Posted on 10/15/2008 11:17:09 AM PDT by Gamecock
"Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. By their fruit you will recognise them…" Matthew 7:15-16
CORRUPTION
STEPHEN VII (896-897AD) "He dug up a Corsican predecessor, Pope Formosus (891-896), when he had been dead for over nine months…. He dressed the stinking corpse in full pontificals, placed him on the throne in the Lateran and proceeded to interrogate him personally….After being found guilty, the corpse was condemned as an anti-pope, stripped and minus the two fingers with which he had given his fake apostolic blessing, was thrown into the Tiber…." (Vicars of Christ - the Dark Side of the Papacy by Father Peter de Rosa).
SERGIUS III (904-911) Standing in his way to the throne had been Leo V, who reigned for one month before he was imprisoned by an usurper, Cardinal Christopher. Sergius had both killed. Then he exhumed his predecessor and had him beheaded, three fingers chopped off and thrown into the Tiber.
JOHN XII (955 - 963) He invented sins, it was said, that had not been known since the beginning of the world - including sleeping with his mother. John XII ran a harem in the Lateran Palace, he gambled with the offerings of pilgrims and he even toasted the devil at the high altar during the mass.
BENEDICT V (964) Described by a church historian as "the most iniquitous of all the monsters of ungodliness."
BENEDICT IX (1032-44, 1045, 1047-8) Elected pope at age eleven, he was twice driven from his position due to his participation in plunder, immorality, oppression and murder. Church historians described him as "That wretch, from the beginning of his pontificate to the end of his life, feasted on immorality," and "a demon from hell in the disguise of a priest has occupied the chair of Peter."
SIXTUS IV (1471 - 1484) This is the pope who built the Sistine Chapel in which all popes are now elected. Sixtus IV had several illegitimate sons, licensed the brothels of Rome and received a large amount of revenue for the papacy from these houses of iniquity, introduced the novel idea of selling indulgences for the dead to raise more revenue, and sanctioned the Inquisition in Castile (Spain) by issuing a bull in 1478 (in just one year - 1482 - in one city of Andalusia, 2000 "heretics" were burned as a result).
ALEXANDER VI (1492 - 1503) He was a murderer by age 12, he had 10 known illegitimate children, he was infamous for his drunken and immoral parties, he was known to have cardinals who had purchased their positions to be poisoned so that he could sell their positions again and increase his turnover. He spent a fortune in bribes to secure his own election as pope and he caused the Reformer Savonarola to be burned at the stake.
CRUELTY
The Romans papacy has been characterised by extreme cruelty in its persecution of those it deemed as heretics. In particular the Waldensians, Lollards and Albigensians were slaughtered by the forces of Rome.
In 1208 Pope Innocent III declared: "Death to the heretics!" Great privileges and rewards were promised to those who would annihilate the "heretics" and to every man who killed one of them, the assurance was given that he would attain the highest place in Heaven!
The first target of this crusade against the Albigensians was the town of Begiers. All it's inhabitants were killed and all the buildings burned. The monk leading this slaughter, Arnold, reported back to Innocent III "Today, Your Holiness, twenty thousand citizens were put to the sword, regardless of age or sex."
In Bram the papal soldiers cut off the noses and gouged out the eyes of the Albigensian "heretics".
In Minerve, 140 Albigensians were burned alive.
In Lavaure 400 "heretics" were burned at the stake.
In response, Innocent III praised the papal soldiers who had destroyed the heretics.
The successor of Innocent III, Pope Gregory IX established the Inquisition in 1232. For over 600 years, spanning the reigns of over 80 popes, the Inquisition tortured and killed tens of thousands of Protestants including the Waldensians, Hussites, Lollards and Huguenots.
CONTRADICTION
Pope Gregory VII (1073-85) declared that "The Pope cannot make a mistake".
The First Vatican Council (1869-70) under Pope Pius IX raised the Dogma of Papal infallibility to become the official teaching of Roman Catholicism adding the usual anathema upon all who dared to disagree:
"But if anyone ….presume to contradict this assertion, let him be accused."
Yet between 1378 to 1408 there were first two popes and then three! Gregory XII reigned from Rome, Benedict XIII from Avignon and John XXIII from Pisa.
John XXIII was described in Vicars of Christ: "He was noted as a former pirate, pope-poisoner, mass-murderer, mass-fornicator…, adulterer on a scale unknown outside fables, simoniac par excellence, blackmailer, pimp, master of dirty tricks."
