o Ian Paisley has died, dear reader, as you may have read. In the Catholic Herald, you may find details, like these, about exactly the kind of anti-Catholic he was:
During St John Paul II’s address to the European Parliament the Rev Paisley had held up a sign saying “Anti-Christ” and started shouting “I renounce you” before he was forcibly removed from the hall. He is also infamous for saying of Catholics during a Loyalist rally in 1969: “They breed like rabbits and multiply like vermin.”
The Washington Post [here] also has this detail:
[Paisley] said he considered all Catholics to be members of the Irish Republican Army, which he branded as a collective of terrorists.
Yes, that is bad. But the Ulster Protestant who refused any political compromise with Northern Ireland’s Catholic minority, later … compromised. Both politics and religious feeling were at play here. Rev. Paisley preferred Northern Ireland to remain under the control of England; while the Catholic minority felt their interests would better be protected by independence and union with the Catholic southern Ireland. Later in life, Dr. Paisley softened toward them.
And tellingly, the UK Guardian reports on what kind of anti-Catholic Rev. Paisley was not:
In [a] BBC documentary, Dr. Paisley was asked what his reaction would be if one of his own family came home with a Catholic.
“I would have bought a long cane and have given him a few strokes with it,” he joked.
But he then added: “I would have said, ‘Let us sit down and ask God his opinion on this’ and I would have said, “Although you hurt me doing what you are doing, you are my child and my love is greater than my hurt.’
“And they could come in and out of this house as they would, they would not have been put out by me or my wife either. We wouldn’t have liked it but we would lump it.’ ”
That says a great deal. There are some in the United States who cannot make any claim to such charity of heart regarding their families. And we don’t have, here, anything like the political sentiment mixed in with anti-Catholicism such as they do in Ireland.
But now Dr. Paisley is dead, and knows the Truth, and it must be a real shock to him. I hope he holds up well under the shock and is (or will soon be) with the Christ he loved, even with all his ignorance.
I have read the words of some doubters, and even some who, with great certainty in themselves, claim that surely the Rev. Dr. Paisley is in Hell. How could he not be—he who with such vehemence and agitprop denounced the very Church that Christ gave us for our salvation?
Fr. Dwight Longenecker, who once met the man at Bob Jones University, rightly tells such people to “step back and shut up”:
They don’t know Ian Paisley the man. They didn’t see Ian Paisley the compassionate pastor who spent a good bit of time, effort and fundraising supporting charitable missionary work in Africa. They forget that he turned from intransigent opponent of the peace process to one of its main protagonists. He learned to compromise. Those who are quick to place him in hell probably don’t know how he had the humility to change his opinions and even to soften his views about Catholics later in life, and they don’t know the father, husband and man of faith that was behind the firebrand, passionate politician and preacher.
Christ, who alone is Dr. Paisley’s judge, tells us to pray for those who are spiteful to us. Even the anti-Catholic. My prayer is that Christ will speak to Dr. Paisley in words very much like Dr. Paisley’s own. Although you hurt me by what you are doing, you are my child, and my love is greater than my hurt.
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