Category Archives: Roman Catholicism

‘Appendix’ to – The ‘gospel truth’ according to ‘Father’ Paul Symonds

Following the posting of The ‘gospel truth’ according to ‘Father’ Paul Symonds to our website I received the following email on 5 April 2007 –

Dear Mr Andrews,

Just as a matter of accuracy, I should inform you that Fr Paul Symonds is no longer a Jesuit priest.  He resigned some time ago from the Jesuits and is now a “diocesan” priest.  In other words, he is a priest now under the authority of a bishop within a diocese, rather than a priest under the authority of an Order.  This is a very significant difference in status which you may wish to reflect in a revised version of the currently inaccurate article you are running on your website.

I do hope you won’t mind this correction.  The truth matters.

With love in Christ,
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TREVOR MORROW – ‘REFORMED’ – BUT ‘LIVING IN THE 21ST CENTURY’

I recently obtained a copy of the speaking schedule for a series of meetings to be held in Belfast on Tuesday nights over the winter months [October 2006 – March 2007]. The theme of all the meetings will be ‘TRUTH’.

For the sake of ‘TRUTH’ I feel it is vital therefore to highlight my concerns about one speaker in particular [although there are several others who ‘ring a few alarm bells’ also]. The speaker in question is former Presbyterian Moderator, Trevor Morrow. The title for this article is taken from the promotional leaflet for these meetings, which in Trevor Morrow’s case reads as follows –

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News From The Front – September 2006

Dear praying friends,

It is always a matter of great sadness and regret in coming to the realisation that individuals or organisations that were in former times a source of much spiritual blessing have now chosen a path of compromise and so there must be a parting of the ways, a separation, in obedience to God’s Word. The first and last articles in this newsletter represent just such matters of sadness and regret for both Margaret and I myself personally. We would ask you to join with us in praying that God, by the convicting work of His Holy Spirit, might draw both the individual and the organisation to ‘the straight and narrow’ and that they would depart from the broad, but no doubt popular road of compromise.

Earlier this year during the ministry visit of Gary Gilley, we were alerted to the unscriptural, gospel-denying views of American, Brian McLaren, regarded by many as ‘the God-Father’ of what is known as ‘The Emerging Church’. Mr McLaren has been invited by the large youth gathering known as ‘Summer Madness’ to be one of their speakers in June 2007 [DV]. I hope to write further on this in due course but meantime, if you have any influence where ‘Summer Madness’ is concerned, please encourage them to rescind the invite to Mr McLaren. Thank you for all your ongoing encouragement and support.

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Roman Catholicism and Indulgences

Any changes since Luther’s days?

Each day I receive via email the daily news bulletin from the Roman Catholic Zenit news agency. This gives comprehensive details of the major statements, pronouncements and activities as they affect the Roman Catholic ‘world’.

The following is an item that was included in the bulletin received today and true believers should weep as they read of how the Roman Catholic Church still proclaims its ability to dispense ‘forgiveness’ of sin upon its terms. This matter concerns ‘indulgences’ and this is what the item stated:

  • Plenary Indulgence Offered for Pentecost Meeting
  • VATICAN CITY, MAY 24, 2006 (Zenit.org)

A plenary indulgence can be gained by participants in the meeting of ecclesial movements and new communities with the Pope in St. Peter’s Square on the eve of Pentecost. The decision was made by the Apostolic Penitentiary, a tribunal of the Holy See, in response to a request of Archbishop Stanislaw Rylko, president of the Pontifical Council for the Laity.

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THE DEATH OF JOHN PAUL II, THE POPE OF ROME

Drawing Aside the Purple Curtain

The Papal System Today: an Analysis of the News

THE DEATH OF JOHN PAUL II, THE POPE OF ROME

by Shaun Willcock

This past weekend – Saturday, April 2, 2005 – the pope of Rome, John Paul II, died and passed into eternity. For over a quarter of a century, this man reigned as pope in the Vatican – Satan’s Seat. He was the leader of the world’s 1.1 billion Roman Catholics. The turbulent years of the 1980s and 1990s are in so many ways dominated by the words and works of John Paul II. He presided over the world’s most iniquitous religion, Satan’s masterpiece itself, guiding it through some of its greatest setbacks and some of its greatest triumphs (for itself, that is).

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The Accomplishments of John Paul II by Richard Bennett

“No other world figure has commanded the admiration he has enjoyed as the globe-trotting (over 1/2 million miles) Pope. His kindly smile and fatherly wave have made the ‘Pope Mobile’ a legend. Although they might disagree with his theology, both Catholics and Protestants have joined in the accolades of praise for this man. …Billy Graham has extolled Pope John Paul, ‘as the conscience of the whole Christian world.’”[1] Continue reading →

Operation Mobilisation purge MV Doulos of ‘Passion’ books promoting Roman Catholicism

  [PDF] 

On 21 May I posted an article after I received a phone call from a very concerned Christian lady who had visited the MV Doulos [one of 2 ships that form O. M’s floating ‘book ministry’ fleet] that is currently visiting Londonderry. Whilst on board she noticed a book called – 

  • ‘A Guide To The Passion’ 
  • 100 Questions About 
  • The Passion of The Christ

and when she asked how much it would cost she was told that it was ‘free’ and she was given a copy. She subsequently rang me to express her horror at what was contained in the book.