Yet John XXIII accused his rival pope Benedict XIII of being "a Fake" and Gregory XII he nicknamed "Mistake"!
Pope Pius IX, who at the First Vatican Council (1869 - 1870) caused the dogma of Papal Infallibility to become the official teaching of Roman Catholicism, also issued an edict permitting "excommunication, confiscation, banishment, imprisonment for life, as well as secret execution in heinous cases."
At the First Vatican Council, Bishop Strossmayer (himself a papist) gave a speech arguing against papal infallibility. He pointed out: "Gregory I calls anyone anti-Christ who takes the name of Universal Bishop; and contrawise Boniface III made Emperor Phocas confer that title upon him. Paschal II and Eugenius III authorised duelling; Julius II and Pins IV forbad it. Hadrian II declared civil magistrates to be valid; Pius VII condemned them. Sixtus V published an edition of the Bible and recommended it to be read; Pius VII condemned the reading of the Bible."
It could also be noted that while one (supposedly infallible) pope, Eugene IV (1431 - 1447), condemned Joan of Arc as a heretic to be burned alive, another pope, Benedict XV, in 1920, declared her to be a saint and her burning a mistake.
Yet the Dogma of Papal Infallibility declares that when a pope speaks ex cathedra his words are "as infallible as if it had been uttered by Christ Himself!"
In plain contradiction to this "papal infallibility" is the Bible. The apostle Peter (from whom all popes claim their succession) never suggested that he was infallible. Indeed in his first general epistle Peter described himself simply as "an elder" and he exhorted his "fellow elders" not to act as "lords over those entrusted to you" (1 Peter 5:1-3).
Paul records in Galatians 2:11 "But when Peter had come to Antioch I withstood him to his face, because he was to be blamed…" Plainly Paul did not see Peter as infallible. Also Peter was married (Mark 1:30; 1 Corinthians 9:5). Indeed a requirement of a church leader is that he is married and bring up his children in the faith (1 Timothy 3:4-5).
The Lord Jesus taught: "You know that the rulers of the gentiles lord it over them, and those who are great exercise authority over them. Yet it shall not be so among you; but whoever desires to be first among you, let him be your slave - just as the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve…" Matthew 20:25-28
Jesus taught that no one is good - except God alone (Mark 10:18) and we are to call no-one on earth Father - God alone is our spiritual Father. How then can any pope be called "his Holiness" or "Holy Father"! The term Holy Father is only used once in the Bible and it is clearly addressed to God the Father in Christ's prayer (John 17:11).
It is no wonder that when Archbishop Thomas Cranmer was about to be burned at the stake, on 21 March 1556, he declared: "As for the pope, I refuse him as Christ's enemy, and Anti-Christ, with all his false doctrines."
In the words of Martin Luther: "Unless I am convinced by Scripture or clear reasoning that I am in error - for popes and councils have often erred and contradicted themselves - I cannot recant for I am subject to the Scriptures I have quoted. My conscience is captive to the Word of God. It is unsafe and dangerous to do anything against one's conscience. Here I stand. I cannot do otherwise. So help me God. Amen."
Sources: Vicars of Christ - the Dark Side of the Papacy by Father Peter de Rosa, Corgi Books, London, 1989
Roman Catholicism by Loraine Boetner, Banner of Truth, London, 1966
The Pope by Ian Brown, Londonderry, 1991
But there is a point to my levity. Actually you can't prove an event with video. The viewer can always say it's faked or misinterpreted or something. And it could be.
So do I believe fifty Catholic Bishops had good reason to make accusations or do I write it off to politics or a fair measure of truth and fiction? If this synod had pronounced the Pope righteous would that make their word more trustworthy? Why should I assume them wicked liars and the Pope upright and not vice versa? Or both?
I end up looking at what is reliably known to judge the worth of accusations and the nature of what is called evidence vs proof. So accusations might be evidence but not proof nor might a video not be accepted as proof.
Need an example?
The original thread held out accusations with some fact behind them. Sloppy? Yeah, but “vicious”? Please! Lies? Not in anything I posted , while others can speak for themselves, where is the proof of the accusation?
“You must be kidding.” You mean you think I might not be?
The allegation was incest. No facts were presented. What you gave me was allegation, not fact.
If this be true, then you may be getting closer to the truth, that if the charges were untrue the bishops were just as corrupt as the accused. In other words, just a bunch of crooked politicians fighting over the spoils?
As I pointed out, the bishops in question were a tiny minority of the episcopate - a "synod" of fifty to supposedly sit in judgment over a Pope is a joke.
