Posted on 11/18/2006 5:08:06 PM PST by lrslattery
Dear kosta50,
Thank you for your post. However, you didn't really answer what I said. Your interpretation still vitiates Jesus' words.
You, yourself, have declared what is marital infidelity:
"Marital unfaithfulness does not merely mean adultery. Your vows specify what marriage entails – to love, cherish, protect, etc."
For a man to divorce his wife is to fulfill this meaning, almost tautologically. Thus, anyone who divorces his wife has not been in a "true" marriage, as a result of "marital infidelity," at least according to your explication. And thus, is not committing adultery after remarriage. Thus vitiating Jesus' words.
According to your interpretation, Jesus' words apply in absolutely no cases of divorce and remarriage.
However, even if we were to narrow the meaning of the word that Jesus used to formal, physical adultery, then it is still relatively easy for someone to gainsay what Jesus taught. Just commit a single act of adultery, then repent, and one's marriage is done away with, and one will be free to marry.
"We don't wed the way you do, we don't see the sin the same way as you do (not even the so-called +Augustinian creation, the 'original sin'), we don't read the Scripture as you do, so I guess we will not agree on the divorce either. That's not going to change."
"If it were not for the trolls with an ax to grind, we would probably never have this discussion."
I apologize that one of the Catholics in this exchange is perhaps a less-than-gracious interlocutor. However, the fact remains that your explanations vitiate the words of Jesus.
I'm not really sure that this business with "true" marriage and "illusory" marriage is particularly orthodox Orthodoxy. I'd been told by other Orthodox that second and third marriages (which, by the way, assume a real first marriage, as pointed out by others) were a concession to the weakness of men (and women, of course), that the bishop, in encomia, dissolves the preceding marriage, and permits the pentitential second or third marriage.
I think the real point of difference between Catholics and Orthodox is that we Catholics do not believe that our bishops have the capacity, the authority, or the spiritual power to dissolve a marriage. We may only recognize when a sacramental marriage never happened.
sitetest
You wrote:
"A "bad check?" Does that make a gradute from law school without a bar a "bad lawyer?""
According to you, yes. That certainly is what you implied earlier.
"Or a pilot without a license a "bad pilot?" Maybe in your baby talk."
Baby talk? You're the one struggling for words here. You can't even find a good analogy!
"I would say they are all frauds."
And you would be wrong. A lawyer is a lawyer. You chose the word lawyer. You're now stuck with it.
"Besides Orthodox Chritians, other Christians don't accept your theoogy on divorce, so I guess they "lost" too."
Lost? Wrong, yes. You know that there are plenty of Christians who don't believe in the Eucharist in any way similar to what Catholics or Orthodox believe. Don't you believe they're wrong? Yes, you do. The fact that tens of millions of Christians, Protestants and Orthodox, don't agree with the truth doesn't change the truth.
"That's fine. We have done well without your assistance or sex scandals."
You have your own problems and sex scandals. Unlike you we don't excuse them and pretend its okay to sin. You excuse adultery. We don't. It took years and years but we corrected our problem concerning sex scandals. You're still excusing adultery. I would much rather have a Church with true Christian standards that many sinners fall short of then call adultery second marriage.
You would rather keep excusing adultery.
Whether that's the only place or not, is irrelevant, as it is irrelevant whether I am personally skilled enough to argue the case for the Church (which I am not). The fact is that Orthodox Church, and Protestant churches, do not read the prohibition on divorce the same way as you do. Just as we do not read the "petras" the same way as "Petros."
The fact is that we have divergent beliefs, concepts of sin and other theological and ecclesiastical issues and trying to antagonize each other on this forum will do nothing to promote fraternal relations and better understanding between our two or three communities.
You can state your position and we can state ours. Such inflammatory words as Orthodox Church "excusing adultery" leads to nowhere. If you want to join one particular troll who delights in this go right ahead.
I strongly urge you to research the entire Orthodox wedding service and theology of sin and grace, all of which are radically different from the Roman Catholic ones.
Your concept of Church marriage is juridical, contractual. Ours is akin to ordination. I don't really care if you agree with it, I am only telling you how we see things. Consequently, perhaps our cocnept of "true" marriage also differs on that basis alone.
