Posted on 03/29/2011 10:46:27 AM PDT by WPaCon
Augustinian Monk:
In a succinct matter, the Cathars/Albigensians were a reemergence of the Dualist Manichaens, who were a heretical movement that St. Augustine dealt with in the 4th century [he for a time was afffiliated with them before hearing St. Ambrose preach in Milan]. There theological belief was “Gnostic” as was noted and it saw that there were 2 Gods, the Good God who was pure spirit and the Evil God [demiurge{sic}] who created matter, and thus all things of the created order were inherently evil which lead to main point #2, if matter was evil, Christ did not become incarnate and did not die on the Cross and the Catholic Church and the Pope were thus evil for believing that as for the Cathars again, Matter was evil.
The Pope, as Belloc correctly notes sent a Papal Legate [a Priest] to and there were attempts by the Domenicans to convert the Cathars but when the Papal Legate was murdered in his Church, this was then scene as the time when both the state with the Church’s blessing launched the crusade which turned into what amounts to a civil war from control of that part of France.
While man suffered the same weaknesses in the middle ages as men before them did, and men do know, the took the heretical notion that Christ did not become incarnate of the Virgin Mary and die on the Cross “quite seriously” and for those who were trying to argue otherwise was seen as a threat to the social and political order and attack on the state itself.
One must understand to not try to look at the clear separation of Church and state in the 21st century and retroactively apply it to the 12th and 13th. This would prove to happen in the 16th century when countries went Protestant, Catholics were viewed as being disloyal to the state and it wasn’t until the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 that wars of religion and the religous rights of minority religions were protected, i.e. a Catholic in a majority Protestant country and vice versa.
Thanks for the best post on the thread so far!
Read history and try not to put it in the modern UN concept, please. The medieval Pope was more than a spiritual leader, he was the militant head of Christendom which was beset from all sides by violent enemies; Islam, these heretics and many more, as well as secular rulers with their eyes on the lands of the Papal States.
You seem like someone who should be on another site.
Introduction: Heresy [The Great Heresies]
The Great Heresies
John Calvin’s Worst Heresy: That Christ Suffered in Hell
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America Succumbs to Heresy
The Bishop Discovers Heresy?
From Orthodox to Heresy: The Secularizing of Catholic Universities
Progressivism/Liberalism is Heresy [Excellent read & reference]
Is heresy better than schism? [Ecumenical]
Modernism: The Modernist Heresy
THE GREAT HERESIES-THE MODERN PHASE
The Protestant Heresy
The Gospel According to Mary Magdalene
Americanism, Then and Now: Our Pet Heresy (encyclical of Pope Leo XIII)
Heresies then and now: ancient Christian heresies practiced in modern times
The Plain Truth About The Baptist Bride Heresy
Balthasar, Hell, and Heresy: An Exchange (is it compatable with the Catholic faith?)
Know Your Heresies
The Rev. John Piper: an interesting look at "heresy vs. schism"
Pietism as an Ecclesiological Heresy
Heresy
Arian Heresy Still Tempts, Says Cardinal Bertone (Mentions Pelagianism As Well)
Catholic Discussion] Church group stays faithful (to heresy!)
An overview of modern anti-Trinitarian heresies
Where heresy and dissent abound [Minnesota]
Gnostic Gospels - the heresy entitled "Gnosticism."
Christian mavericks find affirmation in ancient heresies
The So-Called ‘Gospel’ of Judas: Unmasking an Ancient Heresy
Benedict XVI Heresies and Errors
Donatism (Know your heresies)
The Heresy of Mohammed (Chapter 4, The Great Heresies)
Father & Son Catholic Writers Tag-Team Old & New Heresies
Thanks again!
This is all going off of memory, so I don’t remember the correct terms, and this could possibly be very, very wrong. So, please correct me if I’m wrong.
The Albigensians thought reproduction was evil, as was hinted on in the article when it mentioned that someone would not be confused with a Albigensian if they were married.
