THE VATICAN: The Enemy from Hell

It is not recorded that the Pope ever asked: “How many divisions has Joseph Stalin?” He knows that Moscow threatens the world not only with its armies but with its perverted faith. Last week, in a 10,000-word encyclical on the heresy of Monophysitism,* the Pope made a strong plea for unity among “all Christians” to throw back “the enemy from Hell.” Said Pius XII: “Who is not horrified at the hatred and ferocity with which the God-haters in many parts of the world threaten to stamp out or uproot whatever is divine and Christian? Against this united front, those who are signed with the sacred mark of baptism . . . cannot any longer remain divided and disunited . . . The chains, the sufferings, the torments, the groans, the blood of that immense multitude, known and unknown, who for their . . . Christian faith have suffered . . . urge all to embrace this holy unity . . .”

Does this “holy unity” include Protestants? Yes, to the extent that the Vatican welcomes anti-Communist activity in any quarter. But there remained the ancient catch. The Church of Rome’s price of real Christian unity remains the same: all Christians must “render due homage to the primacy of the Roman Pontiff.”

*A doctrine on which Christians were divided 1,500 years ago and which is still held by some 4,000,000 Christians in Ethiopia, Egypt and Armenia. According to the Monophysites, Christ has only one nature—the divine. But the Council of Chalcedon in 451 ruled that Christ has not one but two natures—human and divine. Both are completely united in Christ, making Him both God and man. Roman Catholic theologians believe that the Monophysite theory can lead to the destruction of the very basis of Christianity, i.e., man’s redemption through Christ’s suffering on earth, since a purely divine being could not be expected to suffer as a man.