For those who don’t know, this book is produced by an organisation called ‘Catholic Exchange’ and its purpose is to explain the Roman Catholic dimension and teachings depicted in Mel Gibson’s movie ‘The Passion of The Christ’. It’s aim and purpose is to promote the religion of Roman Catholicism. Let me quote a few sections from the ‘Introduction’ that was written by Tom Allen, Editor and President of Catholic Exchange. Mr Allen wrote –

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The Legacy of the True Historical Patrick

by Richard Bennett

Ireland has a very distinctive history. It was an island untouched by the Roman legions, and Patrick, the Evangelist, brought to it the Gospel of grace. Patrick was himself descended from a family that had been, for two generations at least, in Christ Jesus. His father, he tells us was “the deacon Calpurnius, son of the late Potitus, a presbyter, of the settlement of Bannaven Taburniae.”[1][1]

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‘Sola Scriptura’ – Greg Bahnsen

Is ‘Sola Scriptura’ a Protestant Concoction?

A Biblical Defence of ‘Sola Scriptura’

by Dr. Greg Bahnsen

(Transcribed by David T. King from a taped lecture and edited for the WWW by James Anderson)

The issue of Scripture and Scripture Alone (or what Protestants have come to call the principle of Sola Scriptura) is a matter that divides professing Christians as to the foundation of their faith and what defines their faith. Back in the days of the Reformation when there were men who felt that the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ had been not only corrupted by the Roman Catholic Church, but had virtually disappeared under the mask of human traditions and rituals and things that kept people from actually hearing the good news of Jesus Christ, in order to reform the Church, in order to have the grace of God more clearly proclaimed to people, Protestants realized they had to take a stand not only for ‘Sola Gratia’ (i.e., in Latin, ‘By Grace Alone’ for our salvation), but that had to be proclaimed on the basis of Sola Scriptura (‘Scripture Alone’) because the Roman Catholic Church used its appeal to human tradition in the Church (or what they considered divine tradition in the Church) as a basis for its most distinctive doctrines.

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The Perfect Sacrifice by C.H. Spurgeon

“It shall be perfect to be accepted; there shall be no blemish therein” Leviticus 22:21.

Thus, then our text shuts out all self-righteousness. IT ALSO SHUTS OUT ALL PRIESTLY PERFORMANCES.

There is a notion among some people that the priest is to save them alias the minister, for men easily in these charitable days make even Dissenting ministers into priests.

I have heard people say “Just as I employ a lawyer to attend to my temporal business, and I do not bother my head any more about it; so I employ my priest or my clergyman to attend to my spiritual business, and there is an end of it”.

This is evil talk, and ruinous to the man who indulges in it. I will speak of this priestcraft very plainly. Recollect “it shall be perfect to be accepted;” therefore all that this gentleman does for you must be perfect.

I do not know what it is that he does, I am sure. I never could make out what a priest of the Roman or Anglican order can be supposed to do in his highest function of the mass. I have seen him walk this way, and I have seen him walk that way: and I have seen him turn his back, and it has been decorated with crosses and other embelishments; and I have seen him turn his face; and I have seen him bow; and I have seen him drink wine and water; and I have seen him munch wafers; and I have seen him perform many genuflections and prostrations; but what the performance meant I have not been able to gather. To me it seemed a meaningless display.

I should not like to risk my soul on it; for suppose that during that service he should think of something that he ought not to think upon, and suppose he should have no intention whatever of performing the mass, what then becomes of those who trust in him and it?

Everything, you know, depends upon the intention of the priest. If a good intention be not there, according to the dictates of his own church, it is all good for nothing, so that your souls all hang upon the intention of a poor mortal in a certain dress.

Perhaps he has not after all been rightly anointed, and is not in the apostolical succession! Perhaps there is no apostolical succession! Perhaps the man himself is living in mortal sin! Ah, me! There are many dangers about your confidence. Are you going to hang your soul on that man’s orders or disorders? Mine is too heavy to hang upon so slender a nail, driven into such rotten wood.

If you have a soul big enough to think, you will feel ‘No, no; there cannot be sufficient ground for dependence in the best pontiff that ever officiated at an altar. God requires of me, myself, that I bring to him a perfect sacrifice; and it is all a device of my folly that I should try and get a sponsor, and lay this burden on him. It cannot be done.

I have to stand before the judgment-bar of God in my own person, to be tried for the sins that I have done in the body; and I must not deceive myself with the idea that another man’s performance of ceremonies can clear me at the judgment-seat of Christ. This man cannot bring a perfect sacrifice for me, and it must “be perfect to be accepted”.

O sirs, do not be deluded by priestcraft and sacramentarianism, whether the priest be of the school of Rome, or of Oxford: you must believe in the Lord Jesus for your selves, or you will be lost for ever! &

“It shall be perfect to be accepted; there shall be no blemish therein” & as this rule shuts out all other confidences, SO THIS RULE SHUTS US UP TO THE SACRIFICE OF JESUS CHRIST &

My heart rejoices as I think of Gethsemane, and Calvary, and of him who by one offering hath perfectly sanctified all who put their trust in him. “It is finished” said he, and finished it is for ever.

Our Lord has presented a perfect sacrifice. “It shall be perfect to be accepted;” and it is perfect. “There shall be no blemish therein;” and there is no blemish in it.

Glory be to God Most High.