The Papal Visit
In a recent editorial The Daily Telegraph warns, “Freedom of speech must be respected; but it would be wrong for the licence fee or any other public money to be used to pay for biased and mean-spirited attacks on the Pope. . . . If Benedict XVI is greeted with hostility and manufactured scandals, then British Christianity as a whole will be weakened.”
We respond that the hand of friendship should never be extended to the man who is the enemy of our Protestant heritage. Nor is it necessary to manufacture scandals against Rome – they already abound. Nor will British Christianity be weakened; it will rather be strengthened by resisting the advances of Rome. To impose a papal state visit upon this Protestant nation is truly shameful. Even the British Ambassador to the Vatican (a devoted
Roman Catholic) admits that Britain “is not a majority Catholic country”. Protests are not only justifiable but necessary.
The Telegraph adds, “Benedict XVI’s arrival is an opportunity to celebrate a culture that planted our Christian roots, for it was a Pope who sent St Augustine1 to Britain”. This false statement about establishing Christianity here is echoes one on a Roman Catholic UK website: “Until the 1530s, the Church in this country, as in the rest of Western Europe, was under the final authority of the Pope, and its doctrine and worship were Catholic”. Christianity was planted in England long before Augustine came to England in 597. The papacy imposed its authority on a Christian Church that already existed.
But more than protests are necessary: we must continue praying to “the Most High that He prevent the schemes and plans of the Roman Antichrist against this Protestant nation”, as the resolution of the last meeting of our Synod exhorts. “I will turn thee back, and put hooks into thy jaws” (Ezek 38:4), was God’s warning to Gog, (whom some able commentators take to be representative of antichristian forces). Be that as it may, we are certain that God is able to turn back the papal Antichrist. May we have the prayer of faith which good King Asa had: “Asa cried unto the Lord his God, and said, Lord, it is nothing with Thee to help, whether with many, or with them that have no power: help us, O Lord our God” (2 Chr 14:11).
The West to Be “Re-evangelised” by Rome
How is the Roman Catholic Church to staunch the haemorrhage of its membership on account of the paedophile scandal? In Austria, for example (at one time a fortress of Roman Catholicism and a defence against the Reformation), it is estimated that due to the revelations about child abuse, 80 000 could forsake the Church this year. The answer of the Pope, says one report, is “the establishment of a new Pontifical Council for the promotion of new evangelisation in countries ‘where the first proclamation of the faith already resounded’ but are now ‘going through a progressive secularisation of society’ and a sort of ‘eclipse of the sense of God’”.
The initiative, which he announced at the end of June, is aimed at disillusioned and lapsed Roman Catholics – but what new evangel is to be presented to them? It can only be the gospel according to Rome – basically the gospel of salvation by works, peace by penances, blessedness by submission to the Church – which, of course, is another gospel. “But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed” (Gal 1:8).
Many former Roman Catholics have reason to bless God for the day they 1Not Augustine of Hippo, the Church Father referred to elsewhere in this issue (Ed).
first heard the “gospel of the grace of God”, by which they were led to salvation by faith in Christ alone, “peace through the blood of His cross” (Col 1:20), and were blessed with all spiritual blessings in Christ Jesus (Eph 1:3). May the promised day soon come when many more of those in thrall to Rome will be liberated by the gospel of Christ. “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (Jn 8:32). NMR