Posted on 11/26/2023 8:32:43 AM PST by SunkenCiv
There were a lot for sure.
And as under many emperors "Roman subjects including Christians were compelled to sacrifice to Roman gods" and Diocletian "purged the army of Christians, condemned Manicheans to death, and surrounded himself with public opponents of Christianity" so the Left works to compelled all to sacrifice (give up speech, associations, occupations, etc.) in the interest of self-preservation by essentially saluting the flag of Sodom.
As it becomes clear that the most perverse, wicked emperor in Roman history (making Caligula look like Elmer Gantry) was a transexual, he must now be recast as a religious fanatic.
You disgrace all the Christian martyrs! So many thousands died rather than pray to a false God, yet you write through your very hands that without a sound, without a protest he perverted the Church of Christ.
If Constantine introduced anything alien to the Church, where were the martyrs? Why were they utterly silent about Constantine’s alleged “innovations,” whereas there was bloodshed over Damasus?
Damasus DID face accusations that he supported the violent thugs... by Arians who shared Protestantism’s rejection of the Church, but also rejected the entirety of the Old Testament bible, which they replaced by diabolical nonsense.
But if the accusations were true and Damasus was no evil (he was never proclaimed a saint, but rather was recognized as a saint by popular acclamation), what of it? The Church never claimed popes couldn’t be evil people. The relavance of Damasus is this: Did he promote heresy or truth?
The truth that Damasus was acclaimed as a saint for promoting was that Arius was wrong;
that the the Old Testament is legitimately part of the sacred Scripture;
that Jesus’ divine origin did not mean that he lacked a human intellect;
that the Holy Spirit is the third person of the trinity;
that Jesus was not born solely of Mary, but was conceived by the Holy Spirit;
that there were not two persons of Jesus, one of which was divine, and the other of which died on the cross;
that the Word is not separate from the Father, and will not have an end;
that the Son was begotten of the Father, that is, of the divine substance of Him Himself, that He is true God just as His Father is true God and He is all-powerful and omniscient and equal to the Father.
that those who say because He was established in the flesh when He was on earth, He was not in heaven with the Father are heretics.
that He sits at the right hand of the Father, in the flesh, in which He will come to judge the living and the dead.
that if anyone does not say that the Holy Spirit, just as the Son, is truly and properly of the Father, of divine substance, and is true God, he is a heretic.
that the Holy Spirit can do all things and knows all things and is everywhere just as the Son and the Father.
that If anyone says that the Holy Spirit is a creature, or was made by the Son, he is a heretic.
that the Father made all things through the Son and His Holy Spirit, that is, the visible and the invisible.
that there is one divinity of Father, and Son, and Holy Spirit, one sovereignty, one majesty, one power, one glory, one dominion, one kingdom, and one will and truth.
Perhaps popular acclaim was wrong to suppose that such a powerful defender and articulator of the true Christian faith was innocent of the charges leveled against him by the Arians and again in modern times. Perhaps popular acclaim was wrong to presume that had he been guilty, he would not have been able to lead the bishops to consensus on so many contentious theological matters.
But know this: Damasus was held in such high regard among Protestant reformers that they did not dare allege that Damasus’ canon was wrong to include the deuterocanonicals (confusingly called “apocrypha” by Protestants, although this name was used to describe dozens of books clearly not in the canon). Rather, they alleged that someone must have appended them without proper cause to Damasus’ proclaimation.
(To correct a poor wording choice before it’s jumped all over: Regard is the wrong word; Protestant reformers did not *like* the person of Pope Damasus. But they recognized the acclaim he received and the correctness of the theological assertions made at the Council of Rome.)
Faggotry teaching history..let’s go back to the five cities on the plain and see how it will end again
I love the smell of brimstone in the morning.
These days, a supreme leader over Rome passes to the College of Cardinals.
Many on FR (and around the world) have strangely expressed a dislike of the current one.
From the beginning your logic is fallacious, or lack thereof. Rejecting certain distinctive Catholic teachings which are not manifest n the only wholly inspired substantive authoritative record of what the NT church believed (which is Scripture, in particular Acts through Revelation, which best shows how the NT church understood the gospels) simply does not translate into supporting pagan deities nor denigrating Christian martyrs who would not bow to them. yet you write through your very hands that without a sound, without a protest he perverted the Church of Christ. If Constantine introduced anything alien to the Church,
Meaning you disgrace yourself, since you do not even cite what you are responding to, which is fitting since I did not even say Constantine himself perverted the Church of Christ, but that when Christianity become his favored religion then it was an answered prayer, yet it was also a test, which [meaning consequently, progressively]] resulted in an already adulterated became increasingly Romanized.
