The news of my renunciation of Papism spread quickly in the wider
ecclesiastical circles. Nevertheless, only when it was enthusiastically
embraced by the Spanish and French Protestants, did my position become
difficult. I dealt with numerous insulting and threatening anonymous letters
in my daily correspondence. My accusers claimed that I was conspiring to
create an anti-Papist public opinion among the faithful. They claimed that I
was striving to lead to "apostasy" a number of Roman Catholic priests, who
were considered "dogmatically weak" because
they showed publicly their compassion and interest in my ordeal. All this
led to my decision to abandon Barcelona and move to Madrid, where I received
hospitality from the Anglicans. Through them, I began to develop relations
with the Ecumenical Council of Churches.
Despite my precautionary moves, my presence did not remain unnoticed. After
each one of my sermons in different Anglican Churches, a great number of the
listeners expressed the desire to meet me personally and discuss in private
various matters of conscience.
Most of those who sought to converse with me questioned the scandalous
coexistence of so many different Christian churches that anathematized one
another, each one claiming that only she was the authentic representative
and heir of the Early Church. Thus, quite unintentionally, I began to
attract a circle of followers, mostly non-Papists, which expanded by the
day. This made me all too visible to the local authorities, especially since
among those who visited me privately were some Roman Catholic priests,
notorious for being "rebellious against the Church and followers of a
libertarian idea concerning the primacy and the infallibility of the pontiff
of Rome."
The fanatical hatred of some Roman Catholics, who acted more Papist than
Christian, would fully surface on the day I gave a public response to an
extensive and notable ecclesiological treatise sent to me by Action
Catholique. The treatise was a "final attempt" to make me come to my senses
and denounce my "heretical obstinacy." It was apologetic in character and
sported the expressive title "The Pope, Representative of our Lord upon the
Earth." It could be summarized as follows:
On account of the infallibility of His Holiness, the Roman Catholics today
are the only Christians who can be certain in what they believe.
With no qualms whatsoever, I answered them via the columns of a Portuguese
book review newspaper:
In reality, on account of this infallibility, you are the only Christians
today who cannot be certain what His Holiness will compel you to believe the
day after tomorrow. I concluded my response with these words:
With a little more effort on your part, you will succeed in having our Lord
become the representative of the pope in heaven.
A short while later, I put an end to this contention with a threefold study
published in Buenos Aires, which exhausted the subject of papal primacy in
the most objective manner.1 This
volume was a collection of all the works of the Church Fathers from the
first four centuries, which directly or indirectly refer to the so-called
"verses of the primacy."2 In this
manner, I proved that the Papist teaching on these Scriptural verses is
diametrically opposite to the exegesis of the Church Fathers, whose
scriptural interpretation constitutes the ONLY authentic rule for the
correct understanding of the word of God.
FOOTNOTES TO CHAPTER 7
1. The
Scriptural Verses of the Primacy and their Patristic Interpretation,
Buenos Aires, 1951.
2. As known:
Matt. 16:18-19, John 21:15-17, Luke 22:3132.
