Posted on 10/06/2003 8:48:07 PM PDT by narses
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From the mailbag:
EUCHARIST SEEN AS PASSOVER MARK THAT PROTECTS AGAINST 'NUMBER' OF THE BEAST
The idea that numbers carry special significance is of course known from the Bible. We're not talking about Bible "codes." We're speaking of outright numbers. Some point to "seven" as standing for perfection.
This was the belief of ancient Jews. In Hebrew, the word seven is "Sheba," which represents something full and complete. In Genesis 21, there are seven lambs as witness to God's oath with Abraham. And then there is the sign of incompleteness -- six, and especially 666, which is represented in the Apocalypse of John as the sign of the "beast" (Revelation 13:18).
In short, seven is heavenly and six often stands for evil. Don't we all get the willies when we see those three digits together? Road signs have been changed and so have telephone exchanges because of it.
But there is a counter to it, and as viewer Jeffrey S. Alpha, an architect in New Orleans, points out, it comes, coincidentally, in John 6:66 (according to the headings of the Protestant bibles). The reason he uses Protestant bibles is to indicate the importance of the Eucharist.
For interestingly enough it is in that chapter of John that Christ says His "flesh is food indeed, and My Blood drink indeed. He who eats My Flesh and drinks My Blood abides in Me, and I in him."
But in the following verses, especially 66, this offer is rejected by a good number who had been following Him. "From that time many of His disciples went back and walked with Him no more," it says.
"As a convert to Catholicism, I get very tired of the Old Protestant scripted version of the Book of Revelation so I decided to find out what the early fathers said, you know, the guys that hung out with John who wrote the apocalypse?" writes Jeffrey. "To sum up, it appears very clear that the mark of the beast is the rejection of the real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. God states in Exodus 12 and 13 twice that the Passover Meal is a sign in your hand and forehead every time you eat this meal. The Eucharist is the perfection of this meal as stated throughout the Gospels."
The anti-christ -- the spirit of anti-christ -- is countered every time we take Communion. We are protected!
"The Bible speaks of marks on people in several places," notes Alpha. "In Genesis, God puts a mark on Cain so that no man will kill him. In Revelation, John states that the 'mark' will be the beast name or the number of his name and the number is 666.
In Revelation, angels must wait to have all of the 144,000 received a mark on their foreheads."
Clearly, John is relating the mark of the beast in the hand and the forehead to the Passover meal where when one ate the Passover meal, it was a sign in the head and forehead. Thus we see how important it is to mark and seal ourselves with Christ. The Sign of the Cross also comes into play. This too protects us, especially when used with Holy Water.
And then there are those numbers again. "John is speaking of the Eucharist, instituted by Christ at the Passover meal," says Alpha. "John 6:30-67 speaks of Christ being the bread from Heaven 12 times and states 7 times if you do not eat His body and drink His blood you will not have eternal life."
Return to home page www.spiritdaily.com
So much for "the Bible Alone" I guess.
Anyway, it is a good idea to look at history, true history. For example, the Crusades weren't an attack on Mohammedans, they were a response to centuries of Mohammedan aggression however difficult that may be to believe. Nevertheless, there were atrocities during the Crusades, most notably the sack of Constantinople, as there are in all wars.
"The Inquisitions" covers a wide range of territory, ranging from the suppression of the Catharists to the Spanish Inquisition which was a quasi-governmental action. Regardless, the BBC has done some groundbreaking work in historical research recently regarding the Spanish Inquisition. Initially, the producers of the series set out to expose the abuses of the Church. What they found instead was the propagation of a black legend which dates back to the conflicts between the British and Spanish. What their research revealed was that a total of 3,000 people were executed over the course of several centuries and that those accused of heresy sought out ecclesiastical tribunals rather than State courts because they believed that they would receive a fairer .
Moreover, Church tribunals are not considered infallible, and the Church never executed a single heretic although heretics were turned over to the state.
You owe it to yourself to learn the other side of the story.
So it was good that they stopped following Jesus? Why didn't Jesus say, "hey guys, wait! I didn't mean that!" Instead, Jesus lets them walk away. Does Jesus then explain to his Apostles that he was speaking figuratively? No. He asks, "Will you leave me too?" Do the Apostles say, "oh no, we know you were speaking figuratively"? No. They're silent. Only Peter says, "Where else can we go?" Peter simply trusts Jesus difficult teaching because of its source, Jesus.
You trust the Protestants who started the black legend? Why? On the other hand, the Bible calls the Church the "pillar and foundation of truth" (1 Tim 3:15) Sounds like a trustworthy source to me.
