Bishop's Palace
Galveston, Texas
Current residence of Bishop Joseph Fiorenza, bishop of the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston, and past president of the USCCB.
This house is about two blocks off the seafront, so I can see the "windswept" inference.
Posted on 05/15/2004 7:53:56 AM PDT by narses
Since the publication of Malachi Martin's WINDSWEPT HOUSE (Doubleday) early this summer, everyone who has read it is asking the same question: Is it all true?
The brilliantly conceived and elegantly written novel presents Vatican City as a nest of intrigue, where the Holy Father is cautiously temporizing as disloyal cardinals subvert his Papacy and scheme with government and business elites in London and Brussels to advance the New World Order.
Believing that the Church must be a key player in the New World Order - primarily for financial reasons - and that Catholic doctrine on key issues must be "moderated," "transformed," or simply dropped in order for the Church to be accepted as a player in the new power structure, the Pope's unfaithful cardinals plot to isolate John Paul II.
That plot - along with dozens of other subplots, ''wheels within wheels " - boils rapidly, making WINDSWEPT HOUSE a thrilling, if somewhat disconcerting, novel.
The novel's title, WINDSWEPT HOUSE, takes its name from a grand home in Galveston, Texas, occupied by an old, very wealthy, and prominent Catholic family which over the centuries has provided valuable services to the Holy See. Two members of that family, brothers - one a priest, the other a lawyer - are the novel's chief protagonists, but they are merely pawns in a high-stakes chess game on which hinges the future social, economic, political, and spiritual development of the world.
Of course, if the work is entirely fiction, Martin's latest book can be dismissed as merely the product of an overly stimulated Irish imagination. If it is largely true, every Catholic should both appreciate the peril the present Pontiff is in, and pray that the Lord have mercy on His Church.
Is WINDSWEPT HOUSE true? That's the question THE WANDERER put to Martin in a recent telephone interview.
Q: How is Windswept House selling since its release in June?
A: The book is selling steadily, all over the country, with no dip in sales yet. Almost 55,000 copies in hardcover are in circulation, and the book is expected to come out in paperback within a year.
Q: What are the reviewers saying?
A: The reviewers are doing a gang review with my book and Andrew Greeley's White Smoke, which is a novel about the election of a Pope. The extraordinary thing is that the reviewers are calling Greeley a conservative compared to me. Greeley is saying that we can elect another Pope and go on with the same ecclesiastical behavior and treatment of the Church, but they should elect a good liberal Pope. My book is radical, because it says the organization is spent, and can't go on. That's the implication of Windswept House.
There have been no bad reviews as far as I know.
Q: Have you received any comments from any important Church leaders?
A: Yes, I have. I cannot quote names. Some approved highly, some disapproved highly, with those disapproving challenging the thesis of the story. Those who approve say it's about time someone started telling the truth.
Q: In general, what reaction has there been among most readers?
A: Those who correspond with me or talk to me on the radio shows I have been doing are thanking me for "telling it like it is." Then they ask: Now what is to be done? What are we to do? That is the question answered in the sequel to Windswept House, which I am writing now.
Q: The burning question among Wanderer readers who have read the book is: How much of Windswept House is true?
A: To speak in percentages, roughly 85% of the fictional characters mirror real people, and roughly 85% of events in the book mirror real events, except those which are obviously mythic, such as the final stay of the Slavic Pope in Poland. We are talking about real events and real people masked in the form of a novel; nowadays it is called faction, a term coined by Norman Mailer, but an art form really created by Taylor Caldwell.
Q: Is there such a place as Windswept House? Are there really such people as the Gladstones? Is there as much intrigue in the corridors of the Vatican as you suggest?
A: The answer to all three is yes; and with regard to the last, the answer is yes, and more.
While we believe and know by our belief that the Holy Roman Catholic Church is centered in Rome in the person of the Pope, we also know that clustered around his persona, whoever he is, there has grown up a highly skilled chancery and this is seated in a sovereign Vatican City State which enjoys a prestige and global position that no other organization enjoys.
It would be impossible, humanly speaking, and only a miracle could prevent it from happening, that such a spiritual power clothed in sociopolitical garb and living for so long - roughly 1,700 years in full vigor - for the intrigue not to be intense.