That which only has a form but not the substance is but a shell; it's empty. To pretend that something is when it is not what it is supposed to be in essence, is likewise empty. Thus a marriage that was broken from the start or broken years later is a betrayal no matter how you turn it around. Timing is of consequence. If I commit adultery the first day or the last day of my marriage, it is the same thing.
If the marriage survives until the end, it is a true marriage. If we survive despite temptations and hold on to the faith until the end we may be saved. We don't know for sure.
Protestants believe otherwise. They believe that when you 'accept Jesus' you are saved and He would never allow you to fall away (apostatize) from Him. They will tell you that they are assured of their salvation and cannot understand how Orthodox and Roman Catholic "just don't get it" when they say they are not sure of their salvation.
They even quote scripture, appeal to your senses,. use logic, all very impressive indeed. They mock our concept of free will, and call sacraments "empty rituals." To them, Holy Tradition is simply tradition of men.
In your examples you make it clear that one person premeditated to commit sin because she has already succumbed to evil and willing to deceive. The second example shows a person who succumbs to evil at a later date. The sin is the same. The timing is different. Sin causes death of the soul and that goes for man as well as for his marriage. The union dies spiritually.
But true marriages actually recover. In your examples, eithe ror both could survive and turn out to be true. Likewise, both seem destined to death. But, true marriages survive temptations, they experience healing just as some people who fall away from God repent and return to Him because they believed in Him all along but got discouraged, while others curse Him and choose their own damnation.
Sin itself is not a sure sign that the marriage is dead. Allowing sin to triumph is.
More importantly, the Orthodox Church does not judge the couple. The Church is only concerned with their spiritual health. Recognizing a divorce is an act of mercy and not judgment for most inhumane relationship, for prostituting one's wife, for beating her, for raping her, and yes, for adultery.
But the guide does not change: it's always mercy and forgiveness, first and foremost, and act of and not of condemnation. You may not agree with it, but we believe that our Lord Jesus Christ taught us to be merciful and forgiving first and not judgmental. Divorces in the Orhtodox Church are recognized for abusive relationships and for te well being of the innocent party. Breaking the law on a Sabbath to save a soul is not a sin. That's how we see it.
I ask you to read "Three Little Hermits", by Leo Tolstoy to get an idea where Orthodoxy's sense of "genuine" comes from.
Ha, for the sake of brevity, Vlad. Using a gaduate-from-a-law-school-who-didn't-pass-a-bar-exam is a rather cumbersome word. So is a piece-of-paper-pretending-to-be-a-promisary-note-as-a-legal-tended-without-sufficient-funds is another.
A "lawyer" who is not qualified to practice law and presents himself as a lawyer is a fraud. So is a "doctor" without a license, and so is a "pilot" without a license. And so is a piece-of-paper-pretending-to-be-a-promisary-note-as-a-legal-tended-without-sufficient-funds presented as a check.
All my analogies convey one and the same in meaning: empty promises, pretense, fraud, a lie, a deceit.
I would much rather have a Church with true Christian standards that many sinners fall short of then call adultery second marriage
Please make sure the Pope brings that up at the coming meeting in Istanbul. It's amazing that he would even so much as look at the EP, knowing that he excuses adultery and disobeys Christ's commands. I think you need to make sure the Pope doesn't miss the opportunity to scold the EP.
You wrote:
"Ha, for the sake of brevity, Vlad. Using a gaduate-from-a-law-school-who-didn't-pass-a-bar-exam is a rather cumbersome word. So is a piece-of-paper-pretending-to-be-a-promisary-note-as-a-legal-tended-without-sufficient-funds is another."
And yet it is still a bad check and not anything else. I know you're just trying to play these silly word games because you have no argument to present, but you're not even good at the word games.
"A "lawyer" who is not qualified to practice law and presents himself as a lawyer is a fraud."
And that isn't what you said. Keep adding nuances. Sooner or later something might work.
"So is a "doctor" without a license, and so is a "pilot" without a license. And so is a piece-of-paper-pretending-to-be-a-promisary-note-as-a-legal-tended-without-sufficient-funds presented as a check."
That would still be a bad check. It would still exist even if it isn't worth anything.
"All my analogies convey one and the same in meaning: empty promises, pretense, fraud, a lie, a deceit."
No. All of your analogies convey the fact that you don't know how to construct analogies. And no matter what, a marriage is a marriage. If it fails, it still was.