Anyway, that rules out the Bible and the Church. What about the normally anti-Catholic BBC?
Spanish Inquisition does not live up to reputation of injusticeSince the epiphany of last September, we have heard countless comparisons between the murders by militant Mohammedans and various epochs of Western history, in a bizarre, masochistic, self-condemning attempt to extenuate the current jihad movement. Dominating the examples of a Western conduit for bloodthirsty religious fervor similar to that of the Osama Movement has been the Spanish Inquisition. Unfortunately for our media and this self-deprecating sequela, examination of the Spanish Inquisition reveals it to be none of the things it is alleged to be, but to be in fact the most just tribunal of its time.
The very word “Inquisition” (which actually comes from the verb ‘to inquire’) conjures up morbid notions of torture, lynch mobs, and oppressive totalitarian men in brown robes carrying out sadistic punishments for no proven cause. This is the image taught and depicted as an apodictic truth by mainstream society. Modern scholars, and a recent BBC expose, have found the truth to be quite to the contrary.
One must first realize why the Spanish Inquisition was founded. At the time (late 15th century), Spain was under attack by, believe it or not, Turkish Muslims set on their own jihad – as it turns out the Iberian Peninsula was also infringing on Muslim Holy Ground. False conversions to Christianity to avoid suspicion were common – producing converts who would later clandestinely aid their invading cohorts. The uprooting of these bogus conversions in an attempt to halt the invading Turks was the initial aim of the Spanish Inquisition.
Within this and all later purposes, the only persons the Spanish Inquisition had jurisdiction over were self-proclaimed Christians. Contrary to popular belief, the Inquisition could not, nor did, prosecute anyone for being Jewish or Islamic. In fact, one way to avoid the trial or punishment by the Inquisition was simply to say that you were not a Christian. One could believe whatever he or she cared to, as long as the person did not claim to be Christian.
A common vision of the Inquisition is a mob of ignoble churls throwing accusations at some poor widow for being a witch, as portrayed by Monty Python. William Thomas Walsh describes the purpose of the Inquisition as “…a judicial instrument of conformity, which would eliminate the caprice, the anger, and the misinformation of the mob.” This view as a stabilizing effect seems more founded, since the Inquisitors, who as Alphonsus Duran points outs “were university lawyers and not even always priests,” claimed that witchcraft was a figment of the imagination. No one could be tried or burnt for witchcraft under the Spanish Inquisition, however there were harsh punishments for false accusation. In contrast, as the BBC points out: in the 350 years of the Spanish Inquisition, only between 3,000 and 5,000 people were killed, while at the same time the rest of Europe burnt 150,000 women for witchcraft alone.
Some of the information used by the BBC came from the annals of the Catholic Church, which kept in-depth internal records of each case. Since these were internal, and hence secret (until recently), their veracity is held in high regard, as forgery would gain nothing.
These records give startling enlightenment with regards to the practice of torture, which was universal in the contemporary courts of Europe. Professor Stephen Haliczer of Northern University of Illinois found that the Spanish Inquisition used torture in only 2 percent of more than 7,000 cases studied, and never for more than 15 minutes. Less than 1 percent were tortured more than once, and he found no evidence that anyone was ever tortured more than twice. This during a time when damaging shrubs in a common garden was an offence punishable by death in England.
The dungeon-like, filthy jails of the Inquisition shown in movies such as “Man of La Mancha” are another fabricated slur against the Inquisition. Prof. Haliczer claims the Inquisition’s jails were superior to all other jails in Spain, and notes, “I found instances of prisoners in secular criminal courts blaspheming in order to get into the Inquisition prison.” This is a far cry from the Neanderthal brutality and insane religious fanaticism being alluded to by the media, let alone being analogous to Bin Laden, the Taliban and the Palestinian terror groups.
So if the Inquisition did not just go from town to town executing anyone accused of heresy, how did it operate? Here is the account given in Alphonsus Duran’s book “Why Apologize for the Spanish Inquisition,” with information provided by the BBC documentary: Upon coming into a district, the Inquisitors would announce a “period of grace.” During this time, anyone accused could freely repent, whereupon a penance would be given and the offender forgiven. After this the accused would appear before the court. At this time he would be given the incredible privilege of writing a list of all his enemies who might want to commit calumny against him, whose testimony would automatically be thrown out. At this point the trial would take place guided by strict procedures which were constantly reviewed and revised by the hierarchy. The defendant could seek the assistance of lawyers. A conviction needed the agreement of at least two witnesses (our courts only require one), and a judge thought to be biased could be rejected by the accused. If convicted, there were multiple levels of appeal available to the accused.
