Peace in Northern Ireland?
A cessation of violence has taken place in Northern Ireland. The terror campaign of the I.R.A. which has continued for twenty-five years has been called off for the present. The British Government in its naivety has made the working assumption that it is a permanent ceasefire. There is no doubt it would be permanent, if the I.R.A. obtained what they desired. However, nothing will satisfy them but the assurance of the incorporation of Ulster in Eire within the foreseeable future. For this end they were prepared to conduct a campaign of murder and destruction over a period of twenty-five years. How powerfully motivated such men must have been to conduct such a campaign for so long. That being so, did they consent to a ceasefire without being given some assurance that at least some of their claims would be met? It is astonishing that our Government is prepared to conduct talks with these murderers after only a short delay. “Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots?”
What motivated the I.R.A. in their murderous and long continued campaign? There is no doubt that there is a pathological hatred to Britain in the bosom of the Romanist Irish. Yet this in itself is insufficient to account for what has taken place over such a long period of time. Another motive is thought by some to be Irish nationalism. If this was the motive, then what an incongruous way to go about uniting the nation, by stirring up enmity and strife.
If we are ever to arrive at a proper assessment of the struggle in Ireland, we have to take account of the Roman Catholic Church’s part in it all. The Romanist system has become adept at appearing as an angel of light and the purveyor of peace while secretly supporting men of violence and murder. For our own part, we do not believe that such a campaign, carried on over such a long period of time, could be maintained without, not only the connivance of the Roman Catholic Church, but also its active support. It would not be something new for the Roman Catholic Church to be hand in glove with murderers. This being so, our Government are not dealing just with a bunch of murderers, but with a powerful politico-religious system which has its tentacles stretching out to almost all the countries of the world. Unless our Government is alive to this, it will succumb to the blandishments of that evil system and make concessions which would undermine the national integrity of the United Kingdom and expose the Protestants of Northern Ireland to the inroads of the Southern Irish.
We have no doubt that the Protestants of Ulster are aware of the dangers that beset them about at this time, and that they value too highly their Protestant liberties and privileges to allow them to be snatched from their grasp, yet constant vigilance is required if freedom is to be maintained. Better days will yet come to Ireland, North and South, but that will be when the Papacy is overthrown, and the deluded Irish Romanists are delivered from the thraldom in which they have been held so long. May the Lord hasten it in His divine providence.
Archbishop Winning to be made a Cardinal
The favours which the Pope of Rome bestows are curses on the head of those who receive them. The elevation of Archbishop Winning to the College of Cardinals is no honour to Glasgow or Scotland. The higher the Roman Catholic dignatories rise in the Papal hierarchy, the greater does their guilt become as deceivers of the people. Scotland had enough of Cardinal Beaton, of infamous memory, to welcome any other Romanist Cardinal, lest such turn out to be of the same ilk.
Violent Britain
The savage murder of a General Practitioner Dr Donald Mackay, in his surgery caused shock throughout the nation. How violent society has become when a doctor, engaged in the relief of the sick, is stabbed to death in the midst of his work. Our sympathy goes out to those who have been bereaved. Dr MacKay was originally from Strathpeffer.
Since then a young man operating a till at one of Woolworth’s stores was stabbed to death, his assailant escaping with one pound in cash. This case, too, has shocked the nation. It is to be hoped that those responsible for these criminal acts will be brought to justice.
The National Lottery
The Government has given an additional boost to gambling by setting up a National Lottery. It has tried to give the lottery a respectable face by deciding that part of the proceeds will go to good causes. What these good causes will be has still to be worked out. In order to ensure the success of the lottery, it has been decided to dangle large amounts of money as prize-money before people. Already gambling has reached tremendous proportions in the nation and the National Lottery will only aggravate matters further. What misery has already been caused to individuals and families through the sin of gambling. Through gambling lives have been ruined. Apart altogether from the sin of it, it is a worthless industry tying up millions of pounds which could have been put to more productive use.
The Church of Scotland has come out strongly in opposition to the National Lottery. It is an indication of the moral decay which has set in on the nation that gambling is being promoted by people in responsible positions who ought to know better. When the nation is restored to righteousness no form of gambling will be permitted within its bounds.
School Assemblies
At a meeting of the Secondary Heads’ Association in September it was proposed that traditional morning assemblies centred on Christian worship should be scrapped. It was thought that the emphasis on God, Christ, the Bible, prayer and hymn-singing was out-dated, impractical and irrelevant to thousands of pupils of non-Christian faiths.
The idea has been widely disseminated that Britain is now a multi-cultural society and that nothing should be done to offend the susceptibilities of those who do not adhere to the Christian faith. In some schools they want to introduce some kind of multi-faith assembly. A Church of England minister spoke rightly when he said that it is possible to hold a daily act of Christian worship, but the problem comes when people try to mix religions all together. Surely it is the least that can be done for children of alien faiths to bring them into touch with the Christian faith in school assemblies, if they wish to attend, as well as children of Christian parents. Why should a Christian nation abandon Christian teachings and practices to defer to false religions? Can we imagine a Mohammedan nation altering its religious practices to accommodate Christians who might come into their midst? Why then should a Christian nation act so spinelessly?