Sir, The Vatican (report, July 11) has merely betrayed its historical ignorance. In Britain, Celtic Christianity long preceded the Roman. Monasticism reached Wales and Ireland early in the 4th century. The lineage is clear, directly from the life of Christ and St Mark’s mission in Alexandria, following the Mediterranean trade routes, up the Rhone Valley and through Brittany to our shores.
St Augustine did not arrive here until AD597, the year that St Columba died, by which time the faith was well established throughout these islands. The Roman Church did not invade in order to convert Germanic tribes to Christianity but to replace a monastic tradition by an hierarchical order. Augustine’s expedition hardly extended beyond Kent: the very reason that the See of Canterbury became supreme was because he made no headway in London. It was not until the Synod of Whitby in 633 that the patrician Romans finally bullied the disorganised Celtic church into submission.
VIVIAN LINACRE, Perth
Sir, The Bible tells us that there should be “no divisions” in the Church, and that we should “be perfectly united in mind and thought”. In his letter to the Corinthians from which these quotes come Paul criticises the Christians in Corinth for quarrelling because “One of you says ‘I follow Paul’, another, ‘I follow Apollos’, another, ‘I follow Cephas’, still another ‘I follow Christ’ .”
RUTH NICHOLS, Borehamwood, Herts
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Sir, Can someone please explain to me what the consequence is of belonging to an “improper” Church?
Does it mean that Anglicans, Methodists, Baptists and many others are debarred from entering the kingdom of heaven? If it does, it seems a little odd: if it does not, it seems to be a fairly meaningless statement.
BERNARD EDWARDS, Elham, Kent
Sir, To call the Roman Catholic Church the one true Church is to pick a branch on a tree and pretend that all the other branches don’t exist. Christ said: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John xiv 6). It’s that simple.
DANIEL EMLYN-JONES, Oxford
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Sir, Pope Benedict XVI delights in making great emphasis about the inferiority of all other churches and the exclusiveness of his own. I do not remember superiority and exclusiveness being praised as Christian values by anybody else. But then, of course, like all human beings, he is fallible.
JOHN CURTIS Locks Heath, Hants
Sir, The Rev David Phillips, general secretary of the Church Society, dismisses as unjustifiable biblically or historically the idea that the Pope is the successor of the apostle Peter (report, July 11).
Biblically, let him turn to Matthew xvi, 18, where Jesus tells Simon “Thou art Peter and upon this rock I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it”. Peter was Petros, ie rock.
Historically, let him turn to Lord Macaulay: “There is not and there never was on this earth an Institution so well deserving of examination as the Roman Catholic Church. No other institution is left standing which carries the mind back to the times when the smoke of sacrifice rose from the Pantheon and when camelopards and tigers bounded in the Flavian amphitheatre. The proudest royal houses are but of yesterday when compared with the line of the Supreme Pontiffs. The Church was great and respected before the Saxon had set foot in Britain, before the Frank had crossed the Rhine, when Grecian eloquence still flourished in Antioch, when idols were still worshipped in the temple of Mecca and she may still exist in undiminished vigour when some traveller from New Zealand shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, take his stand on a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the ruins of St. Paul’s.” Splendid stuff.
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DAVID FOSTER, Ludlow, Shropshire