"Please make sure the Pope brings that up at the coming meeting in Istanbul. It's amazing that he would even so much as look at the EP, knowing that he excuses adultery and disobeys Christ's commands."
Every pope has had to deal with the fact that the Eastern Orthodox have given in on a couple of moral issues. Pope Benedict XVI will be as charitible as he can be in the interests of unity. As the Eastern Orthodox themselves have admitted time after time, some issues can only be solved AFTER unity is achieved and a general council (with both Catholic and Eastern Orthodox bishops) is convened. This is probably one of those issues just like the canon (which even the Eastern Orthodox can't agree on among themselves!).
"I think you need to make sure the Pope doesn't miss the opportunity to scold the EP."
No, I think the pope should do everything he can to protect the Eastern Orthodox from Muslims, strive for unity and aid the Orthodox in many ways. It would be good to see the EP theological college re-open. That will probably only happen with the pope's help. Patriarch Bart. knows this and requested the pope's help several weeks ago. Out of charity we must help the Eastern Orthodox -- especially since they are not able to do much for themselves. We don't mind. Christ emptied Himself for our salvation. We must be prepared to suffer to help the Eastern Orthodox who are so clearly unable to do much of anything for themselves. I think that's why Benedict XVI is going to Turkey in the first place. He wants to meet the EP. He knows his life is in danger. I think he realizes it is a dangerous, but worthwhile opportunity. If he achieves what people expect him to then he will strike a blow for unity. If he dies because of an assassin's bullet then he is a martyr for Christ and the sake of unity -- and he will be a martyr on both sides of the Catholic/Orthodox divide. Once again, in either case, Benedict will prove that the Catholic Church is willing to do more, and suffer more, for unity than the Eastern Orthodox. Same old, same old.
kosta50,
thanks for the long reply.
However, I still believe you are not getting the point.
The point is not juridical (Latin) versus mystical (Orthodox), but theological, philosophical and historical.
The fact is that none of the Fathers of the church interprets the Gospel as you do.
I have asked several times somebody of the orthodox party to show quotes from the Greek or Latin Fathers that could support your theory of illusory marriages, and you have given us none!
Now you are simply arguing that the Orthodox belief is different from the Catholic one, as well as the protestant belief is different from the Orthodox and Catholic ones on many issues.
Well, everybody knows that there are differences. However, the purpose of a dialogue is to discuss these differences and discuss their theological, philosophical and historical justifications with the purpose to find a solution to the differences.
What I and other Catholics here are trying to do is simply to give theological, philosophical and historical arguments to support the faith of the Catholic Church, arguments that seem to show that the doctrine of the Catholic Church looks more theologically faithful to the Gospel and philosophically rational than the Orthodox one, at least as you are presenting it.
You are talking about different beliefs, but the faith should not be blind. A belief should be scrutinized with the reason too, when possible. Without reasoning it is easy to believe wrong things. Humans are called to reason to avoid errors!
You say “But true marriages actually recover.” But how could they recover if the act of adultery itself proves, in your opinion, that those marriages did not exist at all? Moreover, the recovery needs time, perhaps several years. How can a marriage recover if a new marriage is consumed in the middle time? Is there a fixed time allowed for the recovery? How much is it? Three days, three weeks, three months, three years or three decades?
Your interpretation of marriage looks fatalistic and not mystical as you say.
You say: “Jesus Christ taught us to be merciful and forgiving first and not judgmental.” And then you add “Divorces in the Orhtodox Church are recognized for abusive relationships and for the well being of the innocent party.”
Do you really think that an act that implicitly declares that the “guilty” party will not recover any more is really “merciful” and “not judgmental”? Have you ever thought that the prayers of the innocent party could help the conversion of the guilty party?
Why should assuming the guilty party already doomed be considered an act of mercy?
I know that it might be difficult, by Jesus have never said that everything must be easy and He ordered us to love the sinners and pray also for the enemy for their conversion.
If the innocent party says something like “My husband/wife has betrayed me, thus for me he/she is, from now on, like a dead person and I am free to marry another person,” if anybody says to a person who has sinned against him/her “from now on you are a dead person for me”, wouldn’t it be exactly the kind of unmerciful judgment that Jesus has forbidden us to make against another person?
Maybe if the Vatican thinks it is important, you should too.
What?
Nope.
