Bowing the Knee to Rome

We live in strange times. When I became a born-again believer nearly four decades ago following thirty years as a Roman Catholic, not one non-Catholic Christian chided me for leaving the Church of Rome. In those days it was fairly obvious to evangelicals that the teachings and practices of Roman Catholicism were at odds with the teachings of the Bible. Yes, there were a few things, at least superficially, that Catholics and Bible-believing Christians held in common. The virgin birth of Christ, which involved the conception of Jesus by the Holy Spirit, is one example. Yet, regarding Christ’s miraculous birth, the Catholic Church added to the virgin Mary the dogmas of her Immaculate Conception, i.e., her having been conceived without sin, and her perpetual virginity. Although those extra-biblical teachings are serious errors, they do not directly contradict the gospel that is essential for salvation.

I would hope that everyone who is reading this article, (particularly if they profess to be Bible-believing Christians) has understood and received the true gospel, which requires the belief (and belief alone) that Jesus, through His sacrificial death and resurrection, paid the penalty for sin in full for every man, woman, and child. That is the gospel that the Bible teaches explicitly in more than one hundred verses and implies in hundreds more. However, that is not the gospel according to the Roman Catholic Church. In truth, the Catholic Church’s opposition to the biblical gospel in its teachings and practices has been made evident through its councils and murderous inquisitions down through history.

During the Reformation, many individuals (primarily former Catholics) worked to restore the biblical gospel. In truth, it had never ceased to be believed by a remnant outside the Catholic Church. Yet the Reformation helped to get the Scriptures back into the hands of multitudes of believers. In response, the Church of Rome made its official position on the gospel crystal clear in its counter-reformation Council of Trent (1545-1563). Here are just three of the so-called infallible Council’s more than one-hundred condemnations for those who believe what the Bible teaches about the gospel: “If anyone says that the sinner is justified by faith alone, meaning that nothing else is required to cooperate in order to obtain the grace of justification...let him be anathema” (6th Session, Canon 9). It is because the Catholic Church requires far more than faith for salvation that it must anathematize (condemn) those who reject its sacramental works.

“If anyone shall say that justifying faith is nothing else than confidence in the divine mercy which remits sins for Christ’s sake, or that it is this confidence alone by which we are justified: let him be anathema” (6th Session, Canon 12). Again we see that according to Rome, belief alone in Christ’s finished sacrifice on the cross is condemned.

“If anyone says that after the reception of the grace of justification the guilt is so remitted and the debt of eternal punishment so blotted out to every repentant sinner, that no debt of temporal punishment remains to be discharged either in this world or in purgatory before the gates of heaven can be opened, let him be anathema” (6th Session, Canon 30). Though many Catholics wrongly believe that their Church has moved beyond the declarations of its Councils such as Trent, they nevertheless cling steadfastly to the necessity of Purgatory in the hope of burning off their residue of sins, thus making them fit to enter Heaven. That is a rejection of the finished work of Christ and therefore a “gospel” that will save no one.

It is essential for everyone who claims to be a Christian and says that they love Roman Catholics—and who believe that most Catholics are saved simply because they “love Jesus”—to understand the official Catholic “gospel” (which every Catholic is obligated to believe) and to realize how diametrically opposed it is to the biblical gospel. To truly love Jesus means to love Him as the Scriptures declare: “And we know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we may know him that is true, and we are in him that is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life” (1 John:5:20). The Catholic “Jesus,” who did not pay the full penalty for sin and who remains on crucifixes above the altars in Catholic churches is said to be “immolated” during the Mass. Immolation means to be killed —and not simply as a symbolic gesture, according to the Catechism of the Catholic Church : “The sacrifice of the altar, then, is no mere empty commemoration of Calvary, but a true and proper act of sacrifice, whereby Christ the high priest by an unbloody immolation offers himself a most acceptable victim to the eternal Father, as he did on the cross. ‘It is one and the same victim; the same person now offers it by the ministry of his [Catholic] priests, who then offered himself on the cross. Only the manner of offering is different’” (pp. 445-46). This direct denial of the finished sacrifice of Christ takes place daily on millions of Catholic altars in clear-cut contradiction to Hebrews:10:10: “By [God’s will] we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all .”

The truth is that if we honestly love Catholics and want them to receive the forgiveness of their sins and the gift of eternal life that Jesus has paid for and that He offers through a simple act of faith on their part, then any form of encouraging the false gospel of Rome (no matter how well-intentioned) by those who profess to know Christ is a betrayal of the truth and insures for Catholics eternal separation from God. Tragically, that leaven of compromise is what has been infiltrating the church for the last three decades.

