Niceness Will Destroy Us

I do not remember exactly, but I think it was St. Cyprian who once advanced towards Bishop Arius, who was speaking, and knocked him down with a punch. You got it right: a Bishop went to another Bishop and knocked him down.

I do not remember exactly who the man was. What I remember is that now one is a Saint, and the other a heretic. Mind, I do not doubt Arius would have never, ever knocked down the man with a punch. Heretics can be so frightfully nice, you know…

“Mundabor, do you need to write such strong words?” Yes, I do. I think it is not only fitting, but necessary.

“But how is this going to help our cause?” By forcing people to realise the gravity of the current situation; a task for which nice words are proving vastly inadequate.

“You go on the wrong side yourself if you are insulting!”. No, I don’t. Cyprian (or whoever he was) was still right, and Arius was still wrong.

I do not want to die knowing that in what is certainly the gravest crisis of the Church in at least 700 years I did not throw a honest punch here and there, lest my neighbours think me impolite. I assure you I am able of using the politest language, and do not go around calling people “whore” as a daily routine.

But I will call a whore a whore. Particularly so, when this can help people to see the trade they are devoting themselves to. I will not trespass into illegal territory, and will always make clear from the context that the criticism is a religious and political one. But I will call whoring, whoring. Things have come to a point, that I am astonished the entire Catholic world is not up in arms. Instead, I keep reading the usual polite criticism about this or that Cardinal, or the usual Pope, once again somewhat unguarded in their words, and perhaps a tad imprudent; which can be, you know, rather confusing at times…

Niceness will kill us. Niceness is what allows the Francis, Marx and Kasper to prosper. Niceness will pollute the very core of the Church, without sparing even the Sacraments, unless we wake up already.

You, dear reader, do not have to read me. If my writing style does not suit you, so be it. Friends as before. No problem at all.

But I will write this blog in the same spirit – wretched sinner as I am – in which the good and saintly man mentioned above punched Arius; certainly knowing that a bishop enjoys personal inviolability, but simply unable to let an extraordinary situation pass without giving an extraordinary answer to it.

Whenever I read the latest rubbish of the Bishop of Rome I can’t avoid thinking that having his old, sorry ass kicked from St Peter to Termini train station would do a lot of good to him. Heck, it might even save his soul!

“...Early in the Fourth Century, there was a terrible heresy in the Church put forth by a very persuasive man named Arius. Arius contended that Christ was not fully divine, but a creature, created by the Father. This heresy was threatening to schism the Church. (Back then everyone understood the truth that any schism whatsoever was totally and completely evil and thus unacceptable – the Church is ONE. Christ has ONE Bride, not a harem. There is ONE Truth. Not multiple “”truths””. As soon as you start saying that there are ”multiple truths”, what you have done is denied Truth Itself, of which there is only ONE.)

So, the First Council of Nicea was called in ARSH 325 to hash this out and put the Arian heresy down once and for all. Arius was at the Council, of course, and was called upon to defend his position on the inferiority of Christ. Being a bishop, Nikolaos of Myra (in present-day Turkey) was naturally in attendance. Arius’ nonsensical, destructive and insulting lying contentions about Our Lord became too much for Bishop Nikolaos, who stood up and proceeded to haul off and go all Manny Pacquiao on Arius with a left jab directly to Arius’ piehole. (See image above.)

Everyone was alarmed by Bishop Nikolaos’ righteous beatdown of Arius, and he was immediately summarily stripped of his episcopacy. In those days, the two things that designated a man a Christian bishop were a personal copy of the Gospels and a pallium, which is like a stole. Now you may taken aback by the “personal copy of the Gospels” thing. Well, of course! How could a bishop NOT have the Gospels? But you must remember that the printing press wasn’t invented until ARSH 1439. Before that, if you wanted a book, it had to be written out BY HAND. And what were you going to write on? Try vellum. Every piece of vellum had to be harvested from an animal and made. So you see, for a man to have a personal copy of any written text was a HUGE, and frankly EXPENSIVE, deal. So, poor Nikolaos was stripped of his Gospel and his pallium AND thrown in the hoosegow.

Now here is where it gets really good.

While Nikolaos was in the clink, he received a visit from both Our Lord and the Virgin Mary. Our Lord asked Nikolaos, “”Why are you here?”” And Nikolaos replied, “”Because I love You, my Lord and my God.”” At this, Jesus then presented Nikolaos with his copy of the Gospels, and Mary put his pallium back on him, thus restoring his rank as a bishop. When Nikolaos was discovered sitting calmly in his cell, still under guard, with his Gospel and his pallium, which the other bishops had locked away themselves far from Niklaos’ prison cell, Nikolaos was released, welcomed back by his brother bishops, and rejoined the Council. The heresy of Arianism was struck down once and for all, and the Nicene Creed (which we still recite at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass today) was authored...”

http://www.barnhardt.biz/2014/12/06/starting-friday-off-right-3/

Thank you for correcting the blogger's error in misidentifying the saintly bishop who slugged the heresiarch Arius at the First Ecumenical Council.

Another correction is in order: Arius was never a bishop. He was a presbyter of the Patriarchate of Alexandria.

And I must make a historical correction to your remarks about St. Nicholas's copy of the Gospels: While it is true that books were hand-copied before Gutenberg's invention of movable type, the extra cost of needing to make books on vellum was not imposed on European literacy until the Muslim conquest of Egypt. Before then, there was a brisk trade in papyrus throughout the Mediterranean.

At least the urban parts of the Roman Empire was fully literate, as was even the back-country in a good part of Asia Minor, and it was not only the clergy, but the clergy and many financially-well-off Christian lay households who would have had copies of the Gospels, copied out on papyrus, though vellum Gospels did exist as luxuries, or perhaps more durable copies attached to episcopal see, monasteries or wealthy parishes. General literacy survived the collapse of the Empire in the West, so that both Merovingian France and Visigothic Spain were literate societies. (We have not only liturgical books, but administrative documents, shopping lists, and the like from both, all written on papyrus.)

For discussion of the relationship between the collapse of literacy in Western Europe -- falsely attributed to the Latin church by protestants and "Enlightenment" biens pensants -- and the Muslim conquests, I refer you to Henri Pirenne's posthumous Mohammed and Charlemagne and Emmett Scott's book discussing Pirenne's thesis in light of more recent archeological evidence.

John 2:

12 After this he went down to Capernaum, he, and his mother, and his brethren, and his disciples: and they continued there not many days. 13 And the Jews' passover was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 14 And found in the temple those that sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the changers of money sitting: 15 And when he had made a scourge of small cords, he drove them all out of the temple, and the sheep, and the oxen; and poured out the changers' money, and overthrew the tables; 16 And said unto them that sold doves, Take these things hence; make not my Father's house an house of merchandise. 17 And his disciples remembered that it was written, The zeal of thine house hath eaten me up. 18 Then answered the Jews and said unto him, What sign shewest thou unto us, seeing that thou doest these things? 19 Jesus answered and said unto them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.

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