If the Vatican tells my Bishop, who tells my pastor, who starts saying "for many" at Mass, then I'll assume it was the right thing to do.
However, that doesn't mean I'll think it's important.
Have a nice day!
No; it would be more akin to saying that homosexuality is increasingly common, so we have to figure out how we will deal with homosexual Christians. Specifically, how do we tell them that homosexual acts are unacceptable without falling into the homosexual demonization that goes on in too many pulpits?
Furthermore, divorce is different than homosexuality. It's one thing for a homosexual to say he recognizes his orientation and commit to a life of celibacy. It's quite another thing for a man who has been divorced and remarried - and it does and will happen, inevitably, within the life of a congregation. Both the divorce and the remarriage are for life, and neither can be taken back. So, he must now make the best of the situation.
Dear jude24,
The Catholic Church understands that folks sometimes get themselves into bad situations from which they may be unable to readily extricate themselves. In the case of divorced persons who remarry (assuming the validity of the first marriage), the Church recognizes that there may be children who depend on the new "marriage," and that justice would not be served if the new couple were to physically separate.
However, you point out that the Church's response to the homosexual person must include the requirement that the homosexual person must commit to celibacy. Likewise, the Church will admit back to the sacraments those divorced and remarried couples who must remain together for the sake of others if they will commit, as well, to a celibate life with each other.
sitetest
If His blood didn't cover all sin, He is not free in His perfect justice to give eternal life to idiots and babes should they die before the age of accountability.
Thankfully, the Father imputed all sin on the Son and judged it thereby propitiating all sin and allowing Him the freedom to bestow grace by His Soveriegn will.
Perhaps the senior teachers within the RCC have another way of fostering advanced faith by the recent decision which isn't as fully explained.
IMHO, it won't offer much solace to grieving mothers of deceased children.
Good post.
Good post.
I've found it is easier to remain focused in Christ when discussing issues such as liars, adultery, fornication, murder, etc to first focus on the object of our thinking when we remain in fellowship with Him.
It is very easy to slip either into one of the sins mentioned, or into a mental attitude sin, or into legalism when we become obsessed with those sins rather than the object of God through faith in Christ.
The word 'repent' also brings with it an immense amount of mental baggage by those who come to associate repentence either with how much effort we make to resist temptation, or how sorry we might feel, or how sincere we really think hard in our hearts against sin, or how moral we might become, or how long we endure in morality.
None of those issues have anything to do with repentence, but they have alot to do with our thinking we are going to do something other than resting in faith in Him in our thinking.
Repentence is probably better expressed as simply turning back to Him.
When we are in fellowhip with the Holy Spirit, He is free to further set us apart in His plan by renewing our thinking and also our spirit, later evidenced by the outward flow of our heart.
When ever we sin, we simply are disobeying His will. In a sense, we simply are turning away from Him. Our relationship in our soul is by thinking, so when we sin, our thinking isn't through faith in Him, but on anything else but Him. When we repent, we simply are looking back at Him again, setting Him as the object of our thinking, through faith in Him.
When we confess, we are simply communicating to Him and admitting our unrighteousness when we were thinking other than Him.
When our Lord was pressed by some people who held their lust in higher esteem than their faith for God through Him, He stated very simply, as a method to communicate to them a simple matter of fact. Those such as murderers, liars, adulterers, fornicators, etc will not inherit the kingdom of God.
To many people, believers and unbelievers get wrapped around the axle by such verses, thinking without placing Christ as their object of faith, but instead thinking of the law and interpretting His words as a condemnation of their activity, rather than understanding that their object of priority from their viewpoint needs to be simply remaining in faith through Christ.
We all have very, very, very scarred thinking processes, i.e. the soul as discerned from the body or spirit. Much of that scarred thinking came from faulty thinking processes when we were separate from Him. Some might even be genetic from the body in our thinking. Regardless, by faith in Him, we have not only salvation from condemnation, but also the indwelling of the Holy Spirit to further sanctify our souls, and also our spirit, simply awaiting that resurrected body, while we live the life He has created for us.
IMHO, an explanation of repentence, simply as a person turning and facing God, glancing away (sin), turning back,etc helps avoid many off the pitfalls of legalism or lacisviousness which never have anything to do with our remaining in fellowship with Him. So many believers have fallen away from Him in degenerate behavior, either by legalism or in lasciviousness, that many add something to faith by their own independent thinking, rather than resting in Him and allowing Him to perform all the work.
