Church of Scotland Moderator and Rome
The current Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, Rev Derek Browning, visited the Pope in Rome while en route to Wittenberg to celebrate the five-hundredth anniversary of the beginning of the Reformation in Germany. To those nominal Protestants committed to the ecumenical movement, the visit to Rome might have seemed nothing more than a charitable and appropriate gesture after five centuries of division between Rome and the Protestant Churches. To those who have their eyes open to the true antichristian nature of Romanism, however, it can only be regarded as one
further concession to the false claims of the Pope for recognition as the world-wide leader of Christianity.
In his address to the Church of Scotland delegation, the Pope mentioned that the Church of Scotland and the Roman Catholic Church were on an ecumenical journey towards full, visible unity and that the “mutual purification of memory is one of the most significant fruits of this common journey”. It is a solemn and sad day for Scotland when the memory of the impurities of Romanism – and the cost of standing against her falsehoods and tyranny at the Reformation – have obviously been forgotten by the national Church.
The Church of Scotland ought to be seeking repentance for its departures from the biblical teachings of the Reformation rather than desiring to find common ground with Rome. We rejoice in the memory of the noble stand taken by Martin Luther for the Word of God and we long for the day when the Protestant Churches will return to the pure gospel doctrines he preached along with Calvin, Knox and others. Of course, the Roman Catholic Church claims never to have changed, but this only demonstrates that it remains as much the enemy of truth today as it was in Luther’s days. AWM