Which "already" and "increasingly" referred to aforementioned distinctive Catholic teachings besides some political ramifications Eamon Duffy cites via link ("The conversion of Constantine had propelled the Bishops of Rome into the heart of the Roman establishment..."). where were the martyrs? Why were they utterly silent about Constantine’s alleged “innovations,”
What Constantine’s alleged “innovations?" Meanwhile, martyrs took time. While the NT church never used the sword of men to discipline members, since that is contrary to Scripture, yet Rome commanded: Secular authorities, whatever office they may hold, shall be admonished and induced and if necessary compelled by ecclesiastical censure,...to the best of their ability to exterminate in the territories subject to their jurisdiction all heretics pointed out by the Church;.. But if a temporal ruler, after having been requested and admonished by the Church, should neglect to cleanse his territory of this heretical foulness, let him be excommunicated..that he may declare the ruler’s vassals absolved from their allegiance and may offer the territory to be ruled lay Catholics. (Canons of the Ecumenical Fourth Lateran Council (canon 3), 1215: https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/basis/lateran4.asp)
whereas there was bloodshed over Damasus?
Indeed, regardless of you willing to be a martyr to absolve him from substantiated history.
Damasus DID face accusations that he supported the violent thugs... by Arians
By which premise we can also reject any claims by RCs, since your church has made use of fabricated history. However, you can only wish that you could rehabilitate history to absolve your hero by relegating all negative testimony to witnesses other than Catholic defenders, since it is not only Arians who claim this, but the among others, the esteemed (incldg many Catholic) JDN Kelley, as well as a pagan, and no less than an imperial document.
Another source concerning Damasus that has garnered significant scholarly attention is the Collectio Avellana...The dossier is composed of imperial documents, both from the emperors and addressed to them. Most of these documents are imperial rescripts sent to the urban prefect or vicar of Rome that contain orders and instructions for dealing with the schismatics....
Two other documents in the Collectio mention Damasus. Unlike the others, they are not rescripts but are arguably the most important documents in the Ursinian dossier. These documents are the first two in the dossier, the first of which is entitled Quae gesta sunt inter Liberium et Felicem episcopos,11 often shortened simply to the Gesta. The Gesta is a narrative of the events leading up to the exile of Liberius and the appointment by Constantius II of Felix to take his place...
When Liberius died in 366, the clergy elected Damasus to succeed him, but a sizable minority contested the election and choose another deacon named Ursinus to oppose Damasus.82 The author of the Gesta wrote that the election of Damasus took place in “the church in Lucinis” while Ursinus was elected in the “Basilica of Julius.” He described the supporters of Ursinus as those “who had been obedient to the faith while Liberius was off in exile” and the partisans of Damasus as the “perjurers” who had accepted the antipope Felix.83 The choice of words is important as well. The Gesta portrays Ursinus as the rightful successor of the steadfast Liberius and vilifies Damasus as following after Felix, a heretical interloper...
According to the Gesta, an armed force, at the instigation of Damasus and perhaps under his command, broke into the Basilica of Julius and spent three days slaughtering those assembled there.86 After a week, Damasus gained control of the Lateran basilica, the cathedral of Rome, and there was ordained as bishop. The Gesta accused him of subsequently bribing the urban officials of Rome to banish Ursinus and his chief supporters and opposing those who remained with “various beatings and bloodshed.” Included in this group are seven unnamed presbyters whose exile Damasus attempted to arrange. A group of Ursinian partisans interrupted the banishment and took the presbyters to safety in the Basilica of Liberius, which apparently served as the headquarters of the Ursinian faction.87
According to the Gesta, Damasus then ordered a second attack, this time agaist the Liberian basilica. It might have initially been intended to simply recover the seven presbyters, but it swiftly escalated into another killing frenzy. “They broke down the doors and set fire underneath it, then rushed in and ransacked the building. Some members of his household , when they were destroying the roof of the basilica, were killing the faithful congregation with the tiles. Then all of Damasus’ supporters rushed and killed a hundred and sixty of the people inside, both men and women.”88 Scholars usually identify “basilica of Liberius” as the “basilica of Sicinnius” mentioned by Ammianus, based on the similarities in each account, primarily the number of casualties given.89 The survivors of the assault fled to the cemetery of Saint Agnes on t34 Nomentana, and Damasus sent a final assault against which claimed the lives of many.