The Eastern Church recognized divorce as an unfortunate reality of human corruption and decided that some unions are not salvageable. The Church has its theological and ecclesiastical reasons for that. I do not have any other than what is currently written about divorce on various Orthodox sites.
Again, I am not qualified to speak on account of the Church. I am merely thinking as an Orthodox Christian. It makes no difference at which point in the marriage the sin is introduced (in some at the beginning, in others later on). The effect is the same. Look what sin did with God's pristine people in the Garden of Eden. It destroyed our nature. Don't you think sin can destroy a marriage?
If a spouse kills the other spouse, does it mean he or she is free to re-marry? Does "saving" an abusive marriage, that is only a "marriage" on paper, have to be pushed to a tragic end in order for God's justice to be satisfied as far as being "free to re-marry"? God's justice is not to cause suffering. Ask yourself "where is love" in saving, protecting and guarding an abusive, cruel marriage? Do you really believe that God considers and abusive marriage as "His?"
The only litmus test of what is true marriage is if it survives all temptations, even adultery, through repentance, forgiveness and mercy. But that's not always likely or even possible. So, what's the option? To continue in cruelty, to force someone to live alone for no reason other than the other spouse is an unrepentant loser?
In His infinite mercy, God gave us the opportunity to heal our fallen nature by cleaving to Him. He didn't devise it in order to torture the innocent, but to comfort them.
Again, this is what the Orthodox Church has been doing even when our Churches were one, and no one raised the issue as far as I know. Which tells me that it was not an issue.
When ever we sin, we simply are disobeying His will. In a sense, we simply are turning away from Him
You are thinking in a fashion the Orthodox think. To us sin is not so much breaking the law as it is evidence of ungreatfulness and rejection.
We all have very, very, very scarred thinking processes, i.e. the soul as discerned from the body or spirit. Much of that scarred thinking came from faulty thinking processes when we were separate from Him
Separation from God only further diustorts our already distorted image and makes us unrecognizable to the Image of God he created us in. Our sin blemishes, even obliterates that which is holy and renders in unholy, such as marriage. Unless we turn back to Him, and clean up our act, it remains unholy. That which is unholy is not from God.
Kosta50,
Your analogies simply do not hold, I am sorry.
You say: “Look what sin did with God's pristine people in the Garden of Eden. It destroyed our nature. Don't you think sin can destroy a marriage?”
The original sin did not “destroyed” our nature. Adam and Eve were not “destroyed”!!!
Not even the devil has been destroyed by his sin!!!!!
The original sin has “wounded” our nature, not destroyed it. In the same way, no sin can destroy what God has united. Jesus has been clear on this. A marriage cannot be destroyed by any sin, not even by adultery, although the sin will wound it.
Jusus come to heal the wounds inflicted by the sin. So, he might heal the wounds of an adultery too. The faith and the hope in the healings powers of Jesus is central to the Christian faith. Jesus is the s”Savior”, the “Healer” of the human nature from the sickness of the sin.
Didn’t Jesus come to love and heal the sinners?
How can you exclude it? Don’t you see that at the end your position is nothing but a lack of faith? Is the faith good only when the things look good, but at the first problem, (an adultery for example), the faith is forgotten?
See, Saint Augustine is often accused by the Orthodox of a lot of things he never said or wrote. The Orthodoxs simply do not read his works and insult him simply because he is Latin. Nevertheless, his mother, Saint Monica, had a husband that was quite adulterous. She never thought, not for one instant, that because her husband was unfaithful the marriage never existed and it was nothing but an illusion. No priest, bishop or monk would have even dreamed to tell her such an thing.
She prayed and loved her husband for all her life asking Jesus to heal him. And she was teaching other women in the same sad condition to do the same. At the end, her husband was healed, as well as the husbands of some of her girlfriends.
Don’t you see the difference between a person that in front of a prove takes his/her cross and a person who simple take his/her cross away at the first problem and difficulty?
You say: “Again, this is what the Orthodox Church has been doing even when our Churches were one, and no one raised the issue as far as I know. Which tells me that it was not an issue.”
Again, I ask you where are the proves of what you say? Can you cite even one Father of the Church, please?
