Posted on 09/02/2013 9:07:37 AM PDT by bkaycee
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What we now call popes were originally bishops of Rome (one bishop among brother bishops from other cities). Then they became popes, with power over the entire Church. Then they became so powerful that they were able to depose kings and emperors. They became so powerful that they were able to force kings to use their secular might to enforce the Inquisition, which was conducted by Catholic priests and monks. In 1870, the Pope was declared to be infallible. The process of increasing papal power was influenced by forged documents which changed people’s perception of the history of the papacy and of the Church.
I’m just going to briefly summarize some information about these forgeries. At the end of this paper is a link to an on-line article which gives detailed historical information.
One of the most famous forgeries is the “Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals,” which were written around 845 A.D. (They are also known as the “False Decretals”.) They consist of 115 documents which were supposedly written by early popes. [Note 1]
The “Catholic Encyclopedia” admits that these are forgeries. It says that the purpose of these forged documents was to enable the Church to be independent of secular power, and to prevent the laity from ruling the Church. [Note 2 gives the address of an on-line article.] In other words, their purpose was to increase the power of the Pope and the Catholic Church.
In addition to documents which were total forgeries, genuine documents were altered. One hundred twenty-five genuine documents had forged material added to them, which increased the power of the Pope. Many early documents were changed to say the opposite of what they had originally said. [Note 3]
One of the forgeries is a letter which was falsely attributed to Saint Ambrose. It said that if a person does not agree with the Holy See, then he or she is a heretic. [Note 4] This is an example of how papal power was promoted by fraudulently claiming the authority of highly respected Early Fathers.
Another famous forgery from the ninth century was “The Donation of Constantine”. It claimed that Emperor Constantine gave the western provinces of the Roman Empire to the Bishop of Rome. The Pope used it to claim authority in secular matters. [Note 5]
When Greek Christians tried to discuss issues with the Church in Rome, the popes often used forged documents to back their claims. This happened so frequently that for 700 years the Greeks referred to Rome as “the home of forgeries”. [Note 6]
For three hundred years, the “Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals” and other forgeries were used by Roman Popes to claim authority over the Church in the East. The Patriarch of Constantinople rejected these false claims of primacy. This resulted in the separation of the Orthodox Church from the Roman Catholic Church. [Note 7 gives addresses of on-line articles.]
In the middle of the twelfth century, a monk named Gratian wrote the “Decretum,” which became the basis for Canon Law (the legal system for running the Roman Catholic Church). It contained numerous quotations from forged documents. Gratian drew many of his conclusions from those quotations. Gratian quoted 324 passages which were supposedly written by popes of the first four centuries. Of those passages, only eleven are genuine. The other 313 quotations are forgeries. [Note 8]
In the thirteenth century, Thomas Aquinas wrote the “Summa Theologica” and numerous other works. His writings are the foundation for scholastic theology. Aquinas used Gratian’s “Decretum” for quotations from church fathers and early popes. [Note 9] Aquinas also used forged documents which he thought were genuine. [Note 10]
The importance of Thomas Aquinas’ theology can be seen in the encyclical of Pope Pius X on the priesthood. In 1906, Pius said that in their study of philosophy, theology, and Scripture, men studying for the priesthood should follow the directions given by the popes and the teaching of Thomas Aquinas. [This papal encyclical is available on-line. Note 11 gives addresses.]
William Webster is the author of “The Church of Rome at the Bar of History”. (I recommend this book.) His web site has an article entitled “Forgeries and the Papacy: The Historical Influence and Use of Forgeries in Promotion of the Doctrine of the Papacy”. The article gives detailed information about the “Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals” and other forged documents, showing their influence on the papacy and on the Catholic Church. Four quotations from his article are below. (They are used by permission.)
“In the middle of the ninth century, a radical change began in the Western Church, which dramatically altered the Constitution of the Church, and laid the ground work for the full development of the papacy. The papacy could never have emerged without a fundamental restructuring of the Constitution of the Church and of men’s perceptions of the history of that Constitution. As long as the true facts of Church history were well known, it would serve as a buffer against any unlawful ambitions. However, in the 9th century, a literary forgery occurred which completely revolutionized the ancient government of the Church in the West. This forgery is known as the “Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals,” written around 845 A.D. The “Decretals” are a complete fabrication of Church history. They set forth precedents for the exercise of sovereign authority of the popes over the universal Church prior to the fourth century and make it appear that the popes had always exercised sovereign dominion and had ultimate authority even over Church Councils.”