As it turns out, the bishops in question were all from lands controlled by the Emperor or his vassals - these men were likely in danger of their lives - their skins were the "spoils" of the Emperor's coercion.
Even then, he could only get fifty out of the hundreds of bishops living in his realms and not one Frenchman, Spaniard, Swiss, Briton or Pole.
Actually there was a previous John XXIII but wasn’t he considered an anti-pope?
Is the thread about Popes, or antipopes?
So again, where are the lies in anything I’ve presented here?
The lies are in the original article. What you're presenting is your willingness to bend over backwards until your chin touches your soles to try and explain away the lies the author told.
I direct you to Pope Gregory VII by H.E.J. Cowdrey - the foremost modern expert on Gregory VII in the English speaking world. Please note that Cowdrey is a Protestant clergyman who has no personal sympathy for even the legitimate and documented writings of Gregory VII.
He addresses the question of the authorship of the document we're discussing - he is probably the only person who ever personally went through every single surviving document of Gregory VII's papacy and translated them.
He published all 400 documents as The Register Of Gregory VII and explains how the vast bulk of documents personally attributed to Gregory VII include documents written by officers of the Curia, letters written to Gregory by other people, etc. He demonstrates how dubious the supposed Gregorian authorship of the so-called Dictatus Papae is.
so by your statement above, whose lying? A little louder, please.
The answer: neither I nor Cowdrey.
Is this just an accusation or would you accept it as proof?
“The temporal and spiritual authority in Rome were thus again united in one person — a coarse, immoral man, whose life was such that the Lateran was spoken of as a brothel, and the moral corruption in Rome became the subject of general odium. War and the chase were more congenial to this pope than church government.” from the Catholic Encyclopedia, John XII.Sources
Liber Pontif., ed. DUCHESNE, II, 24609; JAFFÉ, Regesta Rom. Pont., I (2nd ed.), 463 sq.; LIUTPRAND, De rebus gestis Ottonis, ed. DÜMMLER, Opp., 124-36; HERGENRÖTHER-KIRSCH, Kirchengesch., II (4th ed.), 201-7; LANGEN, Gesch. der römischen Kirche, II, 336-51; REUMONT, Gesch. der Stadt Rom, II, 237 sqq.; HEFELE, Konziliengesch., IV (2nd ed.,), 605 sqq.; DÜMMLER, Otto der Gross, V, 313 sqq.
Is this vicious? A lie? What? Not fact?
As for the thread, call it what you will but if it’s vicious so is the above.
Gosh this is fun.
“the infallibility claimed for the pope is the same in its nature, scope, and extent as that which the Church as a whole possesses; his ex cathedra teaching does not have to be ratified by the Church’s in order to be infallible.”
It says “pope”, the individual not the office, so who’s conflating?
First of all, you have selectively and misleadingly torn this quote from context.
It is immediately followed by the following language:
"infallibility is not attributed to every doctrinal act of the pope, but only to his ex cathedra teaching; and the conditions required for ex cathedra teaching are mentioned in the Vatican decree"
It then goes on to list those very specific conditions within which the pope enjoys the charism of infallibility.
There is no conflation here.
The Church is doctrinally infallible. The Church cannot teach false doctrine. The Holy Spirit which guides the Body of Christ does not allow that to happen.
The papacy - an office within the Church - is also doctrinally infallible, because the papacy is part of the Church's teaching authority.
The popes - individual officeholders of the papacy - are not inherently doctrinally infallible and are fully capable of error. Only under certain circumstances and conditions - as described in the parts of the Catholic Enxyclopaedia that you conveniently omitted - does the individual pope teach infallibly under the charism of his office.
Therefore the original statement of the Dictatus Papae (which was not authored by Gregory), namely that the Roman Church is incapable of error, is entirely correct and orthodox.
The rephrased version you presented wherein "Roman Church" is changed to "papacy" is technically correct - except that most non-Catholics use the term "papacy" not to refer the office in itself, but to refer to all the individual men who held the office.
Thus the natural and non-technical takeaway of the average person from rephrased version is: "Pope X can personally do no wrong."
Or, as the original article that began this thread slanderously says:
Pope Gregory VII (1073-85) declared that "The Pope cannot make a mistake".
Something which no historical document written by Gregory or even falsely attributed to him says.
Popes make mistakes all the time and Gregory VII knew this as well as anyone else.
see post #107
You said exactly what I wished to say. Thank the Lord for your faithful witness.
