Our Queen and the Pope
True religion has cause to mourn as once again the Queen of Gt. Britain puts on mourning in order to meet the Pope of Rome. The papacy has many friends today, and powerful allies in the press and broadcasting, whereas Christ’s true Church languishes in weakness and obscurity.
On Sabbath the 31st August the news broke that the Pope had been invited by Cardinal Hume and others to visit his flock in Britain in 1982. A month previous to this, aware that a move to bring the Pope to this country was in the offing, the Protestant Reformation Society arranged with various Christian bodies to petition the Prime Minister that the rumoured visit be given neither government nor royal support. The petition was to be made on the 1st September, and the press, struck with the co-incidence of the two events turned out in force to question the Protestant deputation. It is significant that hardly anything of what went into the reporters’ notebooks appeared in the newspapers.
The notice paid to Protestant views may be judged by the fact that the Queen, while on a visit to Italy, visited the Pope on October 17th in his character as a head of state. It is not his headship over the Vatican City, the smallest of all states at an area of one sixth of a square mile, that gives Pope John Paul the Second any importance, but his bold and blasphemous claim to be ruler over all the other rulers in the world. The devil, “the father of lies”, has had great success in subduing truth and gaining credence from men for this supreme imposture. Only at a time when spiritual ignorance prevails over all classes in all lands, could it happen that the ruler of the most professedly Protestant realm be found dressed in mourning black, conferring with “the man of sin”.
What need for all godfearing persons to be pleading humbly yet importunately that God would begin to revive his work and build up his despised and oppressed cause! And in particular, it would be proper to pray that no pope would ever set foot on this Protestant island, and that Romanism itself would soon be destroyed, and the Church of Christ flourish where it formerly reigned.
A. McP.
The Papal Visit
Now that the planning for the proposed Papal visit in 1982 is in full swing we may be sure that Romanists and sympathisers will make every effort to discredit any lawful attempts made to prevent official recognition being given to it by the Queen or members of Her Majesty’s Government. In many quarters any criticism, however valid or well-documented, will be denounced as being only the product of “intolerance” and “bigotry”. The Confessional statement that the Pope is “that Antichrist, that man of sin, and son of perdition, that exalteth himself in the church against Christ, and all that is called God”, will be dismissed even by some so-called Protestants as being only expressive of the view of the Westminster Assembly and present-day “divines” are much more enlightened and better informed! After all, the Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland has welcomed the visit and even his counter-part in the Free Church of Scotland, the Rev. Hector Cameron, has certainly not made clear, in his statement to the Press, that he is opposed to it. In our view, what he said was highly equivocal.
What evidence has Mr Cameron that the present Pope possesses “a large concern for the peace of the world” and what, pray, are some of the number of “important conciliatory gestures” which have been made by the Roman Pontiff “and which may yield much good in time to come”? Even the secular Press has emphasised his hard-line traditional orthodoxy and there is no mistaking his intransigent attitude towards any within the pale of his own organisation who favour a change in Papal attitudes and dogmas as they respect certain issues. What real concern for the peace of Northern Ireland did the Pope reveal when he visited the Republic last year? Not all who heard or read his speech at Drogheda were deceived and the Rt. Hon. Enoch Powell was not alone in his assessment of it. His penetrating mind discerned the ambiguity and political implications of the Roman Pontiff’s fair words and with customary forthrightness described them as constituting “a charter for terrorism”. Commenting on the substance of a recent John Paul II encyclical, a writer in the June “Evangelical Times” confirms that the present-day teaching of Rome is none other than “the traditional Roman Catholicism of the Council of Trent, expounded with renewed vigour by the acknowledged leader of Rome”. “Semper Eadem” is still Rome’s motto and we must ever remember that her anathemas on all who differ with her are still in force. Patrick Hamilton and George Wishart, to mention but two of Scotland’s illustrious martyrs, are still “heretics” in Rome’s eyes. Their blood, with that of countless others, is still to be found in her skirts.
Upon whom in the Free Church, may we ask, has the mantle of that redoubtable champion of Protestantism vis a vis Roman Catholicism, the late Rev. Kenneth A. MacRae, fallen? Not surely on the present Moderator of their General Assembly nor on the Editor of their “Monthly Record”. If what is written in the October issue of the “Monthly Record” is representative of Free Church thinking in regard to the Papal visit then, denominationally, the Free Presbyterian Church stands alone in Scotland as outrightly opposed to it and to any recognition, in any form, being given to that enemy of God — the Roman Antichrist.
In forthcoming issues we hope to show that our attitude towards Romanism is fully justified.
J. MacL.