Seventh-day Adventist Interfaith Relations - Interfaith Dialogue - Relations With Roman Catholicism

Relations With Roman Catholicism

The official beliefs of the church (28 Fundamentals) do not mention the papacy or Roman Catholicism. An official statement "How Seventh-day Adventists View Roman Catholicism" was released in 1997. Adventists are concerned about the institution of the papacy and the Roman Catholic Church, yet recognize many sincere individual Catholics.

Woodrow Whidden wrote, "we must forthrightly affirm that many positive things have taken place in Roman Catholicism". According to him, the papacy "is a mixed bag morally and ethically... All human organizations (including our own 'enfeebled and defective' denomination) are sadly sinful." He concludes, "the Roman Catholic religious system" or "papal Rome is still the great power envisioned in Daniel 7 and 8; 2 Thessalonians 2; and Revelation 13." See the companion article By Grace Alone? by Clifford Goldstein.

More moderate scholars... Progressive Adventists typically reject these traditional identifications. See Spectrum 27, issue 3 (Summer 1999): 30-52.

There was a number of meetings between Seventh day Adventist and Catholic theologians including now Cardinal Walter Kasper and Msgr John Radano. A short report by Ángel Manuel Rodríguez was released.

Adventist Samuele Bacchiocchi was the first non-Catholic to have graduated from the Pontifical Gregorian University.

See also Reinder Bruinsma, Seventh-day Adventist Attitudes Toward Roman Catholicism 1844 – 1965 (Berrien Springs, Michigan: Andrews University Press, 1994) ISBN 1-883925-04-5, and another article.