ROMAN CATHOLIC/REPUBLICANS DESECRATE PROTESTANT CHURCH IN CRUMLIN

“IS THE WRITING ON THE WALL FOR CRUMLIN’S PROTESTANT COMMUNITY?” ASKS LOCAL M.P. DAVID BURNSIDE

This is the face of the “New Ulster”. Crumlin Evangelical Presbyterian Church defaced by Roman Catholic Republicans. The attack received little publicity or coverage by the mass media - press - radio and television in comparison to equally reprehensible attacks on Roman Catholic Church Property in Newtownabbey. Local South Antrim M.P. David Burnside said, “The incident was another blow to the area’s dwindling Protestant population.”

”Crumlin does appear to be becoming a cold house for one side of the community - and it’s all down to a small minority who refuse to live in peace with their neighbours.”

“The sectarian dimension to this is deeply alarming, coming so soon after the Orange Arch was damaged last summer and the Orange Hall attacked. The people who did this are scum who have no respect whatsoever for people of the Protestant faith.”

Meanwhile, the DUP’s Samuel Dunlop also condemned the attack which he said would disgust “the decent people of Crumlin”.

“I have seen Crumlin grow from a sleepy village to a small town and unfortunately some of the people who have come in aren’t fit to be living there or anywhere else.”

Whilst words of condemnation did come from local Nationalist politicians, we did not see the usual collection of “bleeding heart” Ecumenical clergy lining up to express their sympathy.

Some have said the attack was the act of mindless thugs, but if they were mindless then why not vent their anger/venom on the mainline churches in the town. The very names Orange and Evangelical are obviously only too well known and understood by Roman Catholic bully boys who attacked this church which stands for Bible Truth, as well as the local Orange Hall. The message on the wall is clearly stated “PRODS OUT”.

If this is Ulster at peace and still a part of the United Kingdom, we might well ask what our fate would be in a United Ireland where we would be a minority 10% of the population?

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Catholic and Protestant clergymen from Co. Tyrone made history when they met the Pope during a visit to Rome.

Ten members of the Cookstown Clergy Forum were visiting the Italian capital on a peace-building exercise, the highlight of which was to be a private meeting with Pope John Paul II in the Vatican.

The Cookstown group, making the visit were: five Roman Catholic clergy - Monsignor Raymond Murray, Fr Garrett Campbell and Curate Lawrence Boyle (Holy Trinity, Cookstown); Fr Martin McVeigh PP, Pomeroy and Fr Danny Hernandez, Army Chaplain.

Three Church of Ireland clergy - the Rev Kenneth Hall, Bishop’s Curate of Brackaville and Stewartstown Parish Churches and Canon Norman Porteus and the Rev John Ewart, both of Derryloran parish church.

Two Presbyterian clergy - the Rev Isaac Thompson, First Cookstown and the Rev Selwoode Graham, retired and formerly of Magherafelt.

Also on the trip was Maureen Doyle, community relations officer to Cookstown District Council which was part-funding the visit.

A spokesperson for the Cookstown Clergy Forum said: "The visit was primarily a peace-building exercise to visit Anglican and Presbyterian Churches in Rome to see how they operate in a predominately Catholic area!"

The Clergy Forum will also attend a reception, hosted by Kathryn Colvin, the British Ambassador to Rome.

While an Evangelical Church in Crumlin is defaced by Romanists, the Ecumenical ministers of Cookstown, accompanied by R.C. priests go to meet the Pope in the Vatican - their ordination vows forgotten, as the Presbyterian Westminster Confession of Faith, brands the Pope as "AntiChrist" whilst the 39 Articles of the Church of Ireland describe Masses as “blasphemous fables and dangerous deceits”.

Why not just openly return to Rome instead of acting as an Ecumenical Fifth Column?

Was the Reformation a mistake? Did the Reformers and Martyrs die in Vain?

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Queen Isabella I (1451 - 1504) Moves are afoot to canonise Isabella I of Spain the 15th century Queen. Her beatification has already been proposed. Very much a religious mystic she, with her husband Ferdinand “The Catholic Monarchs”, were given the title “The Catholic” by the Pope, in recognition of their role in “purifying” the faith. They it was who instituted the Spanish Inquisition. The Secretary General of the Confederation of Jewish Communities in Spain has lodged a formal objection on this basis as the inquisition was responsible for the cruel persecution of Jews, Muslims, and Protestants.

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By Michael Doyle and Joe Gorrod

AN Irish Archbishop died when his car was machine-gunned by rebel troops in a war-torn African state.

Archbishop Courtney

Michael Courtney, the Pope’s envoy in Burundi, was shot in the head, shoulder and leg as he returned from a funeral.

The 58-year-old Papal Nuncio, from Nenagh, Co Tipperary, died soon after from a major haemorrhage during surgery.

Army officials in the country blamed the killing on rebel Hutu soldiers from the National Liberation Forces (FNL), who refuse to join the peace process aimed at ending a decade of violence.

