Books on Roman Catholicism
One of the most vital issues in our day is discernment in matters of fundamental doctrine. If the Bible teaches anything, it teaches that true believers should live separate from false doctrine and practice. The Bible's commands to shun, avoid and remain distinct from false doctrine and its purveyors are every bit as numerous as its commands to love one another and other more popular injunctions.The fact is Roman Catholicism, the Roman Church, the Pope and the Vatican are the holders and promoters of a body of false doctrine that is deluding and damning hundreds of millions of souls century after century. Despite the arrival of the ecumenical movement, a photogenic Pope or two, the second Vatican Council and a new Catechism of the Catholic Church, very little has changed in Roman Catholicism on an organic doctrinal level since the days of the Reformation when God moved to deliver millions from Rome's doctrinal darkness.
To show how little has changed over the centuries, James McCarthy's book The Gospel According to Rome is a great read. What McCarthy does in this invaluable volume is trawl through the New Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church (produced in the 1990's) and document with page and paragraph references how it differs from pure Biblical doctrine in dozens of major areas. In the process he proves that little has changed since the Council of Trent sat hundreds of years ago to produce the first Catachism of the Catholic Church which pronounced anathemas on everyone who disagreed with its dogmas.
For other titles showing the folly of ecumenism - in light of the fact that Rome hasn't changed theologically as to its core errors (quite the reverse, it has been continually adding more and more errors century after century) - David Cloud's book Is The Roman Catholic Church Changing? or Michael DeSemlyen's book All Roads Lead to Rome would be excellent choices. Iain Murray's book Evangelicalism Divided is a truly astounding account of how John W. Stott split from Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones after World War II over the issue of whether evangelicals should join in with Billy Graham's compromise with Roman Catholicism. For the daddy of them all read David's Cloud's encyclopedic volume Evangelicals and Rome in which he documents name by name all the leading evangelical preachers and writers, along with all the CCM musicians who have accepted Rome as a legitimate Christian denomination.
A sense and knowledge of history is an important bulwark against compromise with Romanism. Those who learn the lessons of history seldom have any trouble with ecumenical tendencies. To learn the history of Rome's doctrines, practices and its persecution of true believers Foxe's Book of Martyrs is an essential volume. Miller's Church History, Broadbent's Pilgrim Church or even Schaff's 8 Volume set on Church History will provide all the proof that is necessary concerning the evil history of the Roman Catholic Church. For a more recent volume on the bloody history of Romanism see Dave Hunt's book A Woman Rides the Beast, or for a book on massacres carried out in the name of the Pope during the 20th century read Avro Manhattan's chilling book The Vatican's Holocaust.
To combat individual erroneous doctrines of Rome you could look at the following: on Mary worship see Quite Contrary; on the Mass see Transubstantiation; on the Papacy see Was Peter the First Pope?; or for a general but brief look at Rome's errors see Facts on Roman Catholicism by John Ankerberg and John Weldon.
To evangelise Roman Catholics there are some wonderful resources available. The Roman Catholic Bible Has The Answer by Oswald Smith points the Catholic reader to the truth from their own Bible. The Bible and Roman Catholicism presents the differences between Rome's errors and Biblical truth in a thorough but graciously evangelistic way. Answers to My Catholic Friends is a brief book that can be given to any Roman Catholic to explain why believers differ in doctrine and practice from their Catholic neighbours and work colleagues. Testimony books can be very effective with Roman Catholics. For a short give-away testimony book try How Real is Our Religion? or for a thrilling book containing over 50 testimonies of converted Roman Catholic priests see Far From Rome Near to God.
For several excellent DVDs on the history and doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church including the evangelistic Catholicism in Crisis DVD, see here.