“The historical facts reveal that the papacy was never a reality as far as the universal Church is concerned. There are many eminent Roman Catholic historians who have testified to that fact as well as to the importance of the forgeries, especially those of “Pseudo-Isidore”. One such historian is Johann Joseph Ignaz von Dollinger. He was the most renowned Roman Catholic historian of the last century, who taught Church history for 47 years as a Roman Catholic.” [Webster quotes extensitely from Dollinger.]
“In addition to the “Pseudo Isidorian Decretals” there were other forgeries which were successfully used for the promotion of the doctrine of papal primacy. One famous instance is that of Thomas Aquinas. In 1264 A.D. Thomas authored a work entitled ‘Against the Errors of the Greeks’. This work deals with the issues of theological debate between the Greek and Roman Churches in that day on such subjects as the Trinity, the Procession of the Holy Spirit, Purgatory and the Papacy. In his defense of the papacy Thomas bases practically his entire argument on forged quotations of Church fathers…. These spurious quotations had enormous influence on many Western theologians in succeeding centuries.”
“The authority claims of Roman Catholicism ultimately devolve upon the institution of the papacy. The papacy is the center and source from which all authority flows for Roman Catholicism. Rome has long claimed that this institution was established by Christ and has been in force in the Church from the very beginning. But the historical record gives a very different picture. This institution was promoted primarily through the falsification of historical fact through the extensive use of forgeries as Thomas Aquinas’ apologetic for the papacy demonstrates. Forgery is its foundation.”
I strongly encourage you to read William Webster’s article. It has an abundance of valuable historical information. The address of the article is:
http://www.christiantruth.com/forgeries.html
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NOTES
[1] William Webster, “The Church of Rome at the Bar of History” (Carlisle, PA: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1995), pages 62-63. Webster is a former Catholic.
Peter de Rosa, “Vicars of Christ” (Dublin, Ireland: Poolbeg Press, 1988, 2000), pages 58-61, 174, 208. De Rosa is a Catholic, and a former Catholic priest. He was able to do historical research in the Vatican Archives.
Paul Johnson, “A History of Christianity” (New York: A Touchstone Book, Simon & Schuster, 1976, 1995), page 195. Johnson is a Catholic and a prominent historian.
[2] “Benedict Levita” in the “Catholic Encyclopedia”. [Benedict Levita is the pseudonym of the author of the “Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals”.]
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02466a.htm
[3] De Rosa, page 59.
[4] De Rosa, page 166.
[5] Johnson, pages 170-172.
[6] De Rosa, page 59.
[7] Orthodox Christian Information Center, “The False Decretals of Isidore”. An excerpt from “The Papacy” by Abbee Guette. The author was a devout Catholic and a historian. As a result of his historical research about the papacy, he eventually joined the Orthodox Church.
http://www.orthodoxinfo.com/inquirers/decretals.htm
“The Great Schism of 1054”. This is a sermon given at the Russian Orthodox Cathedral of St. John the Baptist,in Washington, D.C.
http://www.stjohndc.org/Homilies/9606a.htm
[8] Webster, pages 62-63. De Rosa, page 60.
[9] Webster, page 63. De Rosa, page 60.
[10] William Webster, “Forgeries and the papacy: The Historical Influence and Use of Forgeries in Promotion of the Doctrine of the Papacy”. This gives detailed accounts of Aquinas’ use of forged documents which he wrongly believed to be genuine.
http://www.christiantruth.com/forgeries.html
[11] Pius X, “Pieni l’animo” (“On the Clergy in Italy”), July 28, 1906. (See paragraph 6.)
http://www.ewtn.com/library/ENCYC/P10CLR.HTM
Count me in as well.
Well, I think that now includes every Protestant FReeper here.
LOLOL!!!!
