“Christian unity” is often just Vatican-speak for “papal supremacy”. The Daily Telegraph reports that, during his visit to Germany in September, the Pope “called for unity between the Catholic and Protestant faiths”. Some regard it as a good sign that he made this call while visiting the very monastery where Martin Luther lived before making his stand against Rome which culminated in the Reformation. In fact, the Pope praised Luther, saying, “What constantly exercised him was the question of God, the deep passion and driving force of his whole life’s journey”.
This is partially true, but there is a serious omission. What really exercised
Luther was the question: How may man be just with God? Luther did not find the answer in Rome’s heresy of salvation by works but in the Scripture truth, “The just shall live by faith”. Luther’s great exercise thereafter was to have the true doctrine of salvation – by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone – spread among the people. It is what the Pope dare not acknowledge and what he must reject with abhorrence.
The Christian unity to which he invites us must be on Rome’s terms – a fact confirmed by his rejection of appeals made to him by certain Protestants in Germany “to relax rules barring Protestants from receiving the Catholic eucharist”. (The falseness of these people’s Protestantism is also demonstrated by their wish to mark the forthcoming five-hundredth anniversary of the Reformation in 2017 “with Catholic participation”.)
We must confess that the Pope’s invitations to unite with him call to mind the old line of poetry we learned as children, “Will you walk into my parlour?” said the spider to the fly”. When the Judaizers, with their doctrine of salvation by works, fraternized with the early Christian churches, their objective was, as Paul said, “that they might bring us into bondage” (Gal 2:4). When faced with the Vatican’s show of fraternal amiability we ought to have the resolve which Paul displayed: “To whom we gave place by subjection, no, not for an hour” (Gal 2:5). NMR
The Three-Tiered Tiara and the Papal Triple Claim
It appeared to some that the Pope, in choosing not to be crowned when he was enthroned, renounced the arrogant claim of each pope to be “Father of princes and kings, Ruler of the world, Vicar of our Saviour Jesus Christ” – a claim symbolised by the papal triple-crown tiara. This apparent renunciation seemed to be confirmed by the fact that, when the Pope devised his papal coat of arms, he dispensed with the image of the three-tiered tiara that traditionally appeared at the top of each pope’s coat of arms and replaced it with the image of a bishop’s mitre.
However, we see from The Tablet Blog that, during his recent visit to Germany, in an “ecumenical prayer service in the former Augustinian church (now Protestant) where Martin Luther was ordained, the Pope wore a stole that depicted his personal coat of arms topped by the triple-crown tiara”. The blog entry continues: “Talk about sending a message! If there is anyone who railed against the imperial papacy, it was surely Luther.” That the Pope intended to send out a message is clear from the fact that, as the blog says, “Pope Benedict XVI and his closest liturgical aides – Mgr Guido Marini, the master of ceremonies, and Mgr Georg Gaenswein, his personal secretary – pay careful attention to what type of vestments he wears and for which occasions”.
We dream, if we think the papacy has relinquished its claims to universal power. What Thomas Aquinas said long ago (and Rome still considers him to be her greatest theologian) is still the papacy’s view: “The Pope is top of both powers [the spiritual and the temporal]; so that, when any one [ruler] is excommunicated for apostacy, his subjects are, ipso facto, freed from his dominion, and from their oath of allegiance”. But Scripture reveals that the power of the papacy shall be destroyed (2 Th 2:8). “I have seen the wicked in great power, and spreading himself like a green bay tree,” wrote David. “Yet he passed away, and, lo, he was not: yea, I sought him, but he could not be found (Ps 37:35,36).
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