If one wants reasons for that, consider a few points: The Vatican has 180 ambassadors who desire to be represented diplomatically with the Holy See. That costs money and personnel, which countries are willing to spend. Apparently, it is worth it.
Second, the Pope has 80 personal ambassadors in over 80 countries, including all the highly industrialized countries and around the world.
Third, the nominal membership of the Catholic Church is almost one billion. It is the only example today of a global organization up and running, even though it is inefficient in terms of promoting its religious mission.
There Is No Evangelization
Q: Regarding that "inefficiency," your book presents a scene in which Pope John Paul II laments the fact that Pope Paul VI's "new evangelization" never got off the ground, and, in fact, your book shows Vatican intriguers boasting about their successful "antievangelization" efforts around the globe over the past 30 years. Can you elaborate on that?
A: There is no doubt that throughout this global organization, there is no vibrancy, there is no burning initiative, there is no manifest movement to convert, to spread the Catholic faith as the Catholic faith. There is no evangelization. We have even gone so far as to have our Churchmen suggest that the Gospel of John should be revised to meet the new concept of Catholicism.
This new concept is enshrined in the movement we call ecumenism, exemplified by the agreement signed with the Orthodox in Lebanon a year ago, in which all the parties agreed not to evangelize each other.
Q: Since you mention the revision of St. John's Gospel, what did you think of Joseph Cardinal Bernardin's famous speech at Hebrew University during Lent, 1995 when he described the Gospel of John as a well of anti-Semitism?
A: That was certainly one of the clearest manifestations of the apostasy into which His Eminence Cardinal Bernardin and other members of the Sacred College have fallen: They have decided that for the good of humanity the Roman Catholic organization should collaborate completely with the New World Order and its demographic and educational exigencies - population limitation and the takeover of schools by the state. His Eminence is not alone in this apostasy. Without rnentioning names, you can safely say that over one-third of the Sacred College shares his point of view.
Q: Is this view assumed for religious reasons primarily or is it as you suggest, for financial reasons?
A: Their choice has been made because they have lost the Roman Catholic faith. They are sincerely attached to the New World Order's promise of peace and plenty.
Q: Is there such a mountain as Aminadab outside of Jerusalem, at the peak of which is a Masonic Lodge? Some readers suspect you are referring to Tantur, a gathering place for some of the most liberal Catholic ecumenists in the world. Is Aminadab Tantur?
A: No. Aminadab is an actual hill or mountain, and from it you can see the Lebanese mountains, the Mediterranean, and the mountains of the Sinai peninsula. The Masonic Lodge building at the peak is an invention, but there is a large lodge in Israel to which Catholics, Muslims, and Jews be long. This ecumenical lodge believes that all these religions have a contribution to make to the sociocultural and sociopolitical stability of nations. It is purely and simply on the natural plane.
Q: You describe a gruesome murder in Century City (Chicago) when introducing readers to your Cardinal Leonardine (Bernardin). There are a number of people who will be very disturbed when they see that murder described, because they know you are recording an event that actually took place. If you have the story on that ritual murder, why not tell it as fact, and not fiction?
A: Because I am writing a novel, and I am not blaming any body, living or dead, nor am I fixing any responsibility to anyone no more than any novelist does. Let those who write factual reports please write it. It is about time they fulfill their duties.
Q: How do you know a common effort among business and Church elites to create a New World Order exists? For example, did you ever see any evidence documenting the meeting you de scribe in Strasbourg between top European business leaders and Vatican officials?
A: Strasbourg was a novelistic ploy. There have been several meetings and get-togethers. These are very quiet meetings. They are very private. How does word get out? There is always diplomatic communication and people who pass papers on. It is impossible for such powerful men to get together regularly and to hone their policies to suit each other, without word getting out. It doesn't become public knowledge because no one will talk about it publicly.
This year, for example, between May 29th and June 2nd, the Bilderbergers met in King City, Ontario. There has never been a word about that, even though the purpose of the discussions was to talk about global communications control, an issue that affects every one of us. Attending it were several prominent Americans, including Vernon Jordan.