Color me slow, but can you be a tiny bit more specific?
see post #107
The official Acts and records of the reign of Henry VIII show that while Cranmer was Archbishop of Canterbury and Vice-gerent of the Realm for Visitation (i.e. overseeing, or in his case despoiling and stealing, monasteries) he presided at the trials and sentencing of the Carthusian Martyrs - Roman Catholic monks.
Eighteen of them are recorded as being executed by hanging, disemboweling, drawing and quartering and enforced starvation.
Brother Thomas Johnson took almost three weeks to die. It was rumored that a jailer with subversive catholic sympathies had been sneaking him rainwater.
And these particular Carthusians were just some examples - they happen to be an especially well-documented case since they were particularly beloved by the local communities.
In the mid 1500s many thousands of Protestants were executed this way all over Europe, especially on the Continent, where in France the numbers topped tens of thousands.
Your numbers are off.
As many Catholics died at the hands of Protestants as Protestants did at the hands of Catholics in the days before the Peace of Westphalia.
One can play all sorts of games with the French numbers if one decides to count the Huguenots who took up arms against their king and died in battle as "martyrs" instead of military casualties.
And the issue of civil authority vs. ecclesiastical authority is relevant.
In Spain, where the King reigned, a conviction of heresy could get you burned - just like in Calvinist Geneva.
In the Papal States, where the Pope reigned much of the time as both civil and ecclesiastical authority, you were more likely to end up under hosue arrest like Galileo.
It was a real distinction - except in Protestant countries like England and Saxony and Sweden where the civil authority was the ecclesiastical authority and the King was the head of the Church.
The Catholic martyrs of England were killed directly by the Church of England at the order of the head of the Church of England.
The Pope ordered no executions in Spain and allowed convicted Spaniards to appeal over the King's head to the canonical courts in Rome.
Quite a few such cases were overturned on appeal.
To whom could an English Catholic appeal over the King's head when he had been caught saying a Paternoster in Latin instead of English? No one.
Read before you ignore.
Then advocate your point, i.e. that it is a strawman.
Like pornography, I know hate mongering when I see it.
It doesn't mention anything about maternal incest whatever.
And the historical fact is that almost everything we hear about John XII's personal character comes from the contemporary account of one Liudprand of Cremona.
Who was John XII's mortal enemy? Emperor Otto of Germany.
Coincidentally, of whom was Liudprand a personal employee? That would be . . . Emperor Otto of Germany.
What little we do know from several sources about John XII's character is that he cared more about hunting and political wheeler-dealing than about the responsibilities of his office, and that the local Romans had zero regard for this French-sympathizing outsider and loved to gossip about him.
What there is zero evidence for is maternal incest. Not a shred.
Well done, good historical legwork.
Boettner has Joan of Arc condemned to the stake by the Pope....wasn’t it a Burgundian bishop who presided over her trial?
“Why are you an anti-Protestant bigot? Why are you so hate-filled? Why do you bear false witness? (Hey, I’m getting the hang of this! Much easier than a rational argument!)”
Don’t forget to add some superstition to protect you from these evil people. You could get a local Shaman to get you special water, pray over some beads, or clutch your favorite idol.
And in Protestant countries, they prosecuted Catholicism as "treason," whether or not any actual treason took place. (My namesake, St. Edmund Campion, swore his loyalty to Elizabeth I at his trial "in all matters save religion". He was executed as a "traitor" anyway.)
Although the law was not actively enforced, it was a capital offense to be a Catholic in Sweden until well into the 19th Century.
Calling someone a "traitor" and killing them because you reject their religion is not any more admirable than calling them a "heretic" and killing them because you reject their religion, is it?
What's even more offensive to me is that we're having this conversation at all, given the larger events that we're watching. I guess perhaps soon we'll have the same discussion over our bowls of fish and cockroach soup in the barracks at the concentration camp, in between having the snot beaten out of us by the Obama SS.
Perhaps then we'll start to come to the realization that we have more to gain by treating each other like brothers and sisters than by picking fights over 500-year-old grudges.
A Burgundian bishop who was in the pay of the English, who wanted Joan, their mortal enemy, dead.
Her trial was also very irregular according to canon law. I believe the law required three clerics to sign off on her condemnation; they had one.
I guess perhaps soon we'll have the same discussion over our bowls of fish and cockroach soup in the barracks at the concentration camp, in between having the snot beaten out of us by the Obama SS.
Yup. We are promised it will happen, so get used to the idea.
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