-Caveat Lector-
Infallible Sectarianism
"There is no mistake so great as that of being always right." Samuel
Butler (1835-1902): Notebooks.
Professor Arthur Noble
The Pope's ecumenical dupes got a rude shock on September 5 when his
self-styled 'infallible Holiness', in an official document called Dominus
Iesus, questioned the validity of Protestant Churches and instructed his
bishops not to use the term 'sister churches' with reference to them. The
Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has now arrogantly
pronounced that henceforth non-Roman-Catholics are to be designated as
"ecclesial communities" with "defects". It declares that churches that lack
a "valid Episcopate [bishops] and the genuine and integral substance of the
Eucharistic mystery are not churches in the proper sense"; and a Vatican
letter to bishops, released the same week, calls for Protestants to be
"evangelised".
The American Crosswalk News site summed it up in the headline: "Protestants
are not our equals, says the Vatican." It was on a par with Hitler's
comments about the Jews.
The chief ingredient of this latest outrageous pronouncement by the Roman
impostor is nothing short of blatant sectarianism a predictable complement
to the flagrant racism of his beatification of Pius IX. Once again, the
congenital religious intolerance behind the mask of the Church of Rome's
smiling ecumenism has been exposed: her doctrinal fascism renders her
hypocritically guilty of the very accusation that she is so fond of
levelling against those who refuse to bow the knee to her theological
drivel.
George Carey, the spiritual leader of the world's 70 million Anglicans and
hitherto a loud and pathetic parrot of the Pope, has expressed his "dismay".
No wonder: he failed to take heed of the warning that Rome does not change,
and is now suddenly confronted with the reality that the term 'separated
brethren' was merely a ruse and the original designation of 'heretics' is
now official. Carey has learned of his error the hard way. He has reacted by
saying that the worldwide Anglican Communion "does not for one moment accept
that its orders of ministry and Eucharist are deficient in any way", but
"believes itself to be a part of the one, holy, Catholic and apostolic
Church of Christ."
Protestant leaders in Germany have also been rudely awakened. Manfred Kock,
chairman of the Council of the Evangelical Church of Germany, told ZDF
television: "The declaration suggests that the Catholic and the Protestant
Churches are not on equal terms with each other." These leaders, be it
noted, are the dupes who on October 31, 1999, signed the Joint Declaration
on the Doctrine of Justification between the Lutheran World Federation and
the Roman Catholic Church, believing it to be the reconciliatory seal of 30
years of so-called 'dialogue' between the two Churches.
Irony of ironies! The Vatican's boot-licking World Council of Churches
itself is worried that the ecumenical relationships of the past 100 years
may now be "lost" or "hindered" by what its professing 'theologian' Tom Best
calls "language which precludes further discussion of the issues"; and even
John Wilkins, editor of the Roman Catholic newspaper The Tablet, has
described the declaration as "enormously negative".
Valdo Benecchi, President of the Methodist Evangelical Churches of Italy and
an on-the-spot connoisseur of the Pope's machinations in that country, was
quick to recognise the Vatican's latest confidence trick. Almost echoing the
warning of last October by the 150 German Academics who opposed the
LWF-Vatican Declaration, he said: "Salvation through Christ is not deposited
in one religion only. This puts only the Catholic Church at the centre, but
especially the Catholic hierarchy."
The Southern Baptist Convention, the largest U.S. Protestant denomination,
has also recognised the contrivance. Jerry Rankin, President of its
International Mission Board, protested: "Salvation comes by God's grace
through faith in Jesus Christ and Christ alone not through any
institutional church body, be it Baptist, Catholic, or otherwise. [
] That's
why we have always sent missionaries, even to 'Catholic' countries, because
people come to salvation only through personal faith in Jesus Christ. That
is the message of the Christian gospel according to the Scriptures, and that
is the message shared worldwide by our missionaries."
Popery, despite her modernist garb, remains unchanged. The arrogance of this
latest pronouncement is astounding. It describes all churches since the
Protestant Reformation as not being "churches in the proper sense", while in
reality it is the Church of Rome that is not a church at all, but a colossal
political and financial organisation. Adam Smith, in his famous study The
Wealth of Nations, calls it "the most formidable combination that ever was
formed against the authority and security of civil government as well as
against the liberty, reason and happiness of mankind."
Then
