that it is solely to the Protestant armies of the United States and Britain that the Vatican owes its life at this moment? These armies maintain the barrier holding back the Russian Army from Rome. What would happen to the Roman Church without these defences?

We cannot imagine what the comment must be in the world newspaper Press regarding this unfortunate land of the 50,000 slain in the religious and political turmoil that began in 1948. In the United States, for example, they cannot understand how it is that in the twentieth century, our religion wishes to impose itself by violence, instead of, as with primitive apostolic Christianity, by the moral suasion of heavenly love. Neither is this understood in Mexico, Argentina, Venezuela, or other parts of our Continent. The picture of Father Jordan blessing the daggers in Malaga as “Blessed weapons when drawn in defence of the Catholic religion,” is something which people of these peaceful, honest, and industrious nations, where, in respect of his neighbour, each practices the religion of his choice, cannot understand.

“Particularly, the attacks against the Protestant Church must merit frank condemnation from us, Catholics. In the first place, it is the religion of the great majority of the people of the United States on whom depends the entire destiny of the American Continent, threatened as never before by the godless Communist Monster from Moscow. In the second place, Protestantism is a Christian religion, a sister to ours in basic essentials. In the third place, we, as Catholics, must try to reciprocate the tolerance and respect that these countries of Protestant majority have towards our Church in their countries. The residents of our State of Atlantico are free from sponsoring savage acts such as have taken place in Antiqua, and the Valle del Cauca. However, the least we can do is to protest the stigma that is continually being hurled against the banner of our country, Colombia.” It is significant that officials of the Papal System have remained silent, relative to the foregoing scathing editorial by a Romanist Editor.

Relative to such ruthless violence and bloody savagery, perpetrated by the Papal System in this twentieth century of supposed scholarly refinement, culture, and scientific progress, can anybody explain, other than as a satanic delusion, the extraordinary attraction that Papal Rome has for the present Church of Scotland, with its advocacy of Bishops in Presbytery and union with the ritualistic Church of England, while the latter Church is busy forging Canons to Romanise their Church? While all this is so, why cannot the Free Church of Scotland pass Overtures to put an end to exchange of pulpits with Churches, whose treacherous betrayal of solemn ordination vows, is a Heaven-provoking disgrace to the very name of Christianity? Let our pulpits, as a denomination, at any rate, ring with salutary denunciations of such blatant treachery, and let no Protestant evangelical periodical, worthy of the name, suppress the witness-bearing articles of those who are not afraid to expose and denounce the evils of our day. Let God be true, and every one opposing Him a liar. May He bless this witness-bearing.

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