The author of the Gesta alleged that Damasus bribed the same Viventius, whom he describes as a “city judge,” to banish Ursinus and his allies from Rome.92 He further relates that following the attack on the Basilica Liberii, the Ursinians continued to gather there, and sent numerous petitions to the Emperor Valentinian describing the villainy of Damasus. These petitions convinced Valentinian to allow Ursinus and his supporters to return to Rome. - https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2355&context=etdAd to this RC sources, though some some blame followers of both, or even say Ursinus was to blame for the violence.
Archdiocese of Indianapolis: Early Church: Pope Damasus took the papacy by forceViolence among Christians was not unknown in the early Church. One of the worst examples concerned Pope Damasus, who was pope from 366 through 384.
Last week, I wrote about Pope Liberius being taken by force from Rome to Milan by Roman Emperor Constantius II, and then exiled to Thrace in Greece. In his absence, the archdeacon Felix was elected pope. After Constantius died, Pope Liberius was able to return to Rome. For a while, it appeared that there were two popes, but the people followed Liberius, and Felix became recognized as an antipope.
Damasus was the son of a priest of the basilica of San Lorenzo in Rome, and became deacon of that church. When Pope Liberius was exiled in 355, Damasus accompanied him to Thrace. But not for long. He soon deserted Liberius, returned to Rome and served Felix.
When Liberius died in 366, his supporters met in the Julian basilica, elected the deacon Ursinus to succeed Liberius, and had him consecrated bishop. Felix’s supporters, though, elected Damasus, who immediately hired a gang of thugs to storm the Julian basilica. They carried out a three-day massacre. - https://www.archindy.org/criterion/local/2015/07-03/fink.html
© Catholic Herald 2023: Saint of the Week: Pope St Damasus I...He eventually succeeded Liberius in an atmosphere of violence. Some of Damasus’s supporters attacked and killed followers of the rival Ursinus, the violence escalating to such an extent that the emperor was forced to intervene. At one point 137 men were killed at what is now the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore.
thedailymass.com: Damasus was a sixty-year-old deacon when he was elected bishop of Rome in 366. His reign was marked by violence from the start when another group decided to elect a different pope. Both sides tried to enforce their selections through violence. - https://thedailymass.com/pope-saint-damasus-i/But in any case, the use of the sword of Rome in history is well attested to, and the Catholic encyclopedia it affirms the use of physical force to discipline members (read Inquisition) is part of RC doctrine. (Catholic encyclopedia, Jurisdiction)
what of it? The Church never claimed popes couldn’t be evil people.
The point is and was that the use of violence in service of and for the church is one aspect of becoming like the empire in which it was founded, using physical force against dissidents, under a type of cesario papacy.
The relavance of Damasus is this: Did he promote heresy or truth?
He did both, the former insomuch as he supported the aforementioned distinctive Catholic teachings that are not manifest in the only wholly God-inspired, substantive, authoritative record of what the NT church believed then The truth that Damasus was acclaimed as a saint for promoting was that Arius was wrong; that the the Old Testament is legitimately part of the sacred Scripture; that Jesus’ divine origin did not mean that he lacked a human intellect; that the Holy Spirit is the third person of the trinity; that Jesus was not born solely of Mary, but was conceived by the Holy Spirit; that there were not two persons of Jesus, one of which was divine, and the other of which died on the cross; that the Word is not separate from the Father, and will not have an end; that the Son was begotten of the Father, that is, of the divine substance of Him Himself, that He is true God just as His Father is true God and He is all-powerful and omniscient and equal to the Father. that those who say because He was established in the flesh when He was on earth, He was not in heaven with the Father are heretics. that He sits at the right hand of the Father, in the flesh, in which He will come to judge the living and the dead. that if anyone does not say that the Holy Spirit, just as the Son, is truly and properly of the Father, of divine substance, and is true God, he is a heretic.
I support these and more, so I can be called a saint (which all believers are in Scripture) even if I use physical force to get heretics in line or drive them out.
Perhaps popular acclaim was wrong to suppose that such a powerful defender and articulator of the true Christian faith was innocent of the charges leveled against him by the Arians and again in modern times.
Really? Certainly popular acclaim can be wrong, and is not evidence that the object of their devotion is innocent of the charges leveled against him by varied sources.
Perhaps popular acclaim was wrong to presume that had he been guilty, he would not have been able to lead the bishops to consensus on so many contentious theological matters.
Perhaps you need to understand how desperate this argument is. For the premise that being an effective minister means that such is innocent of charges against him by varied sources is a preposterous polemic! If you know history.