There were many, many Jewish texts available in the first century, which were not later included by the Rabbis. The Rabbis finally settled on the general standard that the texts had to be in the Hebrew language. But though the Pharisees were their precurors, we do not know exactly which books the Pharissees scholars commented. The Talmud tradition developed after the final desecration of Jerusalem. The three fold division of law, prophets and wisdom is too vague to justify your claim that the Jews of Palestine used the equivalent of what we call the Old Testament today. Further, we do not know what the role of Jewish books in Greeks played in the Judaea of Jesus’ time. The simple fact that we call Our Lord by the Greek form of his name, that the New Testament is written in Greeks us how much variation in the Judaism of that time.
Jesus is “in heaven?” Is he there physically as well as spiritually?
I agree with you metmom and boatbums. I can't fault the Orthodox church. Catholics would like to say they haven't changed but indeed they have. Although I disagree with the Orthodox view, they certainly can't be faulted for consistency.
I am shocked that a Catholic would ask that question...
Of course Jesus is in heaven...He is not at the Vatican...
What do you mean by “heaven.”?
How many passages would you like me to post to answer that question?
Ephesians 1:15-21 For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come.
Hebrews 8:1-4 Now the point in what we are saying is this: we have such a high priest, one who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven, a minister in the holy places, in the true tent that the Lord set up, not man. For every high priest is appointed to offer gifts and sacrifices; thus it is necessary for this priest also to have something to offer. Now if he were on earth, he would not be a priest at all, since there are priests who offer gifts according to the law.
Hebrews 9:24-26 For Christ has entered, not into holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf. Nor was it to offer himself repeatedly, as the high priest enters the holy places every year with blood not his own, for then he would have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.
Hebrews 10:12-13 But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet.
More?
No, they think He's in a wafer in a chalice on an altar in their churches waiting to be re-sacrificed.
Do you think that maybe some nefarious organization printed their Bibles with disappearing ink? I’m beginning to believe just that. Or maybe they’re printed upside down and backward. SOMETHING is keeping these poor people from reading God’s Word...
What do you mean by the word “heaven?”
How many ways can one misstate Catholic doctrine? You even get a proposition wrong. Have you ever bothered to crack a Catholic Catechism?
Ask God. It’s HIS word.
All the words are his, you have an obligation to use them correctly,
You are talking to the wrong guy - I dispute the very idea of canon as being a Roman invention. And the Spirit tells me what He will.
The Spirit always speaks through a human agent. Someone wrote these books. Someone else decided they were inspired. The Bible is a product of the Holy Tradition, which is the Holy Spirit working through the church at large. The role of the papacy in this has been a minor one, that of a custodian.
Well said. Rome has spoken, that does not settle it.
With all due respect, RobbyS, you really need to expand your knowledge base. Even a cursury search into the history of the Old Testament (the Law and the Prophets) would reveal that even secular historians recognized the estabished Jewish sacred writings. One of them is:
We have but twenty-two [books] containing the history of all time, books that are justly believed in; and of these, five are the books of Moses, which comprise the law and earliest traditions from the creation of mankind down to his death. From the death of Moses to the reign of Artaxerxes, King of Persia, the successor of Xerxes, the prophets who succeeded Moses wrote the history of the events that occurred in their own time, in thirteen books. The remaining four documents comprise hymns to God and practical precepts to men (William Whiston, trans., Flavius Josephus against Apion, Vol. I, in Josephus, Complete Works, Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1960, p. 8).
What We Learn From Josephus
There are at least four important things can be derived from this statement of Josephus.
1.Josephus includes the same three divisions of the Hebrew Scripture, as had the Prologue to Ecclesiasticus and Philo.
2.He limits the number of canonical books in these three divisions to twenty-two. This would be the same as the current twenty-four – Ruth was attached to Judges, and Lamentation attached to Jeremiah.
3.He says there has been no more authoritative writings since the reign of Artaxerxes, son of Xerxes (464-424 B.C.). This is the same time of Malachi – the last book in the Old Testament.
We know that Artaxerxes ruled for forty years. Ezra came to Jerusalem in the seventh year of his rule. The Bible says:
Ezra arrived in Jerusalem in the fifth month of the seventh year of the king (Ezra 7:8).
Nehemiah came in his twentieth year:
In the month of Nisan in the twentieth year of King Artaxerxes, when wine was brought for him, I took the wine and gave it to the king. I had not been sad in his presence before (Nehemiah 2:1).
