Posted on 03/16/2006 7:42:26 AM PST by Gamecock
You wrote:
"What do you call it when a Roman Emporer calls a counsel and a pope and bishops show up?"
I call it Divine Providence.
"So much of this would be cleared up if Protestants just studied history. Is that too much to ask?"
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Whose? Yours?
After your church became a part of the state did the head of the state ever direct any councils to convene to resolve any doctrinal issues?
After Constantine was the power of the State ever used to punish heretics?
After Constantine did worship services change? Did the places of worship change, after all prior to Constantine Roman Catholicism was largely a faith of the poor.
After Constantine what happened to the pagans?
"If that's political, then so is a meeting of the elders of a Baptist church to SELECT a pastor."
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We don't deny it. Our pastors are accountable to the congregation.
That idea was mainly an invention of the middle ages. Heretics in the era you're talking about were typically removed from church offices (good) and banished to remote locations (maybe not quite as good).
After Constantine did worship services change?
Not very much, although the use of Greek died out in the West and was replaced by Latin.
Did the places of worship change, after all prior to Constantine Roman Catholicism was largely a faith of the poor.
You mean you admit that "Roman Catholicism" existed prior to Constantine? I'm shocked.
After Constantine what happened to the pagans?
Well, one of them, his grandson I believe, became Emperor and tried to stamp out the Faith. qv "Julian the Apostate"
My ancestors and most of my family are Protestants. Reading the true history of the church is what led me to being Catholic. There are a lot of gross exaggerations out there, and a lot of out-and-out lies spread about the Catholic church. For example - the Inquisition. Any honest historian will tell you it was a lot different than most people (especially teachers) say.
I did some investigation and wondered why these people (Jack Chick, etc) would spread lies about the church. That led me to investigate the Catholic Church more and now I am at mass about everyday.
The DaVinci Code is just the latest example. People say "ahh, it's just fiction", but how many believe it is the truth? A lot of these stories probably started the same way.
Been there, done that but nobody has sent me a t-shirt. :-(
I've got a t-shirt for you. What's your address?
I'd send it to you but you'd probably confuse it with the false decretals. :-)
Oh, BTW, that's not absolutely clear. The word "pagan," for example, comes from a Latin term meaning "country person" or "bumpkin". And we know that Christianity was popular in the military and other fairly prosperous and powerful strata of Roman society.
:-) It wasn't going to be a bad t-shirt.
In order to establish a pattern of "papish" abuses before the widespread massacres of nuns and priests, your source relies on identifying Albigensians as Reformed Christians, since the Catholic Church did use violence to suppress the Albigensian movement.
This is quite a desperate tactic, very surprising to me, since the Albigensians' beliefs are so anti-Christian that they are not even referred to as a heresy by the Catholic Church, but an apostasy. The closest comparison the Albigensians have to a modern cult is that of Wahabbism, but even that does not approach the fanatical zealotry of the Albi, who commended people starving themselves to death as the only sure way of earning salvation.
Nonetheless, the Catholic Church was concerned that the suppression of such heresies and apostasies by secular authorities, falsely claiming clerical authority, was dangerous to Christianity. Attempts at selectively blessing certain kings (Holy Roman Emporers, such as Charlemagne) while excluding their rivals was only marginally successful, and bred disloyalty among those kings who would not be so blessed. Further, Kings regularly claimed "divine right," in defiance of the Church's lack of blessing.
Hence, the Inquisition was founded. Unfortunately, Protestant sources such as yours conflate the Inquisition with precisely the barbaric practices it was intended to prevent.
The Inquisition was charged with a difficult task; it represented the Church, so it had to be a sense of forgiveness, redemption, and charity; yet it also had to be effective at suppressing revolt, to maintain credibility with the kings and to fulfill its basic functions.
Whereas secular authorities imprisoned and killed with very little evidence, often on assertions they were "defending the faith," the Inquisition looked to the bible for rules of conducting a trial, introducing such notions as corroborative evidence, concurrence of witnesses, etc. It also found that torture was widely used by kings as a means of terrifying their population, rather than intelligence-gathering. Therefore, sustained torture, although very common among Protestant movements, even in the American colonies was forbidden; Inquisitors realized if an accused terrorist didn't talk in the first fifteen minutes, he wasn't going to talk; they successfully implemented practices recognizing this.