This strict and just method defies our inherited notions of the Spanish Inquisition, but the statistics collaborate this. The BBC research shows that more men and women were executed by the guillotine of the French Revolution in one day than by the Spanish Inquisition during the entire 16th century. In the vast majority of cases, an Inquisition ended in absolution, penance, or a warning – not an execution.
With the chimera of the monolithic, nefarious Spanish Inquisition now debunked, one might still raise the question as to whether it is acceptable to punish, and in particular execute, in the name of God at all; even when done in this comparatively just and benevolent manner.
Is it justifiable to kill for the good of a society or an institution (for a church is an institution, divinely ordered or not)? Our own penal code says yes. Timothy McVeigh can attest to that. If the institution is a church instead of a state, heresy becomes equivalent to treason. American law holds execution as the standard punishment for treason, so the “malodorous” and “fanatical” Inquisitors can not be vilified by our own standards. Would we be better off if Bin Laden and company had been sent to a Muslim Inquisition and made to recant or die, stopping him before he spread his evil ideology? The U.S. response in Afghanistan seems to allude to such a sentiment, making the pathos of the Inquisition more similar to our War on Terror than to the attack on America.
He justifies the MURDER of heretics. Too bad he doesn't realize that Bin Laden & company, much like the early church, has justified the murder of those outside the "right faith", all in the name of their God. It's a real eye-opener to see that some Christians today, like Mull, justify such evil.
Mull writes: "Would we be better off if Bin Laden and company had been sent to a Muslim Inquisition and made to recant or die, stopping him before he spread his evil ideology? "
HUH??? First of all he isn't even comparing apples to apples. Secondly, it's the extreme Muslim fundamentalist, hell bent on converting the world to Islam who acts as the Inquisitor. The infidels, or heretics, who don't/can't accept Islam/Christianity deserve to die. Too bad Mull is unable to see the similarity of mindset between those who perpetrated the Inquisitions, and Bin Laden & comapny.
Also, you should have highlighted this paragraph out of Mull's piece:
"Some of the information used by the BBC came from the annals of the Catholic Church, which kept in-depth internal records of each case. Since these were internal, and hence secret (until recently), their veracity is held in high regard, as forgery would gain nothing. "
"...their veracity is held in high regard, as forgery would gain nothing." HAHAHAHAHA...is he serious!?
Nah, the church would never cover up evil now, would she?
Nope. The church wouldn't cover up anything. (cough, cough)
I like this section from canon 3 of the fourth lateran council
If he refuses to make satisfaction within a year, let the matter be made known to the supreme pontiff, that he may declare the ruler's vassals absolved from their allegiance and may offer the territory to be ruled lay Catholics, who on the extermination of the heretics may possess it without hindrance and preserve it in the purity of faith; the right, however, of the chief ruler is to be respected as long as he offers no obstacle in this matter and permits freedom of action. The same law is to be observed in regard to those who have no chief rulers (that is, are independent). Catholics who have girded themselves with the cross for the extermination of the heretics, shall enjoy the indulgences and privileges granted to those who go in defense of the Holy Land. (found in canon 3)
Then there this from the same link as above:
[Note by Schroeder: In 581 the Synod of Macon enacted in canon 14 that from Thursday in Holy Week until Easter Sunday, .Jews may not in accordance with a decision of King Childebert appear in the streets and in public places. Mansi, IX, 934; Hefele-Leclercq, 111, 204. In 1227 the Synod of Narbonne in canon 3 ruled: "That Jews may be distinguished from others, we decree and emphatically command that in the center of the breast (of their garments) they shall wear an oval badge, the measure of one finger in width and one half a palm in height. We forbid them moreover, to work publicly on Sundays and on festivals. And lest they scandalize Christians or be scandalized by Christians, we wish and ordain that during Holy Week they shall not leave their houses at all except in case of urgent necessity, and the prelates shall during that week especially have them guarded from vexation by the Christians." Mansi, XXIII, 22; Hefele-Leclercq V 1453. Many decrees similar to these in content were issued by synods before and after this Lateran Council. Hefele-Leclercq, V and VI; Grayzel, The Church and the Jews in the XIlIth Century, Philadelphia, 1933.]
Sooooo, the Nazi's got their ideas from the RCC!!!! Which might help explain these pics.
There are other things the Nazis seem to have borrowed from the RCC, but they can wait for another post.