Therefore the last canonical books were composed in this period.
4.Between the time of Malachi and Josephus’ writing (425 B.C. to A.D. 90) no additional material were added to the canon of Scripture. Consequently there was the notion of a long period of time without a divinely authoritative Word from God.
The People Were Willing To Die For The Scripture
Josephus also declared the willingness of the Jewish people to die for their sacred writings:
And how firmly we have given credit to those books of our own nation is evident by what we do; for during so many ages as have already passed, no one has been so bold as either to add anything to them or take anything from them, or to make any change in them; but it becomes natural to all Jews, immediately and from their very birth, to esteem those books to contain divine doctrines, and to persist in them, and, if occasion be, willing to die for them. For it is no new thing for our captives, many of them in numbers, and frequently in time, to be seen to endure racks and deaths of all kinds upon the theatres, that they may not be obliged to say one word against our laws, and the records that contain them (Josephus, Ibid. p. 609).
Josephus Was Aware Of Other Writings Apart From The Hebrew Scriptures
Josephus also wrote concerning books that were composed after the completion of the sacred books.
From Artaxerxes to our times a complete history has been written, but has not been deemed worthy of equal credit, with the earlier records, because of the failure of the exact succession of the prophets (Against Apion 1:41)
From this statement we learn that other writings had been composed after the completion of the Old Testament. However these books were not considered to be divinely authoritative as was the Scripture. There had been no authoritative Word from the Lord after Malachi.
The views of Josephus would have represented those of Palestinian Judaism in the first century. http://blogs.blueletterbible.org/blb/2012/05/29/josephus-historical-evidence-of-the-old-testament-canon/
TRUE... But they are invariably the means used to defend your sacred tradition. In every argument, comes the incessant role of what Irenaeus said, or what Augustine said, or what Aquinas said - and here we find that what they said is leaning upon stuff made of whole cloth. In a nut shell, that which y'all cannot defend within the Scriptures is needfully defended in your history. There is a reason why if one finds leaven, one must throw out the whole lump.
And while I am not accusing you here, it is interesting to me that your focus is on Gratian in our discussion... Holding him out with one hand, while the equally damaged Aquinas is pushed off center stage... And I would reiterate once again, that these forgeries (while powerful, and oft pointed to) are by no means the limit of this discussion.
AND he finally realized where the error was, declared it himself, and did what he could to make it right.
There's your problem right there.
Once again, your distress is triggered by a category error. If some element of Sacred Tradition or a de Fide dogma were really and truly in error --- say, the authenticity of the Four Gospels, the canon of Scripture, the Christology expressed in the Nicene Creed, the foundations of Holy Orders, the essential elements of the Liturgy --- if these were wrong, then the Catholic Church would be shown to be pervasively and irredeemably false.
But that is in fact the problem - Since y'all rely upon a demonstrably faulty history, that which you say we must stand upon cannot be proven. Shoot, the very proofs y'all use to bolster your authority are nothing but a house of cards... And where y'all go against the written Word, or wrest things out of it, your proofs are almost completely without pedigree... That pedigree being the evidence of your authority, I find therein no reason to cede to y'all at all.
Do you understand that?
Yes I do, and I have all along... And again, we are speaking of much more than these forgeries which have been singled out, and certainly more than Gratian.
The succession stands, even if we remove the forgeries as we must, and sink them in the deep blue sea. You may apply the same principles that you would apply to Scriptural genealogies: unexplained lacunae do not make the whole series false.
I reject that outright. Your authority derives from one Apostle laying hands upon the next, with no other ancillary proofs possible in evidence. Ergo, if even one gap is discovered, the pedigree is not guaranteed, and one then relies upon faith rather than an evidential claim. Real Apostolic authority comes with power, and that power has been lacking all along, so the proof, lying solely in patriarchy, must necessarily be air tight.
[...] in doing so have made a grand confusion of the spaghetti pot. [...] I am convinced by my own evaluation of evidence, that the Church, in her dogmas, has her spaghetti straight.
Your kind assurances aside, I too have wandered far seeking evidence, not only in your religion, but nearly in every religion - and I do not see what you do.
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