The comments feature has been turned off because a large number of comments have been made and some commenters have descended to personal name-calling and a completely disrespectful approach. Evidently many readers missed the fact that the headline begins with “Proposed” and there is a tongue-in-check element to this column expressing an opinion. — The Publisher
by Ervin Taylor, September 13, 2015: Readers of the Adventist Today web site and anyone living in Philadelphia who listens to or reads local media in or around that city may be aware of the recent mass mailing of a book, The Great Controversy, to 700,000 individuals living in that city or surrounding area. The mailing was intended to be coincident with a visit to Philadelphia, the “City of Brotherly Love,” by the current Supreme Pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church, Pope Francis.
As readers of Adventist Today will know, The Great Controversy is a 19th-century work based on an extensive editing of materials originally produced by and under the name of a co-founder of the Seventh-day Adventist denomination, Ellen Gould Harmon-White (1837-1915). Like a wide cross section of many other evangelical and later fundamentalist Protestant authors belonging to a wide range of conservative Protestant churches in 19th- and early 20th-century America, White was very critical of the theology and history of the Roman Catholic Church in Europe. Obviously, the heritage she reflected went back centuries, based on the long-standing, intense hostility that existed between Protestants and Catholics beginning at the time of the Reformation and continuing down into the late 19th century in many countries in Europe before being transplanted across the Atlantic to the United States. Continue reading “A Proposed Letter of Apology to Pope Francis from the GC President”
