St Peter's, Lytham: Churches United

St Peter’s Roman Catholic church at Lytham seems to be a typical nineteenth-century construction. Red brick gothic walls and suitably decorated interior. Masses are held daily and a room is available for Confession. Pictures and images line the walls, with written requests from benefactors that we pray for their souls. Large carvings of saints and beautiful floral displays cannot hide the purgatorial horrors awaiting the pious Catholic; only good deeds, prayers to saints and regular attendance can lessen the heavy penalties which their actions warrant.

Towards the front of the church is a large, framed document, which begins ‘We the Ministers and People’ and goes on to list the areas in which the named signatories all desire to unite in witness, fellowship and worship. They include the leaders and members of Lytham’s Methodist, United Reformed, Anglican and, surprisingly, Pentecostal churches. Quite how a Bible-believing Protestant can unite and witness to, and with, Rome is beyond credibility. Catholicism gets much right: the Trinity, the deity of Christ, the virgin birth and the sanctity of life, to name a few. Yet much does she add to the mix, not least the aforementioned purgatory and the need for good works and prayers to saints to procure eventual salvation. There are two ways to kill a man through his stomach. First, one may deny him food, and arrange his death through starvation. Alternatively, one may feed him sumptuously, but lace his rich fayre with poison; the effect is the same.

While despairing of national secularism’s enforced diet of spiritual starvation, let us not, in a search for allies, seek those who drip noxious seasoning into the Word’s pure and wholesome truth.