Protestant Extremists Disrupt Services

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31588, 27 January 1968, Page 13

Protestant Extremists Disrupt Services

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyrtght) GLASGOW, Jan. 26.

Bitter anti-Roman Catholic demonstrations disrupted Christian Unity Week services in an Anglican cathedral and a Church of Scotland church last night as Roman Catholic prelates tried to preach.

In Glasgow fights broke out in the aisles and the police were called as Protestant extremists shouted “down with popery” and other antiRoman Catholic slogans.

i The demonstrators went wild when the city’s Roman Catholic Archbishop, the Most Rev. James Scanlan, attired in his red robes, tried to tread a Scripture lesson. “It was like waving a red flag at a bull when the Archbishop went up to the lectern to preach,” a member of the congregation said afterwards. At Liverpool, about 1000 Protestant extremists demonstrated outside the city's Anglican cathedral as a Roman Catholic priest preached inside. His sermon was disturbed throughout by their chant ’“Ramsey must go”—a reference to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Michael Ramsey, head of the Anglican Church and a leader of the Christian unity movement. Earlier this week he was the first Protestant churchman to preach in London's Roman Catholic Westminster Cathedral.

The Liverpool demonstrators were led by the ultra right-wing Protestant clergyman the Rev. lan Paisley, who came from Northern Ireland to head a protest march. He carried a banner reading “Unity with Rome means Submission to Rome.

In Glasgow, the hotbed of Scotland’s Roman CatholicProtestant religious rivalry, the demonstrations took place in the beautiful 12th century church—a former Roman Catholic cathedral until the Reformation swept Scotland in the 16th century. As the Archbishop stood at the lectern there were shouts of “Get out of our church”

and “You will go to hell with the Pope.” Demonstrators, shouting slogans and quoting the Bible, surged up the aisles struggling with officials. The Rev. Jack Glass, who said afterwards he was a Baptist minister, claimed he led the demonstrators. He said: “We will keep up this sort of thing until the whole ecumenical movement is abandoned.”