Papal Encyclical
The papal encyclical, Veritatis Splendor, has now been issued. An editorial in The Times regards it as a swing back to papal authoritarianism which may provoke a schism in the R.C. Church, especially in America. It asserts that the authority of the magisterium vested in the Vicar of Christ is extended to morality more explicitly than ever before. The encyclical attacks liberalism, permissiveness and secularisation. It seeks to maintain the R.C. distinction between venial and mortal sin. It renews its condemnation of homosexuality, abortion and artificial contraception. The fact that it omits mention of infallibility is taken as a concession to the liberal wing of the R.C. Church, though any real change in papal infallibility is unlikely. The document adheres rigidly to the rule of celibacy for priests. It also makes clear that the way to salvation is through obedience to the church, meaning the Roman Catholic Magisterium or teaching authority. In our day it is often the voice of the R.C. Church which is heard advocating moral standards in the midst of a permissive age. However, she speaks with one voice but acts in a very different way. Within her borders there is more evil than can be imagined and this is the fruit of her own false teaching. Her teaching, far from bringing men and women to live lives of obedience to Christ, actually encourages the practice of many evils. In Britain the percentage of Roman Catholics in prison is out of all proportion to their number in the country. The Bible tells us: “By their fruits ye shall know them”. The Pope will have to set his own house in order before he can have any hope of his voice being heard on matters of morality and religion.
Modern Versions of the Bible
The editor of the Free Church Monthly Record makes a strong plea for modern versions of the Bible on the grounds that the language of the Authorised Version is no longer the common language of today and so no longer measures up to the standard that our Reformed principles require. In reading the Authorised Version to those with little or no church background he feels embarrassed and even in breach of his ordination vows. He calls for toleration in the matter of modern versions and condescendingly says of the A.V. and its readers: “It was a good translation for its time. If folks feel that they have sufficiently mastered the English of the A.V., by all means let them use that version. We won’t despise you for that.” The attempt to disparage the A.V. as an outdated version did not begin today. A hundred years ago an attempt was made to replace it by the production of the Revised Version. Since that time, and especially in more recent times, a spate of modern versions have been produced. Yet none of these has become universally accepted otherwise the continuing proliferation of versions would have ceased. Some of them have been produced in such up-to-date language that they will soon be out of date, owing to modern changes in language. However, the A.V., notwithstanding its archaisms — and these to our mind have been over-emphasised — is, for the most part, perfectly intelligible even to those with a limited knowledge of English. The reason that this version has held such a place in the minds of many Christians is that it is the most faithful version obtainable. The rejection of modern versions is on the ground of their unfaithfulness to the original.
Romish Practice
The widow of ex-President Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines was sentenced to at least 18 years’ jail for corruption. The sentence is to be appealed against. What is most revealing is that after being sentenced she was taken to a Roman Catholic Church where she crawled 40 yards on her knees to kiss a religious statue. It is reported that she prayed: “God of justice, fight my fight, declare me innocent, deliver me from lying and evil men”. While hearing the verdict she had been fingering a rosary. Yes, Romanism is always the same. Poor deluded Roman Catholics! May the light of the gospel break in upon them.
Divorce
Easier divorce is planned to help couples be parted without large lawyer’s fees. The waiting time to end a marriage will be halved from two years to 12 months. The report states that the Lord Chancellor is to set up a national network of advice centres to help couples sort out their affairs on amicable terms. The scheme is to be unveiled later this year. What need there is throughout the country among rulers and people of a return to the Bible and to its teachings, otherwise the nation must continue to sink lower and lower, as it rejects all Biblical moral standards.
