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Jamaican Humanitarian Priest Asks: Do Adventists Hate Catholics?

The following article, printed in Jamaica’s major daily paper, The Gleaner is getting attention online. In this article, “Do Adventists Hate Catholics,” Fr. Richard Ho Lung, founder of the Missionaries of the Poor, writes the following:

I did not understand that Roman Catholics are considered the Antichrist, the evil enemy of true Christianity, by the Seventh-day Adventists. I did not take it seriously that the Pope is considered by the Adventists as the Devil himself. I thought that all this was the idea of some fanatic few from the Adventists. Finally, I did not know that Adventists were taught to hate Catholics.

 

It grieves me, since Christian unity is such an important matter for our times in a world so fragmented by hatred and violence. But I also understand that it is part of the Adventist belief that all attempts at Christian unity are to be regarded with distrust, as an attempt to water down the scriptures. It was predicted that there would be an attempt to unite all religions, including pagan beliefs, in order to dilute and eventually destroy Christianity.

 

I, for one, will continue to work for Christian unity; it is the only way to address the terrible destruction of morality in the West and in the world at large. There is a secular materialism which contrives to destroy the world, headed by extreme feminism, abortion, an exaggerated emphasis on sexual promiscuity, the disbelief in the soul and everlasting life, the rejection of ascetic spirituality, the never-ending variety of material pleasure, suicide, and euthanasia.

 

I admire Adventists for their strictness in living out the Word of God. I am comforted by their love of the Bible and moral principles that are according to the natural law of God. I love their singing and preaching, and their sense of respect in their dress and their language, and their sense of fellowship. I have enjoyed the company of Adventists at our monastery, though I’ve never been invited to their church.

Read the entire article here. A few days later, a former Adventist lay pastor responds, defending his upbringing and calling for Christian understanding.

Absent from this public debate in a major paper is the official Seventh-day Adventist voice.

Once again our denominational leaders fail to communicate, thus leaving others to define Adventism and the rest of us explaining to our friends and relatives that we’re not all like that

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