John Dunmore Lang - Attitude To Roman Catholics

Attitude To Roman Catholics

The traditional evangelical Protestant belief concerning the predicted Antichrist, or Man of Sin in 2 Thessalonians 2, was that: the Man of Sin was not an individual as such but a movement of error in history under the guise of friendship to Christ. Lang shared this belief and saw the Man of Sin as illustrated in the Papacy. When the immigration of poor Irish Catholics was running at a massive level, he campaigned against Irish migration. His fear was that the colony would be swamped by such persons and that Protestant and British liberties would be lost. In 1841 he published The Question of Questions! or, Is this Colony to be transformed into a Province of Popedom? A Letter to the Protestant Landholders of New South Wales, and in 1847 he followed up with, Popery in Australia and the Southern Hemisphere: and How to Check it Effectually: An Address to Evangelical and Influential Protestants of all Denominations in Great Britain and Ireland. He strongly opposed Caroline Chisholm's campaign to sponsor the immigration of single Irish Catholic women to Australia. But Bridges is right to state: "Lang considered opposition to harmful errors of Catholicism part of his duty as a minister but he consistently championed the cause of Irish and Catholic civil liberties and deprecated any incitement to Protestant-Catholic or Anglo-Celtic disturbances." He visited Archbishop Polding when the Roman Catholic leader was dying in 1877.