Through its newsletter articles and resource materials over many years, TBC has addressed such lethal appeasement of Roman Catholic dogmas by highly visible leaders in their evangelism efforts—men such as Billy Graham, who used Catholic priests and nuns as counselors at his crusades; Bill Bright, who placed practicing Catholics in Campus Crusade leadership positions in Ireland; and Luis Palau, who collaborated with Catholics in South America. Under the leadership of Chuck Colson and Catholic priest Richard John Neuhaus, among others, influential evangelical and Catholic leaders signed the Evangelicals and Catholics Together document, thereby committing themselves to working together to convert the world to Christ. Promise Keepers, led by Roman Catholic Bill McCartney, strived to break down the historic wall of division between Catholics and non-Catholic Christians. Hank Hanegraaff’s Christian Research Journal ran a series on Roman Catholicism, declaring that the Church held a biblical view of justification by faith. It was written in part by apologist Norm Geisler and defended by Hanegraaff on his radio program, claiming that the gospel of Rome is fundamentally biblical. Tridentine Catholic movie writer and director Mel Gibson won the hearts of multitudes of evangelicals with his The Passion of the Christ , which was based on the sacred Catholic ritual of the Stations of the Cross, a rite that is dedicated to Mary as co-redemptrix with Jesus.

The praise heaped on the pope upon his death by evangelical leaders is incomprehensible! Incredibly, Billy Graham praised John Paul II for “his strong Catholic faith.” Increasing numbers of evangelicals are joining Colson, [J. I.] Packer, Billy Graham, and others in accepting as fellow Christians Roman Catholics who embrace this false gospel…. Pat Robertson said that “the most beloved religious leader of our age [has passed] from this world to his much-deserved eternal reward.”…Mark Oestreicher, president of Youth Specialties, called the pope’s death “a key point in history where we have the opportunity to embrace [Catholics as] fellow children of God.” That is like failing to set up flares and warning signs for motorists traveling along a highway where a bridge is out and waving them on to their death instead!

Like Billy Graham, Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptists’ Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, emphasized that any disagreements Protestants may have had “with John Paul II are [irrelevant] to the foundations of the faith.” Land praised the pope’s “staunch defense of traditional Christian faith....” Yet John Paul II, on more than one occasion, gathered together for prayer witch doctors, spiritists, animists, Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, and other leaders of world religions, declared that they were all “praying to the same God” and credited their prayers with generating “profound spiritual energies” that would create a “new climate for peace.”

The 4,000-member Evangelical Theological Society’s president Francis Beckwith resigned to return to his Catholic roots (with the official blessing of ETS’s leadership). Rick Warren brought his Purpose Driven church-growth program to the Catholic Church showing no apparent concern for that church’s false gospel.

But that was then; so what is the situation now? Anyone who is saddened over what has taken place in the recent past, e.g., the blatant disregard of the biblical gospel as the only hope for the salvation of mankind, should be deeply grieved at what’s taking place today. The Vatican appears to be turning up the heat in its efforts to romance “Protestants,” a misnomer for non-Catholic Christians. Vatican II’s declaration referring to baptized non-Catholic Christians as “separated brethren,” a change from their having been referred to historically as “heretics” as defined by the Council of Trent, has been surprisingly successful in endearing many evangelical leaders to Rome. There is a saying related to this approach that is borne out in the Church of Rome’s practice: “Rome, when in minority is as gentle as a lamb, when in equality is as clever as a fox, and when in the majority is as fierce as a tiger.” We seem to be in the “clever as a fox” stage here in the US, if what is taking place is any indication.

The “retired” Benedict XVI, the former prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (with its roots in the Roman Inquisition), surprised many by his extraordinary ecumenical efforts as pope. Doctrine became a nonissue, at least on the surface. His successor, Pope Francis, has not only followed the lead of popes John XXIII, John Paul II, and Benedict, but he has put ecumenism in warp speed. Early last year, Francis sent an iPhone video greeting to the audience at a Kenneth Copeland Conference via Anglican-Episcopal bishop Tony Palmer (now deceased), who was also a director of the Kenneth Copeland Ministries in South Africa. For those not aware, Copeland and his wife, Gloria, have led millions into their unbiblical prosperity-and-health doctrines, which feature a false gospel and “another” Jesus who paid for sins by being tortured by Satan in hell. The greeting led to an invitation from the pope to Copeland and some of his false teaching compatriots (James Robison, Geoff Tunnicliff, John and Carol Arnott) to meet with him at the Vatican. Influential Charismatic mystic and false prophet Kim Clement declared that God told him that He had chosen Pope Francis to bring Spirit-filled Protestants and Catholics together.

