Pope as Antichrist?

Pope as antichrist?

from Dave's facebook page:

Dave Armstrong

CARDINAL NEWMAN ON THEOLOGICAL ANTI-CATHOLICISM

[written when he was still an Anglican; from my upcoming "Quotable Newman, Vol. II". I've argued for over 22 years now that the tiny fringe position of anti-Catholic Protestantism is self-defeating, and a reductio ad absurdum. It is impossible to make the historical case for it. This is what Newman is driving at below]

. . . there has ever been in our Church, and is allowed by our formularies, a very great latitude as regards the light in which the Church of Rome is to be viewed. . . . Another question, already touched on, as to which we claim a liberty of opinion is, whether or not the Church of Rome is "the mother of harlots," and the Pope St. Paul's "man of sin." And as feeling it is fairly an open question, I see no need of entering at length into it, even did the limits of a Letter admit. How those divines who hold the Apostolical Succession can maintain the affirmative, passes my comprehension; for in holding the one and other point at once, they are in fact proclaiming to the world that they come from "the synagogue of Satan," and (if I may so speak) have the devil's orders. I know that highly revered persons have so thought; perhaps they considered that the fatal apostasy took place at Trent, that is, since the date of our derivation from Rome; yet if in "the seven hills," in certain doctrines "about the souls of men," in what you consider "blasphemous titles," and in "lying wonders," lies, as you maintain, the proper evidence that the Bishop of Rome is Antichrist, then the great Gregory, to whom we Saxons owe our conversion, was Antichrist, for in him and in his times were those tokens of apostasy fulfilled, and our Church and its Sees are in no small measure the very work of the "Man of Sin."

("The Via Media of the Anglican Church" ii, VI. “On Froude’s Statements Concerning the Holy Eucharist,” 1838)

If we cannot consistently hold that the Pope is Antichrist, without holding that the principle of establishments, the Christian ministry, and the most sacred Catholic doctrines, are fruits of Antichrist, surely the lengths we must run are a reductio ad absurdum of the position with which we start.

(“The Protestant Idea of Antichrist,” British Critic, Oct. 1840; in Essays Critical and Historical, vol. 2, sec. XI)