OPEN LETTER TO THOSE SIGNING THE MANHATTAN DECLARATION

I am one little sheep, I have no pedigree or title after my name. But I have followed my Shepherd, Jesus Christ, for almost 30 years. Before that, I spent a lot of time searching for the Shepherd. To be sure, I have taken some wrong paths, but the Good Shepherd was always there waiting for me to return to Him.

There are many of us little sheep in His pasture. We have long looked to you, the under shepherds as helpers in following the Good Shepherd. But now we are unsure of you.
In Phillip Keller’s now classic book, A Shepherd Looks at the 23rd Psalm, we are told about real life sheep. Keller, being himself a shepherd, was uniquely qualified to explain some of the parables the Lord used about sheep.

One story Keller told was heartbreaking. He himself took extra care of his sheep and provided them with good feeding grounds. He told of one day seeing a neighbor’s flock. That sheep owner didn’t care a thing for his sheep. The pastures were brown and barren, the sheep ragged and uncared for. Keller told us how those sheep gazed longingly for hours at the green pastures his sheep had. They longed to be a part of Keller’s flock but were locked into a dry pasture by an uncaring sheep owner.

I view my friends in the Roman Catholic Church as some of those sheep in a barren pasture. They long for greener pastures, but they will not be led there by the Roman Catholic Church. They are owned an uncaring shepherd.

I understand your desire to turn back the flood of evil penetrating our world today. I stand with you against the evils that were defined in the Manhattan Declaration. I would have respected a signature on a document that did not include the clauses this one has on being fellow Christians with the Roman Catholic Church and The Orthodox Church. You have to know that by Bible definition they are not brothers and sisters of true Christians.
Though we do share some distinct beliefs, those that divide us are crucial. Tell me please, how did you sign that declaration of unity knowing they were a works based religion?
Do you see that by signing that document, you have slapped the face of every genuine Christian who has come out of the Roman Catholic Church? These Christians believed they were saved by grace and not works and left that lifeless church. To them it looks like you are saying that The Roman Catholic Church is okay after all!

I have a friend who was one of the thousands of children molested in the Catholic Church. He also watched his friend get molested. How do you think this makes him feel? Reaching across the aisle to those whose hands that have touched children in obscene ways and driven spikes into their little hearts is surely not acceptable. This church has covered up these sins and even asked the parishioners to come talk to the church and not the law. I know this is true, because they made that request in my home state of Wisconsin. They don’t want their evil deeds to come to light.

How can you join with a church who views the Virgin Mary as a co-redemptress? Mary is often elevated far higher than our Lord Jesus. How can we overlook all the blatant idolatry present in that church?

And how, pray tell, can you join hands with the “church” whose bloody hands have shed the innocent blood of millions of true believers? This blood was shed for as simple a “crime against the church” as reading the bible for themselves! Foxe's Book of Martyrs may well now accuse you by association. The Roman Catholic Church has never repented of that sin. One must ask then if they still believe they are justified.

I beg you to consider recanting your signature. Do you see that the same good could have come from this effort with language we could all live with?

Perhaps a wording such as, though we differ in our religious beliefs, we stand together against the march of moral decline and the forces who wish to take away our religious liberties and even our freedom of speech. By such wording, even people of any belief system could have signed the document. There would have been no implied ecumenism and the number of signers even higher.

The people who put this declaration together are very intelligent people. Surely if I, a lay person can see this way out … they could have too. I must deduce then, that there was another goal. Perhaps one that failed back in 1994, when the Evangelicals and Catholics Together was first trotted out for all to sign. That document even had the gaul to ask the signers to promise not to proselytize each other. In other words saved people signed away their right, no duty, to evangelize the lost souls in the Catholic Church! What an evil request!
　
Please won’t you take time to think this through? This is a serious matter with eternal consequences for many souls.
　
I will never lend my hand to signing this document as it stands. I am in favor of every single point on the turning back of attack on religious liberty, the value of human life and the sanctity of marriage between a man and woman. But I will not stand in the way of salvation of souls to “fight evil.” The battle is the Lord’s and he does not need such “allies” as the Roman Catholic Church to win His battles.

Respectfully,
One Little Sheep
(Elizabeth Register)