Rick Warren has hardly taken a back seat on the journey to Rome. In a series of interviews that he gave last year to EWTN, the Catholic network (which, by the way, he confessed was one of his favorite TV channels), Rick defended Catholicism and attempted to explain the misconceptions held by evangelicals. In keeping with his unbiblical Global P.E.A.C.E. Plan, which stresses the cooperation of the world’s religions, he spoke at the Vatican’s International Religious Colloquium on the Complementarity of Man and Woman. He later “called for adherents of various Christian denominations to unite with Roman Catholics and Pope Francis to work together on three shared goals, focusing on the sanctity of life, the sanctity of sex, and the sanctity of marriage” (www.aleteia.org/en/religion/article/megachurch-pastor-rick-warren-joins-...).

Hopefully, every believer reading this is asking “What of the sanctity of the biblical gospel?” Without that, all other attempts at “sanctity” are a temporal delusion and an eternal tragedy! Yet fewer and fewer of those who profess to be Bible-believing Christians seem to be concerned about this and are comfortable with what has become Warren’s ecumenical mantra: “If you love Jesus,” he claims, “we’re on the same team.”

If you are puzzled or perhaps even dazed by what’s going on in Christendom, the Scriptures supply the answers: “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables” (2 Timothy:4:3-4). Where sound doctrine has given way to experientialism, subjectivism, and emotionalism, as it has among the millions of followers of the false Signs and Wonders teachings, biblical discernment has been abandoned; being a Berean is impossible.

However, hyper-Charismatics and Pentecostals are not the only ones ripe for Rome’s seduction. Consider again conservative theologian Francis Beckwith, the former head of the Evangelical Theological Society who returned to his earlier Catholic faith (emphasis added). How could he have done this if he had truly understood and received the simple and foundationally sound doctrine of salvation? How could one rationally give up the unfathomable free gift that Christ provided and turn instead to a salvation by works—unless he had never received that gift? You could also ask how Beckwith could have been elected president of such a prestigious “Protestant” organization.

Beckwith, however, provides some insights that are reflective of the attitude and beliefs of most Christians today. When asked if he thought the historic hostility between Catholics and evangelicals is eroding, his response was: “Yes. I think it is largely the result of working together on cultural questions [Rick Warren’s approach], which has led to more careful and charitable reading of each other’s beliefs. So, for example, it is rare today to a find a serious Evangelical accusing the Catholic Church of believing in ‘works righteousness.’ Sure, the more flamboyant voices say such things, but most sophisticated Evangelicals do not take them seriously” ( The Catholic World Report 11/5/2014). “Flamboyant voice” here refers to a vocal, narrow-minded fundamentalist, versus “sophisticated Evangelical,” which describes one who takes “more careful and charitable reading of each other’s beliefs.” Tragically, such a mindset is the growing trend among professing evangelicals.

I thank Jesus every day that the evangelicals who witnessed to me more than three decades ago loved me enough to reject such soul-damning “sophistication” and to minister to me in truth. For this I am eternally grateful, and I pray that my fellow believers will do the same for their Catholic acquaintances, friends, and loved ones.

"Maybe you should read the early Church Fathers they can explain along with the Bible the Sacraments. St Ignatius of Antioch talks and wrote about the REAL Presence in the Eucharist in 1st century."

.........[Not so much]..........

