"What is wrong with the Roman Catholic teaching about the Church?" is one of the main questions in a booklet recently issued by "The Commission of the Christian Faith of the United Church of Canada." A minority of the Commission failed in its endeavor to have the word "error" in place of the word "wrong" inserted in the booklet. This is a distinction without a difference of import, even if the word "wrong" implied, as asserted, that the "Roman Catholic Church knew better" when she claims to be the one, and the only Christian Church that functions with Divine authority.
Surely it is not an "error," nor is it "wrong" to claim that the Church Christ established was, and is an authoritative, indestructible Spiritual Society.
Surely it is not an "error," nor is it "wrong" to say that Christ called His Church a "Kingdom," a "Sheepfold," which He placed in the care of His earthly shepherd, Peter, saying "feed My sheep." Therefore it is anti-Christ to hold that any Protestant Church, or a combination of all of them, functions with the authority of Christ.
Surely Christ promised to remain with His indestructible Church until time is no more. Hence to hold that any Church in "The United Church of Canada," or all of them combined, is the Church of Christ is a denial of Christ. It is saying, inferentially, "Jesus You were wrong; You were in error when You said that "the gates of Hell would not prevail" against the Church You started on the First Pentecost Day. Martin Luther, Henry VIII, Queen Elizabeth, John Knox, John Wesley, William Miller, and Mary Baker G. Eddy, ended its existence, by substituting our Protestant churches for Your Sheepfold."
Surely, unless you deny Christ, then must you Canadian Protestants hold that the Church Christ established began to function on the First Pentecost Day; hence it must be a Church that is nearly nineteen and a quarter centuries old.
Surely no Church in the world that claims to be Christian, save the Catholic Church; the Church that has been, and continues to be, under the universal direction of the occupant of the Chair of Peter during all of the Christian centuries, can claim to be the Church Christ established. No other Church has any historical credentials to warrant such a claim.
This is being submitted to the Canadian minister, who protested in the Commission of Christian Faith of the United Church of Canada, and in "The Christian Century," against the insertion of the word "wrong" instead of the word "error" in its booklet. May he see the error of his wrong ministerial way!
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A visiting Canadian preacher, known to be a violent prohibitionist, asked Parson Jones if he might address the congregation. Parson Jones, who enjoyed a nip or two, could find no way to gracefully refuse.
After a lengthy discourse on the evils of drink, the visiting preacher concluded his discourse in a voice shaking with fervor:---"I would take all the whiskey, gin and liquors in the world and hurl them into the St. Lawrence River."
Parson Jones then addressed the congregation: "Now, in conclusion, brethren, let us sing Hymn No. 12---Shall We Gather At The River?"
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Anglicanism:---The bishops of the Anglican Church have once more awakened to the realization of the anomaly of a Church, that claims to be of Christ, being entirely dependent upon the "advice" of the British Prime Minister as to whom the Sovereign, at present Queen Elizabeth II, shall appoint as bishops and deans. They resolved that "the present procedure for submitting advice to the Sovereign is open to objection, and should be modified."
The Anglican bishops want the Queen's Privy Council, instead of the Prime Minister, to advise the appointments. If the "Reformed Religion by Law Established," popularly called Anglicanism, were a division of the Church that Christ established (which it is not), the appointment of bishops by either the Queen's Privy Councilor or the Prime Minister, would be comparable to the appointment of Commissars by the Kremlin, with total disregard of the people in the U.S.S.R.
Why should not the head of the British Parliament select the bishops and deans of the Anglican church? Does not that church owe its existence to the British Parliament? Is not the Sovereign declared, by Law, to be the "Defender of the (Anglican) Faith?"
The first Anglican church was founded by Act of Parliament in the year 1534; which Parliament compelled its bishops to take an oath of acknowledgment of the King as head of the church, assumed to be "immediately under Christ." The second Anglican church, the present existing one, was by law established in the year 1559, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. In it, the bishops declare under oath, that they "recognize Your Majesty as the Supreme Governor of this realm in Spiritual and Ecclesiastical things, as well as in temporal ... "
The union of church and state in the United Kingdom of Great Britain is a gross injustice, since the Anglican church therein represents only a small minority of the inhabitants of that territory. Only about four million of the fifty million inhabitants of the United Kingdom are Anglicans.
Part of the taxes of Catholics therein, who number about as many as there are Anglican church members, are used to support the state church, in which the bishops swear that they are opposed to the Pope; and that he is not "ordained of God by Holy Scripture"; whereas St. Matthew (16:18-19) and St. John (21:15-17) say he is. Strange is it, that the bishops and deans of the "Religion by Law (Parliament) Established" do not realize that their church functions by human, and not Divine authority; as was realized by Cardinal Newman, Cardinal Manning, and about 2,000 other foremost Anglicans, who graduated from the church by Parliament established, into the Church that Christ established, the Catholic Church.