A Plea to Discipline Roman Catholic Liberals
Statement by Dr. Carl McIntire on Billy Graham’s Visit to North Korea. December 28, 1991

Pope John Paul 11
The Vatican Vatican City, Italy

Dear Pope John Paul:

Time Magazine December 30, 1991Undoubtedly you are aware of the front page story in the New York Times, December 23, two days before Christmas, “Peering- Past Faith to Glimpse the Jesus of History,” and also TIME magazine of December 30 (I enclose the cover) with its front page story, “The Search for Mary.”

The New York Times story is insulting and presenting it around the world was a disgrace.

I know how your people have reacted in New York, with the identification of your priests, one of them in the Jesus Seminar, telling us the same thing. Here your own men are saying that Jesus was not born in Bethlehem as the Bible says, and that there was no virgin Mary. The TIME story is equally as insulting, ‘The Search for Mary.” The historic record is set forth in the first two chapters of Matthew and the first two chapters of Luke, and Mary was indeed always in history, God’s handmaid. The difference which exists, between your position as it developed in history and our Protestant position which this council maintains are indeed differences and great. But this that is sought by this liberal media simply cannot remain and stand before the world that there is no virgin birth or no Mary. This means that in the leadership of your church you have these esteemed scholars, denying the virgin and writing these books.

Professor John Dominic Crossan teaches Biblical Studies at DePaul University in Chicago, concludes that Jesus was a preacher of peasant egalitarianism. His subtitle is “The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant.”

Father John P. Meier, (Doubleday) headed his book “A Marginal Jew.” The story reports that Crossan was a “founding member of the Jesus Seminar.” There are 260 scholars in this group who Were saying the same thing, denying the virgin birth and telling us that Jesus never gave the Lord’s Prayer.

Are you planning to take any action against your priests in disciplining your own servants? This is simply a confirmation for us in the great battle with the modernists and fundamentalists in our world. It was the denial of the virgin birth in the famous Auburn Affirmation in 1924 and these other evangelical doctrines, that were among the issues that gave birth, to our International Council of Christian Churches which has 547 denominations in more than 100 countries to maintain the Apostles Creed and the Creeds of the Reformation. Our Council was established to defend and maintain the most precious Christian truths.

These Jesus Seminar so-called scholars after debunking the Lord Jesus, have now taken their attack upon the Virgin Mary and the whole world reads this just before Christmas and we cannot let this pass. There was a Mary and she was a virgin, Isaiah predicted it and Matthew said it was literally fulfilled.

Then in TIME there is this search for Mary and they would put her in the category of’ the feminists. I do trust that you will be led to take some disciplinary action in this field upon these priests and agents of your church who are a part of all this blasphemy against Jesus.

I am sending a copy of this letter to the General Secretary of .the World Council of Churches, requesting that they also take some action. Our Protestant believers which maintain the inerrancy and infallibility of the Scriptures, cannot and will not let this pass without this strong rebuke and rejection which we are making. Mary to us is the blessed virgin but she also was a sinner and was saved by her faith in the Messiah and washed in His precious blood for her redemption. Please accept this as a petition on our part to you to take some action.

Very truly yours,
Carl McIntire, President
International Council of Christian Churches
756 Haddon Avenue
Collingswood, NJ 08108