Why is he posting from a Papist document like Foxe? We all KNOW where to go for the truth? (See above)
</faceatiousness>
BTW, my direct male-line ancestor escaped the St. Bartholomew's Massacre and fled to Scotland.
Religion of peace?
Do I really have to write /sarcasm?
So posting a thread drawing on Foxe's notoriously biased Book of Martyrs is a response to a rather well balanced article written D.L.? How does that work exactly?
As vladimir998 correctly points out, this is nonsense.
If the Albigenses where "a people of the reformed religion," I guess the Unitarian-Universalists are people of the old-line orthodox religion?
The Albigenses were a dualistic sect which scorned marriage and childbearing and encouraged homosexuality and ritual suicide. In fact, the sect came from Bulgaria, which is why the slang term "bugger" (from "Bulgar") in English means ... well, you get the picture.
And Catholics persecuting the good Protestant citizens of Paris in the third century?
Catholics have done enough awful things in history without you having to rely on fables like this junk, Gamecock.
If I get arrested and imprisoned, can I claim that I am being thrown in jail by the Lutheran church, because it IS the state religion of Norway, or is it simply the state punishing me, or simpler still, the actions of a very few who say they are acting on behalf of their church, though they obviously are not?
In actuality I am committing a crime, though it is overshadowed by a perceived religious context, I should be punished for it. Spinmasters can bend this to their ends very easily. As such, this is the case with a good sized majority of those people, and it is very one-sided, and does not take in other historical factors that are external. That said, Yes, there were some atrocities committed by the Church over the last 2,000 years.
Excellent post. Latin America has endured a LOT of persecution from Roman Catholics. Catholicism and Islam are known for such behavior. That's why they hate EACH OTHER. How sad.
Thanks for the post.
I'm always amused by the "holier than though" sarcasm of most of the RC posters.
In order to establish a pattern of "papish" abuses before the widespread massacres of nuns and priests, your source relies on identifying Albigensians as Reformed Christians, since the Catholic Church did use violence to suppress the Albigensian movement.
This is quite a desperate tactic, very surprising to me, since the Albigensians' beliefs are so anti-Christian that they are not even referred to as a heresy by the Catholic Church, but an apostasy. The closest comparison the Albigensians have to a modern cult is that of Wahabbism, but even that does not approach the fanatical zealotry of the Albi, who commended people starving themselves to death as the only sure way of earning salvation.
Nonetheless, the Catholic Church was concerned that the suppression of such heresies and apostasies by secular authorities, falsely claiming clerical authority, was dangerous to Christianity. Attempts at selectively blessing certain kings (Holy Roman Emporers, such as Charlemagne) while excluding their rivals was only marginally successful, and bred disloyalty among those kings who would not be so blessed. Further, Kings regularly claimed "divine right," in defiance of the Church's lack of blessing.
Hence, the Inquisition was founded. Unfortunately, Protestant sources such as yours conflate the Inquisition with precisely the barbaric practices it was intended to prevent.
The Inquisition was charged with a difficult task; it represented the Church, so it had to be a sense of forgiveness, redemption, and charity; yet it also had to be effective at suppressing revolt, to maintain credibility with the kings and to fulfill its basic functions.
Whereas secular authorities imprisoned and killed with very little evidence, often on assertions they were "defending the faith," the Inquisition looked to the bible for rules of conducting a trial, introducing such notions as corroborative evidence, concurrence of witnesses, etc. It also found that torture was widely used by kings as a means of terrifying their population, rather than intelligence-gathering. Therefore, sustained torture, although very common among Protestant movements, even in the American colonies was forbidden; Inquisitors realized if an accused terrorist didn't talk in the first fifteen minutes, he wasn't going to talk; they successfully implemented practices recognizing this.
Tragedies such as Bartholomew's Massacre (wildly exaggerated in many sources) demonstrate not the sadism of the Inquisition, but that a desperate public found the Catholic Church's official actions wholly inadequate, and took matters into their own hands.
Incidentally, Dwight Longenecker, the gentleman who wrote the article in that other thread, is an ex-Protestant (I believe he's a former Anglican priest who started out as some sort of fundamentalist) and an alumnus of -- believe it or not -- Bob Jones University.
b'shem Y'shua
Why is he posting from a Papist document like Foxe? We all KNOW where to go for the truth? (See above)
</faceatiousness>
What's your point in posting this material? It just divides us.
I'm a proud descendant of Italian Protestants who fled into Switzerland in the 1500s to avoid being burned at the stake by the Pope and Inquisition.
read later placemark
Foxe's Book of Martyrs is a legendary collection of myths disguised as history. No serious historian would consider referencing Foxe in any way other than as a demonstration of Protestant propaganda of the 16th century.
Even Protestant publishers have seen fit to "correct and revise" his work 10 times (twice during his lifetime).
Oh gosh, can't we all just get along???? :-) Have you also read "The Trail Of Blood"?