Is the Pope From God or From Men? The Case Against Rome | Mike Gendron
Philippians 1:9 Ministries | 30 June 2026
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Do75NfgAkLM
Three remarks.
1) You didn't even bother to look at verse 19, where "thee" clearly refers to Peter. And with a language making him parallel to Eliacim.
2) You didn't note that the Church was founded on a rock and doesn't just consist of individuals, but regardless of leadership type is an institution, a stable community.
3) You feature personal immorality as non-leadership, like as if James [VI and] I's presumably sodomitic affairs had made him non-king, and add three authors, one of whom is a very recent modernist, adept of Vatican II, one of whom was a dropout in school, but presumably still correct on the historic facts, and one of whom takes support of Fascism, any kind, not just NSDAP, if you call that a Fascism, as a clear moral failure.
On the last point:
Who were the chief traitors to the cause of democratic civilization? Catholic France — that is to say, the Catholic and Pope-directed part of France, Belgium (or its Fascists, royalists, and priests), and the Catholic Croats of Yugo-Slavia.
Who made the best fight against the invading Huns? Norway, which has only 2000 Catholics to nearly 3,000,000 Protestants; the Serbs, who are bitterly anti-Papal and were let down by the Catholic provinces of their country; Greece, where the Pope has no influence; and Russia, where, if you will forgive in Irishism, he has still less. Not for a moment do I belittle the fine resistance of Poland, but it was not fighting Fascism as such. It was already Fascist and had for twenty years persecuted religious minorities. It fought for its national independence and to prevent the extension to Poland of the anti-clerical elements of Nazism.
He could have added Austria to Poland, except Austria, to avoid a bloodbath, didn't fight in 1938. Previously it had both fired on and executed NSDAP.
McCabe argues as if adherence to Democracy (including apparently Communism) were a moral duty and adherence or even alliance with a Fascism, any of them, were a moral failure.
To some who consider each and every one of the non-NSDAP Fascisms as "NSDAP lite", no, not the case. Italy was certainly not the purest, but even there sth like Aktion T-4 would have been and for the ventennio was unthinkable. Also, given Gipsies were trying to enter Italy in 1926, 100 years ago, and Mussolini blocked their entry in that year, it's obvious Gipsies were not oppressed in the early parts of the ventennio. After that block, I'm not sure if all caravans were targetted or just those drawn by horses ... given Mussolini's alliance with Fiat, that's a possibility. But even if not, even if he tried to force them to live in one place, democratic régimes, including Norway which McCabe praised, have oppressed them far worse than that.
So where does McCabe find in the Bible that Democracy is a duty and Fascism a sin? He doesn't.
(Clarification on Mussolini's block and the targetting of caravans, two different but connected stories. Legally, from Mussolini's side, foreign gipsies could no longer enter. In administration, from a chief police, gypsy caravans were targetted. And I'm not sure how much or why or what came of it, but I suspect it was a long term project and even in 1937, when gipsies were transferred from Istria to Sardinia, some gipsies, though fewer, were still roaming around in caravans. And those in Istria got to take their caravans with them, whether horse drawn or motored.)
One more.
This is he that was in the church in the wilderness, with the angel who spoke to him on mount Sina, and with our fathers; who received the words of life to give unto us
[Acts Of Apostles 7:38]
No proof that the word "church" or ecclesia doesn't mean an institution.
We simply say, that was the Jewish Church, a perfectly legitimate (up to Caiaphas the night to Good Friday) precursor of the Catholic Church.
This also shows why Jesus could rebuke Peter a few verses later, since the Catholic Church was not yet founded as such at this moment. Cephas didn't become the first Pope of the New Covenant while (Hannas or) Caiaphas (or someone) was the last (or second last) Pope of the Old Covenant.