Q: One of the strongest criticisms of your book is that it is fiction, and it can easily be derided as "just fiction. " If all you say is true, why didn't you name the names? Why didn't you name Agostino Cardinal Casaroli instead of inventing Cardinal Maestroianni, etc.?
A: I am a Roman Catholic priest and have a reverence for prelates and their privacy, no matter how off course they might be. And a certain amount of reverence is implied by fictionalizing their characters and actions.
Besides, it keeps the book in a certain literary genre which is safe to use from the point of view of the public record. And I am not going to write a book judging morally the present regime of cardinals and prelates in the Church unless absolutely necessary for the good of the Church.
A Superb Intelligence System
Q: What do you think generally of the level of skill and competence - from a merely secular point of view - of the staff members in the Secretary of State's office? How do they rate with their peers in the world?
A: They rate very highly, especially the Second Section, which deals with foreign nations. Most recently, there is no doubt that they, under the stimulus of the present Pope, achieved notable results in their struggle against the UN demographers proposing very drastic means of population control.
They out-maneuvered them; they have cultivated parliamentary procedures matching the most malignant of their opponents, because malignant those opponents were in Beijing and Cairo. So they get good marks for that. The measured statement the Second Section allowed the Holy Father to make criticizing President Clinton for partial-birth abortion was strong enough to let the world know that Clinton had committed an abomination.
One of their chief levels of skill is the collection and use of information. They have an Intelligence system which is superb. That is why many nations want representatives in the Vatican. They want the information.
Q: What kind of information are we talking about?
A: The coded messages sent over the wires and in diplomatic pouches are about the stock market, industrial production, academic conditions, economic conditions, family conditions, and so on. They cover every aspect of human life. The Vatican must have this information because it has a very large portfolio invested in every sector.
For example, the Vatican has all the details on what really happened in Burundi between the Hutu and the Tutsi. It won't publish the information because it would reveal the infidelity of the clergy to their Catholic principles: the collapse of the clergy and the bishops, and taking sides and indulging in killing. It was a disgrace. Tribalism won out.
Then there is the fact that it was the Vatican which provided Boris Yeltsin with the shortwave radio he needed to address the Russian people from the top of the tank during the coup.
Now here's the rub for a man like me: I find that lock, stock, and barrel, this skill and intelligence, this romanitas, is now backing the New World Order, fighting for certain things, but backing the New World Order nevertheless, and that's where the difficulty comes.
But it all goes back to Pope Paul VI's closing comments to the bishops in December, 1965 at the end of the council, in which he said that the Church will now collaborate with men in building the human habitat.
Q: But this isn't new, is it? Is this not the 20th-century equivalent of Church and king collaborating as they did 1,000 years ago?
A: The Church never, but never, asserted that it's mission was to help man build a better world. The Church has always asserted that its mission was to save souls to help men get to Heaven. They promulgated laws to make men more moral and less sinful. But to join hands and make religion sub sidiary to the socioeconomic well being of nations is nonsense.
Q: Isn't the Church at the mercy of the New World Order?
A: Yes, if Churchmen insist on not relying on Christ and the queenship of our Lady and rely on purely human means to perpetuate the organization. Whether they like it or not, the Church is perpetual, but the organization they are trying to perpetuate with concessions to the New World Order has nothing to do with their divine mission. There now is an established tradition in realpolitik dating from the reign of John XXIII in 1960 when he refused the mandate of the Virgin as she appeared in Fatima.
The Vatican-Israel accord signed at Christmas, 1994 exemplifies to an extreme degree the length to which the new realpolitik can lead Churchmen.
Q: Doesn't the Vatican-Israel accord signify the failure of the Holy See's diplomatic corps which you previously appraised as the most highly skilled in the world?
A: It means precisely the following: that the Holy See as a financial power was out-maneuvered.
The Burden Of Peter
Q: Often, when an American prelate is praised by the secular media for his ability to "get things done in Rome" - prelates such as Cardinal Bernardin or Pittsburgh's Bishop Donald Wuerl - reporters use the word romanitas to characterize their skill.
No one who reads your book will ever think highly of romanitas again, because the word is loaded with the concepts of blackmail, murder, intrigue, hypocrisy. Is this really what romanitas signifies?
