In the spirit of spiritual outreach, perhaps Pope Benedict XVI should pay a visit to Stormont and attempt to stop Northern Ireland’s Protestants from splitting their faith into numerous and meaningless churches.
After all, in 1690, the pontiff at the time ordered a Te Deum to commemorate the victory of the Protestant champion, William of Orange, over his father-in-law, James II, at the Battle of the Boyne in southern Ireland.
Now Ireland’s theological waters have been further stirred by Pope Benedict’s offer to the worldwide Anglican communion to join the Roman Catholic Church, while still maintaining elements of their Protestant heritage.
The Vatican has announced approval of its new apostolic constitution allowing Anglican clergy and people from the Anglican pews to enter into full Catholic communion. This is perhaps the most radical piece of Christian ecumenical legislation since the Second Vatican Council in the late 1950s.
Irish Protestant fundamentalists viciously opposed to the Pope would do well to remember the 1979 images of a united Catholic faith when John Paul II visited the Republic. When was the last time an Irish Protestant cleric brought hundreds of thousands together in one venue to commemorate the core beliefs of the reformed faith?
In recent years, the Protestant religion has suffered from the same afflictions as Northern Ireland Unionism: internal feuds and splits. Unionism is now so fragmented politically that it must be running out of names to call each new faction
Even in the 1990s, when I was a editing a weekly newspaper in County Antrim, I identified more than two dozen different Protestant denominations – not churches – in my patch. Add in all the small breakaways, “Ourselves alone” churches and sundry independent fundamentalists and the list must now top 40 across the north of Ireland.
You need only to look at statements from two of the leading fundamentalist umbrella groups to see how the power-sharing Executive has tossed another cat among the Protestant pigeons.
During David Trimble’s reign at Stormont, hardline anti-Catholic groups the Evangelical Protestant Society, with about 3,000 hardcore supporters, and the Caleb Foundation, which claims to represent 200,000 evangelical Christians, secretly mobilised Protestant church support against the Belfast Agreement.
Founded in 1946, the Belfast-based EPS now defends Democratic Unionist Assembly members who “have a go” at the Catholic faith. Its website carries an article entitled “No Pope Here”.
The EPS secretary is Wallace Thompson, a former adviser to the DUP’s deputy leader, Nigel Dodds. Thompson landed himself in hot water when he branded the Pope as the Antichrist during a live radio interview. And Thompson has just got a new job as chairman of the equally hardline Caleb, named after the Old Testament Israelite spy.
Founded in 1998, Caleb was a pathetic attempt by influential figures from the equally fringe Independent Orange Order to marshal Protestant fundamentalist opposition to the Evangelical Prayer Breakfast Movement.
At the prayer breakfasts, “born again” or “saved” Protestants would share their spiritual testimonies with “unsaved” liberal Protestants and Catholics, including priests. For several years, hardline fundamentalists from some of the fringe Protestant denominations would picket the locations of these events
A glance at the names on Caleb’s ruling Council of Reference reveals that Thompson leads a “Protestants-only” group. But Caleb’s ruling council does not attract significant numbers of clerics from mainstream Protestant denominations – the Church of Ireland, Irish Methodist and Irish Presbyterian churches. And perhaps Caleb might be able to explain why “saved” Catholics also seem to be shunned? Both Caleb and the EPS are at great pains to point out that, while they have no official position on the Stormont Executive, they recognise its members hold different political opinions. That’s Protestant-speak for: “We’re just as divided as Unionism”.
One leading EPS council member is the Presbyterian Reverend Stephen Dickinson, who has risen to prominence as a spokesman for the militant Orange Reformation pressure group within the Orange Order, which is also running a “No Pope Here” campaign.
All this brings back memories of the splits and public confrontations caused by the similarly extreme Spirit of Drumcree Orange pressure group in the summer of 1998, months after the signing of the Belfast Agreement, the referendum on the Agreement and the victory by the “Yes” camp in the first Assembly elections that June.
A papal visit to Northern Ireland might just focus Protestant minds on why they actually are Protestants. And why they are supposed to be Christians. Or perhaps some people might plan to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the famous spiritual revival in Northern Ireland with the establishment of a new church: “The Independent Free Reformed Evangelical Non-Subscribing (Happy-Clappy No Hats Faction) Fellowship of Ulster.
Mind you, when you see the behaviour of some Protestant fundamentalists and the anti-Pope stunts they pull, it can almost encourage the sort of sentiments expressed in that famous AC/DC song “Hell Ain’t A Bad Place To Be”.
Caleb and the EPS should ask themselves if they could be turning people off Christianity with their silly antics.