There were two classes of people- the “elites” and the “common” people (not the real terms.) The elites were like priests and never engaged in any sexual activity. The common Albigensians engaged in any kind of sexual activity as long as it could not result in pregnancy. They may have done much worse things than just have crazy theological beliefs and commit fornication and sodomy, but I am not sure.
It was said that there was a stark parallel between how the Albigensian movement appealed to people then and how the modern/left movement appeals to people now. There were three groups of people they both appeal to, and I think they might have been like this:
1) The “elite” Albigensians who deprived themselves of physical pleasure and were considered “elite” in their day are like today’s liberal elites who do things like become vegetarian.
2) The “common” people are just like the people today who want no sexual rules and want to indulge in their hedonistic pleasures.
3) The, for lack of a better term, overly-rational people were also attracted to the Albigensians sort of like the rational atheists on the left today.
This is all off the top of my head and may be totally wrong.
If so, I’d kindly ask any of you or anyone else to correct me.
Any errors the Albigensians may have made pale in comparison to the Catholic religion...And then, one would have to assume that all of the allegations against them by your religion are true...I don't...
As the article points out, the mass murders by the Catholic religion took place NOT for what the Albigensians believed, but by the fact that so many were rejecting the pope of Rome and there was serious fear that the Roman religion would come to be insignificant...
The Pharisees had Jesus Christ killed for going against orthodoxy didn’t they?
False brethren have always been among the church. We are told to teach, to reprove, to even mark and avoid. We are NOT told to kill them as the Roman Catholic did for centuries. The saint’s bloods will be upon their own hands. God will judge them accordingly. The Inquisitions are the most heinous and embarrassing events that I know of, done in the name of Christianity. We have liberty in Christ, even the liberty to be and do wrong. I will be judged by Jesus Christ not by a medieval bureaucratic institution in some backward lost-in-time citadel. The book of Galatians is a very good study on how people wanting to put other believers under some kind of bondage. Roman Catholicism is bondage.
WPaCon:
A common denominator of all Gnostic related heresies is the doctrine that “all matter is evil”. Thus, the Incarnation was a false and the Catholic Church for teaching that was, from the Cathars point of view, an agent of evil. Sacraments were evil because they used “Matter” [bread, wine, water, oil] and as you noted, Marriage was evil because it involved the sexual union of man and woman which. which involved the union of two evil things, the male and female body, which produced offspring, i.e. humans who are now trapped in a human body which results another evil body. Also, as you noted, food products like Milk, which of course was the result of a sexual union between say a Bull and a Cow or male and female goat, and food such as meat were also evil and Cathars were forbidden to eat them. So, yes, in the context of a 12th century Western Europe, which by that time was united in its orthdox Christian belief, a religous system proposed by the Cathars was seen as evil and a threat to the state and social order and a direct attack on the Catholic Church and Rome which of course did not deny the Incarnation, celebrated the sacraments of which marriage was among them.
While the Albingensian crusade did not start until 1209, after the murder of the Papal Legate [Peter of Castlenau], who was sent by the Pope to once again try to preach the orthodox faith to the Cathars and bring them back to unity of the Church, it should be noted [as Belloc notes] that going back to the writings of a young priest named Everwin who wrote to St. Benard of Claivaux in 1143 and all historians agree this is the first time in hisory we hear about the Cathars and by 1163, we know of written sermons being preached against the Cathars as evidenced by a priest named Eckbert of Schoau. Later, in 1207 we see a young Augustinian monk named Domenic, some Cistercians and a Bishop Diego of Spain began preaching against the Cathars trying to convert them back but after the murder of the Papal Legate, Pope Innocent III then allied himself with the French kings in the North and then the crusade began but in reality the crusades never by themselves won the Cathars over, because even the Catholic Kings aligned against the Cathars fought among themselves [Simon of Montfort vs. Raymond VI, who earlier had supported the Cathars] for who would control the Cathar region of France. Ultimately, it was not the war alone, but the preaching of preaching and life of the Domenicans and Francisans that ended the Cathar heresy.
Regards
The similarity of your language to the talking points of a radical leftist is striking.
We have liberty in Christ, even the liberty to be and do wrong....The book of Galatians is a very good study on how people wanting to put other believers under some kind of bondage.