A: It is what romanitas has come to signify in the present epoch. The romanitas of a man like Cardinal Consalvi, the secretary of state dealing with the Congress of Vienna after the Napoleonic wars, cannot be compared to what we have today. Consalvi not only matched wits with giants like Metternich and Castlereagh, but also secured the advantageous position of economic independence of the Holy See. But he did this without conceding one inch either to the rampant republicans or to the very dictatorial attitudes of the imperialists.
The compromisers today are such that romanitas is a means of perpetuating a bureaucratic class which is no longer interested in genuine evangelization.
Ecclesiastical romanitas started in earnest with Pope Sylvester I in the fourth century. He was provided a public identity and power from the Emperor Constantine, and from then on dates the constant enmeshing of the spiritual power with temporal surroundings. Before that, the Church was utterly separate, independent of the temporal power.
The skill Vatican diplomats have developed over 17 centuries has given them a group instinct for where the gravamen of human power in any particular epoch is moving. For a long time it was used for survival; but the enmeshing often became dangerous for the morality of clerics. It also enabled the Church to escape from dilemmas posed to it over 1,700 years, and the guiding light in all cases was always the behavior of the man who was elected Pope.
Q: On the levels of skill and intrigue, how would you compare the diplomatic skill of Churchrnen such as Cardinal Richelieu with Cardinal Casaroli, and do you think Casaroli's accomplishments will be compared to those of Richelieu?
A: Richelieu was, and remains, unmatched for the skill which he used, alone, to change the map of Europe disastrously for the Roman Catholic Church, because he ended up promoting the Protestant powers.
Q: Is the same going on today?
A: Yes, but in an inverse way. The Pope today is as impotent as was Pope Urban VIII in the time of Richelieu. On top of that, the present Holy Father has the added difficulty that there is a complete lack of fervor and enthusiasm for the Catholic cause throughout Europe and the Americas.
The reason this Pope does not get rid of cardinals and bishops who violate traditional rules is that he happens to share the view of the relationship between Pope and bishops according to the postconciliar version of the doctrine of collegiality.
Q: You write in Windswept House that the Pope has his own vision for Europe and the development of the modern world, and he even has a few good men working in support of his plan, against the machinations of the professional intriguers.
Will the Pope succeed over time, or is he in an ecclesiastical end-game?
A: This Holy Father will not succeed in changing the onrush of events which will culminate once he leaves the scene, either by resignation or by death. He simply can not outmaneuver his opponents.
His Papacy has been successful in this basic sense: that nobody can ever doubt his consciousness of carrying the burden of Peter. He has carried the message of Christ all over the world, and given millions the richness of the Gospel.
With his encyclicals, he has provided Catholics with a sheaf of new principles and fresh insights with which they can navigate the New World Order, which will not be a friendly place for Catholics.
I haven't read this book.
But given what I've read. I believe it's at least 85% true, too.
Which book is the sequel to Windswept House?
He died before it was complete.
At the time of his passing on July 27, 1999, Martin was at work on what he said would be his most controversial and important book. Primacy: How the Institutional Roman Catholic Church became a Creature of The New World Order was to deal with power and the papacy. This work was to analyze the revolutionary shift that lies at the heart of what many see as the breakdown of papal power. It was to be a book of predictions about the Vatican and the world in the first decades of the new millennium.
http://www.theharrowing.com/martin.html
Bumping for later read...
Thanks for the bump.
I enjoyed reading those articles. I have read two of Fr. Martin's books - "Windswept House" and "Vatican."
What strikes me most about them, and I'm reminded again today reading the articles, is how silly it is to carry on so much about liturgical abuses, and what Priest is boinking who, and thinking we can really make a difference by complaining, when the Church itself couldn't care less.
Fr. Martin shows what agenda is really important to the Church. It seems like they only pretend to care about our personal holiness.
This is indeed very interesting. If you were to take the birth of Isreal and add a generation (120 years) you come out with somewhere around 2064-about the life time of two more Popes.