Tragedies such as Bartholomew's Massacre (wildly exaggerated in many sources) demonstrate not the sadism of the Inquisition, but that a desperate public found the Catholic Church's official actions wholly inadequate, and took matters into their own hands.
Agus mise fein. My maternal ancestry is Irish Catholic. I'm familiar with all this history. It's chilling to realize that my paternal Scot/Huguenot "Orange" and my maternal "Green" ancestors once literally tried to wipe each other out. All while being manipulated by the English. *sigh*
If this makes the Tiber seem cold, one can only wonder at how frigid the Thames river is!
The Thames is polluted with sodomite sewage. It's not even up for consideration.
Wait... I thought nobody expects the Inquisition?!
*Sigh* Somebody's gotta ping blackelk and ninenot, but I'm just not up for it right now.
>> The Albigenses were a dualistic sect which scorned marriage and childbearing and encouraged homosexuality and ritual suicide. In fact, the sect came from Bulgaria, which is why the slang term "bugger" (from "Bulgar") in English means ... well, you get the picture. <<
Is that why hippies are always eating "Bulgar?"
You wrote:
"Whose? Yours?"
The history of the Church is the history of my Church. There were no Protestants before the sixteenth century. Ask a Lutheran if he ever studied Lutheran church history of fifth century Persia and he'll look at you as if you're from another planet.
"After your church became a part of the state did the head of the state ever direct any councils to convene to resolve any doctrinal issues?"
The Catholic Church NEVER became a part of the state. You've said this at least twice. Care to present your evidence for that assertion?
"After Constantine was the power of the State ever used to punish heretics?"
Roman state power was used to punish religious deviants -- period. Once upon a time that meant Christians and sometimes others. Later that meant heretics from Christianity. The state power didn't change. The definition of who was a deviant did.
"After Constantine did worship services change?"
Not because of Constantine they didn't. We know this from the Hippolytus of Rome who lived BEFORE Constantine.
"Did the places of worship change, after all prior to Constantine Roman Catholicism was largely a faith of the poor."
Incorrect. No such thing as "Roman Catholicism" existed until that term was invented by bitter Protestants in the sixteenth century in England. The Church was Catholic and still is Catholic. Also, the Church always included some wealthy and prominent members even in the first few centuries. Christians worshipped wherever they could just as they do now. When they can afford to build beautiful churches they do it. When they can't, they worship in homes, hotel rooms, outdoors, in caves, catacombs, etc.
"After Constantine what happened to the pagans?"
Nothing. They made up 2/3 of the population. What could happen to them? They even briefly persecuted Christians again under the emperor Julian the Apostate in the 360's (he was a nephew of Constantine). There were still plenty of pagans in the Roman empire in 410 -- 85 years after the Council of Nicea! It was because of their bitter attack on Christisnity after the sack of Rome by Arian Visigoths that Augustine felt compelled to write the City of God to explain why troubles can befall even those who are Christians, and that returning to the old pagan gods would be foolishness.
I think I could use a couple pounds of Indulgences myself, and some for the family. Lord knows I need it!
>> I am a Baptist and one of the reasons we do not have a centralized institution is because of this history. <<
Gee, the Calvinists NEVER did ANYTHING evil... LOL! Besides burn every monastery, convent, and church they could get their hands on. Ya know why the Catholic Church is so screwed up in Boston? Ya might want to look up such historical issues as the Somerville convent: a few hundred nuns brutally murdered and ain't none of the kindly Baptist folks saw nuttin.
My point is not to tar Baptists. You and I both know and acknowledge that the KKK and the like are not representative of the Baptist faith. My point is that evil is not borne of hierarchy. In fact, the underpinning of the modern democratic state is that institutions' meting out of justice protects society from the capriciousness and chaos of the masses.
LOL, right you are with that.
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