From: Philip Schaff: Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. I, Introductory Note To The Epistle Of Ignatius To The Ephesians.
"The epistles ascribed to Ignatius have given rise to more controversy than any other documents connected with the primitive Church. As is evident to every reader on the very first glance at these writings, they contain numerous statements which bear on points of ecclesiastical order that have long divided the Christian world; and a strong temptation has thus been felt to allow some amount of prepossession to enter into the discussion of their authenticity or spuriousness. At the same time, this question has furnished a noble field for the display of learning and acuteness, and has, in the various forms under which it has been debated, given rise to not a few works of the very highest ability and scholarship. We shall present such an outline of the controversy as may enable the reader to understand its position at the present day.
There are, in all, fifteen Epistles which bear the name of Ignatius. These are the following: One to the Virgin Mary, two to the Apostle John, one to Mary of Cassobelae, one to the Tarsians, one to the Antiochians, one to Hero, a deacon of Antioch, one to the Philippians; one to the Ephesians, one to the Magnesians, one to the Trallians, one to the Romans, one to the Philadelphians, one to the Smyrnaeans, and one to Polycarp. The first three exist only in Latin: all the rest are extant also in Greek.
It is now the universal opinion of critics, that the first eight of these professedly Ignatian letters are spurious. They bear in themselves indubitable proofs of being the production of a later age than that in which Ignatius lived. Neither Eusebius nor Jerome makes the least reference to them; and they are now by common consent set aside as forgeries, which were at various dates, and to serve special purposes, put forth under the name of the celebrated Bishop of Antioch.
But after the question has been thus simplified, it still remains sufficiently complex. Of the seven Epistles which are acknowledged by Eusebius (Hist. Eccl., iii. 36), we possess two Greek recensions, a shorter and a longer. It is plain that one or other of these exhibits a corrupt text, and scholars have for the most part agreed to accept the shorter form as representing the genuine letters of Ignatius. This was the opinion generally acquiesced in, from the time when critical editions of these Epistles began to be issued, down to our own day. Criticism, indeed, fluctuated a good deal as to which Epistles should be accepted and which rejected. Archp. Usher (1644), Isaac Vossius (1646), J. B. Cotelerius (1672), Dr. T. Smith (I709), and others, edited the writings ascribed to Ignatius in forms differing very considerably as to the order in which they were arranged, and the degree of authority assigned them, until at length, from about the beginning of the eighteenth century, the seven Greek Epistles, of which a translation is here given, came to be generally accepted in their shorter form as the genuine writings of Ignatius.
Before this date, however, there had not been wanting some who refused to acknowledge the authenticity of these Epistles in either of the recensions in which they were then known to exist. By far the most learned and elaborate work maintaining this position was that of Daillé (or Dallaeus), published in 1666. This drew forth in reply the celebrated Vindiciae of Bishop Pearson, which appeared in 1672. It was generally supposed that this latter work had established on an immoveable foundation the genuineness of the shorter form of the Ignatian Epistles; and, as we have stated above, this was the conclusion almost universally accepted down to our own day. The only considerable exception to this concurrence was presented by Whiston, who laboured to maintain in his Primitive Christianity Revived (1711) the superior claims of the longer recension of the Epistles, apparently influenced in doing so by the support which he thought they furnished to the kind of Arianism which he had adopted.
But although the shorter form of the Ignatian letters had been generally accepted in preference to the longer, there was still a pretty prevalent opinion among scholars, that even it could not be regarded as absolutely free from interpolations, or as of undoubted authenticity. Thus said Lardner, in his Credibility of the Gospel History (1743): "have carefully compared the two editions, and am very well satisfied, upon that comparison, that the larger are an interpolation of the smaller, and not the smaller an epitome or abridgment of the larger.... But whether the smaller themselves are the genuine writings of Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, is a question that has been much disputed, and has employed the pens of the ablest critics. And whatever positiveness some may have shown on either side, I must own I have found it a very difficult question."
This expression of uncertainty was repeated in substance by Jortin (1751), Mosheim (1755), Griesbach (1768), Rosenmüller (1795), Neander (1826), and many others; some going so far as to deny that we have any authentic remains of Ignatius at all, while others, though admitting the seven shorter letters as being probably his, yet strongly suspected that they were not free from interpolation. Upon the whole, however, the shorter recension was, until recently, accepted without much opposition, and chiefly in dependence on the work of Bishop Pearson above mentioned, as exhibiting the genuine form of the Epistles of Ignatius.
