The front page of L’Osservatore Romano (the official Vatican newspaper) for March 15, 2000, carried this headline: “HOLY FATHER CELEBRATES ‘DAY OF PARDON.’” The commentary leading into the Pope’s speech declared, “On Sunday, 12 March, the First Sunday of Lent, Pope John Paul II celebrated Holy Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica and asked the Lord’s forgiveness for the sins, past and present, of the Church’s sons and daughters.” Sons and daughters only, but not the Church itself? Yes, and that is the official position which is consistently presented throughout all of the documents.
Said the Pope, “We are all invited to make a profound examination of conscience...the recognition of past wrongs serves to reawaken our consciences to the compromises of the present...” (emphasis in original). Surely the profound examination and reawakening of conscience the Pope professes would uncover specific details of at least many if not most wrongful deeds actually committed. Yet no acts of evil are described in the Pope’s call for repentance or in any of the other associated documents.
When a Catholic comes to confession, the priest requires specifics and will even probe the penitent’s conscience with leading questions (which, sadly, have polluted the minds of innocent children for centuries with things they have never imagined) to make certain that all sins have been enumerated: “All mortal sins of which penitents after a diligent self-examination are conscious must be recounted by them in confession, even if they are most secret....”1 The Pope needed only to consult history to obtain exhaustive details of the multitude of crimes committed by his predecessor popes and their Church. We have recounted some of these wicked acts in the previous pages of this book, many of which rival those attributable to the worst secular tyrants. Yet the Pope never described even one specific act but spoke only in generic generalities about:
...infidelities to the Gospel committed by some of our brethren...the divisions which have occurred among Christians...the violence some have used in the service of the truth...the distrustful and hostile attitudes sometimes taken towards the followers of other religions...our responsibilities...regarding atheism, religious indifference, secularism, ethical relativism, the violations of the right to life, disregard for the poor in many countries.
We humbly ask forgiveness for the part which each of us has had in these evils by our own actions, thus helping to disfigure the face of the Church. At the same time...let us forgive the sins committed by others against us (emphasis in original).
Such vague categorizations containing neither the names of the guilty nor an honest account of their misdeeds could hardly be called a confession of sins. Yet this whitewash of a Church “drunk with the blood of the martyrs” was hailed by the media and even by many evangelical leaders as an act of great courage, integrity, and humility. In fact, the Pope’s “act of contrition” must be considered by any impartial observer to be little more than a ploy to bury in the past, as supposedly confessed and dealt with, the horror of persecution, torture, and murder perpetrated by the Roman Church through much of her history.
This pretended apology insults our intelligence and mocks the memory of the millions of victims of papal Rome throughout the ages. There was not a word of sympathy or contrition for the victims of her inquisitions, no mention of her crusades against innocent Jews and Christians throughout Europe, papal wars of extermination against Hussites, Albigensians, Waldensians, Huguenots, and countless other victims of such cruelty that would make even a Hitler blush. Nor was there a word about the crimes of numerous unbelievably villainous popes, some of which we have revealed in previous pages. Instead of admitting that many popes, on the basis of their deeds, could not be considered Christians at all (much less Vicars of Christ!), the Vatican unashamedly includes their names in that long line of alleged “apostolic succession” through which Pope John Paul II claims his authority today.
We have documented in these pages the specifics of many of the outrages against God and man committed century after century by the Roman Catholic Church. But the Pope admits nothing in his supposed “confession.” How can there be an examination and awakening of conscience and a valid confession without explicit recital of specific evils perpetrated through the centuries by his Church through its leaders? The Pope has engaged in hypocrisy of the highest degree, sweeping centuries of brutal wickedness under the carpet of a pretended “confession” while admitting nothing.
The transparency of John Paul II’s attempt to exonerate his Church is exposed in his attributing the unnamed sins he “confesses” to her “sons and daughters.” In fact, these crimes (though many were indeed executed by “the children” of the Church) were done in obedience to and under the leadership (indeed, the insistence and urging) of the Church itself through its popes, cardinals, bishops, and priests.
The inquisitions were conceived and directed by the popes themselves and involved diabolic tortures which were forever being ingeniously “improved” to make them more excruciating, the better to exact confession and recantation of alleged heresies of which multitudes were falsely accused. Some of the torture chambers with their cunning instruments for exacting the most agonizing suffering are still available for viewing by curious tourists throughout Europe. Eighty supposed Vicars of Christ, one succeeding the other, supervised and insisted upon this horror. It was the popes, aided by the bishops, cardinals, and priests, who inspired and directed the Crusades (both to the Holy Land and against evangelical Christians in Europe) which brought about the slaughter of millions of innocent Christians, Jews, and Muslims—even offering special indulgences to those who would execute this mayhem.
These horrors committed by papal Rome in the name of Christ are indisputable history. Yet the Roman Catholic Church has never admitted to, repented of, or asked forgiveness for these crimes, nor did John Paul II choose to be the first Catholic leader to do so. And who dares—or cares—to hold Rome responsible? Apparently no one. The complicity of evangelical leaders in this sham through their praise for the Pope and their condoning of Catholic heresies is scandalous.