"French Catholic Church Apologizes for Silence on Holocaust," New York Times, October 1, 1997
excerpts:
DRANCY, France -- The Roman Catholic Church in France apologized to the Jewish people Tuesday for its silence in the face of French collaboration with the Holocaust.The apology by France's bishops, pronounced in this Paris suburb whose name is synonymous with the deportation of tens of thousands of French Jews to Nazi death camps, amounted to an extraordinary admission of responsibility in a country that has long struggled to come to terms with the acts of the World War II Vichy government.
In a country that until two years ago had never made an unequivocal official admission of the French state's responsibility in sending Jews to their deaths, and long tried to construct a semantic distinction between Vichy and France itself, the language used Tuesday was remarkable.
Denouncing a deep-rooted anti-Semitism, excessive conformity, prudence and indifference in the ranks of the church during the war, the archbishop said the bishops of France had acquiesced through their silence to "a murderous process" that should have been met immediately by protest and protection of the Jews. "Silence was the rule, and words in favor of the victims the exception," he said.
The archbishop also condemned the history and influence "of age-old anti-Judaism" in the Catholic Church -- what he called "the constantly repeated anti-Jewish stereotypes." His words appeared designed on the eve of the Jewish New Year on Thursday to lay the basis for a new and deepened understanding between Christians and the 650,000 Jews in France.
Although Pope John Paul II urged Catholics in 1994 to repent for failing in their moral duty to protest the treatment of Jews, and the bishops of Germany and Poland have apologized for their wartime failings, the declaration read Tuesday appeared to amount to an expression of remorse more complete, uncompromising and anguished than anything previously pronounced by the church.
Tuesday's statement came just before the 57th anniversary of the promulgation on Oct. 3, 1940, of the first of more than 160 anti-Semitic laws and decrees passed by the Vichy regime that progressively excluded Jews from French public life and opened the way for sending about one-quarter of France's Jewish population to their deaths.
Several hundred people -- including Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger of Paris, who was born Jewish and converted to Catholicism, and the chief rabbi of France, Joseph Sitruk -- stood and listened in a small square between a railroad freight car and a monument commemorating the 76,000 Jews deported from the Drancy internment camp, most of them to Auschwitz. Drancy was indeed, as the monument records, "the antechamber of the death camps."
After the roundup of Jews by the French police in Paris on July 16, 1942, several leading French churchmen did speak out indignantly against the Vichy regime. Among them was Archbishop Jean-Geraud Saliege of Toulouse, who declared on Aug. 30, 1942 that "the Jews are our brothers, like so many others, and no Christian can forget this fact."
On the other hand, some churchmen, including Cardinal Alfred Baudrillart, the rector of the Catholic Institute in Paris, were outspoken supporters of the Vichy government and the Nazis. Baudrillart called Hitler's mission a noble and inspiring one.
But it is clear that in France at least, and apparently also in the Vatican, the heroism of some is no longer regarded as a pretext to hide the failings of others.
"Conscience is formed by memory," the archbishop said Tuesday, "and no society can live in peace with itself on the basis of a false or repressed past, any more than an individual can."
"The attitude of the French church was compassionate toward those who were persecuted, including the Jews," Le Pen said.
In the case of the French church, Pope John Paul's encouragement to his followers to prepare for the new millennium by confronting past mistakes has clearly contributed to the frankness displayed Tuesday.
The archbishop Tuesday quoted the pope's words in a 1994 encyclical: "To recognize the stumblings of yesterday is an act of loyalty and courage that helps us reinforce our faith."
Serge Klarsfeld, the president of the Association of Sons and Daughters of Deported French Jews, said he believed that the French statement would "put pressure on the Vatican so that it, too, finally completes and makes public its declaration on the Holocaust."
Not murder, execution. Ideas have consequences, sometimes murderous consequences, as the 20th century attests.
At times, the Church has recommended the suppression of malevolent religious movements, like the Catharist movement that forbid marriage. The consequences of the spread of such a cult would have led to the literal end of society.
Would the world have been better off if pernicious ideologies like Nazism and communism had been suppressed? I'll leave that to you to decide.
Heresy is defined as the obstinate adherence to error in the face of correction by those who declare themselves to be Catholics. By definition, non-Catholics cannot be Catholic heretics. As is stated in the article, non-Catholics were exempt from inquisition.
"Being a lover of freedom, when the revolution came in Germany, I looked to the universities to defend it, knowing that they had always boasted of their devotion to the cause of truth; but, no, the universities immediately were silenced. Then I looked to the great editors of the newspapers whose flaming editorials in days gone by had proclaimed their love of freedom; but they, like the universities, were silenced in a few short weeks...