From a Protestant perspective I was extremely disappointed in many of the decisions made at the Council of Trent and the prior 200 years leading up to this event. I don't wish to hash all that Luther stuff out here and the Catholics may think this is nonsense. But to me it seems the decisions made at the Council of Trent and subsequent Vatican pronouncements which followed set the stage for where the Catholic Church has positioned itself today. Certainly changes from Vatican I to Vatican II also played a role.
This is intriguing and I will certainly be praying for you.
"I have read two of Fr. Martin's books - "Windswept House" and "Vatican." "
"Jesuits" and "Hostage to the devil" also make interesting (but quite frightening) reading. "Hostage to the devil" persuaded me into performing an "asperges" (much like the asperges for High Mass) of our home with holy water every evening - not to mention increasing devotion to the Sacraments and the holy rosary.
We should remember that even apparitions and prophecies officially approved by the Church (such as La Salette, Fatima, Lourdes etc), as "private revelation", do not form part of the "deposit of Faith" - and therefore Catholics may reject them (albeit at their peril). The rejection of dogma (that is widespread today) is quite another matter.
While on the subject of prophecies, here's one I find interesting:
http://www.olrl.org/prophecy/prophecy.shtml
"I will certainly be praying for you."
Thank you.
The following is a reputed key relating the fictional names used in Fr. Malachi Martin's Windswept House to the real persons involved.
1. Jean-Claude Cardinal de Vincennes - Jean Cardinal Villot (deceased)
2. Cosimo Cardinal Mastroianni - Agostino Cardinal Casaroli (deceased)
3. Silvio Cardinal Aureatini - Achille Cardinal Silvestrini, Cong. Oriental
Church
4. Leo Cardinal Pensabene - Pio Cardinal Laghi, Congregation of Christian
Education
5. Cardinal Moradian - Gregoire Pierre Cardinal Agagainian (deceased)
6. Cardinal Karmel - Jean-Marie Cardinal Lustiger, Paris
7. Leonard Cardinal Boff - Basil Cardinal Hume, Westminster (deceased)
8. Aviola -Silvano Cardinal Piovanelli, Florence
9. Cardinal Sturz - Franz Cardianl Koenig, Vienna (retired)
10. Cardinal Leonardine - Bernardin (cf. also Card. of Century City and
Archpriest in South Carolina)
11. German Jesuit Cardinal - Augustin Cardinal Bea, S.J. (deceased)
12. Bp. "Leo" James Russeton - Bp. John Russell (deceased 1993)
13. Otto Sekuler - real person/name not disclosed, a member of the KGB
14. Frater Medico - Agnes' father, an M.D. (deceased)
15. Aldo Carnesecca - real person/name not disclosed (deceased)
16. Msgr. Daniel Sadowski - Msgr. Stanislao Dziewicz
17. Msgr. Taco Manuguerra - Msgr. Agosto Bueno
18. Jean Cardinal de Bourgogne - John Cardinal Cody
19. Fr. Damian Slattery, O.P. - composite of Michael Cardinal Browne, O.P.,
and a living former U.S. Dominican, perhaps Fr. Fiore
20. Fr. Christian Thomas Gladstone - composite of 3 priests
21. Mrs. Francesca Gladstone - elderly woman, still living
22. Windswept House - Galveston Island, Texas
23. Cyrus Benthoek - Bill Morrell (deceased)
24. J.J. Cardinal O'Cleary - John Cardinal O'Connor, New York (deceased)
25. Piet Cardinal Svensen - Leo Cardinal Suenens, Belgium
26. Local Chapel/SSPX "Danbury" - Dickinson, TX, chapel of the SSPX
27. Fr. Angelo Gutmacher - P. Schmidt, Cardinal Bea's secretary
28. Giacomo Cardinal Graziani - Angelo Cardinal Sodano, Vatican Secretary of
State
29. Noah Cardinal Palombo - Virgilio Cardinal Noe, Vatican (retired)
30. Michael Continho, S.J. - Carlos Cardinal Martini, S.J., Milan
31. Victor Venable, OFM - Fr. Vaughan
32. Serozha Gafin (Moscow) - A. Golovin
33. Gibson Appleyard (U.S.A.) - composite of J. Hale, State Department, and
William Colby, C.I.A.