One of my favorite passages in the NT is in the book of Galatians, specifically chapter 5, verses 13-26. Under the "works of the flesh," St. Paul has "sects" in his list. If one is honest, you'd have to admit that the strain of theology has caused the most proliferation of "sects" is Protestantism.
Earlier in that chapter, St. Paul addressed your point about "liberty": "For you, brethren, have been called unto liberty: only make not liberty an occasion to the flesh, but by charity of the spirit serve one another."
Roman Catholicism is bondage.
Catholicism is only the yoke Our Lord speaks of in Matthew 11.
There is nothing in losing a war and being oppressed that makes you either correct or virtuous. Often the victors and oppressors are correct and (relatively) virtuous. That was the case in WWII, and at the Battle of Chalons (losers=Huns) and Tours (losers=Muslim Moors).
I’m not sure what you’re talking about. The Albigensians were neither noble nor orthodox. But the Bible does tell the believers how to deal with heresies and heretics and killing them was not one of the proffered options.
Have I missed the point you were making?
‘Have I missed the point you were making?’
Since you have taken the viewpoint of the article, which is that this conflict was essentially a philosophical conflict between Christian scholars, yes you have.
The Crusade was essentially a civilizational war between the richest and most powerful nobles in Europe (the Counts of Toulouse and his vassal lords), and the centralizing power of the French King and his vassals in the North. It was exacerbated by the cultural differences between the more Roman southeast and the more Frankish north, and made interesting to the Church because of the heretical beliefs in the area of Toulouse.
The Church had been in the lead against all Christian heresies, including Arianism, Islam, and Albigensian-ism. The opposition to Albigensian-ism was of the same kind and the same reason as the conflict with Arianism and Islam.
You missed the verses where the Prophet commands us to kill unbelievers?
Oh wait...that was the Koran.
Hey, if you can argue on the merits of my point, just concede. Don’t try to change the subject.
You do know that the quote is a fiction, right?
Yet the reason for the fiction is that the ferocity of the war shocked Albi and Christian alike. Summoning Germans and Spaniards to squash a French heresy was well, short-sighted.
I’m not sure your characterization of the Paulicians is fair. The main problem is the influence of the Manicheans, a pagan cult which held that YHWH was an evil, lesser god who had rebelled against Lucifer by creating the physical world. (Is it fair to call that Satanism?) The Manicheans figured man wasn’t up to avoiding carnal pleasures, so they tolerated recreational sex... just as long as you didn’t procreate. So, yes, sodomy tended to replace procreative sex among the Manicheans. This also possibly accounts for the accumulation of wealth, akin to the way San Francisco and Philadelphia prefer gays to families.
The Manicheans were hardly about free thought! Their disciples frequently starved themselves to death, they became so fearful of “carnality.” My guess is was emotional illness: they got anally raped enough, regarded it, of course, as a negative and profoundly evil experience, then got told that it was spiritually harmful, but no worse than eating. That can kind of mess with someone’s mind.
And probably explains why some of the French were pleading to Rome for a crusade.
Really Iscool?
You’re down with a religion that finds sexual promiscuity OK, as long as it’s anal and not procreative?
Well, to be fair, they said it was not exactly OK. Just not as bad as eating.
So you’ve got all the breadwinners literally treated as gods, and the mothers treated like whores. And you tell the breadwinners that anal sex is OK. How often do you think the women were consenting to being sodomized just for something to eat?
Is that a society you like? One where women are routinely sodomized by virtual strangers, and treated as demonic seductresses if they have babies? You think that’s better than the Catholic church?
All these Albigensian “saints” who “heroically” starved themselves rather than being “contaminated” by food. Ya think maybe one or two of them were saying to themsleves, “well, it beats having my rectum torn apart by anal sex”?
Let’s see, those Albigensians figured:
* Sodomy is fine, but motherhood is evil.
* Being deathly skinny is fabulous
* Meat is murder
* The only true evil in the world is orthodox Christianity.
* God was evil to have created mankind.
Who does THIS sound like to you?
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