September 29, 2000 (David W. Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061-0368, fbns@wayoflife.org) - On September 4, Pope John Paul II ãbeatifiedä two of his predecessors, Pope Pius IX (who called the First Vatican Council) and Pope John XXIII (who called the Second Vatican Council. Beatification is a step in the process of Catholic canonization or ãsainthood.ä This is the false idea that the Catholic Church has the power to declare special heavenly positions to certain dead people. According to Catholic teaching, its ãsaintsä can hear and answer prayer. This is a blasphemous doctrine, for the Bible says there is only One who can hear and answer prayer, and that is Almighty God (Psalm 65:2). Further, there is only One mediator between God and men, the Lord Jesus Christ (1 Timothy 2:5). The Catholic Church claims that its doctrine of the saints does not contradict these and similar passages, but we know that it does. Nowhere in the Bible do we see that Godâs people prayed to the dead. They prayed only to God, and this is our infallible example.

John Paul IIâs praise of Pope Pius IX is very enlightening. Many Evangelicals, such as Billy Graham, Pat Robertson, and Jack Van Impe, have praised Pope John Paul II. We have documented this in our book Evangelicals and Rome. Yet John Paul II is NOT a Bible-believing Christian. He exalts the papacy as ãthe sweet Christ on earth,ä calls himself ãHis Holinessä and ãHoly Father,ä prays to Mary and gives glory to her for his protection from an attempted assassination and has dedicated himself wholly to her, believes in evolution, denies that Hell is a place of fire, claims that salvation is by faith plus sacraments and good works, etc. John Paul II believes what his predecessors believed, one of whom was Pius IX who was pope from 1846 to 1878.

In November 1846, Pius IX issued an encyclical letter in which he denounced all opponents of Roman Catholicism, among which he included ãthose insidious Bible Societies.ä He said the Bible societies were ãrenewing the crafts of the ancient hereticsä by distributing to ãall kinds of men, even the least instructed, gratuitously and at immense expense, copies in vast numbers of the books of the Sacred Scriptures translated against the holiest rules of the Church into various vulgar tongues...ä What a horrible crime! Distributing the Scriptures freely to all people! Pope Pius closes his encyclical by giving blasphemous praise to Mary: ãlet us have recourse to the intercession of the Most Holy Mother of God, the Immaculate Virgin Mary, our most sweet mother, OUR MEDIATRIX [Mediator], OUR ADVOCATE, OUR FIRMEST HOPE, the source of our confidence, and WHOSE PROTECTION IS MOST POWERFUL AND MOST EFFICACIOUS with God.ä

Pius IX was a persecutor of Bible-believing Christians. In 1849, Count Guicciardini and several other Protestants in Florence, in central Italy, were arrested ãfor no offence whatever but that they wished to read the word of God, and hear it preachedä (Dowling, The History of Romanism, p. 730). After being imprisoned for some time in a loathsome cell, in which the stench and the vermin made it almost impossible even to sleep, Guicciardini was banished from Italy. In the spring of 1852, Rosa and Francesco Madiai were arrested in Tuscany, in northwest Italy, ãfor no other crime than that of reading and inviting others to read with them the blessed word of God, and to love and trust in that Saviour whom it reveals.ä After several weeks of imprisonment, their trial was conducted in June. One of the charges was that the Madiais had given a 16-year-old boy ãa prohibited copy of the Bible, in French and in Italianä and that they had taught their 20-year-old servant girl how to read so she could understand the Italian Diodati Bible. For these and similar ãcrimes,ä Francesco Madiai was sentenced to 50 months imprisonment at hard labor, and Rosa, to 45 months imprisonment. They were also fined 300 livres. After several months of cruel imprisonment, the Madiais were released and banished from Italy; but though they regained their freedom, Francescoâs mental and physical health was permanently broken.

On December 8, 1854, Pope Pius IX issued the bull Ineffabilis Deus, which proclaimed the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of Mary. In 1899 the Pontifical Press published a book entitled Manual of Indulgences, which proclaimed: ãThe Virgin Mary, immaculate and always pure, never required to expiate even the shadow of an imperfection, having been always more holy than Cherubim and Seraphim.ä Though the Vatican press was busy publishing books glorifying Mary, it was doing nothing to publish the Holy Scriptures.

Writing in 1903, Alexander Robertson, who long resided in Italy, made the following observations:

ãOn May 18, 1849, some three thousand copies of the New Testament, according to the Martini version, were seized and destroyed in Tuscany. Priests have told me that even they were not allowed to possess a Martini Bible without the Papal consent, and that the very fact of applying for such consent would bring them under suspicion, and so damage their prospects in the Church. Therefore, they said, ÎWE HAVE NO BIBLES.â . . . Students are not taught the Bible in the Papal seminaries. They have many text-books÷Alfonso de Liguoriâs especially÷but no Bible. Count Campello, ex-Canon of St. Peterâs, was trained in the Academy of Noble Ecclesiastics, the highest training college in Rome (to which once only men of noble birth were admitted, but into which now not one such can be induced to enter), and yet DURING ALL HIS YEARS OF STUDY HE NEVER EVEN SAW A BIBLEä (Alexander Robertson, The Roman Catholic Church in Italy, 1903, pp. 211-215).

Bibles were also being destroyed in South America during the reign of Pius IX. The following is an eyewitness account of the burning of Spanish New TestamentsÊin 1870, a papal law required that copies of the Bible found in the possession of visitors to the papal city be confiscated (Schaff, History of the Christian Church, VI, p. 727).

My friends, the Roman Catholic Church hasnât changed, except superficially. The blasphemous and heretical declarations of the Council of Trent and of the first Vatican Council have not been abrogated. In fact, John Paul II recently reaffirmed Romeâs headship over and supremacy above all churches and denominations. Beware of the ecumenical movement which attempts to rob churches of their protection against heresy by convincing them that they do not have the right to judge doctrine and to reject and separate from error.