The Pope’s hypocrisy reached new heights in his claim that “a thorough and fruitful reflection” of sins had “led to the publication...of a document [the product of ‘numerous meetings of the subcommission and...plenary sessions...held in Rome from 1998 to 1999’2] of the International Theological Commission, entitled: “Memory and Reconciliation: The Church and the Faults of the Past.” That title’s lofty promise is immediately dismissed by the document’s Introduction, which declares its purpose to be “not to examine particular historical cases but rather to clarify the presuppositions that ground repentance for past faults.” True to that pledge, that 19,000-word statement, like the Pope’s supposed confession, deliberately avoids even mentioning, much less describing, any actual deeds. Obviously, however, to pretend a confession without a clear recital of sins is to perpetrate a giant hoax. Yet nearly everyone accepts it as something commendable!
The entire document reflects the same hypocritical avoidance as in the Pope’s alleged confession of any culpability on the part of the Church. All is blamed—and without identifying the sins—on “the past and present sins of her sons and daughters...faults committed by the sons and daughters of the Church...past acts imputable to the children of the Church...the Church should become ever more fully conscious of the sinfulness of her children...John Paul II’s appeal to the Church to mark the Jubilee Year by an admission of guilt for the sufferings and wrongs committed by her sons and daughters in the past...,” and so on.3
Furthermore, the unwillingness of the Church to admit any sin on its part is defended as a matter of long-standing and justifiable policy:
Indeed, in the entire history of the Church there are no precedents for requests for forgiveness by the Magisterium for past wrongs...the occasions when ecclesiastical authorities—Pope, Bishops, or Councils—have openly acknowledge the faults or abuses which they themselves were guilty of, have been quite rare. One famous example is furnished by the reforming Pope Adrian VI who acknowledged publicly in a message to the Diet of Nuremberg of 25 November 1522, “the abominations, the abuses...and lies” of which the “Roman Court” of his time was guilty, “deep-rooted and extensive...sickness...extending from the top to the members.” Adrian VI deplored the faults of his times, precisely those of his immediate predecessor Leo X and his curia, without, however, adding a request for pardon.
It will be necessary to wait until Paul VI to find a Pope express a request for pardon addressed as much to God as to a group of contemporaries. In his address at the opening of the second session of the Second Vatican Council, the Pope asked “pardon of God...and of the separated brethren” of the East [i.e., Orthodox] who may have felt offended by us...Paul VI [referred] solely to the sin of the division between Christians....4
To the above can be added Vatican II’s vague statement that “the Council ‘deplores’ the persecutions and manifestations of anti-Semitism ‘in every time and on whoever’s part.’”5 These are the only three incidents of even a halfhearted admission of some guilt on the part of the Church or its leaders. Even then the references are nebulous and confined to mourning the “division” in Christendom so as to clearly imply that the Church of Rome is the one true church and that “unity” means rejoining her (“regret for the ‘sorrowful memories’ that mark the history of divisions among Christians...methods of violence and intolerance used in the past to evangelize”). Even that admission is weak and lacks any request for forgiveness. Always the Pope and supporting documents distinguish “between the indefectible fidelity of the Church and the weaknesses of her members...between the Bride of Christ ‘with neither blemish nor wrinkle...holy and immaculate,’ and her children....”6
In “Memory and Reconciliation” Pope John Paul II is quoted offering “hope that the Jubilee of 2000 will be the occasion for a purification of the memory of the Church from all forms of ‘counter-witness and scandal’ which have occurred in the course of the past millennium.” The Pope seems to have accomplished that “purification of memory” without confessing to anything, so eager is the world and even the evangelical church to overlook the evils of Roman Catholicism in the interest of a false “unity.”
This document from the International Theological Commission of the Roman Catholic Church to which the Pope refers with such approval is cunningly crafted to avoid the damning truth. The torture and slaughter of millions of Christians, Jews, and Muslims is passed over as “the use of force in the interest of truth” by which it is suggested that the “separated brethren...may have been offended by us (the Catholic Church).” Pretentious phrases such as “historical judgment...historical evaluation...ethical discernment...the principle of conscience...moral responsibility...the principle of historicity” mask the cruel reality with a façade of self-serving pharisaical piety.
Reference is made to “the hostility or diffidence of numerous Christians toward Jews...[and] anti-Jewish prejudices embedded in some Christian minds and hearts...a call to the consciences of all Christians today, so as to require an act of repentance...as well as to keep a ‘moral and religious memory’ of the injury inflicted on the Jews.” Such platitudes only add insult to injury in light of centuries of not mere anti-Semitism but virulent persecution and wholesale murder perpetrated by the Roman Catholic Church against those whom the Bible refers to as God’s chosen people and Christ’s brethren. The Pope has managed to portray an allegedly spotless and guiltless Church which is sincerely concerned over some undefined guilt attached to her “sons and daughters.” Amazingly, the media buys the delusion, and evangelical leaders, in their eagerness to support ecumenism’s counterfeit unity, credit the Pope with laudable contrition.