The "Catholic" Rev. Billy Graham

I know people love Billy Graham. They flock to see him like it's the return of Elvis. I watched a news reporter talk about how she missed seeing the Pope and so she went to the last crusade to see Rev. Graham. It leaves you wondering why people go? Are they going to hear the salvation message or to see a celebrity?

With all due respect to Rev. Graham, he has said and done some things that have caused me great concern. From the advice he gave our current President about not worrying if there is only one path to heaven, to the statements he made about the Clintons over the weekend in New York. It seems Rev. Graham is conflicted in the twilight of his evangelical career.

Over the weekend, Graham called the Clintons "wonderful friends" and "a great couple," quipping that the former president should become an evangelist and allow "his wife to run the country." I do hope he was kidding. He peppered his speech with pop-culture references from Madonna to Bono to MTV. He wove a parable about bad decision-making from the plot of "Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith," in which Anakin Skywalker becomes the villain Darth Vader.

"The decisions you make tonight will effect your whole future and your eternal future," he said, before inviting people forward to accept Christ.

But what does that mean to Rev. Graham? Protestants hold him up to be the pinacle of Christian leadership. Many Catholics also adore the man. In fact more than 1300 Protestant and Catholic churches sponsored his last crusade in New York.

Anytime Catholics and protestants come together it's always an interesting study. Back in 1984 Rev. Graham played a behind-the-scenes role in President Reagan's decision to establish formal diplomatic relations with the Vatican. Since the birth of new evangelicalism in 1948, fundamentalists and new evangelicals had not agreed on many things. But, both groups had always stood in opposition to formal diplomatic relations with the Vatican.

So what caused Rev. Graham to embrace this? You have to go back a bit to understand Rev. Graham's unoffical, but evident embrace of Catholicsim. In 1965, Graham spent forty-five minutes with Cardinal Richard Cushing, Archbishop of Boston. Following the meeting Graham said "I feel much closer to Roman Catholic tradition than to some of the more liberal Protestants."

In 1979, Rev. Graham deemed the pope the moral leader of the world. On the eve of the Papal visit to the United States in 1979, The Religious News Service produced a September 27,1979 dispatch which quoted Graham as follows:

"The visit of Pope Paul II to the United States is an event of great significance not only for Roman Catholics, but for all Americans - as well as the world... In the short time he has been Pope, John Paul II has become the moral leader of the world. My prayers and the prayer of countless other Protestants will be with him as he makes his journey."

Now I'm not saying Rev. Graham is really a closet Catholic, but the fact that he can acknowledge a kinship with the Catholic church who stands opposed to every fundamental doctrine of the Reformation is evidence that maybe Rev. Graham is open to the truth. We can only pray that Rev. Graham fully accepts that truth and sets an example for all Christians.