It seems that what you say is not correct at all. Orthodox Churches have been doing that since 1000 years ago, that is, since when they separated from the Catholic Church. And they did that because the emperors imposed on them this pastoral and theological novelty.
I understand that in some case the things might become so unbearable.
But why should a person marry a so bad one?
However, if a spouse was cheating since the beginning, the marriage would be null. But if a spouse was a good person when he/she married and become a bad person after the marriage, how could it be? What are the responsibilities of everyone for such an occurrence?
See, the position of the Catholic Church might appear to be hard and difficult, but it is also just and truly mercifull.
I believe that a real problem is the lack of serious prevention. I believe that everybody, beginning with the priests, should take these things more seriously. For example priests should clearly teach people not to marry lightly because marriage is a serious thing. Also from a political point of view, divorce should be outlawed and adultery should be considered a penal crime and persecuted, because it seriously damages people. (This was what was happening in the catholic countries before the secularization since few decades ago, and the families were quite solid and if a bad problem occurred everybody tried to do something to solve it)
But, after all it is much simpler not to do anything, (not even tell to pray for the spouse in the good and bad situations), and when the bad problems occur say “do not worry, your marriage is nothing but an illusion, go and marry again.”
Yes, it is very easy, but is it really just and merciful according to God, and also according to human reason?
This is the problem!
The penalty of sin is death. The concept of death in the Hebrew notion of a state of existence involving separation.
Just as sin separated our spirit from the Living Spirit of God in the Garden, sin in marriage implicitly results in a separation in the anthropology of man and woman in marriage.
This separation might also be explained as a destruction of a marriage.
The contract of marriage as a legal instrument might take time to formally dissolve, but the uniting of man and woman in one flesh is implicitly broken by adultery. Where the marriage of spirit and soul might also have implications, mental acts of adultery would also qualify to implicitly break the union of man and wife.
Right on the money Cvengr. That is obvious from the following written by +Justn Martyr:
“According to our teacher, just as they are sinners who contract a second marriage, even though it is in accord with human law, so also are they sinners who look with lustful desires at a woman. He repudiates not only one who actually commits adultery, but even one who wishes to do so; for not only our actions are manifest to God, but even our thoughts.” (St. Justin Martyr, First Apology 15)
That which is holy becomes unholy by sin. And that which is unholy is not of God.
"Surely you will die" said the Lord to Adam. Is death not the destruction of life? No, they didn't die at that moment of betrayal; they died many years later, knowing that no amount of regrets would restore them to their pristine existence.
And as a result of their nature-changing disobedience, all subsequent generations of parents who became mortal are born mortal, inheriting not the guilt but the consequence of their guilt: death. Not as punishment from God, but as a consequence of their choice.
When your nature goes from incorruptible and immortal to corruptible and mortal, that is very much destruction of your [original] nature. It's a whole new and different nature.
See, Saint Augustine is often accused by the Orthodox of a lot of things he never said or wrote. The Orthodox simply do not read his works and insult him simply because he is Latin
That is the most asinine thing I have ever heard. +Augustine is a Saint in the Orthodox Church, along with numerous other Latin Fathers and Popes of Rome.
The Orthodox Church rejects Augustinian teachings that were unknown to the primitive Church (in other words, his innovations), such as the "original sin," just as it rejects the theories of some early Fathers that hell is not eternal for mankind.
God does not enslave. And an insoluble marriage is enslavement. Expecting people who separated to be celibate is like expecting someone not to eat or breathe. It's contrary to our fallen nature. It leads to all sorts of struggles, anger, problems, and sin. If you are hungry, you won't be happy. You will be cranky.
You are missing the whole point by being too legalistic about it: what counts is your intent. Whatever you do should be done in mercy and forgiveness and with pure heart. Chances are you won't sin very much that way. Certainly you should do no harm to others, but neither to yourself. And being enslaved by passion or by a sinful marriage is hurting yourself no matter how you look at it.
As for the early Church, there were two Byzantine emperors, one was Constantine VI and the other one's name I can't recall at this moment, who divorced their wives in the 8th century. Constantine VI, in fact, re-married immediately after the divorce.
To the best of my knowledge, neither of the Emperors were denied communion, nor did any of the Popes publicly condemn them.
Less than 200 years earlier, Emperor Justinian (6th c) enacted an anti-dovorce and custody law. Obviously, that was as good as the next emperor's decision.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.