Only the Church stood squarely across the path of Hitler's campaign for suppressing truth. I never had any special interest in the Church before, but now I feel a great affection and admiration because the Church alone has had the courage and persistence to stand for intellectual truth and moral freedom. I am forced thus to confess that what I once despised I now praise unreservedly.
Albert Einstein
Time Magazine, 12/23/40**************************************
The charity and work of Pope Pius XII during World War II so impressed the Chief Rabbi of Rome, Israel Zolli, that in 1944 he was open to the grace of God which led him into the Catholic faith. As his baptismal name, he took the same one Pius had, Eugenio, as his own. Later Israel Eugenio Zolli wrote a book entitled, Why I Became a Catholic.
**************************************
"The voice of Pius XII is a lonely voice in the silence and darkness enveloping Europe this Christmas... he is about the only ruler left on the Continent of Europe who dares to raise his voice at all... the Pope put himself squarely against Hitlerism... he left no doubt that the Nazi aims are also irreconcilable with his own conception of a Christian peace."
The New York Times editorial
12/25/41 (Late Day edition, p. 24)**************************************
"This Christmas more than ever he is a lonely voice crying out of the silence of a continent... Pope Pius expresses as passionately as any leader on our side the war aims of the struggle for freedom when he says that those who aim at building a new world must fight for free choice of government and religious order. They must refuse that the state should make of individuals a herd of whom the state disposes as if they were lifeless things."
The New York Times editorial
12/25/42 (Late Day edition, p. 16)
From the Council of Nicea (325):(excerpted)
It was declared to be particularly unworthy for this, the holiest of all festivals, to follow the custom [the calculation] of the Jews, who had soiled their hands with the most fearful of crimes, and whose minds were blinded.In rejecting their custom,(1) we may transmit to our descendants the legitimate mode of celebrating Easter, which we have observed from the time of the Saviour's Passion to the present day[according to the day of the week]. We ought not, therefore, to have anything in common with the Jews, for the Saviour has shown us another way; our worship follows a more legitimate and more convenient course(the order of the days of the week); and consequently, in unanimously adopting this mode, we desire, dearest brethren, to separate ourselves from the detestable company of the Jews, for it is truly shameful for us to hear them boast that without their direction we could not keep this feast. How can they be in the right, they who, after the death of the Saviour, have no longer been led by reason but by wild violence, as their delusion may urge them?
They do not possess the truth in this Easter question; for, in their blindness and repugnance to all improvements, they frequently celebrate two passovers in the same year. We could not imitate those who are openly in error. How, then, could we follow these Jews, who are most certainly blinded by error? for to celebrate the passover twice in one year is totally inadmissible. But even if this were not so, it would still be your duty not to tarnish your soul by communications with such wicked people[the Jews].
That's why the church needed to change the calendar, needed to do away with the Sabbath and started Sun-day worship, in 'honor of the venerable Sun'. Why they needed to distance themselves from Passover and celebrate Easter, a name derived from the pagan godess of fertility, widely known at the time.
The church has done nearly all it could to distance themselves from the root that they 'claim' to be grafted unto. Yet, it resembles nothing of the root anymore.
There probably were members of the Church hierarchy that deliberately kept silent. That's lamentable, but what does that prove? Catholics don't claim impeccability for any clergy person, even the pope. Certainly non-Catholic Christians are also sinful. Just as many or more Protestant clergy capitulated in the face of Nazi persecution. That's no reason to condemn the teachings of Protestantism per se. Finally, as the NY Times and Albert Einstein attest, the pope was the lone voice speaking out against the Nazis during the early years of the war.
I doubt that any significant number of clergy thought that Hitler was doing something noble. That's a bit of stretch, to say the least. You should have some evidence of that before you slander people, and then extrapolate from that to smear the entire clergy. Slander is a sin.
From the newspaper article that I posted, which you seem to have NOT read!!
On the other hand, some churchmen, including Cardinal Alfred Baudrillart, the rector of the Catholic Institute in Paris, were outspoken supporters of the Vichy government and the Nazis. Baudrillart called Hitler's mission a noble and inspiring one.
Is this the official Catholic position?
Would you like to kill me?
At times, the Church has recommended the suppression of malevolent religious movements, like the Catharist movement that forbid marriage. The consequences of the spread of such a cult would have led to the literal end of society.
The Hussites never forbad marriage. Their society survived fine for hundreds of years -- before you guys got ahold of them.
Would the world have been better off if pernicious ideologies like Nazism and communism had been suppressed? I'll leave that to you to decide.
And why do you call Nazism pernicious? Because Nazis committed genocide? So did Catholics. Should Catholicism be surpressed?
Or are you just upset Hitler didn't exterminate Protestants?
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