34. Rev. Herbert Tartley, Church of England - former Archbishop of Canterbury
35. Nicholas Clatterbuck - real person, still living
36. Dr. Ralph Channing - real person, still living
37. Cliffview House - 304? Riverside Drive, New York
38. Jacques Deneuve (banker) - K. Schwab, World Trade Organization
39. Gynneth Blashford (publisher) - Bertelsmann
40. Brad Gerstein-Snell (communications) - Ted Turner
41. Sir Jimmie Blackburn (South Africa, diamonds) - James Goldsmith
42. Kyun Kia Moi (Korea) - real person, still living
43. Bp. Novacy - Abp. Pavel Hnilica
44. Maldonado (I.R.A.) - Sig. Alberico Novelli
45. Card. Amedeo Sanstefano (I.R.A.) - Silvio Cardinal Oddi (deceased)
46. Bp. Ievin Rahilly (CT) - Abp. John Whealon, Hartford (deceased)
47. Bp. Primas Rochefort (NY) - Bp. Matthew Clark, Rochester
48. Bp. Bruce Longbottham (MI) - Bp. Kenneth Untener, Saginaw
49. Abp. Cuthbert Delish (WI) - Abp. Rembert Weakland, Milwaukee (retired)
50. Bp. Manley Motherhubbe (NY) - Bp. Howard Hubbard, Albany
51. Bp. Raymond Luckenbill (MN) - Bp. Raymond Lucker, New Ulm
52. Bp. Ralph Goodenough (IL) - composite of Chicago auxiliaries
53. Sr. Fran Fedora (Seattle) - Fran Ferder
54. Sr. Helen Hammentick (New Orleans) - ?
55. Sr. Cherisa Blaine (Kansas City) - Sr. Theresa Kane
56. "Capstone" - real person, still living
57. Card. Schuyteneer (Belgium) - Godfried Danneels, Belgium
58. Card. Azande (Gold Coast) - Francis Arinze, Congregation of Saints
59. Card. Reinvernunft - Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Congregation for the
Doctrine of the Faith
60. Abp. Canizio Buttafuoco - Abp. Gianni Danzi, Office of Secretary of State
61. Holy Angels House - Dominican House of Studies, River Forest, IL
62. Fr. George Haneberry - Fr. Donald Goergen, O.P., former provincial of
Chicago Dominicans, author of "Sexual Celibate, now at an ashram in Kenosha,
Wisconsin
63. Fr. Avonodor (Chicago Chancery) - Msgr. John Roche, Archdiocese of Chicago,
friend of Joseph Louis Cardinal Bernardin; now works for Helene Curtiss
Cosmetics, Chicago
64. Fr. Lotzinger (Willowship) - Fr. Robert Lutz, St. Norbert's Church,
Northbrook, IL
65. Sr. Angela - Alice Halpin, Lutz's school principal, former nun
66. Fr. Tomkins (Roantree) - fictitious name
67. Fr. Keraly (Harding) - fictitious name, or perhaps Fr. Kealy
68. Fr. Goerge Hotelet, O.P. - Fr. Georges Cottier, O.P., Rome, a papal
theologian
69. Dr. Carlo Fiesole Marraci - Giovanni Baptista Marini-Bettolo Marcioni
>>He said that these Satanists are in league with Zionists <<
Ya lost me here!
The Roman Catholic historian Malachi Martin attempts to confine these lines of desposyni as follows. These were:one from Joachim and Anna, Jesus’ maternal grand parents. One from Elizabeth, first cousin of Jesus’ mother, Mary, and Elizabeth’s husband Zachary. And one from Cleophas and his wife who was also a first cousin of Mary (M Martin Decline and Fall of the Roman Church, Secker and Warburg, London, 1981, p. 42).
He acknowledges that there were numerous blood descendants of Joseph (p. 43) but, as all Roman Catholics, he seems to attempt to deny their direct lineage from Mariam or Mary, even though he acknowledges they had clung to the Church throughout the early years. Maria is removed to first cousin and not sister as the Bible says.