Burundi’s President Domitien Ndayizeye said it was a deliberate assassination because the archbishop was in a diplomatic car flying the Vatican flag.He added: “It was not an accident, he was killed.” And President Ndayizeye vowed those who killed Archbishop Courtney would be brought to justice.But the FNI, immediately denied any involvement and condemned the shooting. Rebel spokesman Pasteur Habirnana said: “We have nothing against the Nuncio. We had men in the area, where he was ambushed, but I swear it wasn’t us who attacked him?”

Archbishop Courtney was travelling by car with three other passengers 40km south of the capital Bujumbura when gunfire from a nearby hill sprayed the vehicle.

Local governor Annicet Niyongabo said: “they first fired into the tyres and approached to execute him.”

A priest in the car was slightly injured, while the driver and a hitchhiker were unhurt. A Burundian clergyman said Archbishop Courtney had been returning from a funeral for a priest in Minago. Archbishop Courtney, who had lived in Burundi for three years, had been due to leave for Cuba in a short time, added the cleric.

A senior official at the Prince Louis Clinic in Bujumbura said: “The Nuncio received three bullets, one in the head behind the right ear, another in the thorax and a third in the right leg.”

“We tried to resuscitate him and give him a transfusion, but his condition was serious and he succumbed to his injuries.”

Before his appointment to Burundi in 2000, the archbishop had worked for the Vatican in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Senegal, India, Cuba, Egypt and Strasbourg, according to Rome’s missionary news service, Misna. The Vatican issued a statement saying Pope John Paul II was praying for the priest. Vatican Radio said: “The Holy Father, after hearing what happened, immediately prayed for the soul of this faithful and generous servant of the Church, who was killed while undertaking a difficult mission entrusted to him.”

Wherever there is a sizeable Roman Catholic population, violence, revolution and a “peace process” you can be sure Vatican diplomats will be in the midst. The Spirit of Prophecy in Revelation 17 describes Romanism under the symbol of a woman dressed in Scarlet and Purple with whom the rulers of the world have committed spiritual fornication by treaties, concordats and political/diplomatic activity. The events in Burundi illustrate the point yet again.

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A BISHOP in the US has been convicted of hit-and-run killing.

Thomas O’Brien was found guilty of leaving the scene after killing a pedestrian with his Buick in a crash that ended his career as head of the Phoenix Catholic diocese in Arizona. O’Brien is believed to be the first Catholic bishop in US history to be convicted of a felony.

Jurors deliberated for more than four hours on the first day and another two hours the next day before reaching their verdict. Jim Reed, who was jaywalking, was killed in the incident on June 14, last year. O’Brien (68) said he thought he hit a dog or that his car had been struck by a rock.

O’Brien could be sentenced to anything from probation to three years and nine months in prison.

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Two unprecedented studies that document pervasive sex abuse by Catholic clergy in the US found neariy 11,000 young people have claimed they were molested since 1950, and that bishops bear much of the responsibility for the crisis. One document says their failure to stop predators allowed the “smoke of Satan” into the church.

The studies - commissioned by America’s bishops - found that 80 per cent of the alleged victims were male and that just over half said they were between ages 11 and 14 when they were assaulted, according to a source who has seen the reports. The abuse claims were filed against 4,392 of the 109,694 clergy who served over the last half century - or about four per cent of all clerics.

The National Review Board, a lay watchdog panel formed by the bishops, was to formally release the reports in Washington later today. One is the church’s first national accounting of molestation claims and was conducted by John Jay College of Criminal Justice. The other is the board’s own investigation into how the crisis developed.

The John Jay findings are based on information provided by most of the 195 American dioceses. Victims said any study by the church was bound to underestimate the number of abuse cases and that many of those who suffered still had not come forward.

Dioceses nationwide have received 10,667 abuse claims since 1950, according to a news release from the Diocese of Yakima, Washington. Of those, claims by approximately 6,700 were substantiated. About 3,300 were not investigated because the accused clergymen were dead.

Another 1,000 or so claims were unsubstantiated, the diocese said. The national report also calculated abuse-related costs such as litigation and counselling at about £300 million.

However, the John Jay report covered claims up through 2002, and many multimillion-pound settlements have been reached since then. The review board report said celibacy was not a cause of the scandal, but that the celibacy requirement may have attracted candidates for the priesthood who were seeking an escape from their sexual problems. The board came to no direct conclusions about whether gay people should be ordained, the source said.

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POPE ENTRUSTS FUTURE OF EUROPE TO MARY

Pope John Paul II entrusted the future of the new Europe to Mary; as he concluded a series of addresses on his hopes and concerns for the Old World. From the courtyard of the papal summer residence of Castel Gandolfo, the Pope has dedicated his last eight addresses at the Sunday Angelus to reflect on the post-synodal apostolic exhortation “Ecclesia in Europa,” published in June. The Pope concluded his reflections last Sunday, as he, did in the document itself, “with an ‘Entrustment to Mary’ of all the men and women of the continent.” He placed Europe in Mary’s hands, so, that it will “become a symphony of nations [EU] committed to building together the civilisation of love and peace.”