But know this: Damasus was held in such high regard among Protestant reformers that they did not dare allege that Damasus’ canon was wrong to include the deuterocanonicals... Rather, they alleged that someone must have appended them without proper cause to Damasus’ proclaimation.
Which (regardless of its veracity) is another vain argument, not since it depends upon the dubious Gelasian Decree , but because it is well evidenced that, as affirmed even within Catholicism: “the protocanonical books of the Old Testament correspond with those of the Bible of the Hebrews, and the Old Testament as received by Protestants.” “...the Hebrew Bible, which became the Old Testament of Protestantism.” (The Catholic Encyclopedia>Canon of the Old Testament; htttp://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03267a.htm) The Protestant canon of the Old Testament is the same as the Palestinian canon. (The Catholic Almanac, 1960, p. 217)
Moreover, scholarly disagreements over the canonicity (proper) of certain books continued down through the centuries and right into Trent, until it provided the first "infallible," indisputable canon — after the death of Luther. Thus Luther was no maverick in this issue, which was not part of his excommunication by Rome, but had substantial RC support for his non-binding personal opinion (as he expressed it was) on the canon, being just one of many Catholic scholars to express doubt or disagreement before Trent. See Luther and the Canon of Scripture for more.
Not only, but Luther translated and included almost all the deuterocanonicals books of the Catholic canon in his Bible (as did Prot Bibles for about 200 hundred years), wanting them to be available despite not being qualified to be classed as Scripture proper. And therefore he placed deuterocanonicals works between the Old and New Testaments following the ancient practice of Jerome, who had separately placed such at the end of the Old Testament. (The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical Books, by Michael David Coogan, Marc Zvi Brettler, p. 457)
Thus your strained vain attempt at rebuttal is another negative argument for a false church (with many true teachings we defend). Give it up.
BlackRock?....................
A lot of people pray to BlackRock..............
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BlackRock
Septimius Severus took pride in his Carthaginian roots, and that’s the beginning of trouble in the Empire; letting some middle eastern cultist teenager who’s also being managed by some lying conniving ***** was the last step into the chaos of most of the 3rd century. The disease outbreak that hit the Romans also hit the Chinese, the Persians, and Rome’s various barbarian neighbors, which is why the results weren’t worse.
Is this the Roman guy the British history place decided was transgender?
Every so often, God throws a monkey wrench into the human machine to slow it down and even reverse its course for a while. He has to, else we would have destroyed ourselves with nuclear weapons a thousand years ago..............
Yes, Elagabalus Trannius...............
He castrated himself, if memory serves.
We had nuclear weapons a thousand years ago?
He was a both, so, be glad the cross-dressing part wound up in the title.
We would have, had the Roman Empire never fallen, the Dark Ages intervened and a few plagues interspersed here and there.
Knowledge was accelerating at a logarithmic pace, as it always does. The principles of basic mechanics, steam and jet engines were already known.
Just look at the 20th Century. Life at the beginning was not a lot different than Roman times, horse and buggy technology with a steam engine and rudimentary electricity and telephones. In less than a half century, one lifetime, we went from that to exploding a hydrogen bomb and guided missiles.
Imagine if that level of technology were available to the barbarian despot kings of the Franks, Germans, Pics or Celts?
The fire at the Library of Alexandria, and others of its like, wasn’t an accident............
IOW, the muzzie destruction of the ancient world — which includes the incineration of the Library of Alexandria and the fall of Constantinople — saved us all from nuclear annihilation.
Poppycock.
>> Meaning you disgrace yourself, since you do not even cite what you are responding to, <<
Do you even read what you post, or do you simply copy and paste like an automaton?
>> From the beginning your logic is fallacious, <<
Or you just didn’t understand it. The point is that thousands of Christians were ready to die rather than pray to false gods, and the most picayune theological or hierarchical matter inspired such passions, but no-one said “boo” about substantive heresies?
>> What Constantine’s alleged “innovations?” <<
You referred to the Church after Constantine as “adulterated” and linked to an article about how deformed the Church was. They fought violently over which Pope to impose, but not at all over the notion of imposing ANY Pope? What sense is that? “We reject the notion of a pope, but you picked the wrong pope”?
>> [endless rote citations to make the case that Damasus was a murderer] <<
You certainly make the case that Damasus was accused of murder. He was. But you ignore the much more central issue of whether those who acclaimed him by making him a saint believed those accusations, even though my entire argument was “even if those who defended him were wrong to defend him, the doctrine he proclaimed was nonetheless sound.”
Your big Catholic source is a layman without a specialized degree making the very argument that the authority of the papacy doesn’t rely on the sinlessness of the pope.
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