The Great Whore of Babylon

I was on BBC Radio Ulster on ‘Sunday Sequence’ two days ago, discussing the Murphy Report and the fall-out thereof. The man discussing it with me was Wallace Thompson, who is secretary to the Evangelical Protestant Society, and who has issued a statement saying there needs to be a thorough-going investigation of the Catholic Church in the North, including the statement ‘If anyone in any other walk of life was involved in the sorts of crimes committed by priests and nuns, he or she would find no hiding place’. You got that ‘crimes committed by priests and nuns', did you? Not some priests and nuns – just plain priests and nuns. They’re all at it and all of the time, probably.

Wallace was very straightforward on the programme – the Roman Catholic Church was/is rotten to the core. I found myself getting a bit peeved with his universal condemnation, which I shouldn’t have, and I suggested that Protestant churches should equally be scrutinized, which I’m glad I did. From there on things got a bit tetchy and William Crawley cut us off after a few brief minutes. Some people I’ve spoken to said they thought he did so because Wallace and I might come to blows (no chance – Wallace is younger than me). Others - myself included – figured that RTE’s Joe Little had chuntered on in far too much detail earlier in the programme and so they had to cut back on what time they could give to us.

Because I’m a lazy bugger, I didn’t check the website of the Evangelical Protestant Society prior to the radio discussion. If I had, I’d have spotted a few straws in the wind re the Evangelical Protestant Society's views on Catholicism.

‘Rev. John McDonald, B.D. declares, "For a succession of fifty Popes not one pious or virtuous man sat in the pontifical chair. A system which has acknowledged and honoured such men to be each in turn its head, and still honours them, has fairly earned for itself the title 'Man of Sin'." Yet the ‘Man of Sin’ poses as ‘His Holiness’, an attribute which belongs to God alone, and he describes the Popish ‘synagogue of Satan’ as ‘the Church’.’

‘The spirit of Antichrist was in the world in Paul's day. “Even now", wrote John, "are there many anti-christs ..." (1 John 2:18). But when Paul wrote, the Antichrist had not been “revealed”. We hold that there are many forces in the world to-day which are diametrically opposed to Christianity, but that the Papacy is the Antichrist of Scripture.’

The message is clear. Wallace and his co-congregationalists will not be inviting Pope Benedict to address their Ladies’ Knitting Circle this year and ecumenism is a moral bog to be avoided if you value your immortal soul.

It might have been helpful if BBC Radio Ulster listeners had been clued into the EPS position vis-à-vis Rome before Wallace was allowed to launch his offensive offensive. (No, that’s not a misprint.) On the other hand, I had more positive feedback from that six- or seven-minute radio discussion than I’ve had for some time. For which small mercy thank you very much, Mr Thompson.