Martin records that the descendants, as leaders of the Church, held a meeting with Sylvester bishop of Rome about the whole nature of the Church in the year 318 CE (ibid.). The emperor provided sea transport as far as Ostia for eight of them and then they rode on donkeys to Rome and the Lateran where Sylvester now lived in splendour. They wore rough woollen clothes, with leather boots and hats. The conversation was in Greek as they spoke Aramaic and had no Latin, and Sylvester spoke no Aramaic. Martin considers it probable that Joses the oldest of the Christian Jews spoke on their behalf. (CCG, "The Virgin Mariam and the Family of Jesus Christ")
The Roman church had come to be wealthy under patronage. When Constantine tried to establish the Christian system in order to use it, he gave the edict of Toleration at Milan circa 314 CE. After this, the Christians became influential. In 318 CE, the emperor paid for the travel of the family of Christ to Rome to confer with bishop Sylvester at the Lateran Palace. He was, by this time, a very wealthy person living like a prince. The party of the family of Christ came by ship to the port of Ostia and then they went by donkey to Rome. They were dressed in woollen homespun garments and leather hats and boots. They spoke Aramaic and Greek. Bishop Sylvester spoke only Latin and Greek so the conversation was carried on in Greek. It seems likely that Simon was their spokesman (see the paper The Nicolaitans (No. 202) and also the ex-Jesuit historian Malachi Martin The Decline and Fall of the Roman Church, pp. 42 ff).They expressed their concern that the laws of God had been removed as the basis of the church. They wanted the Sabbath reinstated. It had been made inferior to Sunday from the Council of Elvira in 300 CE. They argued for the Torah, which was the Hebrew name given to the law of God, to be reinstated to its correct position. That included the Holy Days and food laws. They asked that the Greek bishops put into Alexandria and Antioch and elsewhere be replaced by the family of Christ. They asked also that Jerusalem again be made the centre of the faith and the money for the church be able to be sent there.
They went home. Instead of using his influence with Constantine to reform the church of these Gnostic influences and restore it to the true faith once delivered to the saints, as the brother of Christ wrote (Jude 3), Sylvester set about destroying the faith and the family of Christ with it. (CCG, "Modern Christian Fundamentalism: A Contradiction in Terms")
I found the actual quote:
...A meeting between Sylvester and the Jewish Christian leaders took place in 318....The vital interview was not, as far as we know, recorded, but the issues were very well known, and it is probable the Joses, the oldest of the Christian Jews , spoke on behalf of the desposyni and the rest.
...That most hallowed name, desposyni, had been respected by all believers in the first century and a half of Christian history. The word literally meant, in Greek, "belonging to the Lord." It was reserved uniquely for Jesus' blood relatives. Every part of the ancient Jewish Christian church had always been governed by a desposynos, and each of them carried one of the names traditional in Jesus' family---Zachary, Joseph, John, James, Joses, Simeon, Matthias, and so on. But no one was ever called Jesus. Neither Sylvester nor any of the thirty-two popes before him, nor those succeeding him, ever emphasized that there were at least three well-known and authentic lines of legitimate blood descent from Jesus' own family...
...The Desposyni demanded that Sylvester, who now had Roman patronage, revoke his confirmation of the authority of the Greek Christian bishops at Jerusalem, in Antioch, in Ephesus, and in Alexandria, and to name desposynos bishops to take their place. They asked that the practice of sending cash to Jerusalem as the mother church be resumed... These blood relatives of Christ demanded the reintroduction of the Law, which included the Sabbath and the Holy Day system of Feasts and New Moons of the Bible. Sylvester dismissed their claims and said that, from now on, the mother church was in Rome and he insisted they accept the Greek bishops to lead them.
...This was the last known dialogue with the Sabbath-keeping church in the east led by the disciples who were descended from blood relatives of Jesus the Messiah. [Decline and Fall of the Roman Church, New York: Bantam, 1983. pages 30-31]
I recently bought Hostage to the Devil. It is frightening to the core.
Ping.
Wow, a Dramatis Personae, thanks!
Bishop's Palace
Galveston, Texas
Current residence of Bishop Joseph Fiorenza, bishop of the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston, and past president of the USCCB.
This house is about two blocks off the seafront, so I can see the "windswept" inference.
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