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
The sources, found at the end of the article, are well respected.
It’s important too to (a) label the hate as such, and (b) drag out the thread long enough to see who steps forward to defend it.
You must be over the target, you are getting lots of flak.shalom b'SHEM Yah'shua
Where did that anger come from, Natchez Hawk? The original post identifies men who abused the office of the Pope, and you're attacking as heretical those who follow Christ differently from the way you do? "Calamity"?
So you *do* argue that the Popes are infallible, without sin? Or do you agree with history that some of them were corrupt men?
Agreed. The sucky part is, you and I will never get to bear the awesome responsibility of being among the Elect.
LOL! And is it merely a coincidence that the largest and loudest fonts on this thread were posted by you?
De Rosa is not a historian but an angry ex-Catholic who is a failed UK sitcom writer. He is not a "Father" and his publisher is a vanity publisher, not a serious press.
Boettner was an IRS hack whose books are famous for their lack of research and accuracy.
Ian Brown has no scholarly reputation - he is a complete unknown outside of whatever dubious circles he operates in.
None of the three cited are authorities in nay way on medieval history or Catholic theology.
Of course some of them were corrupt. All men are.
But the disappearance of Calvinism and Puritanism as paths that people follow show that ideas can be corrupt as well.
I know you’re paying no attention, but I forgot to ping you to post 30.
If you don't know what the word infallible means, why do you use it?
Perhaps you haven’t heard of the resurgence of Calvinism...
Your misunderstanding of “papal infallibility” negates your question. No one argues Popes are without sin.
This is the main inspiration for posts such as the OP: the mistaken belief that "infallibility"="impeccability", which it does not.
Each and every (honest) Catholic will admit that there have been plenty of sinful popes throughout the centuries, some maybe even in Hell. This fact should make one wonder then, "How can Catholics admit that, yet still believe the pope can be infallible?"
Unless one believes all Catholics are insane, then one must realize that there's a difference between "infallible" and "impeccable". The former is Catholic dogma, the latter is not. The former means, in Catholic dogma, that the pope is protected from making a mistake when teaching about matters of morals and faith, and no other time. It does *not* mean that the pope is guaranteed from being sinless; that's what "impeccable" means.
All of this has been explained before. But that doesn't stop the old canard of Boetner's "Roman Catholicism" being posted again and again from time to time, in different forms. Why it doesn't, I don't know, since it's a reasoned rebuttal to the entire OP.
This is from the Catholic Encyclopedia concerning Benedict IX:
“Taking advantage of the dissolute life he(Benedict) was leading, one of the factions in the city drove him from it (1044) amid the greatest disorder, and elected an antipope (Sylvester III) in the person of John, Bishop of Sabina (1045 -Ann. Romani, init. Victor, Dialogi, III, init.). Benedict, however, succeeded in expelling Sylvester the same year; but, as some say, that he might marry, he resigned his office into the hands of the Archpriest John Gratian for a large sum. John was then elected pope and became Gregory VI (May, 1045). Repenting of his bargain, Benedict endeavoured to depose Gregory. This resulted in the intervention of King Henry III. Benedict, Sylvester, and Gregory were deposed at the Council of Sutri (1046) and a German bishop (Suidger) became Pope Clement II. After his speedy demise, Benedict again seized Rome (November, 1047), but was driven from it to make way for a second German pope, Damasus II (November, 1048).”
Are these lies and misrepresentations?
Living a dissolute life and selling the papal office?
Popes warring for their office?
Where would this be?
I know his doctrines have been modified by a bunch of different folks.
I know many Presbyterians, never heard them say they believe in Pre-destination, has the terminology changed?
Well ... the problem is, of course, that "ideas" are no more God than any church is.
In fact, judging by the typical contents of the "Reformed theology" threads that get posted here, and the various "-isms" railed against therein, the chief contribution of Calvinist thought to the modern Church seems seems to be a tendency to splinter by pushing "wrong-thinking" Christians away.
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