But a totally different aspect was given to the question by the discovery of a Syriac version of three of these Epistles among the mss. procured from the monastery of St. Mary Deipara, in the desert of Nitria, in Egypt. In the years 1838, 1839, and again in 1842, Archdeacon Tattam visited that monastery, and succeeded in obtaining for the English Government a vast number of ancient Syriac manuscripts. On these being deposited in the British Museum, the late Dr. Cureton, who then had charge of the Syriac department, discovered among them, first, the Epistle to Polycarp, and then again, the same Epistle, with those to the Ephesians and to the Romans, in two other volumes of manuscripts.
As the result of this discovery, Cureton published in 1845 a work, entitled, The Ancient Syriac Version of the Epistles of St. Ignatius to Polycarp, the Ephesian, and the Romans, etc., in which he argued that these Epistles represented more accurately than any formerly published what Ignatius had actually written. This, of course, opened up the controversy afresh. While some accepted the views of Cureton. others very strenuously opposed them. Among the former was the late Chev. Bunsen; among the latter, an anonymous writer in the English Review, and Dr. Hefele, in his third edition of the Apostolic Fathers. In reply to those who had controverted his arguments, Cureton published his Vindiciae Ignatianae in 1846, and his Corpus Ignatianum in 1849. He begins his introduction to the last-named work with the following sentences: "Exactly three centuries and a half intervened between the time when three Epistles in Latin, attributed to St. Ignatius, first issued from the press, and the publication in 1845 of three letters in Syriac bearing the name of the same apostolic writer. Very few years passed before the former were almost universally regarded as false and spurious; and it seems not improbable that scarcely a longer period will elapse before the latter be almost as generally acknowledged and received as the only true and genuine letters of the venerable Bishop of Antioch that have either come down to our times, or were ever known in the earliest ages of the Christian Church."
Had the somewhat sanguine hope thus expressed been realized, it would have been unnecessary for us to present to the English reader more than a translation of these three Syriac Epistles. But the Ignatian controversy is not yet settled. There are still those who hold that the balance of argument is in favour of the shorter Greek, as against these Syriac Epistles. They regard the latter as an epitome of the former, and think the harshness which, according to them, exists in the sequence of thoughts and sentences, clearly shows that this is the case. We have therefore given all the forms of the Ignatian letters which have the least claim on our attention. The reader may judge, by comparison for himself, which of these is to be accepted as genuine, supposing him disposed to admit the claims of any one of them. We content ourselves with laying the materials for judgment before him, and with referring to the above-named works in which we find the whole subject discussed. As to the personal history of Ignatius, almost nothing is known. The principal source of information regarding him is found in the account of his martyrdom, to which the reader is referred. Polycarp alludes to him in his Epistle to the Philippians (chap. ix.), and also to his letters (chap. xiii.). Irenaeus quotes a passage from his Epistle to the Romans (Adv. Haer., v.28; Epist. ad Rom., chap. iv.), without, however, naming him. Origen twice refers to him, first in the preface to his Comm. on the Song of Solomon, where he quotes a passage from the Epistle of Ignatius to the Romans, and again in his sixth homily on St. Luke, where he quotes from the Epistle to the Ephesians, both times naming the author. It is unnecessary to give later references.
Supposing the letters of Ignatius and the account of his martyrdom to be authentic, we learn from them that he voluntarily presented himself before Trajan at Antioch, the seat of his bishopric, when that prince was on his first expedition against the Parthians and Armenians (a.d. 107); and on professing himself a Christian, was condemned to the wild beasts. After a long and dangerous voyage he came to Smyrna, of which Polycarp was bishop, and thence wrote his four Epistles to the Ephesians, the Magnesians, the Trallians, and the Romans. From Smyrna he came to Troas, and tarrying there a few days, he wrote to the Philadelphians, the Smyrnaeans, and Polycarp. He then came on to Neapolis, and passed through the whole of Macedonia. Finding a ship at Dyrrachium in Epirus about to sail into Italy, he embarked, and crossing the Adriatic, was brought to Rome, where he perished on the 20th of December 107, or, as some think, who deny a twofold expedition of Trajan against the Parthians, on the same day of the year a.d. 116.
Philip Schaff: Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. I, Introductory Note to the Syriac Version of the Ignatian Epistles:
Some account of the discovery of the Syriac version of the Ignatian Epistles has been already given. We have simply to add here a brief description of the mss. from which the Syriac text has been printed. That which is named a by Cureton, contains only the Epistle to Polycarp, and exhibits the text of that Epistle which, after him, we have followed. He fixes its age somewhere in the first half of the sixth century, or before the year 550. The second ms., which Cureton refers to as b, is assigned by him to the seventh or eighth century. It contains the three Epistles of Ignatius, and furnishes the text here followed in the Epistles to the Ephesians and Romans. The third ms., which Cureton quotes as g, has no date, but, as he tells us, "belonged to the collection acquired by Moses of Nisibis in a.d. 931, and was written apparently about three or four centuries earlier." It contains the three Epistles to Polycarp, the Ephesians, and the Romans. The text of all these mss. is in several passages manifestly corrupt, and the translators appear at times to have mistaken the meaning of the Greek original.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.