Pope Benedict XVI and the United Kingdom

The cost of the proposed papal visit to UK taxpayers is one thing (easily £100m once security is taken into account) - although by no means a small matter in the current climate. Why should the tax payer shell out so much on the head of a country that is so small it would scarcely cover the area of any parish or community council in the UK? There is another cost, however, which is political, moral and spiritual. It is a dangerous attack upon the heritage of the nation. A new book seeks to highlight this cost. It does so in an informed, rather than prejudiced, way by taking these matters back to the Scriptures for the examination of the claims of the papacy against the truth.

'For well over a thousand years there has been a succession of men claiming an astonishing position for themselves, both in religion and in the affairs of nations. When one dies, another takes his place. The latest in this extraordinary dynasty has been invited by the former Prime Minister, the Rt. Hon. Gordon Brown, to visit Britain. Who is this man and why is his visit a danger to the United Kingdom?'

Published by Free Presbyterian Publications (Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland) at £5 (available from www.fpbookroom.org), this small paperback (108pp) highlights the serious issues surrounding the impending state visit of the pope to the United Kingdom. It outlines his absurd role as head of state, his objectionable career, especially in covering up the sexual abuse carried out by priests. Other essays focus on the Protestant nature of the UK constitution, show that the Pope is head of a false religion which denies and undermines the cardinal points of salvation and truth, refute the doctrine of Papal infallibility and show how the Scriptures foretell the emergence, character and demise of the papacy.

The volume concludes with the reprint of an essay by RL Dabney on the Attractions of Popery. Dabney has this to say: "The popish system of ritual and doctrine was a gradual growth, which, modifying true Christianity, first perverted and then extinguished it. Its destructive power has resulted from this: that it has not been the invention of any one cunning and hostile mind, but a gradual growth, modified by hundreds or thousands of its cultivators, who were the most acute, learned, selfish, and anti-Christian spirits of their generations, perpetually retouched and adapted to every weakness and every attribute of depraved human nature, until it became the most skillful and pernicious system of error which the world has ever known. As it has adjusted itself to every superstition, every sense of guilt, every foible and craving of the depraved human heart, so it has travestied with consummate skill every active principle of the gospel. It is doubtless the ne plus ultra of religious delusion, the final and highest result of perverted human faculty guided by the sagacity of the great enemy".

A review is available at www.middletome.com from which the above image has been borrowed.