More recently, the Holy Father urged that the final draft of the European Constitution should recognize explicably the Christian roots of the continent [Catholicism], as they constitute a “guarantee of a future.” He referred to the crisis of values in Europe and appealed for the recovery of the continent’s “true identity,” adding that “the process of enlargement of the European Union to other countries cannot affect only the geographic and economic aspects, but must be translated in a renewed agreement on values which must be expressed in law and in life.”

International Express, Oct 21-27, 2003

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U. S. Hip Hop singer Lauryn Hill, from a stage used by the Pope, shocked Catholic officials at a concert by telling them to “repent” and alluding to sexual abuse of children by priests.

The broadside came during the recording of a Christmas concert attended by top Vatican cardinals, bishops and many elite of Italian society... The Pope was not present.

“I did not come here to celebrate the birth of Christ with you but to ask you why you are not in mourning for his death inside this place,” she said according to a transcript of her statement run by the Rome newspaper La Repubblica. A spokesman for Prime Time Productions, the concert’s organizers, said the newspaper’s quotes were accurate. "God has been a witness to the corruption of his leadership, of the exploitation and abuses... by the clergy,” she said.

This was an apparent reference to the scandal in the United States last year over the sexual abuse of children by priests.

Hill told the crowd to seek blessings “from God not men” and said she did “not believe in representatives of God on earth.” A few feet away in the front row sat five cardinals, including Edmund Szoka, American governor of Vatican City...

Organizers said Hill’s outburst and performance would most probably be cut from the show when it is aired on Christmas Eve.

Reuters, December 14, 2003

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POLISH PRIESTS HELD IN CONNECTION WITH $130 MILLION BANK SCAM

Warsaw (ENI) - Three Roman Catholic priests are being held in custody by Polish authorities in connection with a bank scam involving more than $130 million, but the authorities will not disclose the specific charges the priests are facing nor when they will come to trial. The first Polish priest had been arrested in February 2002 and then two other priests, who have not been named by police, were arrested in December, Poland’s Rzeczpospolita newspaper reported.

POLISH NUN FACES JAIL FOR DRUNK TRACTOR DRIVING

Warsaw (Reuters) - A Benedictine nun is facing jail for driving a tractor into a car while drunk outside her convent in south-western Poland, police say.

The 45-year-old nun will be charged with drunk-driving and causing an accident, which carries a prison sentence of up to two years, Dariusz Waluch, police spokesman in the south-western Polish town of Dzierzoniow, told local news agency PAP. He said the nun was 17 times over the country’s legal alcohol limit for driving.

JOHN PAUL GIVES BLESSING TO BODY-POPEING

POPE John Paul II bigs up a break dance crew performing at the Vatican. The 83-year-old pontiff seemed to approve of the windmills and body popping, waving his hand after each dancer completed his moves. One planted his head on the inlaid marble floor of the Vatican hall and spun on it.

At the end, the Pope applauded the whole group and said: “For this creative hard work I bless you from my heart.” The dancers were from a Polish group which helps poor and marginalised youths. Watching from a raised throne, John Paul said: “Artistic talent is a gift from God. Be faithful to beauty and faithful to goodness.”

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A TRIBUTE TO PASTOR JACK GLASS

The producers of Romewatch International were saddened to learn of the death of Pastor Jack Glass. Pastor Glass was minister of Zion Baptist Church Glasgow, founder of the “Twentieth Century Reformation Movement” and editor of “The Scottish Protestant View “Whilst we may have differed from him on some points of theology, we believe that Pastor Glass was a latter-day John Knox.

His years of faithful protest against Popery, Apostacy and many other forms of evil in Scotland were an inspiration to all who believe in Protestant principles. Lambasted by his opponents he never flinched from the task before him. We say farewell to “Pastor Valiant for Truth”.

“Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord... they... rest from their labours and their works do follow them”. - Revelation 14:13

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Catholics in the West Midlands are “concerned and upset” that rosary beads are being used by cannabis dealers to identify themselves.

The prayer beads are reportedly being worn by some students who are either selling or buying cannabis at a school in the region.

The Daily Mail said in a recent article that the principal of the school initially thought the students were “very religious”. However she soon discovered the real reason students were wearing the beads: they were effectively an ‘open for business’ sign for anyone seeking cannabis.

Rosary beads are commonly given to youths in young offenders’ institutes, along with Bibles and other items.

However, the principal said that they had assumed the beads had a status of a badge of honour in the economically deprived Dudley area of the West Midlands, and had been banned at the school. She added that drug dealers outside the school also wore them, and their use even extended beyond cannabis dealers to a kind of fashion accessory.

Peter Jennings, press secretary to Archbishop of Birmingham Vincent Nichols, said parishioners in the area were upset by the news.

“A number of Catholics have already contacted the archdiocese to express their concern about this wrong use of the rosary. Indeed they are not only concerned, they are upset,” he said. He added that Catholics “understand the true purpose of rosary”.

“They keep their rosary beads in their pockets or in their hand bags. They do not wear rosary beads around their necks.”

“Therefore, the fact that young people are doing so in a school playground ought to alert staff that there is something unusual here,” Mr Jennings said.

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STATEMENT OF POLICY

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