Convent Life
“It was an enclosed convent in the middle of Ireland, full of children, from babies right the way up to 16-year-olds . . . “We did all the domestic work of the convent. I didn’t understand what parents were, but I used to lie awake at night wondering where I had come from. The nuns had visits from their fathers and mothers at the weekends, so I thought parents must be like friends . . . The nuns were terribly cruel. There was always the threat that if you defied them you would be ‘sent away’. Four girls disappeared while I was there. The cane was used regularly. When I was seven I was in charge of the babies. We were supposed to tell the nun in charge which ones had wet the bed. The guilty ones would line up and hold out their hand to be caned; two and three-year-olds holding their hands and screaming. “I used to try and cover up for them by drying the sheets on the pipes. I was only caned once, and that was for refusing to eat my cabbage because there was a slug in it. The nun in charge attacked me with the cane in front of everyone, walloping me on my legs and arms till I was black and blue . . . From 10 years old we spent hours scrubbing and polishing floors. If the floor was not like glass we’d be made to do it again. When I was 14 I was sent to the convent laundry. You couldn’t do it when you were younger. The steamy atmosphere was draining. Putting the nun’s heavy habits in and out of those gigantic electric boilers was backbreaking. It was men’s work.” Were it not for the reference to electric boilers, one might be excused for thinking that the foregoing quotation was culled from some book describing the misery of convent life in the Middle Ages. It was however, copied from no less a source than the “Daily Telegraph”, dated 28th September, 1993! The person describing her heart-rending experiences was a Mary McCreanor. She is 49 years of age. The journalist who wrote the article from which the quotation is taken had this to say: “In 16 years, though housed in an institution whose gospel is love, she received neither a kiss, a cuddle nor a sign of affection. From her earliest childhood she remembers frequently thinking death must be better than such a life. If you thought such childhood suffering ceased when they closed the workhouses you are mistaken. Mary McCreanor grew up in Ireland in the Fifties and Sixties. The ‘crime’ that in the eyes of the Roman Catholic Church justified a life of drudgery, harshness and privation was that she was illegitimate.” It was after Mary McCreanor left this establishment and went to work in a Roman Catholic hospital in Dublin, where she had a greater measure of liberty, that she was able to discover her parents. She now lives in London and has, we are told, long ago forgiven her mother. She says that she cannot forgive the Church. It is encouraging that “this dark side of Mother Church” is now, in the Lord’s holy providence, being uncovered and we are told that “a new generation of emancipated and self-confident Irish women” is appalled at what is being brought to light. We hope many will have read and pondered the significance of the “Daily Telegraph” article. J. McL.
“Beliefless Christianity”
In the early Sixties it was the Anglican Bishop of Woolwich who wrote a heretical book. Its title was “Honest to God” and its author maintained among other things that men having “come of age” now found the “whole scheme of a supernatural Being coming down from heaven to save mankind from sin” to be simply beyond belief. Now another Anglican cleric cast, it would seem, in the same mould and called Anthony Freeman, has written what might be called a companion volume. He, for some obscure reason — certainly not because he, himself, believes in the one living and true God — has entitled it “God with Us”. According to the “Daily Telegraph” this poor, benighted man says that he felt a “glorious sense of freedom” when he plucked up the courage to reject what he called the Church’s “supernatural teachings”. “To believe in a supernatural, all-powerful interventionist God when the rest of the world has abandoned that belief is not the same thing as having believed in such a God when it was the generally accepted thing.” Together with this we are told that he still believes in prayer and worship but as a way of “aligning one’s will with one’s highest values” rather than as a way of drawing nigh to a Divine being. Even although he does not believe in life after death he still wants to remain in the ordained ministry to preach what he calls “a new, bracing, beliefless Christianity”. The publication of these views has led to this clergyman’s dismissal from the ecclesiastical post which he occupied but it seems that that is as far as his superiors intend to go. J. McL.
Free Church Professor and Church Divisions
Professor Donald MacLeod, writing in one of the local Highland newspapers, has, among other things, something to say on what he calls “our lamentable Presbyterian divisions”. The most recent of these divisions, as he points out, was the departure of the Associated Presbyterian Churches. The Professor first opines that this division was an “in-house Highland affair” and then goes on to suggest that perhaps it was due more than anything else, to “the machinations of imported zealots reared in the separatist ethos in post-Puritan English puritanism.” It was not entirely an “in-house” affair if we take into account the way in which he, for one, through the medium of the Free Church Monthly Record, endeavoured, over the period leading up to the separation, to interfere in the internal affairs of the Free Presbyterian Church. It was he who, outside the house, incited and encouraged the “younger brethren” to break their ordination vows. They were, he maintained, “more open and tolerant and less inclined to regard their own denomination as the only true Church in Scotland.” He thought that they should be more courageous. “They should rid themselves of the fear of the people and challenge the oligarchy which is leading their church further and further away from the theology of the Reformation.” We wonder what our erstwhile “younger brethren”, looking at their dwindling APC congregations, and fast running out of gimmicks, now think of that advice? They should learn from the past and not take any comfort from the fact that the Professor continues to condone their bizarre behaviour in 1989. They should carefully note that although he says that they were “absolutely right to remain with their congregations”, even he does not presume to say that it was right of them to remain in churches and manses which did not belong to them. It does not surprise us that the Professor maligns our Barnoldswick brethren. His resentment is of long standing and appears to be deep-rooted. It was they who, quoting chapter and verse, first revealed to the wide world and to his own Church that his views on Presbyterian Church polity were far from orthodox. When the need arose, our brethren domiciled south of the border played their own noble part in the maintaining of our witness against Popery and Professor MacLeod’s description of them is as untrue as it is contemptuous. It would be of interest to know if the Professor, after his trip to Belfast to attend the “Evangelical-Roman Catholic Theological Conference”, is still prepared to make the accusation that the Free Presbyterian Church has departed from the theology of the Reformation?! His conduct must surely raise serious questions as to where the Free Church now stands as far as witnessing against Rome is concerned. Its claim to be the Disruption Free Church is now more than ever unconvincing. J. McL.